Revolution (26 page)

When she was finished, there was another pause, and her accompanists played the establishing bars for the aria. And then she sang.

As he listened to Reverdy sing in a flawless soprano voice, Hugh was suddenly overcome with the sense that the music was about him. He could not understand the Italian words that his wife sang, but they seemed nevertheless to beckon him to accept the aria as his own, and to continue his enthralling, guiltless journey through life. The words were irrelevant, he thought, yet words were necessary to accompany the music to convey a joyous, untroubled serenity. The foreign, unknown words seemed to invite him to substitute his own, yet he knew not what words to put in their place. Those words celebrated his every conscious thought and action, his own existence and that of the world. They had the sense of a debut and an end at the same time, and evoked a vista that stretched behind him — the one traveled — and another before him, yet to be traveled. It was an anthem, he thought, one he wished he could somehow project and express. It was as sacred and joyous as any great hymn he had heard in the cathedrals of his past, yet it was somehow addressed to him, and to him alone. He wondered if Reverdy knew this, if she understood him enough to have chosen this cantata for that reason.

Reverdy received a standing ovation from the guests. Hugh was unable to rise, unable even to applaud; he sat immobilized by a benign paralysis. Jack Frake glanced over at him once, and saw a faraway, absorbed look on his friend’s face, one that he recognized and understood.

Hugh then rose, walked around the assembly of guests, and approached
his wife. He gazed into her eyes with silent thanks, then took one of her hands and raised it to his lips. He was vaguely aware that the guests were still applauding.

Reverdy dipped in an abbreviated curtsy, then leaned closer to her husband and said, knowing she could not be heard in the din by anyone but him, “The song is somehow about you, Hugh, not the Lord, and how you chart your own life. When I first heard another singer perform it in Vauxhall Gardens, I confess I thought of you.”

Hugh smiled. “That is markedly sacrilegious, Reverdy, and I am forever grateful,” he said with approval. Then the applause became intrusive. Hugh squeezed once the hand he still held, bowed briefly to Reverdy, and stepped away to return to his seat next to Jack Frake.

The guests demanded an encore. Etáin and Reverdy were prepared for this, and had planned and rehearsed another Handel piece, this one sung in English, the words to the first section of the “Dettingen Te Deum.” This, too, when the women were finished, received a standing ovation. Some of the guests in the front row of chairs noted that the eyes of their newfound soprano were glassy with tentative tears.

Reverdy bowed, once to the guests, and once to Etáin, then, her part in the concert finished, left the musicians to join Hugh. He rose, took her elbow and walked her to the rear of the last row, out of sight of the assembly.

Etáin sat back in her chair from her harp. James Vishonn put another sheaf of sheet music in front of him on the spinet. Will Kenny stood near him, while Jude Kenny did an odd thing and left the ballroom by one of the double doors, which he left open.

Reverdy linked an arm through one of Hugh’s. “I have another surprise for you, my darling. Do you remember the private concert we attended held on the terrace of that merchant friend’s of Mr. Worley’s in London, when I visited you with James and my mother one summer?”

“Yes.”

Reverdy said nothing else. James Vishonn rose to announce, “We are pleased to perform now Mr. Vivaldi’s ‘Echo’ Concerto. Mr. Jude Kenny will serve as the ‘echo.’”

Hugh grinned in gratitude throughout the number. Even though the trio played it with a halting tempo and undeniable coarseness, he applauded nonetheless, along with the assembly.

“Thank you,” said Hugh to his wife.

Etáin had by now begun playing two other Irish tunes by the composer
Turlough O’Carolan, “Lord Inchiquin” and “Hugh O’Donnell.” Hugh and Reverdy stood close together and listened.

“That is a pretty tune,” remarked Hugh about the latter.

Reverdy turned to face Hugh. “It is called ‘Hugh O’Donnell,’” she said, “but I would call it simply ‘Hugh.’”

Hugh smiled at her. They instinctively took each other’s hands and, carried away by the melody and the rhythm, began moving together. Soon, they improvised a dance without thinking about it, gently twirling around and rocking back and forth. Hugh thought it a natural thing to hold Reverdy’s waist, and was about to, while Reverdy felt a desire to rest her hands on his shoulders, and actually did so. But they stopped in confusion, and separated reluctantly in frustration, because there was no precedent for it. They did not know how else to proceed. But they still smiled at each other, oblivious to the confused or disapproving looks of the few guests and servants who had observed them, because they had together come near to the discovery of something.

The sole dance, at least in the middle and upper classes at that time, that called for a couple, was the minuet, an extremely formal, ritualistic mode that allowed a mere touching of hands by the pair, and then only at a distance. No dancing master then had ever conceived, let alone would have ever approved, of the mutually selfish celebration of a man and woman dancing by themselves. The crude, inappropriate notion of dancing couples was the entertainment only of the
vulgar mobility
.

“Well,” said Hugh, “there must be a something like it on the Continent.”

“Perhaps, but I did not observe it,” said Reverdy.

When the concert was concluded, and the dancing commenced, Reece Vishonn and his wife performed the first dance, the traditional opening minuet, a stately number played by James Vishonn on the spinet and Jude Kenny on the flute. Later, Hugh and Reverdy took part with six other couples and Jack Frake in Etáin’s “Squaring the Circle” country-dance, which was well received by the guests and her last solo for the evening. Jack, nominally paired with Selina Vishonn, was the odd man out when the number abruptly ended. As the guests applauded, he retired from the floor, grinning at his wife at the harp, wondering if she had calculated the effect.

A too-bright smile on her face told him that she had.

* * *

T
wo days after the concert-ball at Enderly, the snow vanished again, beginning in the morning and disappearing completely by early afternoon. It ebbed steadily under the sun, sped on by some warm western breezes, until little was left of it but a scattering of gray, icy slivers over the vast, brown acreage of Morland Hall.

Jack Frake watched it go. He had traversed his fields that morning and afternoon to decide what would be planted in the spring and where. As the snow receded and revealed the ground beneath it, a certainty grew in his mind, and a revelation of a different kind. The phenomenon fascinated him, and caused him to linger in the bare fields to observe it and to dwell on a conclusion and solution it had triggered in his thoughts. When he returned to the great house, he collected all the Stamp Act literature that Hugh had loaned him, then saddled his favorite mount and rode to Meum Hall.

Mrs. Vere, the housekeeper, answered the door and showed him into his friend’s study. Hugh greeted his friend and ordered a pot of tea. Jack said, as he sat down opposite Hugh’s desk, “I watched the snow melt today, and more than the ground was bared.”

Hugh looked curious.

“The Navigation Act and all its amendments. That is what we should be opposing.”

Hugh merely smiled in answer.

Jack leaned forward and put the bundle of pamphlets and fliers on his host’s desk, then continued. “In all this literature I have read — narrowly argued, though right as most of it is — I do not see that power questioned or even mentioned as an abuse of colonial trade. The power to regulate our trade implies the power to tax, that regulation ensuring the collection of taxes. For if we were granted the freedom to trade when, where, and with whom we wished, the collection of a tax, if any existed, would become as onerous to its collectors as paying it now under the present system is to us.” He smiled in turn. “The absence of that point in this literature is what
nagged me for a while. The melting snow caused me to think of it.”

“What propinquity,” remarked Hugh. “I remarked the same point to Governor Fauquier.”

Jack nodded. “Yes. You told me about your meeting with him.”

Hugh in turn picked up a sheaf of papers that was in front of him on the desk and handed them over to Jack. “Mr. Talbot in Philadelphia sent me those. They came by post-rider not two hours ago.”

Jack reached for the sheaf and read the top page. “A non-importation agreement, signed by Philadelphia merchants?” he queried.

“And copies of similar agreements, signed by merchants in New York, Albany, and Boston. As you will see, Mr. Talbot signed the Philadelphia agreement not to order more goods from Britain as of that date. Exempt from all the agreements are goods ordered before the various covenants.”

Jack read through the documents. By the time he was finished, Mrs. Vere returned with the tea tray. When she was finished serving, she left. Jack took a sip of the tea, then remarked, “Still, while this is a good idea, these agreements say nothing against the navigation laws.” He put the sheaf back on Hugh’s desk.

“Perhaps the men who signed these concur that opposition to them would be either fruitless or counter-productive. Perhaps many of them don’t question the rightness of their mercantile captivity, or it has never occurred to them to question it.”

“Perhaps,” said Jack. “But for as long as the navigation laws are not questioned and identified as another form of servitude, the power of Parliament to regulate us will not be checked.” He paused to grimace. “They argue that it is only equitable that we help defray the costs of our own security. But what do they truly mean by our ‘security’? That of indentureds? Of captive factotums? Of menials who labor without even the benefit of livery? Is not this style of servitude a sign of conquest?”

Hugh chuckled. “Only servants and horses wear livery,” he said with irony. “At least, in London they do.”

“What rights of Englishmen may we then boast of, when we have been denied them? If we grant them the power to instruct us what to do with our trade, and where, and with whom, is that not by implication a grant to tax us as well, at their pleasure, for their own ends?”

Hugh said, “You are preaching to the choir, Jack.”

Jack nodded to the pamphlets and agreements he had put on Hugh’s desk. “One reason I came over was to ask you if you planned to write a
pamphlet on that subject.”

“You are just as capable of that composition,” said Hugh. “You’ve proven that.”

Jack shook his head. “I could not put the argument as finely as you could.”

Hugh scoffed. “How rudely would
you
put it?”

Jack did not answer immediately, but sat for a moment, thinking. Then he rose and paced back and forth, hands linked behind his back, as he spoke. He said, “I would say that in the end, the arbitrary direction of my trade to benefit the mother country by means of the navigation laws and their amendments is surely as much a tax on me as a tax levied directly on my purse through a stamp or other instrument. It is as much a…
redirection
of my goods or money as is a direct tax, one also levied without my consent.” He stopped to glance at Hugh, who was listening intently.

He continued pacing. “I would say that the authority to tell colonials what may or may not be imported or exported, by what means, and to and from what ports and countries, logically extends to the power to tax as well, for what is a navigation law but a seizure or confiscation of property in favor of an unchosen beneficiary — unchosen by me? What is it but the power of disposal of one’s property to the benefit of another? The power to dispose through trade regulations is simply another form of seizure. A tax is a more immediate form of seizure and disposal. That is all.”

Jack again glanced at Hugh. His host merely nodded in agreement. Jack said, “I would say further that I predict a greater crisis than what we are witnessing over the stamps. The men in London have no incentive to grant us our liberties. Their palates are accustomed to the taste of power and they will want to retain and perpetuate it. They are determined that we shall be their servants and factotums. To date, we have minded only the taxes and spoken against them — not the means of collecting them. I believe that those men see the contradiction in the arguments made in all this literature, if they even bother to read it. We don’t see it. I believe they must celebrate the oversight, or at least breathe easier, when they prepare a rebuttal to colonial resolves and petitions.”

Hugh cocked his head in appreciation. “Too blunt by half, but elegant in its brevity. I particularly appreciate your point about the men in London having no incentive to annul what they and their predecessors have wrought.” He took a sip of his tea, then put down his cup and leaned forward. “My friend, you are capable of penning that fragment yourself. Your
style is not rude at all. It never was. It is refreshingly frank. You should not doubt its potency or efficacy.”

Jack nodded in thanks, and sat down again. He gestured briefly with his hands. “But what incentive do the men in London have to acknowledge the rightness of the argument? None. I own that this answer stops me when I contemplate composing such a tract. Whom would I be addressing, but men who do not wish to be addressed by reason? I have not done so in the past in other matters, except when I thought there was half a chance of persuasion.” He paused to chuckle in wry amusement. “Do you remember the first night we met, at Enderly, at the victory ball, and the argument in Mr. Vishonn’s gaming room?”

“I remember it well,” said Hugh. “Do you remember the debates in the House on the Resolves?”

“Of course.”

“Well, there you are. Three or four men from that evening at Enderly later sided with us over the stamps. And in the House, more than a dozen burgesses who had earlier objected to my call for stronger language in the memorial and remonstrance, voted for the Resolves. Argumentation is not a futile recourse even in the worst circumstances, when it may seem that one is speaking to an audience of medieval serfs or to the inmates of Bedlam Hospital.”

Jack laughed softly. “I remember your relating your nightmare about the medieval serfs.”

“The finer one hones its blade, the deeper an argument can cut through all the guff in which otherwise reasonable men clothe themselves.” Hugh shrugged. “And constructing a finely drawn argument helps to properly arrange the idea in one’s head. Mr. Reisdale, who has had some experience in court, would likely attest to the truth of that.”

After a moment, Jack smiled with decision. “I will make the attempt, and compose a pamphlet on this subject. Will you read it?”

“Of course,” said Hugh. “It so happens that, while you have been watching melting snow, I have been contemplating chimney swifts.”

This time Jack looked baffled.

Hugh said, “The behavior of recent governments in London caused me to recall a day one spring here when I observed the nesting ritual of a flock of swifts. Finding a suitable open hollow oak, they circled round and round it, and when the leader dropped down inside it to begin building its nest, the flock changed the direction of its circling, following the next in
seniority until it dropped into the oak. One by one they left the moving ring, the direction of the circle changing each time a swift left the flock. Swifts, of course, cannot build regular nests in tree branches, but construct theirs with their own drool on the sides of walls and inside hollow trees.” Hugh’s expression changed to one of contented deviltry. “I believe the analogy between swifts and politicians to be strikingly thorough and just.”

And this time Jack cocked his head in appreciation. “It’s a deserving analogy, Hugh. I look forward to reading it. I have had to clear swifts from my own chimneys.” He paused. “It is better than your analogy of epergne and empire,” he added.

Hugh looked surprised. “You remember that?”

“There’s not much that I forget. Do you still endorse the idea?”

“Yes, I do.”

Jack said nothing. He rose and said with excited conviction, “Well, I want to return to Morland and begin my composition.”

“Will you stay for dinner?” asked Hugh.

“No, thank you. I don’t think I’ll have an appetite even for supper until I’ve put some words on paper.” Jack glanced around the study. “How is Reverdy settling in?”

“With difficulty. We both expected it. There aren’t as many distractions here as there are in London, or even in Eckley, Surrey.” Hugh beamed. “She has set herself to read a number of books. She brought Mr. Rousseau’s
Émile
with her, and some paltry novels on the advice of her mother. But she abandoned Rousseau to begin
Hyperborea
.” His smile broadened. “She put Mr. Rousseau aside, saying he was too aimlessly pedantic.” Hugh left his desk to walk his friend to the study door.

Jack folded his arms. “It will be interesting to hear what she will say about
Hyperborea
.” He paused. “Etáin has read it, many times, and claims that it is appropriate that it had something to do with what you and I are.”

Hugh laughed and slapped Jack on the back once. “Modesty be damned! I must express agreement with that sentiment! I told Reverdy that you helped to copy it out in a Cornwall cave. That intrigued her, as well as my own recommendation.”

Jack sighed. “Well, it seems that now Caxton is obsessed with words. Mr. Reisdale is also composing a fragment, on some obscure religious dispute.”

“Yes,” said Hugh nodding. “He dropped me a note about it. Obscure? No. He wishes to connect the dispute between Benjamin Hoadley and
Francis Atterbury to the evolution of religious and general liberty. Why, your own Mr. Proudlocks is assisting him in the writing of it — as a copier — just as you once assisted Redmagne.”

“Yes. Anymore, John spends almost as much time in Mr. Reisdale’s library as he does at Morland. Well, perhaps he will help copy out my own creation.”

“I am certain he will. And when you have finished it, I will send a copy of it to Mr. Jones in London. He may readily agree to employ it in the House, when it convenes again, though not ascribe its reasoning to a former felon and smuggler. I am certain that should Mr. Pannell be in the House that day and hear your name, he will recognize it after all this time, and pelt Mr. Jones with distracting and grand-sounding irrelevancies for the delectation of the Commons.”

They were standing on the porch of Meum Hall now. Jack asked, “Speaking of copies, how are we to have these printed, now that Mr. Barret is gone?”

Hugh said, “We will need to send them to an Annapolis printer, I suppose. Or to Mr. Talbot in Philadelphia, who knows some printers there. I am sure that neither ailing Mr. Royle nor his foreman, Mr. Hunter, will agree to print anything we may submit to the
Gazette
’s office, not even for ready money. But let us first give them something to spurn!”

Jack untied his horse’s reins, which he had secured to the balustrade of the porch steps, mounted, waved Hugh good day, and rode off.

When Hugh went back inside, he found Reverdy standing halfway down the central staircase in the breezeway. She held his copy of
Hyperborea
in one hand. “What did Mr. Frake want?” she asked.

“My advice,” said Hugh. “He is going to compose a pamphlet on the current troubles. His first.”

Reverdy gestured with the book. “I am surprised that it will be his first effort.”

“He did not write that, but was fired by it. As was I.” Hugh added, “In anything that matters to him, he says little. For all his sociability, Jack is still very much the solitary man. He suffers fools nought, and has little to say to them. I have seen him silence them with his dismissive quiescence many times.”

“I had observed that effect myself.” Reverdy glanced at the book in her hand. “I wonder how many fools have read this, and not been similarly fired, but remained indifferent or dead to it.”

“Undoubtedly, countless fools, as numerous as once were the kings of ancient Mercia and Wessex. But they do not matter. Only those capable of being moved by the work will want to bring to life in their own actions the spirit of Drury Trantham.”