The Seekers (24 page)

Inside the cabin, he spent an hour with Elizabeth.

He sat on the puncheon floor beside the bedstead, his eyes closed, his hand straying to her face occasionally.

Soon her skin became so cold that touching it was unbearable. He rose, carried the newly packed knapsack out into the sunlight.

He deposited the knapsack on top of a stump that still bore the black traces of last fall’s burning. He brought his rifle, shot bag and powder horn to the same stump. Back in the cabin, he used flint and steel to light tinder beneath the hearth logs.

When the fire was burning well, he broke off one of the pole legs of the table. He thrust the leg into the flames for a minute. Then he set the table afire.

As soon as it caught, he bent and kissed Elizabeth’s cheek.

Coughing in the smoke, he walked outside and torched the barn. Then he picked up his gear.

He sniffed the fire as he walked toward the track leading to the settlement. He heard the cabin walls beginning to crackle, but he wouldn’t look back at the puffs of black smoke. The smell was enough to remind of how he’d erred, failed, lacked the strength and wisdom to deny Elizabeth’s wish to start a new life in the west. The smell was enough to remind him of how much he hated this barbarous land that permitted only the hardiest to survive, destroying the others.

Henrietta Knox mooed at him as he hurried by the field where she stood in the glare of noonday. He wouldn’t look at her either, nor could he have seen her clearly if he had. Tears blurred his eyes.

He hated the earth under his feet. God, how he hated it!

And himself.

Blind to everything except his consuming need to escape, he stumbled on toward Fort Hamilton as the tree-tops around the cabin began to burn. Clouds of smoke billowed into the noon sky, shot through with fire.

The unkempt strangers trudging up Beacon Street on a hot morning in early July 1801 attracted the attention of everyone from housemaids bustling on errands to gentlemen climbing into carriages to be off for the day’s business. There were whispers and stares—the pair hardly resembled Bostonians from this part of town—or any other!

One was a heavily bearded man of twenty-five or so. The other was a tow-haired boy whose face looked pinched and gray. The man carried a grubby knapsack on back straps, and a rifle in the crook of his left arm. He held the boy’s hand tightly. It was hard to tell which of them wore the filthier coat and fringed trousers.

The pair caused no end of curiosity as they climbed the stoop of one of the most substantial homes on the entire street. The man let the knocker fall three times.

A mobcapped girl opened the door. Abraham didn’t recognize her.

The maid took a step backward, overpowered by Abraham’s stench. He smelled rank for good reason. He’d obtained a small sum of money from a hasty sale of the farm to a Fort Hamilton speculator. The money had run out two weeks ago, as they approached Philadelphia. Abraham and his son had made the rest of the journey on foot, sleeping in the open, begging or stealing food where they could, and never bathing.

The maid’s reaction was automatic. “Beggars are not allowed at the front—”

“This is my home. I am Abraham Kent.”

The maid caught her breath. She recognized the name. But her face showed her doubt and bewilderment. How could this greasy, bearded person in frontier garb be Abraham Kent?

The man’s brown eyes piercing into hers were so terrifying, she didn’t dare speak the question aloud.

“I wish to see my father. I wish to come in—
will you stop goggling?
I
live
here!”

He thrust her aside roughly, dragging the little boy after him like a mindless dwarf. In the middle of the front hall, he put down his knapsack and rifle, wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and demanded, “Where is my father? And my brother? Have they gone to the firm already?”

The maid stammered, “Yes, Mr. Gilbert left an hour ago—”

“Is my father about the house, then?”

“Sir—sir—”

“What the hell’s wrong with you, girl?” She’d remembered some talk she’d heard about the whereabouts of Philip Kent’s son. That would explain the crude, hideous clothing. She swallowed hard. “If—if you are Mr. Abraham Kent from the west—” His mouth twisted. “Don’t I smell like it?”

“I know Mr. Gilbert wrote you two months ago—”

“Wrote what? My boy and I have been traveling for over three months. Any letter that was sent to me two months ago, I never received.”

So weary he could barely stand, and maddened beyond endurance by the maid’s fluttery behavior, Abraham raised his fist to her. “Damn you, speak out! Where is my father?”

“Dead, sir,” the girl whispered. “He died in his sleep on the thirtieth of April.”

I
N THE MATERIAL AS
well as the intellectual sphere, Mr. Gilbert Kent was an avowed modernist.

He deemed that orientation eminently suitable to the new century, and to the rapid changes taking place in the nation. He refused to close his mind to ideas simply because they had never been tried before, or were foreign to his experience.

His Beacon Street home, for example, boasted not one but three of the innovative banjo wall clocks introduced the previous year by Mr. Willard of Roxbury. He had adopted two new and novel fashions—regular bathing and the donning of clean underwear every day. He hadn’t gone so far as to embrace the Napoleonic custom of a daily bath; once every two or three days seemed sufficient in a city that considered bathing the entire body bizarre.

His apparel would have found favor in fashionable circles in Britain. At eleven o’clock on a warm morning in midsummer 1803, he approached Kent and Son wearing clothes that could only be termed impeccable. His coat was one of the new, longer gentleman’s models, lacking the severe cutaway so popular with conservative members of the business community. His shirt was linen, custom-cut, and featured the new detachable collar. His waistcoat was cut low to show off his stock and shirt ruffles. The basic ensemble was completed by snug boots over long pantaloons—the very combination said to be preferred by the elegant George Brummel, whose sartorial preferences were religiously aped by all in England’s upper classes—including Brummel’s intimate friend, the prince-regent.

To top off the outfit, Gilbert wore a dark, soft hat of beaver, the brim drooping slightly at front and back but rolled on the sides. The jaunty hat bobbed up and down briskly as he made his way through the crowds this humid morning. Most of the better-dressed people on the street recognized the owner of Kent and Son. Those who didn’t know him personally identified him from his costume precisely the way he wanted to be identified—as a modernist.

Perhaps in reaction to his late father’s Federalist bias, Gilbert Kent was that rare creature—a New Englander who was also a Jeffersonian. After much thought and study, he had concluded the president was correct in his contention that all men, while perhaps not equal in their abilities, were certainly equal in their rights. He was convinced the country should be governed not by a coterie of highly educated aristocrats—to which group he would certainly have belonged by reasons of birth, wealth and talent—but by the consent of all, highborn or otherwise. He knew by heart—and despised—Alexander Hamilton’s cynical expression of the opposing Federalist philosophy:

All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are rich and wellborn, the other the mass of the people. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom determine rightly. Give, therefore, to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second.

It was a persuasive argument, Gilbert recognized. But in his eyes it was nothing less than evil, for if it were espoused wholeheartedly, then the principles of American liberty became a sham and a deceit.

Gilbert’s view wasn’t a popular one in Boston. In the growing number of states in the west, and in their swelling populations, the great merchant families saw a threat to New England’s traditional control of the nation’s affairs. Gilbert Kent believed that to serve, not to control, was the proper function of the government in Washington—and the duty of the private citizen of more than average means. A subtle difference but, to his way of thinking, a crucial one.

Not that Gilbert Kent had anything against being successful in the private sector. He watched the Kent ledgers closely, usually examining them at midnight or later, at home—he seldom slept more than four hours a night, to his wife’s annoyance—and he seized every prudent opportunity to expand the family wealth. Indeed, he had just come from a meeting with that purpose.

The meeting had been held at the Rothman Bank. It was attended by a consortium of rich gentlemen of Boston. His father’s old Revolutionary War comrade, Mr. Royal Rothman, presided. Before the meeting broke up, Gilbert pledged one hundred thousand dollars of risk capital to help finance the Blackstone Company, a new cotton-spinning firm going into competition with Slater’s decade-old spinning works on the Blackstone River in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

In a private session with Rothman after the other investors left, Gilbert informed the banker that he wanted his partnership to be a silent one. His shares were to be held by the bank so that future profits would go directly to the child his wife was now carrying, as well as to any other issue of their marriage.

Rothman naturally asked the reason for the arrangement. Gilbert gave a candid reply. He wanted his wife to have her just share of his estate when he died—

“And don’t say it’s too soon to think of that, Royal. I’ve already lived more than half the lifetime of many men.”

“Go on.”

“My wife has a number of good qualities, but self-denial isn’t one of them. She buys whatever she wishes for herself or the house—heedless of the cost. I don’t mean to sound unkind, but I don’t believe she could manage and conserve a large sum successfully. I’d feel more comfortable if a part of the Kent estate was held in reserve, where she could never touch it. Indeed, I don’t even want her to know about it. The profits of the printing house should be ample to sustain her should something happen to me.”

“I wish I were as optimistic about the success of the Blackstone Company as you seem to be,” Rothman observed with a wry expression.

“Oh, I’m very optimistic. Textiles will soon become the heart of New England’s economy—along with shipping.”

“The bank will naturally honor your request about the confidentiality of the shares.”

“I’ll visit my attorney next week and have him draw up the legal papers.”

“Old Benbow senior is going blind. He should retire and turn your affairs over to his son.”

“His mind’s as alert as ever. He’ll live to be ninety.”

“Which you may not—at the pace you drive yourself.”

Gilbert ignored him, using a quill to scribble
Benbow & Benbow
on a slip of paper. He tucked the slip in his waistcoat pocket and stood up, extending his hand.

“To the Blackstone Company. May it enrich my children and yours.”

“It almost died a-borning,” Rothman said with a thin smile. “I admire your progressive spirit, Gilbert. But I fear some of the other gentlemen found it incomprehensible—not to say dangerous.”

Gilbert shrugged. “They gave in.”

“Because you refused to commit Kent money otherwise.”

“No, not until they agreed unconditionally to provide schooling for the children who’ll be hired to operate the spinning machinery. I’d actually prefer to hire adults—”

“At least you’re realistic enough to understand that’s unprofitable. Children can be had for a fraction of adult wages.”

“Still, it bothers my conscience.”

“The other gentlemen salved it for you. Gave in to your demands for a free school—”

“Gave in grudgingly! I tell you, Royal, one day we’ll have to face the question of profits at the expense of people. Children shouldn’t be working twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours a day—”

“And one man should not own another?” Rothman added, having heard it all before.

“Yes, there’ll be a confrontation on the slave question too, you mark me.”

“I wish you wouldn’t suggest we’re somehow involved in slavery!”

“The next thing to it.”

“Would you do away with factories, then?”

“How could I? They’re being built everywhere.”

“My dear boy, you’re unreasonable! If a child takes a job at the Blackstone Company, that’s entirely voluntary!”

“When a family is poor but much too large, and the young must be put to work at seven or eight or face starvation—you call that voluntary?”

“It’s an imperfect world, Gilbert. We can either refuse to deal with it altogether, or content ourselves with altering it a little at a time. The trouble with you is, you’ve a strong streak of idealism
and
a sharp business sense. As the factory system grows, those two sides of your nature are becoming incompatible. Today you were lucky. You satisfied both.”

Gilbert sighed. “I suppose it’s the best that can be done. You will remember about the shares?”

“Certainly.”

“I’ll have Benbow senior call on you to settle the details—provided there’s no reneging on the school!”

“Don’t worry, I’ll see that doesn’t happen,” Rothman assured him.

“I insist it doesn’t.”

“I know.” The banker sighed. “In some ways, you are a very radical fellow.”

It was true. But he was honest with himself about it. Much of what he thought and said and did sprang from a solid core of conviction. At the same time, his modernism was a mechanism, deliberately employed to show his much older peers in the business world that he was their match, perhaps even a step ahead—

Gilbert had been thrust into unexpected control of Kent and Son when his father died two years earlier. For a young man of eighteen to be in charge of his own affairs was not at all unusual. For a young man of eighteen to be solely responsible for a large and growing fortune as well as a prestigious publishing company was highly unusual. Therefore Gilbert had to demonstrate to the world—and to himself—that he was in every way capable of accepting the responsibility.