Dreams of Glory Page 5
Hugh Stapleton drank the excellent claret and murmured sympathetically while he mentally dismissed Schuyler’s hope of single-handedly reforming Congress. The Dutchman’s blunt, irascible style and his possession of one of the great fortunes of America virtually guaranteed Yankee hostility. It was George Washington who stirred the congressman’s sympathy. He glimpsed the desperation beneath the Virginian’s weary calm. Should he bring it to the surface by telling him that nothing was going to change Congress’s feckless ways? They would dither and drivel and go back to bemoaning the decline of patriotism and haggling over whose relative should get the biggest slice of the inflation-fat army and navy supply contracts.
Hugh Stapleton found it easier to remain silent, to drift with the current and hope that someone or something would extricate him from this rudderless ship of state before it blundered into shoal water. He wished he had listened to his instincts when France entered the war in 1778 and the conflict had engulfed the West Indies, making it impossible to do business there. With his fluent Dutch, learned from his mother, Hugh Stapleton had wanted to retreat to Holland. If the choice had been his alone, he would be matching wits with the canny merchants of Amsterdam instead of posturing in Morristown, pretending enthusiasm for a revolution he had disliked from the start.
But the choice had not been his alone. His wife had bombarded him with letters that pleaded, wheedled, begged, and finally threatened him with the loss of her affection, of his sons’ respect, if he did not return home immediately. She had made him into this pseudo-patriot and politician. Since his return she had continued to harry him with her opinions and exhortations. That was why he had almost welcomed being delayed by the investigation into Caesar Muzzey’s death. He was in no hurry to get home for another round of lectures.
The investigation had been a bore. The ragged members of Muzzey’s regiment had ail insisted they knew nothing about his death. The name of Caesar’s master was the only interesting fact the congressman had learned. Henry Kuyper had been one of a half-dozen fellow New Jerseymen at Kings College in 1761. Unfortunately, English was a foreign language to him - as it was to most of the Dutch farmers who lived in the large, fertile section of northeastern New Jersey known as Bergen County. Henry had failed almost every subject and quit before the end of the first year. He had gone humbly home to his farm on the heights of Bergen, where he no doubt resumed speaking and reading Dutch, praying in it each Sunday, and each Monday counting the English money he made from selling his milk and cheese and poultry and grain to the hungry New Yorkers on the other side of the Hudson River. It was easy to understand why Henry Kuyper would send a husky slave like Caesar Muzzey to serve as his substitute in this quarrel between the American English and the European English. Most of Kuyper’s sort of Dutchmen, the solid, prosperous farmer class, regarded the war as madness.
Hugh Stapleton found himself speculating about the kind of man the shy, quiet Dutch boy he had known in 1761 had become. Almost certainly Henry had gotten fat and had no doubt married a Dutch huys vrouw who had gotten even fatter. She probably ordered him around and kept the books on the farm, in the style of many Dutch women. Henry probably smoked his pipe, drank his beer, and let her get away with it.
The savage northeast wind slashed across Hugh Stapleton’s sleigh as the powerful horses challenged the steep slopes of the Short Hills. Descending the other side of this mountain rampart, the congressman passed rapidly through the towns of Springfield and Connecticut Farms, each dominated by its white-spired Presbyterian church, and was soon on the road to Newark. He did not meet a single sleigh; not a living person was visible in the towns. The cold was like a giant’s hand, crushing life out of the state.
As they rounded a bend in the road the charred ruins of a farmhouse and barns appeared on the right. The tumbled timbers were black against the snow; the smashed windows were like the blank eyes of a corpse. In the next five miles, they saw two almost identical ruins, dispiriting evidence that rebel Jerseymen had little hope of defending themselves against British and loyalist vengeance. In the last two years, these brutal tactics had forced more than one man to abandon the revolution and espouse a pallid neutrality.
“Bad business, Master Hugh,” Pompey said as they passed still another charred farm, within sight of the town of Newark. “Lettin’ these fellows come over from New York and burn and rob us this way. Takes the heart out of everybody, it surely do.”
“Yes,” Hugh Stapleton said.
“Can’t understand why General Washington doesn’t send some men to fight’m.”
White-haired now, Pompey had once been a fighter himself. He had marched to Canada and sailed to Cuba with Hugh Stapleton’s father and stood his ground in more than one pitched battle with Frenchmen and Spaniards. Pompey had been a free man for over a decade, but he had chosen to stay at Great Rock Farm and work for wages. He had persuaded his son, Isaac, to do likewise. Hugh Stapleton regarded him as a member of his family, a friend as well as a servant. For a moment he was tempted to tell Pompey what Washington had admitted to him at dinner the other night. He dared not send his men beyond the perimeter of their winter camp at Morristown because he feared most of them would never return.
No, Congressman Stapleton would continue the role of patriotic spokesman a while longer. “The army is too small to patrol every road or guard every foot of the shore along the Hudson,” he said.
“Can’t understand why the army’s so small. Why don’t the other states send some men to help us? Seems like we fightin’ the British all by ourselves.”
“I’m afraid everyone is looking out for his own skin. That goes double for our Yankee friends to the east. Most of them haven’t seen a British soldier since 1775.”
Pompey laughed heartily. “Master Hugh, when you start on the Yankees you sound just like your mama.”
“She knew what she was talking about. She did business with them for thirty years.”
Pompey nodded and grew solemn as he guided the horses down the deserted main street of Newark. Hugh Stapleton wondered if he was recalling the years when he had driven his mother, Catalyntie Van Vorst Stapleton, to Newark, where she would often persuade some enterprising merchants to join her in buying the cargo of a newly arrived London freighter. No matter what was in the hold - dry goods or tinware, spices or fine silver - if Catalyntie Van Vorst Stapleton advised them to buy, they knew there would be a profit in it. No merchant in New Jersey - or in New York, for that matter - could approach her talent for “improving some moneys,” as she called it.
Beyond Newark, the sleigh skimmed down the new stagecoach road across the salt meadows of the frozen Hackensack River to the town of Bergen on its long narrow ridge overlooking New York. “Mister Hugh,” Pompey said as the horses toiled up the slope of the ridge, “what happens if the ‘Mericans lose this war?”
“I’ll have to run for my life,” Hugh Stapleton said. “They’ll confiscate everything I own.”
“Includin’ your slaves?”
“Yes.”
“That’d be a sorrowin’ time for black people. They’d sell them to the West Indies. They might even tear up my freedom certificate and sell me.”
“They might.”
“Don’t like what I’ve heard about a black man’s life down there.”
Every American black had heard horror stories about the short, unhappy lives of slaves on the sugar plantations of the West Indies. Before the Revolution, rebellious blacks were often sold and sent there as a punishment.
“We’re far from beaten, Pompey, believe me. General Washington plans a vigorous campaign this spring. There’s hope of more aid from France-”
“That be the Kuyper farm, I think.”
It occurred to Hugh Stapleton, as his eyes followed Pompey’s pointing finger, that he was really two people, one, the congressman who told official lies; the other, a man who had once prided himself on telling the truth, however unpleasant, in business, religion, politics - the important things in life.
Hugh Stapleton looked around him. New York was in clear view across the Hudson, which was frozen so solid, according to the newspapers, men on horseback and in sleighs could cross it with ease. The sight of the mile-long cluster of buildings on the tip of Manhattan Island sent a twist of regret through Hugh Stapleton’s chilled flesh. He had lived in a well-furnished house on Jane Street for seven years before the war - the seven happiest years of his life, he ruefully admitted to himself. He had had a beautiful wife who devoted herself to his comfort and pleasure and who barely spoke a word in company without consulting his opinion beforehand. His ships carried cargoes of wheat and corn from the expertly tilled farms of New Jersey and New York to the West Indies and Europe, and brought back English cloth and furniture and tea, which he sold for whacking profits. Now he had a woebegone wife who did nothing but preach political sermons to him. He was condemned to living in a noisy tavern in Philadelphia and in a drafty semifurnished farmhouse when he came home to New Jersey while his New York house was occupied by a British officer, perhaps some lout of a cavalryman who put his boots up on the yellow Chippendale couch and spilled wine on the rose-colored wing chairs.
Congressman Stapleton’s eyes wandered from New York to the Jersey shore of the Hudson. On Paulus Hook, where he had debarked from the ferry hundreds of times in prewar days, stood a stockaded British fort. The Union Jack fluttered above it, a flare of red against the gray sky and white river. There were almost a thousand British troops in the fort, which was little more than two miles away across the riverside marshes. Bergen was not the safest place in the world for a Continental Congressman. Hugh Stapleton was sure his horses could outrun anything the British had in their stables. But it was almost four o’clock. Darkness came early in January. By night Bergen would be distinctly unsafe for him - or for any other civilian. General Washington had warned him that British and American patrols prowled the roads, ready to shoot on sight.
Pompey urged the horses up the narrow lane to the Kuyper house. It was evident from their sluggish gait that they were very tired. The congressman threw aside his bearskin robe and mounted the steps to rap the round brass knocker.
A tall, husky Negro in red-and-blue livery opened the door. “I’m Mr. Stapleton,” the congressman said. “Is your master or mistress at home?”
“Come in, sir,” the black said. My mistress is expecting you.”
He bowed Stapleton into the center hall, took his greatcoat, and led him to the door of the parlor. An exceptionally pretty, dark-haired young woman stood with her back to the fireplace. She was wearing a dark green brocade dress with a fashionably looped skirt that revealed a pale green petticoat. The room pulsed with welcome warmth. Oil lamps cast a soft glow on a Persian rug, rose wallpaper full of English pastoral scenes, Chippendale mirrors and paintings in fine gold frames, a sky-blue Chippendale couch and matching arm chairs. It was extraordinarily stylish for a Dutch farmhouse. For a moment Congressman Stapleton felt he had been transported back in time to prewar New York.
“Good evening,” he said. “I thought your butler said Mrs. Kuyper was here.”
“I’m Flora Kuyper,” the young woman said in a voice that had an intriguing hint of a foreign accent.
“Henry Kuyper’s wife?” Stapleton said, unable to conceal his surprise. This woman was as distant from the stout Dutch vrouw he had expected as his own sour spouse was from the tender glowing girl he had married.
“His widow,” she said, dropping her eyes. “Henry has been dead over a year.”
“I’m sorry. I . . . I didn’t know.”
“In times like these, death becomes commonplace. You have - Caesar’s body with you?”
“Yes.”
A shadow passed over her face. He thought for a moment she was going to start ranting at him about the loss of her slave. But she only nodded mournfully and called her butler, whose name was Cato, and told him to see that the coffin was put in the barn. Turning again to Hugh Stapleton, she said, “You must stay the night. The roads are too dangerous after dark. Tory thugs come across the Hudson at will. A member of the New Jersey legislature was ambushed only last week.”
“I must take the chance. My wife was expecting me two days ago.”
“Please. If you were waylaid on my account, I would never forgive myself. We have our last goose waiting for you in the oven. You must allow me to show my gratitude. Caesar was . . . was very dear to me. He had a good heart.”
Hugh Stapleton looked out at the gathering gloom of the winter twilight. He thought about his tired horses and the thirty miles of dangerous roads to Great Rock Farm. For a moment he envisioned the welcome he would receive there, his wife’s wan face, his noisy younger son climbing on him. Then a blizzard of woes, worries, complaints. Perhaps he should heed this plea, in which he sensed - or was it hoped? - that there was more than mere patriotism. Besides, he was supposed to be helping solve the mystery of Caesar’s death. To this task he could easily add the mystery of how and where that shy Dutchman, Henry Kuyper, had found such an attractive wife.
“Please,” Flora Kuyper said once more.
“Very well,” Congressman Stapleton said.
So this was a congressman, Flora thought. He looked and acted like a spoiled English scion. He dressed like one, too. His apple-green frock coat was in the latest Pall Mall style, with a broad, contrasting collar and deep cuffs of darker green velvet. He wore a frilled jabot of fine batiste at his neck, and from beneath his fashionably long embroidered blue waistcoat dangled the requisite two watch fobs. His buff breeches were skintight in the London mode.
Hugh Stapleton called in his coachman and told him to complete the journey to his home near Hackensack, inform his wife of the reason for his delay, and return for him tomorrow. He retained his trunk and from it changed out of his traveling boots to elegant blue shoes with expensive silver buckles. He eyed his hostess’s dress appreciatively. “You must have friends in New York, madam,” he said. “I believe that gown is identical to one worn by Mrs. Robinson at a ball given by the Prince of Wales less than a year ago.”
Was he being sarcastic? Flora wondered uneasily. “London trading” - buying English goods, above all expensive dresses - was strictly forbidden by Congress. Then she saw the smile in his eyes and realized he was paying her a compliment.
“What an unexpected pleasure, to find an American congressman approving what a woman has broken the law to wear - even when she imitates the Prince of Wales’s mistress.”
He laughed. “You expected one of our snarling Yankee saints, who think that any man or woman who dresses well is a traitor to our glorious revolution? Let me assure you, madam, I have no use for those hypocrites.”
Flora smiled. “I’m so glad,” she said. “I must confess I was a little afraid that your opinions might be extreme. I understand some of the patriots of New Jersey lean in that direction - although I don’t really keep track of their views. I try to live quietly, and avoid politics.”
“That’s decidedly in your favor,” Stapleton said. “Women and politics don’t mix. My wife has taken up politics. It has soured her temper and ruined her sensibility.”
“I find it hard to believe that mere politics could wreak such havoc,” Flora replied. “I feel impelled, as a woman, to defend her. Have
you been neglecting her?”
“I suppose so,” the congressman admitted, taking a steaming glass of mulled Madeira from a tray proffered by Cato. “We’ve been married thirteen years. Do you really think love - I mean, the sentiment that blinds us to the faults of a spouse - can last so long?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never felt it.”
Flora took her wine and sipped it, her eyes cast down. That was well done, she decided, spoken at just the right moment. When she looked up she saw bemused erotic interest playing across her visitor’s handsome face.
“But that’s extraordinary, madam,” he said.
“Did you know my husband well?”
“Moderately. I went to Kings College with him for a year. I saw little of him since. He was-”
“A good man, a kind man. But I didn’t love him. It was a marriage of convenience. Does it disturb you to discover that a woman can do such a thing?”
“On the contrary, madam. I’ve never been one of those who feel a woman should find a man irresistible simply because he crooks his finger at her. Unless she takes fire, unless her sensibility is aroused, there can be no real affection.”
Flora smiled. How glad she was that she had not trusted the advice she had gotten from Beckford, to discuss politics with this man. The congressman saw women as creatures apart. He thought they were intended to amuse, to soothe, to intrigue successful powerful men, among whom he clearly numbered himself.
Flora sipped her wine and let Hugh Stapleton ask her the inevitable question - how had she come to marry Henry Kuyper? “He bought me,” she said. “Just as you might buy my butler, Cato, though I would never sell him.”