“The truth is, brother, you've treated Hannah abominably since you came back from the West Indies. On this visit you've outdone yourself. You speak to her as if she were a servant, when you speak at all.”
“Since you know absolutely nothing about living with a wife, I suggest you shut your mouth.”
Paul became intensely agitated. For a moment the congressman thought he was going to burst into tears. “I've
vowed to talk to you about this, no matter what you say to me. Hannah loves you with a violence thatâto be frankâdismays me. I always thought you were like Mother, incapable of loving or being loved by anyone. I assumed you'd marry a mirror image of yourself, a woman of fashion who'd cherish some faint affection for you as long as you kept her well housed and gowned. But you surprised me completely with Hannah. Even more byâby winning her love. You can't ignore a fact like that, Hugh. It becomes aâresponsibility.”
“Responsibility!” the congressman snarled. “I'm sick to death of responsibility. First I have to apologize to eight blockheaded Dutchmen about the way Congress is losing the war and then I'm supposed to cringe because my saintly sodomite brother calls me a failed husband. To hell with all of you.”
“We
are
losing the war.”
“What do you mean, we? You have nothing to fear. Neuters like you can laugh at fools like me. I might have imitated your bad example if it weren't for my patriot wife. That alone is reason for me to snap at her. Without her exhortations I would have gone back to Holland in '78. But I had to come home and rescue the family honor. My country needed me. Dear God. I could be sitting in Amsterdam at this moment, with a plump trollop on either knee, singing an old-fashioned drinking song instead of arguing with you about responsibility.”
“You came home because you loved her, Hugh. I saw you in New York, in those years. You were the happiest husband in America. IâI envied you that happiness.”
“If I was happy, it was because I had a wife who tried to please me. Now it seems I'm supposed to please herâby prating about patriotism and lying about our glorious cause. I'll be damned if I'll do it any longer.”
“Hugh, try to understand how we live here. In terror every night. Only when you come home does the place get any protection. Hannah's nerves are bad. You can't live in constant fear without having it depress your spirits.”
“Fear of what? No one's gong 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. Theyâthey use our barns to hide escaped prisoners on the way to New York.”
“Have you notified the militia?”
“No. IâI 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 fatherâget 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 mutinyâand 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.”
“Yesâof 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 fireplaceâthe 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 is '62.”
“Not many of them came back, as I recall.”
“No. He talked about thatâthose last monthsâwhen he was dying. He didn't regret the deaths. He said they won something important by fighting beside the Britishâhonor. 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 Falstaffâa 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 meâcertain 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 termsâif they have the power to impose themâwould 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 Morristownâif 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 with 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.