Rebecca Wentworth's Distraction (8 page)

In the parlor room, she offered him a turned chair and seated herself facing him in a chair upholstered in fabric.

“And do I understand you correctly, sir, that you had thought to inquire of our own interest in portraits?” she said.

“Quite so, madam.” He offered his most charming smile. He was uncomfortable making an appearance in dirty clothes, but she seemed to take no notice of his traveler's disarray. “I had thought that such respected families as yourselves might be in need of my portraits. Madam Browne had mentioned you in particular.”

“Is that so?” she said blushing slightly in pleasure. “Well, that is recommendation enough. Yet my husband has not mentioned any thought of portraits, so you shall have to discuss the matter with him.” She smiled. “Or should I say, convince him of the necessity.”

“And may I inquire, madam, as to how many family members you have? There is yourself and your husband . . .”

She filled in where he hung fire. “And five children besides.”

“Ah, I see. We can't, of course, say whether Mr. Prescott will entertain portraits of each, or a family portrait or a children's group, but I am anxious to be of service, whatever his preferences.”

“He should return within the hour, and you may discuss it then.” The servant brought a pewter salver of refreshments and laid it on the table. Mrs. Prescott offered him some of the delicacies and poured them both a tumbler of cider. “Would you care for pipe and tobacco, sir?”

“Perhaps after the cider, madam, if you care to join me. Thank you.”

She blushed and sipped immediately from her cup and peered at him with a twinkle in her eye. “And how go things in Portsmouth, Mr. Sanborn?”

He grew expansive, taking care to enlighten and entertain her with the doings of the port's best society—their new governor (to whom they were distantly related), Parson Browne (who was, despite the name, no relation to the colonel) and his family, and so on. He continued to intimate his own revolutions in these circles of the well-to-do. And he even piqued her with a tale of his painting the portrait of one of the Wentworth clan's enemies, Richard Waldron.

“A most undesirable interloper,” she said. “And much too prideful by half. One of the saving graces of life in these parts, sir, is being free of the immediate presence of our professed opponents. These . . .”—she made a dismissive motion of her hand—“Waldrons and Vaughans and Gilmans, and the others.” Her face wrinkled in distaste.

He laughed and she joined him. “Indeed, madam, they have all been a trial to your family, I understand.” He decided to engage in a little scandal to place them on firmer ground together.

“And most unfairly, I assure you, Mr. Sanborn.”

“Yet I can't discriminate among my patrons, or I'd soon be out of pocket myself.”

“Oh, I understand that, Mr. Sanborn. Commerce is, after all, commerce.”

“But Mr. Waldron does harbor a vast cyst of ill will in his breast, I must say.” He put an amused look on his face and waited to see if she would take the bait.

“I have no doubt of the lies with which he must have regaled you while at his sitting.” She shook her head. “Everything not to his personal and immediate advantage he takes for anathema. Every proposal, every vote, every grant and purchase not devolving honor and profit to him, he claims to be the result of the perfidy of others.” She stopped as if getting a little out of breath in her imprecations. “I suppose he was relentless in his disparagements.”

“Rather so, I'm afraid, Mrs. Prescott. He made a charge very similar to yours, against our governor! But I learned long ago not to take to heart my sitters' rants against their enemies. It was nothing more, I am sure, than the usual list of complaints of his family and associates against yours.” He smiled as if about to impart an amusing confidence. “That Mr. Wentworth was stacking the Assembly with his own men, and the Council with a gaggle of brothers-in-law, nephews, and cousins. That they had monopolized the mast trade by way of underhanded influence with Admiralty. That the governor had received unseemly gifts and bribes from lumbermen and mill owners, and was disbursing land grants, high military and judicial offices, and proprietary rights among friends, family, and supporters. I must say, I felt rather an apostate myself just to hear him refer to, in his words, madam, ‘that contemptible simpleton Wentworth.' . . .” Sanborn paused to let the words take effect and watch his hostess grow flushed again.

Then he added the final stroke. “He took great pains to assure me that Mr. Wentworth sits in the governor's chair only because he was, in Mr. Waldron's words again, ‘a bankrupt whose London creditors thought they'd never be paid, and so inveigled Newcastle to support him.'”

Her face had been growing red as she listened. He made a mental note that it would be better never to repeat this list of charges in conversation with Mr. Prescott. “As if church and family associations counted for nothing,” he hastened to add. Yet Mrs. Prescott, he soon realized, was taking pleasure, as many do, in her dudgeon.

“Of course,” she began, “he says nothing of the enormous benefit to the home government and to the colony itself—the merchants, timber men, mill owners, land owners, and every citizen great and small! Never has the province flourished, nor have so many benefited so much, as since Mr. Wentworth's appointment to the royal governorship. On that I'm certain he is quite silent. Surely even such a creature as Mr. Waldron could now benefit from our independence from Massachusetts, if he so chose. But one cannot expect a pompous ingrate to admit it.”

He felt that he had her in his confidence now, and that she would speak well of him to her husband. But he was unable to witness that conversation or its result because Mr. Prescott did not return. After they had been sitting for some two hours together, anticipating her husband, it became clear he had been detained by more pressing matters to the proprietors. She asked after his plans to lodge, and he admitted he had none, that even Mr. Ladd had no knowledge of a lodging house.

“There is one being built to attach the tavern, but is unfinished,” she admitted. “However, Mrs. Sinclair, a widow, now takes in lodgers.” She told him how to find the Sinclair house. He made arrangements to return the next day to speak to Mr. Prescott. He decided to make a final bold inquiry, however, before taking his leave.

“You spoke of five children, Mrs. Prescott, but I have not seen nor heard them about the house or its environs. Are they all abroad today?” He gave her a cheery, light-hearted look.

“They are all engaged, sir, while the final light lasts, in the planting fields. It is, as you see, just Betty, who served us, and myself at home this evening. There is always so much to be done.”

“I see,” he said and smiled. “Well, five children is a blessing, of course. They must be a great help and comfort to you. After the distemper, as I understand it, there were few families who escaped intact. So, you and your husband are twice blessed, to have five of your own dear children in your home.”

“Yes, we are,” she said, and then added as if in afterthought, “though one is my brother and sister-in-law's child, Rebecca. The entire rest of her family were wiped out in the sickness.”

“Dear me. What a tragedy for your relations, Mrs. Prescott!”

“Indeed, sir. She had lived with my husband's cousin, Colonel William, for a time, but they decided she required the better air and discipline of rural life.” She smiled, as if she had been clever.

Sanborn put on a look of some astonishment. “I might have met this young lady, briefly, while at Squire Browne's, madam. She was quite a pretty child and showed me some paintings of her own.” He thought better, just yet, of explaining that he had painted the child.

“That is she, but there's no time for painting and reading here; she has a more common round to occupy her now.”

She seemed almost curt, so Sanborn did not detain the woman any longer; he took his leave, promising to return at the appointed time.

Chapter 13

H
IS HAY-FILLED MATTRESS
at Mrs. Sinclair's lay in a small but adequate room, and she was a friendly, bustling old lady. There was only one other lodger, who came to Sinclair's later, to share the room. It was the officer in the provincial guard, Captain Carlyle from Londonderry. Sanborn now discovered he was traveling about the countryside to propose the best ways for roads and to assess the condition of peacetime garrisons, as if peace with the French were not expected to last indefinitely. And if in times of trouble, as he had heard, the men of the province preferred to enlist under a provincial officer rather than under a king's regular, Governor Wentworth and Colonel Blanchard might have been grooming Captain Carlyle for future trust.

Sanborn and Carlyle spoke not a word of what had passed at McGuire's, but grew friendly over their jars of rum and molasses. One peculiarity was that Carlyle's two great dogs went everywhere he did, inside and out, and they now slept wheezing like oversized lapdogs before Mrs. Sinclair's kitchen fire while the men around the table in the fluttering light of candlewood spoke of their own adventures. Sanborn thought the dogs must be some kind of Teutonic war beasts—huge, of middling shagginess, one black and one brown, ever alert and patrolling while out and about with the captain.

One confidence the captain offered was that his wife, Maria, at Londonderry, was the sister of an Indian friend who had been frequently at Portsmouth.

“You might have seen him, Sanborn, name of Christo.”

“Oh, yes. Heard of him. Performed services for the provincial government, and the like.”

“That's the man. I intend to enlist him in my company if the trouble starts again, and I find myself organizing a troop for the frontier.”

“I imagine that would be helpful indeed, if, as you say, he's by blood absolutely trustworthy.”

“We have some good trackers among us, but you can't do better than an Indian when it comes to discovering the enemy.”

Some years later Sanborn would hear others refer to “Captain Carlyle's squaw,” but no one seemed to think the less of him. And no one mentioned what he might have thought to Carlyle's face.

Before too long Sanborn felt fatigued from his journey and excused himself to go to his bed.

The next morning over his breakfast of bacon and cabbage, Mrs. Sinclair informed Sanborn, upon his inquiry, that the officer had ridden off at dawn, “Like some invulnerable hero in a romance, sir,” as she put it. Sanborn had heard some stirring in the dark bedroom, but he had immediately fallen back into deep sleep.

After breakfast, he walked about the town, awaiting his appointed hour with Mr. Prescott. He noticed the odd fencing immediately: whole logs piled on one another with short stabilizing blocks between them. Every house had its kitchen garden and cabbage vault, or root cellar. And there were many young orchards planted. Before leaving Portsmouth he had learned something of Blackstone, named for an original grantee of old, reverential Massachusetts lineage. His heirs had sold their interest in the land, including a rather crude settlement, to the current proprietors a few years before the Massachusetts–New Hampshire boundary disputes had been resolved.

His thoughts turned to how he might best manage to see Rebecca again and talk to her directly. He imagined several seemingly incidental conversational ploys to try on Mr. Prescott when they finally met. As he looked about him again, he was impressed by the well-ordered town: its planting fields and kitchen gardens stretching behind neat houses, the busy mills and commons, the lowing of cattle and sheep, the bark of dog and crow of cock. Tradesmen—a blacksmith, a hat maker, a clothier and other retailers, and a tanner—plied their trades, mostly from their households. The town seemed a model of industry and beneficent proprietorship.

And no one was more proud of the town's success than Mr. Prescott, a principal proprietor. He was a man some ten or more years older than his wife, and with a distinctly cosmopolitan appearance about him. His clothes were fashionably cut and comfortably draped over his shoulders and paunch. His flaxen wig was of city quality and fashion, and well powdered. Sanborn could see immediately that, like his ornate snuffbox, he could sidle inconspicuously into the best circles of Portsmouth society upon emerging from forest and field.

“So, you have come to Blackstone to assess our interest in portraits, Mr. Sanborn,” he said, after they were properly introduced and seated in the same chairs where Sanborn and Mrs. Prescott had held their conversation.

“That is my intention, sir, after the recommendation of several in Portsmouth whose own portraits I have taken.” He dropped a few names of weight, mostly of the Wentworth faction.

“Well, I can't say as I've thought of it until this moment, Mr. Sanborn, but there is a certain appeal in the idea nevertheless.”

“I'm delighted that you say so, sir. As I told Mrs. Prescott, I am wholly at your service.”

The proprietor seemed to mull the idea a bit before speaking. “Perhaps a portrait of myself and Mrs. Prescott would not be remiss,” he finally said, almost as if thinking aloud. “Of course, matters press me here, Mr. Sanborn, as you saw even yesterday. I was not in my own house and bed till midnight. There may be certain difficulties about the arrangements, practical considerations.”

“I understand, sir. My time is free, while I am here.”

“How many sittings necessary, did you say?”

“That depends on my patron's specifications, finally. But as a general matter, three or four is common.”

“I see.” He turned it over in his mind some more. “And what is your price at three or four sittings then, Mr. Sanborn?”

“Depending on your wishes for the final portrait, usually it comes to something on the order of ten guineas, sir.”

“I see,” he repeated. His face had the look of mild surprise. “And you would expect it to be as much for your country clients?”

“Indeed, sir, considering the expense of travel and lodging, and guide fees, and so on. In point of fact, I'll not nearly clear the modest profit I do producing likenesses in my home port.” He smiled. “In any case, it comes to considerably less expense than in a city like Boston, for example, where you would expect a Kit-cat to require from twelve to fifteen guineas, a half-portrait, say, sixteen, and a whole length above thirty, sir.” He did not say that these would be a Mr. Smibert's prices.

“Aha,” Prescott said in a noncommittal voice. “I suppose there is some truth in that.” He looked at Sanborn carefully. “Though I expect if, as you say, you've been painting in Portsmouth for a year, there may be some dearth of patrons just now.”

“That is true, sir. For now. But I had wanted to see something of the interior, and, as I say, on the recommendation of certain of your associates I thought I might try my hand in these parts. I thought there might be some yearning after my traffic.”

Prescott was still looking directly at Sanborn as they spoke. “I imagine there is, Mr. Sanborn, but whether people about here can afford your wares is another matter. Still, I expect you'll find some business of the sort to occupy your hours and reward your travels.”

Sanborn wondered whether he had just lost a potential commission, a commission that would surely lead to others. He decided at the moment he had nothing to lose now.

“I also paint children in groups or singly,” he suggested. “I painted, in fact, the step-daughter of Colonel Browne.” Prescott didn't display any surprise, but Sanborn felt sure he had reached him. “Mrs. Prescott had mentioned in passing that one of the children here was from other cousins, and I happened to see the connection the more she spoke. I imagine she told you I knew of the relation. And I quite believe this is the girl I painted, from what your wife said, sir.”

“She may well be, Mr. Sanborn. The girl had lived some years with Squire William, as you say.”

“She was a delightful child, I recall, and very talented herself, in the painting way.”

“Indeed, sir.”

“Have you by chance seen my painting of her, on your own travels back to the port, I mean?”

“No, I have not.”

“It was hanging in the squire's dining room.”

“Aha,” he said. “No, I have not seen it, Mr. Sanborn.”

“Pity. It was a good likeness, if I say so myself, and I believe you'd have appreciated it, sir.” He offered an ingratiating smile. “I hope in any case you will consider my proposals. I know it's a matter that takes some thought, consideration. Perhaps I could return at a day and hour of your appointment to inquire whether you retain any interest in a portrait, or portraits.”

Prescott did not answer immediately, but finally said, “Let me consider what you've said, Mr. Sanborn. Should I find I'm interested in your proposal, I'll send a man round to you. You are lodging at Mrs. Sinclair's? Yes, good. Then I know where to reach you if I find I require your services.” He began to rise out of his chair. Sanborn stood up and made a courteous bow with his good-day.

After taking his leave, he returned to his rooms where he began to consider the best way to obtain a commission or two while awaiting word from Mr. Prescott.