Rebecca Wentworth's Distraction (18 page)

Chapter 27

Y
ET WHEN HE NEXT SAW
Rebecca he knew he had to do something. She appeared not well, as if surely she were becoming what they had already determined her to be: recalcitrant and mad. She no longer paid attention to her appearance; she cared little for manners and conventions, even outwardly now. Her frowsy back chamber overlooked the gardens, and he noticed a chair by her window, as if she spent much of her time gazing at the dead, snow-covered planting beds below. Perhaps the sun brought needed heat through the window, too. He felt a chill and stepped over to the fire to stir the smoldering wood.

“How did they allow you in to see me?” she asked immediately after speaking his name in surprise.

“I asked if I might reason with you, and they saw no harm I could do.”

“The Master of Reason has a forked tail, has he not?” She smiled. It was not her old smile.

“If so, his underlings, such as I, are granted no such distinguishing demarcation.”

She laughed. “It's pleasing to see you, Mr. Sanborn. It's pleasing to see anyone who speaks plainly to me.”

“Miss Norris?”

“Yes.”

“Parson Browne?”

“Less so.”

“Your guardians?”

“They speak only out of fear of reproach, of dishonor, to the family.”

“Miss Norris thought so too.”

“She is a kind, knowing woman.”

“Indeed.” He knew that Miss Norris had sneaked a few books in to Rebecca. He couldn't stop noticing the disarray of her hair, the soiled clothing. “She wishes to help you. We both do.”

“You are kind. But it's futile now. What could you do?” She didn't expect an answer. She looked around the room. “I'm hardly ever let out of this chamber now.”

“No suitors,” he said flatly.

“No more.” She looked around the room again. “They don't allow suitors to see me like this.”

“That is a relief to you.”

“A blessing.”

“You have been drawing and painting on the sly.”

“Yes, I
had
been.”

“The colonel showed me a few.”

“Did he?” Her face revealed nothing. “He constructs his proposition, his plea against me.” There was a taint of amusement in her voice.

“Perhaps. You've been a willing accomplice, I daresay.”

“I interfered with no one. I was a model of propriety, otherwise.”

“You disobeyed their explicit instructions. Your actions have caused more than a little disorder. They were bound not to take kindly to that. And then you rejected the suitors they took pains to send your way. What, they kept wondering, are they to do with you?”

“If you are here to reason with me, then you know they have been unreasonable.”

“You've misunderstood them. In time you would have found a suitable match and perhaps even found a way to pursue your drawing.”

“Do you understand so little the ways of the world, Mr. Sanborn?”

“Is it I who have denied this world for some other? I've seen your recent drawings. They are extraordinary, as ever. But they are not of this world.”

“So sayeth Parson Browne.” There was a measure of sarcasm in her voice now. “He held two of my specimens before me and said, ‘Miss Rebecca, it appears you much desire to deny this world, even while you are living in it, in favor of some other. Would you not do better to follow the nature of it, the world we must live in?'”

“And did you answer him?”

“How could I not? ‘Would not such an attitude separate your doctrines,' I said to him, ‘from those of our Savior?'”

Sanborn hung fire. He was aghast at her courage and effrontery. “And how did he find your speculations?” he asked finally.

“He left this room without a word, Mr. Sanborn.”

“You endanger yourself. You do harm to yourself. You challenge your betters and they will not abide it, Rebecca. You're bringing destruction upon your own head when you confront those whom you should, rather, respect.”

“I don't say that you are wrong, Mr. Sanborn.”

“But you don't admit that you are wrong. You don't admit that your temper, your speculations as to the shortcomings of others and of this world, and your more melancholic productions, are wrong.”

“I am perhaps too impetuous and strong-headed for my own good. But if I am wrong essentially, I am in good company.”

He wanted to slap her to her senses, to a degree of more becoming
168
humility for a girl of . . . what? Seventeen? Instead he raised his voice. “You will be in good company indeed in the madhouse!”

She looked at him. Her eyes began to glisten, softening for the first time since he had entered her chamber. He had not come here to wound her. He recalled one of her drawings the colonel had just, that day, held up to him as if to demonstrate his view of her. In the foreground a gigantic androgynous figure knelt in prayerful attitude over an abyss, an abyss like a great smoking crater formed by war or disaster. “Nature contemplates man's destruction,” the colonel had said in disbelief. “That's what she says of this one, sir. It is the work of one who is deranged. Clearly. How can there be any other explanation?”

Now Sanborn looked into Rebecca's eyes again. They were moist, and they told him that she no longer cared to speak to him. She must view him, he thought, as an old friend who would now, at this terrible pass, forsake her.

He left her room and went downstairs. Colonel and Madam Browne awaited him in the parlor. They had a sheaf of papers, drawings he was sure, to show him.

“And how do you find her, Mr. Sanborn?” Squire Brown asked. “Atrabilious of countenance?”

Sanborn looked at them calmly but he had no sympathy for them. “Troubled. Confused. In need of understanding; in need of our prayers and our Christian charity, perhaps.”

They both looked at him skeptically. Madam Browne showed him to the table where the Squire placed the bundle of drawings and paintings.

“Against our expressed admonitions,” he said, as he untied the white ribbon around the bundle. “What, Mr. Sanborn, would you, an accomplished painter, make of these?”

Sanborn looked at the one placed on top of the pile. A woman with long unruly tresses forlornly looked out her moonstruck window, from what could be a castle or a manor house. A great dark bird—a raven?—with its back to the viewer seemed to return the woman's stare. Sanborn peered at the tiny inscription near the bottom.
Night Thoughts.

“Does she title all these?” he asked.

“Many,” Colonel Browne said.

Sanborn turned the first sheaf over to expose another illustration. A naked woman slouched sensually on a couch of woodland moss. From the other side of the couch, near the woman's left thigh, a huge serpent's head and neck (large enough to devour the woman) crept toward her. The serpent held a golden apple in his jaws. There was no title. “Eve and the Serpent,” Sanborn said. He turned the sheet to another. Fires raged in distant forests. In the foreground ships plied turbulent seas, and in the middle ground milldams, log drives, and heaps of sawdust blocked rivers where fish leaped and churned, as if in agony.
Never Does Nature Say One Thing and Wisdom Another,
the tiny inscription read.

“Juvenal. I am not unread, Mr. Sanborn,” the colonel said. “Imagination is essential to original expression in the fine arts. But Reason must ever hold the reins, for without it, one descends to chaos, to the chimeras of unbridled fancy, to loss of judgment, to the tyranny of the imagination. Here we can plainly see a capital disturbance of the Reason.”

“We have tried, Mr. Sanborn, believe me,” Madam Browne said. “We have tried.”

“Is none of these in a more rejoicing mood, as before?” he asked.

“None of these,” the colonel replied, tapping his hand on the small stack of illustrations before them. “There are some others of a lighter mood, but fewer, collected in a separate folio.” He indicated a smaller pile on the sideboard.

“I see,” Sanborn said. “She appears to be more changed than I had hoped. What a sadness!”

The colonel insisted on turning over several others. One in particular, another Hogarthian pen sketch, depicted corpulent merchants (some with strangely familiar faces) dancing with audacious bawds. The figures were done in just enough caricature to suggest, beyond moral wickedness and corruption, the corruption of their brains in lunacy. In the spirit of her inspirational master, she had managed to depict not “all Britain is Bedlam” so much as “the New World is Bedlam.”

“What is this?” Sanborn asked, squinting at the tiny scrawl at the bottom center of the drawing.
“Semel—insanivimus—omnes,”
he spoke each word singly. “We're all mad”?

“Precisely, Sanborn. Burton, I believe. But now you see the uses to which she puts her reading and study.”

Who was it, Sanborn tried to recall, that called our times the Age of Satire?

The colonel fumbled through the pile again, barely containing his rising anger, and pulled out two sheaves sewn together. “A diptych, Mr. Sanborn!” He held opened both sides and held it before Sanborn's face like a minister bearing witness to devils' work.
“Black Ivory,
she writes on this one.”

On one sheaf was an ink and watercolored sloop of perhaps some forty or fifty tons. The ship flew under moonlight while phosphorescent sea creatures danced in the bow-wake. Two figures only were on deck, drenched in moonlight—a steersman on watch and a Negro tied to a whipping post, unconscious or asleep. On the other sheaf attached were ladies and gentlemen riding out into the New England countryside—the ladies in chaises driven by black servants, the gentlemen on horseback with black lackeys in attendance.

At the moment Sanborn didn't have the heart to continue through the pile before him. The Brownes' point was taken.

He moved over to the more joyous pile and opened the covers. The first was a still life: a prayer book, silver communion and christening vessels emblazoned with the royal coat of arms. “Are these not of Queen's Chapel?” he asked.

“Quite right, Mr. Sanborn,” the colonel said.

“To demonstrate the ecclesiastical ties between us and King George and Queen Caroline?” Sanborn asked.

“So it would seem, if there were not some irony intended.”

Sanborn mused over the painting a moment. “It appears straightforward enough to me.”

“Well, she says it is nothing more than a gift to our dear curate,” Madam Browne said, “but we doubt her.”

He looked at them. “A peace offering, perhaps,” he said. “And a way of letting the curate know she has a mind capable of lucid practical work.”

“Is not the perfect mimicry of sanity itself a sign of madness?” she said. “She takes him for a modern-day Pharisee. We have not offered it to him.”

“I understand.” He turned to go. “I thank you for allowing me to see her. I'm afraid I haven't been of much help.” He dared not speak his mind and felt like a coward. “I have an appointment to keep with a patron, if you'll excuse me, sir. Madam.”

As he entered the wintry streets again he blew out a great sigh of relief. The manse itself had come to feel like a prison to him. He felt confused about what he had witnessed inside, upstairs and down. What could he alone do? Or even he and Miss Norris? They both seemed to be as helpless as Rebecca herself to change the direction of her life.

Chapter 28

S
ANBORN, IN DESPERATION,
paid another visit to Parson Browne.

“As you may know,” Sanborn said once they were seated, “Squire Browne has made discreet inquiries of one Reverend Mr. Oldmixon, of Boston, who boards the distracted at his parsonage.”

“It is good of him not to inflict upon her the fate of a pauper,” the minister said. “Or an unmanageable wife or relations: the almshouse, workhouse, or jailhouse that serve our Bedlams.” He crossed his legs comfortably and waited for Sanborn to come to the point.

“Yes, but I have not been able to learn anything of this Oldmixon, and I wondered if you might enlighten me. I would not burden the Brownes further with my curiosity or concern.”

“I see.” The minister appeared to search his thoughts a moment. “Well, from my discussions with Squire Browne and from what I know in the first place, I can tell you that he is a godly man, and for some reason known only to himself, he and his good wife had boarded distracted persons at their parsonage just outside London. He's a physician as well, you see, and he seems to have taken a physic's interest in such matters—at least among his parishioners, as I understand it.”

“A private madhouse keeper, then?”

“In effect, yes.”

“That's not unusual in England, but I hadn't, until now, heard of it in New England. How did he come here and establish this house?”

“For over a decade the selectmen in Boston have complained of the number of distracted persons in the almshouse at public expense. But Oldmixon came to be here, to my knowledge, not entirely of his own volition. There was some scandal, and it appears he fled.”

“Scandal? As to the nature of his private house?”

“That is rather uncertain.”

“Is he some mere mendicant or mountebank then?”

“No. A proper practitioner of physic—”

“Perhaps a latitudinarian,” Sanborn interrupted.

“I think not quite. He's solid Established Church. Which is of course sufficiently tolerant in these times to encompass many. Nor was it narrow enthusiasm undid him.”

The minister stood up and walked to a front window, his back to Sanborn now as he spoke. “It was doubtless the usual thing, or so I believe from my imperfect knowledge of the affair. His churchly labors had always been in order, remarkably so, and his piety unquestioned. But there are, as you know, Sanborn, always factions and professional jealousies—the host of political pettiness to which the flesh is heir.

“Some who opposed him,” he went on, “called his practice into question—the manner of his madhouse keeping, I mean—and joining with a cabal of disaffected parishioners created a hubbub sufficient to raise an inquiry, which in turn the anti-Oldmixon faction blew into an utter scandal. In defiance, and to protect his good name, he quietly resigned his pastorate, and not long thereafter, I believe, removed to Boston.”

“He was called to Boston?”

“I'm not certain of that. It's quite possible. It was some five years ago now.”

“And he brought with him his practice of keeping a madhouse.”

“That would seem to be clear. Though I don't believe he would have begun his curacy as a keeper of lunatics. At some point, he simply reintroduced his practice and treatments, as a physician, you see.”

“Do you know anything of these treatments?”

“No. I do not.”

“And you yourself are convinced that Rebecca is
non compos,
Parson Browne?”

“I am. Colonel Browne also told me himself of the incident at Blackstone, of her tragic failure of judgment. What's more, I do not believe she's had a lucid interval for some time. I think she may be entirely distracted.” He turned from the window to face Sanborn. “Would you disagree, Mr. Sanborn?”

“Not entirely, sir. But she's no nincompoop, this young lady, I assure you. Her mad freaks are an unfortunate affliction.” Sanborn had not till then known whether Colonel Browne had heard of the violent reaction to Rebecca's portraits. He felt strangely relieved that the dangerous incident was no longer his, and the parson's, secret.

“You wish me to appreciate that there is a certain . . . profundity to her delirium.”

“She is a young lady of fine intelligence and talents. I think it's fair to say that her rather too highly strung sensibility, however, has at times initiated her distraction, overbearing her reason.”

“I would not disagree on that point, Sanborn. However, she is committed to my cure, and I am to render an account of her soul. There is an arrogance born of her gifts and in her judgment of others, her aloofness from the practical matters of living peaceably and humbly in this world, even unto her position in relation to her betters. She's still rather like a child who has never known proper discipline, who has been too much indulged. She has not learned a proper relation to this world by the example of the Brownes, the Prescotts, her own deceased parents even. And her distraction has only increased for all her refusals to countenance a civilized relation to others and to the community of Christians among whom she resides.”

“You are of course right, Parson, in the main,” Sanborn said. He got up out of his chair and stood beside the parson now. The two men turned to look out the front window where the business of Portsmouth in winter continued upon the snow-packed street. “Yet perhaps you, we, are too harsh in some degree. I still believe there is hope for this young woman, myself. I cannot turn from my conviction yet that, given a proper channel for their exercise, her gifts might flourish and release her from the sloughs of her melancholic distractions.”

“She has not found, and I fear is not capable of finding, such a balance of humors. Everything has been tried for her, Sanborn. Yet her bodily motions would appear to remain irregular, as are the desires they continually excite in her mind.”

“Everything tried? Perhaps. Or perhaps not.”

“Even the sacred institution of matrimony can do nothing but breed discord, for one such as she. It is perhaps well that she has refused the suit of Mr. Buckminster and young Wentworth.”

“I fear I can't quite agree with you on that point, Mr. Browne. The bonds of matrimony, if tender and flexible enough to allow a respectable pursuit of her gifts, could only release her from despair. It may simply be a matter of choosing suitors out of her own affections.”

“But she does not know her own mind,” the curate insisted. “Her affections are diseased.”

“At this moment, perhaps. But there is always hope, sir. And there is always prayer.”

“Indeed, Mr. Sanborn, there is always prayer.” The curate folded his hands as if to calm himself. “Have you a counter proposal to Colonel Browne's?”

“I'm not entirely sure. But I am searching, Parson; I am searching.”

“Then I will pray for you, and for Rebecca, as well. But take care you do nothing to cross the colonel and his lady. Take care to bring them fully into the circumference of your searches and reflections. Do not allow your heart to overrule your head.”

Sanborn was taken aback by the final admonition. Was the good parson insinuating Sanborn's unhealthy fascination with Rebecca? Or was Sanborn being too sensitive himself as a result of his own curious and unreasonable sense of responsibility for her? He had never been able to explain that sense—was it too much to call it an obsession?—even to himself. Once awakening in the middle of the night, after earlier expending the coarsest of his passions rather angrily upon his paramour, Gingher, he had asked himself whether he had indeed fallen in love with the other young woman. But he was unable to entertain that question for long. The growing strength of his affections made it too painful to contemplate. All he dared to consider was whether he somehow might alter Rebecca's apparently unalterable course.

I
T WAS
M
ISS
N
ORRIS
who came up with an idea.

“I've been able to think of little else, sir, since seeing her for myself,” she told Sanborn as they strolled along the Parade again. “Together we must present my plan to the Brownes, for trial at least.”

“Agreed,” he said. “I'm as desperate as you to do something, and if we can bring Colonel and Madam Browne into our plan, all the better for its efficacy and our exoneration from meddling. But you must tell me what it is!”

She smiled. “It strikes me that they have not lost all concern for Rebecca,” she said, rather strangely echoing Parson Browne, “as they would not abandon her to the workhouse or lockup, but rather bear the expense of private confinement. My plan is this: We prevail upon Madam Browne to allow Rebecca to accompany you to this private madhouse. A sort of prospective visitation, you see. We then tell her we have been authorized by her guardians to offer her a clear choice, and our recommendation. She may still avoid incarceration by the expedient of marriage.”

“But, Miss Norris, as you well know, she's been offered just such a choice already.”

“Yes, but without a tour of the netherworld. Without encouragement from us upon the tour's completion.”

“I take your point. But she has distaste of her suitors, and I don't think the Brownes will brook other suitors at this pass. It has come to be a point of honor and filial obeisance with them.”

“As to suitors and husbands it makes little difference, so far as I can see, Mr. Sanborn. We must let the colonel have his way—what choice have we?—in that regard. Many a woman has made her peace with a suitor of her betters' choosing.”

“You have me there, Miss Norris.”

He was relieved to hear that she did not propose some variety of abduction, as she had suggested before. That was a thought he had simply not been able to entertain. He did not think her new proposal would work, or at least not readily, but he saw no alternative and refused to do nothing.

“The problem,” he suggested, “is enticing her on such a tour, as you put it, enticing her to Boston.”

“What would you suggest, sir?”

He thought a moment. “Well, I think she may—given her circumstances here, I mean to say—have some curiosity as to a ..., what should I say, restful alternative. That is, if she can be assured that it will be more restful, and temporary, than frenzied. And there is, of course, the admonitory force of her guardians, if they will insist.”

Miss Norris, who had stopped and turned toward him as he spoke, looked directly at him. “Go on,” she prompted.

“Yes, well, something more occurs to me. As you know she has illustrated beautifully Dr. Watts. I have in the past suggested that we approach Boston printers to see what may be done. I have, in fact, a letter, in response to my earlier query, from Thomas Fleet—”

“The printer?”

“Even so, Miss Norris. And there is the bookshop of course. I would be pleased, also through Mr. Smibert, perhaps, to approach Church and Company as to the possibility of their taking on the book once printed. That would insure a much greater exposure of vendibility—to schools, country shops and traveling auction men, and the like.”

“I see. What would be required?”

“I believe it's a matter of some ten or twenty pounds, to start. Fleet would have to assess the manuscript for a more exact estimate. The principal expense, no doubt, would be in the illustrations. It is all doubtless a matter finally of suitability for subscriptions, but Watts is so popular I don't see how this work can fail.”

“And your idea is to increase the appeal of Boston by rejuvenating this idea in Rebecca?”

“Quite so. With success, moreover, might she not even eke out some small or partial independence from the project?”

“Anything is possible,” she said, looking away now and pondering the idea. “I think it a good enticement, Mr. Sanborn.”

“Good.”

“Will you appeal to the Brownes for an interview with us then?”

“For both of us?”

“I think it will be better, don't you?”

“You may be right. Leave it to me, Miss Norris.”

“We shall play matchmakers then,” she said and smiled again.

“I think that we shall have to prepare young Paine Wentworth as well, if Rebecca relents,” Sanborn said. “Her parents have kept her suitors in the dark as to her true distraction.”

“It is but the English malady, sir—”

“Be that as it may, I think we may also concoct some credible story of a doubtful and inexperienced young lady whose mind has been properly awakened by the counsel of her formidable parson and her parents, as well as by the advice of her former tutor and friend.”

“Not to forget the blandishments of her fine young gentleman.

Indeed, Mr. Sanborn. I see you warm to my project. That's just the thing, and we may even be able to prevail upon young Wentworth to allow her some exercise of the decorative arts, as befits an accomplished lady, including drawing and watercolors.”

“Which will have to be curtailed of their more visionary nature.”

“Indeed,” she said. Her smile grew uncharacteristically wide. “We are of one mind, sir.”

“We are, Miss Norris.”