The Shores of Tripoli

by James L. Haley

  “Family, by all means!” They settled in the kitchen, where Sam opened the trunk. He brought with him a selection of gifts for Bliven’s mother from his own far-removed life—a sack of sweet nuts called pecans, which Bliven judged superior to walnuts, preserves made of strawberries, a ham cured in sugar instead of salt. She accepted these as rare delicacies, but he would not be thanked for them. “I am the one who is imposing on you,” he protested. “The least I can do is help you feed me!”

  It was apparent from Sam’s clothing and accessories, and even more from the way he wore them, that he came from great wealth. It left Bliven embarrassed that the best hospitality they could offer him was to share his room in the attic eaves of their house, but Sam gave no evidence of feeling superior.

  In the mornings, after chores, they hunted or fished. Bliven showed him the town, Tapping Reeve’s law school, and was surprised to learn that Sam and John Calhoun knew each other, though not well; both were from Abbeville. “Why are you not as insane as he is?” asked Bliven. “Do you have better water at your plantation?”

  “We just call him peculiar,” said Sam.

  Bliven introduced him to friends at Captain Bull’s tavern, but not to the Marshes for they were away. Sam took to helping him with chores, to finish quicker and gain free time. “Do you and your parents really work this place all by yourselves?” Sam asked.

  “Occasionally they hire one worker, but otherwise yes, we do.”

  “No wonder you are as strong as a bear.”

  Bliven leaned on the split-rail fence. “Do you remember what it was we fought about, back on the President?”

  Sam considered it. “I think it was about what somebody told me, that somebody told him, that somebody told him, something that you said about me.”

  “We were fools. One of us might have killed the other.”

  “Well, I tried.” They laughed.

  They spent ten days together before Sam departed. The day before he was to leave, Bliven inquired and obtained an invitation to bring Sam to visit the Marshes, who had returned. Bliven had put it forward as a chance for Sam to see how the really well-to-do New Englanders lived, but in truth it was a chance to present him to Clarity.

  They arrived for tea; it was now by habit that her father led them into the library. “Ordinarily,” he said to Sam, “we take tea in the parlor, but when our young lieutenant comes calling, we know this is his favorite room, so we gather in here.”

  Sam was taken aback by the sheer number of books. “I can well believe it is his favorite room. You have to pull him out with a rope, I’ll wager.”

  Clarity greeted him cordially, but with a reserve in her bearing that Bliven thought a little more than her custom. Their young black maid wheeled in the cart with the tea service and cakes, and Clarity rose and took control of it as she entered the room. “I will pour, Becky, thank you.”

  Marsh raised a hand and touched the maid’s as she left and asked quietly, “Becky? How is your mother today?”

  “Thank you very kindly, Mr. Marsh, I believe she’s a sight better today, but the ague still has a pretty powerful hold on her.”

  “Does she need a doctor?”

  “Oh, no, sir, thank you, she’s strong, I’m sure we just keep her warm, she’ll be fine.”

  “Well, you will let us know if she needs anything?”

  “Yes, sir, thank you kindly.” Marsh released her hand and nodded slightly to dismiss her. Sam took in this exchange without comment.

  Clarity asked Sam pleasant questions about his family and his friendship with Bliven and their life at sea, but both boys noticed she inquired nothing of the plantation, or what they raised or how it was run. It was her father who learned from him that it was some four thousand acres in extent and grew the full range of crops suitable to the climate. “Well, between our wool and your cotton,” Marsh said at last, “we ought to have a more lively commerce between our sections, don’t you think?”

  “Perhaps we shall,” said Sam. “I hope so.” He changed the subject suddenly. “But look, here we are, just a few weeks until Christmas. Have you special plans? How shall you celebrate it?”

  The pall cast was as silent as if it had suddenly snowed in the library. Marsh’s brows arched visibly, while his wife’s eyes flew open like window sashes. Clarity looked helplessly around the room and then focused down on her tea cake.

  “Hm, Sam,” Bliven stammered. “Christmas . . . is not held to be such an event in New England as it is elsewhere in the country, or the Christian world.”

  “Do you not celebrate Christmas?” Sam asked incredulously.

  “Mercy, no,” hushed Clarity. “Why on earth would we do such a wicked thing?”

  “What? Forgive me, I am amazed.” Sam laughed nervously, aware that he had fallen off a social cliff, but astonished as to why. “Was not General Washington famous for his Christmases at Mount Vernon?”

  “He was a Virginian,” said Marsh, tempering his disapproval with his understanding that not everyone lived as they did. “And an Episcopalian. In our church, we regard the passion of Christ as the important matter, not his birthday.”

  “Oh. Well, please forgive me, I have never perceived any harm in it.”

  “It is popish,” mumbled Clarity.

  “If you read your Bible carefully,” said Marsh, “you will observe that Jesus was born at the time of the Jewish Passover, and that is in spring. December was chosen because it was a pagan festival in ancient Rome. The entire concept was artifice.”

  Bliven was sure he detected one of Reverend Beecher’s sermons in the cadence of it.

  Sam heaved a helpless sigh. “Oh. I confess, I had no idea.”

  “And look at the time!” exclaimed Bliven. “Sam, come, we must go get you packed.” They said their good-byes as quickly as propriety allowed and walked together south across the green. “You know, Sam, when you put your foot in your mouth, it is a good policy to leave the other leg free to hop away on.”

  Sam stopped abruptly, shot Bliven a cold look, crossed his left foot over his right knee, and hopped the next several steps, until he nearly fell and Bliven caught him roughly. “Never mind. I still like you as well as before.”

  That next morning Bliven’s mother had packets prepared to take up the space in his baggage where Sam had loaded the Southern delicacies, and she presented him with walnuts, choice apples from their orchard, and a large jug of maple syrup, which Sam had opined was infinitely superior to Southern molasses. Bliven saw him out the door and put him aboard the coach, with exchanged promises that they would write more often.

  • • •

  ALONE IN HIS ROOM he quaffed a tankard of hard cider, and then rode to the Marsh house. He found Clarity seated with books before the fire in their library. “What are you reading?”

  She smiled as her gaze rose to his. “It is a book of ladies’ correct manners and deportment.” She rose and they exchanged curtsy for bow, and they sat together. He spied a second book lying at her side, and as she did not call attention to it, he judged it must be a novel.

  “After spending half your life with Miss Sarah Pierce, deportment is the last subject upon which I should think you need advice. Tell me, what did you think of Mr. Bandy?”

  She grew thoughtful. “I will like him, for your sake. But in all honesty, the fact that he and his family own slaves must probably prevent my ever regarding him with great warmth.”

  Bliven shook his head. “They live in a different world, Clarity.”

  She was unmoved. “They speak the same language and worship the same God.”

  “But in the South, they preach that God approves of slavery.”

  She stared at him icily. “I do not understand how that is possible.”

  “Well, this is a mountain that I will not attempt today. Tell me, what are you learning about deportment?”

&nb
sp; She smiled, but checked it. “It says here that ladies must never laugh aloud. They may smile with reserve, but only coarse women laugh.”

  “Well, that is sad news,” he said, “for you are never prettier than when you laugh.”

  Their eyes met. “We are well matched, then,” she said, “for you are never more handsome than when you scowl.”

  “I hope you will not cause me to scowl today.”

  “I hope that also, but why should I cause you to scowl?”

  Bliven felt his heart pounding so hard it must make the vessels in his neck stand out. “Because you hold it in your hand today to make me either the happiest young blade in New England or the most wretched.”

  Clarity closed the book, suddenly very solemn. “So that is where we have arrived?”

  Bliven shook his head and shrugged at the same time; it made him feel stupid, and the silence grew long. “I don’t read novels,” he blurted finally. “I have no idea how a fellow, well, declares his . . . love . . . for someone. I throw myself on your mercy—you have read about these things, I have not.”

  “Ah.” She took his hand to calm him. “You must be the most unusual young man in Connecticut to fall in love with a girl and have to appeal to her greater . . . experience.”

  He understood that she was making a witticism but was in too great anxiety to play with it. “Yes, I am a clod, I know it.” He glanced fitfully down at the second book lying beside her. “But tell me, what would your—Maria Rackrent have me do?”

  She burst out helplessly, “Oh, now you have made me laugh; I am a coarse woman. Her name is Maria Edgeworth, her book is Castle Rackrent. I cannot say what she would advise. I can only say what I would advise.” She fell silent.

  “I am hanging from a yardarm here, tell me before I die!”

  “I should want you to be completely honest with me,” she said.

  “How could I not? That’s why I’m here!”

  “Do you love me?”

  The question startled him. “Yes, of course I do!”

  “Then perhaps you should tell me.”

  “I love you. I adore you. I have loved you since the moment I saw you at Mrs. Pierce’s spring social, sitting by the pianoforte, wearing your lavender ribbon. Which you are . . . wearing again today.”

  “Well, see now? That was actually quite a good start.”

  “Augh!” Bliven’s neck went limp and his head fell forward, his chin bouncing on his chest.

  Clarity let go of his hand, passed her arm inside his, and took it again. “My dear, kind, handsome Lieutenant Putnam. Are you trying to ask me to marry you?”

  He heaved a sigh of gratitude for her rescue. “Yes.”

  She patted his hand. “Well, let us give you a moment to recover yourself before I must answer.”

  “Augh!” He breathed quietly for several seconds. “I suppose the real question, Clarity, is whether you love me. Whether you could love me.”

  She tightened her grip on his hand. “I think I do. But, at only seventeen, how can I be certain when my family, all those who advise me best, are united in the opinion that I am too young for such a step?”

  She surprised him. “You have asked their advice, then?”

  “No, but they have offered it all the same.”

  Ah, he thought, that will include Reverend Beecher. If she is enamored of a scowl, he must set her heart racing. If Beecher asked her, he thought, I’ll bet she’d know quick enough. But jealousy was one emotion he must not show. “I am more interested in your own doubts.”

  She softened visibly. “How am I to do without you for years at a time, and then when you come home you are here only long enough for your ship to replace powder and balls and dead men? Of whom you may one day be one.”

  “I have been home for well over a year. Is that so little? And the navy is a likely field for ambition. A young man does have his ambitions.”

  “So you will end like Nelson, with one arm and one eye?” She flung one arm across her breast as though it were in a sling and closed one eye in the ugliest fashion of which she judged herself capable.

  “My dear Clarity”—he heard himself say it, aware that it was the first time—“there is also such a thing as duty, which some of us must take upon ourselves.”

  “Hm!”

  “You were born here in Litchfield and always lived here.”

  “I was, yes.”

  “We were born too late, you and I, to remember the Revolution, and my family has only lately settled here. But Litchfield was behind the battle lines. It was never fought over, nor occupied. Your families and property never knew that destruction. My father came here to start over because he lost everything in Boston. Everything, you understand. We cannot suppose that war will never come again. Our country is young, and must be kept strong. The navy, too, is young, and wants seamen badly. There are nowhere near enough ships even to safeguard the coast.”

  Clarity was quiet for a long moment. “I have said I want you to be completely honest with me.”

  “Believe me, I am trying.”

  “Can you admit to me simply that you love ships, and the sea, and sailing?”

  “Yes, I do. And for myself, I want that.”

  “And battle?” she probed.

  He thought on it. “No. There is the noise and the sting, and it is exciting, at least when you are certain of victory. But I have seen the dead and the wounded. And, Clarity, I should tell you, when we took the Tripoli, I killed two men.”

  “I know,” she said quietly.

  “You know?” He was incredulous. “How?”

  “My father has read everything about the navy since you began passing time with our family. He told me. I believe he approved of you better after he learned it, but for myself—” She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “I killed one Moor to save my own life, the other to save Sam. Had I not done it we would both be dead, but killing another man—it made me sick and ashamed. War will come again, without respecting whether or not I relish it. I am a good officer, and I am wanted to help guard the country. Is that not honorable?”

  “It is”—she nodded—“but you will not be the only one called to serve. If you serve, I must serve, but not with you. I must serve without you, serve whole seasons without you, perhaps raise our children alone.” She added flatly, “That is no small price.”

  “I know.” Bliven felt an urgent need to lighten the air. “Or once I become a captain, I could take you with me, like Mrs. Commodore Morris. Would you fancy that?”

  She hesitated. “I might, one day, but that is many years hence.”

  “But now, really, in truth,” he protested, “if your father rejects me because you are yet too young, and you reject me because you believe you shall be an old maid before you see me again, then truly I am between the rock and the whirlpool. My cause can only founder.”

  She smiled, with reserve, just as instructed by the manual of deportment. “Make me a bargain,” she said. “You go to sea again, and finish this war if you can. While you are gone, I will consider everything you have said. While we are apart we will consider ourselves engaged. But only as between ourselves; we will tell no one, but we will undertake no other friendships. When you return, if you still feel the same about me, and if I have made peace with myself that I can pay the price you ask”—she searched the depth of his blue-gray eyes—“I will marry you. Can you accept this as an answer?”

  “The kindest and wisest I could wish for.” He moistened his lips as discreetly as he could. “As we are now engaged, at least as between ourselves, may I leave with your kiss?”

  He believed her smile the mildest he had ever seen, and their lips met, barely touching, then more firmly. When they parted, each could barely breathe.

  “You will wait for me, then?” he asked.

  “I will, but
do not keep me in suspense. You must still write me of your adventures.”

  “I will, I promise.”

  “And it says here in the manual of deportment that a letter of fewer than five pages is to be considered a slight, so do not be excessively brief.”

  8.

  THE CONSTITUTION

  June 1803

  For junior officers such long furloughs were not unheard of, as the navy tried to hang on to good officers while their ships were hove down, or refitted, or even paid off and replaced. True, they were only paid half their wage, but knowing they would be home for large blocks of time left every opportunity to find gainful employ. If nothing else, the navy could point to it as a kind of seagoing militia, saving the country the crushing burden of a full-strength fleet while keeping an adequate number of good officers subject to recall.

  Bliven received new orders to report to Boston on May 15, after a year and a half at home. The spring of 1803 came and went quickly, and the planting was finished by the time Bliven packed his sea bag and repeated the stage journey to Boston. He took less regard this time of the hulk that served as their receiving ship, and was pleased to learn that Lieutenant Todd was still on duty there.

  When he entered his office, he dropped his sea bag in astonishment. “Bandy!”

  Sam turned, as blond and boyish-looking as he was when he was a midshipman. “Well, look here!” he said. They shook hands tightly. “How in the world?”

  Bliven shook his head. “My orders just said report here today. Good day to you, Mr. Todd.”

  He nodded.

  “I just got orders to sail from Charleston to Boston on the Vixen,” said Sam, “and then report here. I am amazed to see you.”

  “Mr. Todd,” said Bliven, “are we bound for different ships?”

  Todd looked down his lists. “Gentlemen, you are both assigned to the Constitution, Commodore Preble.”

  “Preble!” exclaimed Bliven. “I thought he was home, in Maine, sick.”

  “So he was,” answered Todd, “but he improved miraculously after he was summoned to a dinner with President Jefferson and the navy secretary. They made him commodore of the new squadron; he’s been here some few months, getting Argus ready to sail, getting Philadelphia and Constitution back into commission. Constitution has been a terrible headache, they hove her down, recoppering her bottom. Mr. Revere had to open a shop here in the navy yard to hammer the plates to shape. The commodore was in fits until she was finished.”