The Heart of Liberty

by Thomas Fleming

  Finally Caroline lost all caution and patience. She confronted these two besotted, defeated men, a tiny flaming figure of reproach, and told them what they did not want to hear - it was she who had persuaded Jonathan Gifford to admit his love, she who had offered herself to him from feelings too strong to resist. She told them that Jonathan Gifford would sell Kemble Manor back to the Skinners tomorrow.

  “But what good would that do? It would be condemned and confiscated the next day. Admit the truth. You chose the wrong side.”

  With a roar, Anthony lunged to his feet, his single fist raised to smash her in the face. For him this truth was unbearable. Charles Skinner lurched from his seat and sent him crashing across the room with a swipe of his huge arm.

  “She’s right,” he said. “We chose the wrong side. But Gifford is still a whorernaster. And you - ”

  He glared at his wife, wavering between rage and regret. Her confession utterly refuted his primitive belief that women were innocent victims of men like Jonathan Gifford. Too drunk to think, Charles Skinner collapsed into sobbing self-pity.

  “You see what you have done to him?” Anthony Skinner shouted. “If there is a God in heaven, you and Gifford will pay for it.”

  He staggered into the night. Charles Skinner stood there in the center of his drab parlor, alcoholic tears streaming down his face. Caroline knew there was no truth in the bitter accusation Anthony had just flung at her. It was British defeat that had unmanned Charles Skinner. It was ridiculous to blame it on the loss of her love when there had been no love to lose. But it was impossible not to pity this suffering man. For a moment she almost regretted the Revolution, facing the pain it had caused her husband. In memory of the first days of their marriage, when there had been at least a hope of love, Caroline went to him and threw her arms around him for a sad solemn moment. She put him to bed tenderly, like a daughter nursing an aged parent.

  At Liberty Tavern, Captain Gifford remained a melancholy ghost. Kemble took charge of running the tavern and the manor. He hired workmen to plant the spring crops, rode down once or twice a week to check on the gristmill and the outlying farm at Colt’s Neck, replaced the manor house’s shattered windows, and presided each evening in the taproom at the tavern. Simultaneously, he refused to abandon his pursuit of Anthony Skinner. At least once, and often twice a week, he was racing across the district on horseback in pursuit of this public and private enemy. Loot was Skinner’s primary interest, although he added to his greed a personal taste for sadistic destruction. He rarely left his victims without insulting or abusing them in some way, or burning their houses or barns. He was soon the most hated man in south jersey, and no one hated him more than Kemble.

  Bearing all these burdens, Kemble carefully concealed from his father and everyone else an alarming decline in his health. He had a number of small hemorrhages in his sleep which left him so weak he could barely mount a horse. He went to Dr. Davie and calmly told him what was happening. He wanted to know if there was any medicine he could take that would slow the disease.

  “I don’t want to distress my father when he’s sunk so low. If ever he needed a healthy son, it’s now.”

  Dr. Davie urged him to spend the winter in Bermuda or the Bahamas. Kemble shook his head and ended the conversation with a warning that under no circumstances was Dr. Davie to mention it to Jonathan Gifford. The old doctor retreated to one of his magic cures, this one from the manuscripts of Friar Bacon. He wrote that ancient word, Abracadabra, in a pyramidal form on virgin parchment, and each day scraped out one line, saying, “As I destroy the letters of this chain, so by virtue of this sacred name, may all grief and dolor depart from Kemble.”

  For a few weeks, Kemble improved. No credit should be given to Abracadabra. Bad weather kept Anthony Skinner away from our coasts and Kemble got some rest. But calm seas eventually permitted Skinner’s return, which meant, after a few sleepless nights, the revival of Kemble’s cough. In desperation, Dr. Davie urged Jonathan Gifford to get a passport from the British army in New York and spend a few months in the West Indies. A sea voyage often cured melancholy. He could take Kemble with him. Jonathan Gifford sighed, nodded, and said he would think about it. It was obvious that he did not believe anything could cure his melancholy.

  In despair, Dr. Davie summoned Kate and Thomas Rawdon for a consultation. Rawdon was pessimistic about Kemble. “We don’t understand the disease. How can we cure it?” he asked.

  Kate somberly agreed. “All we can do is pray,” she said. “But I am just as worried about my father. It seems to me we can do more for him.”

  Rawdon shook his head. “Only time heals the kind of wound your father has received.”

  “Time? Time is killing him,” Kate said. “Has anyone told Aunt Caroline that she can now come home safely?”

  “The less said about that the better, my dear,” said RawcIon.

  “I agree,” said Dr. Davie. “There is already too much talk about it.”

  Dr. Davie and Rawdon were only echoing the sentiments of most of Jonathan Gifford’s friends. They were ready to forgive him for his indiscretion (which is what they considered it) with Mrs. Skinner. But they felt that it should be forgotten as quickly as possible. A tavern was subject to strict regulation by the state. Its owner had to be a man of good moral character.

  Kate scoffed at this attitude. “You are joining the ranks of the hypocrites,” she told them. “Who cares about talk when a man’s happiness - perhaps his life - is at stake?”

  Kate abandoned the doctors and strode to the greenhouse, where Jonathan Gifford sat disconsolately staring at his roses. “Father,” she said, “why haven’t you asked Aunt Caroline to come home?”

  “Even if I felt I should, how can I get word to her?” He showed her the letter he had received from Charles Skinner. “I’ve hurt him enough. He was my best friend.”

  Kate saw it was futile to argue with him. She mounted her horse and rode to George Washington’s headquarters at Rocky Hill. Introducing herself as Jonathan Gifford’s daughter, she had no difficulty gaining access to the commander in chief. She had heard that General Washington had an intense interest in the affairs of the heart. She told him the whole story of her father and Caroline Skinner. The General listened with fascination and wrote out a pass, permitting her to go to New York, “on a matter of private business.”

  Two days later, Kate stood before the Skinner home on Dock Street. She dreaded the thought of seeing Anthony but was ready to risk even that confrontation. She knocked. The door was opened by Jesse, the black butler, wearing a worn, faded relic of his old livery. His lean face brightened at the sight of Kate.

  “Why, Miss Stapleton. What a nice surprise.”

  “Is Mrs. Skinner at home, Jesse? I would like to see her - alone.”

  “She is alone at this moment. Mr. Anthony and the Squire have gone to buy passage on the next packet. We will all be in England before long.”

  “Tell Mrs. Skinner I am here.”

  Caroline threw her arms around Kate like a mother welcoming a beloved daughter. Kate thought she looked as wan and forlorn as Jonathan Gifford. She did not hesitate to say so.

  “It would be ridiculous for me to pretend I am happy,” Caroline said.

  “Daniel Slocum is dead, shot by one of his many enemies. There is no reason why you can’t come home.”

  “Kate - you know there are reasons. Too many reasons.”

  “None that really matter, when there is a man over there in New Jersey dying by degrees for the want of the sight of you.”

  For a moment hope created a glow on Caroline’s dark face. Then she shook her head sadly. “I can’t believe that, Kate. No, I can. But I’m sure he feels, as I do, that it would be best if we never saw each other again.”

  “Why?”

  “You have heard what happened at the manor. We publicly confessed - our attachment. I have embarrassed him enough. He depends on the public for his living.”

  “Let us talk as married women.
Above all, as women. He is sitting over there in his greenhouse, dying, literally dying, like a prisoner bound and gagged and starving in a dungeon by his own arrangement. I love him as much as you do, but he is a man. His head is crammed with ridiculous rules about honor and friendship - ”

  “They are not ridiculous, Kate. They have their place.”

  “Not here. Not when they are destroying a love that brought happiness to everyone connected with it - to me, Kemble, above all, to you and him. There has been a Revolution in the name of liberty. Are you going to let it make you a prisoner for the rest of your life? And leave him in the same situation?”

  “But how could we ever marry?”

  “Your case is surely not unique. I cannot believe an American court would refuse you a divorce if your loyalist husband has gone to London and left you in New Jersey.”

  Caroline wrestled with the memory of those tears on Charles Skinner’s ruined face. She had her own guilt, compounded now by pity, to confront. “I don’t know, Kate. I must think about this. You’re sure Jonathan - Captain Gifford - would welcome me?”

  “If he doesn’t, I will give up all pretense of being a woman of judgment. I will go back to reading silly novels and consider myself a feminine idiot for the rest of my life. Come with me now. I have money for the stage boat.”

  Caroline shook her head. “I must be honest with Mr. Skinner.”

  “He will never let you go. That is asking too much of human nature - especially his nature.”

  “He has treated me decently, Kate. Coldly but decently.”

  She was as unreachable as Jonathan Gifford, as lost in her own guilty melancholy. Kate was discovering that strong feelings cannot be changed by argument. Only the shock of events - usually violent events - can break their grasp on the spirit.

  “You had better go,” Caroline said. “They may come home drunk. If Anthony saw you, I’m afraid he would get very ugly.”

  Kate retreated to New Jersey so discouraged she did not even bother to send us a message at Liberty Tavern. Within an hour of her departure, Caroline faced the two Skinners like a criminal under investigation. Jesse had told them of Kate’s visit. They demanded to know her purpose.

  It is something I wish to discuss with you in private,” Caroline told her husband.

  “There is nothing I care to hide from my son,” Charles Skinner said.

  “Very well,” Caroline said. “She told me Captain Gifford would welcome me if I chose to go back to him.”

  “If you chose to go,” Charles Skinner roared. “By God you shall not go as long as there is a lawyer in England and a King on the throne. You are my wife. You may deny me your bed but you shall not deny me your presence, madam. As long as there is a breath in this body Anthony will see to that, even if illness enfeebles me. You have sinned, madam, and you must pay for it.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you, Father. There is only one way to settle this business,” Anthony said.

  Charles Skinner looked at his son with gloomy hesitation. Caroline could not tell what was passing through his mind.

  “I guarantee it can’t fail. I have the sloop reserved, the men waiting,” Anthony said.

  A malevolent violence swept Charles Skinner’s florid face. “All right,” he said. “Do it.”

  “As for her,” Anthony said, glaring at Caroline, “I suggest locking her in her room until we are ready to sail.”

  “I shall not be treated this way – ” Caroline cried.

  “You shall be treated as I wish to treat you, madam,” Charles Skinner said. “You are my wife. The greatest mistake I ever made was letting you assume airs of independence. Now go to your room or I shall drive you there with a whip. Jesse!”

  Genuinely frightened, Caroline retreated to her room and let Jesse lock the door after her. An hour later Anthony Skinner sailed for New Jersey aboard the loyalist sloop Revenge. Landing at Woodbridge with three confederates, he rode boldly to Bound Brook on stolen horses, seized a loaded sloop from the wharves there, burned two other ships, and retreated with the tide. Kemble and I and the light horsemen picketed at Liberty Tavern traded bullets with him along the shore. But it was blind shooting and Skinner escaped unscathed as usual.

  By the time we returned to Liberty Tavern it was a half-hour after sunrise. Kemble let himself in the side door with his key and checked the downstairs rooms to make sure they were ready for serving breakfast. As he unbolted the big front door, he saw someone had slipped a letter underneath it, addressed to Jonathan Gifford. The handwriting was familiar. He had seen it on many letters to Kate. Why was Anthony Skinner writing to his father? The letter was unsealed. A public insult was scrawled on the envelope: “To Jonathan Gifford, Trimmer, for all to read.” Kemble read it.

  Gifford:

  My father has decided to retire to England on the next packet. I am going with him. But I cannot leave this country without demanding satisfaction from you for the wound you have inflicted on our family’s honor. You are a thief and a whorernaster of the lowest, most cunning sort. I still have one good hand to hold a pistol. I hereby challenge you to meet me on the beach below Garret Hill tomorrow morning at dawn. If you kill me, you will be the hero of New Jersey. I give you this opportunity, knowing you may betray me to your fellow thieves and usurpers. I will take the risk to give my father a chance to face his friends again.

  Kemble looked around, him. The taproom was empty. The first risers were stirring upstairs. He put the letter in his pocket and told no one about it. Except Me.

  “You’ be my second, jemmy.”

  “But why not tell your father?” I asked, inclined to rely Jonathan Gifford’s prowess as a duelist.

  “Because it would be sending him to commit suicide. That letter is written with diabolical skill. It is designed to make him hold his fire.”

  This was Kemble at his most admirable. Then darkness consumed his face. “Besides, I want to kill that bastard. For my father it will be just one more torment if he did kill him. For me it will be the greatest satisfaction.”

  The war was still in Kemble’s blood. It was in mine, too. We did not sleep much that night. Kemble wanted to talk. At first he poured out to me all the sadness, the regret that burdened his mind and soul. Even though we were on the verge of victory, for Kemble the Revolution was a failure. It had not achieved that purified, virtuous America that he had envisioned in 1776. The paradigm of that failure was his decision to kill Slocum. Its necessity tormented him. He had only one consolation. The act, the crime (let us call it by its right name) was committed more in the name of love than of revolutionary justice. I listened while Kemble struggled with the contradictions between the heart and the mind, between abstract ideals and personal love.

  “I always told myself I could never love anything or anyone I did not completely admire. I think that was my original sin - a sin of pride. Now I realize that we can love our country, our friends, our relations with their flaws, their weaknesses, their failures.”

  I see him now, pacing the floor of that darkened room, the angular face still young, but also old, creased, worn, stained by six years of war. “Perhaps that is why we learn more from defeat, losses, than from what we win. But I don’t understand exactly how. It is not purely intellectual. I. understand even less how the suffering is passed on to those we love. Perhaps it helps us see them - really see them - for the first time.”

  Then he began talking about the future, and I saw that Kemble had only begun to resolve his contradictions. He said that there would always be Slocums for Stapletons and Kembles to fight. The time might come - it might be nearer than we thought when we would have-to use the same solution to eliminate them. I glumly disagreed. “We can’t depend on guns, Kemble. Nothing grows from the point of a gun but death and more death.” .He stopped pacing and stared at me. For a moment I saw the profound weariness, the mortal sadness in his soul. “You may be right, Jemmy. You may be right.”

  With a visible effort he hardened himself. “Bu
t for the time being, guns are necessary.”

  About three a.m. Kemble told me to lie down and get some sleep. He wanted to write a letter to his father. I copy the faded words in Kemble’s small, precise script, from the old yellowed paper before me.

  Dearest Sir:

  The enclosed letter from Anthony Skinner will explain where I have gone. I know you told me never to indulge in such folly. It seems I am fated to go on disobeying you, ignoring your advice. I suppose sons have done thus to fathers since time began. But let me assure you that I do it here not out of disrespect, but from a loving concern for your state of mind, which renders you incapable of meeting this challenge. Since it is part of a quarrel that I was eager to start, and you reluctant, it seems only fair that I should answer it. If the event proves unfortunate, I would like you to know all this, and one thing more. I have come to love you as few sons love their fathers. (Or perhaps like most do but few can admit.) Please understand that I do not in the least see myself as offering a sacrifice in your place. I am Jonathan Gifford’s son, and I know how to use a gun. I fully expect to put a bullet between, that bastard’s eyes.

  Kemble

  In New York, six or seven hours before Kemble wrote this letter, Caroline Skinner stood between her husband and son, watching Jesse and two husky sailors hauling the last of their trunks out the door. The royal mail packet H.M.S. Sandwich was sailing with the morning tide. When the wagon lumbered off with their baggage, Anthony Skinner hired a coach and gave the driver directions to a Hudson Rivet wharf. It was not unusual to go aboard a ship the night before she sailed. Captains were not inclined to lose a favorable wind or an early turning tide for a tardy passenger. Caroline was too miserable to pay much attention to what was happening around her, anyway. The rest of her life stretched before her eyes, a gray pilgrimage to oblivion. She tried to imagine what Jonathan Gifford was doing in New Jersey. One moment she felt consoled by the thought that he was also miserable. The next moment this became the most unbearable part of her despair.