The Rebellion of Jane Clarke (16 page)

T
HE FINAL EVENT
of October came fast on the heels of a premature winter chill. Jane had risen that morning and gone to the window, as it had become her habit to do, and discovered an icy glaze on the gutter below. She pressed her fingers to the glass and felt them go numb; she looked over the rooftops and saw a thick slash of gray that surely held rain—no matter the cold it was far too early for snow. Perhaps it was the thought of snow, of winter in town, that put Jane out of sorts; all she knew for certain was that she turned from the window and found everything wrong: the nearness of the bed to the wall as she pulled up the coverlet, the pitch of the stairs as she worked her way down, even the color of Prince’s skin—it should have been the Negro Jot filling the wood box. Throughout the day the images of Satucket persisted, some real, some fancied: Mehitable with her head bent over the babe, the little girls winding wool, Neddy at his books, Bethiah being called into their father’s office and given some direction for the miller or the tanner—Bethiah, now the favored one.

The day dragged on like a toothache, and Aunt Gill helped none. She was cold from the minute she rose, and no amount of wraps could get her warm; she wanted the fire built up no matter how it flamed and bolsters piled around her feet to ward off the draft from the door. In the end Jane bundled her early to bed and returned below-stairs to read her latest gift from Henry—a poem by the slave Phillis Wheatley—but she couldn’t attend; the thought of the long winter ahead hung over her like the weighted sky that still refused to unleash what it held.

Such was Jane’s state when the knock sounded at the door. It would be Henry, and Jane knew herself poorly set up for his good cheer. She set Wheatley’s slim volume down, closed her eyes, and attempted to breathe herself into life; she heard the voice in the hall and her eyes flew open. She leaped to her feet. Martha called into the front room, “A Mr. Paine to see you,” and with only that much warning Phinnie stepped through the door.

They stood in silence.

Aunt Gill called from above, “Jane! Jane!”

Jane said, “Excuse me a minute, please.” She pushed past Phinnie, into the hall, up the stairs to her aunt’s room.

The old woman sat upright in the bed, clutching an empty candlestick, but all Jane’s impatience with her aunt had evaporated on her way up the stairs; that minute to gather herself before addressing Phinnie was worth any number of annoying, unreasoned fears.

“Who’s here?” Aunt Gill cried. “Who is it? ’Tis not Mr. Knox! ’Tis not his voice I hear!”

“No, Aunt. ’Tis Mr. Paine, a friend from Satucket. No one to fear.”

“From Satucket? A friend of your father’s?”

“A friend of mine, Aunt Gill. No one the Sons would object to. Your reputation is clear.” She leaned over and removed the candlestick from her aunt’s hand. She resettled the bolster, and her aunt lay back.

“ ’Tis terribly cold.”

Jane drew the coverlet up high and tucked it tight around the old woman’s thin shoulders. She leaned over, dropped a kiss onto her aunt’s forehead, and drew herself up, or in, or out, she wasn’t sure. On her way down the stairs she recalled Phinnie Paine at the play-reading, talking to the soldier, talking about dictators, and realized she had no idea if what she’d said to her aunt about the Sons was true.

He stood in the parlor, hat still in hand. He whipped around as Jane came in. He looked changed since the play—more cautious about the eyes, more grim about the jaw. He made no bow to Jane, either country or town. He said, “I apologize for so late a call; I have news from Satucket I thought you would want to hear.”

Whatever calm Jane had managed to collect on her way down the stairs abandoned her. Her father, she thought. She had long feared his nature too excitable for his health. Or Mehitable, so often ill. And the babe not yet out of that dangerous first year.

But Phinnie had continued. “I thought you should like to know that Mr. Adams has won his case.”

So disjointed was Jane’s mind that she thought first of Mein—that Phinnie should come from Satucket to tell her about Mein—and no doubt her confusion showed.

Phinnie said, “The
qui tam
?”

“Oh! Yes.”

“ ’Tis good news for your father, then.”

“Indeed.”

“I knew you to be worried over it. I thought you should like to hear.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

They fell silent again until Jane realized they stood yet, just inside the door. She said, “Would you care to sit down?”

Phinnie looked around, spotted the pair of chairs near the fire, crossed to the distant one, and sat down. Jane sat down opposite him and stood again. “May I get you some cider?”

“No. No, thank you.”

Jane sat down again. “Have you other news of home?”

“Your family is well. As I trust you are.”

“I am. And you?”

He made a crescent-shaped move with his head—neither up nor down. He said, “I was surprised to see you at the play.”

“And I you.”

“You are well acquainted with Mr. Knox, then.”

As it was not a question, Jane made no answer. After a time Phinnie’s mouth did what Phinnie’s mouth did. “Perhaps you’re not so well acquainted with Mr. Shaw.”

“You know the man?”

“Well enough.”

Again, an answer that could be taken two ways. Jane said, “Did you enjoy the play?”

“I couldn’t follow beyond the first line.”

“Well, you must read it for yourself then.”

His eye traveled to the table where Jane had set down Wheatley. “Get myself a copy from Mr. Knox?”

“If you patronize that shop. Or were you a customer of Mein’s?”

“I have patronized Mr. Knox from time to time. Perhaps not as often as you.”

Ah, thought Jane. So this was to be the game. Well, she would not play it. She stood up. “Should you like a cider?”

Phinnie’s mouth twitched. “No thank you. Again.”

Jane flushed, sat down. Phinnie did not move or speak. But then, it was not his turn. She searched about for something presentable among her thoughts. “I’m indeed happy to see my father vindicated at last.”

“Or to see Mr. Adams vindicated.”

“So you think my father guilty yet?”

“I don’t speak of your father’s guilt or innocence; I speak only of the splendid argument of his lawyer, which I happened to witness, being at Barnstable at the time.”

“And I don’t ask what you speak of at all, I ask what you think. Knowing my father as you do, do you think him capable of cutting off a horse’s ears?”

She heard her mistake before she saw it in Phinnie’s lifted brows. He said, “So we’ve turned fish to horses now?”

It was the usual Phinnie-answer, clever and to the purpose, or at least to Phinnie’
s
purpose, which was to turn away her question once again.

Jane stood up. She said, “Thank you for delivering the news of my father’s verdict.”

Phinnie stood too. He dipped his head, executed a smart turnabout, turned around again. He pointed at the Wheatley book on the table. “Before I go, I wonder if you would satisfy my curiosity on a small point. Do you take that note as a compliment, considering it contains so great a slur upon your sex as a whole?”

Jane whirled around. The note Henry had sent with the book lay exposed where she’d left it on the table. Henry had copied out one of Pope’s shorter poems—“On a Certain Lady at Court,” and written across the top “For a Certain Lady from Satucket.”

She whirled again. That Phinnie should dare to read her personal note, that he of
sum over parts
should question how a man should pay a compliment!

He said, “It has been my personal observation that reasonable women are no rarer than reasonable men. It has been my further observation that if man or woman should lose his reason for a time it is always possible to regain it again.”

He exited the room, banging his hat against his thigh.

IT TOOK JANE SEVERAL
days to recover from Phinnie’s visit. She went back over it and around it and under it again and again. What impulse could possibly have driven him to come? To ease her concern over the case did not hold water beyond the point where he had mentioned Adams’s name. And who was he accusing of losing his or her reason? Henry? Phinnie? Jane? She had not understood Phinnie in Satucket, and she did not understand him in town. She was tired out with Phinnie. Tired
of
Phinnie.

And Jane was tired of all that went on around town. As the days wore on, her grandmother’s words pressed often on her ears:
The political situation can go hang.
Jane stopped reading about politics in the paper and sought out other stories:
A child born at Freetown was at the time of his birth uncle to ninety-nine persons . . . Fahrenheit’s thermometer records today is the coldest of the year so far . . . Mr. Winslow of Duxbury has died aged 101 years, husband to sixteen wives and father to none.

Jane saw and heard nothing of her grandparents for a fortnight, but at the end of that fortnight she and her aunt received an invitation to dine. Jane prepared to decline the invitation in deference to her aunt, who in addition to her usual poor nerves was nursing an abscessed tooth. Jane could at least treat the tooth with a powder of cloves, but for the nerves she could only continue her attendance at home; she was greatly surprised when her aunt urged her to go to her grandparents’ alone.

Otis and Nate had been invited to dine as well; Otis came; Nate did not. Jane, and soon enough her grandparents, or so she suspected, might have wished the reverse. Otis sat down and leaped up and sat down and rambled from topic to topic throughout dinner, beginning with criticism of the food and moving on to criticism of his friends, until at last he landed upon the subject of the king.

“I have one wish, one hearty wish,” Otis declared. “That King George might rule forever the father of all mankind.”

Jane’s grandfather set down his knife. “My dear sir—”

Otis leaped up again. “This country is in ruin!” he cried. “I wish myself never born!” He dashed for the door.

Jane’s grandmother got up and returned with the cider jug. Jane looked at her grandfather and saw with some shock that tears stood in his eyes, but no doubt his wife saw it too; as she passed his chair she dropped a gentle hand on his arm.

That night Jane sent a note around to her brother; she had missed him at dinner and hoped he was well. She sat and pondered on the powers of a Miss Linnet for a time but soon discovered that thoughts of her grandmother had pushed Miss Linnet aside. It had been such a quiet thing—that hand dropping down and along her husband’s arm—and yet it spoke so loud.

AS JANE HAD PREDICTED,
Aunt Gill grew worse with the cold. She glued herself to the fire, wrapped in a blanket now as well as her shawls, and started at every snap of a log. She leaned on Jane more and more heavily as she walked and seemed unable to hold a conversational thought through to the end. She ate little. Once, as Jane accompanied Henry to the door at the end of an evening, she found her aunt standing at the midpoint of the stairs as if lost, and she started so violently when she spied Jane that she nearly fell the length of them to the floor. Jane’s concern grew.

BELATEDLY, NATE SENT
an
answer to Jane’s note: he had regretted missing the dinner at his grandparents’ but had been kept to his bed with a stomach complaint. That afternoon, as Jane wrote a long letter to her sister in which she was once again unable to offer up any other news of their brother than a stomach complaint, Jane decided something for herself:
she
would make the call. She left her sister’s letter on the post table, checked on her napping aunt, and went to the kitchen after Martha.

“If Aunt wakes before I return, please tell her I’m gone on a visit to my brother and will be back soon.” As Martha gave the expected blank stare Jane’s gaze fell to the seed cakes that had just been removed from the oven, a childhood favorite of her brother’s. “And I’m sure my aunt wouldn’t mind if I took a few cakes along.” Before Martha could speak, if she even intended to, Jane had wrapped up a half-dozen cakes and made for the door.

It was late to be setting out—the sun’s winter rays had already weakened—but Jane told herself she would not be gone long. She did not look at the sentry as she passed, and either the cold or the hour seemed to have kept the boy-men at home; the worst Jane encountered were two pigs got loose from their pen. She dodged the pigs and proceeded without further disturbance to Nate’s rooms above the wig maker’s on Cold Lane. A set of stairs in a questionable state of repair hung from the side of the building, and Jane climbed up with care. She knocked on the door. She waited. In time, it opened.

Her brother said, “Jane!”

Jane said, “I came by to see that you’d recovered from your ail.”

“My ail! Yes, yes. Indeed so.”

Jane handed her package across. “Then these won’t set wrong?”