The Seekers (47 page)

I
N THE DRESSING ROOM
adjoining her bedroom on the second floor, Harriet took off the bandeau that held her breasts in place when she was dressed. She added the bit of lingerie to the pile of petticoats and the long-waisted, lightly boned corset lying on the floor.

Harriet’s upstairs maid had been ready to assist her in undressing, of course. The lascivious girl undoubtedly wanted to see what sort of nightgown her mistress had chosen—so she could gossip about it with the other servants. Harriet refused the help. Her bed apparel this evening in mid-July 1813 was solely her affair.

A moth circled the chimney of the lamp on her dressing table. She studied the beating beige wings. She felt exactly like that poor creature—frantic—though only her quick breathing and her racing heart betrayed her state.

With the greatest of effort, she’d endured the ceremony performed by the Reverend Channing in the front sitting room. She’d feigned composure during the modest reception afterward, chatting with guests and concealing her inner turmoil. But she wasn’t at all sure she could stay calm now. She faced the rest of the night with disgust, even outright fear.

Outside, the hooves of a carriage horse clopped rapidly. Beacon Street was becoming a raceway for commercial vehicles and youngbloods on horseback. The hoofbeats set off a wistful yearning for the safe, quiet days of her childhood in New York. Being a woman certainly had its undesirable aspects—

Undesirable? Why not be truthful? The word was loathsome.

She had often expressed her loathing during the initial year of her marriage to Gilbert. By the time she became pregnant with Amanda, it was unmistakably clear to him that physical intimacy repelled her. After the child was born, he left her alone.

But her current situation reminded her all too vividly of her first wedding trip. Reminded her of the revulsion, the anguish—

Like a prisoner, she was sentenced to that again tonight.

Well, it was the price she had to pay for marital respectability. But she refused to gaze at the mirror and confront the reality of her own body, especially the breasts her opaque cotton chemise concealed from sight but revealed in contour.

Her lips compressed angrily. She snatched at the moth, crushed it between her fingertips and flung it aside.

Seating herself, she began to comb out her long, dark hair.

Something else stunned and angered her suddenly. She leaned forward, touched the top of her head. In the mirror, she saw gray hair.

She’d never noticed it before. She counted only six or seven strands. But they upset her horribly.

Gilbert was responsible for that gray hair! He’d wrenched her whole life awry last December when he died. He had been bedridden ever since his collapse at the Faneuil Hall dinner in early September. On Christmas Eve, his heart had simply stopped beating while he slept.

The household was in a turmoil for days. Immediately, Harriet found herself coping with problems normally the purview of men: funeral preparations, arrangements for burial of the body at the family plot in Watertown—there had been no end to the aggravations. She recalled one of the worst—the necessity of sending servants all over Boston just to find a fashionable mourning costume for Amanda: a black cashmere dress with white frills, a white mull cap, gray stockings.

The whole period was a dreadful ordeal. But she got through it—only to be plunged into another. At the end of February, that wretched Jared had come home.

He’d been discharged from service along with most of his crew because
Constitution
was to be laid up in the Navy Yard indefinitely, for repairs. Having taken part in a second major engagement—the capture and sinking of the British frigate
Java
off the coast of Brazil—the boy was decidedly changed. Harriet had noticed a difference in him when he returned with Captain Hull. But at the second homecoming, the change was even more marked.

Physical maturation was part of it, of course. Abraham’s son had grown taller. The relatively soft flesh of childhood had turned to muscle. But the change went deeper than mere passage through normal adolescent development.

Jared carried himself differently. With confidence, even a certain air of authority. Harriet could recall years gone by when she had deliberately intimidated him—and taken secret pleasure in the way it visibly withered his spirit, lent his eyes a nervous, unhappy quality—

Now her sharpest admonishments produced little response—other than a cool, almost hostile stare. It was harder than it had once been to make him lose his temper. She found the boy’s new self-assurance infuriating. She regretted that she’d lost her power to make him feel terrified and demeaned.

Mercifully, Jared wasn’t underfoot too long after his return. At his own request, he went to work at the firm under the supervision of Mr. Franklin Pleasant, a jowly, phlegmatic man who seemed to understand the ins and outs of the coarse, controversial trade in which her husband had been involved. Mr. Pleasant had taken over operation of the company pending a decision from Harriet as to whether she wished to put Kent and Son up for sale. On several occasions he begged her not to sell. His pleas carried little weight. He was a tradesman and always would be; why, the fellow didn’t even have a diploma from one of the lesser colleges!

Although Pleasant gave her a weekly report, Harriet paid scant attention to the business. She was aware that the list of titles to be published in the fall had been reduced. And she knew circulation of the
Republican
was off sharply. No one could match Gilbert’s way with words, Pleasant said. Even those details failed to interest her.

Gilbert’s demise had brought one benefit, however. It had put an end to those horrid visitations by antiwar hooligans who threw stones. To make doubly sure, she had given Mr. Pleasant definite orders that there were to be no more articles or editorials stating or even implying support of the war.

That action helped her in another sphere as well. She was once more accepted and treated cordially by members of Boston’s better families.

Except for minor naval victories of the sort Jared talked about with quiet pride, the war was proving a disaster. The New England Federalists took smug satisfaction in having foreseen that—

To punish the upstart nation, Britain had clamped a blockade on Chesapeake and Delaware Bays the preceding December. The blockade had been extended to the mouth of the Mississippi and the ports of New York, Charleston and Savannah in May. Though New England’s harbors were still open, the northeast felt the effects of the blockade in shortages of everyday goods, and in rising prices.

In consequence, the outcries from press and pulpit grew louder. They culminated in gloomy predictions of American defeat. As if to confirm the predictions, news reached the city that the much-touted Captain James Lawrence had lost the frigate
Chesapeake
to the British just thirty miles from the Boston waterfront.

Through most of the month of June, Harriet was forced to endure Jared’s defense of the defeat: Lawrence might have lost his frigate, but not his fighting spirit! Dying, he had exclaimed, “Don’t give up the ship!”

In vain, Harriet tried to convince the misguided boy that such sloganeering was foolish. It certainly hadn’t helped save Lawrence’s life—and it gave the country a false confidence. President Madison was steering the ship of state straight onto the rocks of military and economic disaster—all Harriet’s friends and their husbands said so. The sooner America pleaded for terms, the better!

During one such argument, Harriet almost succeeded in goading Jared into a rage. But he controlled his temper and replied, “You—and your friends—are entitled to your opinion, Aunt Harriet.” She seethed over the little exhibition of self-control.

The war made daily living difficult. Even a family as well off as Harriet’s had trouble buying the necessities—and if they were available, prices were cruel. Managing household affairs by herself was a strain. Perhaps that was part of the reason she’d succumbed relatively quickly to the marriage proposal of a man she had only met in March, at Reverend Channing’s church.

What she had liked immediately about Mr. Andrew Piggott was his gentility. He wore the proper clothes. Cultivated the proper people. Disavowed and damned the war. He was educated—a graduate of Yale down in New Haven. That wasn’t Harvard; but one couldn’t have everything.

More important, Mr. Piggott didn’t misuse his education by wandering into philosophical byways and espousing radical causes, as Gilbert had.

Piggott told her he had become a man of independent means when an uncle in Albany left him an inheritance. Harriet made a few inquiries around town and found no evidence to contradict Piggott’s claim that the uncle was a prosperous fur factor associated with Mr. Astor. She had to admit the inquiries were superficial; in her eagerness to end the lonely struggle that was widowhood, she accepted Piggott’s credentials almost at face value. He was urbane, polite, and appeared to be welcome in the best circles.

She wasn’t totally imprudent, though. Mr. Piggott first proposed in June. She put him off. She needed to satisfy herself that he wasn’t marrying her in order to take possession of the assets of Kent and Son. She questioned him about it several times. Repeatedly, Mr. Piggott assured her that he wished to live a gentleman’s life, not soil his hands in business. He would be perfectly content to let Franklin Pleasant operate the company until Harriet decided about its disposition.

He also disarmed her by confessing to two vices. He liked liquor, he said. And he enjoyed card playing. In fact, when he wasn’t squiring her to salons, dinner parties, or the Federal Street Church, he spent most of his time at the Exchange Coffee House, hunting up other affluent and respectable gentlemen he could engage in a marathon game of solo. At other times, the game was shemmy—the one French invention whose origins Mr. Piggott, a good Federalist, overlooked.

The games were always played in private rooms rented for the occasion, he said. His fondness for cards would never cause a scandal. Everything was conducted with the utmost discretion.

Another small investigation seemed in order. Harriet called on Franklin Pleasant, and he in turn sent out one of the
Republican
’s writers. She got back a report that yes, Mr. Piggott did involve himself in card games organized at the Exchange—games in which the stakes were rumored to be quite high. But he seemed to have the income to support his passion.

Finally, then, Harriet accepted the proposal, telling herself she could wean Mr. Piggott from his not-quite-respectable pastime after they were man and wife.

She had yet to learn the extent of Mr. Piggott’s interest in sexual matters. It was a topic one didn’t discuss prior to marriage. Tonight would surely shed some light on that repellent subject, however—

As she finished brushing her hair and walked to the wardrobe to select a gown in which to greet her new husband, she resolved that in the boudoir, too, she would rule. She had accepted Mr. Piggott because he seemed a decent, pliant man of good social connections—a man who would understand her wishes and accede to them. She meant to make sure he did—

A noise in the outer room startled her. The latch!

She darted back to the dressing table so he wouldn’t see her in her chemise.

“Andrew? Is that you?”

“Indeed it is.” He had a deep, mellow voice. A little too mellow right now, she decided. He had imbibed somewhat heavily at the reception.

“I won’t be ready to receive you for at least a quarter of an hour.”

He laughed. “Don’t trouble yourself with bed clothes, my dear—”

Andrew Piggott appeared in the dressing room entrance, gazing at his wife with alarming directness.

He was about Harriet’s age, with good features and a ruddy complexion. His eyes tended to be squinty, and he carried a fair amount of flesh on his frame: some might even describe him as portly. But that mellow voice charmed everyone, compensating for the small signs of self-indulgence: a florid nose, the beginning of a paunch.

Harriet caught her breath as he studied her. Mr. Piggott had already discarded his dark green clawhammer tail coat with its elegant black velvet collar. She saw it on the bedroom floor behind him. He stood before her in his pea green waistcoat, fluffy stock, fawn trousers and gartered pumps. His eyes moved slowly from her throat to her breasts.

Undone by the sudden interruption and his candid stare, Harriet crossed her arms over her bosom.

“The clothes will come off soon enough anyway,” Piggott said with a genial smile. The dreaded moment had come—too quickly.

Harriet Lebow Kent Piggott was terrified.

“I wish you would retire and permit me—” she began.

“Nonsense.” Piggott waved. “We’re married now. Very enjoyable affair, too.”

“I noticed you dipping into the punch quite often.”

Piggott’s eyes grew a bit less cordial. “That’s my business, I think. By the way—your nephew refused to say more than a couple of words to me.”

Turning her back, Harriet hurried to the wardrobe. “You can be sure Jared will hear about that.” She was less than confident that a reprimand would do any good, though.

“Not necessary,” Piggott said. “If he persists in his rudeness, I’ll speak to him. We will come to an under standing, I promise.”

Piggott’s tone made Harriet glance around. His smile remained fixed. But his eyes were humorless.

“I mean to say, if he doesn’t show proper respect for his new father, I’ll take him aside and thrash him.”

“Jared has grown to be a very strong boy—”

“Headstrong is more like it. Sea duty quite inflates his hat size, I think.”

“He’s like his mother now. She was an arrogant creature—”

“Well, I can deal with him. Gentleman at Yale don’t spend all their hours musing over the classics! They’ve been known to fight free-for-all—”

Piggott rubbed the fingers of his right hand against his palm, as if in anticipation. Then he walked toward her.

“Time enough for that in the weeks to come. At the moment our concern is pleasure.”