He knew the verse: There’s no delight like living at your ease.
“One may admire the poet, but not all his sentiments, madam.”
Flora Kuyper pouted and sighed. “Does that mean you disapprove of all this?” she said, gesturing to the expensive china and silver, the succulent beef and rabbit pie they were enjoying.
Caleb felt humiliation and confusion infest him like a fever. He began trying to explain himself. “I doubt if I would complain at bread and water if they were served with your presence, your conversation to enhance it, madam. It’s not rich food or beautiful things in themselves that New England condemns. You’ll find as much good eating and silver plate in Boston and New Haven as you will anywhere in America. It’s what men and women do to possess the pleasures and treasures of this world that alarms us. We believe that people should be ready to forgo ease rather than compromise their principles.”
“Ah, Mr. Chandler,” Flora Kuyper replied with another unnerving sigh. “What if you’re a person who admires such principles, but you have given your love to someone whose spirit has already been corrupted by the pursuit of wealth?”
“Then you must seek by prayer and, if need be, by fasting to sunder yourself from such a love.”
“Do you think we have the power? So often the heart becomes infested, controlled by another person, and there’s little we can do about it.”
“You sound as if you’re speaking from experience, madam.”
“I am.”
There was a tremolo of sadness in her throaty voice. Caleb groped for words to express his sympathy. “The Bible tells us to judge not. I would be the last to condemn a divided heart. I, too, know, in another way, the pain it can cause.”
“I am afraid I don’t understand.”
Now the sympathy flowed from her side of the table. Caleb felt his words responding to it; they seemed to be summoned from deep within his body by her puzzling combination of beauty and sadness. “One can love not only a person but a calling, a creed, a faith. I came to Yale on fire with enthusiasm for the ministry. For the faith of our fathers. In six months, I had a nickname - Tom Brainless.”
“What does it mean?”
“He’s a character in a poem written by one of the college’s tutors, John Trumbull. A model of a country fool, madam. Yale, you see, is dominated by city-bred young men, sons of merchants and lawyers from New Haven, New London, Hartford. They regard it as their duty to mock farm boys from little towns like Lebanon, my home. As for religion, they laugh at it. They’d rather read a play or a poem than study the Bible. I tried to defend the old faith at first. But in the end, they taunted me into silence. That’s why I began exploring other creeds. Now I begin to fear the ministry is wasted on me. My mind and heart are infested with doubt. I volunteered as a chaplain in the hope that service in a good cause would restore my faith. But what I’ve seen in the army has only deepened my doubts.”
Caleb wondered why reproach, disapproval, was not visible on Flora Kuyper’s lovely face. He had just made a confession to her that he had concealed from everyone, even, to some extent, from himself.
“I know some of what you’re feeling,” Flora Kuyper said. “I was educated by the Ursuline sisters in New Orleans. But I lost the sweet, simple faith they gave me.”
“What, may I ask, was the cause of your disillusionment?”
Her eyes searched Caleb’s face for a moment. She seemed disappointed, or at least unencouraged, by what she found. “The story is too complicated, and we’re too strange to each other, Mr. Chandler,” she said. “If you were a priest, your lips sealed by the secrecy of the confessional, I might kneel beside you and tell you a great deal. That’s the one thing I miss from my childhood faith, the sacrament of confession. How marvelous it was to escape the burden of one’s sins, even childish ones. Now that we know, as adults, what sin really is, the idea becomes even more precious. Why did you Protestants abandon it?”
“Because we believe God forgives the repentant sinner directly, without the agency of men.”
Flora Kuyper shook her head. “Men and women need the words, the feeling of forgiveness, the experience, Mr. Chandler. Don’t you feel better for having confessed - I don’t believe there’s a better word for it - your feelings about the ministry, even though I have no power to forgive you?”
An extraordinary surge of feeling swept Caleb. He wanted to say something extravagant, absurd. Madam, you have more power than you realize. A smiling Flora Kuyper pushed her chair from the table, apparently unaware of the violent emotion she was arousing. “We’re growing too solemn. Let’s have some music. Do you play an instrument, Mr. Chandler?”
“No,” he said as they walked to the parlor. “But I’ve been to singing school every year of my life since the age of four. I went to Boston one summer and studied under the great Billings.”
“I don’t know him,” Flora said.
“You should. He’s our first American musician. The next time I visit, if you will permit me such a pleasure, madam, I’ll bring my copy of the New England Psalm Singer. It’s not all psalms, let me assure you.”
“Sing one of Billings’s songs for me. I’m sure I can pick it up on the harpsichord.”
“No, it would be too awkward. I prefer them done rightly or not at all. Let’s enjoy your favorites, which I am sure will please me infinitely.”
“You flatter me. Here’s one I set to music myself, from an old chanson by Charles d’Orleans, a contemporary of Villon. Do you know him?”
Caleb shook his head. She began to play a delicate, haunting melody, to which she added a soft, subtle contralto. The French words rhymed beautifully. Caleb was only able to translate them into prose.
I think nothing of those kisses
Given by convention
As a matter of politeness.
Far too many people share them.
Do you know the ones I value?
Secret ones, bestowed in pleasure.
All the rest are nothing
But a way of greeting strangers.
I think nothing of those kisses.
Standing behind her at the harpsichord, Caleb breathed Flora Kuyper’s perfume. Her dark, gleaming hair, her graceful neck, were only inches from his fingers. A kind of delirium consumed his mind. He did not know how long he stood there listening to her sing other songs. In the end, he begged her to play “Secret Kisses” again. He joined her, hoping his vigorous baritone would compensate for his deplorable pronunciation.
“Now I must hear one of your New England songs,” Flora said. “With such a voice, you don’t need an accompanist.”
“I’ll sing you my favorite, ‘Chester,’“ Caleb said. “It’s far superior to ‘Yankee Doodle’ in my opinion.”
She sounded the key of G for him and Caleb began. He always felt confident, at ease, when he sang. William Billings himself had praised his voice.
Let tyrants shake their iron rod
And Slav’ry clank her galling chains.
We fear them not, we trust in God.
New England’s God forever reigns.
On he sang, through the rolling, sonorous notes, the unflinching words, with their vivid testament of New England’s fierce spirit of resistance, to the thunderous climax.
When God inspired us for the fight
Their ranks were broke, their lines were forced,
Their ships were shattered in our sight
Or swiftly driven from our coast.
What grateful offering shall we bring?
What shall we render to the Lord?
Loud hallelujahs let us sing
And praise His name on every chord.
Flora Kuyper sat at the harpsichord, gazing up at him, her eyes wide with amazement. Or was it dismay? Caleb could not tell.
“When it’s sung by a full choir, it’s very grand,” he said.
“It’s enough to hear you sing it, Mr. Chandler,” Flora Kuyper said. “For the first time I begin to understand this war.”
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br /> He was not sure what she meant. But the compliment pleased him.
“Is seven o’clock too early for the funeral service tomorrow?”
“I’m at your disposal, madam.”
“Let us set it for that hour so you may get safely back to Morristown in time for your dinner. I’ll tell Cato. He wants to invite some of Caesar’s friends from nearby farms. Now let me show you to your room.”
She led him up the red-carpeted stairs to the second floor and into a bedroom with a banked fire glowing in the grate. The wallpaper was a soft rose, full of classical shepherds and shepherdesses. The furniture was in the heavy Dutch style of the early part of the century.
“Here’s your candle,” she said, thrusting it at him without warning. His hand missed the lip of the pewter holder and it went clattering to the floor. “Forgive me,” she said. “This was Mr. Kuyper’s room. I never come in here without doing something clumsy.”
He lit the candle on the coals and inserted it in the holder again. “No damage done,” he said.
“Sleep well, Mr. Chandler.”
Caleb found himself incapable of fulfilling this polite wish. He lay in the big tester bed for at least an hour thinking about Flora Kuyper, her grace, her composure, and that puzzling sadness lurking beneath the surface of her manner. He had never met a woman like her, a woman who had read Francois Villon, who spoke and sang flawless French, and wore fashionable clothes with such ease. He compared her to Deborah Hawley, the Lebanon girl he had been halfheartedly courting. Deborah of the lush figure and blooming country cheeks was moderately attractive at a distance. But she walked with a loping gait and her laugh was like the bellow of a calf. She thought novels and plays and most poetry, except the psalms, were sinful. Her dresses were all inherited from her mother and her aunts, and the vanity of lace on her friend Polly’s cuff or the price her friend Susan paid for a muff could dominate her conversation for an entire afternoon.
Flora Kuyper was a woman of the world. The familiar phrase reverberated in Caleb’s mind. His religion warned him to suspect such creatures, to guard against their corruption, their powers of seduction. But Mrs. Kuyper seemed to combine her worldliness with compassion and kindness and sympathy. There was nothing hard or acquisitive about her. On the contrary, he sensed a need, a wish, for protection.
Stop, Caleb told himself. Go to sleep. What could Tom Brainless, the country fool from Lebanon, offer such a woman? To her, he was a raw boy without money or savoir faire. Perhaps all this pondering was an attempt to evade the desire Flora Kuyper stirred in him. He wanted her, wanted her now, naked beside him in this bed, wanted his hands in that dark coiled hair, his lips on that mournful mouth.
Risking the winter chill that was creeping through the room as the fire died, Caleb took his Bible from his traveling bag. He laid the book on its spine and let it fall open. The first lines that struck his eyes were from Ecclesiastes 10:8, He who digs a pit will fall into it; and a serpent will bite him who breaks through a wall. No light there. He put the book on its spine and let it fall open again. This time it was Isaiah 45:15. Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself. Equally baffling.
Caleb finally went to sleep and dreamed he was in a garden full of curiously trimmed hedges, forming a maze. At the end of it, he saw Flora Kuyper in a gown of glowing white. He kept glimpsing her and losing her as he wandered through the maze. He himself, he discovered to his confusion and dismay, was naked. Eventually he emerged to find not Flora, but a statue of her, a sculpture of pure white marble, its head bowed, a grieving nymph at the funeral of Dionysius. The statue was naked, revealing a body of stunning perfection. On her cheeks were frozen two or three lapidary tears. I am too late, flashed through Caleb’s bemused brain. Forgetting his own nakedness, he flung his arms around the statue and pressed his lips to the cold stone mouth. But the marble figure did not, as in some classic fable, stir to joyous life. Instead the face shattered beneath his lips; the body crumbled in his arms.
A dark voice, which might well have belonged to God, began calling Caleb’s name. He grappled with an overwhelming dread. The voice drew closer. Caleb opened his eyes and gazed up at Cato’s black face. “Six by the morning clock, Mr. Chandler,” he said. “I’ll light your fire and the room should be ready for habitation in a few minutes.”
“Thank you, Cato,” he said.
“Ten below zero outside,” Cato said. “The field boys been up since five hacking out Caesar’s grave. They had to use axes and saws to cut through the topsoil. Frozen down almost two feet. Sure makes you think the Lord is angry with this nation, sending us such a cold.”
“Yes,” muttered Chandler.
“Mistress is waiting for you at breakfast. She was up when I come into the house at dawn. Some nights she doesn’t sleep at all.”
Caleb Chandler shaved, dressed, and descended to the dining room. Flora Kuyper sat at the table, on which bacon, eggs, ham, and fresh bread were arrayed in profusion. She was wearing a simple green dress, with a blue apron and matching blue shawl. Her mood was muted, somber.
“Did you sleep well, Mr. Chandler?” she asked.
“When regret finally allowed me to close my eyes,” he replied.
“Regret?” she said in a startled voice. “What were you regretting?”
“That we couldn’t continue our music. I wish we could have thrown prudence to the winds and sung till dawn, madam.”
Flora Kuyper smiled forlornly. “Yes. I wish so, too. I heard your voice in my dreams.”
“Does that justify my hope for another singing session?”
“No,” she said, with what seemed to him unnecessary sharpness. “It wouldn’t be wise, or safe. I’m too close to the British lines. It was rash of me to ask you to risk even this visit.”
“Madam, although I wear a clergyman’s collar, I carry a gun. I have little fear of the kind of vagabonds that prey on travelers.”
“These aren’t vagabonds. They’re in British pay. They prowl the roads around here, day and night.”
Caleb heard rejection, impatience, in her sharp tone. He was disappointed but not entirely surprised. Hadn’t he told himself last night that Tom Brainless had nothing to offer this woman? Their conversation at dinner, the music after it, had been mere politeness on her part; gratitude for his willingness to preach at Caesar’s funeral.
“Is there anything you’d like me to say about Caesar? Any special characteristic that you want his family and friends to remember?”
Flora Kuyper literally trembled. He was puzzled by her agitation. “I . . . I leave that to you.”
At 7 a.m., she wrapped herself in a fur-lined cape and followed Caleb out to the barn. It was a huge structure, in the style of many Dutch barn, as large as a church. About fifty blacks were assembled in the center. It was the first time Chandler had ever seen so many of their race together. He was surprised to discover that they were a very mixed assemblage of humankind. Some were brawny, others skeleton thin. He saw friendship on several faces, sullen distrust on a few. Intelligence and interest gleamed from some eyes, boredom from others.
Caesar’s coffin sat on two trestles at the head of the congregation. In spite of the cold, the air in the barn was redolent with the smell of animals and hay. Caleb mounted a small platform set up behind the coffin, so that Caesar rested at the level of his knees. Someone had removed the coffin’s lid and prepared his body for burial. Caesar lay there in his uniform, his eyes closed, his thick-lipped mouth drooping at the edges, in a kind of silent resentment of death. The flat nose, the massive jaw, were quintessentially African, as was his intense blackness.
“My fellow Christians,” Caleb said, “I am here from the American army to help you mourn the death of one of your brethren. I did not know Caesar Muzzey. Everything I’ve learned about him since his death has convinced me that he was a brave soldier. He risked death in the war America is fighting to throw off her oppressors. I hope that the memory of his service - and the service of other men of your race - will in
the years to come persuade Americans to lift from your shoulders a greater oppression than most white men have ever known, the bonds of slavery. The Bible tells us that God sees all the oppressions that are practiced under the sun, and the tears of the oppressed who have no one to comfort them. Until the day of your freedom, remember that God is there in the person of His Son Jesus. Let Him be your comforter. Let Him give you the courage, the same courage that Caesar possessed, to bear your burden patiently till the time to strike off your chains is at hand.
“Now let us join in reciting a Psalm of David.
“‘Hear my voice, O God, in my prayer; preserve my life from fear of the enemy.
“‘Hide me from the secret counsel of the wicked; from the insurrection of the workers of iniquity.’”
The solemn black voices intoned the words with him. They were obviously familiar with the psalm. In the front rank, Chandler saw Cato, reciting in a deep rumble, his eyes closed.
“I hope now you will join me in a song of mourning, a new song, written by a Boston composer, William Billings. The words are from the Bible. They were spoken by King David over the corpse of his son Absalom. I will sing it for you first, then ask you to join me.”
He took his pitch pipe from his pocket, sounded the key of G, and sang “David’s Lamentation.”
David the king was grieved and moved.
He went to his chamber and wept
And as he went he wept and said:
O my son
O my son
Would to God I had died
Would to God I had died
Would to God I had died for thee
O Absalom
My son
My son.
The slaves joined him in the reprise, Cato leading with a magnificent bass. The melody soared to the roof of the barn, the reiteration of the strong, simple phrases achieving a grandeur that the setting made doubly remarkable. Gazing down the ranks of black faces, Caleb’s eyes found Flora Kuyper standing to one side at the rear. She was weeping. It struck him as odd. He noticed none of the blacks were shedding any tears for Caesar. From what he had learned about him, this was not surprising. Why was Flora Kuyper so grief-stricken over a black field hand whom she could have known for only a few years?
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