Rebecca Wentworth's Distraction Read online

“And to the great need in these parts for likenesses among the better class of patrons. I was right, I’ve come to see, to leave Boston when I did, on the speculation of less competition for my portraits. I’ve just completed a likeness of Madam Browne herself.”

  “Is that so, sir? And your reputation grows with every season, from what I hear.” She looked directly at him.

  “I’ve thought to extend my range, so to speak, Miss Norris. In part because I have so thoroughly covered immediate opportunities for portraiture in town; in part to see something more of this New England whilst I’m here. Who knows but that I may decide to make some investment in the forest trade or lands on my own account.”

  “You are very comfortable indeed, then, Mr. Sanborn.” She arched an eyebrow.

  “I am to meet a man, one Joseph Ladd—do you know of him?—who is to advise me on such travels, perhaps with one party or another of surveyors or overseers of the wood.”

  “I have heard of him, but know nothing directly.”

  “From what you’ve heard, he should serve my purpose?”

  “From what I’ve heard.”

  “I rest more confident for your confirmation then,” he said. She looked him in the eye throughout this interchange, as if she had anticipated his intentions to ask something more of her. “I’m not certain where this Ladd will advise me to look for patrons, but I may of course come into the neighborhood of your former charge. It wouldn’t be impossible at the least for our paths to cross, if what I understand of her disposition is correct.”

  “Certainly it’s a possibility,” she said, and waited for him to go on.

  He dared not tell her outright that the true object of his desire was to find the child. It would simply seem too odd in a man of his station and reputation. He was not able to admit fully even to himself the degree of his evolving fascination with this girlish prodigy.

  “I should be prepared to report to you her welfare,” he finally said, “were I to encounter her on my travels. I imagine the Brownes would appreciate word as well.”

  “Have you spoken of it to them?” she asked, a slight note of skepticism coming into her voice. “For my own part, that would be a blessing to know how she fares.”

  “No. I don’t wish to intrude on what is perhaps for them a delicate matter. Upon my return, however, I could rather incidentally mention that I’d seen her and leave it to them to ask whatever they wish to know. They do, I expect, have others to report to them, even if rarely.”

  “That’s probable.”

  “But I’d prefer to have some clue as to her whereabouts, the better to look out for her. As long as I may come into—what?—the vicinity of Miss Rebecca.”

  “I see.” She smiled. “And you’ve come to me to ask if despite my earlier protestations I know something more of her situation.”

  “Well, in a sense, yes. As I say, I’m going to the frontier in any event, and I thought we might consider together the well-being of the child.” He flashed his brightest smile. “We might, together I had thought, honor our mutual concern.” He knew he was stumbling and repeating himself, but he was operating extemporaneously as well as he could.

  She looked down, saying nothing at first. He decided not to press her further.

  “I would have to think much more on it, Mr. Sanborn.” She hesitated, and then, as if correcting herself, said: “I don’t know that I can help you.”

  “Us, rather. Say us, then, Miss Norris, for it’s an investigation from which we both might benefit, as well as, perchance, the poor exiled girl.” When she looked up he smiled sympathetically. “If she is in comfortable circumstances and well looked after, we need say nothing more, do nothing more. We shall be appeased. If she is not, in any sense, we may offer some small help and comfort to her. Just how we might do so, we could determine only after fully informing ourselves on the matter.”

  “I agree with you there. Thank you for returning this,” she said, touching Rebecca’s heavily wrapped portrait.

  “Will you let me know your decision, Miss Norris?” he prompted her.

  She looked at him with a bold eye. “She is not their daughter, Mr. Sanborn. Not Miss Browne, but strictly speaking Miss Wentworth.” He was struck speechless by her sudden turn of conversation.

  “She is the issue of the Wentworth line, which likes to trace its noble heritage back to the time of Henry the Third. But cousins to Colonel Browne,” she continued. “Not the more august branch of that family, but of a lesser tributary. The parents were devastated in the last distemper. She was brought to Portsmouth by her proper father’s cousin, Squire Browne, who was her godfather, you see. As I said on an earlier occasion, but did not explain entirely, the Brownes were then struck during the plague. The death of their two sons left them with no children but their adopted daughter, Rebecca. There was some trouble delivering their second child, and they were strongly advised against having any more children of their own. I had been hired as tutor to their sons, to supplement the town schooling, that is. They were deeply wounded by the death of their sons. I became Rebecca’s tutor by default, you might say.”

  “And your tutorship accounts for her remarkable learning,” he said as a statement but meant as a question.

  “She reads continually, sir, whenever opportunity is presented. But also, her natural father took deep interest in her, after he understood that she was the quickest to learn, the most clever of his children. He indulged her, perhaps unfortunately so. I believe he once applied to his cousin and old friend from childhood Squire Browne to assist him in sending her to school in Boston, after the manner of the Pepperrells, when the elder Pepperrell bore the cost of an extraordinary granddaughter’s schooling in Boston. To no avail, as you see, but her father saw to it that Rebecca partook of certain of her brothers’ lessons at home, and at the feet of their minister.” “The basis of her learning and lore.”

  “Precisely. But in time the Brownes, who had indulged her passion for books as did her father, grew troubled by Rebecca’s strange gifts and, well, to put it plainly, her unmanageability. . . .” Miss Norris seemed to wish to go on, but something held her back. She looked down. Neither of them spoke further. He remembered the drawing of the boys’ souls released and wondered a moment whether the Brownes somehow might have come to blame the strange girl for the death of their sons.

  He reached across the table and placed his hand on hers. She did not look up or move her hand. She did not weep or appear confused, merely silent, as if gathering herself, either to go on or to determine to say nothing further about the Brownes. He believed she might be full of regret for having spoken, but he could not be certain.

  After they had been sitting quiet for some time, she spoke. “You understand, then, that the colonel and his wife did not forbid Rebecca further learning out of that prejudice that afflicts many men of position. Such men believe it is in their interest to discourage reading and literature because such learning will expose them to the contempt of those beneath them and detract from their sense of significance, their unassailability. Thus they find satisfaction even in the ignorance of their own sons, let alone their daughters. . . .” She broke off as if she had veered into rant that might expose her. She thought a moment, looked up at Sanborn, her eyes full of a strange pleading he had not seen before, and then began again.

  “Colonel Browne fears for her, and even for himself, perhaps. I believe madness in any form is his greatest fear. There’s a history of terrible distraction in his family, sir . . . self-murder, the visions of religious frenzy. . . .” She broke off again. And this time she could not continue. She looked down again. Finally, in a barely audible voice she said, “I will need time to consider what you have said, Mr. Sanborn.”

  “Of course, Miss Norris,” he said. “I have not made an appointment yet with Joseph Ladd, nor have I made specific plans for departure. There is time to consider well.” He touched her hand gently and then stood up. “I hope I haven’t caused you discomfort, Miss Norris. Please belie
ve that was not my intention. I was thinking principally of Rebecca’s well-being, and of an opportunity arising for us to discover her circumstances. . . .” He paused, but she said nothing. “I’m in your debt for being so forthright,” he continued. She looked up at him but said nothing still. “Should you wish to reach me, you know where I am. And I am always at your service.”

  She stood up slowly, as if it cost her an effort, still looking at him. He had never seen her so sluggish. “I thank you, Mr. Sanborn, for making the opportunity you speak of known to me. I do not know what I can do, but I will do what I can.” She supported herself on the back of her chair. “Good-day, sir.”

  Once back on the street, Sanborn found he was stunned all over again by her revelations. Everything about the child was thrown into a new light. He found that his determination to find Rebecca grew firmer than ever. But he did not want to examine closely yet these accelerated feelings of precedence toward, as he now thought of it, his mission.

  Chapter 12

  A WIRY MAN IN HIS THIRTIES wearing a deerskin jacket, Joseph Ladd was an experienced road scout and an old hand at forest travels. As he rode beside Sanborn their first day out that June, he spoke of the changes he had seen in this part of the forest—the trees cut back from some of the riverbanks, the developing system of mastways, the appearance of a way station or two, and the new towns being planted, especially along major rivers. They had left Portsmouth on a river gundalow on the afternoon tide the previous day for Exeter, fifteen miles distant, and set out at first light from Exeter on horseback by way of the road to Kingston and Chester. Ladd had business of his own to conduct, serving on a road-surveying commission for the proprietors of Londonderry and Blackstone, as Sanborn understood it. Both men had packhorses tethered to their own mounts.

  The road they traveled was still rough, the more so the farther west. Much of it had been a mere footpath within a decade’s memory. Now it was a bridle path improving toward a cart-path, and indeed they had encountered the odd oxcart on their inward trek. It wound among glacial rocks and over the great stems of blowdowns and the long, low backs of surly hills; it deposited walkers and riders at the banks of streams and rivers that had to be forded or, in one instance, swum on horseback. Sanborn noticed here and there scouts’ and surveyors’ ax hashes remaining on a tree to indicate the intended improvements still to be made in the most narrow reaches of the way. Ladd told Sanborn that until just a few years ago, one had to travel up the Merrimack River “and come in the back door” to reach the towns thirty or forty miles inland.

  As they approached one nearer settlement, in fact, they heard the clanking of chains, the creaking of great carts, and the shouting of drivers. Soon their way intersected a wide mast road. They saw at a distance of perhaps a half mile, coming toward them some fifty or more yoke of oxen heaving and straining to haul a great pine, propped up on enormous chains between two pairs of wheels of more than fifteen feet in diameter.

  “They’ll be quitting soon,” Ladd said, “as the rivers will recede again with the end of the rains.”

  Sanborn observed that the entire area around the great felled pines appeared to have been reduced to waste.

  “This time of year,” Ladd explained, “they have to preserve the big ones by cutting down the smaller trees in the direction of the fall, for bedding, so that after a stand of great pines has been cut, there’s little or nothing left erect.”

  “An amazing sight,” Sanborn said. “Yet I suppose the smaller trees and stems may be useful for boarding or bow-sprits and whatnot.”

  “That’s so,” Ladd said. “They’ll all be twitched down river so long as the water’s high enough. As it has been this season. Wood-gold.” He laughed. “Spain, Portugal, England—it’s all the same, a sale is a sale, friend or foe.”

  Sanborn had heard a great deal in Portsmouth about how efficient the tree cutters had been, especially in the mast trade. “His majesty’s woods,” as some said with more than a little irony, were becoming depleted so fast of the best accessible stands that the merchants were turning to Casco Bay and other points east to insure their product.

  As they would not reach their destination before nightfall, Ladd recommended they lodge at the mast camp. Their quarters in temporary dwellings were primitive yet dry and not inconvenient. The exhaustion of the mast party put everyone to bed early, on two or three noggins of rum and a heavy venison supper. Sanborn slipped toward unconsciousness hearing the distant calls of wolves, then tumbled into deep, dreamless sleep.

  THE CAMP WAS ASTIR at first light. After a breakfast of bacon and porridge, Sanborn and Ladd left before the sun was in the trees. The men traveled in silence for a time, so Sanborn’s thoughts turned toward his mission to the child. He felt particular gratitude to Miss Norris for finally informing him of her whereabouts—the very town and family her guardians had sent Rebecca. He had not had to prevail upon Miss Norris more than he already had. She had come to his rooms again, well hooded, with the names written in her neat tutor’s hand on a half sheet of paper. She had arrived at the opinion, similar to his, that she could be satisfied only by some direct and independent knowledge of Rebecca’s circumstances. She, more than anyone, knew of the child’s tendency to darker fancies. These often suddenly overcame Rebecca in the very midst of happiness. Over the course of several years the girl and her tutor had developed, Sanborn by now understood, a strong feeling toward one another, and, on Miss Norris’s part, a true solicitude for the welfare of the brilliant but moody child. Such sentiments, he now believed, had led Miss Norris to confide in him, as she had no one else to confide in regarding Rebecca.

  As far as Ladd knew, however, he was merely guiding a much-respected portraitist into the farther reaches of the timber plantations of the province, of Portsmouth to be more precise. They were not traveling to grinding, primitive villages of a previous century, but to settlements planned as New England towns for the development and stability of trade and the security of boundaries and land claims. It was unusual, perhaps, but not to Ladd’s or townsmen’s minds extraordinary, that the better-placed families of these districts should wish portraits of themselves and their loved ones. At first Ladd and Sanborn had traveled along much cut-over forest, and on more than one occasion had to cover their faces against the smoke of fires burning the previous year’s slash near a settlement’s new planting fields.

  The rare taverns were, however, of the most primitive kind. By a river’s edge where a rude causeway of felled trees served for crossing, they stopped at an equally rude dwelling with a sign of a fish and a boar hung out. Upon entering, Sanborn was glad they were determined to complete that day’s trek without respite again for sleep. It was a two-room garrison log cabin with a lean-to stable semiattached, and any sleepers would be obliged to throw their weary carcasses upon a bearskin before the fire or, in warmer months, on bug-infested hay in the second squalid room behind a flimsy partition.

  Ladd and Sanborn each drank a noggin of grog. They managed in their hunger to eat some of the nondescript porridge offered as well. There were two other men in the common room—a couple of taciturn forest roughs who had thrown Ladd and Sanborn a hostile glance as they entered and then, to Sanborn’s relief, proceeded to ignore them. As Sanborn and Ladd were eating, another traveler arrived—a captain of the Provincial Guard. The captain’s name was Carlyle, a huge man of some six and a half feet with a deep bass voice. The two roughs stopped talking and eyed him quietly.

  They must have decided to check their native hostility in his presence, for when the captain came in undoing his great coat and stamping his boots, calling for the care of his dogs and horse, for a loaf and cheese, and for a good dram of molasses and rum, they merely looked away, and shortly thereafter got up to leave. But just as they were going out, the larger and fiercer of the woodsmen stopped short at the opened door and called back to the host as he was heading out the back door to the stable to execute Carlyle’s requests.

  “McGuire,” he called,
a malignant grin beginning to spread across his face, “here comes Robie, and I mean to set things right between us, if you’ll not interfere.”

  McGuire took one look back at him and said, “Not in here you don’t. Settle it outside.”

  The big woodsman stepped outside while his smaller mate looked out, as if guarding the open door. Ladd and Sanborn, fascinated by this turn of events, looked toward the doorway where they could see but little of what transpired between the woodsman and Robie. The altercation was audible before it turned physical and they surmised the trouble was over the sale of a horse, by which the woodsman now felt cheated. They were just able to see around the door guard into the tavern yard when the woodsman took his first swing and began to beat Robie with his fists, in favor of the stout crabstick he had taken with him. Robie went down under the assault and, to the jeers and encouragements of the woodsman at the open door, began to receive the more damaging blows of his opponent’s booted feet.

  Through it all, Captain Carlyle, who had given his good-day to Ladd and Sanborn, ignored the violent scuffle as if he hadn’t the least interest in such affairs, and only cared to refresh himself at McGuire’s bar. When Ladd got up, finally, as if to demand the woodsman discontinue kicks brutally delivered to the unfortunate Robie, who it appeared had gone into convulsions, Carlyle held his arm calmly and said, “Better not, sir. It’ll be on his head and McGuire’s. The man is in no mood to brook strangers interfering.” He leaned back in his chair and applied a candle to his pipe.

  Ladd sat down again. “You’re no doubt right, Captain, but he’ll kill him sure if no one interferes.”

  Just then the man in the doorway, laughing now, left his post and went to commend his partner and, fearing perhaps Robie’s demise, to warn him off further revenge. The big woodsman did cease, finally, as his partner eased him off, but they were not yet quite through with Robie’s punishment. All the while the beating of Robie had proceeded, the poor man’s little dog had set itself to a fit of barking and growling and snarling approaches to the woodsman’s deadly feet. Now the smaller woodsman picked up his friend’s stout walking stick where he had dropped it and proceeded to beat the valiant terrier.