Yates drew a deep breath through his nose. “You don’t have to say another word to me, General. He has just damned himself out of his own mouth. He has accused an officer of the army of the United States of taking a bribe.”
“What should we do with him, Major?”
“Why, we are on detached duty, here. My officers and me will be glad to form a court-martial board, with you as chairman. We will have this spying son of Satan ready to hang tomorrow at sunrise, all done so legal-like the lord chief justice of England would split his wits to find a quibble with it.”
“Put him under arrest, Major.”
Major Yates yelled an order. A half-dozen Yankees marched Kemble to the guardhouse. There he was forced to strip and surrender his clothing and shoes.
“If you are carrying any secret messages, we will have them soon enough,” Yates said.
Kemble was left shivering in the unheated guardhouse all night without even a blanket to cover him, and with no supper, not even a glass of water. At dawn, Slocum appeared and flung his clothes unceremoniously on the floor at his feet.
“The Major’s disappointed. I won’t let him hang you. It wouldn’t be that hard to justify. You’re a member of a suspected family. Cousins, uncles, aunts on the other side. They burned them saltworks on the Navesink. How do you think they found them? Some damned spy gave them the exact location, how many guards – ”
It was clear that Slocum had seriously considered hanging Kemble. Only fear of the consequences restrained him. With all his power, Slocum was still intimidated by the Stapleton name. If Kemble had been a Talbot, he might have ended his life in those gloomy woods beside the gray sluggish Manasquan that December.
“I told you once before not to cross me, lad. Now I’m telling you again, for the second and last time. Go home and keep your Mouth shut about what’s ‘happening here. We still need your name to turn out the men in the district. But that is. all you are good for. You are out of your depth in this war. If you mind your business, when it is all over, Slocum will take good care of you. He’ll send you to the legislature, maybe to Congress. You can have your choice of Tory estates. Any place but Kemble Manor. That goes to Slocum.”
Kemble finished dressing. He barely noticed that the Yankees had slashed the linings of his coat and cloak, searching for secret documents. He was full of loathing for this gross barrel of a man confronting him, and equally full of loathing for himself. He had collaborated with Slocum to give him the power he was now using to foul our Revolution with his greed. Worst of all, Jonathan Gifford, the man whom Kemble had sneered at and condemned, had been right about Slocum from the start. Partly far this reason, and partly because he clung to his sinking belief in the politics of enlightenment and virtue, Kemble suppressed his loathing and tried once more to speak to Slocum as a friend, an ally.
“There is only one way you can right the wrong you have done here, General. You must sell the rest of the salt you produce below the market price set by Congress and even give away some of it to the poor. You must also share the profits with the men who are doing the work.”
“You are out of your goddamn mind,” roared Slocum. “Share the profits with them cattle? Slocum is not risking his head in this war for nothing. You rich bastards are all alike. You expect the poor man to risk his neck for glory and when it’s all over go back to sweating a bare living on his lousy acres. Well, you can stuff your glory up your ass, young squire. Now get the hell out of here. Just remember, if you say one word against Slocum you’ll regret it all your life.”
Outside it began to rain. Acrid smoke billowed from the chimneys of the boiling house and swirled through the saltworks. Kemble walked through the drizzle to his horse, still tied to the tree where he had left him. He mounted and turned to Slocum, who was standing at the gate.
“General Slocum,” he said. “Did you ever see a letter Dr. Franklin published after Bunker Hill? He wrote it to a friend in England.”
“I don’t think I saw it. What did he say?”
“‘You are now my enemy and I am yours.’”
With a curse Slocum snatched a musket from one of the sentries at the gate, aimed it at Kemble, and pulled the trigger. The bullet came within a foot of his head.
“There is my answer to you. The next shot won’t miss,” Slocum roared.
Kemble shoved spurs into his horse and got out of the clearing into the safety of the trees. For the first time he faced the fact that Daniel Slocum was not just an uneducated Whig. He was something much more dangerous - something that did not exist in the American future as Kemble envisioned it - an evil man.
TROUBLES OF A much different sort were absorbing Kate. Lieutenant Thomas Rawdon suffered an alarming relapse. His wound, which seemed to be healing normally beneath Dr. Davie’s sutures, suddenly became infected. Dr. Davie had to remove the sutures. This time he left it open with a device known as a tent in it to encourage a thorough drainage.
“I knew I should have left the dumb thing open in the first place,” Dr. Davie said. “I almost think the fellow wanted things to go this way. Remember his crazy talk of closing it up and getting it over with?”
From the hall where they were standing, Kate studied Rawdon’s flushed feverish face on his pillow. “Is it - serious?”
“No. I think we will save him this time in spite of himself. But there is something going on in that fellow’s noggin that I don’t understand.”
By this time Kate was alternating between the same opinion and a suspicion that she understood Thomas Rawdon all too well. At first there seemed little to suspect. He had stubbornly insisted on fulfilling the first part of his planned march to infinity. He doubled the number of steps he took each day, clinging to Kate’s arm, all the while murmuring outrageous remarks. She was defiantly determined to assert her American identity in his presence. Memories of her mother’s fate put her doubly on her guard against the seductive powers of the British officer corps. But these antagonistic feelings mingled with the ambience with which a nurse - particularly an amateur nurse - surrounds her patient. It is a kind of love mingled with a certain vexation. It is akin to the feeling a mother has for a difficult child. In the language of the electrical laboratory, there was simultaneous attraction and repulsion - a phenomenon that would seem to defy science and which occurs in no other place but the human heart.
By the time he had completed his first week of promenading in his sickroom, Rawdon had Kate calling him Thomas as a habit. It was all done with jests, a mad extension of his original contention that Thomases doubted everything, even their own identities, hence needed constant reassurance about who they were, hence the need to hear their names frequently. But beneath the witty fooling there were flashes of serious - and seriously troubled - feelings.
Toward the end of the second week of his recovery, Lieutenant Rawdon suddenly fixed Kate with his deep-socketed dark gray eyes and said, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to shoot you, Miss Stapleton.”
“Why?”
“You have criticized my taste in poetry. I recited some of the best work of the finest English poets of our era and you called me a damned silly noodle.”
“Which is what you were, and I fear still are. But why should I be killed for saying it?”
“In denying my taste in poetry, you’re defying the authority of the mother country, who has sent me over here to educate you on a wide variety of subjects. If you refuse to be educated, I will be forced to shoot you. Doesn’t that make perfect sense?”
“There is no one in the world who can talk nonsense to match you.”
“Precisely what I told my father. For that very reason I argued that he should buy me a seat in Parliament. Instead I found myself gazetted to the King’s Own Regiment. My father is a patriot. He sees America as threatening the very foundation of the English Constitution. Those who threaten the Constitution are traitors, and traitors should be shot. That is the kindest thing we can do to them. When our blood is up, we hang, draw, and quarter them.
But my father would find it hard to continue his ranting after one look into your eyes.”
“What does this have to do with your taste in poetry?”
“Thomas. Your taste in poetry, Thomas.”
“Thomas.”
“It has nothing to do with my taste in poetry. But I thought you might be interested to know how I came to America and a little about yours truly, the Rawdon family black sheep.”
“Who gave you that nasty name?”
“Practically every relative I have. I suffer by comparison with my cousin, you see. Perhaps you’ve heard of him. Francis, Lord Rawdon. We are the same age. I’ve gone through life being compared to him. I’m sure, if he were to pay us a visit, you would fall in love with him instantly. He is the perfect soldier, noble, proud, brave. At Bunker Hill he commanded a company of thirty-five men. At the end of the battle there were only five of them left. Can you find a better proof of a man’s heroism? Francis is currently General Clinton’s aide-de-camp. His ambition is to be a full general at the age of forty. I have no doubt that he will realize it.”
“What is your ambition?”
“Ah, Miss Stapleton. That is why I am the family black sheep. I don’t have any. I am a hopelessly idle indolent fellow.”
“Don’t be so cruel to yourself. There is no need for a person to accept the names others fasten on him. Even if they’re half true, a person can change.”
“That’s why I decided to accept my father’s challenge and try soldiering. The very opposite of my nature. I told myself by pretending to be ravenous for fame, honor, glory, I would somehow ignite a mild appetite for these things. And what happens? Before I can lead a charge or deliver a summons to surrender, I am shot through by some bumpkin who neither knows nor cares about the great experiment in character development he is interrupting. I fear I am doomed to be a man of futility. I have only one hope left.”
“What?” said Kate, rather solemn now, for in spite of his wry tone she sensed a personal pain in this complicated confession.
“To find a woman foolish enough to let me love her. Since I have no talent or interest in anything else, I am prepared to make this the grand project of my life. But what woman will tolerate a man without spirit, honor, ambition, etc.?”
“Have you tried any to find out?”
“One. She led me on until I revealed my abysmal character in all its unlovely nakedness. She rejected me with contempt.”
“Damn her for a bitch,” Kate said.
“She was another reason why I accepted my commission in the King’s Own.”
“Yes. I listened to you reciting The Sorrows of Young Werther by the yard while you were delirious.”
He took her hint. “I was afraid to hope. I had no hope.- Until I saw you that night at the dance. You were so full of life and I was so full of death.”
“What in the world - are you talking seriously - ”
For the first time in years Kate was flustered by a man. She sprang up, blushing. “You are a damn tease, that is what you are.”
“I am serious, Miss Stapleton. I love you.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“I don’t need to know - or want to know.”
“Yes you do,” Kate said. “I don’t believe two people can love each other in defiance or ignorance of the world. Love can’t be separated from the life people must live after it’s pledged.”
Kate had ceased to be a romantic. But Thomas Rawdon, behind his mask of mockery and humor, was in the grip of the darkest, most destructive romantic emotions and he was determined to draw Kate into them.
“I have the money, Miss Stapleton, or will have soon. The money to devote my life to loving you. Do you know what a nabob is?”
“Of course I do. One of those disgusting Englishmen who has made his fortune by exploiting the poor East Indians.”
“Precisely. My father is a nabob. He sired me and forthwith departed for the East, where he no doubt sired several dozen unacknowledged dusky little Rawdons, and returned home immensely rich, built himself a noble pile in Cornwall and a town house in Berkeley Square, and went to work on making me worthy of inheriting his fortune.”
“This is all mad imagination, like everything else you say.”
“I wish it were. I very much want to inherit this fortune. Otherwise it will go to my pompous hero cousin, Lord Rawdon. But it will take management. I have no intention of recovering my health until this damnable war ends. I have lost all desire to get killed in order to turn Americans into obedient servants of His Majesty. It should not be difficult to remain a prisoner of war until the maniacs on both sides get tired of killing each other. They’ve captured several hundred healthy officers in Burgoyne’s army who will be much more worth exchanging than me. The moment the war ends, I can resign my commission with tolerable honor. We will board the next packet to London where I will introduce you to Father as the American heiress who has saved my life and whom I wish to make my wife. The day before you see him, I will ask you to spend twelve hours swearing. Hopefully you will be all sworn out for the next day or two.”
“I knew you were not serious about this.”
“I am serious. I have never been more serious about anything in my life.”
The old Kate, the Kate who pledged her love so recklessly to Anthony Skinner in the Shrewsbury swamps, might have been overwhelmed by this vision of lifelong devotion backed by a hundred thousand pounds. But the new Kate was wary. She declined to accept the offer - or Thomas Rawdon - at face value. Over the next few weeks she struggled to penetrate his comedian’s mask and find out more about him. Why had he left medical school in Edinburgh, for instance?
“I was too good.”
“What does that mean?”
“No, that is only half the truth. The other half is what I’ve already told you about the ignorance of most doctors masquerading as knowledge. And - something else.”
Kate sensed his reluctance and pressed him to tell her the whole truth. They were strolling beside the brook. Rawdon stared away from her into the stripped wintry trees of late November.
“I didn’t care, I didn’t care whether any of the stupid people I was trying to cure lived or died.”
“That is why you did not care whether you yourself lived or died?”
“I suppose so. Until I saw you.”
“I wish,” Kate said, trying to choose her words with extreme care, “I wish I could say I was flattered, simply flattered by such a reaction, Thomas. But I am afraid it also frightens me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know how to say it, exactly. Perhaps I don’t feel worthy of such single-minded devotion. Perhaps I’d like to see a man do something besides devoting his life to making me happy. There are so many things to be done in this country, Thomas, after we win this war. I’m not sure I want to marry a man who doesn’t care enough to be part of the life around him.”
“I will care, through you. Your caring will be my caring.”
“It’s not enough, Thomas. It’s not enough and too much at the same time.”
From that moment Thomas Rawdon begin slipping down into the swamp of melancholy in which he had spent too much of his young life. It had an inevitable effect on his health. Anyone who practices medicine for a few years notices how much our moods, the loss of hope, a sudden grief, affect our bodies. With melancholy came a critical hypersensitivity. Rawdon saw the time Kate spent preparing for Christmas as a rejection of him. He withdrew from all the celebrations of the season and even abandoned his daily exercise because Kate was no longer there to walk with him. In a few weeks, his wound began to swell and an infectious fever returned to disturb his nights.
He said nothing about it. He probably would have allowed the infection to spread inward from the sutured wound until it was too late to help him. Kate, bringing him his breakfast one morning, noticed his nightshirt was drenched with sweat. She told Dr. Davie, who examined the wound, diagnosed the return of the infection, and took p
rompt steps to combat it.
A few days later, when Dr. Davie pronounced himself satisfied at the rate with which infected matter was flowing from the wound, Kate tried to deal with the other side of Thomas Rawdon’s sickness - the invisible unhealed wound in his spirit.
“You must have been in great pain, Thomas, and you knew you had a fever,” she said as they sat in the rose garden. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why didn’t you ask me?”
“You know how busy I’ve been in the kitchen. Father spends a great deal of his time at Kemble Manor these days. I’ve also been needed in the taproom.”
Without looking at her, Rawdon felt his own pulse, and said, “The fever is almost gone. I will be up in a week.”
“You are half in love with dying, aren’t you?”
“Sometimes more than half.”
“I have been thinking a good deal about love in the past year, Thomas. I didn’t think about it much before that. Then I tried loving someone; I made a dreadful mess of it. So did the man I loved. He hadn’t thought very much about it either.”
With brutal detail she told him the story of her involvement with Anthony Skinner, leaving nothing out.
“For him love was - is - all pride, possession. You seem to think it’s pity. I’m sure it’s neither of these things. I’m not rejecting your love out of hand, Thomas. On the contrary I’ve never been happier in the company of any man. But I think we must wait a little longer to see if we can both discover a better kind of love between us.”
The calmness, the honesty, the good sense of these words disturbed Thomas Rawdon more than he could bring himself to admit. But he was too deep in his melancholy to escape that deadly swamp along the route Kate was offering him.
“There are some people who cannot change their natures. You must understand that.”
“That is what I refuse to admit. People do change. I am living proof. A country can change. If America can have a revolution, why not a person? History is nothing but the story of changes. I believe we are only at the beginning of them in America.”
The Heart of Liberty Page 33