The Seekers

by John Jakes

  Abraham nodded. “Very definitely.”

  “So that leaves your future open to discussion. Excellent.”

  Abraham tried not to show how great an impact those words had on him. He felt as if a huge weight, long suspended over his head, had crushed down on him at last. He’d known he couldn’t indefinitely postpone talking about what he intended to do now that he was home. Philip had just made that doubly clear.

  But Gilbert didn’t want to abandon war stories quite so quickly. The adoring look stole back into his eyes as he said to his half brother, “How many of the red men did you kill, Abraham?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Didn’t you count?”

  “No,” Abraham answered, curtly. He saw agonized faces, heard screams—

  Elizabeth tossed her fair hair. “I’d like to know which is more immoral—Mrs. Rowson’s novel of seduction or all this gory talk of slaughtering Indians!”

  Philip shot the girl another irritated glance. Peggy, always the mistress of tact and diplomacy, rose from her chair before he could speak.

  “Neither is appropriate at the moment, my dears. I’m sure the servants are anxious to clear away. Shall we take tea in the music room? Abraham, you haven’t heard Gilbert play the harpsichord—”

  Gilbert made a disgusted face.

  “I’m looking forward to it,” Abraham said.

  “You’ll be delightfully surprised. Gilbert can perform most of the hymns and fugues in Mr. Belcher’s Harmony of Maine. Or any of Mr. Kimball’s popular songs from The Rural Harmony—he’s really quite accomplished.”

  Philip stood up. “I prefer that Gilbert concentrate on his study of mathematics. If he continues to show the aptitude he’s demonstrated so far, our business will never lack for managerial talent. In fact I’ve given some thought to having the sign repainted.”

  Peggy looked startled. “In what fashion?”

  “So that it reads Kent and Sons—plural.” With affection, Philip reached out to tousle Gilbert’s curly hair. For a moment his stern countenance softened noticeably.

  Gilbert smiled in a forced way. He appeared to accept the channeling of his life into a predetermined course with almost complete resignation. But he grew a little more cheerful when Philip said to him: “Let us postpone the concert, shall we?”

  “Anything you say, Father!”

  “Why can’t Gilbert play?” Peggy asked.

  “Because I want a word with Abraham alone—over a glass of port in the sitting room.”

  Again it was more of a command than a statement, and it didn’t sit well with Abraham, rankled as he was by Philip’s remark about renaming the firm. Elizabeth rebelled too, though against something else.

  “I despise this ridiculous tradition of the gentlemen retiring behind closed doors!” She rose, flinging her linen napkin on the table. “Mama and I are expected to be docile slaves simply because of our sex—”

  “Elizabeth!” Peggy warned. “You will refrain from the use of that word in conversation.”

  “Oh, Mama, stop!”

  Peggy glanced pointedly at Gilbert. “Please consider who is present—”

  “Do you honestly suppose Gilbert hasn’t seen the dogs coupling in every alley in Boston?”

  “Of course I have.” Gilbert grinned.

  Already scarlet, Peggy gasped, “Young man—!”

  “This pious sham of not using certain words is disgusting!” Elizabeth cried.

  Philip’s eyes were thunderous—like his voice:

  “Nevertheless, you will not use them in Gilbert’s presence—your mother’s presence—or mine! This is my house, and it’s my decision.”

  “Yes, you make all the decisions, don’t you?”

  “See here—!”

  “You also make it quite apparent that I’m an outsider.”

  “Oh, Elizabeth, that’s altogether unfair and unwarranted,” Peggy said in a saddened tone.

  “Is it? I don’t believe so!”

  The candles in the chandelier put glistening highlights in Elizabeth’s pale blue eyes. Yet Abraham had the uncanny feeling that her tears were artifice. If so, they still worked.

  Philip looked taken aback. “My dear child, your mother’s quite right. You’re as much a part of this family circle as any other person at the table. But the fact remains—you’re much too forward and free-thinking.”

  “I suppose next you’ll be calling me a mad, bloodthirsty Jacobin!” Elizabeth wailed, starting to rush out. As she left, she contrived to brush against Abraham. His arm tingled at the touch of her muslin-covered breast.

  They all listened to Elizabeth clattering away upstairs to her room just down the hall from Abraham’s on the third floor. A door slammed distantly. Philip sighed. Then: “Peggy, will you please go to her? She continues to harbor the misguided notion that because I’m not her father, I care the less for her.”

  Peggy said softly, “We both know that’s not true.”

  “At the same time, I demand decent behavior. Elizabeth quite often seems totally incapable of it.”

  “She just doesn’t want to grow up and be ladylike,” Gilbert said with a tentative smile.

  No one responded. His large eyes lost their glow. His face fell.

  Abraham knew full well that the problem was much deeper than Gilbert’s oversimplification suggested. Elizabeth bore her father’s last name, Fletcher. That she was illegitimate was no secret within the Kent family. The circumstances of her conception, however, were largely unclear to Abraham.

  He did know that his stepmother had met Philip only after she had placed her infant daughter in a foster home here in Boston. Evidently Peggy hadn’t wanted to expose the child—and herself—to scandal in her native Virginia. Beyond that, Abraham had pieced together certain other information from chance remarks at the family table or hearthside:

  Peggy’s first husband had been a Virginia planter named McLean. He was butchered in a short but apparently harrowing slave rebellion that swept Peggy’s home district along the Rappahannock River in 1775. Elizabeth, born in 1778, had therefore been fathered by this Fletcher fellow after Peggy became a widow.

  Sometimes Abraham wondered whether that slave uprising might be the cause of the silent grief that seemed to grip his stepmother occasionally. Walking abroad in Boston, he had seen Peggy turn pale at the sight of a free black man.

  Philip had once confided to Abraham that Peggy had indeed suffered physical harm in the rebellion. To what extent, he didn’t say. Abraham had speculated on the possibility of rape. That would account for Peggy’s pallor and the sudden nervous starts which automatically—and unfairly—lumped all Negroes into a single category: persons to be feared.

  If Peggy Ashford McLean Kent’s past did include ravishment, how it had affected her intimate relationship with Abraham’s father remained a mystery. He knew they shared one large bed. And his stepmother hadn’t been so devastated that sexual congress was impossible for her. Gilbert was proof of that. Beyond the obvious, however, Abraham didn’t deem it his business—or, to use Philip’s word, decent—to speculate.

  He did know that no children had come of Peggy’s union with the murdered McLean. Growing up, he’d asked his father questions about the whole puzzling business. Philip refused to reply to most of them, stating that he did so out of respect for his wife’s wishes. The past was buried and would remain so.

  No one was forbidden from talking about Elizabeth’s real father—though no one dwelled on him especially either. Over the years, Peggy had let slip a few tantalizing details about the man. The one mentioned most often—and most proudly—was that he had been shot to death in Pittsburgh in 1778, by an Indian spy attempting to abort George Rogers Clark’s march to capture British forts in the Northwest Territory.

  It seemed clear that the man had indeed possessed an unstable nature. It showed up, as it had for as long as Abraham could remember, in Elizabeth’s dislike of Philip’s discipline, and her occasional outright rebellion against
it. That was one thing in the household that hadn’t changed in Abraham’s absence—even though Elizabeth’s appearance had changed remarkably. She had quite literally grown up. Filled out. Become almost beautiful.

  She was no blood kin of Abraham’s. Yet he still felt vaguely guilty over the sensual thoughts she inspired. Her frank glances had stirred him often during the short time he’d been home.

  Responding to Philip’s request, Peggy said in a weary tone, “Yes, I’ll go to her—though I doubt my admonitions will have much effect. They seldom do any more. Gilbert, you see to finishing your studies for the day.”

  Gilbert stuck out his lower lip. “I’d rather talk to Abraham about Indians.”

  “Your brother is going to talk to me,” Philip said, starting from the dining room. With each step, his right shoulder drooped a little—the result of the wound he had suffered at the battle of Monmouth Court House. The way he had limped ever since had also played a part in making him an assertive, sometimes domineering man, Abraham suspected.

  Reluctantly he followed his father into the front sitting room. Servants had already lit a fire against the December darkness. Philip warmed his hands in front of the blaze. He didn’t once glance back to see whether Abraham had followed. He expected Abraham to be there, and Abraham was.

  ii

  Over the mantel hung a long, beautifully polished and oiled Kentucky rifle that Philip had acquired in the war. Above that, a focal point of the room, shone the grenadier’s sword given him by Lafayette. They had known each other as young men in the French province of Auvergne; then, Philip’s name had been Phillipe Charboneau. He had adopted his new one on the voyage to America.

  Gazing at the sword, Abraham recalled what his father had recently told him about its famous donor. At first a supporter of the French Revolution, the Marquis de Lafayette had lately rebelled against the savagery of the Jacobins. He was now imprisoned somewhere in Europe—Prussia or Austria, Philip believed. It was an irony of the great political upheaval that had polarized not only Europe but the United States that Lafayette, finally rejecting the revolution, had still been clapped into irons by its enemies because of his position before he changed his mind.

  Below the rifle and sword on the mantel proper stood a small green glass bottle with a quantity of dried tea leaves in the bottom. This Abraham’s father had acquired on the night of Mr. Samuel Adams’ famous tea party in Boston harbor.

  The tea had accumulated in Philip’s boots during the opening and dumping of the chests. Later that same night he had put the tea in the bottle, to save as a family souvenir. Years afterward, he’d adopted the symbol of the partially filled bottle for the signboard identifying Kent and Son.

  Despite the crackling fire, the sitting room was chilly. All at once Abraham noticed the tea-bottle symbol on the masthead of a single-sheet; four-page gazette lying on a small table. The title of the paper was the Bay State Federalist. That and a quick glance at its columns identified the paper’s slant; Abraham noted an unfriendly story referring to the ex-secretary of state, Mr. Jefferson, and his Jacobin cohorts.

  “I’ve a great deal to catch up on,” he said while Philip poured two glasses of port. “No one’s bothered to tell me you’ve gone into the newspaper business as well.”

  Philip handed a glass to his son. “It’s merely a weekly at the moment. Still, the more voices speaking out against these imbeciles who’d entangle us with the French, the better.”

  Abraham laughed.

  “Pray tell me what’s so amusing,” Philip snapped.

  “Forgive me, Papa—it’s just that your attitude’s a bit surprising. I mean, you were born in France.”

  “The people living there now have collectively lost their minds. And some of the revolution’s friends in America are in equally pathetic shape. I’ve heard educated gentlemen who should know better aping the French barbarians by addressing one another as ‘citizen.’ Proudly! Can you imagine—?”

  He capped his little oration with a scornful sniff. Abraham sipped his port, then said: “So your sympathies are entirely with Mr. Hamilton and his faction?”

  “Indeed they are. Alexander Hamilton is the one authentic genius in the president’s cabinet. An absolute master of financial affairs. It’s Hamilton who untangled the debt mess left at the end of the war, you know. He and he alone put this nation on a sound monetary basis. I agree wholeheartedly with his contention that we must strengthen our commercial ties with England now that we’ve settled our differences.”

  “I’m not sure they’re settled.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “No, Papa. For one thing, the British haven’t yet withdrawn from their forts in the northwest.”

  “But they signed Mr. Jay’s treaty last year, agreeing to do so! They can’t delay forever,” Philip declared, seating himself as if the subject was closed.

  Abraham still looked skeptical. “The treaty is all right as far as it goes. But as I understand it, the treaty said nothing about some vital issues still outstanding. Interference with our shipping—that absurd ploy of boarding American vessels to hunt for British seamen who’ve deserted. The real object as everyone knows is to seize Americans to fill the Royal Navy’s press gang quotas.”

  “The treaty may have its weaknesses,” Philip said, somewhat huffily. “But by and large, I approved of Mr. Jay’s endeavors.”

  “I heard that others didn’t. Quite a few others.”

  Philip waved. “Ignorant rabble.”

  “Is it true they burned Jay’s effigy in various cities?”

  “Yes, and stoned Hamilton when he spoke for the treaty in New York! But I can cite you an outrage closer to home. Do you know what those filthy Francophiles painted on the wall of my own establishment—right here in Boston? Damn John Jay! Damn everyone who won’t damn John Jay—!”

  Philip noticed his son smiling again. “You are easily amused, Abraham. Such outbursts against public order—deprecations of the effort of decent, patriotic men—they’re a disgrace!”

  He lowered his voice until it sounded almost threatening. “I trust you haven’t acquired a different view. Haven’t fallen in with a pack of republican radicals during your army service.”

  Straight-faced, but marveling anew at the way wealth and position could alter a man’s politics and tame his passion for upsetting the status quo, Abraham answered, “I don’t believe so, sir. We were a little too busy with the tribes to discuss political theory.”

  “I had some doubts about permitting you to go off to military duty—as you well know. I allowed it because I suspected the outcome—that you wouldn’t find it to your liking.”

  “You knew that ahead of time? How?”

  Philip shrugged, as if the answer was obvious. “I never liked soldiering either.”

  “I see.” Again Abraham wanted to chuckle. But he didn’t.

  Philip went on. “I confess I’m not entirely happy to see the new territory secure. It only means the creation of new states. The settlers will be nothing but farmers—artisans—”

  “Mr. Jefferson’s sort of people,” Abraham returned wryly.

  “The fool is wrong to believe government should rest in the hands of all! Hamilton sees the issue correctly—”

  “Only the rich—the well-educated—are competent to administer the affairs of the nation? Forgive me a second time, Papa, but I thought that was exactly what you fought against in the late war.”

  “Times change! So does a man’s thinking. However, I don’t wish to discuss my views. I wish to discuss your future.”

  “I’ve only been home a week—”

  “And I expect to give you sufficient time to acclimate yourself to civilian life. But I do want to inform you of one fact, Abraham.”

  Philip looked so serious, Abraham lost even the slightest desire to laugh. He asked: “What fact?”

  “I am relying on you to join the printing house as soon as possible. I’ll give you as much responsibility as I think you can handle
, and—”

  Quickly, Abraham raised his glass to interrupt. “Papa, Papa—wait! I’m not certain that’s what I want to do with my life.”

  “A career with Kent and Son offers you everything!” Philip exclaimed. “Why wouldn’t you want a comfortable, secure existence? Influential friends? A position of respect within the Federalist community—?”

  “Perhaps because I’m not yet a Federalist.”

  “You’ll change.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  The dark eyes caught the hearth’s glare. “You are my son.”

  Softly, but without hesitation, Abraham said, “Yes—and that’s the very reason I prefer to do exactly as you did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The story, Papa.”

  “What story?”

  “The one you told me so often when I was growing up. How you refused to accept what was planned for you by your mother—how you struck out on your own instead. Made your own way. Will you deny me the same opportunity? It’s a tribute to you that I want it that way—”

  “I do not consider it a tribute,” Philip said. Abraham felt a sudden hurt. “I will be exceedingly disappointed if you refuse to come into Kent and Son as your half brother will surely do.”

  “Gilbert’s a different case. Bright, but too frail for any kind of work except commerce. In a business he can use his true strength—his mind.”

  Philip sat in stony immobility for a moment. Then: “If you don’t care to accept my suggestion, be kind enough to tell me what alternative you’ve chosen.”

  “The truth is, I can’t.”

  “And why not, sir?”

  Silence.

  “Answer me! Why not?”

  “I—I just haven’t found it yet. The alternative—”

  Abraham’s sentence trailed off in lame fashion. Philip’s lip showed his scorn—and perhaps concealed pain as deep as Abraham’s own. Philip turned defensive, sarcastic.

  “You don’t know what you want to do, yet you already know my proposition is unsatisfactory. Odd—”

  “Papa—”