Back Bay (28 page)

She followed his mouth with the glass. “More, Father?”

He didn’t look at her.

“Father?”

His eyes filled with tears. He mumbled something that she took to mean no.

She brushed back a few strands of gray hair around his face and kissed him on top of the head. “Poor child.”

He pulled his head away. He did not want sympathy. He mumbled and gestured with his head toward the window.

She rolled his wheelchair into the sunlight. “Is that better?”

The sun was intense, but he seemed content in the heat. He put his head back and closed his eyes.

Six weeks earlier, he had been known as the toughest old man in Boston. He had survived the War of 1812, and, by 1824, had built a granite foundation for Pratt Shipping and Mercantile. When the Treaty of Ghent was signed and the blockade lifted, Pratt ships poured out of Boston, their holds brimming with New England goods. They returned laden with the products of Europe and the Orient. Pratt bought off the creditors waiting to pounce on the
Pegasus
and the
Alicia Howell
. Then, he leaped into competition with Thomas Handasyd Perkins in the Chinese opium trade.

Pratt had avoided opium before the war, but not because of scruple. The risk had simply been too great. When the Emperor of China announced a new campaign against smugglers, Pratt knew the profits would be enormous for the smugglers who succeeded. Soon, captains under the Pratt flag were plowing from Turkey to the China coast and selling their opium to Chinese dealers, while Pratt agents in Canton bribed government officials to look the other way.

“If the heathen Chinee care so little for their souls,” Pratt told
Jason, “it is upon their heads, not ours, that the blame for their addiction shall rest. We’ll not let Perkins and his Forbes nephews take all the profit.”

In 1822, Pratt decided that textiles were worth his attention after all. Associates of the late Francis Cabot Lowell offered the Pratts, specifically Jason’s wife, an opportunity to purchase preferred stock in the Merrimack Manufacturing Company, which was building a textile-producing town at the fork of the Concord and Merrimack rivers. Pratt invested fifty thousand dollars at two hundred dollars a share, which gave him nine percent of the company. Two years later, the town of Lowell was thriving, and the stock was returning a yearly dividend of a hundred dollars a share.

Jason Pratt saw vindication, eight years late, in his father’s textile investments, but Horace Pratt gave no credit.

“You don’t invest in a company when it has shown nothing. That’s too risky,” he explained. “You wait. You let others take chances, and then you strike, but you never sell ships. Never. If we had sold the
Pegasus
and the
Alicia Howell
when you counseled it, we would have lost thousands in revenue, which we have since invested in the Merrimack Manufacturing Company. In 1814, we were weak. We had to be conservative. Our conservatism made us strong. Now we can profit from the daring of others.”

“You forget that my wife’s relatives exacted large penalties from us before allowing us the privilege of investing,” said Jason.

“The penalties were not so large as the monies earned for us by
Pegasus
and
Alicia Howell
. Do not jump when you have weak legs, my boy.”

When Pratt fell ill, he was planning to build four new ships to haul Merrimack Manufacturing products around the globe. American textiles were one of the fastest-selling commodities on the world market, and he intended to assure his family’s dominance in every facet of production and distribution.

“I will present the Merrimack board of directors with four new fast ships,” explained Pratt to his son. “I will offer them special transport rates, since I am a stockholder, and I will become the sole shipper transporting textiles from Merrimack mills.”

After he had built the ships and arranged the contracts, he said his legacy would be assured. The company would be secure. Jason
had grown in experience and competence. Jason’s son Artemus, a seventeen-year-old freshman at Harvard, promised brilliance in the third generation. The tea set remained buried in the Back Bay. Pratt planned to reach one more goal, then retire.

Now, thought Abigail, he was little more than a plant turning constantly toward the sun. It would have been merciful if he had died the day he fell ill. He had lived almost seventy-five years. There was no need to prolong his life. Abigail hoped that he died before winter, when plants withered for want of sunlight and warmth.

Pratt had been stricken on the first warm Sunday in April. He and Abigail were walking along Western Avenue, atop the Mill Dam, which stretched west from the city to Brookline. The dam controlled the flow of water from the Charles River Basin into the Back Bay and used the power of the tides to operate mills on Gravelly Point and along its own length. As the tide rose, the water flowed into a full basin on the west side of Gravelly Point, then ran through sluices into the receiving basin, the area on the east side of the point that included the Easterly Channel.

Before the tea set had sunk into the channel, Pratt had supported the building of the dam and had considered investing in the Roxbury Mill Corporation. When he later realized that only a foot or two of water would cover his tea set at low tide, he became a vociferous opponent of the dam. The Mill Dam was built nonetheless.

It was low tide when Pratt and Abigail stopped above the sluice gates that day. The water across most of the receiving basin was no more than ankle-deep. A few feet filled the Easterly Channel. But a fresh breeze was snapping down the river and blowing the low-tide stench out to sea. Children were scampering about. Carriages packed with families clattered out toward Brookline and the countryside. Lovers arm in arm promenaded along the dam.

Abigail could not recall when her father had looked so well. She had finally convinced him that, in 1825, gentlemen no longer dressed in the frock coats and broad-brimmed hats that he had been wearing since the turn of the century. He now sported a pearl-gray cutaway, crimson silk cravat, and beaver hat.

“You look positively resplendent, Father, and twenty years younger.”

He grunted. His attention was on something else, out in the bay. “I must be getting senile to be buying new clothes at my age.”

Abigail smiled. “I no longer care to be seen in public with a relic of the past.” She offered her arm. “Shall we walk?”

He didn’t respond. His eyes were fixed on the Easterly Channel. A quarter mile away, four boys were sloshing across the flats, poking sticks into the mud as they went. They looked tiny to Abigail. She marveled that her father could see them. Usually, he couldn’t read the newspaper.

“They’re probably just looking for clams, Father.”

“Sewage killed the clams years ago, and I don’t care what they’re looking for. It’s what they might find that bothers me.”

“You’ve worried about that tea set since the day they started building the dam. Why don’t you go out and dig it up and be done with it?”

He slammed his cane into the sidewalk. “Do not say that! I will not dig it up. I will not deny it to my descendants.” He realized that he was attracting the attention of passersby. He looked out across the water once more.

Abigail did not mention the thought that flashed through her head. Perhaps the tea set wasn’t there at all. Perhaps someone had tripped across it when the Back Bay was dry and dragged it off to sell. Perhaps, but she refused to consider it. She had become as jealous as her father of their secret.

Abigail told herself that if the tea set had been found, the world would have heard about it. Its disappearance had created international unpleasantness. The tea set was now legendary.

When the war was over, Dolley Madison said she thought she had seen the tea set loaded onto one of the carts leaving Washington, but she couldn’t be certain. President Madison believed that his wife might have left it behind. He petitioned Great Britain for its return. The British admitted the possibility that one of their officers had taken the tea set, but they pointed out that the Americans had abandoned their own Presidential Palace, leaving everything in it as spoils of war. In a gesture of friendship and honor, the British called on any officer who knew of the tea set’s fate to come forward. None responded, and the Crown considered the matter closed.

The American government then turned the investigation, such as it was, onto its own country. Eventually, it led to Pratt, a former employer of Dexter Lovell. Pratt feigned ignorance and indignation, proclaiming that a hero from Bunker Hill did not deserve such treatment. The meek lawyer appointed by Congress soon went his way and no one ever again considered Pratt a suspect in the theft. There was no evidence to implicate him: the military did not keep careful records when delivering a satchelful of dispatches to a city; the courier left the army after the war and had not been seen since. The investigation ended in failure, and most Americans believed that the tea set was somewhere in England.

Abigail saw her father’s body grow tense. She didn’t know exactly where the strongbox lay, but she could sense from his reactions that the four boys were near it.

Pratt began to tap his cane nervously on the planking. “Get away from there, you little bastards. Get away from there.” He spoke softly, almost to himself.

“Father, we’re more than a quarter mile away from them. Distance can play tricks on good eyesight. It’s certain to affect yours.”

“I have visited that spot too often to be tricked. Those boys are moving straight toward it. They’re trying to find it.” His voice rose suddenly. “See how they splash at the water and poke their sticks into the mud!”

Abigail put her arm around him and tried to move him along. “Shall we walk, Father?”

“No. The sanctuary is threatened.”

“Four boys are playing in the mud. Now come along.”

Pratt did not take his eyes from the tiny figures out in the bay. They were running, chasing each other about on the flats. Then, three began to chase the fourth.

“You see, Father? They’re not trying to find things in the mud. They’re playing games.”

One boy caught up with the fourth, then all three had him. They picked him up by the arms and legs, swung him back and forth three or four times, and threw him into the air. He landed in the water and disappeared.

“He’s in the channel. He can’t be more than five or six feet away from it.” Pratt choked on the words.

“He isn’t looking for it.” Abigail tried to soothe him.

The boy appeared again. The water in the channel was up to his waist. He tried to splash his way out, but his mates pushed him back again. Abigail heard their laughter echoing across the flats, and she felt her father turning rigid beside her.

“They must not find it!” He was talking to himself again. “They cannot find it.”

The tiny figure in the channel stopped splashing about. He bent over and reached into the water.

“No, no, no.” Pratt bit his lower lip. “He’s found it.”

The boy took a handful of mud from the water and flung it at his friends. They scattered. Then he climbed out of the channel, both hands filled with mud, and began to chase them off toward the sea wall at the edge of the Public Garden.

The air hissed out of Horace Pratt as though someone had pricked him with a pin. The threat was over, the tirade just beginning. He turned to the people walking past and slammed his cane into the planking. “This Mill Dam is a disgrace, an abomination. I damn it publicly. We have interfered with the workings of nature and tried to control the flow of God’s tides.”

Passersby stared at Pratt as though he were mad, then hurried along. A few stopped to laugh, but most were sympathetic to the sight of a well-dressed gentleman making such a scene.

“We have created six hundred acres of reeking filth. For what? So that a few profiteers might run their mills.”

“Father, please!” Abigail was frightened by the pitch of his voice and the veins bulging at his temples. She waved frantically to her footman, who had parked the carriage a few hundred yards down the dam.

“I opposed it!” he screamed. “I opposed this invasion of a… a sacred place!” Saliva was trickling out of the corners of his mouth.

“Father, your apoplexy.”

“Damn my apoplexy.” He directed his attention to her. “I was right. If they’d listened to me, our treasure would be safe forever. Now, young boys play upon it each day and will one day dig it up. I opposed it.”

The carriage arrived. The footman, a surly Scot named Dunwell, climbed down and opened the door.

“Help us in with Mr. Pratt,” commanded Abigail.

They tried to urge Pratt into the carriage, but he did not want to go.

“Let me alone!” he screamed. “We must watch over it.”

Abigail grabbed him by the arm. He swung his cane at her. He was enraged.

“Drag him,” she said.

The Scot put his hands under Pratt’s armpits and hauled the old man into the carriage.

Abigail climbed in the other side and took her father’s bony hand in hers. “The tea set is safe, Father. The tides fell this low before the Mill Dam. No one has touched it.”

“I opposed the Mill Dam.” His voice sounded like breaking glass. “It is a sin against nature.”

The box atop the carriage opened. “Where to, ma’am?” asked the Scot.

“Take us home.”

The carriage started to move. Suddenly, Pratt stood. He reached for the door and collapsed in the bottom of the carriage.

“The Mannion couple are here, ma’am.” Mrs. Dunwell, the maid, appeared at the top of the stairs. She was in her mid-forties and usually as cranky as her husband.

Abigail had given them their release a week before her father’s stroke. They had served her well since Wilson had died and Miss Priddam, their maid for thirty years, had retired to Nova Scotia. But with Franconia mercifully dead of pneumonia the year before, Abigail felt that the house-hold no longer needed a couple. Then came the stroke. The Dunwells, insulted by their dismissal, refused to stay. Few couples wished to enter the service of an old man who needed constant attention.