I once met a girl from New Haven
Who thought all my fellows quite craven
I kissed her despite
Her protest that night
And now she thinks me quite the brave'un.
New Haven, Connecticut - 1772 - The Bell and Drum - They were a rowdy group that late afternoon. Lectures were not to re-start for a sennight, and for a brief, brief moment the seven of them were not on about how many pages for this professor, how soon a treatise need be written for that one. There was, instead, only ale and bread. Cheese, if you wished it. Talk of pretty girls and when one might next be invited to a party, notions of who might look for better (or cheaper) lodgings during the short break, depending upon whether their marks inspired parents at home sending allowances, or worried them (and therefore cut into one's finances).
Billy Roe, the loudest of the group, and its lone upperclassman (who, truth-be-told drank with lower-classmen because they were more likely to pay for his ales), began a chant, expecting Ben to chug what was left in everyone's glass so that a new round might be ordered.
"Tall-MADGE! Tall-MADGE! Tall-MADGE!" The walls of the establishment rang with that Setauket surname in the challenge.
Ben was not at all certain he could handle the task (it would have made quick enough work for the likes of Caleb Brewster, had he been ashore-which he was at the present moment not), but he was in a game enough mood to attempt it, and leaned toward the first mug in sight.
But before he clapped a hand upon it, the serving girl had her hand to his upper arm. Her grip-for one yet so young and reasonably pretty-was surprisingly strong. "You're Benjamin Tallmadge?" she asked, and her face abruptly looked less pretty. "Of Long Island?"
"Yes," he answered obediently, baffled at her attention, at her disrupting their gaiety.
"You'll settle your tab before you drink another drop, here."
"Settle my tab?" he asked, incredulous. "I don't know as if I've been here above two times in my life!"
The other students at the table paused to watch what transpired between him and the girl.
"Then it's quite the constitution you have for liquor, Mr. Tallmadge of Long Island," she said. "For it's a fat one-and overdue."
He looked back, and his entire group was leering in pride-and no doubt about to engage in bets and speculations as to how large it was, and what he may have visited upon this tavern maid in prior visits to make her quite so prickly with him now.
"No, no," he tried to assure them (though it was clear they preferred to believe the girl), "there is some misunderstanding here. I shall sort it out."
He stood up and walked to the bar, behind which the innkeep stood. A paper was produced, bearing a rather ridiculous amount of credit owed upon it, and what may have stood for his signature-had he been very intoxicated when scribing it.
"This is ridiculous," he said, realizing quickly that this particular innkeep was quite large enough to make him regret opposing his assertion of the debt owed.
Ben looked back to the table. His party still watched on. He could not simply refuse to pay the tab in front of them. It would appear dishonest, no matter that he was certain it was not his.
He pulled several notes from his pocket and laid them down for the innkeep to examine. "I shall not be coming here again," he promised, certain he had been swindled into paying a bill he had never incurred.
"Fine by me, my boy," the innkeep told him, accepting his payment. "Much prefer paying customers than you fine, tab-running Yalies."
The others begged him to rejoin the table, but he found his enjoyment of the place (and any ready cash for further celebration) quite gone.
He had almost shaken the incident off when he had arrived back at his lodgings. It was a rooming house, the concierge-an older woman-with a door just as you walked in, so that she might be easily found should you need her, or visitors come to call for you.
Her household was well-respected, and exclusively housed students. He was fairly certain he was one of her favorite boarders.
As he entered, he saw the curtain of her window move, and as he passed through the door into the house (on his way upstairs to his room), her door scraped open until she was standing beside it, looking as though she wished to confront him.
"Ma'am?" he asked, with deference and uncertainty.
"This came for you today," she held out a paper, her mouth turned down. "Your tailor's bill. He regrets to mention that it has not been paid, and is now considered past due." She swallowed as though the next part was difficult for her to share. "If you cannot pay, Mr. Tallmadge, he states that he will be...taking action."
"Action?" he almost choked. "Tailor?" he looked down to his self-mended cuff. He had not had so much as a single shirt of new clothes since well before the school year began, and nothing he owned at present required professional tailoring.
"Mr. Tallmadge-" his landlady began, and he became very worried that if she went on she might be about to dismiss him from her house.
"Ma'am, No." he said. "There has been some mistake. Please, allow me the dignity of finding out why this was sent to me. I shall come to you straight after and explain what the mix-up must be. You must not think that I-"
"You have always been a good tenant, Mr. Tallmadge. And because of that I will wait until tomorrow to have the story from you. But that is all. I cannot have my rooms go empty. Nor my young men bring shame to this address."
"No, Ma'am," he agreed. Many of his classmates were paying double the rate for far less-nice accommodations.
He took the bill from her, but light in the hallway was such, even before sundown, that he could not see to read it. He took the stairs two at a time toward his upper-floor room.
In his haste and distraction, he had not been quiet on the stair, nor did he pause before throwing open the door to his private room.
The windows in the room were large (one of the reasons he had taken it-hoping to save coin on candles), and so plenty of what was left of daylight illuminated its contents before him.
It should have been a modest, though (he thought) cozily, accoutred sleeping room, with a bed, good table beneath the wall of two windows, chair, hearth and two single shelves of various sizes that held what he owned of books.
Instead, what he saw was a mountain of moving petticoats upon his mattress, the bedframe beneath them shuddering as it creaked in a way unfamiliar to it, and a pair of fine men's boots jutting out from among said petticoats.
In a different mood, no doubt his first impulse would have been to turn his back upon such an unexpected discovery, even though it was occurring without his permission, in his rooms. But he was primed for anger by this point, his frustration with what was going on this day and all these incorrectly-served-to-him bills, ready to blow.
"Thunder and brimstone!" he shouted with all the vocal command the son of a reverend might learn (or have inherited)-stunned at the thought of such shenanigans taking place in his landlady's home, much less in his own rooms.
He did not recognize the boots as belonging to any of the other student boarders.
At his voice and entry, the pair on the bed ceased their activity immediately, unable to ignore his noisy entrance and his loud shout of protest. A flap of petticoats were tossed back, and he saw the pattern of the frock on the girl, who sat astride someone still not visible from under the rest of her skirts.
Her hair was dark, and what poets might have called glossy black. Anna Smith's father had a beloved gelding of that same color he quite highly prized. Her nose was short, bobbed, and likely had prevented her from ever being told she was beautiful, it was simply too charming to be taken very seriously. He could not make out her eyes, as she disembarked both his bed and the fellow beneath her in order to straighten her clothing (though petticoats now down, she was for the most part ready for public view, save a lock or two of hair displaced by her exertions).
Having less interest in this unknown female than the (he had assumed) housemate of his underneath of her, Ben's eyes shot back toward his bed, to find a man re-collecting himself into his trousers.
"Brewster!" he shouted, more like a swear than any curse he could at the moment call up. Caleb Brewster had not been seen ashore for the better part of a year, and then, nowhere in the vicinity of New Haven.
"Um, ah-" Caleb Brewster, stammered, a man rarely at a loss for words. The whaler looked little of himself, being clean shaven, and wearing what appeared to be newly fashionable clothes. In looks he could almost pass for one of Ben's wealthier classmates.
"Brewster?" the girl asked, her voice not exactly confused, not exactly outraged.
"Yes, madam," Ben assured her, though did not take his eyes off Caleb. "Allow me to introduce you to your paramour," his own tone was terse and far from amused. "Caleb Brewster, Whaler-on-holiday, and all-around Arse." Ben's jaw was so tight he barely opened his mouth to say the words. "I am-" he began to explain his claim upon the room and bed which he felt certain she had been brought to under false pretenses.
"Benjamin Tallmadge, of Long Island," she said, shaking her head, her lips together in an expression of 'of course you are, I should have known it'.
His eyebrow shot up at her knowing this, and then he moved instinctively to replace a book that had, in the ruckus, fallen from his nightstand onto the floor.
"Benny-" Caleb began, now re-dressed, his boots soles to the floor. His hands were out in supplication.
But Ben was in no mood to be either charmed or mollified. "What do you mean, by bringing-" he stalled out a moment on the proper word, particularly since said person was still among their company, "women to my room?"
"Well, I-"
"Got tired of drinking at the Bell and Drum?" he shook the signed tab in the air, its parchment crackling with the motion. "Or," and here he went ahead and grabbed Caleb by the lapels of his obviously new frock coat, "felt an urge to muss your new clothes?" He stuffed the second bill, for the tailoring, into the top of Caleb's equally well-made waistcoat.
"Easy now, easy there, Tall-boy," Caleb brought his hands up to try and prise Ben's fists off his new coat. "No harm meant. No harm done. 'Tis only this New Haven of yours is built for students. It's all the fashion to leave a tab-I've the coin to cover it all, don't worry. No harm done."
Ben's hands relaxed somewhat at the news he was not to be financially ruined by his childhood friend, and he felt Caleb's hands go to pat at his chest as his own eyes slid over to the other problem: this unknown female in his private sleeping quarters, his exacting (and upright) landlady but one flight of stairs away. "And when you are playing at being one of those students..." he began to apprehend Caleb's scheme.
Caleb took a step closer to Ben, as if there was any possibility he might speak in confidence (which there was not), "she liked you study-bodies, when I went to pay at the inn 'twas just suggested I start a tab. Same at the tailor's. When I had first brought her back here-she found your books. Saw your name written in them and just...assumed."
"And so you assumed my identity-"
Brewster shrugged. "Only for a few hours here and there."
"Wait," his brain had gone back and caught on something. "When you first brought her back here?"
Caleb threw a smitten look at the girl. "She liked to read me your texts. Thought she was helpin' me study, I liked the way she looked when she was readin'," he shrugged, as if Ben should understand he had no control over such things. "'Tis a nice enough sound to fall asleep to."
Ben looked back to the girl. "Perhaps you'd best introduce me," he said, though his tone was clipped still with annoyance. "So I know the proper name to give the constable when my landlady throws the three of us out of here."
"This is Daisy-," Caleb began, and stalled out.
"Et est nomen meum Daisy Stanhope," she answered, surprising Ben by introducing herself in Latin.
"Facere ordinem vestrum," after a pause of surprise he responded with a nod and what was sure to be a puzzled expression on his face. He had no true idea how to comport himself in such a tangled, ungenteel instance.
Ben could now see her eyes, which were quick, clear brown as weak tea, but also (for such a moment) surprisingly indulgent when they took in both he and his 'friend'. It seemed she was enjoying this scene more than feeling troubled by it.
Her clothes were tidy and neat, if not as fashionable or luxurious as those of the young ladies he had grown accustomed to attending parties with. She had all her teeth. She did not look of a working girl. Certainly not the kind one encountered in the town, upon the streets.
"So it is Caleb Brewster," she said. "Well that is one mystery solved."
"How do you mean? Were you not fooled by me? By my scholarly airs?"
She laughed. "You seemed enough of a Yalie to begin with," she told him. "But you hold your liquor far too well, and tell better stories."
"Why did you not confess you'd discovered me?" Caleb asked her.
She shrugged. "A girl can't find books like that just anywhere."
"Books?" Ben asked. "My books?" He looked over at what he fondly thought of as his library.
She shrugged again. "Not to say the rest hasn't been-a pleasure," she said in Caleb's direction, and if he'd been wearing a hat he'd have doffed it to her.
"Ah, don't go, Daisy!" he said, when she took steps toward the door.
"I think she must, Caleb. There are several reputations on the line here, though, as usual, none of them yours. Miss Stanhope," Ben nodded to her, as he might when bidding any respectable woman good day.
"Mr. Tallmadge," she replied, equally cordially, and reached for the door.
His arm shot out to prevent her from grasping the door knob by placing his own hand over it.
She looked confused, until he turned his hand over, palm up, indicating that she give over what he had found missing from his shelves: his copy of Virgil.
Looking slightly chastened, she produced it from somewhere among her stockings (he did not watch directly, choosing modesty on her behalf even if she did not choose it for herself), and placed it in his hand. Unsettlingly the leather binding was still warm from her body's heat.
"Let me just see you down to the street-" Caleb said and ducked out of the room after her. pursuing his primitive understanding of chivalry.
Ben prayed they'd be able to avoid his landlady as much as they had when they had arrived.
How his childhood friend usually met women he could easily imagine (had, in times past, watched on), but one who enjoyed reading-and knew Latin at that-and who would pursue not only Caleb's affections but access to scholarly books-well, that was certainly an unexpected wrinkle in Brewster's list of conquests.
When Caleb returned, within the quarter hour (though Ben had not asked him back) Ben had straightened the coverlet to his bed, re-straightened all his books (though they had not needed it), lit several candles (more than usual) and was considering adjourning downstairs to his supper, as served to boarders by his landlady-to whom he owed at least the knowledge that the tailoring bill would be paid first thing tomorrow.
"You can't do that, Caleb," Ben began his lecture as the door cracked open. "To say nothing of taking out credit in my name!"
"I know! I know!" Caleb threw up his hands. "Won't happen again. Seaman's honor! Next time I'll bring one for you."
"BREW-ster," said Ben, his eyes rolling high, his brows flaring.
"Ah, think nothing of it, Benny-boy," Caleb carried on, flashing a huge grin. "Best not lag behind, landlady's rung the bell, and we don't want to miss our repast."
"Repast?" Ben questioned Caleb's unusual use of the word.
Caleb shrugged as he put one foot on the top step, "Daisy, she knows lots of fine words."