The Seekers (8 page)

“They?”

“Well, chiefly your father. I didn’t understand it myself for the longest time. Then, the older I got, the clearer it became. I’ve known the truth for—oh, almost two years.”

“The truth about what?”

“About what your father wants. It’s very simple. He wants everyone who lives under this roof—me, and now you—to bend to his notions of respectability. I admit he’s been kind to me over the years. Yet in a way, I hate him.”

“Elizabeth, that’s a damned ghastly thing to say—”

“I can’t help it—that’s how I feel. Don’t you realize he wants to trap both of us in the same trap? Neither of us must let that happen—we’re not cut out for it!”

“What do you propose we do, may I ask?”

“We must fight him, Abraham. Secretly. Together—”

Suddenly she leaned against him, letting him feel her breasts through the thin gown.

Then she took his hand and placed it over one breast and squeezed his fingers, all the while staring at him with those strange, pale eyes.

That moment destroyed any doubts Abraham Kent might have had about Elizabeth’s purpose in coming to his room so furtively. By means of an act Philip would be sure to find reprehensible, she would defy the authority he sought to exert over her.

Abraham had felt some of the same pressure in the painful interview with his father. Thus he was quite willing to let the eager instincts of his young man’s body have their way, joining the girl in this private, ultimately pleasurable form of protest.

To his surprise, he discovered she wasn’t a virgin. Her gown tossed aside, her pale thighs spread to reveal a gilded place, she kissed and teased him as expertly as that Cincinnati whore. She drew him down, then guided him with practiced hands curled around his maleness. As the rhythm of the coupling intensified, she groaned louder and louder against his ear. Wantonly, she locked her legs around the small of his back. The ferocious outpourings shook them both almost simultaneously.

Afterward, under the coverlets, she nestled naked in the curve of his arm. When he questioned her about her experience, she only laughed brightly and said it was of no importance. She rolled against him, gripping his cheeks with both palms while those intense blue eyes probed.

“We mustn’t let them destroy us, Abraham.
We mustn’t.
”

Limp from their union and captivated by her presence, he found it easy to say, “We won’t.”

“Promise?”

He heard a grotesque echo of Gilbert’s voice when she spoke, another echo in his own reply.

“Yes, Elizabeth. I promise.”

She uttered a small, satisfied laugh and leaned back against his arm.

She stayed with him an hour or more, until the house was utterly still, and then stole away. In the weeks that followed, as the new year of 1796 opened, she visited him by night whenever she could. No one in the house seemed to suspect, because the lovers carefully avoided one another except at those times when normal household activities such as meals brought them together.

But not many days had passed in January before Abraham realized that his problems had taken on a new dimension.

He was no longer merely defying his father.

He was falling in love with Elizabeth Fletcher.

D
URING LATE JANUARY AND
into February, Abraham’s relationship with his father remained in a state of truce. He agreed to work regular hours at Kent and Son—the firm was expanding so fast that sufficient help couldn’t be found—but at the same time, he made clear to Philip that his decision shouldn’t be construed as a permanent one.

To reinforce the point, Abraham insisted on menial work and menial wages. He didn’t want other employees thinking he was taking advantage of his status as the owner’s son.

Despite all the conditions Abraham set, Philip seemed happy with the arrangement. His face showed his pleasure whenever he walked into the press room and saw Abraham black-handed and smeary-cheeked from manipulating the leather balls that inked the type forms, or lugging huge stacks of newly cut paper.

Although new inventions were being introduced at an astonishing rate—duly reported in the columns of the
Bay State Federalist
—the equipment of Kent and Son remained similar to that on which Philip had first learned his trade in a shop in London in the 1770s. Kent’s now owned four large flatbeds, each driven by human muscle applied to a screw lever. The presses were located on the first floor of the three-story structure near Long Wharf. Their weight had already caused a noticeable sag in the floor.

On the second story Philip maintained his own bindery, plus warehousing space. Kent and Son had just printed an inexpensive edition of Mr. Noah Webster’s
Blue-Backed Speller.
This instructional book for school children was already more than a decade old. But it showed every sign of remaining the standard text for generations to come, and the warehouse was piled high with copies of the Kent version.

The building’s third floor held Philip’s cramped, rather dingy private office, a smaller press for his weekly newspaper, and another, even dingier cubby occupied by the paper’s editor, Mr. Supply Pleasant.

Mr. Pleasant had advanced to journalism from a career as a public letter writer hired for a few pence by the illiterate, or by those who wanted their correspondence inscribed in a fine, graceful hand. Abraham quickly developed a liking for the graying, potbellied editor. Whenever he had a free moment, he climbed the stairs to talk with Pleasant and scan the stories being set in type by Pleasant’s one assistant.

Pleasant, in turn, soon sensed Abraham’s dissatisfaction with his work downstairs. He raised the subject one blustery day in February.

“Your father’s delighted that you’re working for Kent’s, Abraham.”

“It’s only temporary, I assure you.”

“The book trade isn’t to your liking?”

“No, that’s not quite it. What I don’t like is being expected to spend my life in the book trade.”

Supply Pleasant leaned back in his chair, scratched his nose with a quill that left an ink stain between his eyes. He peered over the top of his steel spectacles. “Then what career do you have in mind? Medicine? The law?”

“I don’t know.”

“A year’s study at Harvard might help you decide.”

“I doubt it.”

“Well, many a young man takes a while to find his way. But surely you have some idea—”

“Frankly, Mr. Pleasant, about all I’ve been able to determine so far is what I don’t want. I know I’m not a bookman or a scholar. I’m damned if I’d make a good soldier, either—”

Admitting all that was hard. In fact, he was vaguely ashamed that his accomplishments in Boston thus far consisted of doing his job without too many mistakes, and conducting half a dozen furtive meetings with Elizabeth. That last, and the attendant deception of his father and stepmother each secret hour required, were hardly things to be proud of; yet he was so completely and dizzily in love with the fair-haired girl, all else seemed unimportant.

Supply Pleasant chewed the stem of his quill a while, then picked up a stack of neatly inked foolscap sheets. “Strikes me you’re like a beggar at a banquet, Abraham.”

“How so, Mr. Pleasant?”

“You’re confronted with so many rare dishes, you don’t know which to pick first. The country’s a veritable cornucopia of opportunity—a veritable cornucopia!” Pleasant had a passion for flowery phrases, in conversation as well as in the paper. He wrote every word of the five columns on each of the four sixteen-by-twenty-inch pages of the
Federalist.

He handed the foolscap sheets to the younger man. “Sit ten minutes with this. You’ll see what I mean.”

“What is it?”

“A feature I’ve been preparing for some time. A review, if you will, of the remarkable accomplishments of our young country. Of course,” Pleasant added after another bite of the quill, “my employer exercises his right to edit my copy. There
are
subjects which can’t be mentioned. The very sensible metric measurement system, for example. It’s certain to become a world standard—certain! But it’s deemed an invention of the devil by good Federalists like your father. While other nations go ahead and adopt it, I predict we shall not—simply because the French Jacobins thought it up. Also—”

He pointed at the sheets with his quill.

“Mr. Jefferson’s new plow. Experts claim it will revolutionize farming. Not only does it break the soil, it lifts and turns it aside more efficiently by means of the mold-board Jefferson added. I’ve put in some copy on the plow, but I’m sure Mr. Kent will scratch it out.”

“Don’t you resent that sort of interference, Mr. Pleasant?”

“Naturally I resent it.”

“Then why don’t you protest? Or quit? The first amendment to our Constitution in ’ninety-one guaranteed a man’s freedom to speak—or publish—what he wishes.”

“That’s exactly how it is—Mr. Kent publishes what he wishes,” Pleasant said with a resigned smile. “I don’t quit because I like newspapering. And I’m not shrewd enough on matters of financing to operate my own gazette. You’re too young to realize that much of life is compromise, Abraham. My idealism doesn’t extend to my belly, which is empty several times a day, regular as a clock. Besides, your father and I have reached a state of accommodation. He only interferes on subjects related to politics.”

“But slanted news is dishonest!”

“No doubt you’re right. However, don’t forget it was propaganda, not straight news, that rescued us from the morass of the unworkable Articles of Confederation and gave us our Constitution. If Messrs. Jay and Hamilton and Madison hadn’t published their eighty-odd
Federalist
essays in the New York papers a few years ago, we might still be a gaggle of fractious states instead of a reasonably stable federal union. Like all things, journalism has both its lofty and ignoble sides.”

Abraham wasn’t persuaded. But he was interested in the article Supply Pleasant had handed him, intrigued by its title and subheadings:

THE YOUNG COLOSSUS!

A Succinct Review of the Conditions

Generating Unparalleled Prosperity

Under Our Federal Government!

Amazing Advancements

In The Mechanical Sciences!

Expansionist Fever Points To

Vast Population Increase!

“To return to my original point,” Pleasant said, “there is enough happening in the United States to provide a young fellow with twenty lifetimes of satisfying labor. Give that a scan and you’ll see I’m right. Now I must get to work and finish this review of
The Mysterious Monk.
I saw it last night at Powell’s theater. A most diverting Gothic melodrama—”

Abraham hardly heard. Carrying the sheets in his blackened fingers, he retired to the back stairs of the building, found a little light under a grimy window, plucked an apple from his leather apron and began to read.

For a while he couldn’t get past the opening sentence. He kept seeing Elizabeth’s lovely and defiant blue eyes.

Finally Abraham managed to read the article to the end. Mr. Pleasant’s piece was indeed a paean to the prosperity and intellectual achievement that seemed to be sweeping the nation.

Pleasant began by noting that the first census, authorized by Congress in 1790, had discovered a population nearing four million, of which, he reported in a dour aside, almost seven hundred thousand were slaves. The editor predicted that by the time of the next census—the year the new century, opened—the country would probably grow to an astonishing five or six million people, particularly since there was now more room in which to raise families. The treaties maneuvered through the ministries of England and Spain by Mr. Jay and Mr. Pinckney had at last resolved some territorial disputes and brought a measure of stability to the northwest.

Jay’s treaty had removed or reduced the British threat on the country’s northern and western borders. Pinckney’s Treaty of San Lorenzo, signed in Madrid, had established the Mississippi as the official western limit of the country—set the southern boundary at the thirty-first parallel—and, most important, given America free navigation of the river and free deposit of goods—the right to store and re-ship them without paying duty—at Spanish-held New Orleans for an initial period of three years. Settlers raising crops for profit would now have a secure and easy route to a major port.

The nation had adapted with reasonable ease to the new coinage of 1786. Abraham smiled at Pleasant’s deliberate inclusion of the fact that Mr. Jefferson had thought out the system, based on the Spanish milled dollar; the editor wasn’t as pliant as he pretended.

A general economic boom was accelerating the pace of commerce and invention. Mr. Whitney of New Haven, for instance, had virtually eliminated the old, tedious process of cleaning green seed cotton. His new gin enabled a single slave to separate out a remarkable fifty pounds of staple per day. As a result, the entire south was turning to a cotton economy; the commodity had at last been made profitable. At the same time, the luckless Whitney was spending a fortune to defend his patent against infringements by rival manufacturers.

As for “expansionist fever”—well, a whole array of startling developments had made it possible for immigrants to travel into the newly won west faster and more safely than ever before.

Highways were a-building; a turnpike modeled after those in Britain had been opened between Philadelphia and Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Boone’s Wilderness Road had been widened to accommodate wagon traffic. And the waterways swarmed with one-way flatboats and keel-boats. Families going west gathered on the Pittsburgh docks faster than craft to transport them could be constructed. Wayne’s victory had made a journey down the Ohio relatively safe.

Mr. Pleasant touched on other trends that promised to quicken the pace of migration even more. Men were talking of canal systems. Steam, power was being harnessed for river boats. Fitch and Rumsey had already launched trial vessels on the Delaware and the Potomac—

With a sigh, Abraham turned over the last sheet. The editor had indeed painted a glowing picture. But in it, he still saw no definite place for himself.