The Rebels: The Kent Family Chronicles

by John Jakes

“By accompanying me tonight.”

  “What?”

  “I said I would like you to accompany me to the supper party.”

  “Out of the question.”

  “You’re engaged?”

  “There’s a cracked leg on one of my presses. I planned to go back to the loft yet this afternoon and start on the repair. I imagine it’ll take me a good part of the evening—”

  “Ah, pouf! Tomorrow will be soon enough.”

  “I’ve got to finish that blasted circular!”

  “You are inventing excuses,” Gil declared with an airy wave.

  “That’s not so, I—”

  “Why bother with repairs and circulars if you intend to give up your trade?”

  “I haven’t definitely decided to do that—”

  “But you’re thinking about it. So neither repairs nor advertisements are that urgent. Besides,” Gil hurried on as Philip started to protest again, “there’s a practical reason for my desiring your company. The kind family issuing the invitation to me has also included another guest. A young woman who is the niece of my host’s wife. Since I am a married man, the host and hostess have arranged for my partner for the evening to be a grand dame quite advanced in years. Some antique relative of Mr. Hancock’s, I believe. But the other lady I mentioned—a young widow—is thus far without a suitable compan—wait, wait, hear me out!”

  Philip had limped off along the stone fence to stare at the cloud-dappled sky.

  Gil rushed after him, still speaking in that light, half-mocking tone:

  “You needn’t curdle up so! You might enjoy an evening of feminine companionship.”

  Gazing obliquely at Philip to see if he’d piqued his curiosity, Gil waited. Philip merely scowled. Gil went on in spite of it:

  “The young woman is from Virginia. Her name is McLean. According to my host, she is pretty and quite intelligent. To have dinner with her, while possibly a pleasant diversion, should not be construed as an attempt at matchmaking, if that’s what’s troubling you.”

  It was, in part, but Philip didn’t admit it, saying instead:

  “Hauling a stranger along, Gil—that’s ridiculous.”

  “Let me decide that, please. Will you go?”

  “No, of course I won’t go. I doubt the lady would care to have someone like me for a partner. I mean—” He spread his fingers downward to indicate his right leg. His mouth twisted in an ugly way. “—I’d hardly cut a fine figure dancing.”

  “There is to be no dancing. But your concern is revealing. I’ve suspected you were overly anxious about your injury. You probably pay it more heed than anyone else would.”

  “I am a cripple.”

  Gil shrugged again. “You are if you think you are. It is that simple, I believe.”

  “To you.”

  “So you definitely will not go?”

  “I’ve already answered that.”

  “In other words, you reject your friend and his interest in you?”

  Philip uttered a long sigh. “If you insist on putting it that way, yes.”

  “Very well. I shall have my secretary return your letter to the duke.”

  “Damme, you promised—”

  “Ah, but I have my price.”

  “Lectures, supper invitations—what the hell is this all about?”

  Suddenly the Marquis de Lafayette grew completely sober-faced. He looked much older than his years as he laid a compassionate hand on Philip’s arm.

  “It is about you, my friend. It is about your life, which must go on even though your beloved wife’s has ended.”

  Gil spun and thrust one hand toward Abraham scampering on the sunlit hilltop in the distance.

  “Will you consign him to misery the remainder of his days just so you can revel in it too? I think that is decidedly short-sighted. And selfish. Earlier, I tried to suggest that every grief must have an end. You paid no attention—”

  “My wife died because I was away when I should have been here!”

  “Why should you have been here? Explain to me exactly—why? You professed belief in the army’s purpose, did you not? You pledged yourself to that purpose, did you not? You committed yourself to helping deliver this new nation into freedom—freedom for each man to choose his own path without consulting kings or ministers. I am a foreigner, but I have the distinct impresssion that what has happened in this country in the last few years now means more to me than it does to you!”

  “That’s a damned lie. I believe it was. worthwhile to—”

  “Faugh, you do not believe it was worthwhile at all. Otherwise you would not throw it all away.”

  “Throw what away, for Christ’s sake?”

  “The future that has been and is being so dearly and preciously won! You make a mockery of the struggle. You no longer care about the future! Oh, you run about pretending to be busy—you substitute frantic motion for authentic purpose—but you’ve admitted you’ve lost hope—abandoned yourself to wallowing in grief—even reached the brink of throwing away the career you once hoped to create for yourself in this country! If all of that weren’t so, you’d clearly see, for example, that your behavior is creating an irreparable gulf between yourself and that boy. No, don’t deny it—I saw how he looked at you a few minutes ago! In twenty years you’ll have no son worthy of inheriting what you’ve begun, because what you’ve begun is already disappearing in apathy and bitterness. Your son’s love will have disappeared too—and no doubt your son himself, when he’s old enough to flee the moody creature who’s a father in name only! I repeat, do not argue—I am not finished!” Gil cried, cheeks scarlet now.

  “I know I should not speak this way. It is none of my affair if you wish to entomb yourself, give up and rot in despair all your days. But a week in Boston has been quite long enough for me to see the pattern evolving. You are driving that boy from you, and just as surely, you are counting as nothing all that’s been spent to give him a future—a country to grow up in that is unlike any other this world has ever seen. Once, you faced death for that. Now you dismiss it! You dismiss out of hand all the decent men who have surrendered their lives for this new nation. You very conveniently forget they died not only for themselves but for you. More important, for that boy! You forget, and you spit on their sacrifice!”

  Gil was trembling. He averted his head, as if ashamed. Philip tried to blunt the stinging accusations with sarcasm:

  “Those are fine sentiments. But over-optimistic, don’t you think? You’re talking as if we’ve won.”

  “We have! I am willing to take my oath on it! America will surely triumph now that its own army has shown fighting teeth, and allies are on your side—”

  “Allies? We’ve only France.”

  “I suspect there will be another soon. Perhaps not formally tied to America but declaring war on Britain nevertheless. I refer to Spain. However, you’re dodging the issue.”

  “Gil, I can’t help how I feel!”

  “But certainly you can. You are a man. Grieve inwardly if you must. Of course you will never forget your wife. But the world goes on. So must you.”

  “I’d rather have lost the war than Anne!”

  Hazel eyes pinned him. “You see? My indictment was entirely correct.”

  “I—” Philip hesitated. “Well, dammit, not entirely, but—”

  “What you mean is, you want both the war won and your wife alive, and it has not worked out that way because things of value carry a high cost. One which must be paid despite our bitter reluctance. Mr. Jefferson named the price explicitly. ‘Our lives. Our fortunes. Our sacred honor.’ If you were not willing to pay it, you should have said so at the beginning—and stuck with the damned, cowardly Tories! It is a measure of what a weak, pathetic creature you are allowing yourself to become that you put those same sentiments into type—”

  Gil snatched the slim book from his pocket and shook it at Philip.

  “—you print them in hope of a profit, yet you’re blind to the very words on
the page! Mr. Paine knows Heaven sets the proper price on its goods. In your miserable self-pity, you have forgotten!”

  He hurled the book at Philip’s feet and stalked off.

  ii

  Stunned, Philip reached down for the volume that represented so much of his stake in the future—a future which, in his darkest moments, he was indeed ready to abandon.

  As he straightened up, he saw Gil glaring at him. The young Frenchman turned his back.

  Philip swallowed, remembering almost word for word the passage Royal had first shown him; the passage he’d set so carefully as he began work on the Paine edition.

  What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value.…

  Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods.…

  It would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.…

  But it was dearness and struggle that had given Anne her importance in his life, too. Now she was gone. Irretrievably gone. That was the loss, the price, that had reduced him to confusion and depression and uncertainty about what he wanted for himself in the years ahead—if indeed he wanted anything at all.

  His temper in control again, Gil walked slowly back to his friend. With a polite half-bow, he said:

  “Once more I was grossly intemperate. But this time I offer no apology. The words needed speaking.”

  “Gil, I—perhaps you just can’t understand. Believe me when I say I feel responsible for Anne’s death.”

  “Then you have fallen into dire error.”

  Philip shook his head, resigned: “It certainly wouldn’t be the first time—”

  “I do remind you of this. If you cannot or will not lift yourself out of your despondency, then you will be responsible for that young boy dying—even though he lives physically to be a hundred years.”

  “Gil, this—”

  Philip stared into his friend’s face, still shocked and hurt by the assault, even as he began to understand Gil’s motives.

  “—this is pretty damned thick stuff for you to spout just because I don’t want to have supper with some damned widow from Virginia.”

  “The dinner is incidental. Your willingness is not.” Gil touched his arm, adding softly, “Come—will you deny your old comrade in arms?”

  A lengthy pause. Philip’s face hardened a little.

  “Let’s get back to the basic issue. If I go, will you carry the letter?”

  “Yes.”

  “Otherwise you won’t?”

  “No. You will have to see to it yourself. I will consider our friendship at an end.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Perfectly.”

  Philip remained silent even longer. The sound of the wind seemed to intensify, then fade. Shaken, he began:

  “What time—?”

  He couldn’t get out the rest, because Gil exclaimed:

  “My coach will call at seven sharp!”

  Feeling exhausted by the argument, and more than slightly traitorous to Anne’s memory, Philip let out a long, defeated sigh:

  “All right. Seven o’clock.”

  “Splendid! Splendid! You don’t even have to enjoy it. Just go. Now—”

  Gil whirled him around by the shoulders, drawing Philip’s attention to what he’d perceived only dimly a moment before:

  “—your son is calling you. Evidently he’s found some object of interest.” Another of the billowy, slow-moving clouds darkened Gil’s face. “Why don’t you go to him? Speak to him? This time, out of more than necessity?”

  Philip stared at the summit of Morton’s Hill as Gil added, “I shall stroll by what’s left of the redoubt and rejoin you shortly.”

  All elegance, lace and gold trim that gleamed in the sun, the Marquis de Lafayette walked off through the high grass.

  CHAPTER V

  The Woman From Virginia

  PHILIP CLIMBED AWKWARDLY over the stone fence and started down the slope toward the base of Morton’s Hill. He was continually conscious of his limp now, and certain that the other guests at the supper party would be also. What a blasted fool he was, to allow a moment’s weakness to overcome his initial refusal!

  Or was it weakness? Could Gil be right about the necessity for abandoning his excessive preoccupation with Anne’s death?

  The blatant bribery concerning the letter to James Amberly had been relatively incidental to Philip’s change of mind. He could have found other, though less certain, means of posting the letter to England. He could not have endured the dissolution of his friendship with the marquis quite so easily.

  The more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that Gil’s threats were deliberate devices for breaking through to the heart of his personal crisis and jolting him, if possible, from the despair that had held him in its grip for months.

  Still, the idea of dining beside some strange woman was unnerving. But he had said he would, so now he must suffer through. The evening was certain to be a disaster—

  He was glad to be momentarily distracted from contemplating it. The distraction was provided by Abraham, waving and calling from the summit of Morton’s Hill.

  As Philip reached the depression between the hills, the boy pointed to something in the grass. Philip blinked against the sun, thinking he saw Anne standing on the hilltop, lovely as he remembered her from that first picnic in the pastures of farmers Breed and Bunker—

  So long ago.

  He heard the distant drums again. The distant voices—

  Push on! Push on!

  How that cry had terrified them, just before the redcoats stormed the redoubt where Gil was wandering, trying to mark its outline in the overgrown grass.

  Philip started up the hill toward Abraham, still upset about the prospect of an evening in the company of some Virginia charmer. About all he’d learn from such a person might be a few details of the widening war in the southern states. He might not even learn that if she were a vapid creature who paid no attention to affairs of the country.

  He thought about the long conversation just concluded. Realistically, Gil was correct in one of his comments. There was confidence abroad now. Philip heard it in every lane and coffee-house in Boston.

  It was a boisterous, be-damned-to-you confidence risen phoenix-like from the humiliation of the early days of the war. It was a confidence forged in the bitter struggle to bring military discipline out of disorder. It was a confidence instilled by steady, courageous, honorable men like Washington, and bizarre professionals like Baron von Steuben. It was a confidence heightened by France’s open and growing support of her ally, even though that support was birthed in expediency as the result of centuries-old hatred.

  Whatever the motivation for the act, France had tipped the balance. The bastard nation had at last been legitimized; recognized by another country. Surely others would follow suit—

  Laboring up Morton’s Hill, Philip hesitated at the halfway point, jerked back to the immediacy of his surroundings. There were too many ghosts stirring here; ghosts whose presence threatened to overwhelm him with grief—

  Sweating suddenly, he stood with one hand at his brow to blot out the sun. He failed to notice Abraham’s wigwagging arms fall to his sides, indicative of his disappointment as he saw his father come to a stop in the rippling pasture grass.

  Philip was pale. The eerie drumming became a thunder that conjured up too many faces he wanted to forget.

  Black-skinned Salem Prince and handsome Dr. Warren facing bayonets in the redoubt, and going down to death—

  Eph Tait, begging for a rifle to end his own life in the winter-clutched mountains—

  Lucas Cowper, screaming as pitch on the stump of his arm seared his whole future out of existence—

  A schoolmaster with a fly crawling in the moist, dead cavern of his mouth; never again for him the pleasure of shiny faces over hornbooks, or the companionship of a girl called Patsy—

  There were more, th
ousands more, whose names and histories he would never know. Gil said they had died for him. He would have died for them if that had been his lot and luck. And collectively, they would have perished for a piece of paper drawn up in Philadelphia and flung at the world in magnificent defiance of tyranny; magnificent affirmation of everything in which a lovely, tender, strong-minded Boston girl had believed—

  Everything he had believed.

  Once.

  A new thought struck him. Anne, too, had given herself. She was a casualty of war just as surely as the others were. He was certain that, to the end, she had kept her faith in the worth of the difficult struggle—

  What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.

  Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods—

  All those he remembered, including Anne, had known the value of the goal for which the nation fought. And had paid the price. Not by choice. But they had paid.

  He stared down at his right leg and thought, And so did I.

  Would he have had it otherwise? Seen freedom lost in return for personal safety and security? That was the fundamental question Gil asked. In conscience, Philip had to admit his answer was no. But in that answer, there was heartbreak—

  “Papa? Come see—I’ve found a bird. I think it’s a waxwing!”

  Once more Philip shielded his eyes, shifted position for a glimpse of his son’s face. He was disconcerted to see that the boy looked apprehensive. No doubt he expected an absent stare; or a scowl and a reprimand—

  “I’m coming, Abraham.”

  He resumed his slow ascent of the hillside, the phantom drumming a crescendo; the sound seemed to throb all around him.

  Then, as he concentrated on the boy’s tense, expectant face, it began to fade—

  As did the horrible massed cry of those long-ago voices:

  Push on! Push on!

  Suddenly, there was no grimness at all in the voices dying away in the sunny wind. There was only a challenge. His mouth framed the words softly:

  “Push on—”

  It was what he must do. Put pain and grief behind as best he could, and live the rest of his life in the now, not the yesterday or the tomorrow that should have been.