The Seekers Page 21

  But a few of the French winterers—the men whose fathers and grandfathers had pioneered the trade years earlier—disliked all Englishmen, and journeyed down to St. Louis on the Mississippi to sell their catches to Americans trying to gain a foothold in the lucrative industry. Gilbert didn’t doubt that one of the objectives of Jefferson’s western expedition was the discovery of new routes to help American traders capture a larger share of the fur business. Because national rivalries were involved, a purpose like that would, of necessity, be kept secret until it was accomplished—

  As would other details of the mission, simply because the president’s monumental purchase—which some New Englanders called totally illegal—was sketchy on certain questions of boundaries. By exploring, Captain Lewis might help settle future disputes. Possession, as the old saying claimed, was still nine points of the law.

  Establishment of territorial rights would blunt the thrust of Canadian expansion too, balk the fur entrepreneurs already pushing their trapping parties west and south—

  The Louisiana acquisition had made it all possible. It had also come as a stunning surprise to the country.

  Minister Plenipotentiary Monroe had sailed to France the preceding January to investigate the possibility of buying the port of New Orleans, and perhaps some additional territory in the West Floridas, for no more than two million dollars. On arrival, Monroe was offered not merely the requested territory, but all of the Louisiana lands west of the Mississippi and north of the Gulf!

  The turnabout in French policy—marking the abandonment of Bonaparte’s vision of an empire in the western hemisphere—had two causes: the failure of the French military to suppress a decade-long slave revolt on the island of Haiti, and, closer to home, the threat of renewed hostilities with Britain.

  More than eight hundred and thirty thousand square miles were involved in the offer. Astonishingly, Jefferson quickly accepted it—and the price of sixty million francs, or about fifteen million in dollars. The sum included the payment of some American war debts. By Gilbert’s reckoning, the purchase itself amounted to something like three pennies per acre—which had to be one of the most remarkable real estate bargains of recorded history.

  Gilbert had already read an edited text of the treaty of cession. For safety’s sake, three copies of the full document had been rushed to the United States by three different couriers aboard three fast packets. The Senate had yet to ratify the treaty, however. And in the inevitable debate, old positions were being turned topsy-turvy.

  The president, known to favor strict interpretation of the Constitution, adopted a somewhat broader view where the purchase was concerned. He argued that constitutional power to govern territory implied the right to acquire it. The majority of New England Federalists, normally loose constructionists, had likewise reversed themselves, insisting that nowhere in the Constitution was the president authorized to buy new land. Gilbert suspected Jefferson had made a pragmatic decision, bending principle to accommodate his conviction that the purchase would enrich the country in everything from minerals and timber—and fur-bearing animals—to much-needed land for settlement and agricultural cultivation.

  From reading the edited text, Gilbert was well aware that the boundaries of the ceded land were vague, especially in the north and far west, where a vast mountain chain separated the inland prairies from the Pacific coastal region which a Boston skipper had explored in 1792. Discovering a great river that poured down out of the mountains—the western end of the legendary Northwest Passage, perhaps?—the skipper had christened it with the popular name “Columbia.”

  Gilbert admired Jefferson’s labyrinthine thinking. With one stroke—the expedition—he could solidify the nation’s claim to new territory and aid an increasingly important sector of the economy.

  Suddenly he sat upright. Snatched Lewis’ letter and scanned it.

  He blinked several times. A smile slowly lifted the corners of his mouth. He just might have stumbled onto something—!

  He rose quickly, tucked the letter into the pocket of his coat which lay neatly folded over another chair. He paced back and forth for a minute. Then he sat down. He tented his fingers and tilted his chair back, soothed by the faint and rhythmic thump-thump of the book presses churning out pages on the first floor. Despite his youth, he resembled nothing so much as a frail old man cogitating.

  Gilbert knew what his critics said of him. That he had an almost driven desire to succeed—to be a good steward of the assets left by Philip Kent’s passing. As a result, he sometimes behaved like a man three times his years. He never let it trouble him. Thinking without the passion of youth could be an advantage.

  It proved so now, as he looked at Abraham’s problems in an objective way.

  He believed the problems sprang from three interrelated sources. The first was Abraham’s obvious guilt about being responsible for his wife’s death.

  The second, perhaps as deep and fundamental as the first—although Abraham had never even mentioned it to Gilbert—was the rift between father and son when Abraham and his bride set out for the west. Philip’s death during Abraham’s absence had effectively prevented any healing of the wounds of either party.

  The third source of the problems was Abraham himself.

  Looking back to his own boyhood, Gilbert could recall very nearly worshiping his half brother. His precipitous entry into the world of adult affairs had purified his thinking on many subjects, burned away old illusions. He could make a more accurate appraisal now: Abraham was a man of weaker character than their father.

  Gilbert didn’t consider it callous to form such judgments of the living and the dead. In all things, he tried to be rational. He knew it would have been difficult indeed for almost any young man, himself included, to have matched Philip Kent’s mental and physical toughness.

  To offset his limp, Philip had kept himself in perfect condition. He had constantly educated himself—a process made easier by his professional involvement with books and journalism. Gilbert, sickly as a child, had never faced the necessity of competing with his father on both fronts. Physically he was no match. That gave him leave to devote himself to keeping up with Philip’s mind as best he could.

  Abraham, sadly, had lived completely in Philip’s shadow—and suffered by comparison. When Abraham married Elizabeth, stirring the so-called Fletcher temperament into the brew, no wonder explosions resulted.

  Against that background, Gilbert analyzed the idea that had popped into his mind a few minutes ago. A mad idea, some would say—perhaps even Abraham himself! Yet Gilbert embraced it because he could no longer permit Abraham’s behavior to go unchecked. Not only was his half brother destroying himself with his drinking and troublemaking, he was harming his son. Perhaps irreparably.

  As Gilbert sat and pondered, beams of slanting sunshine turned his cheeks to the color of warm ivory. His mind roved over tales told by fur factors who had made the difficult trip to the country’s western outposts, St. Louis and Michilimackinac, there to bargain with the trappers whose wanderings had taken them into the country Lewis proposed to cross and map. The factors brought back astonishing, almost fanciful accounts of a sea of grass stretching west toward the mountain rampart. They spoke of gigantic herds of the bison like those the Kentucky settlers had slain and eaten for years.

  Out there, it was said, the red tribes were different from Indians of the east. They raised and rode horses, acquiring a dangerous mobility lacked by nations such as the Shawnee.

  And now Mr. Meriwether Lewis was captaining an expedition to that very land. Abraham had soldiered with Lewis under General Wayne. Yes, and with the other one—the younger brother of George Rogers Clark. By God, it was perfect!

  Even though the solution carried an element of risk, Gilbert didn’t shrink from it. In the two years since he’d taken charge of Kent and Son, he had proved over and over that risk-taking could pay off handsomely. The only difference now was in the nature of what was at stake. Not money, but a man’
s life and sanity.

  The question, then, was whether to consult Abraham first or present him with an accomplished fact. Thinking a few minutes more, Gilbert decided on the latter course. Abraham must have no excuse to back out, no more latitude in which to indulge his excesses. The press room was nearing the point of mutiny.

  His mind raced. Much remained to be done before he went home for the evening. And much remained after that. He’d have to speak to Abraham as soon as his half brother returned from whatever den he’d crawled into after the fight.

  Beyond that, he needed to gain his wife Harriet’s consent to her role in the plan. She had disliked Abraham and Jared—but particularly Abraham—since the day the two had come home after Elizabeth’s death. The fact that Harriet was now in her eighth month of her first pregnancy wouldn’t make Gilbert’s job any easier. It would require extra effort on his part to make sure dinner this evening was composed and cordial—an appropriate forum for him to share his plan with his spouse before broaching it to Abraham.

  Yes, he had much to do—

  Commencing with the draft of a letter.

  iv

  He found fresh paper, inked his quill and began to scribble in that small, compressed hand others found so difficult to decipher.

  My dear Captain Lewis,

  I am in receipt of yours of the first instant, for which my deepest thanks. I hope I do not place you under an undue burden by tendering a most urgent request which, at the same time, could well work to your benefit—

  Ten minutes later, Gilbert stepped to the office door.

  “Mr. Morecam?” The reporter hurried over.

  “Sir?”

  “Can you spare an hour from your duties?” Gilbert asked rhetorically. “You’ve a good hand—and I have a letter that needs to be copied three times—and kept entirely confidential. I want the letter to go to Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Louisville, so that I’m certain it reaches the recipient—just like the purchase treaty, eh?”

  “I’ll be happy to make the copies, Mr. Kent.”

  “Bring them in as soon as you’re finished and I’ll see about the posting.”

  “By the regular mails? I can do that for you.”

  “Speed is essential. I want to engage private couriers.”

  Morecam goggled, contemplating the expense of that. Gilbert wheeled back into his office—and rushed out of the building an hour later. Seldom had employees of Kent and Son seen the youthful owner depart in such haste—and so early! A full hour before closing.

  Nor had they ever seen such an intense luster in his dark eyes—or such touches of emotional color in his cheeks.

  If Mr. Gilbert Kent the modernist was engrossed in another venture, it had to be a very important one indeed.

  Chapter V

  The Mark

  i

  “YOU MAY SERVE THE plum pudding,” Harriet Kent said to the girl in the striped cotton dress and gingham apron. “No hard sauce for the boy. But refill the milk pitcher.”

  On the side of the dining table opposite Abraham’s empty place, Jared Adam Kent made a face. “I don’t want any more milk, Aunt Harriet.”

  The maid hesitated. The young woman at the foot of the table glared. “Jared, I am growing tired of your impertinence. You behave like a dock boy instead of a child reared in a Christian home.”

  “Harriet,” Gilbert said softly, pursing his lips.

  “The boy is disrespectful! To me, to the servants, to everyone! He’s a willful, headstrong child—”

  As if to confirm it, Jared said, “I won’t drink any more even if you whip me.” He was handsome for a five-year-old, with long tawny hair and brilliant blue eyes. But his face had a fatigued, pasty look.

  And his retort made Harriet furious. “You see what I mean, Gilbert? He not only looks like his mother, he acts like her!”

  Jared reacted with a stunned look, then with obvious anger. In a controlled voice, Gilbert said, “Raking over the past is futile and cruel. Especially in front of—”

  “I disagree. We’ve tiptoed around the issue too long. You’ve told me how his mother behaved. Defiant of everyone—”

  “Please stop,” Gilbert broke in, aware of the hurt and hostility in the boy’s eyes.

  Harriet opened her mouth, hesitated, then glanced sharply at the maid.

  “Bring the milk, Esther.”

  “Papa wouldn’t force me to have it,” Jared said.

  Harriet leaned forward awkwardly; she was approaching the end of her term. Her huge stomach couldn’t be minimized, not even by the expensive, high-waisted maternity gown of lavender lawn she wore over a matching petticoat. Gilbert pushed his chair away from the table, noting unhappily that his wife’s features had taken on a familiar, pinched look. It had to do with her dark eyes. When she was angry, she tended to slit them, and frown. The contraction changed the proportions of her features subtly.

  “Your father is not in charge of this household,” she said to the boy. “Indeed, if he were present for meals a little more often—present and sober—he’d take you in hand.”

  Rapping his palm on the table, Gilbert said, “That will be quite enough, Harriet.”

  “Why? It’s true—but you’re always evading that issue, too.” She gestured to the vacant place. “Abraham’s gone more than he’s here!”

  “We had a great deal of work at the firm today. I asked him to stay late to help with it.”

  Harriet’s pale lips compressed, branding the lie for what it was. She had an oval face, dark hair, fine patrician features. But bad temper destroyed the total effect.

  Gilbert glanced at Jared. The boy sat on a pillow that raised him to table height. His downcast expression showed that he too disbelieved Gilbert’s statement. Jared had seen his father’s place empty too many evenings, watched Abraham come stumbling in from Beacon Street, unkempt and incoherent, too many times. Sadly, Gilbert reflected that Jared might not understand the word sober—or its opposite. But instinct surely told him his father’s behavior was abnormal, and wrong.

  The maid waiting nervously for a final resolution of the milk question started to speak to Harriet. Gilbert was quicker. “We’ll not have any more milk, Esther. Nor the pudding either. You may retire.”

  “Yes, sir.” She curtseyed and left.

  “Jared, be so good as to go up to your room,” Gilbert said.

  The boy started to protest, then took note of Gilbert’s stern expression and slipped off the pillow. Irked by her husband’s intervention, Harriet stared at him, spots of color showing in her cheeks. The color deepened when Jared blurted, “You don’t like Papa, do you, Aunt Harriet?”

  “That is not a suitable question for a boy your age! This house is partly his—”

  “But you wish it weren’t, don’t you?”

  “Jared, go,” Gilbert said, soft but firm.

  Jared paid no attention. “You wish we’d both leave and never trouble you again, don’t you?”

  “Jared!” Gilbert rose halfway out of his chair.

  Eyeing his uncle, Jared looked less pugnacious all at once. Gilbert sat down again. “You owe your aunt Harriet the same politeness she owes you. And please remember, she’s expecting a child. That makes a person—well, rather cross at times. You do understand?”

  Jared’s tawny hair shone in the light of the chandelier candles. His blue eyes were almost venomous as tears sprang into them and he cried, “I understand she doesn’t want Papa here—or me!”

  He spun, dashed to the hall and clattered away up the stairs while thunder muttered in the distance.

  ii

  The moment Jared had gone, Harriet vented her anger. “I’m sick of the way you coddle that boy. You’ve said time and again how willful his mother was—and when he flaunts his temperament, you overlook it!”

  “Harriet—”

  “Must we suffer another Elizabeth Fletcher in this house? Abraham is bad enough, but—”

  “The immediate concern is the father, not the son. I don�
�t believe we should continue to discuss—”

  “Why not? The boy resists the slightest imposition of authority! Absolutely refuses to behave as any respectable boy shou—”

  “God’s sake, Harriet!” he burst out, in such an unusually loud voice that his wife recoiled in her chair. “Is that all that ever matters to you—respectability? Did you look at that child? He’s tormented with fear!”

  “Of me?” she asked in an arch way.

  “Of you and his father. Harsh discipline won’t alleviate the problem. Nor will constant harping about his mother’s faults. You’ll only make him feel worthless—and his behavior will get worse.”

  “Do you deny he’s headstrong?”

  “Of course not. But the way to cure it is with kindness, not rancor. He hasn’t lived like normal children. Have you forgotten he saw his own mother murdered?”

  “And whose fault is that?”

  Gilbert uttered a dismayed sigh. “Is it necessary to place blame? It happened, that’s all.”

  Harriet leaned forward again, a movement that emphasized her bulk and clumsiness. “But it would not have happened if Abraham hadn’t subjected his wife to the hardships of the west. Had he stayed in Boston, Jared wouldn’t be a spoiled only child. He’d have an older brother or sister—”

  “You’re now blaming Abraham for Elizabeth losing her first baby?”

  “Yes, he was responsible.”

  “Nonsense. Utter nonsense!”

  Harriet’s dark eyes suddenly became very bright. Her voice grew cool, malicious. “Is it? My dear, you told me a few weeks after Abraham returned that Elizabeth was the one instrumental in their departure.”