David Liss - The Whiskey Rebel

“Why do you rise?” asked her good husband. “I am speaking and you rise, as though no words come out of my mouth.”

“Our guest has arrived,” she answered, her voice flat.

“Our guest? Oh, Saunders. Hide the state secrets-ha-ha. He has kept us long enough, hasn’t he?” Pearson at last rose to greet me and I shook one of his big hands. His grip was loose and absent, as though he could not remember why he took my hand or what he was meant to do with it.

Also rising was the widow Maycott, who had been sitting in a high-backed chair. She wore a much plainer dress than Mrs. Pearson, ivory in color, high-necked and remarkably charming. Upon another settee was a couple of some fifty years apiece, handsomely if uninterestingly appointed. The man was a bit on the short side, and plagued with that curious sort of fat which accumulates only in the belly, the rest of his body remaining gaunt, so that he appeared great with child. His gray-haired lady, attired in a modest black gown, had pleasing features and must have been acceptably comely some thirty years earlier; probably not so, ten years later.

“Captain Saunders, I am happy to see you once more,” said Mrs. Pearson, her face the very mask of control. I suppose she had a great deal of practice.

“See him at last, you mean,” said Pearson. “It is a dreadful thing to make a man wait for his own supper.”

I bowed. “I do apologize, sir. I was detained upon government business.” I told this lie not only to excuse myself but to excite a general curiosity.

“You must tell us of it,” said Mrs. Maycott.

“What government business could you be about?” asked Pearson. “The kind with beer and rum by the smell of it. In any case, I would think the government is by now done with you.”

Mrs. Pearson, blushing charmingly, made some sort of conversation-changing spouse-scolding noise in the back of her throat. “Mrs. Maycott tells me you already know each other and was the one who invited you here tonight, so I need not introduce you.”

“I have indeed already had that pleasure,” I said, bowing to the lady.

Did I detect a flash of jealousy upon Cynthia’s pretty face? She turned to the older couple. “May I present Mr. Anders Vanderveer and Mrs. Vanderveer, Mr. Pearson’s sister.”

After making the necessary introductory remarks to the good man and wife, in whom I had no interest, I took a chair matching Mrs. Maycott’s, separated from hers only by a small table of dark wood and oriental design. A servant arrived to present me with a glass of wine, and I accepted most gratefully. And there I sat, Mrs. Maycott smiling upon me, her red lips turned up with delightful impishness, and Mrs. Pearson, looking away.

“You work for our government, then?” asked Mr. Vanderveer, in a deep and booming voice. “Do you know the President?”

“I knew him during the war,” I said. “Currently I am engaged in a project for Hamilton at Treasury, however, and have no contact with General Washington. I am led to believe, Mr. Pearson, that you have had some contact of late with Hamilton, or perhaps his men?”

“Not at all,” he said. “Why should I?”

“I’m sure I cannot speculate. I hoped you would enlighten me.”

Mrs. Vanderveer was still, in her mind, upon the topic of Washington, and had no interest in my sparring with her brother. “Do you not long to see him again?” she asked, her voice full of the worship only Washington could inspire among those who had never met him-and probably half who had.

I bowed from my seat. “Those of us who serve are not permitted to choose the terms upon which we serve.”

“How they fuss,” said Mr. Pearson. “I dine with Washington two times a month, and I may ask him to pass the salt as well as any man. He is like me, no better and, I pray, no worse.”

“How is it that you are on such good terms with the President?” asked Mrs. Maycott. Her lips were upturned and her eyes sparkled.

“How should I not know the President?” Pearson returned.

“I do not know exactly how to respond,” she said. “I only meant that, from my understanding, his inner circle is composed of government men, men he served with, and gentlemen from Virginia. It is my understanding you are none of those.”

“I am from this city, madam,” said Mr. Pearson in a loud voice. “A man need not be from Virginia to associate in the best company, and I might say that of Washington as well as he might say it of me. As for serving in the government, it is meaningless. Anyone may do so, as I am certain this fellow will inform you.” He gestured toward me. “I dine with Washington because we are both men of consequence, so we must dine together or with inferiors.”

Pearson spun his head so quickly I thought it might fly off entirely and pointed one of the stubby fingers on his oversized hand toward his brother-in-law, jabbing back and forth like the blade of an assassin. “What is it you say?”

“I said nothing, Jack,” the gentleman answered, his voice a study of calm and reason.

“I heard you. You said Bingham, you rascal.”

“I said no such thing,” answered Vanderveer.

“May not a man say Bingham now and again?” I inquired.

Pearson was too far gone in some sort of fit to even hear me. “You suggest I dine with Washington because of my wife’s friendship with Mrs. Bingham.”

“Really, Jack,” said the man’s sister. “It hardly matters to us. We think it very grand that you know such people as the Binghams. We would never belittle such a connection.”

Mr. Pearson now turned to Mrs. Maycott and attempted something like a smile. Perhaps at some earlier time in his life, before he allowed a pretty wife and fine house to convince him he was the emperor of the universe, he might have charmed a woman or two with that smile. If the day had been foggy or the candles dim, anything was possible. Now he appeared grotesque, a mask of human skin atop something diabolical and unsavory. Yet he clearly believed himself to be the embodiment of charm and sought to shore up his position by bringing to his side the only unattached woman in the room, always the jewel of greatest value in any gathering.

“Do you hear, Mrs. Maycott?” he said, his voice now a calm, unctuous vibrato. “‘Such people as the Binghams,’ says my sister, as though she, the wife of a lawyer of but indifferent reputation, can sit in judgment of the first families of the nation.”

“I think,” answered the good lady, “that in this republic, there is no one family that may be elevated above another, as all are equal before the law.”

From another, less charming, set of lips I supposed this comment might have launched an entirely new course of outraged oratory, but not so now. He merely smiled his death’s-head smile. “A good joke, Mrs. Maycott. A very good joke.”

“I should like to hear more of Captain Saunders’s connection with Colonel Hamilton,” said the widow, in a neutral tone.

“Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Vanderveer, a drowning woman wrapping her arms about a piece of conversational flotsam. “Such exciting times there, I should think, with the bank and such.”

Mr. Pearson would not be soothed. “Yes, yes, you must always flatter,” he said to his sister. “You flatter me, you flatter my guests. What shall it get you?”

“I believe I was merely making an inquiry,” said the lady.

“You’ve never merely done anything in your life, Flora, so let us not pretend otherwise.” He turned to me. “Shall I tell you what it means to serve Hamilton at Treasury?”

“You may attempt to do so,” I answered, “but as I’m the one who is so engaged, and as you are not, I cannot imagine you have much to say that will enlighten me.”