New York - The Novel

dominie?”
    “It’s no use the dominie saying anything. We are to be married in the Anglican church, by Mr. Smith.”
    “Anglican?” The Mistress made a sort of gasping sound. “His family dares to demand that?”
    “It was my idea.”
    The Mistress just sat there staring at her as if she couldn’t believe it. Then she looked at the Boss. “You knew of this?”
    “I heard something. But Clara’s more than thirty now, and a widow. She’ll make up her own mind.”
    Then the Mistress turned to her son and asked him if he had known.
    “I had a notion of it,” he said.
    After he said that, the Mistress seemed to sag in her chair.
    “It would have been kinder,” she said quietly, “if somebody had told me.”
    “We didn’t know for sure,” said Jan.
    “It’s not so bad, Greet,” said the Boss cheerfully. “Henry’s a nice boy.”
    “So, Clara,” the Mistress continued, “you are happy to marry an Englishman, and desert your Church. This means nothing to you?”
    “I love him,” Clara replied.
    “That will pass,” said the Mistress. “You realize that in an English marriage, you will have few rights.”
    “I know the law.”
    “You must never belong to your husband, Clara. Dutchwomen are free.”
    “I am not worried, Mother.”
    Nobody said anything for a moment. The Mistress looked down at the table.
    “I see,” she said at last, “that my family cares nothing for me.” She nodded. “You are all in league with Master.” She turned to Miss Clara. “I wish you joy of it.”
    Later that year, Mr. Smith, the English clergyman, married them. The Mistress refused to attend the service. People weren’t surprised. Many of her Dutch friends would have felt the same. When the Boss came back afterward, she was sitting in the parlor looking like a thundercloud. He was looking quite contented, and I could see he’d had a few drinks.
    “Don’t worry, my dear,” he said. “You weren’t missed.”

    I’d have been happy enough myself, if only my son Hudson hadn’t wanted to go to sea. He was always pestering me about it, and the Boss was all in favor. Mr. Master said he’d take him any time, and it was only because the Boss knew I didn’t wish it, and that Hudson was all I had, that he didn’t hire him to Mr. Master. “You’re costing me money, Quash,” he told me, and he wasn’t joking.
    One day Mr. Master came to the house with a Scottish gentleman named Captain Kidd. He’d been a privateer and married a rich Dutch widow. He was a well-set man, very upright. He had a weather-beaten face, but he always wore a fine wig, and a spotless cravat and a rich coat of blue or red. The Mistress called him a pirate; but having so much money now, he was very respectable and was friends with the governor and all the best families. Mr. Master told him how young Hudson could tie all kinds of knots, and made Hudson show him, and the captain was very impressed.
    “That slave laddie o’ yours belongs at sea, van Dyck,” he said in his Scottish voice. “Ye should make him a mariner.” Then he sat in the parlor telling the Boss tales of his adventures in front of Hudson, and for a month after that I had a terrible time with my son wanting to go to sea.

    All my life in that household, I’d been accustomed to hearing the family talk among themselves freely. If there was something that had to be said privately, the Boss and the Mistress would make sure they were alone and close the door before they discussed it. But people spoke their thoughts, especially at mealtimes when I was serving them. So as the years went by, there wasn’t much of the family’s business or their opinions about what was passing in the world that I didn’t know.
    But once I heard something that I should not have heard.
    It wasn’t my fault. There was a pleasant little garden behind the house. The room the Boss used as an office gave on to it. Like all the Dutch gardens, it was very neat. There was a pear tree in that garden, and a bed of tulips. There was a patch where cabbages, onions, carrots and endive were grown, together with a stand of Indian corn. Against one sheltered wall there were peaches growing. I never liked to work in that garden when I was young, but I had come to like tending to the plants there now.
    On a warm spring day I was quietly working there, not far from the window of the Boss’s office, which was open. I didn’t even know he was in there when I heard the voice of his son Jan.
    “I hear