From Sea to Shining Sea

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  Jonathan sat on an upholstered chair across the room, listening to these things he felt were true, and earnestly studying the speaker’s voice and mannerisms. Jonathan was trying to see what it was about Henry’s demeanor that made him so convincing, so provocative. Jonathan had slowly come to understand that hard work and intelligence alone were not enough to make a public servant stand out and gain fame. There had to be a certain power of personality, an ability to excite people or cast a spell on them, as for instance brother George could do. George, like Henry, could catch people’s fancy, make them yell in agreement. Jonathan felt that he was lacking in these qualities himself. He, like his father, earned confidence, but neither of them was an exciting man. Jonathan envied men who had that flair, that theatric quality; he thought they had an unfair advantage to advance in public life, almost the same sort of unmerited advantage as was held by those who had huge Crown patent grants of land and were thus marked for prominence. Sometimes Jonathan resigned himself to believe that one either was born with that flair or would never have it. Other times he hoped it could be learned and acquired, and so now he was using this chance to study one of the most stirring of them all, and was paying less attention to what Patrick Henry was saying than to the way he said it.

  “Hear, hear!” someone cried, in response to something Henry had just said, and Jonathan realized he had no idea what the man had said even though he was engrossed in listening to him. He looked into the bottom of his empty glass and wondered if it was the brandy that was so diffusing his faculties.

  At that moment a hand took his wrist, a big, rough, red, freckled hand, and held his arm steady while pouring a dram of brandy into his glass. He looked up, and there beside him was a big, rough, red, freckled face. It was his Uncle George. George Rogers was a mighty stonemason, carpenter, and engineer, who had made himself into Caroline County’s most respected builder of bridges, churches, gristmills, dams, and public buildings. He was Ann Rogers Clark’s closest brother, and George’s namesake. As important and impressive as he had become, he was still a charmer, a Rogers. His blue eyes were merry and mischievous and his smile was elfin. “I saw ye gazin’ all forlorn into your glass there,” he said, “and figured you were too numbed by Mister Henry’s harangue to go fetch the bottle.”

  Jonathan laughed. “Nay, just lost in the ponders, I guess.”

  “Aye, me too. It’s somethin’ about weddings. They make me ponder too. So! So, now my niece is a married woman! I am just obfuscated! It seems no time since she sat on my knee and took that Dutch doll I’d bought ’er!”

  “She still has it. It sits on a chest in her room.” They were speaking quietly. Mister Henry was still proclaiming about the rights of man, over by the hearth. Some of the men in the library were still raising their voices in response to his exhortations, others were talking among themselves in twos and threes, and some sat snoring with their chins on their chests, liquor and pipe ashes dribbling unheeded onto their vests. Beyond the doors and hallways, the fiddles and fifes were playing a jig.

  Now George Rogers was saying, “… told your Mama today, ‘Sister Ann,’ said I, ’y’ve raised a fine brood. I cherish ’em every one, and couldn’t more if they were my own.’”

  “Thankee, Uncle.” George Rogers had a large family of sons himself, and doted on them, but in his great avuncular heart there seemed to be room for unlimited nieces and nephews.

  Another hand settled on Jonathan now, a light hand on his left shoulder, and he turned and looked up. It was another uncle, this one Parson Robertson, his old teacher. Here was the man Jonathan loved more than anyone outside the immediate family, the man who had taught him how to think. The old Scots schoolmaster, tall and somber, beamed down on him. He wore his usual black wool frock coat and waistcoat, believed to be his only ones, and although he had exchanged his brown farmer’s breeches for a black pair for the occasion, these too were so bagged out at the knees that he looked as if perpetually ready to hop off a stile. His face was gray and long, as was his hair, but kindly and intelligent. “Ah,” said Jonathan, patting the bony hand on his shoulder. “Come sit with us. We were talking of family, and how weddings make ye feel.”

  “Join us, Parson,” said George Rogers, and he hopped up and fetched a chair for the old gent, placing it at Jonathan’s other side. Parson Robertson was married to Jonathan’s Aunt Rachel. He farmed, and Aunt Rachel sold eggs and sewed clothes to supplement his tutor’s fees, and the pair were as frugal as bread pudding, but due to the Parson’s scrupulous honesty and a philanthropism that belied his Scottish birth, they remained as poor as Uncle George was rich. The parson had got off the ship from Scotland more than twenty years ago, but still had such a burr in his speech that many Virginians could scarcely understand him. Still, he was known as one of the very best teachers, in a colony where good basic education was hard to find, and Jonathan Clark had been one of his best pupils, along with Jamie Madison and Harry Innes and Samuel Edmundson. Donald Robertson had fled Scotland to escape the strictures of religious doctrine there, and thus the undercurrent of all his teachings was intellectual liberty. There was a joke that he had married Rachel Rogers primarily to acquire John Rogers the Martyr as an ancestor. It was, in fact, George Rogers who had made up that joke. George Rogers was respected and liked his pedantic brother-in-law as much as anyone in the family did, but had always felt that anyone on such a high intellectual plane needed some down-to-earth teasing now and then, “to keep ’im from just floating away,” as he put it. And one of his slyest ways of teasing the parson was bringing up the name of his worst pupil. So he said now:

  “Have ye heard, Parson, that my nephew George has become a builder?”

  The teacher pursed his lips, and raised his eyebrows skeptically. “A builder?”

  “A builder?” Jonathan said.

  “Aye. Seems he’s about to erect the largest structure west of Fort Pitt. He came visited me last month, to brush up on points o’ joining and leverage and so on, that I’d taught ’im long since.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Jonathan said. “He told me nowt about a building. What’s it to be?”

  “Why, a fort. A log fort. He has a contract to build it. He’s doing right well, that lad is. Smart. Smart!” He always added that emphasis when he was teasing the Parson about George.

  “A fort wheerrr?” the parson inquired.

  “Why, a settlement on the Ohio, named, ah, let me recollect. I believe Wheeling, he said.”

  Jonathan shook his head. “I’ve heard there’s much Indian alarm lately thereabout. I didn’t know he was to build the fort, though I’d heard the people wanted one, so they wouldn’t have to go all the way to Pitt if there’s an outbreak.”

  “I tried to discourage him from going out,” George Rogers said. “But y’ know him.”

  “Aye,” said Jonathan. “Advice runs off ’im like rain off a loon.”

  “So did education,” said the parson.

  “But he’s certainly smart,” repeated George Rogers. “Smart!”

  “How smart’s a man who goes out there at a time like this?” said Jonathan. “There’s bad unrest there, so I read and so I hear.”

  “That gent by the doorr theerrr,” said the parson, inclining his head. “That Captain Lewis, d’ ye know’m? He asserts thot thrrr’s been Indian sign as farrr doon as Albemarrrle.”

  “It’s spooky out along the mountains,” Jonathan said. “Imagine how it must be way out there past ’em.”

  “Well, I don’t like the thought o’ that lad bein’ in an Indian war,” said George Rogers. “But he’ll take care o’ himself as well as any man could, I’ll say as much.”

  “From what Pa tells of ’im,” Jonathan muttered, “he’s gotten so Indian ’imself, I’m not sure but what he’d be on their side.” It had been a spiteful thing to say, and his Uncle George’s expression made him regret it at once. Now and then Jonathan would blurt out something like that and get an unexpected glimpse of his own envy of George. He forc
ed a chuckle. “I’m jesting, though, o’ course. I pray for ’im every day, as we all do. Hey, lookee here at the fob he brought me from the capital! He toured way up to Woodstock to say hey to me.” Jonathan was proud to be able to say that. One thing certain was that he loved and admired his younger brother far more than he envied him. And the thought of him out there in the dark heart of the Indian country was fearsome. “I spent two hours trying to talk him out o’ going. I told him about all the out-country families I’d seen come back over the mountains scared for safety. I told him he’d be foolhardy, and more fool than hardy, to go on out. Told him to stay and come back down for the wedding. Make the family happy. O’ course I didn’t know then that he had a fort to build. But he just laughed, said his usual litany how he had that country in ’is blood. How he was goin’ to make Clark a name out there. Bet me I’d be out there myself someday, and the whole family likewise. There’s no arguing with ’im.”

  “My argument,” said George Rogers, “was with my boys Joe and John. He had ’em in such a buzzel they wanted to go with ’im. I told ’em, ‘Talk to me about it in five years, when y’re both weaned proper.’”

  “The oonly argument I iver had wi’ Master Georrrge,” said the parson, “tha’ is, the oonly thing ’e iver said tha’ I could no’ answer, was, when I’d caught ’im sky-gazing in the classroom, ’e said, ‘Sir, if ye truly believe in freedom o’ thought, then why does it botherrr ye if I sit heerrr having a guid time wi’ my mind?’ Heh! Fair said, eh?”

  Jonathan looked in surprise at his old teacher. The parson had never told that story before, nor had he ever spoken of George with a tone of fondness in his voice like that. It’s almost, he thought with a shiver, the way folks start talking respectfully about a man who’s dead.

  And he remembered his last sight of George, George riding up the road, leading his packhorse, turning to wave back, the huge, shadowy flank of Massanutten Mountain dwarfing him. And Jonathan remembered having had an awful premonition at the time that that would be his last vision of George. But of course he had not told that to the family. And Jonathan didn’t believe in omens anyway. Such things, Parson Robertson had taught him, are not valid parts of an enlightened rationale. “I’ll outlive ye, Jonathan,” George had told him once, pointing westward. “Open places are healthier.”

  “Hey, Jonathan.” Dickie’s voice laughed behind him. “Hullo, Uncle George. Parson, sir.” Dickie was presently a pupil of the parson and felt awkward calling him ‘Uncle’ as he always had used to.

  “Hullo, Dick,” said George Rogers. “Thought you’d be abed by now.”

  Dickie laughed, and there was considerable aroma to his breath. The parson’s face stiffened when it billowed around him, but Dickie was having too fine a time to notice. “Listen to what happened up at Port Royal, that I just heard tell of. I think it’s funny as all get-out. D’you remember Roy’s Warehouse, where Pa used to take our tobacco?” He was leaning on the back of Jonathan’s chair.

  “Aye, o’ course.”

  “D’ye know that when Mister Roy died, his business was sold to Magistrate Miller?”

  “No, I hadn’t heard it. What’s funny about that?” Thomas Roy had been a popular man with the planters; James Miller was a royalist, who probably would be high-handed and hard to deal with.

  “Nothin’s funny so far,” Dickie went on. “But ol’ Miller, he moved the main entrance from th’ street side around to the wharf side. Ye remember that narrow gangplank up over the Rappahannock, where we’d sit an’ fish while we waited for Pa to get th’ tobacco weighed? Well, that was th’ only way a body could get to ol’ Miller’s office. So here’s th’ funny part: so many planters would get drunk at Roy’s Tavern and fall off that gangplank into the river tryin’ to get to Miller’s office that the Court made him move it back around! Ha, ha, ha! And him a justice himself!”

  “Ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha!” Even the parson was laughing.

  That was a story Jonathan liked. He could remember well that high gangplank and the murky river flowing far below among the pilings, and could imagine the drunks falling off. But he liked best hearing about a judgment against a Tory.

  Uncle George was roaring with laughter too, bending forward and slapping his knee, and his Rogers laughter was so loud that it overrode one of Patrick Henry’s perorations. Henry pulled his spectacles down from his forehead to the end of his nose and stared over them.

  “What d’you find so amusing, Squire Rogers?”

  “Ha, ha! Hey, nothing you said, Burgess Henry, but a tale this nephew o’ mine just told. Dick, boy, would ye like to tell it to the gentlemen present?”

  And so the slightly tipsy thirteen-year-old had a large audience of substantial gentlemen to tell his story to, and told it well, with only a few slurred words. And although Mr. Henry and some of the others had already heard the story, or read it in the Gazette, Dickie’s narration was a resounding success, and dispelled some of the disgruntled gravity that Mister Henry had brought into the room. Dickie staggered out to their applause, blushing with a happy self-consciousness. He had actually stolen the floor from Patrick Henry.

  * * *

  IN THE SMALL HOURS OF THE MORNING, JOHNNY LAY WITH his arms around Betsy Freeman’s magnificent hips, mumbling into her superb bosom that if she would only yield the rest of her charms to him, he would straightaway go to her father and speak of marriage. He knew, deep in his rational mind, that it was a terribly rash promise to make, one that he had never made to anyone else before, but he was desperate with desire, and to possess her wholly at last after these twelve hours of hot pursuit seemed worth any risk. If he could have her now, if he could only penetrate that last few inches to the warm inner mystery of her, then tomorrow he could think about how to deal with the consequences.

  It had to be soon. He was as exhausted and uncomfortable as he had ever been in his life. His groin ached unbearably, and though he and his temptress were burrowed deep in the hay of the stable mow, the chill of the October night air on his sweat-damp underdrawers and bare back made his teeth chatter as he poured forth his frantic vows. It was incredible that he could be burning like a charcoal kiln in his loins at the same time his nose rankled with cold and dripped on her chemise. Only that part of him that he held plastered against her was warm.

  Egod, but she was a stubborn wench, he had thought twenty times this night. A dozen times he had been ready to give up the siege. But at those moments she had somehow sensed his weakening resolve and allowed him to untie one more ribbon, loosen one more lace, slip off one more shoe, pull out one more hairpin. And now she had drawn from him the promise of promises, and she murmured at last, “Ah, Johnny, Johnny! Oh yes, if ye must,” and she took his hand in the pitch darkness and guided it to some warm, soft, smooth place, which he could not immediately identify because of the numbness of his cold fingers. She gasped and started, and he was afraid it was because of the shock of his cold hand. But she was pushing him away again, for the hundredth time, and she hissed with a chilling urgency:

  “Someone’s here!”

  The hay rustled loudly as they sat upright, wisps of alfalfa cascading off them. Horses were nickering, stamping, thumping in the wooden stalls.

  Voices, several voices, were muttering in the stables not ten feet away. Someone whispered and someone snorted and someone snickered. A sliver of lanternlight fell between the planks. Johnny and Betsy cringed, wanting to grab their discarded garments and dress themselves, but knew their rustlings in the hay would be heard. There was a moment of stillness then, in which the rapid squeaks of the violins far away in the house could be heard. Then one of the voices said ominously:

  “Gi’ me your knife. I’ll get that filly first!”

  The words struck a cold panic in Johnny’s breast. He was stiff and numb and aching and absurdly out of costume, but there was no honorable thing to do but take a stance to protect her. In the darkness she was making little gasping groans of terror, and these piteous sounds galvanized Johnny. “N
o!” he shouted in a quavering croak, and leaped out of the hay into the stable corridor ready to fight to the death for his lady love.

  The intruders recoiled, incredulous, at this apparition in hay-wisps and drawers. The horses, whose tails they were cutting off, reared in their stalls and whinnied in stark terror. The lantern fell to the ground and went out. There was a frenetic banging of hooves and thudding of flesh. The commotion spread to the paddock outside the stables, where several score horses belonging to the wedding guests panicked and started running and neighing. The fiddle music in the house trailed off, and doors were banging, voices were shouting. “What goes?” “What?” “Horse thieves!” “Indians!” The paddock fence rattled and threatened to break under the force of lunging horseflesh. Candles and lanterns came pouring out of the house. Someone fired a pistol in the air, doubling the confusion.

  It was an old country trick, Johnny realized then, for pranksters to cut off the tails of the horses of wedding guests, and he had interrupted such a prank.

  The lights and voices were coming closer. Johnny turned, leaped back into the haymow on top of his terrified paramour, clamped a hand over her mouth, and drew clothes and hay in over them.

  No evidence was ever found to determine who had managed to cut the tails off a filly and two geldings in the Clark stable that night. Johnny had seen who two of them were—those two loutish brothers of Betsy herself—but of course he was in no position to reveal what he knew.

  While the household and guests were out and about in the aftermath of this disruption, it was discovered that Master Billy Clark was missing from his trundle bed. For a long time the fear reigned that he had somehow been kidnaped by the interlopers, and a rider was sent out to fetch the constable, and a boyhunt was on that very nearly discovered Johnny Clark and Betsy Freeman, who, though nearly naked deep in the hay, were too shivery with cold and fright to consummate their union.