Dreams of Glory

by Thomas Fleming

  “Fear of what? No one’s going to attack this place. The British are gentlemen. They might enjoy catching me but they’re not likely to abuse a congressman’s wife.”

  “The people the British send into Bergen County by night are not gentlemen,” Paul said. “Two women were raped within a mile of here in the last six months. They use our barns to hide escaped prisoners on the way to New York.”

  “Have you notified the militia?”

  “No. I persuaded Hannah to say nothing. I was afraid it would compromise my neutral status.”

  “And she dares to lecture me about giving moral leadership? She’ll hear from me about this tomorrow. I’ve half a mind to wake her up and confront her with it now.”

  “No! Hugh, please. That was stupid of me to even mention it. Promise me you’ll say nothing. To her or the militia. They’re useless. They can’t protect us even if they thought it was worth the effort. I know the men who operate the escape route. Liberty Turnpike they call it. They’d burn this place over our heads.”

  Congressman Stapleton went to a cupboard and poured himself a glass of Barbados rum. The winter cold was settling in his chest. He would have a miserable cough and a running nose tomorrow. “What a mess,” he said. “Perhaps we should imitate our hero father, get drunk and stay that way.”

  He took a long swallow of the dark brown liquid. Warmth flooded his body. It made him think of Flora Kuyper. Warmth there, too. Warmth and happiness such as he had not known for years.

  “I think you’d do better to keep a clear head,” Paul said. “If Congress really manages to lose this war, what are you going to do?”

  “It depends on how we lose,” Hugh Stapleton said. “As long as Washington holds an army together at Morristown, we can negotiate a fairly advantageous peace.”

  “What if Washington can’t do it? What if the army collapses or mutinies? New York is full of rumors about some tremendously clever stroke that will finish the war overnight. It seems to have something to do with a British plot to stage a mutiny and provoke Washington’s assassination.”

  “If that happened,” Hugh Stapleton said, “it would behoove a Continental Congressman to find asylum in another country for a while.”

  “No doubt you have a plan?”

  Until that moment Congressman Stapleton had had no plan. He had not considered the possibility of an American collapse even after he saw Washington’s surly, starving troops at Morristown. Now, for the first time, he thought seriously about flight from the faltering rebellion.

  “Of course, I have a plan,” he said. “One of my privateers, Common Sense, can outrun anything on the ocean, I’ve got the money I made in the West Indies invested in Holland.”

  Paul nodded. He seemed depressed by his brother’s assurance. “No doubt you’ll get word to us in time to bring Hannah and the boys to Philadelphia.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Give me a swallow of that rum,” Paul said. “This fire is fading fast.”

  Hugh Stapleton poured him half a glass. Paul stared into the flames. “The old man would stay and fight it out.”

  “Like a trapped bear. That’s all he’d know how to do,” Hugh Stapleton said. “I’m glad I inherited Mother’s brains.”

  “He wasn’t stupid,” Paul said. “He had no head for business, but he was a great soldier in his day.”

  “I’m surprised to hear you taking his side,” Hugh said.

  For a moment Paul glanced at the huge double-barreled musket over the fireplace, the gun Malcolm Stapleton had carried to his numerous wars. Pompey kept it polished and oiled as religiously as he had when the old man was alive. In the nearby corner was a glass-fronted cupboard with a half-dozen other muskets in it.

  “We had a sort of reconciliation in the last six months before he died,” Paul said. “I suppose it was an acceptance of the fact that neither of us was going to change. I painted his portrait. Would you like to see it?”

  “Why not?”

  Paul took the canvas from the drawer of a nearby chest and unrolled it on the floor. It was not a portrait of the bored, frequently drunk old man Hugh Stapleton had known. This was a figure from a whirlwind, a soldier poised on a parapet with enemy guns belching death in his face. He was looking back, one muscular arm raised, waving on men behind him. The massive face, with the thick fighter’s jaw, was alive with battle fury.

  “That’s really rather good, Paul,” Hugh Stapleton said.

  “It’s how the men around here remember him,” Paul said. “The ones who followed him to Canada in ‘58 and down to Havana in ‘62.”

  “Not many of them came back, as I recall.”

  “No. He talked about that, those last months, when he was dying. He didn’t regret the deaths. He said they won something important by fighting beside the British - honor. That’s what he was afraid we’d lose in this war.”

  Hugh Stapleton finished his rum. “You know what Shakespeare wrote about honor. You can’t eat it or drink it or spend it.”

  “Remember he put those words in the mouth of Falstaff, a buffoon.”

  “You’re not sounding very neutral, brother. What’s happened? Has the love affair you were having with that fat fop Walter Beckford gone poof?”

  “That ended a long time ago,” Paul said. “But it did give me certain insights into the British mind. They’ve acquired a rather alarming attitude toward Americans, Hugh. A mixture of contempt and hatred. I fear that any so-called peace terms, if they have the power to impose them, would be very harsh.”

  “For some people. Like those who’ve been idiotic enough to serve in the Continental Congress. If it weren’t for the boys, I’d be tempted to leave my patriot wife behind to see what her kind of harebrained enthusiasm leads to.”

  “I hope you’re not serious.”

  “Why not? I assure you I wouldn’t miss her, in bed or out of it. Perhaps I’ll leave her to you, brother. You can enjoy a union of the spirit if not of the flesh.”

  “You disgust me. You’ve always disgusted me.”

  Paul’s voice went shrilling into the top of his throat. Hugh Stapleton laughed. He was being outrageous, and he knew it. He had always played the brutal realist when confronted with Paul’s ethereal idealism. Like too many brothers, they continued to inflict wounds in the cruel ways they had discovered as boys.

  The tall case clock in the upper hall bonged 3 a.m. as Hugh Stapleton slipped into bed beside his sleeping wife. Without his brother to goad him, the congressman’s cynicism rapidly subsided into barren depression. His life was turning into a disaster in front of his eyes. Was he really ready to run for cover like a hunted fox? He heard George Washington saying, I know I can speak freely to Malcolm Stapleton’s son. Once he had been complacently proud of that designation. For all his faults the old man had been a famous soldier. But the memory, the fact, was becoming more and more meaningless. Malcolm Stapleton was dead. Hugh Stapleton was living in a world that his father could never have comprehended.

  It was almost dawn before the congressman fell asleep. At 7:30, his five-year-old son, Malcolm, came scampering into the bedroom to pull on his arm and demand a ride in the sleigh. Hugh stumbled downstairs to breakfast and sat there glowering at his wife and brother. Paul was about to depart for New York, where he was making more money as a painter than he had ever made before. He also had a fair number of commissions from American officers in Morristown. But he talked, in his effeminate way, of dropping them because the Americans insisted on paying him in depreciated paper money.

  “I told them I was not neutral about Continental currency,” Paul said with a giggle. “Having gotten a glimpse of America’s prospects from a candid talk with my dear brother last night, I may be even less neutral the next time I go to Morristown, if I even bother.”

  Hannah gave her husband one of her woebegone looks, as if she despaired not only of his patriotism but of his soul’s salvation. The congressman finished his breakfast feeling even more disgruntled with his wife and w
ith the war that had demolished his contentment. He sneezed violently as he retreated from the table and did not even reply when his wife murmured, “God bless you.” In the parlor, his nose began to run. He was, as he had feared last night, getting a nasty cold. Logy from lack of sleep, he sat before the fire and tried to read the latest edition of the New Jersey Journal. The editor was an ex-artillery officer who had been mustered out of the army to launch the paper as an antidote to the loyalist newspapers published in New York. The Journal was full of gasconades about the resolute Americans and mockery toward the cowardly British.

  About 10 o’clock, Maggie, Pompey’s daughter, brought him a package. She said that it had been handed to her by a coachman driving a fine team of white mares. “There he goes now,” Maggie said.

  Hugh Stapleton peered out the window at the gray-and-white landscape and saw Cato, Flora Kuyper’s servant, leaving the circular drive in front of the farmhouse, heading his team toward the main road. The congressman ripped open the package and discovered the blue shoes he had put on when he decided to stay for the night at Flora Kuyper’s. His son Malcolm came bounding into the room and again begged him to take him for a sleigh ride. Seeing the shoes, Malcolm asked if he could wear them. The congressman chose the lesser of two evils (the other being the sleigh ride) and gave him the shoes. The boy slipped his small feet into them, then pulled out the right foot and peered into the toe. “There’s something in here, Papa,” he said.

  Hugh Stapleton’s fingers touched paper. He extracted a note.

  My dear friend:

  I cannot stop thinking of the pleasure your visit gave me, Cato found these shoes under your bed. Would that we could meet again! But I am loath to tempt you into such a dangerous neighborhood.

  Regretfully,

  Flora Kuyper

  “Who’s the letter from, Papa?” Malcolm asked.

  “From a lady. I stayed at her house the other night and forgot my shoes.”

  Malcolm found this hilarious. “How could you forget your shoes? Weren’t they on your feet?”

  “I had another pair on my feet.” And I will soon have them on again, he thought.

  By noon Hugh Stapleton was packed. Ignoring the dismay on his wife’s face, he declared that politics made it imperative for him to return to Philadelphia immediately. He had messages from Washington to deliver to certain congressmen. “Surely you can’t criticize me for doing my political duty, can you, my dear?” he said.

  “You said you would stay at least two weeks.”

  “I believe you told me only last night that our nation’s affairs were in crisis,” he said.

  Hannah looked so sad he felt momentarily ashamed. He soothed his conscience by telling himself that destiny was conspiring with desire to overwhelm his will. It was an easy thing for a willful man to believe when his world was writhing in history’s grip.

  Pompey was at the door with the Burlington geldings hitched to the sleigh. With masterful hypocrisy, the congressman told Pompey that he would endure the strain of driving to Philadelphia without him. “I want you here to guard the house against loyalist raiders. I hope it will calm Mrs. Stapleton’s nerves to have someone nearby who can use a gun. Keep my father’s old musket loaded at all times and show her you know how to use it.”

  Flattered by his master’s trust, the burly old black promised to be ready to defend the house on a moment’s notice. Hugh Stapleton seized the reins and headed for the main road. In two hours, he was knocking on Flora Kuyper’s door. She greeted him in her sitting room, looking as pale and disconsolate as the wife he had just abandoned.

  “I got your note,” he said. “I almost missed it.”

  “I . . . I merely wanted you to know my feelings,” she said. “I didn’t really expect you to risk another visit. So soon, at least.”

  “You seem unhappy.”

  “I’ve been assailed by a most melancholy humor all day.”

  “Why, madam?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps the times. Perhaps it has something to do with you. I found myself wishing to see you again, and telling myself it would be far better if you tore my note into a thousand pieces and dismissed our meeting as a night’s indiscretion.”

  “You must know it was much more than that.”

  “It was for me. But you’re a man of the world. No doubt you have had many such conquests.”

  “If there was a conquest, madam, it was on your part. Since I left here I haven’t passed an hour, day or night, without thinking of you.”

  “I’ve had similar thoughts. But you’re a married man, Mr. Stapleton. What can either of us hope to gain from continuing our friendship?”

  “Happiness. Enough happiness to satisfy our souls for a lifetime.”

  “How? Even as you sit here, my heart leaps at the risk you take to visit me again.”

  “I’ve thought of that,” the congressman admitted. “I must either resign my seat in Congress or persuade you to come to Philadelphia with me.”

  “Both are out of the question,” Flora said. “I won’t be responsible for your abandoning the cause of your country, which is also mine by adoption. I can’t go to Philadelphia. I have seven slaves, a farm to protect. All I own in the world.”

  “What if I told you the truth, madam, that the cause of your adopted country is no longer worth defending? It may have been once, in those glorious days of 1776, when everyone was sure of America’s virtue and patriotism. Now we know those qualities were chimeras, imaginary visions as fanciful as the nonsense in the Bible.”

  “Then, why should I go to Philadelphia and join you in defending this . . . this nonsense?”

  That was the moment when memory and desire fused in Congressman Stapleton’s mind. The memory of his conversation with his brother, Paul.

  Of course, I have a plan . . .

  You’ll get word to us in time to bring Hannah and the boys to Philadelphia . . .

  Perhaps I’ll leave her to you . . .

  Here was the other half of his mind - or, better, his soul. The better half of his soul. Here was beauty and admiration and consolation for Catalyntie Van Vorst Stapleton’s son, whose shrewd Dutch brain tells him it is time to run for cover.

  “You wouldn’t stay in Philadelphia very long, madam. I have a fast ship, and a half-million pounds, waiting for us to enjoy in Amsterdam as soon as the ice melts in the Delaware.”

  “Amsterdam,” Flora Kuyper said, a smile banishing her melancholy frown. “I’ve never been there. I’ve heard it’s charming.”

  Major Benjamin Stallworth studied Caleb Chandler’s haggard, sleepless face. It was the fourth day of his interrogation. From 6 a.m. until 6 p.m., Stallworth had paced the bare room in the unheated house off the Vealtown Road, snarling questions and accusations at his prisoner. Then Alexander Hamilton took charge of the verbal gauntlet, continuing it until midnight.

  For a moment Stallworth felt a tremor of remorse. It disturbed him, out of all proportion to its intensity. He had never felt a trace of such an emotion with other prisoners. Was he losing control of his nerves? Was he afraid of repeating the mistake he had made - if it had been a mistake - with the Reverend Joel Lockwood? No, Stallworth told himself, glaring coldly at Caleb Chandler until his stare matched the temperature in the room. The regret was not for Chandler. It was his own naive self he was mourning, the slogan-chanting college graduate, marching to war in the good cause. Caleb Chandler reminded him of that nincompoop, who believed the ministers in every pulpit, thundering confidence in America’s virtue. Perhaps he still wished he could believe in that myth, and the larger myth behind it, the God of righteousness and His grace. But Stallworth was a servant of necessity now.

  Besides, there was still the possibility that Caleb Chandler was a traitor. Stallworth had begun to doubt it. But the thought enabled him to begin the day’s interrogation with the requisite contempt in his voice.

  “Do you believe me now, Chandler? Are you prepared to admit that your hero, Joel Lockwood, was ready to
turn his coat?”

  Yesterday, Stallworth had read Chandler the letters that Lockwood had written to Major Walter Beckford. Letters that Caesar Muzzey had conveniently betrayed before carrying them to New York.

  “Yes,” Caleb said in a leaden voice. “But that doesn’t mean I’m a traitor.”

  “Oh, no,” Stallworth said. “Not at all. Just because your mentor, the man whom you called in one of your letters the captain of your soul, is a traitor, that doesn’t mean you’re one. It just raises the probability a little higher. When we add to it all the other probabilities - no one else had a better opportunity to murder Caesar Muzzey, no one else had a better motive, presuming, as we must, that you’re in British pay. No one else has preached traitorous sermons to the troops. No one else arranged to send one of our congressmen to the house of a known British agent, where only good fortune prevented his capture. No one else proceeded to spend twenty-four hours with that same British agent, for Christ knows what hellish purpose. When we pile all those probabilities on top of one another, Chandler, they become a gallows high enough to hang you.”

  “I’ve told you a hundred times I knew nothing about Mrs. Kuyper being an agent. I knew nothing about Lockwood. I knew nothing about Caesar Muzzey. I only wanted to see justice done.”

  Stallworth shook his head. “Chandler, your feeble pleas won’t convince a court-martial board. There are too many coincidences. Your one chance for life is to tell us the truth. Confess your guilt. Give us the names of the other people in your network. Who recruited you?”

  “No one. Major, please believe me. I’m not a spy. I . . . I’m ready to die for the cause. I came here believing everyone, Joel Lockwood, the soldiers, the officers, felt the same way.”

  “Have you ever seen a man hanged, Chandler?”

  “No! I told you. I . . . I never have.”

  “I saw General Putnam hang one of your royalist confederates, a Ridgefield man named Jones, about a year ago. It was a dismal scene. His parents and relatives wringing their hands, wailing. You can be sure we’ll hang you back in Connecticut, as an example to others of your traitorous ilk.”