The Whiskey Rebel

“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 stu

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 ma

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.

“She is charming,” said Mrs. Pearson. “And they say her husband left her wealthy.”

“It is good to know that husbands may be good for something,” I said. “Such as leaving money to their wives.”

I feared I may have exceeded my limits, but Mrs. Pearson burst out into a shrill, girlish laugh such as I never thought to hear again.

“Captain Ethan Saunders, let us take a drink in the library.”

“Mrs. Cynthia Pearson, your husband has informed me that if I am not gone in a quarter hour, I shall be tossed out by the servants.”

She smiled at me. “I’ve learned a thing or two after a decade of marriage. The servants are loyal to me. And the library is well removed far from Mr. Pearson’s room. There is no better place to go in the house to avoid his notice.”

“Then, Mrs. Pearson, let us go by all means. I do love a good library.”

Her pretty plump girl led us to the library, where a fire already burned. The girl lit a number of candles and provided us with an excellent bottle of port. She was good enough to pour a glass for each of us, and equally good enough to disappear afterward.

Cynthia let out a sigh and sat in a high-backed chair across from me and, just like that, something changed. That one small gesture did it. It was as though a master carpenter presented two pieces of wood and they fit together with such preordained snugness that they clicked upon joining. So it was that Cynthia, in her good-natured and indulgent sigh, in her uncomplicated slide into a high-backed chair, put me at my ease. I was not an unwelcome intrusion from her past but something far more pleasing.

“It was wrong of Joan to invite you here tonight,” Cynthia said, studying her port. “I think she is mischievous.”

“Such old friends as we are might be in the same room without mischief.”

“It was not what I meant. I wish you had not seen Mr. Pearson in one of his moods.”

“I understand, and yet I have seen it. Mrs. Pearson, you asked for my help before. You asked me to find your husband because you believed yourself and your children in danger. I ca

“You mustn’t say that,” she said. “We ca

“Then I won’t speak to you so. It will be all business. I never mind a deception or two if it is to cover one’s own tracks, but you must own up if discovered. Did you ask Mrs. Maycott to invite me here and to do it publicly at the party so all could see it was not of your doing?”

She blushed deeply. “How did you know?”

“Only a feeling. It was a clever maneuver.”

“Thank you. I did learn a thing or two from you during the war. I always loved to hear of your tricks and schemes, and at last I had a chance to put into place a little scheme of my own.”

“To what end?” I asked. “I would like to flatter myself that you wished no more than my company, but I ca

“It began some six weeks ago,” she said. “Mr. Pearson has never been the most even-tempered of men, but he grew much more irritable than usual. And he began to have around the house a very uncouth sort of man, very western-looking, with a scar upon his face.”