by John Jakes
“Yes, when the weather’s favorable and the seas reasonably safe. Tell me, what’s the name of your firm? Is it a family firm?”
“Well, I have a young son, named Abraham after my late wife’s father. Of course I entertain some hope that he might continue in the business. For that reason I christened the establishment Kent and Son.”
“I wish both Kents much success and prosperity,” Peggy McLean said, returning his smile with warmth.
Philip felt a peculiar sensation then. With a touch of surprise, he realized what it was. He was enjoying this young woman’s amiable and literate conversation as he’d enjoyed nothing else in months. He even caught himself eyeing the swell of her figure beneath her cloak.
That produced another severe twinge of guilt. It was embarrassing to find himself responding to widow McLean’s presence with even a flicker of physical pleasure—
Perhaps the evening wouldn’t be so disastrous as he’d imagined.
Gil tapped Philip’s shoulder, interrupting his reverie:
“By the by, my friend. That signboard for your doorway—have you made plans yet to put it up?”
“No, I—”
He cut the sentence off abruptly, realizing how skillfully he had been maneuvered into a trap. But Philip couldn’t be angry. Behind Gil’s smile and apparently innocent question lay genuine concern.
“I have been too busy to think much about it,” he resumed. A moment later, the decision was made:
“I expect to call for the sign and have it erected within a week, though.”
“First-rate! I’m sorry I shan’t be here to watch.”
Peggy McLean said, “Most business signboards here in Boston seem to have distinctive designs, Mr. Kent. Is that true of yours?”
“It has a design. Whether it’s distinctive, I can’t say. Just the name, Kent and Son, lettered in gold, Kent at the top, the other two words at the bottom. In between, there’s a green bottle painted black for about a third of the way up. The black represents tea. I was present at Griffin’s Wharf when—”
“When Mr. Adams held his famous tea party,” Peggy nodded. Her stock rose immediately with Philip, for whatever else she might be, she was no empty-headed beauty languishing disconnected from the world.
Sitting forward on the coach seat, aware that he was looking at her with perhaps too great a degree of interest—and sinfully enjoying it!—he went on:
“Yes, exactly right. During the cutting and dumping of the tea chests, my shoes got filled with the stuff. I put some in a green bottle to save it. I have it as a souvenir at home. I like the bottle’s symmetry, but more important, I like what it stands for. So I chose the bottle for the signboard instead of something more typical such as a press or a book—”
He realized the coach had stopped. A large, impressive house loomed outside. All the downstairs windows were aglow with candles, and the rooms themselves shed brilliant lamplight into the street. Liveried servants sprang to the coach door. Glancing out the other side, Philip saw they had returned to the vicinity of the Common.
One of the servants handed Peggy McLean out. Philip followed, alighting with only a slight awkwardness. He was feeling less self-conscious by the moment.
Moving to Philip, Peggy McLean said, “I will need to pick up those circulars before I sail home, Mr. Kent.”
“I can have them brought around to you.”
“But I’ve never seen a printing shop. I should like an invitation to visit yours.”
“You may have it, of course.”
“I hope you don’t think me too forward. Since my husband was killed some years ago, it’s been necessary for me to involve myself in many areas not normally considered proper for a woman. With my overseer’s assistance, I manage my own plantation, for example. I’ve found I have an interest in commerce—even a certain small aptitude for it. I like to broaden my knowledge of all areas of business—”
“Then you’ll surely be welcome at Kent and Son, Mrs. McLean.”
“Wonderful! We can work out the details over supper. And on my next trip to Boston, I’ll give you a report on my success with the circulars.”
“You’ll be coming back reasonably soon?”
“Yes, Mr. Kent, most assuredly.”
Standing perhaps a foot from him in the glare of a torch held aloft by one of the host’s footmen, Peggy McLean looked at Philip a moment longer. Color rushed to her cheeks. She glanced away, adding:
“I wonder if I might have your hand to climb the steps—?”
Philip smiled. “Certainly.”
When he lifted his arm and she touched him, there was a peculiar prickling all along his spine. And, within him, only a vestige of guilt.
Philip couldn’t see the Marquis de Lafayette smiling broadly as he followed the couple up the stairs in the shifting light of the windblown torches.
Epilogue
The World Turned Upside Down
ON THE NINETEENTH OF October, 1781, some eight thousand British and German troops laid down their arms outside the tiny tobacco port of Yorktown in the state of Virginia, in token of the surrender of their commanding officer, General Charles Cornwallis, Earl of Cornwallis, to the combined American and French forces under General Washington and his ally, Count Donatien de Rochambeau.
The Hessians who had been besieged in Yorktown, trapped between the American army and the French fleet of Admiral de Grasse, stacked their arms with phlegmatic resignation. The British were a shade less gallant; embittered redcoats were seen to crack the butts of their muskets on the ground, and regimental musicians staved in the heads of their drums. Lord Cornwallis himself pleaded indisposition, sending a deputy to the ceremony.
General Washington refused to treat with the deputy. He insisted that Cornwallis’ alternate speak with his alternate, an American general of lesser rank, Benjamin Lincoln.
During the unit-by-unit abandonment of arms and musical instruments, the British bands played a peculiar assortment of music. Few were marches; some were airs with a distinctly melancholy strain. One, a popular nursery tune entitled The World Turned Upside Down, seemed ironically appropriate to the failure of the last thrust of the army of His Majesty. The army had swept up along the southern coast of the United States, hoping to win the victory that had eluded the British in the north.
At Sermon Hill, Caroline County, Donald Fletcher heard the story of the siege and surrender not many days later, from relieved residents of the district. There had been an ominous period of several months in which all the farmers and planters along the Rappahannock had feared they would be fighting redcoats from their own fields and verandas.
News of the surrender brought jubilation. And word of the playing of that particular children’s melody tickled Donald’s fancy as very little did any more.
Donald felt his age. His gouty leg kept him in constant pain. He did leave Sermon Hill occasionally, but not without enormous effort.
Donald’s stomach had swollen to immense proportions from his continuing refusal to cease his excessive eating and drinking. The task of operating the plantation after his father’s death from a paralytic seizure in mid-1780 had become a burdensome routine without real purpose; only massive meals and massive quantities of port and claret could relieve the lonely sameness of his days.
So he enjoyed hearing every detail of the humiliation of Cornwallis, a humiliation most interpreted as the end of hostilities, even though peace was by no means official as yet.
Before the year was out, the gentry along the Rappahannock found their own world turned topsy-turvy by other unexpected happenings. Hints of the first one circulated about Thanksgiving time, and Donald, through his house blacks, soon managed to confirm that the rumors had a factual basis.
Williams, the overseer who had helped Seth McLean’s widow keep her plantation operating as efficiently as was possible during the war, had been authorized to place the property on the market.
The actual owner, Peggy Ashford McLean, was away on one of
her frequent trips to the city of Boston when the estate went up for sale. She returned to Caroline County in early December—and to the astonishment of Donald and everyone else in the district, she brought with her a new husband, plus two children.
One was her bridegroom’s son by his first wife. The second was a little girl a few years younger, who was supposedly related to Peggy’s distant kin in New England.
There were no fetes, no gala balls to welcome the new couple, because they had expressed their desire for privacy, keeping to their great house except for Sunday worship at the little Presbyterian church six miles from Sermon Hill. The children were not present on those occasions.
Like most other persons of substance along the river, Donald at first harbored private reservations about the fellow Peggy McLean had married. A mere tradesman, it was said; a printing-house owner! Neighbors who came to visit Donald stated unequivocally that the Bostonian had to be a fortune-hunter. The opinion was widely held until Williams gradually let slip certain details to disprove the charge.
According to the overseer, Mr. Philip Kent had some wealth of his own, due to successful investment in a privateering enterprise. His printing business was, if not yet overwhelmingly prosperous, at least successful.
And he had important personal connections.
He was a good friend of a wealthy Jewish merchant of Boston—there were several thousand Jews in America at the time, many quite affluent—and Kent’s friend, Selwyn Rothman by name, was said to have been one of those who had quite literally helped stave off the total collapse of America’s finances during the war. He and others had advanced the government huge sums from their personal treasuries. Rothman, it was reported, had given nearly as much as the Polish-born Haym Solomon and, like Solomon, had not demanded any definite terms for repayment.
Further, Donald learned that Rothman had helped Peggy McLean’s new husband through his first difficult days of establishing the firm called Kent and Son. But what gave final approval to Kent’s credentials was his widely discussed friendship with the Marquis de Lafayette. The Frenchman was a heroic figure in the eyes of Virginians, both because General Washington thought so highly of him, and because of his presence during the fighting at Yorktown.
Curious about the new liaison that was to result in Peggy Ashford McLean Kent’s removal to a new home in the North, Donald made a difficult trip to worship services one drizzly Sunday morning. He noted that Peggy looked radiantly happy as she entered the tiny church on the arm of her new husband—who, Donald saw with some astonishment, was a good half a head shorter than his wife. Also, he limped noticeably.
Yet the Bostonian had a rather cocky bearing, and a certain pugnacious set to his dark features. To Donald he appeared a man of determination and quiet vigor.
In the churchyard afterward, Donald had a chance to greet the New Englander. He found Kent to be well educated, at least superficially. What continued to impress Donald the most, however, was Kent’s steady, almost bold stare—as if he would cheerfully thrash any person who dared to question his right to marry a woman of such impeccable background as Peggy.
All smile and blushes—looking healthier, in fact, than he’d seen her in many a year—Peggy invited Donald to call at the McLean house that afternoon. He accepted.
In the carriage on the way back to Sermon Hill—Donald could no longer exert the effort or withstand the pain of riding horseback—he lingered on some far-from-godly thoughts which had teased his mind throughout the tedious sermon.
Peggy certainly seemed pleased with her new spouse. But Donald wondered about the more intimate details of the marriage. Having endured the nightmare of the uprising of ’75—been raped, was the long and short of it—would she be capable of fulfilling what were euphemistically known as wifely duties?
And had the groom known the quality—or should one say “limitations?”—of the goods he had acquired?
Donald realized he’d never know the answers, and supposed they were none of his business. But he wondered all the same.
At the McLean house, he visited for an hour while the drizzle continued to fall from the December sky. He found himself enjoying conversation with this Kent chap, who had served with the American army for several years, and been mustered out after Monmouth Court House, where he had received the wound that crippled him. At one point, their talk was interrupted by the sudden arrival of the two children.
One was a rather stocky, dark-haired boy of about six. The other was a bad-tempered but lovely little girl of about three.
Philip Kent presented his son Abraham, but Peggy had scant chance to do the same with the girl, whose name was Elizabeth. The child seemed preoccupied with turning over small tables, pulling books from shelves and howling like a fiend when Peggy tried to discipline her—gently at first, then crossly.
Fortunately, the little girl caused so much commotion in the couple of minutes before Peggy seized her and carried her out bodily, both Peggy and her new husband failed to notice the absolutely thunderstruck expression on Donald Fletcher’s face.
When Peggy returned, out of breath and murmuring apologies, Donald had concealed his surprise behind a bland expression. But he did ask a question or two about the little girl. She would of course become part of the new household along with the boy Abraham, Kent said.
Peggy supplied the information that the girl was an orphaned relation of the northern branch of Peggy’s mother’s family. Elizabeth had been raised in a private home in Boston. It was the child, Peggy explained, whom she had gone to visit by ship, twice annually at first, then more often. Donald concluded that the shortened intervals were probably prompted by a ripening romance with Kent.
During the discussion of the vile-tempered little girl, Peggy seemed to be staring at Donald in an odd, apprehensive way. Still privately agog, he struggled to keep his features bland, and to give her no cause to think he suspected much of her story was a lie. Soon she lost her air of tension. The visit ended on an equable basis—though Donald could still hear the little girl yelling her head off somewhere upstairs as he bundled into his coat and muffler. Just before he stepped off the veranda to the open door of his carriage, he shook Kent’s hand, then Peggy’s. On her wrist he saw a pattern of red marks; she had been bitten.
Riding back to Sermon Hill for the second time that day, he asked himself if his senses had deceived him. But he was certain they hadn’t. He didn’t know whether to feel horribly sorry for the new Kent household, or to laugh at the unexpected twists and turns fate could take.
The rain fell more heavily throughout the rest of the afternoon. That evening, in Sermon Hill’s huge and lonely dining room, he found he had no appetite for food. After the blacks had left him, he sat with a decanter and glass, his bandaged left leg propped on a stool and his eyes resting on one of the more recent and unprecedented additions to the furnishings of the house.
On the inner wall, its canvas glowing in the candlelight, hung an oil portrait of Angus Fletcher.
The portrait was of immense size. It showed the old man dressed in elegant gentleman’s apparel—a suit and accessories which, in fact, he had never owned, but which were added by the artist at Angus’ insistence.
Throughout his entire life, the elder Fletcher had shown no concern whatever for his personal appearance. Indeed, he’d shown few traces of vanity at all, except for the vast and unspoken one of operating Sermon Hill exactly as he wished, and at a profit. Then, unexpectedly, he had commissioned the painting—one month after receiving the news that Judson had been shot to death in Pittsburgh.
George Clark was another hero to the Virginians along the river. After his victory at Kaskaskia, then the more incredible one at Fort Vincennes which his little army had approached in the dead of winter, across flooded prairies others would have considered impassable, George Clark had sent Angus a letter. Donald had read the letter several times; it was still stored among his father’s few personal effects in the office.
In the letter, the Vi
rginia frontiersman paid glowing tribute to Judson’s heroism. He made it quite clear that, except for Judson’s sacrifice, the great enterprise in the west would very likely never have come about.
It was after the receipt of the letter that Angus Fletcher began making inquiries about qualified portrait painters—insisting on references and answers by mail to a series of questions. He finally selected an artist from Baltimore.
The artist boarded at Sermon Hill six weeks while completing the canvas. Angus sat willingly, though he put forward certain demands which the artist protested. Sermon Hill must be glimpsed in the background of the painting. In the middle distance, one or two figures must appear in a field, standing passively. Black figures; slaves.
The artist said all those stipulations would limit his thinking; hamper his artistic expression. But Angus’ hectoring ways, and the high price he was paying, won out. So there Donald’s father hung, resplendent in a white lace cravat such as he never owned in later life. And there were the docile blacks behind him, and Sermon Hill a whitish rectangle in the upper right.
The artist from Baltimore had professed to be an admirer of the well-known Boston miniaturist and portrait painter, John Copley, who had gone off to Italy before the war and was now settled in England—colonial migration in reverse! The artist told Donald that Copley had painted a number of the Boston radicals responsible for precipitating the conflict—Samuel Adams and the express rider Revere were two—and that in their portraits, Copley had striven both for verisimilitude and for composition that captured the essence of the subject’s character. Thus Angus Fletcher had been posed with one fisted hand on his hip. And he was shown full face, so that the tough, lined countenance assaulted the viewer head on. Whether by accident or intent, the artist had brushed tiny highlights into Angus’ pupils, lending them a suggestion of temper about to be unleashed.
At first, Donald had charged the whole business off to senility, plus Angus’ abrupt if belated realization that he, like all men, would go to the earth in the end. Only gradually did it dawn on Donald that Judson’s behavior at Pittsburgh had given Angus something of which to be genuinely proud; something which therefore made the old man worthy of memorialization in a family portrait. It was as if, for all his days, Angus Fletcher had harbored doubts about his principles, his style of life, his very worth—doubts which he had successfully concealed. Donald came to the conclusion that he never wholly understood his father until the portrait was completed.
