Christmas season - 1776

We hear nothing of the war. It is presumed by most that any fighting will cease until better weather arrives with the Spring, and each army's troops may march and battle in fairer weather.

Though I may say I enjoy reading for both pleasure and enrichment, I have spent no time at all with military texts, and very little with contemporaneous accounts of the soldiering life, and I therefore must take others' opinions upon the subject as fact.

It is a topic, one presumes, might spark conversation from one of the lieutenants quartered here with us in the house. Should one such as I wish to engage either man in conversation. Perhaps I shall suggest it as a topic to Bess. She is in want of lively company, always, and so spends a great deal of her time alone assembling lists of conversational topics both acceptable and most likely to spur on further interaction.

As for me, certainly I enjoy visiting, and the energetic exchange of ideas among people well-suited to enjoying one another's company. But I find more and more one need offer no opening question or even salutation in order to get our resident lieutenants talking. They gossip like fishermen at the docks, and when they are not speaking of their own self-importance they are more than happy to speak of another's lack. To begin such speeches, they require no encouragement.

It was last night, later than ought be, I will confess, that I was up and still about the main rooms of the house. The sitting room of a night is always lit by at least two lamps (Sally B sees to it) should the lieutenants return unexpectedly (which is not uncommon), and our home must be kept at their beck and call.

As I was up, and two of our lamps wasting oil just down-the-stairs, I thought to take myself down there and make use of them, and the empty (but yet fire-upon-the-hearth) sitting room, rather than burn another lamp in my bed chamber.

Having laid aside my book, and looking over the needlework I was by-turns working upon (it needed more than a few stitches picked-out and re-done), I was seated near the fire in a comfortable chair, the sides and back of the chair keeping out draft as sitting upon a sofa alone never will.

Without so much as a knock for a servant at the front door to announce his arrival, Lieutenant Davis pushed in, staggered a bit (not closing the door with any dispatch), and stumbled into the sitting room.

His eyes did not register surprise upon seeing me there at that hour, though he seemed pleased to see me. He began to speak.

It would seem, from his accounting of events, that the girl he had hoped to marry back in England has sent him a letter telling him that due to it being unlikely that he shall sail home to her any time soon, and may very well instead be killed fighting here in the colonies, that she no longer considers them affianced.

And so she has broken Lieutenant Davis' heart. As he told me.

And in response, he has gotten himself quite drunk on whatever they were serving in glasses at Whitehall. It would seem he left there before it was apprehended by any of his superiors quite how drunken he was, or the nature of his despair.

I am not accustomed to being very often around drunkenness, although before the garrison came one did witness it in men at festivals and village celebrations-sometimes just by being in close enough proximity to the tavern. And I am less familiar with seeing a man weep.

But Lieutenant Davis did weep, with great phlegm- and spittle-fueled sobs. He smelled of a broke-open barrel of spirits. His weeping at times made it difficult to understand what he spoke of, other than that it seemed to be his love for and disappointment in the girl who had sent him the letter.

At one point I saw Sally B about to enter the room (not knowing I was there) to see what the lieutenant might be most in need of, but finding me there, she took two steps backward without turning about, and left again.

At seeing this, I attempted to rise and excuse myself from his company.

But before I was fully out of the chair, here was Lieutenant Davis on his knees at my feet. Begging, imploring something of me.

Still, I wanted to stand. I very much wanted to stand.

My hands were in my lap, holding the needlework. I moved them to lay it down upon a nearby table, and he suddenly had them in his.

"Oh, Miss Jenny," he said-clearer than nearly anything he had spoken thus far. "You are a good girl, are you not? You would not treat a man that loved you so!" He looked up for a moment as he said this, and then his face came down toward my hands (which he had caught up in his own) and he was kissing them.

Kissing my hands fervently, and perhaps but an inch away from his face and head resting in my lap. And still weeping.

My mind did not immediately suggest any course of action to me, other than telling me again that I had no wish to be used as a handkerchief by a jilted man in a red coat who had the right to live in my family's home without invitation or obligation of payment.

I had no wish to comfort him in his distress. So unfitting was everything about his person, so surprising the liberty he had taken in putting his hands and kisses upon me, he hardly seemed real to me. The entire scene struck me as imaginary, illusory.

And yet I could not ignore the weight in my lap. The notion that this befuddled person wished to pair me as the opposing positive to his (former) girl back in England. I began to try and shift at least one hand out of his grip so that it might be tasked with searching for the needle sure to be still stuck to the needlepoint's fabric, thinking an 'accidental' prick might just sober him up enough for me to exit the room.

"Lieutenant," I heard a voice: strong, in-charge, announce from the doorway.

Amazingly, it was Mama. She did not add the lieutenant's surname, perhaps thinking to do so would rob her of some of the staccato authority of her abrupt address. "You are unwell. Cleopas," she said, meaning our man, "will see you to your chamber, and any needs you might have. It has grown late."

I could see one of her hands upon the door frame, but not the other. She was dressed as though it were day, though without the usual care for perfection one could expect from her toilet.

Lieutenant Davis had straightened his back, releasing his hold upon my hands and removing the weight of his head from my lap, allowing me to stand, which I did without pause, and making no goodnights, turned with all speed (yet still walking) and exited the room for the stairs.

I was surprised to find myself laboring to breathe normally. And yet I did not wish to dally upon the steps. I felt very much I wished a door-at least-between Lieutenant Davis and myself. When I arrived at my door, I felt someone behind me.

It was Mama. "You will sleep in with Bess tonight," she told me, and when I did finally see the other hand she had concealed from Lieutenant Davis, I saw that she had Cook's best kitchen knife in it. She made no attempt to hide it from me, yet nor did she brandish it as though it made her feel powerful.

Obediently I kissed her, for I am young, but not too foolish to understand that without her intrusion, or my own potential action in finding that needle, nothing of good would have come of the situation we'd both escaped.

I went in to join a sleeping Bess in her bed, and heard the legs of a chair being dragged across the passageway and in front of the bedroom door. And then I heard Mama sit down in it, and imagined the weight of that knife resting upon her lap.

I say I've little familiarity with drunkenness. Which is true enough. But there was a time, a time before soldiers, when ale on the breath of respectable young men was common enough, when festival punch gained a bite to it whether its makers placed it in the mix or no.

When I was fifteen, Bess and I were allowed to attend Oyster Bay's late-spring festival. We were to spend several nights before and after at the home of a friend of my mother's, in whose care we were to be left.

Bess had been to dances and country socials before, being older than me by almost two years, but I had only just begun to be permitted to join in such things as a young woman, and not simply a girl child growing too quickly out of her dresses.

It was to be an informal occasion, held out-of-doors, the dancing to happen in a spot cleared for it among a shading of trees hung with lanterns. It looked to me like a fairy world, those lights twinkling between the coming-on spring leaves and blossoms. Everyone was excited to be there, to be out of the indoors that had kept us locked up for the winter, save necessary chores.

And Oyster Bay! It seemed a different country to me entirely. The acquaintances we should make! The connections! The new faces we should see and opinions we should hear! And though, of course, Setauket folk were everywhere (such festivals and chances for society being few enough in the countryside of our humble colony), I could not be convinced otherwise of this chance to broaden my world.

We were introduced by Mama's friends to their acquaintances that early evening. Among them, a relation of Setauket's Lucy Scudder; Daniel Scudder, aged nineteen, of whom we had some small recollection from years earlier when he had visited the village to see his aunt. Though he was closer in age to Bess, it was I he fell in walking beside.

I have said the occasion was an informal one, countrified in its simplicity. This extended to chaperones as well. The young people in attendance gathered together largely to one side of the clearing, a few older ladies seated on benches carried out for just such a purpose here and there, but we were largely left to ourselves-so long as we stayed with the group and did not attempt to wander off alone-or in twosomes.

I felt Bess' elbow dig into my side and followed her eyes to where she had seen Abraham Woodhull and Anna Strong, who had also traveled to attend the gathering. Anna was fetching to look at in a well-fitted frock, and there were many women in Setauket who wondered when news of an engagement might be announced. She kept herself to the side of Abraham, and it was obvious to spy the other young men look away, frustrated that her interest lay elsewhere, when their rival had neither height nor beauty of his own to recommend him.

"It shall be a good match," Bess assured me in a whisper, "they have been close since they were children. And their families share friendship."

And then Bess' breath caught a second time, as the third person in the Woodhull-Strong party turned around. It was Thomas Woodhull, always a particular favorite of Bess', though their paths had seldom crossed socially, and they were not much close in age. And yet, Thomas was always thought to be a fine example of a Setauket young man with a future. And he wore his clothes well, and took care with his queue. As he was on a leave from soldiering for the moment, he did not wear his uniform. No doubt this kept Bess' sighing shorter than it might have been otherwise.

"I see there shall be an exchange of opinions this night," Daniel Scudder announced from the other side of me. Had he been anything but a previous acquaintance I daresay I should have been too overcome with being impressed by myself for catching a young man to walk about with me at only fifteen that I would not have been able to look at him, much less reply.

But he was not so foreign to me, and the night and anticipation of it was making me bold. "How do you mean?" I asked.

"Tallmadges," was all he said, and inclined his head back toward Abraham Woodhull who had gone toward one of the tables set up with drinks and sweet foods.

Sure enough, there, beside him as they selected cups for the punch, were Samuel and Benjamin Tallmadge. Samuel, closer in age to me and a former schoolmate, looked my way and saucily gave me a wink and a nod showing he noted that I had already found a partner, whose arm I was presently on.

I felt my nose wrinkle in annoyance, rather than in a becomingly ladylike blush. I knew Samuel too well to see him for anything other than the friendly boy he was. I had not meant to react so-anyone could be watching!-when I saw his elder brother's head tick down, and he spoke to Sam.

Did I see his head jerk toward me? Had I really pulled that face? Now? On this night? When I had made certain to be dressed perfectly? My hair without flaw or fault? My skin as close to perfection as all my recent attentions to it might make it? And here was a man-a man-asking for help in identifying me (for I could imagine no other conversation occurring between them) and being told, 'yes, that's Jenny Outerbridge, baby Jenny Outerbridge, you remember her-she'll stick her tongue out at you and kick your shin. 'Her dowry's but a penny. And if you haven't any, and wish to marry Jenny, you'll earn your shiny penny, husbanding Miss Jenny.' Yes, THAT Jenny Outerbridge. Imagine her being allowed to come here.'

Ugh. As we walked on and the trees' overhang obscured them from view, I attempted to forget my slip-up.

"Reverend Tallmadge's oldest son is to be a schoolmaster," Bess was saying to Daniel. "I cannot rightly recall just where at the moment, though."

"Would that you could, Miss Outerbridge," Daniel said. "For he speaks sedition as like as his father, and no village ought give such a voice room to be heard, be it from reverend or school master."

Well, this did take me back a moment. The notion that Reverend Tallmadge ought be called out for his beliefs was not one I was familiar with. Nor that there was anything shameful or wrong in his public convictions. He was our minister, and the highest respect was all that I had ever been taught to afford him.

Bess, being the excellent conversationalist that she is (even at seventeen) quickly steered the talk away from sedition, and into less shocking waters, while I grew impatient waiting for someone to begin to play for the dance.

At some point, Daniel asked me to reserve several dances for him, before dismissing himself to the punch bowl to get us both drinks.

Some time passed, but there were new faces to look at and dancing to look forward to and we did not much mark that Daniel had not yet returned. Then a new acquaintance Bess had made shortly after our arrival walked over toward us and said there was something of a brawl that had developed over and down toward the privvies.

We resolved to walk in that direction to see for ourselves.

I do not think I had ever truly seen a 'brawl' before. When we arrived (and they were within view of the privvies, but not near enough to them for the wind to be unpleasant) there was a great deal of shouting, and some of those involved clearly wanted to scuffle.

"No, Shhh," Bess said to me-even before I had said anything in response to what we had found. "What are they shouting about?"

Though perhaps not intentionally, the two sides were divided as one might be in a children's game, and each side appeared to have found its champion. On one side Daniel Scudder stood to the front of a group.

On the other, Samuel Tallmadge's older brother, Benjamin.

Words like King George and Liberty and Tory, sedition-were swirling about among rougher terms Mama probably would not have liked me to hear.

We had arrived only moments before others, also informed that unpleasantness was about to erupt down by the privvies.

It had to be broken up by several of the older men, who chalked it up to a bit too much punch (and whatever the younger men were passing around among themselves).

Once the two sides had more or less dissolved back into the growing crowd, Daniel Scudder managed to again find my side. His breath, indeed all of him, had become quite warm during his disagreement, and his breath showed more than a small taste of ale had passed over his tongue (though he never had brought me the drink he had gone to fetch). He was still angry, and distracted. Too much so to be particularly polite, much less pleasant.

I did not see where Bess had got to.

I kept my place by Daniel, all the way back to the dancing, because I didn't know what else to do. I wanted to have a good time, which seemed unlikely to come about on my own. I wanted to dance, which seemed somewhat likely if I were already coupled with a male partner. But Daniel's mind and dialogue were far from sociable.

He muttered more than addressed me, though he did seem to expect me to follow him. I reminded myself he had asked several dances of me.

He stopped near the edge of where the couples were forming up, as the dancing was about to begin. I assumed he was about to suggest he partner me, and though the current situation was hardly what I had imagined, I would have been a willing-enough partner.

And yet he did not.

I watched on as the dancing began, without me.

More than several measures into the first song, a shadow fell upon both of us when Benjamin Tallmadge stepped between the dancing (lit by lanterns) and Daniel Scudder and me.

It had been years (and important, growing-up years) since I had seen Benjamin Tallmadge, who had gone to Yale to study. When he left he would have been closer to Samuel in age. As we Outerbridges attended Reverned Tallmadge's church, and Setauket was not a large village, one could hardly keep from learning news and stories of Benjamin's time away. But those items were nothing, of course, to encountering the person himself.

He had been fifteen or sixteen when he left home. Making me but twelve, and making my relationship to him one chiefly of knowing that if Samuel misbehaved badly enough it was his brother Ben he'd answer to-before being taken to his father. As such, he had always seemed tall to me, imposing: this figure of discipline haunting his younger brother (to my girl's mind). But I could see now; he was tall in his own right, exceeding Daniel's height by almost a hand.

He wore his clothes well, but they were modest in their cut and color, the cuffs and buttons giving away their Connecticut provenance. A lock of his hair had fallen free from his queue (perhaps in the scuffle) and he had not managed to replace it back to where it might stay.

He looked only at Daniel.

"Daniel, I-" he began, and it looked to me of some reconciliation about to be spoken.

"I need hear no further words from you, Tallmadge," Daniel sneered at him, nothing of the gentleman about his manner. Nothing, even, of a nicely behaved boy. "And I-and my family'll not pay toward your schoolmaster's salary wherever you may seek it. One revolutionary pulpit hereabouts is all that shall be afforded your family."

Of course Daniel was in no position to speak for his entire family, being but nineteen and barely on his own. Benjamin tensed, his shoulders straightening, and his chin and head cocked to the side as Daniel spoke, his eyes attentive to, but not engaged by the words being said.

Daniel finished what he had to say, and though he had no tobacco in his mouth to necessitate it, spat off to the side, as if placing a period at the end of a sentence.

I wondered if I was about to be caught up in a second scuffle. For all that it seemed exciting-and certainly nothing like being back at home-it was not the style of excitement I had come here to seek out.

Ben Tallmadge held the gaze he had been giving Daniel through this, and let it linger a moment, almost as though he were making an unspoken answer to him within his own head. He turned his head, then, with a quite deliberate action, and looked directly at me. (Though he had paid me no notice yet at all) "Will you dance, Jenny?" he asked. His eyebrows bounced slightly, up from their usual resting place.

It was a rude question, of course, there could be no other thought about it. I was standing next to another young man. Benjamin Tallmadge could not have thought Daniel had not expected to engage me (or had not already) on the topic of dancing.

And he was no roughneck. No village fisherman without manners or polish. New Haven girls, girls who danced with Yalies, would require the utmost in refinement and gentility from their potential partners. Genteel introductions in lavish ballrooms, parental approval, dainty treatment, and gallant compeers.

But how could I pay too much mind to the strictures of etiquette when his hand was presented, lifted toward me, to take mine and lead me away from the disastrous evening anyone could see I was about to share standing beside Mr. Scudder?

I don't think I even looked back to Daniel upon taking that hand, only foward to the lights and music ahead.

It was such a tentative grip, my hand in his as we walked away. Had either of us stepped apart even slightly, all contact would have been lost. Had I stumbled it would not have been close enough to help catch me. Had he relaxed his hand even a pin's width more, mine would have slipped from his grasp. For it to work, we had both to be equally committed to it. Willing.

I reminded myself to smile less broadly. To close my lips over my teeth and compose myself. His face was to the front, so he could not see mine presently, but I was not adept as a coquette might be at burying the glee that had overcome me upon getting free of the sour, unlikely to dance Daniel Scudder. However, I was feeling sheepish enough about my actions toward Daniel to keep quiet through our entering the forms and taking our places.

Once we were positioned for the Roger de Coverley, we faced one another.

There was a quick flick to the corner of his mouth which gave me pause to wonder if he were taking pleasure in having induced me to abandon his political rival, or simply in having persuaded me to behave rudely in order to gain a position among the dancers. And he had done it so easily.

"I trust your parents are in good health," he said, a perfectly acceptable opening for conversation between two people of acquaintance long ago, but not presently social.

"Yes, thank you," I told him, trying to find my way to the next thing to say. "I would ask after your father, but I have been in closer society than you to him of late. So perhaps I should answer, 'the Reverend is in excellent health'." I tried not to put an uncertain question mark at the end of my speech.

He smiled, though I could not tell if it were with me or at me.

"He has a hale constitution, that is a truth universally acknowledged."

"It must give you a degree of comfort, as you have been away," I replied, "knowing that he is so lusty." I stopped, rather wishing I had chosen a different adjective for the Reverend.

"I have been away," he agreed, looking at me, before turning his head of necessity in the dance. Again I could not tell if his breath had caught in the dance for a moment, or he was suppressing a laugh at my potentially unfortunate word choice. "Bess is looking well."

"Bess always looks well," I said.

"And she has found herself several beaux to pick from this evening," he added, a nod of his head in her direction where Bess had, indeed assembled a collection of potential partners. "One might think 'twill not be long before she leaves you and your parents at home."

"You have no trouble recognizing her in a group," I said, without having the proper skill to sound casual about it.

A turn in the dance separated us.

His brows had drawn together in question when again we met up. "What?"

"You did not have to ask me who she was," I reminded him.

"Ah. Yes, well," he seemed relieved at understanding my comment. "Bess still looks very much of herself."

I looked at him, wanting to challenge with 'and I do not'? but even I knew my little-practiced verbal jousting with young men was too underdeveloped to successfully attempt that. But my intent must have shown up on my face.

He brought his head somewhat closer to mine. That uncooperative lock of hair again fell free of his queue. "It is well-known that Outerbridges are memorably pretty-looking girls."

"I don't think that is true at all," I said, and there was no artifice in my reply, nor its intent.

"You don't?" he said, with half-a-chuckle. He faced forward as we were now in a promenade.

"I think Bess is a great favorite of many people, and rightly so."

"And?"

"And to say anything else, to include me, is but an attempt at flattery. Why should you need to flatter me, Ben Tallmadge? I am already dancing with you." Had there been more to asking me for this dance than simply to take me away from Daniel Scudder?

He smiled, as if he had been caught out in some secret impropriety, but as though he did not mind. "Will you dance with me again?"

I turned to see his full face. It was growing later, the night now fully arrived. The lanterns cast shadows all about us, but the shadows upon his jaw were genuine: his beard was starting to show after this morning's shave. "Will you tell me about New Haven?"

His left hand went to try and slide back that lock of hair and get it to stay off his face. "Anything as is suitable for a young lady's ears."

The dancing became lively, and our words had to give way. I was flush with excitement. Being away from home I felt new somehow, just introduced to the world. I felt anything could happen. The sensation of giddiness from the turnings in the dance coupled with his gloveless hands on mine, the occasional brush or resting of his hands on my lower back, the pinch of ale that was on his breath but not overpowering. It all seemed of one pleasantly exotic treat. We danced three in a row.

We danced once more near the end of the night, after other dances I had accepted from other partners. After sweetmeats and punch. In the meanwhile Daniel Scudder had not left, nor had he taken any steps to grow more sober. He had not found me to claim the dances I had promised him. As we left what was to be our final dance, Daniel stalked over toward us, behind Benjamin's back.

"Ben!" I heard Samuel Tallmadge shout from wherever he was about, and Ben turned, able to block to blow Daniel had been intending for him.

Daniel was so drunken he could not stay upright, though Benjamin did not follow-up the attack with a fist of his own.

Ben took back my hand, his grip somewhat less relaxed than before, and walked me well-clear of Daniel.

"Do consider, Jenny," he said, throwing a glance over his shoulder, "if a man is so desperate to be ruled by an all-powerful and absent monarch, what sort of household might he wish to establish? What sort of husband will he expect to be? A ruler, obeyed at any cost? Or a benevolent leader, eager to listen to his wife and family?" He gave something of a shrug. His concern at the question appeared to be genuine.

I am certain we exchanged some form of non-committal farewells, though I do not recall them.

The evening was not yet concluded, though very nearly. He had danced with other partners (including Bess), had spent time among his circle of friends watching as well. A reverend's son, his education accomplished, his person unfettered by engagement of any kind, would never be unwelcome at such an event. And I had had the honor of walking through the figures with at least three other young men.

He had graduated Yale barely two months earlier, in '73. And he went on to become a schoolmaster. Until he walked (some said ran) away from that calling to join the Second Continental Light Dragoons.

To fight against kings and tyranny. To oppose the very injustice that is even now painted all over Setauket.

In the morning, the chair and Mama-and Cook's large knife-were no longer outside Bess' door.

When Sally B came to dress me, she said, "Mistress say you and her gonna visit Major Hewlett today. You gotta be lookin' your best."

"Will Papa come?" I asked, not certain what to think about this unusual announcement.

"Naw. Just the mistress and you."

I chose the green lawn.

...tbc...