Revolution (22 page)

Reverdy glanced through the sheets of Etáin’s transcribed Dettingen Te Deum. “Oh, this is wonderful, Etáin!” She turned to face her hostess. “May I call you Etáin?”

Etáin nodded.

“Thank you.” Reverdy took the bundle of paper and sat in an armchair, then continued. “I shall never forget the first time I heard the ‘Te Deum’ at the Opera House. Even when I listen to certain passages of it now, in my head, I experience the same thing, a kind of uplifting — being transported off the earth, not caring if I were thrust back down onto it to my death. Just to have experienced it once is some kind of reward. But you must know that once is not enough. And, then, of course the words to it are irrelevant. One wonders what Mr. Handel felt as he composed it.”

Reverdy looked at Etáin again. “Oh, Etáin! I pity you for not ever having heard it as it was meant to be heard! The chorus! The orchestra! The great drums that seem like cannon, beating in time, insisting that one rise, and all of it together propelling one and the music upward to some kind of heaven. Not to the heaven that any minister would preach about in church, but to a glory whose roots are somehow temporal, somehow more immediate, and meaningful, even though one is lifted up from the earth.… Oh, I don’t know how else to put it! You see, I have never had a reason to describe it, until now. God forgive me, but what I feel in those moments has little to do with Him.”

After a moment, Etáin replied, “I understand. I have listened to it in my head, too, as I do all the music I transcribe. I can only imagine what you have heard, and so must envy you.” She smiled tentatively. “And your late husband — did he feel the same thing?”

For a moment, Reverdy wore an expression as though she were trying to remember to whom Etáin was referring. Then she sighed and shook her head. “I don’t think so. I quite forgot about him at those times, and never spoke to him about it afterward. I knew he would not understand.” She paused. “I don’t mind your having asked that. Alex was a good person, but he was not capable of that.”

“Hugh is,” said Etáin with an unintended emphasis of warning. However, she was smiling at Reverdy with approval, although the object of her scrutiny did not know it.

Reverdy nodded. “Yes, he is. He has been that for as long as I have known him.” She laughed and remarked, “Well, George the Second, in whose honor the ‘Te Deum’ was composed, was a rather dull person, I have read, his victory at Dettingen notwithstanding. I am certain that listening to it must have taxed the ability of the poor dear to stay awake during its performance.” She changed the subject by turning again to Etáin’s collection of transcriptions. She nodded to the table that held them. “I have only seen so much music in Signori Berlusconi’s studio!” She leafed through the collection. “Do you play these often?”

“Not as often as I would like. Only at balls and on other occasions. Mostly at Mr. Vishonn’s place, and sometimes at the Palace. There is not much occasion for concerts here, except on the usual holidays.”

Reverdy looked at the harp that sat in the corner of Etáin’s room. “May I trouble you for a sample of your art? Hugh says you are worthy of the best concert halls in London.”

Etáin grinned. “He exaggerates, of course.”

“I think not, Etáin,” answered Reverdy. “If you understand him in the least, you must know that Hugh does not exaggerate anyone’s virtues…or vices.”

“That is true.” Etáin clasped her hands together. “What would you like to hear?”

“The ‘Te Deum.’ ‘We praise thee.’”

“That is the best part.” Etáin rose and went to her harp. She tested its strings to make sure it was in tune, then played the selection. It took her about five minutes to finish it.

But halfway through it, she noticed that Reverdy’s eyes had suddenly glistened in an overture to some uncontrollable emotion. Then the woman abruptly looked away, removed a lace handkerchief from her bag, and dabbed the tears that had begun to stream down her face.

With only an imperceptible pause, Etáin continued to play. When she was finished, she rose and went over to Reverdy. She said, “We can be friends.”

Reverdy looked up at her hostess. “What do you mean?”

“You love this…and you love Hugh.”

“How could you know…?”

Etáin simply smiled, took the handkerchief from her guest, and with it removed the remaining tears from Reverdy’s face.

Reverdy did not protest. When Etáin was finished, she took back her handkerchief, and said, “I have never heard the harp played so beautifully, Etáin. Hugh did not exaggerate your abilities.” After a pause, she asked, in a solemn, quiet voice, “He was in love with you once, was he not?”

Etáin nodded. “Yes. And I with him, up to a point. I think he would say the same thing about me. But I chose Jack, who has been my future for as long as I have known him. And now he is my present, as well.”

“I had…have a similar regard for Hugh. I fought it, but it was useless.”

“They are both forces of nature, are they not?”

Reverdy nodded, and smiled weakly. “Yes, they are that. Things and men that seem to be obstacles to them always manage to remove themselves from their path, or surrender, or else be swept aside.” She paused. “And, they are…stars,” she remarked, remembering what she had told Hugh.

Etáin suddenly reached down, took Reverdy’s hands, and brought her to her feet. Then she kissed her on the cheek. “Yes. We can be friends,” she repeated.

Reverdy overcame her shock at the gesture, and reciprocated by bussing one of Etáin’s cheeks. “Yes. We can be friends.”

Etáin’s eyes sparkled with delight. “Reverdy…may I call you Reverdy?’

“Yes, of course…Etáin.”

“Reverdy, let us imagine that we are to give a concert, and select a program of music!”

Reverdy sat down again in the armchair. “That would be fun! Then we must rehearse together. Are there any other musicians we could perhaps call on?”

“There are a few men near town who can play the violin and the flute. The Kenny brothers, and in Williamsburg, many other persons, as well.”

“Wonderful! Do you happen to have the music for Mr. Vivaldi’s ‘Echo Concerto’?”

* * *

That evening, as they watched Hugh and the Brunes leave Morland, Jack grinned at Etáin. “I have never seen Hugh so composed and happy.”

“I am happy for him,” said Etáin. “I would have been happy for him had he married Selina Granby. You know that she had her hat set for him,
and not all at her parents’ urging, either. But Reverdy is different.”

“How so?”

“She does not wish to love him. But she does.”

Jack was silent for a while. “Do you think they will marry?”

“If she is wise enough, she will marry him. She knows it would be her salvation.”

Jack glanced at his wife. “Did you discuss that with her?” he asked, a little astounded that Etáin, so stingily private in social and private matters, would discuss such a subject with another woman.

Etáin shook her head. “No. I have merely seen in her what Hugh has seen.”

When the party returned to Meum Hall, James Brune almost immediately begged his retirement, leaving Hugh and Reverdy on the front porch of the great house. Mrs. Vere, alert as always, came out and offered the couple refreshments. Reverdy declined, as did Hugh. “Good night, Mrs. Vere,” he said. The housekeeper went back inside the house.

Reverdy and Hugh sat again in the porch chairs. “Did you enjoy the evening, Reverdy?”

“Yes, more than any of the other occasions. Mr. Frake is an unusual man. And Etáin is delightful. We have so many interests in common.”

“I expected you both would discover that,” said Hugh. “Jack is my dearest friend, and Etáin — Etáin is special to me.”

Reverdy looked at him. “I know how special.” She paused. “I suppose that when she chose Jack over you, it was not over a ‘cargo of virtues.’”

Hugh shook his head. “Quite the contrary, Reverdy. It was because his was greater than my own.”

Reverdy folded her arms and looked at the night sky. It had cleared, and stars were visible. “Somehow, since coming here, Hugh, my past life diminishes in my eyes, and I feel ashamed of it.”

“Is it shame you feel, or regret?” Hugh reached over and took one of her hands. It was cold from the night air. “Whichever it is, it is time that you forgive yourself. You must contemplate the pedestal again, tell yourself that you are worthy of it, and step back onto it. I know that you are capable of that, my dear, and seeing that capacity, I wish you to stay here, and let James go on by himself.”

“Stay here?” whispered Reverdy, confessing to herself that the possibility had often invaded her thoughts for the past two weeks. Sometimes it had been a welcome invasion; at other times, not.

“As my wife, or as my mistress, I care not which. Just so long as you are here.” Hugh paused. “You must know how much your presence graces and completes my life, Reverdy. I hope that you may say that about me, now that you know it is not so terrible and burdensome a thing.”

Reverdy stared into his eyes. “I can,” she whispered again. “And I do know.” Then she raised the hand that held hers to her lips. She let it linger there for a moment, then said, “I must think about it, Hugh.”

“Of course.”

* * *

I
n Williamsburg, on a chilly, late November afternoon, Lieutenant-Governor Francis Fauquier found, near the bottom of a pile of important correspondence his secretary had placed on his desk for him to peruse, a letter from Hugh Kenrick of Meum Hall, Caxton, requesting the honor of being married by the Lieutenant-Governor, in his capacity as head of the church in the colony, to Mrs. Reverdy Brune-McDougal, recently widowed, at his earliest convenience.

The Lieutenant-Governor was flattered by the request, but more surprised, for he did not think the young man was either marriageable or the marrying kind of man. He liked the fellow, but considered him too flinty and headstrong. Almost arrogant! What woman could tolerate him? Fauquier pondered the paradox for a moment, then shook his head in amused defeat. He had noted more perplexing unions amongst the populace here. Who was he to judge ideal matrimony? He set the letter aside, and later dictated to his secretary an answer to Mr. Kenrick, setting a date for the ceremony in early December. He was more than curious to meet the woman who would wish to share a life with that rambunctious troublemaker. He did not know this lady; the name was not familiar to him. Perhaps Mr. Kenrick had met her in Boston or Philadelphia.

Sitting also in the pile of read correspondence were some pleas and many more requests from merchants and ships’ captains and masters for Mediterranean passes and special clearances to leave port with “unstamped” cargoes. The undertone in most of these missives varied from desperation to anxiety to restrained surliness, all of them imbued with implicit blame of him for any continued inconvenience, and implying economic disaster if he did not grant permission. He would approve all these requests and had already forwarded to Captain Sterling on the
Rainbow
in Hampton and his officers on other naval vessels bundles of special clearance certificates, which temporarily waived the necessity of stamped papers. The foreman of the
Gazette
, on the Lieutenant-Governor’s orders,
was still churning them out by the score. The alternative was to have dozens of vessels riding at anchor in the Bay and tied up in so many Tidewater ports, all paralyzed for lack of a piece of paper.

The Lieutenant-Governor thought his wording of those certificates was a spurt of practical genius. “I do hereby certify that George Mercer, Esq.; appointed distributor of the Stamps for this colony, having declined acting in that character until further orders, declared before me, in Council, that he did not bring with him, or was never charged by the Commissioners of the Customs in England with the care of any Stamps.…” The onus of responsibility was thus placed directly over Mr. Mercer’s head. It was true that Mr. Mercer had not a single stamp on his person when he made that statement, and further, had not signed a receipt for the stamps, which were in fact on the
Rainbow
itself, in Captain Sterling’s custody. But the better half-truth was that, for all practical purposes, they had not arrived. The blame-exonerating certificates would have to do until peaceful means were found to introduce the stamps into the colony’s course of business. Tempers and passions ought to abate with time, hoped the Lieutenant-Governor.

Peter Randolph, that sly-boots member of his Council and the Surveyor-General for the Western Middle District, had tried to persuade him, during a confidential discussion in this very office a few weeks before, that he ought to allow commerce to continue without the stamps, and to share with him either the blame or credit for such an extralegal action. Otherwise, that man had gently warned, there might be “difficulties” of the sort that other governors and correspondents were reporting in neighboring colonies, unpleasantness that might call for gubernatorial actions of dubious practicality.

Fauquier had agreed then only to allow Randolph to act as he saw fit, but would not agree to split the responsibility with him. Then, it was a grave issue of granting official sanction to flouting the law, and of risking the severest of rebukes from the Board of Trade as a consequence, once that body learned of his action. Fauquier was certain that an absence of specific instructions from the Board to deal with the crisis in such a manner would not have been countenanced by that body as either a legitimate excuse or good governorship.

Now, however, he realized that Randolph’s plan was eminently practical. Because, instead of these harmless, inert missives on his desk to answer, there would too likely be, at this very moment, dozens of angry,
determined gentlemen besieging the front door of the Palace, demanding assurances that he would do something, and quickly! Perhaps, he mused, the Crown was responsible for those gentlemen’s assuming that he had the powers of a wizard.

The Lieutenant-Governor was afraid of Virginians, now. He had witnessed their anger and observed the precipice of violence these men had skirted when the unfortunate Mr. Mercer arrived earlier in the month to assume his appointed duties as stamp distributor. Fauquier thought:
If I had not intervened, Mr. Mercer could have suffered a fate worse than humiliation, one perhaps worse than the roughing up he had received in Hampton.

He thought again:
Well, I will condone the resumption of business and commerce without the stamps, for they are simply not available. They are indeed here, but consigned to a netherworld. They may as well have never have crossed the ocean with Mr. Mercer!
It was not so incredible a thing, thought Fauquier. After all, London had even neglected to send him a copy of the Act that he was duty-bound to enforce! He knew its particulars only because Mr. Robinson, the Speaker, had deigned to loan him a copy of the Act that had somehow come into the House last May.
Well
, he thought,
they cannot accuse me of being Buridan’s ass, that beast of burden that starved to death because it could not decide which haystack to eat!

In another special pile of paper assembled by his secretary were memorials from dozens of county courts, in which the undersigned justices declared the Stamp Act to be unconstitutional, asserted their unwillingness to admit the stamps into any of their business, and claimed consequently they were unable to perform their functions. What hubris! thought the Lieutenant-Governor. Then there was the memorial from the justices of the court of Queen Anne County, who had made the same declarations and assertions, but had decided to sit in defiance of the Act.

He had received letters from other governors reporting the same phenomena in their own colonies. What would London think when it heard of this universal foolery! Accompanying their reports were details of violence against appointed distributors and of the subsequent resignations of those men. Why, the fools had even destroyed the home and library of the Chief Justice of Massachusetts, Thomas Hutchinson, a kinder, wiser man Fauquier did not know. And the same Boston mob had pillaged the home of the man’s brother-in-law, Andrew Oliver, forcing him to resign his commission before he had even received it, and obliging him to repeat his abjuration when he had it in hand!

The Lieutenant-Governor mused darkly on the fact that every one of the appointed distributors had resigned. Not a single one had stood his ground. They had all either resigned or fled, rendering their commissions useless and without power of enforcement. His information came not only from his correspondence, but also in the town’s coffeehouses and taverns, in the overheard conversations of other patrons, who talked of the phenomenon with amused, grimly gloating satisfaction.

Even the unfortunate Mr. Mercer, sensing that his life would henceforth be made miserable in Virginia — he very likely shunned, ostracized, and certainly not reelected to his seat in the House by his countrymen — had already left for a return voyage to England, ostensibly to press the claims of the Ohio Company, of which he was a member, but actually because he knew he was now an outcast with a callous future in Virginia. He did not think the man would ever return; during their last interview, he impressed the Lieutenant-Governor as wanting to wish a pox on his fellow Virginians.

Some of the Lieutenant-Governor’s correspondents were kind enough to send him newspapers from other colonies. The single item in one of them that gave the Lieutenant-Governor a sense of normality and solace was a report that in July that literary prince, Samuel Johnson, had been made a Doctor of Law by Trinity College in Dublin. The papers were otherwise replete with news of the same outrages and violence. Homes and warehouses owned by the stamp distributors were destroyed, effigies were hanged and burned, noisy parades and all-night vigils were staged, liberty trees and
faux
gallows were erected, loyal recalcitrants were tarred and feathered — all the usual mob violence.

The raw violence frightened the Lieutenant-Governor more than he wished to contemplate, and certainly more than he could allow himself to express angrily in company, for his concern could be interpreted as a sign of doubt and helplessness. He was grateful that this dangerous foolery had not much occurred in Virginia. He resolved to remain stolidly calm, even when he read such things as a broadside forwarded to him by an official in Pennsylvania, in which some caitiff asserted that the violence against the stamp distributors was “the most effectual and decent method of preventing the execution of a statute, because it was an axe that struck into the root of the tree of tyranny.”

“
Tyranny
?”
Did these commotions, assaults, and vandalism constitute rebellion, or revolution?
the Lieutenant-Governor asked himself. He could
not decide. He wondered: If General Gage sent a regiment or two to any of these venues of anarchy to restore order and Crown authority, would the same roving mobs that preyed on defenseless stamp distributors and chief justices and port officials have the arrogance to confront seasoned, disciplined troops? Fauquier thought they might be reckless and bold enough, their fiery confidence stoked by the example of their late successes and with a fatal sense of righteous omnipotence. He mentally commended the general for staying his martial hand. One such incident might provoke the wrath of the Crown, and Virginia would be among the first colonies to feel
that
particular violence.

After all, it had been his own House’s ill-considered resolves from last May, illegally broadcast to the other colonies, that precipitated the anarchy and continuing uproar. The role of those resolves would doubtless be noted by His Majesty, by the Board of Trade, by the Privy Council, by the new ministry. Trials for treason would certainly ensue, either here in the colonies or in London, followed by hangings, imprisonments, and fortune-consuming fines, together with the punishment of lesser ringleaders and offenders.

Fauquier knew, in the deepest part of his political soul, that one such bloody contest of anger and arms anywhere in the colonies between regular troops and colonials would alarm all those powers in London and move them to press vigorously for a complete and explicit reordering of the colonies’ subordinate relationship with the mother country. Then there would be no arguable doubts about that subordination. Charters would be rewritten, legislatures emasculated or altogether abolished, and less wise, less patient, and less prudent men appointed to all the governorships. Very likely he himself would be replaced, dismissed from office in disgrace for somehow having allowed it all to happen.

The Lieutenant-Governor paused to reflect sadly: Then, no longer would anyone here be able to proclaim with careless confidence, “
Procul á Jove, procul á fulmine!
” The farther away from Jove, the less to fear his thunder bolts!

But he knew distance was irrelevant to the gods of Whitehall. He was certain that a reordering was in the works, with or without an incident. It had been an occasional subject of discussion and speculation during those endless card games in London among his closest friends and colleagues, and frequently a topic of bellicose ranting in the clubs he had frequented there. Because he was regarded as something of an authority on Crown
financial governance, he had even been privileged to read some proposals authored by a number of subministers. The desire to directly control the colonies existed, and had existed long before the late war. Whitehall would deem it lawful administration and proper due deference. But the people here, he knew, would begin to regard it as conquest and enslavement.

The Lieutenant-Governor also knew, in the same depths of his soul, that the colonials would not long brook such a radical reordering without defiance and resistance. Then there would be more bloodshed, and tragedy, the clash of two sets of Constitutional premises. He did not think he would live long enough to witness that certain apocalypse, and was glad of it.

Fauquier read again some of the correspondence, pausing occasionally to take notes for another doleful and obsequious report to the Board of Trade. He could not remember the last time he had composed an optimistic one.
How my veiled complaints must fatigue their lordships!
he thought.

Later that day the Lieutenant-Governor, tired of his labors, pushed back his chair in the diminishing light of fall eventide, and ventured into the chilly air for a late dinner in the Palace with his wife and son. As he passed from the annex to that edifice, a servant rushed from it and intercepted him with the news that Joseph Royle, printer of the
Virginia Gazette
and ill for some time, “was close to passing to his final reward.”

Fauquier stopped long enough to frown in dismay. He muttered, “Zounds! They may blame me for that, as well!”

* * *

A more important personage had already gone to his final reward. Or perhaps to his final punishment, for all the maladies and vices that had plagued him in recent years — near-blindness, abscesses, asthma, obesity, and the collective effects of having led a largely dissolute life — seemed to combine to claim their ultimate due in one sudden, unexpected stroke. The Lieutenant-Governor would not receive news of it for some months. The first reports of the summer and fall disorders from General Gage and several colonial governors had only just then reached London and threaded their way up through the various Crown bureaucracies to the desks of first secretaries and Board of Trade members, together with the remonstrances, memorials, addresses, and resolves from other colonies.