Part 34 (1/2)
”You may think you know how to manage low ruffians-”
”My mates ain't low ruffians, my mates are them what loves me and have, mind you, been loyal and kind to me and stood beside me, unlike present company!”
”You may think you know how to manage low ruffians, but you have no defenses against smooth-talking gentlemen who have nothing on their mind but to have sport with you! Randall is good at what he does, and you wouldn't be the first link in his chain of broken hearts, Jacky, I can tell you that. Father has had to get him out of several sc.r.a.pes of that nature so far. There are at least two local girls who are older and far, far wiser now.”
”Don't care don't care don't care...”
”Put down that bag. Stop that. You are not going anywhere. It will be dark soon.”
”Yes, I am. Jacky Faber don't stay where she ain't wanted. Don't worry, I can make my way-”
”Oh yes, I had forgotten: the redoubtable Jacky Faber and her magic whistle! How could I have forgotten that wonderful life-sustaining talent! Tell me, Sister, how will it be when it is the old Jacky Faber squatting on a street corner in rags, tootling on her pennywhistle?”
”You shut up, you-”
”Will the crowds hoot and hooray for you then when you are not the brisk young dame that jumps up and down so pretty...”
”Stop it, Amy...”
”Will they say, 'Oh, ain't she the prettiest thing' when ... all right, now wait. Stop that. Stop crying. I am sorry I said those-”
”I ain't cryin' you can't m-m-make me cry, you can't, you can't...”
”Please. Come here. There, there, I did not mean it. I know you mean well and have a good and open heart. That's the problem. Please stop crying now, Jacky, please ... here, dear, let me hold you. Come, dear child, put your head on my breast. Collect yourself. And then we will go down for dinner, which we will have in the kitchen. Then maybe to the piano? I will start to teach you to play it. There, that is better. Quiet now. Quiet.”
That night, in bed, we start off sleeping without touching, each of our backs toward the other, but by morning we are snugged up as usual and I am forgiven. Again.
Chapter 42.
We're back in Boston and we could have come back, on horseback with Randall as escort but Amy would have none of it, so we came back by that d.a.m.ned rattly coach. But we're back and hardly the worse for wear.
Amy's right, of course. I always think I know what I'm doing and I don't. I always think I'm in control of everything and I ain't in control of nothing. I always think I know everything and it always turns out that I don't know nothin'. I do know, though, that I'll watch that Mr. Randall Trevelyne real close.
I just wish that I'd get a letter from jaimy. Something. Anything. It's been five months since I sent that letter with Davy and, I know, maybe the wakes of their s.h.i.+ps didn't cross, maybe they'll never meet, I don't know.
It's hard, Jaimy, it is. It's hard enough for me to he good when I know you're waitin for me, hut if you ain't...
I attend to my studies. I got to, 'cause I ain't got much freedom around here no more. Since my last outing when I come back with the smashed eye, Peg has told Herr Hoffman I ain't to check out no more horses and Mistress Pimm won't let me spend the night with the Byrnes sisters no more-ladies don't a.s.sociate with servants, you know. Amy, too, has her eye on me constant. So I must be good. I must content myself with going over to the stables to see dear Gretchen and just ride her around the paddock and walk her and comb her down.
And we have been to see Ezra again, under Amy's watchful eye. I would not be surprised if she has not been given a club by Peg and the Sisterhood and ordered to drop me in my tracks should I show any interest in straying from the straight and narrow. But I am good as any angel, and except for a few growls from Amy when I look longingly toward the Pig, things go smoothly. Ezra has nothing new to report, other than the fact that people are beginning to remark upon the Preacher's growing strangeness.
They do let me out for Rachel's wedding, though, mainly 'cause Peg's goin', too, in all her finery and I get to go under her watchful eye. Peg's kids are all grown and gone, but she considers us all to be her brood, too, so she bawls most uncontrollably when the words are said.
Amy gives Rachel a fine leather-covered family Bible that has a family tree in the front where they will put in all the names of their babies and the babies that the babies have down the years. I, of course, give em each a portrait, which is all that I seem able to do of a lasting nature in this world. Annie and Betsey and Abby and Sylvie give two needlework pillow slips that they all worked on and put in their names and wishes, and if you ask me, it is as fine as any of the framed needlework in the school. And Peg, some kitchen tools, and Ephraim gives the bridegroom a fine wood plane he made himself, and Henry, a finely worked bridle.
Across the Alleghenies, imagine that ... and she the oldest of us and in some ways the calmest and the wisest, and I can't stand to see her go 'cause I know for certain I'll never see her again and to keep from blubberin' we promise to write and never forget each other and then Rachel and Paul Barkley get on the seat of the loaded wagon, wave, and are gone.
Along with my other studies, I keep working on the miniatures, and I have taken them to a new turn-now I have the sitter turn a little toward me, a three-quarter view, as Mr. Peet would have it. It is harder than the profile view, but it does let the painter fix the eye of the viewer with that of the sitter.
I have had two miniature-portrait commissions that Mr. Peet got for me, and I made a decent penny out of them, too. One was of a prosperous s.h.i.+powner, and I did him in his office at the end of Hall's Wharf. I think the portrait was a present for his wife. I brought along my long gla.s.s and had him cradle it in his arm as I posed him. I gave him a little more hair than he actually has and slimmed him down a touch. He was enchanted with the result and tipped me most handsome.
The other one, curiously, was a portrait of a young bride whose new husband was about to go off to sea, and she brought me into a private room and she locked the door and she took off her cloak and revealed herself in a very sheer slip, one so sheer that parts of her upper self were plainly visible through the filmy garment. ”Paint me as you see me,” she said, sitting down on a stool, ”and don't leave anything out.” I did it and I made the parts to which she was referring most plump and proud and pink. When she saw the result, she blushed and squeezed my arm and said, ”It is just the thing. That will keep him warm and he will look to no other soft breast for comfort.”
You'd better not, I thinks, or this fierce young bride of yours will make short work of you.
I have shown Maestro Fracelli the Lady Lenore and my intent to try to learn her. He sucks in his breath as he picks her up and cradles her in his arm and puts the bow to her and plays.
”It's like one cannot play a false note on it,” he says in wonder, and examines her most closely. ”It is Italian, without a doubt,” he says, with a hint of national feeling and pride. ”And if you should ever want to sell it...”
”Ah, nay, Sir,” says I. ”I could never sell her, as I am but keeping her for ... a sometime friend, who will one day return to claim her.”
”Ah,” says Maestro Fracelli, handing the Lady to me. ”Then hold her thus, and put this under your chin and put your left hand just so, and take the bow...”
And the Lady Lenore and I are off on a long voyage.
The Preacher is losing his congregation. As I look about the church I see the hapless Pimm's girls are really all that's left, and they look at each other and cringe at his rambling, disconnected sermons and keep their gaze down in their laps. His twitchy actions during the service have made even the most hidebound Puritans, them what's used to taking their lumps in church, feel weird and discomfited and they know they have only to go down to the Old South Church to find a preacher that, though fierce, at least ain't crazy. And there they have gone.
I do not meet his eye, because if I do, I think he will know what I have been doing for Janey. I pa.s.s the time during the service today wondering how he's dealing with his own board of directors. Those collection plates been looking mighty thin.
I think he sleeps on one of the hard pews, afraid to sleep upstairs, where sometimes he hears the scratching of fingernails or the moaning of a young girl saying, ”Please, Sir, don't...” over and over. Sometimes I'm there and sometimes I ain't, but I know he hears her anyway.
One more haunting should do it, I think. I must call the Brothers and Sisters together, one more time, before Amy and I return to Dovecote and the Great Race.
Chapter 43.
”You see how he comes around with the dog every hour on the tolling of the Meeting House clock?” I whisper. The bell sounds off in the distance. There is the call of a night watchman down in the town sayin' that all's well. ”He is not a smart man, as he never varies in his rounds.”
Ephraim nods in the dark, and he and I duck around the side of the school as the man with the dog appears in the graveyard under the pale moonlight. Betsey is there in the shadows, too, and she clutches Ephraim's arm as he comes back to her from our scouting mission.
”So I will distract him when he is at the far end of his round, on the other side of the church?”
”Right. But you must give no sign you know anything about this school or anyone in it, or the Preacher will know that it is not ghosts who are after him, but real people. And that I know he can deal with.”
”How long, Jacky?”