Read Online The Schoolmaster's Daughter by John Smolens - Free Book Online Page B

pass without sight of him, and then he would walk through the kitchen door as though he hadn’t been missing at all.
    This morning, Father was wearing his toga. He sat at the head of the dining room table, taking his biscuits and tea as he leaned over several leather-bound tomes, muttering in Latin. When Abigail took her place at the table, always to his left, he did not look up from his reading, though she detected that the arch to one bushy white eyebrow was intended to convey disapproval. Pulling back the sleeve of his toga, he picked up his tea and sipped loudly.
    Like many men of his station, John Lovell believed that he was a direct descendant of the learned Greeks and Romans. Boston was the new city, the new Athens, with its philosophers and senators. Daily newspapers such as the Boston Observer carried letters and broadsides that were signed with aliases: Archimedes, Euthymius, or Democritus. As schoolmaster of the Latin School, her father at times spoke English only as a last resort. But the toga at breakfast had become a recent development, as worrisome in its own way as was Abigail’s mother’s frailty in the wake of her extended winter illness. As the weather had warmed, he began wearing the loose, flowing toga around the house more and more frequently. Benjamin assured Abigail that their father wore nothing beneath the garment, and on more than one occasion she had noticed the front of his garment stained with urine. They simply never knew what to expect from their father. He was often pompous and distant, or relentlessly overbearing. Yet at times he would seem to possess the innocence of a savant. And there were also moments, perhaps most trying, when he would fawn lovingly over his children, taking satisfaction in simply watching them perform a task as mundane as tying a boot lace.
    â€œTea, dear?” her mother said.
    Abigail only stared down at the biscuit on her plate.
    While turning a page, her father cleared his throat.
    As her mother took up the teapot, Abigail said, “No, thank you, Mother.”
    He removed his spectacles and laid them on top of an open book. “Why is it incumbent upon my children to begin each day with this mild form of gastronomic protest?”
    â€œYou know very well why,” Abigail said. “We’ve been through this … for years.”
    â€œWe have,” her father said. Something about his voice seemed to rise up from the very depths of his lungs. It was a quality, a resonance that could fill a crowded Old South Meetinghouse, and could also strike fear into the hearts of the most recalcitrant pupil at the Latin School. “We have indeed for too long,” he said, “and today, at last, it’s going to stop.” He leaned toward her. “And do you know why?”
    Abigail ventured a look at her father, his eyes bulging beneath those brows. “Yes.”
    â€œYes!” he shouted. “Because George the Third has finally taken matters in hand! Clearly, he’s instructed General Gage that it’s time to put a stop to this nonsense. You know he sent an expedition out into the country during the night?”
    â€œReally?” Abigail said. “I trust they have a good map.”
    â€œThey have a map, they have their Brown Bess firelocks, they have bayonets! They have orders to break this, this rebellious nonsense.”
    â€œNonsense,” Abigail said. “That’s your favorite word. In English.”
    â€œIt is,” he said, now quietly, as though explaining a subtle philosophical point. “It means ‘without sense,’ the ‘opposite of that which makes sense.’ It perfectly defines what you and your brothers—and all those pathetic people out in the hills—think they’re up to. Patriots, revolution: nonsense. We are all subjects of the king. And as of today, he’s directed his military to reassure each of us that he holds us all dear to his compassionate