by Fortune Kent
Jeffrey sat on the edge of a projecting rock and ran his fingers over his disarranged black hair. She looked up and found his eyes on her face. When he saw her looking at him, he glanced away like a child surprised while engaged in mischief.
“The sentries were stationed here,” he indicated the island. “Seven men on twenty-four-hour-a-day alert. Waiting for the British. And the British came. They mounted simultaneous attacks on every American outpost along the river—Tarrytown, Peekskill, Fort Clinton, Fort Montgomery, Sentry Island—while their army made a feint into New Jersey to throw Washington off balance. This island was the key to their success, and they sent two hundred men here in five shallow-draught ships.”
“Two hundred against seven,” she commented, sipping the wine. His voice was low and rhythmic, and she enjoyed listening to the cadence of his speech. How men love to talk of wars and battles, she thought.
“Yes,” he said, “and not only were the Continentals outnumbered, but the English had the advantage of surprise and, from their spies, an exact knowledge of the strength of the garrison. They cordoned off the island with ships and men, came ashore at one in the morning, and were in the fort before our men could light the signal fires to warn the troops on shore. Three of the defending Continentals were killed and three were captured.”
“And the seventh?” Beth held her cup to be refilled.
“Ah, the seventh sentry,” he said. “Somehow he escaped, slipped past the enemy troops and ships, whether in a boat or by swimming no one knows. He reached Newburgh and gave the alarm and riders were posted to General Washington. You know the rest. Washington reinforced the highlands, Howe never advanced, St. Leger was defeated by our General Herkimer, and Burgoyne was turned back at Saratoga in the battle that was to be the turning point of the war.”
Jeffrey was free with both his speech and his gestures. The wine? Because he had forgotten her presence? Or, and this she hoped was the reason, had he come to be at ease with her and able to put aside his earlier diffidence?
“The people here in the valley like to play ‘it might have been’,” he said. “If the British had killed or captured all of the sentries instead of only six, General Howe would have attacked up the Hudson, and the Americans would have been compelled to weaken their other armies to send help. We would have lost at Saratoga, the colonies would have been divided, the war lost.”
“Then the Revolution may have been decided right here,” she said.
“Yes. Perhaps if the seventh sentry hadn’t escaped—not for certain, but perhaps—there would be no United States of America today and George Washington would be remembered as a Virginia planter who led an unsuccessful revolt.”
He paced across to the edge of the rock shelf and back again as though his energy, contained most of the day, must burst forth.
“And at times,” he said heatedly, “I think we might have been better off if we had lost the war. The English at least would have known better than our good governor how to deal with our anti-rent rebels. They wouldn’t hesitate to call out the militia to maintain law and order.”
Beth looked up. This was the first mention of sending for troops. Probably an idea discussed at Jeffrey’s New York meeting. She sipped from her cup. Not today, she thought, no tenant revolts, no provisions of wills today. Let me enjoy this moment without debates, or politics, or problems.
“The anti-renters refuse to listen to reason,” Jeffrey said. “We have many arguments on our side, but one fact, and one fact alone, justifies the rents. They agreed, these same farmers—they not only agreed but pleaded—to sign the contracts for the land, and now they want to renege on their word.” He hauled a stone into the gray water of the river.
Beth got to her feet and went to him and touched him on the arm. “Walk with me,” she said, and they climbed down to the shore and walked along the beach, the late afternoon breeze damp on their faces, water slapping on the stones below. A few large drops of rain spattered in their faces and made penny-size spots on the rocks. They turned back and retrieved the picnic basket and, her arm on his, returned to the boat.
The wind was rising, coming off the near shore, making the rowboat struggle over the swells. Jeffrey faced her, intent at the oars, his feet planted firmly on a rib of the boat. She saw he had changed his boots since morning and now wore an older brown pair. Her breathing quickened. On the toe of the left boot was a double scratch in the shape of an X. Beth gasped—so the man at the meeting had been Jeffrey. Don’t question him now, she cautioned herself. Ask him tomorrow. Don’t spoil today.
They rowed into the boathouse where Jeffrey secured the boat. They went out and he closed the door. Red Devil and Lady Barbara were waiting, and they mounted the horses and rode along the shore road. To the south the sky was a hazy blue but the clouds above them were dark, and as they turned from the river, the rain began once more, light and steady. Jeffrey reined in beside a bridge over the creek.
“Only a shower,” he said. “We’ll wait here until the rain stops.” He tied the horses below a large tree, and they bent their heads to go beneath the stone bridge.
They sat on the grass bank of the stream, protected from the rain pattering on the fallen leaves. The water murmured at their feet. She saw him watching her, his wavy hair glistening with the rain, and she turned to him and raised her face. He bent to her, put his arms about her, and kissed her. She moved into his arms, shutting out all else, living only for this moment, no thought for the past, no concern for the future, only Jeffrey, here, now.
He drew away, face puzzled, emotions seeming to struggle one with another. His mouth tightened. “And you still claim,” he asked, “to be my sister?” He smiled derisively.
Beth fell back as though he had slapped her face. She turned her head away and tears came to her eyes. A sob shook her. She ran and untied Lady Barbara, mounted and rode off at a gallop, the rain sharp and stinging on her face.
Chapter Fifteen
On the following morning, Monday, Beth thought Jeffrey looked at her over the breakfast table in a different way, but whether with disdain or a wary interest she could not be sure. Outwardly he was polite and distant. I don’t care, she told herself, and put thoughts of the day before from her mind.
An indifference had replaced the tears of yesterday, an overwhelming feeling of not caring, of being once removed from those around her. It mattered little what Jeffrey said or did, she told herself, for he could no longer hurt her.
I will live within myself, she thought, for myself. Once more she had exposed her feelings to a man and made herself vulnerable to him. She should have known what the result would be, for she had followed this same course before. With Francis long ago, with Matthew, now with Jeffrey.
She didn’t need them—she was capable of managing her own life without help from anyone. Even though happiness might not result, she knew she could find contentment, a peace much to be preferred to the alternating exultation and despair of the last few days. She was able to return Jeffrey’s stare across the white linen and shining crystal.
“Grandmother is ill.” Jeffrey’s tone was abrupt. Charles Fremont, sitting next to her, raised his tired eyes.
“Really sick this time,” Charles said. “Ellen has sent for Dr. Smith. We’re expecting him at any moment.”
“I’ll stop in and see her after breakfast,” Beth promised. She felt a sinking within her—the only friend she had in the family, old and ill.
Jeffrey deliberately changed the subject. He pretended a casualness toward his grandmother, but Beth had noticed the affectionate glances he had given her outside the church the day before. She vowed she would no longer be daunted by him and discussed in turn the weather, the food, and her impressions of New York State as compared to Ohio. Mrs. Jamison would have been proud of the results of her coaching. The two men seemed confused by her sudden loquacity, but after a time Charles injected comments or questions. Jeffrey merely smiled.
After breakfast she climbed to the old secti
on of the house and found Ellen sitting by Mrs. Worthington’s bed as she had when Beth first visited the aged woman.
Mrs. Worthington held out her hand to Beth who took it in both of hers.
“Did you enjoy your excursion?” The sick woman’s voice was low, and Beth leaned forward to hear.
“The excursion? Oh, yesterday on the river. Yes, the island fascinates me.”
Mrs. Worthington murmured words Beth could not make out.
“What did you say?” she asked.
“Never…go…to…the…island…alone.”
Beth’s hands tightened about the old woman’s as the words echoed in her mind.
“Never,” Mrs. Worthington began again, “go to…” Her voice trailed off and she closed her eyes and slept. Ellen shook her head at Beth while she placed a compress on her patient’s forehead. Beth backed slowly and quietly from the room.
She stopped halfway down the winding stairs to study her reflection in the mirror. Shadows made crescents under her eyes, and her face was paler than it had been when she arrived a brief two weeks before. Perhaps the fault is with this muslin dress, she thought; gray isn’t my best color. Even the clear bright morning outside the door failed to cheer her.
The sun had barely topped the trees, and the grass was still wet with dew. Birds called to her from the woods, but Beth paid them no heed as she walked along the side of the house. The thud, thud of a hammer sounded from the side porch, and she found Mr. Bemis nailing a loose board into place.
“Found your dog yet?” he asked. His blue eyes looked out from a face lined and browned by the weather and the sun.
“No,” Beth said, “and I’m beginning to worry about him.”
“I wouldn’t if I was you,” Mr. Bemis said. “He’s done this many a time before. Gone into the mountains for one, two, three days at a stretch. He’ll be back. Don’t worry, you’ll find him today or tomorrow.”
“I hope I do,” Beth said. She missed Thunder’s companionship and the feeling of security he gave her. Dogs were more dependable than men.
She wandered through the barn and the stables, walked behind the kitchen and the conveniences, around the corner of the woodshed. She stopped short. A tall, ungainly figure loomed over her.
“Oh,” she gasped. A young man stared down at her. “You startled me,” she told him. He didn’t speak but she recognized a smile struggling to be born on his face. She looked at him more closely and saw a tall and heavy youth, eighteen or nineteen, eyes blank and staring, brown hair full and long, mouth slack. Although both he and his clothes were clean, a sweet and unpleasant odor emanated from him. It was all she could do to keep from backing away.
Beth smiled, an unconvincing smile she was sure, and hurried past. He stared vacantly after her. Charles, leaning on his cane, had been watching from the path to the gazebo.
“He startled me so,” she half-apologized.
“Floyd is a shock if you aren’t used to him,” Charles agreed. He walked along the path and she joined him, thankful for company in her retreat. “Floyd Harris is his name, from the village,” he explained. “Not the village either, really, he lives in Daken’s Hollow down by Moodna Creek. He was born the way he is. Learned to talk and does talk when he wants to, and he’s a good worker when someone shows him exactly what to do.”
“A shame,” Beth said. She wished she had been kinder to the boy. “He has a job, though?”
“Works with his father who’s a rather simple man himself. They’re here to clear a blockage in the pipes going into the cesspool.” The odor, she thought, the cesspool explains the odor.
Charles shook his head. “Contrary to the laws of God and man,” he said with indignation.
She was confused. The boy? The stench? The cesspool?
“What is?” she asked.
“Marrying too close a kin,” Charles said. She glanced at him with quick suspicion. His eyes were on the ground, and he used his cane to push aside a branch to reveal a narrow path she had never noticed before. “Will you go with me to the point?” he asked. “I’ll show you my favorite view.” She nodded and followed him.
Was he using the boy, Floyd Harris, to warn her? she wondered. Or simply passing the time of day?
“Daken’s Hollow is rather notorious in these parts for intermarriage,” he went on. “First cousins, I believe, his mother and father were. The relationships in the hollow become confused. Whatever the relation, Floyd is the result.”
Beth felt a momentary nausea. Apparently Jeffrey had made Charles his confidant. Still, did Charles really believe he must warn her? Was he hinting at an unnatural bond between Jeffrey and her? More likely he wanted her to pause and ponder her attraction to her brother.
She had always believed such emotions could not exist between kin. At least not with her. And she knew her feelings for Jeffrey were not those of a sister for her brother. I must have deluded myself, she decided. I cannot be Beth Worthington—Beth could not feel the way I do, not the way I did. And yet, and yet—how to explain the nightmare of the engulfing water, how to explain the mystery of the island?
Enough, she told herself. If Charles wished me to reflect, he succeeded. Leave these thoughts behind with all my misshapen yesterdays. Live one day at a time, concentrate on now.
They reached the view point, and the valley lay spread beneath them. Charles sat on a log bench, and Beth stood next to him and looked for the familiar mountains and the river, but they remained hidden in the mist. Charles held out his land, palm down, indicating the farmlands below, and Beth saw the thick veins on his hand and his white hair and she felt compassion for him.
“The Worthington estate,” he said. His voice was strong and proud. “The fields, the orchards, the cattle, the farms. Look, at the land, Beth, fertile and rich. And all you see will one day be yours.”
“Isn’t it actually mine now?” she asked.
“Oh, the will, you refer to the will.” He shrugged. “Yes, technically yours now.” His eyes met her direct gaze. “Jeffrey and I wanted you to be at home here before we burdened you with talk of wills, and estates. Jeffrey has a great responsibility. He’s worked many years to make our land what it is today.”
“You and Jeffrey were most thoughtful in waiting,” she said without inflection. Charles glanced at her, suspecting sarcasm but not sure. He stood with the help of his cane, and together they looked over the countryside and saw a quilt of brown fields joined by a stitching of zigzag rail fences with here and there a tall marker tree, a first-growth tree left when the land was cleared to mark a farm’s boundary.
“I hope you’ll come to love the estate as I do,” he said. “I often think I’m more a Worthington than any of you, that I have more feeling for this country than you or your grandmother or even your brother. When I was younger I seized every chance I had to ride over the estate, walk beneath the old trees, fish down the creeks from source to river, watch the seasons change from the living green of spring to the dead white of winter. Give us time, Beth. Abide with us a few seasons. Give the estate a chance to become a part of you. Give yourself a chance to become one of us.”
His voice was hoarse, and there was almost a pleading in his speech. She touched his sleeve in tentative response. “I'll try to do what’s right,” she said. You don’t realize, she thought, how much I too have come to love this land in this short time.
They retraced their way along the path, more slowly than on the walk to the point, each of Charles’s steps an effort. Am I heartless, Beth wondered, to be suspicious of this man? Yet she had seen Charles, thinking himself unobserved, walk as would a man of thirty.
They approached the rear of the house where the large square kitchen protruded like an ungainly appendage. “And never forget the value,” Charles said as they stopped outside the door. “The worth has increased more than fifty percent in the last fifteen years. Never relinquish the land. Your future, Beth, and the future of the Worthingtons depends on the land. This is why Rent Day next week is so
important. The annual rents provide for running this house, including the help. All of the help.”
He left her at the kitchen door where the smell of baking bread lured her inside past the buttery, through the pantry with the new icebox sitting high off the floor, into the spacious kitchen. A huge hearth extended halfway across one wall where until a few years ago all of the cooking had been done. The new cookstoves were along the side wall with coal and wood in boxes beside them.
Mrs. Bemis glanced at Beth and smiled. The housekeeper sat across the table from a man Beth recognized as a peddler by the knapsack from which he was drawing forth an assortment of needles and pins, hooks and eyes, scissors, combs, buttons and beads. He laid his wares with great care on the table where Mrs. Bemis examined them and, at times, nodded approval.
Beth breathed deeply to savor the aroma of the bread, reminded of the kitchen in Ohio where she had so often baked in Mrs. Shepherd’s brick oven. Here she felt herself almost an intruder in a stranger’s domain. She brushed a fly from her face and noticed several more hovering in reconnaissance.
Mrs. Paul, the cook, bent over the oven and slid out the loaves with the long-handled bread peel, using pot holders to gently place them on a wooden table. They were large and brown and smelled of home.
Alice entered the door from the main house and whispered to Mrs. Bemis. “A crime,” Beth heard the housekeeper say. They looked surreptitiously at Beth.
She walked across the room to stand before Alice. “A crime?” Beth asked. Alice shook her blonde head. “See for yourself. Around back.” She nodded in that direction. Beth walked with quick steps to the rear of the house where she found a group of men in the yard beside the woodshed. As she approached she grimaced and held her thumb and forefinger on her nose to shut out the thick, cloying stench.
On the grass lay a large cement cover with a metal ring in the top. The men stepped back from the circular opening in the ground, and she saw the boy, Floyd, kneeling on the dirt beyond. He was crying, softly and quietly, tears streaking his face and falling unheeded from his cheeks.
