I had turned away from Pearson and his harsh words, and then I had set my face in determination. It must have looked like pain, for I felt a hand upon mine, and when I looked up Mrs. Maycott was smiling at me with warm sympathy. Who was this good woman, I wondered, to feel so strongly for a stranger in what she thought was distress?
I cast her a glance and I smiled, hoping to show she had misunderstood my mood. Then I turned to Pearson. “What is the nature of your business with Duer?”
“What concern is that of yours?”
“I believe he is inquiring to be polite,” Mr. Vanderveer said.
“I believe you are a fool,” Pearson answered. “Well, Saunders, why do you wish to know? Did Hamilton send you to ask me? The Jew gets nothing, so he sends a drunken traitor, is that it?”
“I was invited here,” I answered. “ Hamilton did not send me, and this gentleman is correct. I merely make conversation.”
“Make it about something else,” Pearson said. “My business with Duer is private. We are engaged in a new venture, and we play it quietly. That is all you need to know.”
It was not all I needed to know, but it was something. The entire world speculated on Pearson’s declining capacity. What were the chances that William Duer would trust him with a secret venture?
Any further questions were forestalled by the arrival of a plump, buxom, and not unattractive serving girl. She informed us we might remove ourselves to the dining room. I was pleased to find myself next to Mrs. Maycott and not next to Mrs. Pearson, for I should have found that awkward. That lady did her best to avoid looking in my direction the entire evening, and though Mrs. Maycott made much polite conversation with me, we said nothing of further import-no matters of government or Washington or even accusations of malicious flattery. Mr. Pearson was the sole arbiter of conversational topics, and he chose to speak only of the excellence of his own food, the comfort of his dining chairs, and then, toward the end of the evening, the gripping narrative of his rise from son of the owner of an importation business to the exalted heights of being himself the owner of an importation business. Mrs. Maycott and Mrs. Vanderveer both gamely attempted to join the conversation, but Mr. Pearson would not have it. As for the lady of the house, she had, I could only presume, long ago abandoned all efforts at civil discourse.
I therefore endured pea soup, boiled potatoes with bacon, roasted pig, chicken in wine sauce, roasted apples in sugar, and a whipped syllabub-all of it without a single pleasant exchange. The wine, however, flowed. Mr. Pearson seemed unduly interested in his wife’s consumption, commenting rather loudly when she finished her first glass and accepted a second, which went sadly unfinished. More than once, our eyes met over the embrace of this communion. She looked away. I did not. Mr. Pearson made the occasional unkind observation, but it altered neither conversation nor behavior. When Mrs. Pearson accepted a glass of port with her baked apples, her husband began such a paroxysm of tuts and clucks he sounded like a henhouse at feeding time.
“Have you not had enough to drink already?” he asked.
She now met her husband’s eye, and her expression was dark and foreboding. Perhaps she had indeed had too much wine. “I believe I am the best judge.”
“I think, of all possible judges, you may not be the best. The wife of one of the first men of the city ought to conduct herself with more sobriety. For all the world it appears as though you and that rascal are engaged in a tavern drinking contest.” The reader may be surprised to learn that he gestured toward me when he spoke.
“Really, Jack,” began Mr. Vanderveer.
“I’d advise you not to interfere,” said Pearson. “It is a foolish thing for a man to wedge himself between another and his wife. In addition, that great belly of yours tells us you know nothing of when a person has had enough. Another baked apple, Anders?”
“There is no reason to be cruel,” said Mrs. Vanderveer quietly.
“What is this? An entire sentence empty of flattery? All the toad-eating in the world shan’t help you in the matter of my will, so be easy on it.”
Mr. Vanderveer slapped the table. “I do object. That has never been our intention.”
Pearson waved a hand in the air. “Yes, yes, don’t be tedious.” He pushed himself to his feet. “Well, it has been very good company. Now I am tired, and I must to bed. Good night to the lot of you.” With that he left the room, leaving the rest of us in stunned silence and the unfortunate Mrs. Pearson with the responsibility of determining what must come next.
I, however, was not yet ready for the festivities to end, and I rose from my chair, excused myself to the company, and hurried after my host. He had stepped only a few paces out of the room and was on the landing at the stairwell, where only a single candle illuminated the gloom, when I caught him. He contemplated the darkness and had turned to call for a servant, when he saw me instead.
“What, Saunders? What is this?”
“I wanted to speak with you in private for a moment, if you will.”
“I’ve nothing to say to you. I ought never to have had you in my home. I shall speak to Mrs. Maycott about what manner of person she claims as a friend.”
I stared at him, his face-aging and on the very cusp of becoming elderly-in the dim light, the yellow flame reflecting off the yellow teeth. He was frightened to be alone with me.
All I’d had to drink rushed about in my head, and I forced myself to focus. “I want to know about you and Duer.”
“I won’t speak of it. I am to say nothing, and I shall say nothing.”
“What of your properties in Southwark? You’ve lost them or sold them. And then there is the matter of your loan from the Bank of the United States. I understand your payments are past due, and you won’t even appear when summoned. Are you unprepared to talk about that?”
Pearson’s face twisted into a grotesquerie of hatred. All signs of the rugged man, the handsome man he had once been, were blasted away by an explosion of fury that altered, in a single flash, the landscape of his countenance.
“Do you mean to have your revenge, Saunders? All those years ago, you fled Philadelphia and I happened to marry the girl you once set your cap at. So now you must hound me?”
I could not show how bitter his words made me, and I would not dismiss my feelings for Cynthia-not for his satisfaction or my advantage. I said nothing.
Pearson seemed to grow calmer. He said, “Mrs. Maycott seems fond enough of you, and she’s an excellent widow to catch. Put your mind to that, if you dare, and leave me and my family alone. You are not welcome inside this house again-or any longer, for that matter. I go to bed, but I shall tell my servants that if you are not gone in a quarter hour you are to be removed forcibly.”
Pearson now turned from me and ascended the dark staircase. He did not pause to say good night, which was rude.
W hen I returned to the sitting room, Mr. and Mrs. Vanderveer were rising and thanking their hostess for an enjoyable evening. Perhaps it was a different, earlier evening they mentioned. They spoke as though the meal had come to a natural and pleasant conclusion. They spoke of the lateness of the hour, the goodness of the food. They thanked the hostess and departed.
Then it was Mrs. Maycott’s turn. “You are a lovely hostess, Cynthia. Thank you so much for having me.”
“Joan.” She cast her eyes downward.
Mrs. Maycott raised a finger to her lips. “It need not be said. We are friends. I shall show myself out. I hope you have no objection if I first speak to your cook. That chicken was marvelous, and I would learn how she does it.”
“Of course.”
The two ladies embraced, and Mrs. Maycott allowed me to take her hand, which was very smooth for the time of year. Then she was gone, leaving me alone with Mrs. Pearson. We were both standing, looking to where Mrs. Maycott had gone, not quite sure what to say.