It was during this interregnum after I had assumed the title that I turned my attention to Edward. Edward appeared older than I even though the years were reversed in truth. He thought of me as a younger brother, though he never did presume upon that relation and in fact had never given even hint of it to me. I appreciated his discretion. I determined to put such plans as I had decided upon into effect.
I invited Edward for dinner one afternoon. Elizabeth was there as well. Over dessert, I made straight to the point. “Edward, as your brother I grow concerned that you do not have a position worthy of you.”
He rocked back, surprised I think at my boldness. He glanced at Elizabeth who simply smiled as if there was nothing at all amiss at this simple declaration of shared paternity. “Lord Northam,” he said.
“Edward, at least you could address your brother by his name,” I said. “It is Jeremy.”
“Jeremy, I, I don’t know what to say…”
“In that case, let me have my say. I am distressed that your current circumstances in England will always be doubtful due to the circumstance of your birth. That, I find, to be most unfair. It is the law and the custom however, and we would be tilting at windmills to fight against it. Therefore, I have a proposition for you. My father had much commerce in the colonies.”
Aside to the reader, yes, I know they now considered themselves a country but I could not consider them such. I still thought of them as crown colonies. On with my recollections of that day.
“As such, I still have many contacts with various firms in the New World. I would send you to a firm in Boston with a letter that would provide you good standing and a position. I would also pay your passage and such funds as you would need to begin life anew.”
Edward looked surprised and a bit troubled. It was a great deal to have something so significant dropped in your lap just like that.
“There is a Scot who wears the bend sinister who has risen to the top of the government in the colonies. Here, birth is all. There, birth is nothing. It is what a man brings to the table that matters. You could have a fine life there, Edward. What could you have here?” I asked.
He looked up at Elizabeth and me, “Nothing except living on a farm I might never own.”
Elizabeth spoke, “I think this offer from your brother is an offer for a new life, Edward. I hope you will consider it most carefully. I too, am a prisoner of our customs and there is little I can do to break out of the social circumstances. You can.”
“I will consider it. Thank you, Lord…” I shook my head at him. He smiled and finished, “Thank you, Jeremy.”
I stood and clapped him on the shoulder. I wished I could call him son and he call me father, but that would never be. Brother would have to be it. At least I could make some recompense.
But the hubbub that this created... it was as if Milton’s poem came to the Earth. Mary, slightly deranged Mary, lost all sense of herself. The idea of Edward leaving unhinged the poor woman. She had lost all else when she bore him out of wedlock. Now she faced losing him, and thereby everything. I gathered from the telling it was a piteous scene, Mary dragging herself along the floor crying out to Heaven for her boy not to be taken from her.
The rest of the Bennett family rejoiced that Edward would have a chance at a good life, they being only too aware of the limitations on him. They pleaded with Mary to relent but the woman had lost her reason. Finally, they asked me to put up Edward at the barony to save him from the piteous entreaties of his mother.
Edward, like any son, was torn atwain by his desire to do as his mother wished and by his own desires to do for himself. But with both families urging him, he agreed to my plan. I took him by carriage to Plymouth and a trader outbound for Boston. He had my letter to a firm in which I was a large partner asking to place him in a position with the possibility of advancement. I gave him a purse to see him on the way. We clasped each other, tears in our eyes, as he boarded. The last I saw of him was as he waved, the boat catching a fair wind and tide, heeled to, and raced out of the harbor.
The lead partner, in his letters to me, kept me abreast of Edward’s doings. After a year, he had the urgings to try the sea life himself. He rose to first mate on a whaling vessel our firm operated out of New Bedford. On his second voyage as first mate, his ship disappeared in the vast reaches of the Pacific. When I received the letter stating that his ship was overdue, I had great foreboding. Was I again being punished for the sin of my youth? As time passed, it was accepted that the ship was lost. The company took it off their lists. Edward’s name was added to a plaque which hung in the church of New Bedford looking out over the unforgiving ocean.
Had it not been for Elizabeth, I would have run off to sea myself searching the deeps. She was my rock, both because I loved her, and because she refused to accept that I was to blame for Edward’s fate and refused to let me accept that blame. Her love helped me endure.
Copyright Rod O'Steele © 2007