David Liss - The Whiskey Rebel

The ladies stared at me, their coffee cups suspended in an eerie tableau of fashionable life. Finally, Mrs. Dorland spoke. “Captain Saunders! Lord, why are you here?”

Note she did not ask what had happened. Here I was, looking as though I’d clawed my way out of my own grave, and yet she did not come running, hug me, caress my injuries, ask me how she might be of service. Could she get me anything? Could she put me to bed? Could she call a surgeon? No. She wanted to know why I would interrupt her gathering.

“Susan, my dear, I have been laid low by unfortunate circumstances.” I gesticulated like a stage performer and knocked over a vase, though I have excellent reflexes, and so caught it and returned it to its place. “I am afraid, Susan, I am in a bit of a difficult situation. I should be most grateful, Susan, if you might offer me some assistance.”

She gazed upon me with disgust. I wish it were not so, but there is no other word.

“Why do you look at me so, Susan? Have we not been friends? Has not our friendship brought me this state? Will you not help me for what has been between us?”

Then she spoke four of the most withering words I have ever heard. “My name is Sarah.”

I clapped a hand to my forehead. “Of course. Sarah. It is what I meant. Sarah, things have grown a bit difficult for me. A few dollars would help me smooth over my troubles. You have always been a generous woman. I have need of your generosity now.”

I looked at her, my eyes wide and moist, masculine but also childlike in their raw, naked need, but it was all for naught. She only turned away in horror. It began to occur to me that visiting the lady while she had guests was not a sound idea. It may, in fact, have been a poor one. I had hoped to charm her and her friends. I had hoped to have many women offering up coin and sympathy, but I now saw that I had only embarrassed Mrs. Dorland, and she wanted nothing more than that I should leave her be. And not only that lady. The others looked away as well. One held her head down with her hand raised, so that I could see nothing of her face, only her mass of copper-colored hair.

It was a distinctive color, and I began to think at once that I knew it. I took a step closer and stooped a bit to get a look upon the shaded face. “Why, it’s Louisa Chase!” I cried. “Lovely Mrs. Chase. I know I can rely upon you for a few dollars. It shall not be missed by so magnanimous a creature as yourself.”

Louisa Chase did not raise her eyes. She and I had enjoyed some lovely afternoons together some months before. I had no notion that she and Mrs. Dorland were friends. I had the notion now, and I saw that things had turned out very, very badly.

“I beg you, leave,” said Mrs. Dorland.

“I want only fifty dollars,” I said. “That is all. A mere fifty. It shall not be lost to you. Come, good woman, a pittance for a patriot, a soldier of the Revolution, a man upon whose back the republic was built.”

Her eyes had reddened considerably as I spoke, and now tears were flowing freely down her cheeks. “Get out,” she said, “I hate you!”

Knowing when I am unwelcome, I took my exit no better than when I had arrived but surely no worse, and I chose to count that a kind of triumph.

Since the previous night I’d given a great deal of thought to what had happened with Mrs. Pearson. She had summoned me, taking the trouble to travel to my rooms-which meant she must have made an effort to discover where I lived. I had been in Philadelphia only a few months and had never been upon the social scene. I did not believe we had acquaintance in common, unless some ladies I had known were friends of hers. Even so, I never took such companions to my own rooms.

Nevertheless, she had found me, and when I obeyed the summons, she sent me away. She had lied, and done so quite badly. She had wanted me to come, but, once there, she had an even more pressing reason for sending me away.

Now, as I walked along Spruce Street, I contemplated the possible reasons for her behavior. The first was that circumstances had changed. Either she had obtained intelligence of her husband or had reason to believe he and her family were safe. The second was that her disposition had changed. She had either concluded or been convinced that, whatever her concerns, they did not justify renewing an association with a man she once intended to marry but whose companionship was not now appropriate. The third, and the one that had me moving in the direction of her home, was that she had been forced somehow, against her will, to tell me that she wished me to leave: a threat against her husband, herself, or perhaps even her children.

It was that possibility, that and my desire to look upon her face in daylight, and perhaps even a desperate knowledge that I had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do, which brought me once more to the Pearson house. In the light of day it seemed even more luxurious and stately, though the leafless branches and empty gardens gave it a forlorn appearance, dignified but terribly lonely.

I knocked upon the door and was addressed almost at once by the same footman with whom I had dealt the previous night. He appeared neater and better rested, but I supposed I did not look better for the time that had passed. My injuries developed into bruises, and while I might be certain that the light of day would only elevate Mrs. Pearson’s loveliness, I knew it served to make my own appearance even more dreadful-beaten, rumpled, and tattered. Given that my clothes bore the odors of my recent adventures, I must have seemed no better than a vagabond, a pitiful unfortunate, and though this footman and I had locked horns not a day earlier, he at first had no notion of who I was.

“Beggars are dealt with at the servants’ entrance,” he intoned.

“And I’m sure they are grateful,” I answered. “I, however, am Captain Ethan Saunders and would like to speak with Mrs. Pearson.”

He studied me again, attempting to contain the disgust so visible upon his face. Yet the typical sneering so common among footmen when confronted with those beneath their masters’ station was not evident. Indeed, he took a step forward and spoke in a low if sympathetic voice. “Sir, I believe the lady herself asked you to go and not return.”

“She did, but I doubt she meant it. Please tell her I am here.”

“She will not see you.”

“But you’ll tell her?”

He nodded but did not invite me in. Instead he closed the door, and I remained upon the front porch, cold in my insufficient coat. Light snow fell upon me, and I watched as gentlemen and ladies traveled along Spruce, glancing up at my vigil with dismay.

In a moment, the man returned, his expression neutral. “Mrs. Pearson will not see you.”

I could not argue this point with him. If I was refused, nothing I could say would alter his mind, and unless I was prepared to force my way inside, which I was not, that would be the end of it. “You seem like an honest man,” I said. “Is there something you would tell me?”

He opened his mouth as if to speak but then shook his head. “No. You must go.”

“Very well, but if you-”

This little speech was interrupted, for he reached out and pushed against my coat. “I said go!” he cried, rather more loudly than necessary. “Leave, and return no more!”

I turned away, slouching in a performance of shame, feeling the stares of passersby upon me. On the surface, I should have been dispirited by these events, which might now appear as one more disappointment and humiliation in a string of such since the previous night. That was on the surface. Look beneath and you may find several things that surprise you, such as a footman with more cleverness and dexterity than that for which perhaps you gave him credit. You may also find a piece of paper, cleverly secreted inside the coat of Captain Ethan Saunders, a piece of paper from the lovely and once-beloved Cynthia Pearson.