The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Conqueror, by Gertrude Franklin Atherton

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Title: The Conqueror

Author: Gertrude Franklin Atherton

Release Date: August 22, 2004 [EBook #13246]

Language: English

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THE CONQUEROR

BEING THE TRUE AND ROMANTIC STORY OF

ALEXANDER HAMILTON

BY

GERTRUDE FRANKLIN ATHERTON


     "Je considère Napoleon, Fox, et Hamilton comme les trois plus
     grands hommes de notre époque, et si je devais me prononcer entre
     les trois, je donnerais sans hesiter la première place à Hamilton.
     Il avait deviné l'Europe."

     TALLEYRAND, _Études sur la République_


New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.

1904

Set up, electrotyped, and published March, 1902. Reprinted May, July
twice, August, September, October, December, 1902; February, 1903;
February, 1904.

Special edition June, 1904.


Norwood Press J.S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass.,
U.S.A.




TO THE DISTINGUISHED MEN WITHOUT WHOSE SUGGESTION AND ENCOURAGEMENT THIS
ATTEMPT TO RECREATE THE GREATEST OF OUR STATESMEN WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN
MADE

THE RT. HON. JAMES BRYCE, M.P.

DR. ALLAN McLANE HAMILTON




CONTENTS


NEVIS

BOOK I RACHAEL LEVINE

BOOK II ALEXANDER HAMILTON. HIS YOUTH IN THE WEST INDIES AND IN THE
COLONIES OF NORTH AMERICA

BOOK III THE LITTLE LION

BOOK IV "ALEXANDER THE GREAT"

BOOK V THE LAST BATTLE OF THE GIANTS AND THE END




EXPLANATION


It was my original intention to write a biography of Alexander Hamilton
in a more flexible manner than is customary with that method of
reintroducing the dead to the living, but without impinging upon the
territory of fiction. But after a visit to the British and Danish West
Indies in search of the truth regarding his birth and ancestry, and
after a wider acquaintance with the generally romantic character of his
life, to say nothing of the personality of this most endearing and
extraordinary of all our public men, the instinct of the novelist proved
too strong; I no sooner had pen in hand than I found myself working in
the familiar medium, although preserving the historical sequence. But,
after all, what is a character novel but a dramatized biography? We
strive to make our creations as real to the world as they are to us.
Why, then, not throw the graces of fiction over the sharp hard facts
that historians have laboriously gathered? At all events, this
infinitely various story of Hamilton appealed too strongly to my
imagination to be frowned aside, so here, for better or worse, is the
result. Nevertheless, and although the method may cause the book to read
like fiction, I am conscientious in asserting that almost every
important incident here related of his American career is founded on
documentary or published facts or upon family tradition; the few that
are not have their roots among the probabilities, and suggested
themselves. As for the West Indian part, although I was obliged to work
upon the bare skeleton I unearthed in the old Common Records and Church
Registers, still the fact remains that I did find the skeleton, which I
have emphasized as far as is artistically possible. No date is given nor
deed referred to that cannot be found by other visitors to the Islands.
Moreover, I made a careful study of these Islands as they were in the
time of Hamilton and his maternal ancestors, that I might be enabled to
exercise one of the leading principles of the novelist, which is to
create character not only out of certain well-known facts of heredity,
but out of understood conditions. In this case I had, in addition, an
extensive knowledge of Hamilton's character to work backward from, as
well as his estimate of the friends of his youth and of his mother.
Therefore I feel confident that I have held my romancing propensity well
within the horizon of the probabilities; at all events, I have depicted
nothing which in any way interferes with the veracity of history.
However, having unburdened my imagination, I shall, in the course of a
year or two, write the biography I first had in mind. No writer, indeed,
could assume a more delightful task than to chronicle, in any form,
Hamilton's stupendous services to this country and his infinite variety.

G.F.A.




NEVIS


In the eighteenth century Nevis was known as The Mother of the English
Leeward Caribbees. A Captain-General ruled the group in the name of the
King, but if he died suddenly, his itinerant duties devolved upon the
Governor of Nevis until the crown heard of its loss and made choice of
another to fill that high and valued office. She had a Council and a
House of Assembly, modelled in miniature upon the Houses of Peers and
Commons; and was further distinguished as possessing the only court in
the English Antilles where pirates could be tried. The Council was made
up of ten members appointed by the Captain-General, but commanded by
"its own particular and private Governor." The freeholders of the Island
chose twenty-four of their number to represent them in the House of
Assembly; and the few chronicles of that day agree in asserting that
Nevis during her hundred proud years of supremacy was governed
brilliantly and well. But the careful administration of good laws
contributed in part only to the celebrity of an Island which to-day,
still British as she is, serves but as a pedestal for the greatest of
American statesmen. In these old days she was a queen as well as a
mother. Her planters were men of immense wealth and lived the life of
grandees. Their cane-fields covered the mountain on all its sides and
subsidiary peaks, rising to the very fringe of the cold forest on the
cone of a volcano long since extinct. The "Great Houses," built
invariably upon an eminence that commanded a view of the neighbouring
islands.--St. Christopher, Antigua, Montserrat,--were built of blocks
of stone so square and solid and with a masonry so perfect that one
views their ruins in amazement to-day. They withstood hurricanes,
earthquakes, floods, and tidal waves. They were impregnable fortresses
against rioting negroes and spasmodically aggressive Frenchmen. They
even survived the abolition of slavery, and the old gay life went on for
many years. English people, bored or in search of health, came for the
brilliant winter, delighted with the hospitality of the planters, and to
renew their vitality in the famous climate and sulphur baths, which, of
all her possessions, Time has spared to Nevis. And then, having
weathered all the ills to which even a West Indian Island can be
subject, she succumbed--to the price of sugar. Her great families
drifted away one by one. Her estates were given over to the agent for a
time, finally to the mongoose. The magnificent stone mansions, left
without even a caretaker, yielded helplessly to the diseases of age, and
the first hurricane entering unbarred windows carried their roofs to the
sea. In Charles Town, the capital since the submergence of James Town in
1680, are the remains of large town houses and fine old stone walls,
which one can hardly see from the roadstead, so thick are the royal
palms and the cocoanut trees among the ruins, wriggling their slender
bodies through every crevice and flaunting their glittering luxuriance
above every broken wall.

But in the days when the maternal grandparents of Alexander Hamilton
looked down a trifle upon those who dwelt on other isles, Nevis recked
of future insignificance as little as a beauty dreams of age. In the
previous century England, after the mortification of the Royalists by
Cromwell, had sent to Nevis Hamiltons, Herberts, Russells, and many
another refugee from her historic houses. With what money they took
with them they founded the great estates of the eighteenth century, and
their sons sent their own children to Europe to become accomplished men
and women. Government House was a miniature court, as gay and splendid
as its offices were busy with the commerce of the world. The Governor
and his lady drove about the Island in a carriage of state, with
outriders and postilions in livery. When the Captain-General came he
outshone his proud second by the gorgeousness of his uniform only, and
both dignitaries were little more imposing than the planters themselves.
It is true that the men, despite their fine clothes and powdered
perukes, preferred a horse's back to the motion of a lumbering coach,
but during the winter season their wives and daughters, in the shining
stuffs, the pointed bodices, the elaborate head-dress of Europe, visited
Government House and their neighbours with all the formality of London
or Bath. After the first of March the planters wore white linen; the
turbaned black women were busy among the stones of the rivers with
voluminous wardrobes of cambric and lawn.

Several estates belonged to certain offshoots of the ducal house of
Hamilton, and in the second decade of the eighteenth century Walter
Hamilton was Captain-General of the English Leeward Caribbees and
"Ordinary of the Same." After him came Archibald Hamilton, who was,
perhaps, of all the Hamiltons the most royal in his hospitality.
Moreover, he was a person of energy and ambition, for it is on record
that he paid a visit to Boston, fleeing from the great drought which
visited Nevis in 1737. Then there were William Leslie Hamilton, who
practised at the bar in London for several years, but returned to hold
official position on Nevis, and his brother Andrew, both sons of Dr.
William Hamilton, who spent the greater part of his life on St.
Christopher. There were also Hugh Hamilton, Charles, Gustavus, and
William Vaughn Hamilton, all planters, most of them Members of Council
or of the Assembly.

And even in those remote and isolated days, Hamiltons and Washingtons
were associated. The most popular name in our annals appears frequently
in the Common Records of Nevis, and there is no doubt that when our
first President's American ancestor fled before Cromwell to Virginia, a
brother took ship for the English Caribbees.

From a distance Nevis looks like a solitary peak in mid-ocean, her base
sweeping out on either side. But behind the great central cone--rising
three thousand two hundred feet--are five or six lesser peaks, between
which are dense tropical gorges and mountain streams. In the old days,
where the slopes were not vivid with the light green of the cane-field,
there were the cool and sombre groves of the cocoanut tree, mango,
orange, and guava.

Even when Nevis is wholly visible there is always a white cloud above
her head. As night falls it becomes evident that this soft aggravation
of her beauty is but a night robe hung on high. It is at about seven in
the evening that she begins to draw down her garment of mist, but she is
long in perfecting that nocturnal toilette. Lonely and neglected, she
still is a beauty, exacting and fastidious. The cloud is tortured into
many shapes before it meets her taste. She snatches it off, redisposes
it, dons and takes it off again, wraps it about her with yet more
enchanting folds, until by nine o'clock it sweeps the sea; and Nevis,
the proudest island of the Caribbees, has secluded herself from those
cynical old neighbours who no longer bend the knee.




BOOK I

RACHAEL LEVINE


I

Nevis gave of her bounty to none more generously than to John and Mary
Fawcett. In 1685 the revocation of the Edict of Nantes had sent the
Huguenots swarming to America and the West Indies. Faucette was but a
boy when the Tropics gave him shelter, and learning was hard to get;
except in the matter of carving Caribs. But he acquired the science of
medicine somehow, and settled on Nevis, remodelled his name, and became
a British subject. Brilliant and able, he was not long accumulating a
fortune; there were swamps near Charles Town that bred fever, and the
planters lived as high and suffered as acutely as the English squires of
the same period. His wife brought him money, and in 1714 they received a
joint legacy from Captain Frank Keynall; whether a relative of hers or a
patient of his, the Records do not tell.

Mary Fawcett was some twenty years younger than her husband, a
high-spirited creature, with much intelligence, and a will which in
later years John Fawcett found himself unable to control. But before
that period, when to the disparity in time were added the irritabilities
of age in the man and the imperiousness of maturity in the woman, they
were happy in their children, in their rising fortunes, and, for a
while, in one another.

For twenty-eight years they lived the life of the Island. They built a
Great House on their estate at Gingerland, a slope of the Island which
faces Antigua, and they had their mansion in town for use when the
Captain-General was abiding on Nevis. While Mary Fawcett was bringing up
and marrying her children, managing the household affairs of a large
estate, and receiving and returning the visits of the other grandees of
the Island, to say nothing of playing her important part in all social
functions, life went well enough. Her children, far away from the swamps
of Charles Town, throve in the trade winds which temper the sun of Nevis
and make it an isle of delight. When they were not studying with their
governesses, there were groves and gorges to play in, ponies to ride,
and monkeys and land crabs to hunt. Later came the gay life of the
Capital, the routs at Government House, frequent even when the Chief was
elsewhere, the balls at neighbouring estates, the picnics in the cool
high forests, or where more tropical trees and tree ferns grew thick,
the constant meeting with distinguished strangers, and the visits to
other islands.

The young Fawcetts married early. One went with her husband, Peter
Lytton, to the island of St. Croix. The Danish Government, upon
obtaining possession of this fertile island, in 1733, immediately issued
an invitation to the planters of the Leeward Caribbees to immigrate,
tempting many who were dissatisfied with the British Government or
wished for larger estates than they could acquire on their own populous
islands. Members of the Lytton, Mitchell, and Stevens families of St.
Christopher were among the first to respond to the liberal offer of the
Danish Government. The two sons of James Lytton, Peter and James, grew
up on St. Croix, Danish by law, British in habit and speech; and both
married women of Nevis. Peter was the first to wed, and his marriage to
young Mary Fawcett was the last to be celebrated in the Great House at
Gingerland.

When Peter Lytton and his wife sailed away, as other sons and other
daughters had sailed before, to return to Nevis rarely,--for those were
the days of travel unveneered,--John and Mary Fawcett were left alone:
their youngest daughter, she who afterward became the wife of Thomas
Mitchell of St. Croix, was at school in England.

By this time Dr. Fawcett had given up his practice and was living on his
income. He took great interest in his cane-fields and mills, and in the
culture of limes and pine-apples; but in spite of his outdoor life his
temper soured and he became irritable and exacting. Gout settled in him
as a permanent reminder of the high fortunes of his middle years, and
when the Gallic excitability of his temperament, aggravated by a
half-century of hot weather, was stung to fiercer expression by the
twinges of his disease, he was an abominable companion for a woman
twenty years closer to youth.

In the solitudes of the large house Mary Fawcett found life unendurable.
Still handsome, naturally gay of temper, and a brilliant figure in
society, she frequently deserted her elderly husband for weeks at a
time. The day came when he peremptorily forbade her to leave the place
without him. For a time she submitted, for although a woman of uncommon
independence of spirit, it was not until 1740 that she broke free of
traditions and astonished the island of Nevis. She shut herself up with
her books and needlework, attended to her house and domestic negroes
with the precision of long habit, saw her friends when she could, and
endured the exactions of her husband with only an occasional but mighty
outburst.

It was in these unhappy conditions that Rachael Fawcett was born.


II

The last affliction the Fawcetts expected was another child. This little
girl came an unwelcome guest to a mother who hated the father, and to
Dr. Fawcett, not only because he had outgrown all liking for crying
babies, but because, as in his excited disturbance he admitted to his
wife, his fortune was reduced by speculations in London, and he had no
desire to turn to in his old age and support another child. Then Mary
Fawcett made up her definite mind: she announced her intention to leave
her husband while it was yet possible to save her property for herself
and the child to whom she soon became passionately attached. Dr. Fawcett
laughed and shut himself up in a wing where the sounds of baby distress
could not reach him; and it is doubtful if his glance ever lingered on
the lovely face of his youngest born. Thus came into the world under the
most painful conditions one of the unhappiest women that has lived. It
was her splendid destiny to become the mother of the greatest American
of his centuries, but this she died too soon to know, and she
accomplished her part with an immediate bitterness of lot which was
remorselessly ordained, no doubt, by the great Law of Compensation.

There were no divorce laws on the Islands in the eighteenth century, not
even an act for separate maintenance; but Mary Fawcett was a woman of
resource. It took her four years to accomplish her purpose, but she got
rid of Dr. Fawcett by making him more than anxious to be rid of her. The
Captain-General, William Matthew, was her staunch friend and admirer,
and espoused her cause to the extent of issuing a writ of supplicavit
for a separate maintenance. Dr. Fawcett gradually yielded to pressure,
separated her property from his, that it might pass under her personal
and absolute control, and settled on her the sum of fifty-three pounds,
four shillings annually, as a full satisfaction for all her dower or
third part of his estate.

Mistress Fawcett was no longer a woman of consequence, for even her
personal income was curtailed by the great drought of 1737, and Nevis,
complaisant to the gallantry of the age, was scandalized at the novelty
of a public separation. But she was free, and she was the woman to feel
that freedom to her finger tips; she could live a life with no will in
it but her own, and she could bring up her little girl in an atmosphere
of peace and affection. She moved to an estate she owned on St.
Christopher and never saw John Fawcett again. He died a few years later,
leaving his diminished property to his children. Rachael's share was the
house in Charles Town.

The spot on which Rachael spent her childhood and brief youth was one of
the most picturesque on the mountain range of St. Christopher. Facing
the sea, the house stood on a lofty eminence, in the very shadow of
Mount Misery. Immediately behind the house were the high peaks of the
range, hardly less in pride than the cone of the great volcano. The
house was built on a ledge, but one could step from the terrace above
into an abrupt ravine, wrenched into its tortuous shape by earthquake
and flood, but dark for centuries with the immovable shades of a virgin
tropical forest. The Great House, with its spacious open galleries and
verandahs, was surrounded with stone terraces, overflowing with the
intense red and orange of the hybiscus and croton bush, the golden
browns and softer yellows of less ambitious plants, the sensuous tints
of the orchid, the high and glittering beauties of the palm and
cocoanut. The slopes to the coast were covered with cane-fields, their
bright young greens sharp against the dark blue of the sea. The ledge on
which the house was built terminated suddenly in front, but extended on
the left along a line of cliff above a chasm, until it sloped to the
road. On this flat eminence was an avenue of royal palms, which, with
the dense wood on the hill above it, was to mariners one of the most
familiar landmarks of the Island of "St. Kitts." From her verandah Mary
Fawcett could see, far down to the right, a large village of negro huts,
only the thatched African roofs visible among the long leaves of the
cocoanut palms with which the blacks invariably surround their
dwellings. Beyond was Brimstone Hill with its impregnable fortress. And
on the left, far out at sea, her purple heights and palm-fringed shores
deepening the exquisite blue of the Caribbean by day, a white ever
changing spirit in the twilight, and no more vestige of her under the
stars than had she sunk whence she came--Nevis. Mary Fawcett never set
foot on her again, but she learned to sit and study her with a whimsical
affection which was one of the few liberties she allowed her
imagination. But if the unhappiest years of her life had been spent
there, so had her fairest. She had loved her brilliant husband in her
youth, and all the social triumphs of a handsome and fortunate young
woman had been hers. In the deep calm which now intervened between the
two mental hurricanes of her life, she sometimes wondered if she had
exaggerated her past afflictions; and before she died she knew how
insignificant the tragedy of her own life had been.

Although Rachael was born when her parents were past their prime, the
vitality that was in her was concentrated and strong. It was not enough
to give her a long life, but while it lasted she was a magnificent
creature, and the end was abrupt; there was no slow decay. During her
childhood she lived in the open air, for except in the cold nights of a
brief winter only the jalousies were closed; and on that high shelf even
the late summer and early autumn were not insufferable. Exhausted as the
trade winds become, they give what little strength is in them to the
heights of their favourite isles, and during the rest of the year they
are so constant, even when storms rage in the North Atlantic, that Nevis
and St. Christopher never feel the full force of the sun, and the winter
nights are cold.

Rachael was four years old when her parents separated, and grew to
womanhood remembering nothing of her father and seeing little of her
kin, scattered far and wide. Her one unmarried sister, upon her return
from England, went almost immediately to visit Mrs. Lytton, and married
Thomas Mitchell, one of the wealthiest planters of St. Croix. Mary
Fawcett's children had not approved her course, for they remembered
their father as the most indulgent and charming of men, whose frequent
tempers were quickly forgotten; and year by year she became more wholly
devoted to the girl who clung to her with a passionate and uncritical
affection.

Clever and accomplished herself, and quick with ambition for her best
beloved child, she employed the most cultivated tutors on the Island to
instruct her in English, Latin, and French. Before Rachael was ten years
old, Mistress Fawcett had the satisfaction to discover that the little
girl possessed a distinguished mind, and took to hard study, and to _les
graces_, as naturally as she rode a pony over the hills or shot the reef
in her boat.

For several years the women of St. Christopher held aloof, but many of
the planters who had been guests at the Great House in Gingerland called
on Mistress Fawcett at once, and proffered advice and service. Of these
William Hamilton and Archibald Hamn became her staunch and intimate
friends. Mr. Hamn's estate adjoined hers, and his overlooker relieved
her of much care. Dr. James Hamilton, who had died in the year preceding
her formal separation, had been a close friend of her husband and
herself, and his brother hastened with assurance of his wish to serve
her. He was one of the eminent men of the Island, a planter and a member
of Council; also, a "doctor of physic." He carried Rachael safely
through her childhood complaints and the darkest of her days; and if his
was the hand which opened the gates between herself and history, who
shall say in the light of the glorified result that its master should
not sleep in peace?

In time his wife called, and his children and stepchildren brought a new
experience into the life of Rachael. She had been permitted to gambol
occasionally with the "pic'nees" of her mother's maids, but since her
fourth year had not spoken to a white child until little Catherine
Hamilton came to visit her one morning and brought Christiana Huggins of
Nevis. Mistress Huggins had known Mary Fawcett too well to call with
Mistress Hamilton, but sent Christiana as a peace offering. Mary's first
disposition was to pack the child off while Mistress Hamilton was
offering her embarrassed explanations; but Rachael clung to her new
treasure with such shrieks of protest that her mother, disconcerted by
this vigour of opposition to her will, permitted the intruder to remain.

The wives of other planters followed Mistress Hamilton, for in that soft
voluptuous climate, where the rush and fret of great cities are but a
witch's tale, disapproval dies early. They would have called long since
had they not been a trifle in awe of Nevis, more, perhaps, of Mistress
Fawcett's sharp tongue, then indolent. But when Mistress Hamilton
suddenly reminded them that they were Christians, and that Dr. Fawcett
was dead, they put on their London gowns, ordered out their coaches, and
called. Mary Fawcett received them with a courteous indifference. Her
resentment had died long since, and they seemed to her, with their
coaches and brocades and powdered locks, but the ghosts of the Nevis of
her youth. Her child, her estate, and her few tried friends absorbed
her. For the sake of her daughter's future, she ordered out her ancient
coach and made the round of the Island once a year. The ladies of St.
Kitts were as moderately punctilious.

And so the life of Rachael Fawcett for sixteen years passed uneventfully
enough. Her spirits were often very high, for she inherited the Gallic
buoyancy of her father as well as the brilliant qualities of his mind.
In the serious depths of her nature were strong passions and a tendency
to melancholy, the result no doubt of the unhappy conditions of her
birth. But her mother managed so to occupy her eager ambitious mind with
hard study that the girl had little acquaintance with herself. Her
English studies were almost as varied as a boy's, and in addition to her
accomplishments in the ancient and modern languages, she painted, and
sang, played the harp and guitar. Mary Fawcett, for reasons of her own,
never let her forget that she was the most educated girl on the Islands.

"I never was one to lie on a sofa all day and fan myself, while my
children sat on the floor with their blacks, and munched sugar-cane, or
bread and sling," she would remark superfluously. "All my daughters are
a credit to their husbands; but I mean that you shall be the most
brilliant woman in the Antilles."

The immediate consequences of Rachael's superior education were two: her
girl friends ceased to interest her, and ambitions developed in her
strong imaginative brain. In those days women so rarely distinguished
themselves individually that it is doubtful if Rachael had ever heard of
the phenomenon, and the sum of her worldly aspirations was a wealthy and
intellectual husband who would take her to live and to shine at foreign
courts. Her nature was too sweet and her mind too serious for egoism or
the pettier vanities, but she hardly could help being conscious of the
energy of her brain; and if she had passed through childhood in
ignorance of her beauty, she barely had entered her teens when her happy
indifference was dispelled; for the young planters besieged her gates.

Girls mature very early in the tropics, and at fourteen Rachael Fawcett
was the unresponsive toast from Basseterre to Sandy Point. Her height
was considerable, and she had the round supple figure of a girl who has
lived the out-door life in moderation; full of strength and grace, and
no exaggeration of muscle. She had a fine mane of reddish fair hair, a
pair of sparkling eager gray eyes which could go black with passion or
even excited interest, a long nose so sensitively cut that she could
express any mood she chose with her nostrils, which expanded quite
alarmingly when she flew into a temper, and a full well-cut mouth. Her
skin had the whiteness and transparency peculiar to the women of St.
Kitts and Nevis; her head and brow were nobly modelled, and the former
she carried high to the day of her death. It was set so far back on her
shoulders and on a line so straight that it would look haughty in her
coffin. What wonder that the young planters besieged her gates, that her
aspirations soared high, that Mary Fawcett dreamed of a great destiny
for this worshipped child of her old age? As for the young planters,
they never got beyond the gates, for a dragon stood there. Mistress
Fawcett had no mind to run the risk of early entanglements. When Rachael
was old enough she would be provided with a distinguished husband from
afar, selected by the experienced judgement of a woman of the world.

But Mary Fawcett, still hot-headed and impulsive in her second
half-century, was more prone to err in crises than her daughter. In
spite of the deeper passions of her nature, Rachael, except when under
the lash of strong excitement, had a certain clearness of insight and
deliberation of judgement which her mother lacked to her last day.


III

Rachael had just eaten the last of her sixteenth birthday sweets when,
at a ball at Government House, she met John Michael Levine. It was her
début; she was the fairest creature in the room, and, in the idiom of
Dr. Hamilton, the men besieged her as were she Brimstone Hill in
possession of the French. The Governor and the Captain General had
asked her to dance, and even the women smiled indulgently, disarmed by
so much innocent loveliness.

Levine, albeit a Dane, and as colourless as most of his countrymen, was
her determined suitor before the night was half over. It may be that he
was merely dazzled by the regal position to which the young men had
elevated her, and that his cold blood quickened at the thought of
possessing what all men desired, but he was as immediate and persistent
in his suit as any excitable creole in the room. But Rachael gave him
scant attention that night. She may have been intellectual, but she was
also a girl, and it was her first ball. She was dazzled and happy,
delighted with her conquests, oblivious to the depths of her nature.

The next day Levine, strong in the possession of a letter from Mr. Peter
Lytton,--for a fortnight forgotten,--presented himself at Mistress
Fawcett's door, and was admitted. The first call was brief and
perfunctory, but he came the next day and the next. Rachael, surprised,
but little interested, and longing for her next ball, strummed the harp
at her mother's command and received his compliments with indifference.
A week after his first call Mary Fawcett drove into town and spent an
hour with the Governor. He told her that Levine had brought him a
personal letter from the Governor of St. Croix, and that he was wealthy
and well born. He was also, in his Excellency's opinion, a distinguished
match even for the most beautiful and accomplished girl on the Island.
Peter Lytton had mentioned in his letter that Levine purposed buying an
estate on St. Croix and settling down to the life of a planter. On the
following day Levine told her that already he was half a West Indian, so
fascinated was he with the life and the climate, but that if she would
favour his suit he would take Rachael to Copenhagen as often as she
wished for the life of the world.

Mary Fawcett made up her mind that he should marry Rachael, and it
seemed to her that no mother had ever come to a wiser decision. Her
health was failing, and it was her passionate wish not only to leave her
child encircled by the protection of a devoted husband, but to realize
the high ambitions she had cherished from the hour she foresaw that
Rachael was to be an exceptional woman.

Levine had not seen Rachael on the morning when he asked for her hand,
and he called two days later to press his suit and receive his answer.
Mistress Fawcett told him that she had made up her own mind and would
perform that office for Rachael at once, but thought it best that he
should absent himself until the work was complete. Levine, promised an
answer on the morrow, took himself off, and Mary Fawcett sent for her
daughter.

Rachael entered the library with a piece of needlework in her hand. Her
mind was not on her books these days, for she had gone to another ball;
but her hands had been too well brought up to idle, however her brain
might dream. Mary Fawcett by this time wore a large cap with a frill,
and her face, always determined and self-willed, was growing austere
with years and much pain: she suffered frightfully at times with
rheumatism, and her apprehension of the moment when it should attack her
heart reconciled her to the prospect of brief partings from her
daughter. Her eyes still burned with the fires of an indiminishable
courage however; she read the yellow pages of her many books as rapidly
as in her youth, and if there was a speck of dust on her mahogany
floors, polished with orange juice, she saw it. Her negroes adored her
but trembled when she raised her voice, and Rachael never had disobeyed
her. She expected some dissatisfaction, possibly a temper, but no
opposition.

Rachael smiled confidently and sat down. She wore one of the thin white
linens, which, like the other women of the Islands, she put aside for
heavier stuffs on state occasions only, and her hair had tumbled from
its high comb and fallen upon her shoulders. Mary Fawcett sighed as she
looked at her. She was too young to marry, and had it not been for the
haunting terror of leaving her alone in the world, the Dane, well
circumstanced as he was, would have been repulsed with contumely.

"Rachael," said her mother, gently, "put down your tapestry. I have
something to say to you, something of great import."

Rachael dropped her work and met her mother's eyes. They were hard with
will and definite purpose. In an instant she divined what was coming,
and stood up. Her face could not turn any whiter, but her eyes were
black at once, and her nostrils spread.

"It cannot be possible that you wish me to marry that man--Levine," she
stammered. "I do not know how I can think of such a thing--but I do--it
seems to me I see it in your eyes."

"Yes," said her mother, with some uneasiness. "I do; and my reasons are
good--"

"I won't listen to them!" shrieked Rachael. "I won't marry him! His
whiteness makes me sick! I know he is not a good man! I feel it! I never
could be happy with him! I never could love him!"

Mary Fawcett looked at her aghast, and, for a moment, without answering;
she saw her own will asserting itself, heard it on those piercing notes,
and she knew that it sprang from stronger and more tragic foundations
than had ever existed in her own nature; but believing herself to be
right, she determined to prevail.

"What do you know about men, my darling?" she said soothingly. "You have
been dreaming romantic dreams, and young Levine does not resemble the
hero. That is all. Women readjust themselves marvellously quick. When
you are married to him, and he is your tender and devoted husband, you
will forget your prince--who, no doubt, is dark and quite splendid. But
we never meet our princes, my dear, and romantic love is only one of the
things we live for--and for that we live but a little while. Levine is
all that I could wish for you. He is wealthy, aristocratic, and
chivalrously devoted."

Her long speech had given her daughter time to cool, but Rachael
remained standing, and stared defiantly into the eyes which had relaxed
somewhat with anxious surprise.

"I _feel_ that he is not a good man," she repeated sullenly, "and I hate
him. I should die if he touched me. I have not danced with him. His
hands are so white and soft, and his eyes never change, and his mouth
reminds me of a shark's."

"Levine is a remarkably handsome man," exclaimed Mistress Fawcett,
indignantly. "You have trained your imagination to some purpose, it
seems. Forget your poets when he comes to-morrow, and look at him
impartially. And cannot he give you all that you so much desire, my
ambitious little daughter? Do you no longer want to go to Europe? to
court? to be _grande dame_ and converse with princes?"

"Oh, yes," said Rachael. "I want that as much as ever; but I want to
love the man. I want to be happy."

"Well, _do_ love him," exclaimed her mother with energy. "Your father
was twenty years older than myself, and a Frenchman, but I made up my
mind to love him, and I did--for a good many years."

"You had to leave him in the end. Do you wish me to do the same?"

"You will do nothing of the kind. There never was but one John Fawcett."

"I don't love this Levine, and I never shall love him. I don't believe
at all that that kind of feeling can be created by the brain, that it
responds to nothing but the will. I shall not love that way. I may be
ignorant, but I know that."

"You have read too much Shakespeare! Doubtless you imagine yourself one
of his heroines--Juliet? Rosalind?"

"I have never imagined myself anybody but Rachael Fawcett. I _cannot_
imagine myself Rachael Levine. But I know something of myself--I have
read and thought enough for that. I could love someone--but not this
bleached repulsive Dane. Why will you not let me wait? It is my right.
No, you need not curl your lip--I am _not_ a little girl. I may be
sixteen. I may be without experience in the world, but you have been
almost my only companion, and until just now I have talked with
middle-aged men only, and much with them. I had no real childhood. You
have educated my brain far beyond my years. To-day I feel twenty, and it
seems to me that I see far down into myself--much deeper than you do. I
tell you that if I marry this man, I shall be the most hopeless wretch
on earth."

Mary Fawcett was puzzled and distressed, but she did not waver for a
moment. The cleverest of girls could not know what was best for herself,
and the mother who permitted her daughter to take her life into her own
hands was a poor creature indeed.

"Listen, my dear child," she said tenderly, "you have always trusted in
me, believed me. I _know_ that this is a wise and promising marriage for
you. And--" she hesitated, but it was time to play her trump. "You know
that my health is not good, but you do not know how bad it is. Dr.
Hamilton says that the rheumatism may fly to my heart at any moment, and
I _must_ see you married--"

She had ejaculated the last words; Rachael had shrieked, and flung
herself upon her, her excitement at this sudden and cruel revelation
bursting out in screams and sobs and a torrent of tears. Her mother had
seen her excited and in brief ungovernable tempers, but she never had
suspected that she was capable of such passion as this; and, much
disturbed, she led her off to bed, and sent for her advisers, Archibald
Hamn and Dr. Hamilton.


IV

Mr. Hamn responded at once to the widow's call, his adjacence giving him
the advantage of Dr. Hamilton, of whom he was a trifle jealous. He was
an old bachelor and had proposed to Mistress Fawcett--a captivating
woman till her last hour--twice a year since her husband's death. But
matrimony had been a bitter medicine for Mary after her imagination had
ceased to sweeten it, and her invariable answer to her several suitors
was the disquieting assertion that if ever she was so rash as to take
another husband, she certainly should kill him. Archibald was not the
man to conquer her prejudices, although she loved the sterling in him
and attached him to her by every hook of friendship. He was a dark
nervous little man, spare as most West Indians, used a deal of snuff,
and had a habit of pushing back his wig with a jerking forearm when in
heated controversy with Dr. Hamilton, or expounding matrimony to the
widow.

Dr. Hamilton, for whose arrival Mr. Hamn was kept waiting,--Mistress
Fawcett tarried until her daughter fell asleep,--was a large square man,
albeit lean, and only less nervous than the widow's suitor. His white
locks were worn in a queue, a few escaping to soften his big powerful
face. Both men wore white linen, but Dr. Hamilton was rarely seen
without his riding-boots, his advent, except in Mistress Fawcett's
house, heralded by the clanking of spurs. Mary would have none of his
spurs on her mahogany floors, and the doctor never yet had been able to
dodge the darkey who stood guard at her doorstep.

The two men exchanged mild surmises as to the cause of the summons; but
as similar summons occurred when newly wedded blacks were pounding each
other's heads, provoked thereto by the galling chain of decency, or an
obeah doctor had tied a sinister warning to Mistress Fawcett's knocker,
neither of the gentlemen anticipated serious work. When Mary Fawcett
entered the long room, however, both forgot the dignity of their years
and position, and ran forward.

Dr. Hamilton lifted her as if she had been a palm leaf, and laid her on
the sofa. He despatched Mr. Hamn for a glass of Spanish port, and
forbade her to speak until he gave permission.

But Mary Fawcett made brief concessions to the weakness of the flesh.
She drank the wine, then sat up and told her story.

"Oh, Mary," said Dr. Hamilton, sadly, "why do you ask our advice? Your
ear may listen, but never your mind. If it were a matter of business, we
might even be allowed to act for you; but in a domestic--"

"What?" cried Mistress Fawcett; "have I not asked your advice a thousand
times about Rachael, and have I not always taken it?"

"I recall many of the conversations, but I doubt if you could recall the
advice. However, if you want it this time, I will give it to you. Don't
force the girl to marry against her will--assuredly not if the man is
repulsive to her. For all your brains you are a baby about men and
women. Rachael knows more by instinct. She is an extraordinary girl, and
should be allowed time to make her own choice. If you are afraid of
death, leave her to me. I will legally adopt her now, if you choose--"

"Yes, and should you die suddenly, your wife would think Rachael one too
many, what with your brood and the Edwardses to boot." Mistress Fawcett
was nettled by his jibe at the limit of her wisdom. "I shall leave her
with a husband. To that I have made up my mind. What have you to say,
Archibald?"

This was an advantage which Mr. Hamn never failed to seize; he always
agreed with the widow; Dr. Hamilton never did. Moreover, he was
sincerely convinced that--save, perhaps, in matters of money--Mary
Fawcett could not err.

"I like the appearance of this Dane," he said, reassuringly, "and his
little country has a valiant history. This young man is quite
prince-like in his bearing, and his extreme fairness is but one more
evidence of his high breeding--"

"He looks like a shark's belly," interrupted Dr. Hamilton, "I don't
wonder he sickens Rachael. I have nothing against him but his
appearance, but if he came after Kitty I'd throw him out by the seat of
his breeches."

"He never looked at Kitty, at Government House, nor at Mistress
Montgomerie's," cried Mary. "You are jealous, Will, because Rachael has
carried off the foreign prize."

Dr. Hamilton laughed, then added seriously, "I am too fond of the girl
to forbear to give my advice. Let her choose her own husband. If you
dare to cut out her future, as if it were one of her new frocks, you
have more courage than I. She has more in her than twenty women. Let her
alone for the next five years, then she will have no one to answer to
but herself. Otherwise, my lady, you may find yourself holding your
breath in a hurricane track, with no refuge from the storm you've
whipped up but five feet underneath. If you won't give her to me, there
are her sisters. They are all wealthy--"

"They are years older than Rachael and would not understand her at all."

"I can't see why they should not understand her as well as a strange
man."

"He will be her husband, madly in love with her."

"Levine will never be madly in love with anybody. Besides, it would not
matter to Rachael if her sisters did not understand her; she has too
strong a brain not to be independent of the ordinary female nonsense;
moreover, she has a fine disposition and her own property. But if her
husband did not understand her,--in other words, if their tastes proved
as opposite as their temperaments,--it would make a vast deal of
difference. Sisters can be got rid of, but husbands--well, you know the
difficulties."

"I will think over all you have said," replied Mary, with sudden
humility; she had great respect for the doctor. "But don't you say a
word to Rachael."

"I'm far too much afraid of you for that. But I wish that Will were home
or Andrew old enough. I'd set one of them on to cut this Dane out. Well,
I must go; send for me whenever you are in need of advice," and with a
parting laugh he strode out of the house and roared to the darkey to
come and fasten his spurs.

Archibald Hamn, who foresaw possibilities in the widow's loneliness, and
who judged men entirely by their manners, remained to assure Mistress
Fawcett of the wisdom of her choice, and to offer his services as
mediator. Mary laughed and sent him home. She wrote to Levine not to
call until she bade him, and for several days pondered deeply upon her
daughter's opposition and Dr. Hamilton's advice. The first result of
this perturbing distrust in her own wisdom was a violent attack of
rheumatism in the region of her heart; and while she believed herself to
be dying, she wrung from her distracted daughter a promise to marry
Levine. She recovered from the attack, but concluded that, the promise
being won, it would be folly to give it back. Moreover, the desire to
see her daughter married had been aggravated by her brush with death,
and after another interview with Levine, in which he promised all that
the fondest mother could demand, she opened her chests of fine linen.

Rachael submitted. She dared not excite her mother. Her imagination,
always vivid though it was, refused to picture the end she dreaded; and
she never saw Levine alone. His descriptions of life in Copenhagen
interested her, and when her mother expatiated upon the glittering
destiny which awaited her, ambition and pride responded, although
precisely as they had done in her day dreams. She found herself
visioning Copenhagen, jewels, brocades, and courtiers; but she realized
only when she withdrew to St. Kitts, that Levine had not entered the
dream, even to pass and bend the knee. Often she laughed aloud in
merriment. As the wedding-day approached, she lost her breath more than
once, and her skin chilled. During the last few days before the ceremony
she understood for the first time that it was inevitable. But time--it
was now three months since the needlewomen were set at the
trousseau--and her unconscious acceptance of the horrid fact had trimmed
her spirit to philosophy, altered the habit of her mind. She saw her
mother radiant, received the personal congratulations of every family on
the Island. Her sisters came from St. Croix, and made much of the little
girl who was beginning life so brilliantly; beautiful silks and laces
had come from New York, and Levine had given her jewels, which she tried
on her maid every day because she thought the mustee's tawny skin
enhanced their lustre. She was but a child in spite of her intellect.
Her union with the Dane came to appear as one of the laws of life, and
she finished by accepting it as one accepted an earthquake or a
hurricane. Moreover, she was profoundly innocent.


V

Mary Fawcett accompanied the Levines to Copenhagen, but returned to St.
Christopher by a ship which left Denmark a month later, being one of
those women who picture their terrestrial affairs in a state of
dissolution while deprived of their vigilance. She vowed that the North
had killed her rheumatism, and turned an absent ear to Rachael's appeal
to tarry until Levine was ready to return to St. Croix. She remained
long enough in Denmark, however, to see her daughter presented at court,
and installed with all the magnificence that an ambitious mother could
desire. There was not a misgiving in her mind, for Rachael, if somewhat
inanimate, could not be unhappy with an uxorious husband and the world
at her feet; and although for some time after her marriage she had
behaved like a naughty child caught in a trap, and been a sore trial to
her mother and Mr. Levine, since her arrival in Copenhagen she had
deported herself most becomingly and indulged in no more tantrums.
Levine had conducted himself admirably during his trying honeymoon. Upon
his arrival in Copenhagen he had littered his wife's boudoir with
valuable gifts, and exhibited the beauty he had won with a pride very
gratifying to his mother-in-law. In six months he was to sail for his
estates on St. Croix, and pay an immediate visit to St. Kitts, whence
Mistress Fawcett would return with her daughter for a sojourn of several
months. She returned to her silent home the envy of many Island mothers.

Rachael wrote by every ship, and Mary Fawcett pondered over these
letters, at first with perplexity, finally with a deep uneasiness. Her
daughter described life in Denmark, the court and society, her new gowns
and jewels, her visits to country houses, the celebrities she met. But
her letters were literary and impersonal, nor was there in them a trace
of her old energy of mind and vivacity of spirit. She never mentioned
Levine's name, nor made an intimate allusion to herself.

"Can she no longer love me?" thought Mary Fawcett at last and in terror;
"this child that I have loved more than the husband of my youth and all
the other children I have borne? It cannot be that she is unhappy. She
would tell me so in a wild outburst--indeed she would have run home to
me long since. Levine will never control her. Heaven knows what would
have happened if I had not gone on that wedding-journey. But she settled
down so sweetly, and I made sure she would have loved him by this. It is
the only thing to do if you have to live with one of the pests. Perhaps
that is it--she has given him all her love and has none left for me."
And at this she felt so lonely and bitter that she almost accepted
Archibald Hamn when he called an hour later. But in the excitement of
his risen hopes his wig fell on the floor, and she took offence at his
yellow and sparsely settled scalp.

There were few gleams of humour left in life for Mary Fawcett. Rachael's
letters ceased abruptly. Her mother dared not sail for Denmark, lest she
pass the Levines on their way to St. Croix. She managed to exist through
two distracted months, then received a note from her daughter, Mrs.
Mitchell.

"Rachael is Here," it ran, "but refuses to see Us. I do not know what to
think. I drove over as soon as I heard of Their arrival. Levine received
Me and was as Courteous and Polished as ever, but Rachael had a
_Headache_ and did not come out. Mary and I have been there Twice since,
and with the _same_ result. Levine assured us that he had begged her to
see her Sisters, but that She is in a very _low_ and _melancholy_ state,
owing doubtless to her Condition. He seemed much _concerned_, but More,
I could not help thinking, because he feared to lose an Heir than from
any _love_ for my little Sister. Peter and Mary agree with Me, that _You
had best come here_ if You can."

Mary Fawcett, whatever her foibles, had never failed to spring upright
under the stiffest blows of her life. Ignoring her physical pains, which
had been aggravated by the mental terrors of the last two months, and
sternly commanding the agony in her heart to be silent, she despatched a
note at once to Dr. Hamilton,--Archibald Hamn was in Barbados,--asking
him to charter a schooner, if no ship were leaving that day for the
Danish Islands, and accompany her to St. Croix. He sent her word that
they could sail on the following morning if the wind were favourable,
and the black women packed her boxes and carried them on their heads to
Basseterre.

That evening, as Mary Fawcett was slowly walking down the avenue,
leaning heavily on her cane, too wretched to rest or sleep, a ship
flying the German colours sailed past. She wondered if it had stopped at
St. Croix, then forgot it in the terrible speculations which her will
strove to hold apart from her nerves.

Wearied in body, she returned to the house and sat by the window of her
room, striving to compose her mind for sleep. She was forcing herself to
jot down instructions for her housekeeper, whom she had taught to read,
when she heard a chaise and a pair of galloping horses enter the avenue.
A moment later, Dr. Hamilton's voice was roaring for a slave to come and
hold his horses. Then it lowered abruptly and did not cease.

Mary Fawcett knew that Rachael had come to her, and without her husband.
For a moment she had a confused idea that the earth was rocking, and
congratulated herself that the house was too high for a tidal wave to
reach. Then Dr. Hamilton entered with Rachael in his arms and laid her
on the bed. He left at once, saying that he would return in the morning.
Mary Fawcett had not risen, and her chair faced the bed. Rachael lay
staring at her mother until Mary found her voice and begged her to
speak. She knew that her hunger must wait until she had stood at the bar
and received her sentence.

Rachael told her mother the story of her married life from the day she
had been left alone with John Levine,--a story of unimaginable horrors.
Like many cold men to whom the pleasures of the world are, nevertheless,
easy, Levine was a voluptuary and cruel. Had his child been safely born,
there would have been no measure in his brutality. Rachael had watched
for her opportunity, and one night when he had been at a state function
in Christianstadt, too secure in her apparent apathy to lock her door,
she had bribed a servant to drive her to Frederikstadt, and boarded the
ship her maid had ascertained was about to leave. She knew that he would
not follow her, for there was one person on earth he feared, and that
was Mary Fawcett. He would not have returned to St. Croix, had his
investments been less heavy; but on his estates he was lord, and had no
mind that his mother-in-law should set foot on them while he had slaves
to hold his gates.

Mary Fawcett listened to the horrid story, at first with a sort of
frantic wonder, for of the evil of life she had known nothing; then her
clear mind grasped it, her stoicism gave way, and she shrieked and raved
in such agony of soul that she had no fear of hell thereafter. Rachael
had to rise from the bed and minister to her, and the terrified blacks
ran screaming about the place, believing that their mistress had been
cursed.

She grew calm in time, but her face was puckered like an old apple, and
her eyes had lost their brilliancy for ever. And it was days before she
realized that her limbs still ached.

Rachael never opened her lips on the subject again. She went back to bed
and clung to her mother and Dr. Hamilton until her child was born. Then
for three months she recognized no one, and Dr. Hamilton, with all his
skill, did not venture to say whether or not her mind would live again.

The child was a boy, and as blond as its father. Mary Fawcett stood its
presence in the house for a month, then packed it off to St. Croix. She
received a curt acknowledgment from Levine, and an intimation that she
had saved herself much trouble. As for Rachael, he would have her back
when he saw fit. She wrote an appeal to the Captain-General and he sent
her word that the Danes would never bombard Brimstone Hill, and there
was no other way by which Levine could get her daughter while one of her
friends ruled the Leeward Caribbees.

Many thoughts flitted through the brain of Mary Fawcett during that long
vigil. Her mind for the first time dwelt with kindness, almost with
softness, on the memory of her husband. Beside this awful Dane his
shadow was god-like. He had been high-minded and a gentleman in his
worst tantrums, and there was no taint of viciousness in him. A doubt
grew in her brain, grew to such disquieting proportions that she
sometimes deserted Rachael abruptly and went out to fatigue herself in
the avenue. Had she done wrong to leave him alone in his old age, to
bear, undiverted, the burden of a disease whose torments she now could
fully appreciate, to die alone in that great house with only his slaves
to tend him? It had seemed to her when she left him that human nature
could stand no more, and that she was justified; but she was an old
woman now and knew that all things can be endured. When that picture of
his desolate last years and lonely death had remorselessly shaped itself
in her imagination, and she realized that it would hang there until her
hands were folded, she suffered one more hour of agony and abasement,
then caught at the stoicism of her nature, accepted her new dole, and
returned to her daughter.


VI

Rachael's mind struggled past its eclipse, but her recovery was very
slow. Even after she recognized her mother and Dr. Hamilton, she sat for
months staring at Nevis, neither opening a book nor looking round upon
the life about her. But she was only eighteen, and her body grew strong
and vital again. Gradually it forced its energies into her brain,
released her spirit from its apathy, buried memory under the fresher
impressions of time. A year from the day of her return, if there were
deep and subtle changes in her face and carriage, which added ten years
to her appearance, she was more beautiful to experienced eyes than when
she had flowered for the humming-birds. She took up her studies where
she had dropped them, a little of her old buoyancy revived; and if her
girlishness was buried with ideals and ambitions, her intellect was
clear and strong and her character more finely balanced. She flew into
no more rages, boxed her attendants' ears at rarer intervals, and the
deliberation which had seemed an anomaly in her character before, became
a dominant trait, and rarely was conquered by impulse. When it worked
alone her mother laid down her weapons, edged as they still were, and
when impulse flew to its back, Mary Fawcett took refuge in oblivion. But
she made no complaint, for she and her daughter were more united than
when the young girl had seemed more fit to be her grandchild.

The Governor of St. Christopher had written a letter to his friend, the
Governor of St. Croix, which had caused that estimable functionary to
forbid Levine the door of Government House. Levine could not endure
social ostracism. He left St. Croix immediately, and took his son Peter
with him. To this child Rachael never referred, and her mother doubted
if she remembered anything associated with its impending birth. Perhaps
she believed it dead. At all events, she made no sign. Except that she
was called Mistress Levine, there was nothing in her outer life to
remind her that for two years the markers in her favourite books had not
been shifted. She had studied music and painting with the best masters
in Copenhagen, and in the chests which were forwarded by her sisters
from St. Croix, there were many new books. She refused to return to
society, and filled her time without its aid; for not only did she have
the ample resources of her mind, her mother, the frequent companionship
of Dr. Hamilton and four or five other men of his age and attainments,
but she returned to the out-door life with enthusiasm. On her spirit was
an immovable shadow, in her mind an indelible stain, but she had strong
common sense and a still stronger will. An experience which would have
embittered a less complete nature, or sent a lighter woman to the
gallantries of society, gave new force and energy to her character, even
while saddening it. To the past she never willingly gave a thought;
neither was she for a moment unconscious of its ghost.


VII

Two years passed. Rachael was twenty, a beautiful and stately creature,
more discussed and less seen than any woman on the islands of Nevis and
St. Christopher. Occasionally Christiana Huggins paid her a visit, or
Catherine Hamilton rode over for the day; but although Christiana at
least, loved her to the end, both were conscious of her superiority of
mind and experience, and the old intimacy was not resumed.

Dr. Hamilton had used all his influence in the Council to promote a
special bill of divorce, for he wanted Rachael to be free to marry
again. He had no faith in the permanent resources of the intellect for a
young and seductive woman, and he understood Rachael very thoroughly.
The calm might be long, but unless Levine died or could be legally
disposed of, she would give the Islands a heavier shock than when the
innovation of Mary Fawcett had set them gabbling. Against the
conservatism of his colleagues, however, he could make no headway, and
both the Governor and Captain-General disapproved of a measure which
England had never sanctioned.

But Dr. Hamilton and her mother were more disturbed at the failure of
the bill than Rachael. Time had lifted the shadow of her husband from
the race, but, never having loved, even a little, her imagination
modelled no pleasing features upon the ugly skull of matrimony. It is
true that she sometimes thought of herself as a singularly lonely being,
and allowed her mind to picture love and its companionships. As time
dimmed another picture she caught herself meditating upon woman's chief
inheritance, and moving among the shadows of the future toward that
larger and vitalizing part of herself which every woman fancies is on
earth in search of her. When she returned from these wanderings she
sternly reminded herself that her name was Levine, and that no woman
after such an escape had the right to expect more. She finally compelled
herself to admit that her avoidance of society was due to prudence as
well as to her stern devotion to intellect, then studied harder than
ever.

But it is a poor fate that waits upon the gathering together of many
people.


VIII

Rachael was riding home one afternoon from Basseterre, where she had
been purchasing summer lawns and cambrics. It was March, and the winter
sun had begun to use its summer fuel; but the trades blew softly, and
there was much shade on the road above the sea. There was one long
stretch, however, where not a tree grew, and Rachael drew rein for a
moment before leaving the avenue of tamarinds which had rustled above
her head for a mile or more. Although it was a hot scene that lay before
her, it was that which, when away from home, for some reason best known
to her memory, had always been first to rise. The wide pale-gray road
rose gradually for a long distance, dipped, and rose again. On either
side were cane-fields, their tender greens sharp against the deep hard
blue of the sea on the left, rising to cocoanut groves and the dark
heights of the mountains above the road. Far away, close to the sea, was
Brimstone Hill, that huge isolated rock so near in shape to the crater
of Mount Misery. Its fortifications showed their teeth against the faded
sky, and St. Christopher slept easily while tentative conquerors
approached, looked hard at this Gibraltar of the West Indies, and sailed
away.

But there scarcely was a sail on the sea to-day. Its blue rose and fell,
in that vast unbroken harmony which quickens the West Indian at times
into an intolerable sense of his isolation. Rachael recalled how she had
stared at it in childish resentment, wondering if a mainland really lay
beyond, if Europe were a myth. She did not care if she never set foot on
a ship again, and her ambitions were in the grave with her desire for a
wealthy and intellectual husband.

On the long road, rising gray and hot between the bright green
cane-fields, horsemen approached, and a number of slave women moved
slowly: women with erect rigid backs balancing large baskets or stacks
of cane on their heads, the body below the waist revolving with a
pivotal motion which suggests an anatomy peculiar to the tropics. They
had a dash of red about them somewhere, and their turbans were white.
Rachael's imagination never gave her St. Kitts without its slave women,
the "pic'nees" clinging to their hips as they bore their burdens on the
road or bent over the stones in the river. They belonged to its
landscape, with the palms and the cane-fields, the hot gray roads, and
the great jewel of the sea.

Rachael left the avenue and rode onward. One of the horsemen took off
his Spanish sombrero and waved it. She recognized Dr. Hamilton and shook
her whip at him. He and his companion spurred their horses, and a moment
later Rachael and James Hamilton had met.

"An unexpected pleasure for me, this sudden descent of my young
kinsman," said the doctor, "but a great one, for he brings me news of
all in Scotland, and he saw Will the day before he sailed."

"It is too hot to stand here talking," said Rachael. "Come home with me
to a glass of Spanish port, and cake perhaps."

The doctor was on his way to a consultation, but he ordered his relative
to go and pay his respects to Mistress Fawcett, and rode on whistling.
The two he had recklessly left to their own devices exchanged
platitudes, and covertly examined each other with quick admiration.

There are dark Scots, and Hamilton was one of them. Although tall and
slight, he was knit with a close and peculiar elegance, which made him
look his best on a horse and in white linen. His face was burnt to the
hue of brick-dust by the first quick assault of the tropic sun, but it
was a thin face, well shaped, in spite of prominent cheek bones, and set
with the features of long breeding; and it was mobile, fiery, impetuous,
and very intelligent: ancestral coarseness had been polished fine long
since.

They left the road and mounted toward the dark avenue of the Fawcett
estate, Rachael wondering if her mother would be irritated at the
informality of the stranger's first call; he should have arrived in
state with Dr. Hamilton at the hour of five. Perhaps it was to postpone
the moment of explanation that she permitted her horse to walk, even
after they had reached the level of the avenue, and finally to crop the
grass while she and Hamilton dismounted and sat down in a heavy grove of
tamarinds on the slope of the hill.

"I'm just twenty-one and have my own way to make," he was telling her.
"There are three before me, so I couldn't afford the army, and as I've a
fancy for foreign lands, I've come out here to be a merchant. I have so
many kinsmen in this part of the world, and they've all succeeded so
well, I thought they'd be able to advise me how best to turn over the
few guineas I have. My cousin, the doctor, has taken me in hand, and if
I have any business capacity I shall soon find it out. But I ached for
the army, and failing that, I'd have liked being a scholar--as I know
you are, by your eyes."

His Scotch accent was not unlike that of the West Indians, particularly
of the Barbadians; but his voice, although it retained the huskiness of
the wet North, had, somewhere in its depths, a peculiar metallic quality
which startled Rachael every time it rang out, and was the last of all
memories to linger, when memories were crumbling in a brain that could
stand no more.

How it happened, Rachael spent the saner hours of the morrow attempting
to explain, but they sat under the tamarinds until the sun went down,
and Nevis began to robe for the night. Once they paused in their
desultory talk and listened to the lovely chorus of a West Indian
evening, that low incessant ringing of a million tiny bells. The bells
hung in the throats of nothing more picturesque than grasshoppers,
serpents, lizards, and frogs so small as to be almost invisible, but
they rang with a harmony that the inherited practice of centuries had
given them. And beyond was the monotonous accompaniment of the sea on
the rocks. Hamilton lived to be an old man, and he never left the West
Indies; but sometimes, at long and longer intervals, he found himself
listening to that Lilliputian orchestra, his attention attracted to it,
possibly, by a stranger; and then he remembered this night, and the
woman for whom he would have sacrificed earth and immortality had he
been lord of them.

Heaven knows what they talked about. While it was light they stared out
at the blue sea or down on the rippling cane-fields, not daring to
exchange more than a casual and hasty glance. Both knew that they should
have separated the moment they met, but neither had the impulse nor the
intention to leave the shade of the wood; and when the brief twilight
fell and the moon rose, there still was Nevis, and after her the many
craft to divert their gaze. Hamilton was honourable and shy, and Rachael
was a woman of uncommon strength of character and had been brought up by
a woman of austere virtue. These causes held them apart for a time, but
one might as well have attempted to block two comets rushing at each
other in the same orbit. The magnetism of the Inevitable embraced them
and knit their inner selves together, even while they sat decorously
apart. Rachael had taken off her hat at once, and even after it grew
dark in their arbour, Hamilton fancied he could see the gleam of her
hair. Her eyes were startled and brilliant, and her nostrils quivered
uneasily, but she defined none of the sensations that possessed her but
the overwhelming recrudescence of her youth. It had seemed to her that
it flamed from its ashes before Dr. Hamilton finished his formal words
of introduction, and all its forgotten hopes and impulses, timidity and
vagueness, surged through her brain during those hours beside the
stranger, submerging the memory of Levine. Indeed, she felt even younger
than before maturity so suddenly had been thrust upon her; for in those
old days she had been almost as severely intellectual as yesterday, and
when she had dreamed of the future, it had been with the soberness of an
overtaxed brain. But to-day even the world seemed young again. She
fancied she could hear the unquiet pulses of the Island, so long grown
old, and Nevis had never looked so fair. She hardly was conscious of her
womanhood, only of that possessing sense of happiness in youth. As for
Hamilton, he had never felt otherwise than young, although he was a
college-bred man, something of a scholar, and he had seen more or less
of the world since his boyhood. But the intensity and ardour of his
nature had received no check, neither were they halfway on their
course; and he had never loved. It had seemed to him that the Island
opened and a witch came out, and in those confused hours he hardly knew
whether she were good or bad, his ideal woman or his ideal devil; but he
loved her. He was as pale as his sunburn would permit him to be, and his
hands were clasped tightly about his knees, when relief came in the
shape of Mary Fawcett.

Her daughter's horse had gone home and taken the stranger with him, and
Mistress Fawcett, with quick suspicion, new as it was, started at once
down the avenue. Rachael heard the familiar tapping of her mother's
stick, hastily adjusted her hat, and managed to reach the road with
Hamilton before her mother turned its bend.

Mary Fawcett understood and shivered with terror. She was far from being
her imperious self as her daughter presented the stranger and remarked
that he was a cousin of Dr. Hamilton, characteristically refraining from
apology or explanation.

"Well," she said, "the doctor will doubtless bring you to call some day.
I will send your horse to you. Say good evening to the stranger,
Rachael, and come home." She was one of the most hospitable women in the
Caribbees, and this was the kinsman of her best friend, but she longed
for power to exile him out of St. Kitts that night.

Hamilton lifted his hat, and Rachael followed her mother. She was cold
and frightened, and Levine's white malignant face circled about her.

Her mother requested her support, and she almost carried the light
figure to the house. Mistress Fawcett sent a slave after Hamilton's
horse, then went to her room and wrote a note to Dr. Hamilton, asking
him to call on the following day and to come alone. The two women did
not meet again that night.

But there is little privacy in the houses of St. Kitts and Nevis. Either
the upper part of almost every room is built of ornamental lattice-work,
or the walls are set with numerous jalousies, that can be closed when a
draught is undesirable but conduct the slightest sound. Rachael's room
adjoined her mother's. She knew that the older woman was as uneasily
awake as herself, though from vastly different manifestations of the
same cause. At four o'clock, when the guinea fowl were screeching like
demons, and had awakened the roosters and the dogs to swell the infernal
chorus of a West Indian morning, Rachael sat up in bed and laughed
noiselessly.

"What a night!" she thought. "And for what? A man who companioned me for
four hours as no other man had ever done? and who made me feel as if the
world had turned to fire and light? It may have been but a mood of my
own, it is so long since I have talked with a man near to my own
age--and he is so near!--and yet so real a man.... No one could call him
handsome, for he looks like a flayed Carib, and I have met some of the
handsomest men in Europe and not given them a thought. Yet this man kept
me beside him for four hours, and has me awake a whole night because he
is not with me. Has the discipline of these last years, then, gone for
nothing? Am I but an excitable West Indian after all, and shall I have
corded hands before I am twenty-five? It was a mistake to shut myself
away from danger. Had I been constantly meeting the young men of the
Island and all strangers who have come here during the last two years, I
should not be wild for this one--even if he has something in him unlike
other men--and lie awake all night like the silly women who dream
everlastingly of the lover to come. I am a fool."

She lit her candle and went into her mother's room. Mary Fawcett was
sitting up in bed, her white hair hanging out of her nightcap. It seemed
to her that the end of the world had come, and she cursed human nature
and the governors of the Island.

"I know what has kept you awake," said Rachael, "but do not fear. It was
but a passing madness--God smite those guinea fowl! I have lived the
life of a nun, and it is an unnatural life for a young woman. Yesterday
I learned that I have not the temperament of the scholar, the
recluse--that is all. I should have guessed it sooner--then I should not
have been fascinated by this brilliant Scot. It was my mind that flew
eagerly to companionship--that was all. The hours were pleasant. I would
not regret them but for the deep uneasiness they have caused you. To-day
I shall enter the world again. There are many clever and accomplished
young men on St. Kitts. I will meet and talk to them all. We will
entertain them here. There is a ball at Government House to-night,
another at Mistress Irwin's on Wednesday week. I promise you that I will
be as gay and as universal as a girl in her first season, and this man
shall see no more of me than any other man."

Her mother watched her keenly as she delivered her long tirade. Her face
was deeply flushed. The arm that held the candle was tense, and her hair
fell about her splendid form like a cloud of light. Had Hamilton seen
anything so fair in Europe? What part would he play in this scheme of
catholicity?

"You will meet this man if you go abroad," she replied. "Better stay
here and forbid him the gates."

"And think about him till I leap on my horse and ride to meet him? A
fevered imagination will make a god of a Tom Noddy. If I see him
daily--with others--he will seem as commonplace as all men."

Mary Fawcett did not speak for some moments. Then she said: "Hark ye,
Rachael. I interfered once and brought such damnable misery upon you
that I dare not--almost--(she remembered her note to Dr. Hamilton)
interfere again. This time you shall use your own judgement, something
you have taught me to respect. Whatever the result, I will be to the end
what I always have been, the best friend you have. You are very strong.
You have had an awful experience, and it has made a woman of thirty of
you. You are no silly little fool, rushing blindly into the arms of the
first man whose eyes are black enough. You have been brought up to look
upon light women with horror. In your darkest days you never sought to
console yourself as weaker women do. Therefore, in spite of what I saw
in both your faces yesterday, I hope."

"Yes--and give yourself no more uneasiness. Could _I_ look upon the
love of man with favour? Not unless I were to be born again, and my
memory as dead as my body."

"If you love, you will be born again; and if this man overmasters your
imagination, your memory might quite as well be dead. One of the three
or four things in my life that I have to be thankful for is that I never
had to pass through that ordeal. You are far dearer to me than I ever
was to myself, and if you are called upon to go through that wretched
experience, whose consequences never finish, and I with so little time
left in which to stand by and protect you--" She changed abruptly.
"Promise me that you will do nothing unconsidered, that you will not
behave like the ordinary Francesca--for whom I have always had the most
unmitigated contempt. The hour. The man. The fall. The wail: 'The earth
rocked, the stars fell. I knew not what I did!' You have deliberation
and judgement. Use them now--and do not ramble alone in the gorge with
this handsome Scot--for he is a fine man; I would I could deny it. I
felt his charm, although he did not open his mouth."

Rachael's eyes flashed. "Ah! did you?" she cried. "Well, but what of
that? Are not our creoles a handsome race, and have not all but a few
been educated in England? Yes, I will promise you--if you think all this
is serious enough to require a promise."

"But you care so little for the world. You would be sacrificing so much
less than other women--nevertheless it would make you wretched and
humiliate just as much; do not forget that. I almost am tempted to wish
that you had a lighter nature--that you would flirt with love and brush
it away, while the world was merely amused at a suspected gallantry. But
_you_--you would love for a lifetime, and you would end by living with
him openly. There is no compromise in you."

"Surely we have become more serious than an afternoon's talk with an
interesting stranger should warrant. I am full of a sudden longing for
the world, and who knows but I shall become so wedded to it that I would
yield it for no man? Besides, do I not live to make you happy, to
reward as best I can your unselfish devotion? If ever I could love any
man more than I love you, then that love would be overwhelming indeed.
But although I can imagine myself forgetting the world in such a love, I
cannot picture you on the sacrificial altar."


IX

Rachael was asleep when Dr. Hamilton called. Mistress Fawcett received
him in the library, which was at the extreme end of the long house. He
laughed so heartily at her fears that he almost dispelled them. Whatever
he anticipated in Rachael's future, he had no mind to apprehend danger
in every man who interested her.

"For God's sake, Mary," he exclaimed, "let the girl have a flirtation
without making a tragedy of it. She is quite right. The world is what
she wants. If ever there was a woman whom Nature did not intend for a
nun it is Rachael Levine. Let her carry out her plan, and in a week she
will be the belle of the Island, and my poor cousin will be consoling
himself with some indignant beauty only a shade less fair. I'll engage
to marry him off at once, if that will bring sleep to your pillow, but I
can't send him away as you propose. I am not King George, nor yet the
Captain-General. Nor have I any argument by which to persuade him to go.
I have given him too much encouragement to stay. I'll keep him away from
routs as long as I can--but remember that he is young, uncommonly
good-looking, and a stranger: the girls will not let me keep him in
hiding for long. Now let the girl alone. Let her think you've forgotten
my new kinsman and your fears. I don't know any way to manage women but
to let them manage themselves. Bob Edwards failed with Catherine. I have
succeeded. Take a leaf out of my book. Rachael is not going through life
without a stupendous love affair. She was marked out for it, specially
moulded and equipped by old Mother Nature. Resign yourself to it, and go
out and put up your hands against the next tidal wave if you want an
illustration of what interference with Rachael would amount to. I wish
Levine would die, or we could get a divorce law through on this Island.
But the entire Council falls on the table with horror every time I
suggest it. Don't worry till the time comes. I'll fill my house with all
the pretty girls on St. Kitts and Nevis, and marry this hero of romance
as soon as I can."

Rachael went to the ball at Government House that night, glittering in a
gown of brocade she had worn at the court of Denmark: Levine had sent
her trunks to Peter Lytton's, but not her jewels. She was the most
splendid creature in the rooms, and there was no talk of anyone else.
But before the night was a third over she realized that the attention
she would receive during this her second dazzling descent upon society
would differ widely from her first. The young men bowed before her in
deep appreciation of her beauty, then passed on to the girls of that
light-hearted band to which she no longer belonged. She was a woman with
a tragic history and a living husband; she had a reputation for severe
intellectuality, and her eyes, the very carriage of her body, expressed
a stern aloofness from the small and common exteriorities of life. The
Governor, the members of Council, of the Assembly, of the bench and bar,
and the clergy, flocked about her, delighted at her return to the world,
but she was the belle of the matrons, and not a young man asked her to
dance.

She shrugged her shoulders when she saw how it was to be.

"Can they guess that I am younger than they are?" she thought. "And
would I have them? Would I share that secret with any in the world--but
one? Do I want to dance--to _dance_--Good God! And talk nonsense and the
gossip of the Island with these youths when I have naught to say but
that my soul has grown wings and that the cold lamp in my breast has
blown out, and lit again with the flame that keeps the world alive? Even
if I think it best never to see him again, he has given me that, and I
am young at last."

When she returned home, as the guinea fowl were at their raucous matins,
she was able to tell her mother that the Scot had not attended the ball,
and Mary Fawcett knew that Dr. Hamilton had managed to detain him.

But a fortnight later they met again at the house of Dr. George Irwin,
an intimate friend of the Hamiltons.

The Irwin's house in Basseterre was on the north side of the Park, which
was surrounded by other fine dwellings and several public buildings. The
broad verandahs almost overhung the enclosure, with its great banyan
tree, the royal palms about the fountain, the close avenues, the flaming
hedges of croton and hybiscus, and the traveller's palm and tree ferns
brought from the mountains. When a ball was given at one of the houses
about this Park on a moonlight night, there was much scheming to avoid
the watchful eyes of lawful guardians.

It was inevitable that Hamilton should attend this ball, for the Irwins
and his relatives were in and out of each other's houses all day and
half the night. By this time, however, he had met nearly every girl on
St. Kitts, and his cousin had ridden out that afternoon to assure
Mistress Fawcett that the danger weakened daily.

But for an hour, he did not leave Rachael's side that night. The
beauties of St. Christopher--and they were many, with their
porcelain-like complexions and distinguished features--went through all
their graceful creole paces in vain. That he was recklessly in love with
Rachael Levine was manifest to all who chose to look, and as undaunted
by her intellect and history as any man of his cousin's mature coterie.
As for Rachael, although she distributed her favours impartially for a
while, her mobile face betrayed to Dr. Hamilton that mind and body were
steeped in that tremulous content which possesses a woman when close to
an undeclared lover in a public place; the man, and Life and her own
emotions unmortalized, the very future bounded by the gala walls, the
music, the lights, and the perfume of flowers. These walls were hung
with branches of orange trees loaded with fruit, and with ferns and
orchids brought fresh from the mountains. A band of blacks played on
their native instruments the fashionable dances of the day with a weird
and barbaric effect, and occasionally sang a wailing accompaniment in
voices of indescribable softness. There was light from fifty candles,
and the eternal breeze lifted and dispersed the heavy perfume of the
flowers. Hamilton had been in many ball-rooms, but never in one like
this. He abstained from the madeiras and ports which were passed about
at brief intervals by the swinging coloured women in their gay frocks
and white turbans; but he was intoxicated, nevertheless, and more than
once on the point of leaving the house. The unreality of it all held him
more than weakness, for in some things James Hamilton was strong enough.
The weakness in him was down at the roots of his character, and he was
neither a feathercock nor a flasher. He had no intention of making love
to Rachael until he saw his future more clearly than he did to-night.
During the fortnight that had passed since he met her, he had thought of
little else, and to-night he wanted nothing else, but impulsive and
passionate as he was, he came of a race of hard-headed Scots. He had no
mind for a love affair of tragic seriousness, even while his quickened
imagination pictured the end.

He deliberately left her side after a time and joined a group of men who
were smoking in the court. After an hour of politics his brain had less
blood in it, and when he found himself standing beside Rachael on the
verandah he suggested that they follow other guests into the Park. He
gave Rachael his arm in the courtly fashion of the day, and they walked
about the open paths and talked of the negroes singing in the
cane-fields, and the squalid poverty of the North, as if their hearts
were as calm as they are to-day. People turned often to look at them,
commenting according to the mixing of their essences, but all concurring
in praise of so much beauty. Hamilton's sunburn had passed the acute
stage, leaving him merely brown, and his black silk small clothes and
lace ruffles, his white silk stockings and pumps, were vastly becoming.
His hair, lightly powdered, was tied with a white ribbon, but although
he carried himself proudly, there was no manifest in his bearing that
the vanities consumed much of his thought. He was gallanted like a young
blood of the period, and so were the young men of St. Kitts. Rachael
wore a heavy gold-coloured satin, baring the neck, and a stiff and
pointed stomacher, her hair held high with a diamond comb. Her fairness
was dazzling in the night-light, and it was such a light as Hamilton
never had seen before: for in the Tropics the moon is golden, and the
stars are crystal. The palm leaves, high on their slender shafts,
glittered like polished dark-green metal, and the downpour was so
dazzling that more than once the stranger shaded his eyes with his hand.
Had it not been for the soft babble of many voices, the silence would
have been intense, until the ear was tuned to the low tinkle of the
night bells, for the sea was calm.

Once, as if in explanation for words unspoken, he commented nervously on
the sensation of unreality with which these tropic scenes inspired him,
and Rachael, who longed to withdraw her hand from his arm, told him of
an entertainment peculiar to the Islands, a torchlight hunt for
land-crabs, which once a year travel down from the mountains to the sea,
to bathe and shed their shells. Words hastened. Before she drew breath
she had arranged a hunt for the night of the 10th of April, and received
his promise to be one of her guests. They were not so happy as they had
been within doors, for the world seemed wider. But their inner selves
pressed so hard toward each other that finally they were driven to
certain egotisms as a relief.

"I think little of the future," she said, after a direct question, "for
that means looking beyond my mother's death, and that is the one fact I
have not the courage to face. But of course I know that it holds nothing
for me. A ball occasionally, and the conversation of clever men who
admire me but care for some one else, books the rest of the week, and
life alone on a shelf of the mountain. The thought that I shall one day
be old does not console me as it may console men, for with women the
heart never grows old. The body withers, and the heart in its awful
eternal youth has the less to separate and protect it from the world
that has no use for it. Then the body dies and is put away, but the
heart is greedily consumed to feed the great pulses of the world that
lives faster every year. We give, and give, and give."

"And are only happy in giving," said Hamilton, quickly. "But if men
preserve the balance of the world by taking all that women give them, at
least the best of us find our happiness in the gifts of one woman, and a
woman so besought dare not assert that her heart is empty. I
understand--and no one more clearly than I do to-night--that if she give
too much, she may curse her heart and look out bitterly upon the
manifold interests that could suppress it for weeks and months--if life
were full enough. Is yours? What would you sacrifice if you came to me?"

He asked the question calmly, for there were people on every side of
them, but he asked it on an uncontrollable impulse, nevertheless; he had
vowed to himself that he would wait a month.

His natural repose was greater than hers, for she had the excitable
nerves of the Tropics. He felt her arm quiver before she dropped her
hand from his arm. But she replied almost as calmly: "Nothing after my
mother's death. Absolutely nothing. When a woman suffers as I have done,
and her future is ruined in any case, the world counts for very little
with her, unless it always has counted for more than anything else. We
grow the more cynical and contemptuous as we witness the foolish
gallantries of women who have so much to lose. I am not hard. I am very
soft about many things, and since you came I am become the very tragedy
of youth; but I have no respect for the world as I have seen it. For
many people in the world I have a great deal, but not for the substance
out of which Society has built itself. One never loses one's real
friends, no matter what one does. Every circumstance of my life has
isolated me from this structure called society, forced me to make my own
laws. I may never be happy, because my capacity for happiness is too
great, but in my own case there is no alternative worth considering.
This is the substance of what I have thought since we met, but you are
not to speak to me of it again while my mother lives."

"I do not promise you that--but this: that I will do much thinking
before I speak again."


X

But although they parted with formal courtesy, it was several nights
before either slept. Rachael went home to her bed and lay down, because
she feared to agitate her mother, but her disposition was to go out and
walk the circuit of the Island, and she rose as soon as she dared, and
climbed to the highest crest behind the house. It was cold there, and
the wind was keen. She sat for hours and stared out at Nevis, who was
rolling up her mists, indifferent to the torment of mortals.

During the past fortnight she had conceived a certain stern calm, partly
in self-defence, due in part to love for her mother. But since she had
left Hamilton, last night, there had been moments when she had felt
alone in the Universe with him, exalted to such heights of human passion
that she had imagined herself about to become the mother of a new race.
Her genius, which in a later day might have taken the form of mental
creation, concentrated in a supreme capacity for idealized human
passion, and its blind impulse was a reproduction of itself in another
being.

Were she and Hamilton but the victims of a mighty ego roaming the
Universe in search of a medium for human expression? Were they but
helpless sacrifices, consummately equipped, that the result of their
union might be consummately great? Who shall affirm or deny? The very
commonplaces of life are components of its eternal mystery. We know
absolutely nothing. But we have these facts: that a century and a half
ago, on a tropical island, where, even to common beings, quick and
intense love must seem the most natural thing in the world, this man and
woman met; that the woman, herself born in unhappy conditions, but
beautiful, intellectual, with a character developed far beyond her years
and isolated home by the cruel sufferings of an early marriage, reared
by a woman whose independence and energy had triumphed over the narrow
laws of the Island of her birth, given her courage to snap her fingers
at society--we know that this woman, inevitably remarkable, met and
loved a stranger from the North, so generously endowed that he alone of
all the active and individual men who surrounded her won her heart; and
that the result of their union was one of the stupendous intellects of
the world's history.

Did any great genius ever come into the world after commonplace
pre-natal conditions? Was a maker of history ever born amidst the
pleasant harmonies of a satisfied domesticity? Of a mother who was less
than remarkable, although she may have escaped being great? Did a woman
with no wildness in her blood ever inform a brain with electric fire?
The students of history know that while many mothers of great men have
been virtuous, none have been commonplace, and few have been happy. And
lest the moralists of my day and country be more prone to outraged
virtue, in reading this story, than were the easy-going folk who
surrounded it, let me hasten to remind them that it all happened close
upon a hundred and fifty years ago, and that the man and woman who gave
them the brain to which they owe the great structure that has made their
country phenomenal among nations, are dust on isles four hundred miles
apart.

A century and a half ago women indulged in little introspective
analysis. They thought on broad lines, and honestly understood the
strength of their emotions. Moreover, although Mary Wollstonecraft was
unborn and "Émile" unwritten, Individualism was germinating; and what
soil so quickening as the Tropics? Nevertheless, to admit was not to lay
the question, and Rachael passed through many hours of torment before
hers was settled. She was not unhappy, for the intoxication lingered,
and behind the methodical ticking of her reason, stood, calmly awaiting
its time, that sense of the Inevitable which has saved so many brains
from madness. She slept little and rested less, but that sentinel in her
brain prevented the frantic hopelessness which would have possessed her
had she felt herself strong enough to command James Hamilton to leave
the Island.

She met him several times before the night of her entertainment, and
there were moments when she was filled with terror, for he did not
whisper a reference to the conversation in the Park. Had he thought
better of it? Would he go? Would he conquer himself? Was it but a
passing madness? When these doubts tormented her she was driven to such
a state of jealous fury that she forgot every scruple, and longed only
for the bond which would bind him fast; then reminded herself that she
should be grateful, and endeavoured to be. But one day when he lifted
her to her horse, he kissed her wrist, and again the intoxication of
love went to her head, and this time it remained there. Once they met up
in the hills, where they had been asked with others to take a dish of
tea with Mistress Montgomerie. They sat alone for an hour on one of the
terraces above the house, laughing and chattering like children, then
rode down the hills through the cane-fields together. Again, they met in
the Park, and sat under the banyan tree, discussing the great books they
had read, all of Europe they knew. For a time neither cared to finish
that brief period of exquisite happiness and doubt, where imagination
rules, and the world is unreal and wholly sweet, and they its first to
love.

The wrenching stage of doubt had passed for Hamilton, but he thought on
the future with profound disquiet. He would have the woman wholly or not
at all, after Mary Fawcett's death; he knew from Dr. Hamilton that it
would occur before the year was out. He had no taste for intrigue. He
wanted a home, and the woman he would have rejoiced to marry was the
woman he expected to love and live with for the rest of his life. Once
or twice the overwhelming sense of responsibility, the certainty of
children, whom he could not legalize, the possible ruin of his worldly
interests, as well as his deep and sincere love for the woman, drove him
almost to the bows of a homeward-bound vessel. But the sure knowledge
that he should return kept him doggedly on St. Christopher. He even had
ceased to explain his infatuation to himself by such excuse as was given
him by her beauty, her grace, her strong yet charming brain. He loved
her, and he would have her if the skies fell.

It is doubtful if he understood the full force of the attraction between
them. The real energy and deliberation, the unswerving purpose in her
magnetized the weakness at the roots of his ardent, impulsive, but
unstable character. Moreover, in spite of the superlative passion which
he had aroused in her, she lacked the animal magnetism which was his in
abundance. Her oneness was a magnet for his gregariousness and
concentrated it upon herself. That positive quality in him overwhelmed
and intoxicated her; and in intellect he was far more brilliant and far
less profound than herself. His wit and mental nimbleness stung and
pricked the serene layers which she had carefully superimposed in her
own mind to such activities as mingled playfully with his lighter moods
or stimulated him in more intellectual hours. While the future was yet
unbroken and imagination remodelled the face of the world, there were
moments when both were exalted with a sense of completeness, and
terrified, when apart, with a hint of dissolution into unrelated
particles.

When a man and woman arrive at that stage of reasoning and feeling, it
were idle for their chronicler to moralize; her part is but to tell the
story.


XI

Mary Fawcett encouraged her daughter's social activity, and as
Hamilton's name entered the rapid accounts of revels and routs in the
most casual manner, she endeavoured to persuade herself that the madness
had passed with a languid afternoon. She was a woman of the world, but
the one experience that develops deepest insight had passed her by, and
there were shades and moods of the master passion over which her sharp
eyes roved without a shock.

As she was too feeble to sit up after nine o'clock, she refused to open
her doors for the crab hunt, but gave Rachael the key of a little villa
on the crest of a peak behind the house, and told her to keep her
friends all night if she chose.

This pavilion, designed for the hotter weeks of the hurricane season,
but seldom used by the Fawcetts, was a small stone building, with two
bedrooms and a living room, a swimming bath, and several huts for
servants. The outbuildings were dilapidated, but the house after an
airing and scrubbing was as fit for entertainment as any on St. Kitts.
The furniture in the Tropics is of cane, and there are no carpets or
hangings to invite destruction. Even the mattresses are often but
plaited thongs of leather, covered with strong linen, and stretched
until they are hard as wood. All Mary Fawcett's furniture was of
mahogany, the only wood impervious to the boring of the West Indian
worm. This tiny house on the mountain needed but a day's work to clean
it, and another to transform it into an arbour of the forest. The walls
of the rooms were covered with ferns, orchids, and croton leaves. Gold
and silver candelabra had been carried up from the house, and they would
hold half a hundred candles.

All day the strong black women climbed the gorge and hill, their hips
swinging, baskets of wine, trays of delicate edibles, pyramids of linen,
balanced as lightly on their heads as were they no more in weight and
size than the turban beneath; their arms hanging, their soft voices
scolding the "pic'nees" who stumbled after them.

Toward evening, Rachael and Kitty Hamilton walked down the mountain
together, and lingered in the heavy beauty of the gorge. The ferns grew
high above their heads, and palms of many shapes. The dark machineel
with its deadly fruit, the trailing vines on the tamarind trees, the
monkeys leaping, chattering with terror, through flaming hybiscus and
masses of orchid, the white volcanic rock, the long torn leaves of the
banana tree, the abrupt declines, crimson with wild strawberries, the
loud boom of the sunset gun from Brimstone Hill--Rachael never forgot a
detail of that last walk with her old friend. Hers was not the nature
for intimate friendships, but Catherine Hamilton had been one of her
first remembered playmates, her bridesmaid, and had hastened to
companion her when she emerged from the darkness of her married life.
But Catherine was an austere girl, of no great mental liveliness, and
the friendship, although sincere, was not rooted in the sympathies and
affections. She believed Rachael to be the most remarkable woman in the
world, and had never dared to contradict her, although she lowered her
fine head to no one else. But female virtue, as they expressed it in the
eighteenth century, stood higher in her estimation than all the gifts of
mind and soul which had been lavished upon Rachael Levine, and she was
the first to desert her when the final step was taken. But on this
evening there was no barrier, and she talked of her future with the man
she was to marry. She was happy and somewhat sentimental. Rachael sighed
and set her lips. All her girlhood friends were either married or about
to be--except Christiana, who had not a care in her little world. Why
were sorrow and disgrace for her alone? What have I done, she thought,
that I seem to be accursed? I have wronged no one, and I am more gifted
than any of these friends of mine. Not one of them has studied so
severely, and learned as much as I. Not one of them can command the
homage of such men as I. And yet I alone am singled out, first, for the
most hideous fate which can attack a woman, then to live apart from all
good men and women with a man I cannot marry, and who may break my
heart. I wish that I had not been born, and I would not be dead for all
the peace that is in the most silent depths of the Universe.

At ten o'clock, that night, the hills were red with the torches of as
gay a company as ever had assembled on the Island. The Governor and Dr.
Hamilton were keen sportsmen, and nothing delighted them more than to
chase infuriated land-crabs down the side of a mountain. There were some
twenty men in the party, and most of them followed their distinguished
elders through brush and rocky passes. Occasionally, a sudden yell of
pain mingled with the shouts of mirth, for land-crabs have their methods
of revenge. The three or four girls whom Rachael had induced to attend
this masculine frolic, kept to the high refuge of the villa, attended by
cavaliers who dared not hint that maiden charms were less than
land-crabs.

Hamilton and Rachael sat on the steps of the terrace, or paced up and
down, watching the scene. Just beyond their crest was the frowning mass
of Mount Misery. The crystal flood poured down from above, and the moon
was rising over the distant hills. The sea had the look of infinity.
There might be ships at anchor before Basseterre or Sandy Point, but the
shoulders of the mountain hid them; and below, the world looked as if
the passions of Hell had let loose--the torches flared and crackled, and
the trees took on hideous shapes. Once a battalion of the pale
venomous-looking crabs rattled across the terrace, and Rachael, who was
masculine in naught but her intellect, screamed and flung herself into
Hamilton's arms. A moment later she laughed, but their conversation
ceased then to be impersonal. It may be said here, that if Hamilton
failed in other walks of life, it was not from want of resolution where
women were concerned. And he was tired of philandering.

The hunters returned, slaves carrying the slaughtered crabs in baskets.
There were many hands to shell the victims, and in less than half an
hour Mary Fawcett's cook sent in a huge and steaming dish. Then there
were mulled wines and port, cherry brandy and liqueurs to refresh the
weary, and sweets for the women. A livelier party never sat down to
table; and Hamilton, who was placed between two chattering girls, was a
man of the world, young as he was, and betrayed neither impatience nor
ennui. Rachael sat at the head of the table, between the Governor and
Dr. Hamilton. Her face, usually as white as porcelain, was pink in the
cheeks; her eyes sparkled, her nostrils fluttered with triumph. She
looked so exultant that more than one wondered if she were intoxicated
with her own beauty; but Dr. Hamilton understood, and his supper lost
its relish. Some time since he had concluded that where Mary Fawcett
failed he could not hope to succeed, but he had done his duty and
lectured his cousin. He understood human nature from its heights to its
dregs, however, and promised Hamilton his unaltered friendship, even
while in the flood of remonstrance. He was a philosopher, who invariably
held out his hand to the Inevitable, with a shrug of his shoulders, but
he loved Rachael, and wished that the ship that brought Levine to the
Islands had encountered a hurricane.

The guests started for home at one o'clock, few taking the same path.
The tired slaves went down to their huts. Rachael remained on the
mountain, and Hamilton returned to her.


XII

It was a month later that Rachael, returning after a long ride with
Hamilton, found her mother just descended from the family coach.

"Is it possible that you have been to pay visits?" she asked, as she
hastened to support the feeble old woman up the steps.

"No, I have been to Basseterre with Archibald Hamn."

"Not to St. Peter's, I hope."

"Oh, my dear, I do not feel in the mood to jest. I went to court to
secure the future of my three dear slaves, Rebecca, Flora, and Esther."

Rachael placed her mother on one of the verandah chairs and dropped upon
another.

"Why have you done that?" she asked faintly. "Surely--"

"There are several things I fully realize, and one is that each attack
leaves me with less vitality to resist the next. These girls are the
daughters of my dear old Rebecca, who was as much to me as a black ever
can be to a white, and that is saying a good deal. I have just signed a
deed of trust before the Registrar--to Archibald. They are still mine
for the rest of my life, yours for your lifetime, or as long as you live
here; then they go to Archibald or his heirs. I want you to promise me
that they shall never go beyond this Island or Nevis."

"I promise." Rachael had covered her face with her hand.

"I believe you kept the last promise you made me. It is not in your
character to break your word, however you may see fit to take the law
into your own hands."

"I kept it."

"And you will live with him openly after my death. I have appreciated
your attempt to spare me."

"Ah, you _do_ know me."

"Some things may escape my tired old eyes, but I love you too well not
to have seen for a month past that you were as happy as a bride. I shall
say no more--save for a few moments with James Hamilton. I am old and
ill and helpless. You are young and indomitable. If I were as vigorous
and self-willed as when I left your father, I could not control you now.
I shall leave you independent. Will Hamilton, Archibald, and a few
others will stand by you; but alas! you will, in the course of nature,
outlive them all, and have no friend in the world but Hamilton--although
I shall write an appeal to your sisters to be sent to them after my
death. But oh, how I wish, how I wish, that you could marry this man."

Mary Fawcett was attacked that night by the last harsh rigours of her
disease and all its complications. Until she died, a week later,
Rachael, except for the hour that Hamilton sat alone beside the bed of
the stricken woman, did not leave her mother. The immortal happiness of
the last month was forgotten. She was prostrate, literally on her knees
with grief and remorse, for she believed that her mother's discovery had
hastened the end.

"No, it is not so," said Mary Fawcett, one day. "My time has come to
die. Will Hamilton will assure you of that, and I have watched the space
between myself and death diminish day by day, for six months past. I
have known that I should die before the year was out. It is true that I
die in sorrow and with a miserable sense of failure, for you have been
my best-beloved, my idol, and I leave you terribly placed in life and
with little hope of betterment. But for you I have no reproach. You have
given me love for love, and duty for duty. Life has treated you
brutally; what has come now was, I suppose, inevitable. Human nature
when it is strong enough is stronger than moral law. I grieve for you,
but I die without grievance against you. Remember that. And Hamilton? He
is honourable, and he loves you utterly--but is he strong? I wish I
knew. His emotions and his active brain give him so much apparent
force--but underneath? I wish I knew."

Rachael was grateful for her mother's unselfish assurance, but she was
not to be consoled. The passions in her nature, released from other
thrall, manifested themselves in a grief so profound, and at times so
violent, that only her strong frame saved her from illness. For two
weeks after Mary Fawcett's death she refused to see James Hamilton; but
by that time he felt at liberty to assert his rights, and her finely
poised mind recovered its balance under his solace and argument. Her
life was his, and to punish him assuaged nothing of her sorrow. He had
decided, after consultation with his cousin, to take her to Nevis, not
only to seclude her from the scandalized society she knew best, but that
he might better divert her mind, in new scenes, from her heavy
affliction. Hamilton had already embarked in his business enterprise,
but he had bought and manned a sail-boat, which would carry him to and
from St. Kitts daily. In the dead calms of summer there was little
business doing.

"I attempted no sophistry with my cousin," said Hamilton, "and for that
reason I think I have put the final corking-pin into our friendship.
Right or wrong we are going to live together for the rest of our lives,
because I will have no other woman, and you will have no other man; and
we will live together publicly, not only because neither of us has the
patience for scheming and deceit, but because passion is not our only
motive for union. There is gallantry on every side of us, and doubtless
we alone shall be made to suffer; for the world loves to be fooled, it
hates the crudeness of truth. But we have each other, and nothing else
matters."

And to Rachael nothing else mattered, for her mother was dead, and she
loved Hamilton with an increasing passion that was long in culminating.


XIII

They sailed over to Nevis, accompanied by a dozen slaves, and took
possession of Rachael's house in Main Street. It stood at the very end
of the town, beyond the point where the street ceased and the road round
the Island began. The high wall of the garden surrounded a grove of
palms and cocoanut trees. Only sojourners from England had occupied the
big comfortable house, and it was in good repair.

When the acute stage of her grief had passed, it was idle for Rachael to
deny to Hamilton that she was happy. And at that time she had not a care
in the world, nor had he. Their combined incomes made them as careless
of money as any planter on the Island. Every ship from England brought
them books and music, and Hamilton was not only the impassioned lover
but the tenderest and most patient of husbands. Coaches dashed by and
the occupants cast up eyes and hands. The gay life of Nevis pulsed
unheeded about the high walls, whose gates were always locked. The
kinsman of the leading families of the Island and the most beautiful
daughter of old John and Mary Fawcett were a constant and agitating
theme, but two people lived their life of secluded and poignant
happiness, and took Nevis or St. Kitts into little account.




BOOK II

ALEXANDER HAMILTON

HIS YOUTH IN THE WEST INDIES AND IN THE COLONIES OF NORTH AMERICA


I

I should have been glad to find an old Almanac of Nevis which contained
a description of its 11th of January, 1757. But one January is much like
another in the Leeward Islands, and he who has been there can easily
imagine the day on which Alexander Hamilton was born. The sky was a
deeper blue than in summer, for the sun was resting after the terrific
labours of Autumn, and there was a prick in the trade winds which
stimulated the blood by day and chilled it a trifle at night. The slave
women moved more briskly, followed by a trotting brood of "pic'nees,"
one or more clinging to their hips, all bewailing the rigours of winter.
Down in the river where they pounded the clothes on the stones, they
vowed they would carry the next linen to the sulphur springs, for the
very marrow in their bones was cold. In the Great Houses there were no
fires, but doors and windows were closed early and opened late, and
blankets were on every bed. The thermometer may have stood at 72°.

Nevis herself was like a green jewel casket, after the autumn rains.
Oranges and sweet limes were yellow in her orchards, the long-leaved
banana trees were swelling with bunches of fruit, the guavas were ready
for cream and the boiling. The wine was in the cocoanut, the royal palms
had shed their faded summer leaves and glittered like burnished metal.
The gorgeous masses of the croton bush had drawn fresh colour from the
rain. In the woods and in the long avenues which wound up the mountain
to the Great House of every estate, the air was almost cold; but out
under the ten o'clock sun, even a West Indian could keep warm, and the
negroes sang as they reaped the cane. The sea near the shore was like
green sunlight, but some yards out it deepened into that intense hot
blue which is the final excess of West Indian colouring. The spray flew
high over the reef between Nevis and St. Kitts, glittering like the salt
ponds on the desolate end of the larger island, the roar of the breakers
audible in the room where the child who was to be called Alexander
Hamilton was born.

Rachael rose to a ceaseless demand upon her attention for which she was
grateful during the long days of Hamilton's absence. Alexander turned
out to be the most restless and monarchical of youngsters and preferred
his mother to his black attendants. She ruled him with a firm hand,
however, for she had no mind to lessen her pleasure in him, and although
she could not keep him quiet, she prevented the blacks from spoiling
him.

During the hurricane months Hamilton yielded to her nervous fears, as he
had done in the preceding year, and crossed to St. Kitts but seldom. As
a matter of fact, hurricanes of the first degree, are rare in the West
Indies, the average to each island being one in a century. But from the
25th of August, when all the Caribbean world prostrates itself in church
while prayers for deliverance from the awful visitation are read, to the
25th of October, when the grateful or the survivors join in
thanksgiving, every wind alarms the nervous, and every round woolly
cloud must contain the white squall. Rachael knew that Nevis boats had
turned over when minor squalls dashed down the Narrows between the
extreme points of the Islands, and that they were most to be dreaded in
the hurricane season. Hamilton's inclination was to spare in every
possible way the woman who had sacrificed so much for him, and he asked
little urging to idle his days in the cool library with his charming
wife and son. Therefore his business suffered, for his partners took
advantage of his negligence; and the decay of their fortunes began when
Rachael, despite the angry protests of Archibald Hamn, sold her property
on St. Kitts and gave Hamilton the money. He withdrew from the firm
which had treated him inconsiderately, and set up a business for
himself. For a few years he was hopeful, although more than once
obliged to borrow money from his wife. She gave freely, for she had been
brought up in the careless plenty of the Islands. Mary Fawcett,
admirable manager as she was, had been lavish with money, particularly
when her favourite child was in question; and Rachael's imagination had
never worked toward the fact that money could roll down hill and not
roll up again. She was long in discovering that the man she loved and
admired was a failure in the uninteresting world of business. He was a
brilliant and charming companion, read in the best literatures of the
world, a thoughtful and adoring husband. It availed Archibald Hamn
nothing to rage or Dr. Hamilton to remonstrate. Rachael gradually
learned that Hamilton was not as strong as herself, but the maternal
instinct, so fully aroused by her child, impelled her to fill out his
nature with hers, while denying nothing to the man who did all he could
to make her happy.

In the third year Hamilton gave up his sail-boat, and had himself rowed
across the Narrows, where the overlooker of a salt estate he had bought
awaited him with a horse. Once he would have thought nothing of walking
the eight miles to Basseterre, but the Tropics, while they sharpen the
nerves, caress unceasingly the indolence of man. During the hurricane
season he crossed as often as he thought necessary, for with expert
oarsmen there was little danger, even from squalls, and the distance was
quickly covered.

Gradually Rachael's position was accepted. Nothing could alter the fact
that she was the daughter of Dr. and Mary Fawcett, and Hamilton was of
the best blood in the Kingdom. She was spoken of generally as Mistress
Hamilton, and old friends of her parents began to greet her pleasantly
as she drove about the Island with her beautiful child. In time they
called, and from that it was but another step to invite, as a matter of
course, the young Hamiltons to their entertainments. After all, Rachael
was not the first woman in tropical Great Britain to love a man she
could not marry, and it was fatiguing to ask the everlasting question of
whether the honesty of a public irregular alliance were not
counterbalanced by its dangerous example. It was a day of loose morals,
the first fruit of the vast scientific movement of the century, whose
last was the French Revolution. Moreover, the James Hamiltons were
delightful people, and life on the Islands was a trifle monotonous at
times; they brought into Nevis society fresh and unusual personalities,
spiced with a salient variety. Hamilton might almost be said to have
been born an astute man of the world. He opened his doors with an
accomplished hospitality to the most intelligent and cultivated people
of the Island, ignoring those who based their social pretensions on rank
and wealth alone. In consequence he and his wife became the leaders of a
small and exclusive set, who appreciated their good fortune. Dr.
Hamilton and a few other Kittifonians were constant visitors in this
hospitable mansion. Christiana Huggins, who had taken a bold stand from
the first, carried her father there one day in triumph, and that austere
parent laid down his arms. All seemed well, and the crumbling of the
foundations made no sound.

And Alexander? He was an excitable and ingenious imp, who saved himself
from many a spanking by his sparkling mind and entrancing sweetness of
temper. He might fly at his little slaves and beat them, and to his
white playmates he never yielded a point; but they loved him, for he was
generous and honest, and the happiest little mortal on the Island. He
could get into as towering a rage as old John Fawcett, but he was
immediately amenable to the tenderness of his parents.

When he was four years old he was sent to a small school, which happened
to be kept by a Jewess. In spite of his precocity his parents had no
wish to force a mind which, although delightful to them in its saucy
quickness, aroused no ambitious hopes; they sent him to school merely
that there might be less opportunity to spoil him at home. His new
experience was of a brief duration.

Hamilton on a Sunday was reading to Rachael in the library. Alexander
shoved a chair to the table and climbed with some difficulty, for he was
very small, to an elevated position among the last reviews of Europe.
He demanded the attention of his parents, and, clasping his hands behind
his back, began to recite rapidly in an unknown tongue. The day was very
hot, and he wore nothing but a white apron. His little pink feet were
bare on the mahogany, and his fair curls fell over a flushed and earnest
face, which at all times was too thin and alert to be angelic or
cherubic. Hamilton and Rachael, wondering whom he fancied himself
imitating, preserved for a moment a respectful silence, then, overcome
by his solemn countenance and the fluency of his outlandish utterance,
burst into one of those peals of sudden laughter which seem to strike
the most sensitive chord in young children. Alexander shrieked in wrath
and terror, and made as if to fling himself on his mother's bosom, then
planted his feet with an air of stubborn defiance, and went on with his
recital. Hamilton listened a moment longer, then left the house
abruptly. He returned in wrath.

"That woman has taught him the Decalogue in Hebrew!" he exclaimed. "'Tis
a wonder his brains are not addled. He will sail boats in the
swimming-bath and make shell houses in the garden for the next three
years. We'll have no more of school."


II

Alexander Hamilton had several escapes from imminent peril when he was a
boy, and the first occurred in the month of December, 1761. Hamilton had
gone to St. Croix on business, and Rachael and the child spent the
fortnight of his absence with Christiana Huggins. Rachael was accustomed
to Hamilton's absences, but Nevis was in a very unhealthy condition,
through lack of wind and rains during the preceding autumn. The sea had
looked like a metal floor for months, the Island was parched and dry,
the swamps on the lowlands were pestiferous. Many negroes had died in
Charles Town, and many more were ill. The obeah doctors, with their
absurd concoctions and practices, were openly defying the physicians of
repute, for the terrified blacks believed that the English had prayed
once too often that the hurricane should be stayed, and that he sulked
where none might feel his faintest breath. Therefore they cursed the
white doctor as futile, and flung his physic from the windows.

Rachael was glad to escape to the heights with Alexander. There it was
almost as cool as it should be in December, and she could watch for her
husband's sloop. He had gone with the first light wind, and there was
enough to bring him home, although with heavy sail. She forgot the
muttering negroes and the sickness below. Her servants had been
instructed to nurse and nourish where assistance was needed, and up here
there was nothing to do but wander with her friend and child through the
gay beauty of the terraced garden, or climb the stone steps to the cold
quiet depths of the forest.

At the end of a fortnight there was no sign of her husband's sloop, but
the wind was strengthening, and she decided to return home and make
ready for him. During the long drive she passed negroes in large
numbers, either walking toward Charles Town or standing in muttering
groups by the roadside. At one time the driveway was so thick with them
that her coach could not pass until the postilion laid about him with
his whip.

"This is very odd," she said to her nurse. "I have never seen anything
like this before."

"Me no t'ink he nothin'. All go tee tick--oh, dis pic'nee no keep till
one minit. Me no t'ink about he'n de road."

She lifted the child between her face and her mistress's eyes, and
Rachael saw that her hand trembled. "Can the negroes be rising?" she
wondered; and for a moment she was faint with terror, and prayed for
Hamilton's return.

But she was heroic by nature, and quickly recovered her poise. When she
arrived at home she sent the nurse to Charles Town on an errand, then
went directly to her bedroom, which was disconnected from the other
rooms, and called her three devoted maids, Rebecca, Flora, and Esther.
They came running at the sound of her voice, and she saw at once that
they were terrified and ready to cling to her garments.

"What is the matter?" she demanded. "Tell me at once."

"Me no know fo' sure," said Rebecca, "but me t'ink, t'ink, till me yell
in me tleep. Somethin' ter'ble go to happen. Me feel he in de air. All
de daddys, all de buddys, 'peak, 'peak, togedder all de time, an' look
so bad--an' de oby doctors put de curse ebberywheres. Me fine befo' de
gate dis mornin' one pudden', de mud an' oil an' horsehair, but me no
touch he. Me ask all de sissys me know, what comes, but he no 'peak. He
run out he tongue, and once he smack me ear. Oh, Mistress, take us back
to Sinkitts."

"But do you _know_ nothing?"

They shook their heads, but stared at her hopefully, for they believed
implicitly in her power to adjust all things.

"And my other slaves? Do you think they are faithful to me?"

"All in de town all de time. Me ask ebbery he tell me what comes, and he
say 'nothin,' but I no believe he."

"And has the Governor taken no notice?"

"De Gobbenor lord and all de noble Buckras go yis'day to Sinkitts. Take
de militia for one gran' parade in Bassetarr. Is de birfday to-morrow de
Gobbenor lord de Sinkitts. Up in de Great Houses no hear nothin', an'
all quiet on 'states till yes'day. Now comin' to town an' look so bad,
so bad!"

"Very well, then, the Governor and the militia must come back. Rebecca,
you are the most sensible as well as the weakest in the arms. You will
stay here to-night, and you will not falter for a moment. As soon as it
is dark Flora and Esther will row me across the channel, and I will send
the Buckra's agent on a fast horse with a note to the Governor. If the
other house servants return, you will tell them that I am ill and that
Flora and Esther are nursing me. You will lock the gates, and open them
to no one unless your Buckra should return. Do you understand?"

The slave rolled her eyes, but nodded. She might have defied the
Captain-General, but not one of the Fawcetts.

There were two hours before dark. Rachael was conscious of every nerve
in her body, and paced up and down the long line of rooms which
terminated in the library, until Alexander's legs were worn out trotting
after her, and he fell asleep on the floor. Twice she went to the roof
to look for Hamilton's sloop, but saw not a sail on the sea; and the
streets of Charles Town were packed with negroes. England sent no
soldiers to protect her Islands, and every free male between boyhood and
old age was forced by law to join the militia. It was doubtful if there
were a dozen muscular white men on Nevis that night, for the birthday of
a Governor was a fête of hilarities. Unless the militia returned that
night, the blacks, if they really were plotting vengeance, and she knew
their superstitions, would have burned every house and cane-field before
morning.

The brief twilight passed. The mist rolled down from the heights of
Nevis. Rachael, with Alexander in her arms, and followed by her maids,
stole along the shore through the thick cocoanut groves, meeting no one.
They were far from the town's centre, and all the blacks on the Island
seemed to be gathered there. The boat was beached, and it took the
combined efforts of the three women to launch it. When they pushed off,
the roar of the breakers and the heavy mist covered their flight. But
there was another danger, and the very physical strength of the slaves
departed before it. They had rowed their mistress about the roadstead
before St. Kitts a hundred times, but the close proximity of the reef so
terrified them that Rachael was obliged to take the oars; while Flora
caught Alexander in so convulsive an embrace that he awoke and protested
with all the vigour of his lungs. His mother's voice, to which he was
peculiarly susceptible, hushed him, and he held back his own, although
the gasping bosom on which he rested did not tend to soothe a nervous
child. But there were other ways of expressing outraged feelings, and he
kicked like a little steer.

Rachael herself was not too sure of her knowledge of the dangerous
channel, although she had crossed it many times with Hamilton; and the
mist was floating across to St. Kitts. The hollow boom of the reef
seemed so close that she expected to hear teeth in the boat every
moment, and she knew that far and wide the narrows bristled. She
wondered if her hair were turning white, and her straining nerves
quivered for a moment with a feminine regret; for she knew the power of
her beauty over Hamilton. But her arms kept their strength. Life had
taught her to endure more than a half-hour of mortal anxiety.

She reached the shore in safety, and Esther recovered her muscle and
agreed to run to the overlooker's house and send him, on his fleetest
horse, with her mistress's note to the Governor of Nevis. When the
others reached the house, a mile from the Narrows, the man had gone; and
Rachael could do no more. The overlookers wife mulled wine, and the
maids were soon asleep. Alexander refused to go to bed, and Rachael, who
was not in a disciplinary mood, led him out into the open to watch for
the boats of the Governor and his militia. There was no moon; they could
cross and land near Hamilton's house and overpower, without discharging
a gun, the negroes packed in Charles Town. If the Governor were prompt,
the blacks, even had they dispersed to fire the estates, would not have
time for havoc; and she knew the tendency of the negro to procrastinate.
They did not expect the Governor until late on the following day; they
could drink all night and light their torches at dawn when Nevis was
heavy in her last sleep. Nevertheless, Rachael watched the Island
anxiously.

Fortunately, Alexander possessed an inquiring mind, and she was obliged
to answer so many questions that the strain was relieved. They walked
amidst a wild and dismal scene. The hills were sterile and black. The
salt ponds, sunken far below the level of the sea, from lack of rain,
glittered white, but they were set with aloes and manchineel, and there
were low and muddy flats to be avoided. It was a new aspect of nature to
the child who had lived his four years amid the gay luxuriance of tropic
verdure, and he was mightily interested. Nevertheless, it was a long
hour before the overlooker returned with word that the Governor was on
his way to Nevis with the militia of both Islands--for St. Kitts was
quiet, its negroes having taken the drouth philosophically--and that her
husband was with them. He had arrived at Basseterre as the boats were
leaving; as a member of the Governor's staff, he had no choice. He had
sent her word, however, not to return to Nevis that night; and Rachael
and Alexander went down to the extreme point of the Island and sat there
through a cold night of bitter anxiety. With the dawn Hamilton came for
them.

The negroes, surprised and overwhelmed, had surrendered without
resistance, and before they had left the town. They confessed that their
intention had been to murder every white on the Island, seize the
ammunition which was stored on the estates, and fire upon the militia as
it passed, on the following day. The ringleaders and obeah doctors were
either publicly executed or punished with such cruelty that the other
malcontents were too cowed to plan another rebellion; and the abundant
rains of the following autumn restored their faith in the white man.


III

When Alexander was five years old, James arrived, an object of much
interest to his elder brother, but a child of ordinary parts to most
beholders. He came during the last days of domestic tranquillity; for it
was but a few weeks later that Hamilton was obliged to announce to
Rachael that his fortunes, long tottering, had collapsed to their rotten
foundations. It was some time before she could accommodate her
understanding to the fact that there was nothing left, for even Levine
had not dared to lose his money, far less her own; and had she ever
given the subject of wealth a thought, she would have assumed that it
had roots in certain families which no adverse circumstance could
deplace. She had overheard high words between Archibald Hamn and her
husband in the library, but Hamilton's casual explanations had satisfied
her, and she had always disliked Archibald as a possible stepfather. Dr.
Hamilton had frequently looked grave after a conversation with his
kinsman, but Rachael was too unpractical to attribute his heavier moods
to anything but his advancing years.

When Hamilton made her understand that they were penniless, and that his
only means of supporting her was to accept an offer from Peter Lytton to
take charge of a cattle estate on St. Croix, Rachael's controlling
sensation was dismay that this man whom she had idolized and idealized,
who was the forgiven cause of her remarkable son's illegitimacy, was a
failure in his competition with other men. Money would come somehow, it
always had; but Hamilton dethroned, shoved out of the ranks of planters
and merchants, reduced to the status of one of his own overlookers,
almost was a new and strange being, and she dared not bid forth her
hiding thoughts.

Fortunately the details of moving made life impersonal and commonplace.
The three slaves whose future had been the last concern but one of Mary
Fawcett, were sent, wailing, to Archibald Hamn. Two of the others were
retained to wait upon the children, the rest sold with the old mahogany
furniture and the library. The Hamiltons set sail for St. Croix on a day
in late April. The sympathy of their friends had been expressed in more
than one offer of a lucrative position, but Hamilton was intensely
proud, and too mortified at his failure to remain obscure among a people
who had been delighted to accept his princely and exclusive hospitality.
On St. Croix he was almost unknown.

They made the voyage in thirty-two hours, but as the slaves were ill,
after the invariable habit of their colour, Rachael had little respite
from her baby, or Hamilton from Alexander, whose restless legs and
enterprising mind kept him in constant motion; and the day began at five
o'clock. There was no opportunity for conversation, and Hamilton was
grateful to the miserable mustees. He had the tact to let his wife
readjust herself to her damaged idols without weak excuses and a
pleading which would have distressed her further, but he was glad to be
spared intimate conversation with her.

As they sailed into the bright green waters before Frederikstadt, the
sun blazed down upon the white town on the white plain with a vicious
energy which Rachael had never seen on Nevis during the hottest and most
silent months of the year. She closed her eyes and longed for the cool
shallows of the harbour, and even Alexander ceased to watch the flying
fish dart like silver blades over the water, and was glad to be stowed
comfortably into one of the little deck-houses. As for the slaves,
weakened by illness, they wept and refused to gather themselves
together.

But Rachael's soul, which had felt faint for many days, rose triumphant
in the face of this last affliction. Like all West Indians, she hated
extreme heat, and during those months on her own Islands when the trades
hibernated, rarely left the house. She remembered little of St. Croix.
Her imagination had disassociated itself from all connected with it, but
now it burst into hideous activity and pictured interminable years of
scorching heat and blinding glare. For a moment she descended to the
verge of hysteria, from which she struggled with so mighty an effort
that it vitalized her spirit for the ordeal of her new life; and when
Hamilton, cursing himself, came to assist her to land, she was able to
remark that she recalled the beauty of Christianstadt, and to
anathematize her sea-green maids.

The trail of Spain is over all the islands, and on St. Croix has left
its picturesque mark in the heavy arcades which front the houses in the
towns. Behind these arcades one can pass from street to street with
brief egress into the awful downpour of the sun, and they give to both
towns an effect of architectural beauty. At that time palms and
cocoanuts grew in profusion along the streets of Frederikstadt and in
the gardens, tempering the glare of the sun on the coral.

Peter Lytton's coach awaited the Hamiltons, and at six o'clock they
started for their new home. The long driveway across the Island was set
with royal palms, beyond which rolled vast fields of cane. St. Croix was
approaching the height of her prosperity, and almost every inch of her
fertile acres was under cultivation. They rolled up and over every hill,
the heavy stone houses, with their negro hamlets and mills, rising like
half-submerged islands, unless they crowned a height. The roads swarmed
with Africans, who bowed profoundly to the strangers in the fine coach,
grinning an amiable welcome. Surrounded by so generous a suggestion of
hospitality and plenty, with the sun low in the west, the spirits of the
travellers rose, and Rachael thought with more composure upon the
morrow's encounter with her elder sisters. She knew them very slightly,
their husbands less. When her connection with Hamilton began,
correspondence between them had ceased; but like others they had
accepted the relation, and for the last three years Hamilton had been a
welcome guest at their houses when business took him to St. Croix. Mrs.
Lytton had been the first to whom he had confided his impending failure,
and she, remembering her mother's last letter and profoundly pitying the
young sister who seemed marked for misfortune, had persuaded her husband
to offer Hamilton the management of his grazing estates on the eastern
end of the Island. She wrote to Rachael, assuring her of welcome, and
reminding her that her story was unknown on St. Croix, that she would be
accepted without question as Hamilton's wife and their sister. But
Rachael knew that the truth would come out as soon as they had attracted
the attention of their neighbours, and she had seen enough of the world
to be sure that what people tolerated in the wealthy they censured in
the unimportant. To depend upon her sisters' protection instead of her
own lifelong distinction, galled her proud spirit. For the first time
she understood how powerless Hamilton was to protect her. The glamour of
that first year when nothing mattered was gone for ever. She had two
children, one of them uncommon, and they were to encounter life without
name or property. True, Levine might die, or Hamilton make some
brilliant coup, but she felt little of the buoyancy of hope as they left
the cane-fields and drove among the dark hills to their new home.

The house and outbuildings were on a high eminence, surrounded on three
sides by hills. Below was a lagoon, which was separated from the sea by
a deep interval of tidal mud set thick with mangroves. The outlet
through this swamp was so narrow that a shark which had found its way in
when young had grown too large to return whence he came, and was the
solitary and discontented inhabitant of the lagoon. The next morning
Rachael, rising early and walking on the terrace with Alexander, was
horrified to observe him warming his white belly in the sun. On three
sides of the lagoon was a thick grove of manchineels, hung with their
deadly apples; here and there a palm, which drooped as if in discord
with its neighbours. It was an uncheerful place for a woman with terror
and tumult in her soul, but the house was large and had been made
comfortable by her brother-in-laws' slaves.

Mrs. Lytton and Mrs. Mitchell drove over for the eleven o'clock
breakfast. They were very kind, but they were many years older than the
youngest of their family, proudly conscious of their virtue,
uncomprehending of the emotions which had nearly wrenched Rachael's soul
from her body more than once. Moreover, Mrs. Mitchell was the physical
image of Mary Fawcett without the inheritance of so much as the old
lady's temper; and there were moments, as she sat chattering amiably
with Alexander, with whom she immediately fell in love, when Rachael
could have flown at and throttled her because she was not her mother.
Mrs. Lytton was delicate and nervous, but more reserved, and Rachael
liked her better. Nevertheless, she was heartily glad to be rid of both
of them, and reflected with satisfaction that she was to live on the
most isolated part of the Island. She had begged them to ask no one to
call, and for months she saw little of anybody except her family.

Her household duties were many, and she was forced at once to alter her
lifelong relation to domestic economics. Hamilton's salary was six
hundred pieces of eight, and for a time the keeping of accounts and the
plans for daily disposal of the small income furnished almost the only
subjects of conversation between her husband and herself. His duties
kept him on horseback during all but the intolerable hours of the day,
and until their new life had become a commonplace they were fortunate
in seeing little of each other.

Alexander long since had upset his father's purpose to defer the opening
of his mind until the age of seven. He had taught himself the rudiments
of education by such ceaseless questioning of both his parents that they
were glad to set him a daily task and keep him at it as long as
possible. In this new home he had few resources besides his little books
and his mother, who gave him all her leisure. There were no white
playmates, and he was not allowed to go near the lagoon, lest the shark
get him or he eat of forbidden fruit. Just after his sixth birthday,
however, several changes occurred in his life: Peter Lytton sent him a
pony, his father killed the shark and gave him a boat, and he made the
acquaintance of the Rev. Hugh Knox.

This man, who was to play so important a part in the life of Alexander
Hamilton, was himself a personality. At this time but little over
thirty, he had, some years since, come to the West Indies with a
classical library and a determination to rescue the planters from that
hell which awaits those who drowse through life in a clime where it is
always summer when it is not simply and blazingly West Indian. He soon
threw the mantle of charity over the patient planters, and became the
boon companion of many; but he made converts and was mightily proud of
them. His was the zeal of the converted. When he arrived in the United
States, in 1753, young, fresh from college, enthusiastic, and handsome,
he found favour at once in the eyes of the Rev. Dr. Rogers of Middletown
on the Delaware, to whom he had brought a letter of introduction.
Through the influence of this eminent divine, he obtained a school and
many friends. The big witty Irishman was a welcome guest at the popular
tavern, and was not long establishing himself as the leader of its
hilarities. He was a peculiarly good mimic, and on Saturday nights his
boon companions fell into the habit of demanding his impersonation of
some character locally famous. One night he essayed a reproduction of
Dr. Rogers, then one of the most celebrated men of his cloth. Knox
rehearsed the sermon of the previous Sunday, not only with all the
divine's peculiarity of gesture and inflection, but almost word for
word; for his memory was remarkable. At the start his listeners
applauded violently, then subsided into the respectful silence they were
wont to accord Dr. Rogers; at the finish they stole out without a word.
As for Knox, he sat alone, overwhelmed with the powerful sermon he had
repeated, and by remorse for his own attempted levity. His emotional
Celtic nature was deeply impressed. A few days later he disappeared, and
was not heard of again until, some months after, Dr. Rogers learned that
he was the guest of the Rev. Aaron Burr at Newark, and studying for the
church. He was ordained in due course, converted his old companions,
then set sail for St. Croix.

Hamilton met him at Peter Lytton's, talked with him the day through, and
carried him home to dinner. After that he became little less than an
inmate of the household; a room was furnished for him, and when he did
not occupy it, he rode over several times a week. His books littered
every table and shelf.

Alexander was his idol, and he was the first to see that the boy was
something more than brilliant. Hamilton had accepted his son's
cleverness as a matter of course, and Rachael, having a keen contempt
for fatuous mothers, hardly had dared admit to herself that her son was
to other boys as a star to pebbles. When Knox, who had undertaken his
education at once, assured her that he must distinguish himself if he
lived, probably in letters, life felt almost fresh again, although she
regretted his handicap the more bitterly. As for Knox, his patience was
inexhaustible. Alexander would have everything resolved into its
elements, and was merciless in his demand for information, no matter
what the thermometer. He had no playmates until he was nine, and by that
time he had much else to sober him. Of the ordinary pleasures of
childhood he had scant knowledge.

Rachael wondered at the invariable sunniness of his nature,--save when
he flew into a rage,--for under the buoyancy of her own had always been
a certain melancholy. Before his birth she had gone to the extremes of
happiness and grief, her normal relation to life almost forgotten. But
the sharpened nerves of the child manifested themselves in acute
sensibilities and an extraordinary precocity of intellect, never in
morbid or irritable moods. He was excitable, and had a high and
sometimes furious temper, but even his habit of study never extinguished
his gay and lively spirits. On the other hand, beneath the surface
sparkle of his mind was a British ruggedness and tenacity, and a
stubborn oneness of purpose, whatever might be the object, with which no
lighter mood interfered. All this Rachael lived long enough to discover
and find compensation in, and as she mastered the duties of her new life
she companioned the boy more and more. James was a good but
uninteresting baby, who made few demands upon her, and was satisfied
with his nurse. She never pretended to herself that she loved him as she
did Alexander, for aside from the personality of her first-born, he was
the symbol and manifest of her deepest living.

Although Rachael was monotonously conscious of the iron that had impaled
her soul, she was not quite unhappy at this time, and she never ceased
to love Hamilton. Whatever his lacks and failures, nothing could destroy
his fascination as a man. His love for her, although tranquillized by
time, was still strong enough to keep alive his desire' to please her,
and he thought of her as his wife always. He felt the change in her, and
his soul rebelled bitterly at the destruction of his pedestal and halo,
and all that fiction had meant to both of them; but he respected her
reserve, and the subject never came up between them. He knew that she
never would love any one else, that she still loved him passionately,
despite the shattered ideal of him; and he consoled himself with the
reflection that even in giving him less than her entire store, she gave
him, merely by being herself, more than he had thought to find in any
woman. His courteous attentions to her had never relaxed, and in time
the old companionship was resumed; they read and discussed as in their
other home; but this their little circle was widened by two, Alexander
and Hugh Knox. The uninterrupted intimacy of their first years was not
to be resumed.

They saw little of the society of St. Croix. In 1763 Christiana Huggins,
visiting the Peter Lyttons, married her host's brother, James, and
settled on the Island. She drove occasionally to the lonely estate in
the east, but she had a succession of children and little time for old
duties. Rachael exchanged calls at long intervals with her sisters and
their intimate friends, the Yards, Lillies, Crugers, Stevens, Langs, and
Goodchilds, but she had been too great a lady to strive now for social
position, practically dependent as she was on the charity of her
relatives.


IV

In the third year of their life on St. Croix, Rachael discovered that
Peter Lytton was dissatisfied with Hamilton, and retained him to his own
detriment, out of sympathy for herself and her children. From that time
she had few tranquil moments. It was as if, like the timid in the
hurricane season, she sat constantly with ears strained for that first
loud roar in the east. She realized then that the sort of upheaval which
shatters one's economic life is but the precursor of other upheavals,
and she thought on the unknown future until her strong soul was faint
again.

Hamilton was one of those men whose gifts are ruined by their impulses,
in whom the cultivation of sober judgement is interrupted by the
excesses of a too sanguine temperament. He was honourable, and always
willing to admit his mistakes, but years and repeated failure did little
toward balancing his faults and virtues. In time he wore out the
patience of even those who loved and admired him. His wife remained his
one loyal and unswerving friend, but her part in his life was near its
finish. The day came when Peter Lytton, exasperated once too often,
after an ill-considered sale of valuable stock, let fly his temper, and
further acceptance of his favour was out of the question. Hamilton,
after a scene with his wife, in which his agony and remorse quickened
all the finest passions in her own nature, sailed for the Island of St.
Vincent, in the hope of finding employment with one of his former
business connections. He had no choice but to leave his wife and
children dependent upon her relatives until he could send for them; and
a week later Rachael was forced to move to Peter Lytton's.

Her brother-in-law's house was very large. She was given an upstairs
wing of it and treated with much consideration, but this final ignominy
broke her haughty spirit, and she lost interest in herself. She was
thankful that her children were not to grow up in want, that Alexander
was able to continue his studies with Hugh Knox. He was beyond her now
in everything but French, in which they read and talked together daily.
She also discussed constantly with him those heroes of history
distinguished not only for great achievements, but for sternest honour.
She dreamed of his future greatness, and sometimes of her part in it.
But her inner life was swathed like a mummy.

To Alexander the change would have been welcome had he understood his
mother less. But the ordinary bright boy of nine is acute and observing,
and this boy of Rachael's, with his extraordinary intuitions, his
unboyish brain, his sympathetic and profound affection for his mother,
felt with her and criticised his father severely. To him failure was
incomprehensible, then, as later, for self-confidence and indomitability
were parts of his equipment; and that a man of his father's age and
experience, to say nothing of his education and intellect, should so
fail in the common relation of life, and break the heart and pride of
the uncommonest of women, filled him with a deep disappointment, which,
no doubt, was the first step toward the early loss of certain illusions.

Otherwise his life was vastly improved. He soon became intimate with
boys of neighbouring estates, Edward and Thomas Stevens, and Benjamin
Yard, and for a time they all studied together under Hugh Knox. At first
there was discord, for Alexander would have led a host of cherubims or
had naught to do with them, and these boys were clever and spirited.
There were rights of word and fist in the lee of Mr. Lytton's barn,
where interference was unlikely; but the three succumbed speedily, not
alone to the powerful magnetism in little Hamilton's mind, and to his
active fists, but because he invariably excited passionate attachment,
unless he encountered jealous hate. When his popularity with these boys
was established they adored the very blaze of his temper, and when he
formed them into a soldier company and marched them up and down the palm
avenue for a morning at a time, they never murmured, although they were
like to die of the heat and unaccustomed exertion. Neddy Stevens, who
resembled him somewhat in face, was the closest of these boyhood
friends.

Alexander was a great favourite with Mr. Lytton, who took him to ride
every morning; Mrs. Lytton preferred James, who was a comfortable child
to nurse; but Mrs. Mitchell was the declared slave of her lively nephew,
and sent her coach for him on Saturday mornings. As for Hugh Knox, he
never ceased to whittle at the boy's ambition and point it toward a
great place in modern letters. Had he been born with less sound sense
and a less watchful mother, it is appalling to think what a brat he
would have been; but as it was, the spoiling but fostered a
self-confidence which was half the battle in after years.

Hamilton never returned. His letters to his wife spoke always of the
happiness of their final reunion, of belief in the future. His brothers
had sent him money, and he hoped they would help him to recover his
fortunes. But two years passed and he was still existing on a small
salary, his hopes and his impassioned tenderness were stereotyped.
Rachael's experience with Hamilton had developed her insight. She knew
that man requires woman to look after her own fuel. If she cannot, he
may carry through life the perfume of a sentiment, and a tender regret,
but it grows easy and more easy to live without her. It was a long while
before she forced her penetrating vision round to the certainty that she
never should see Hamilton again, and then she realized how strong hope
had been, that her interest in herself was not dead, that her love must
remain quick through interminable years of monotony and humiliation. For
a time she was so alive that she went close to killing herself, but she
fought it out as she had fought through other desperate crises, and
wrenched herself free of her youth, to live for the time when her son's
genius should lift him so high among the immortals that his birth would
matter as little as her own hours of agony. But the strength that
carried her triumphantly through that battle was fed by the last of her
vitality, and it was not long before she knew that she must die.

Alexander knew it first. The change in his mother was so sudden, the
earthen hue of her white skin, the dimming of her splendid eyes, spoke
so unmistakably of some strange collapse of the vital forces, that it
seemed to the boy who worshipped her as if all the noises of the
Universe were shrieking his anguish. At the same time he fought for an
impassive exterior, then bolted from the house and rode across the
Island for a doctor. The man came, prescribed for a megrim, and
Alexander did not call him again; nor did he mention his mother's
condition to the rest of the family. She was in the habit of remaining
in her rooms for weeks at a time, and she had her own attendants. Mrs.
Lytton was an invalid, and Peter Lytton, while ready to give of his
bounty to his wife's sister, had too little in common with Rachael to
seek her companionship. Alexander felt the presence of death too surely
to hope, and was determined to have his mother to himself during the
time that remained. He confided in Hugh Knox, then barely left the
apartments.

Just before her collapse Rachael was still a beautiful woman. She was
only thirty-two when she died. Her face, except when she forced her
brain to activity, was sad and worn, but the mobile beauty of the
features was unimpaired, and her eyes were luminous, even at their
darkest. Her head was always proudly erect, and nature had given her a
grace and a dash which survived broken fortunes and the death of her
coquetry. No doubt this is the impression of her which Alexander carried
through life, for those last two months passed to the sound of falling
ruins, on which he was too sensible to dwell when they had gone into the
control of his will.

After she had admitted to Alexander that she understood her condition,
they seldom alluded to the subject, although their conversation was as
rarely impersonal. The house stood high, and Rachael's windows commanded
one of the most charming views on the Island. Below was the green
valley, with the turbaned women moving among the cane, then the long
white road with its splendid setting of royal palms, winding past a hill
with groves of palms, marble fountains and statues, terraces covered
with hibiscus and orchid, and another Great House on its summit. Far to
the right, through an opening in the hills, was a glimpse of the sea.

Rachael lay on a couch in a little balcony during much of the soft
winter day, and talked to Alexander of her mother and her youth, finally
of his father, touching lightly on the almost forgotten episode with
Levine. All that she did not say his creative brain divined, and when
she told him what he had long suspected, that his mother's name was
unknown to the Hamiltons of Grange, he accepted the fact as but one more
obstacle to be overthrown in the battle with life which he had long
known he was to fight unaided. To criticise his mother never occurred to
him; her control of his heart and imagination was too absolute. His only
regret was that she could not live until he was able to justify her. The
audacity and boldness of his nature were stimulated by the prospect of
this sharp battle with the world's most cherished convention, and he was
fully aware of all that he owed to his mother. When he told her this she
said:--

"I regret nothing, even though it has brought me to this. In the first
place, it is not in me to do anything so futile. In the second place, I
have been permitted to live in every part of my nature, and how many
women can say that? In the third, you are in the world, and if I could
live I should see you the honoured of all men. I die with regret because
you need me for many years to come, and I have suffered so much that I
never could suffer again. Remember always that you are to be a great
man, not merely a successful one. Your mind and your will are capable of
all things. Never try for the second best, and that means to put your
immediate personal desire aside when it encounters one of the ideals of
your time. Unless you identify yourself with the great principles of the
world you will be a failure, because your mind is created in harmony
with them, and if you use it for smaller purposes it will fail as surely
as if it tried to lie or steal. Your passions are violent, and you have
a blackness of hate in you which will ruin you or others according to
the control you acquire over it; so be warned. But you never can fail
through any of the ordinary defects of character. You are too bold and
independent to lie, even if you had been born with any such disposition;
you are honourable and tactful, and there is as little doubt of your
fascination and your power over others. But remember--use all these
great forces when your ambition is hottest, then you can stumble upon no
second place. As for your heart, it will control your head sometimes,
but your insatiable brain will accomplish so much that it can afford to
lose occasionally; and the warmth of your nature will make you so many
friends, that I draw from it more strength to die than from all your
other gifts. Leave this Island as soon as you can. Ah, if I could give
you but a few thousands to force the first doors!"

She died on the 25th of February, 1768. Her condition had been known for
some days, and her sisters had shed many tears, aghast and deeply
impressed at the tragic fate of this youngest, strangest, and most
gifted of their father's children. Unconsciously they had expected her
to do something extraordinary, and it was yet too soon to realize that
she had. His aunts had announced far and wide that Alexander was the
brightest boy on the Island, but that a nation lay folded in his saucy
audacious brain they hardly could be expected to know.


V

The Great House of Peter Lytton was hung with white from top to bottom,
and every piece of furniture looked as if the cold wing of death had
touched it. A white satin gown, which had come from London for Rachael
six years before,--just too late, for she never went to a ball
again,--was taken from her mahogany press and wrapped about her wasted
body. Her magnificent hair was put out of sight in a cap of blond lace.

The fashionable world of St. Croix, which had seen little of Rachael in
life, came to the ceremonious exit of her body. They sat along the four
sides of the large drawing-room, looking like a black dado against the
white walls, and the Rev. Cecil Wray Goodchild, the pastor of the larger
number of that sombre flock, sonorously read the prayers for the dead.
Hugh Knox felt that his was the right to perform that ceremony; but he
was a Presbyterian, and Peter Lytton was not one of his converts. He was
there, however, and so were several Danes, whose colourless faces and
heads completed the symbolization encircling the coffin. People of
Nevis, St. Christopher, and St. Croix were there, the sisters born of
the same mother, a kinsman of Hamilton's, himself named James Hamilton,
these bleached people of the North, whose faces, virtuous as they were,
would have seemed to the dead woman to shed the malignant aura of
Levine's,--and the boy for whom the sacrificial body had been laid on
the altar. He paid his debt in wretchedness then and there, and stood by
the black pall which covered his mother, feeling a hundred years older
than the brother who sat demurely on Mrs. Lytton's agitated lap.

When Mr. Goodchild closed his book, the slave women entered with silver
pitchers containing mulled wines, porter mixed with sugar and spice,
madeira, and port wine. Heaped high on silver salvers were pastries and
"dyer bread," wrapped in white paper sealed with black wax. The guests
refreshed themselves deeply, then followed the coffin, which was borne
on the shoulders of the dead woman's brothers and their closest
friends, across the valley to the private burying-ground of the Lyttons.
Old James Lytton was placed beside her in the following year, and ten
years later a child of Christiana Huggins, the wife of his son. The cane
grows above their graves to-day.


VI

Alexander went home with Mrs. Mitchell, and it was long before he
returned to Peter Lytton's. His favourite aunt was delighted to get him,
and her husband, for whom Alexander had no love, was shortly to sail on
one of his frequent voyages.

Mrs. Mitchell had a winter home in Christianstadt, for she loved the gay
life of the little capital, and her large house, on the corner of King
and Strand streets, was opened almost as often as Government House. This
pile, with its imposing façade, represented to her the fulfilment of
worldly ambitions and splendour. There was nothing to compare with it on
Nevis or St. Kitts, nor yet on St. Thomas; and her imagination or memory
gave her nothing in Europe to rival it. When Government House was closed
she felt as if the world were eating bread and cheese. The Danes were
not only the easiest and most generous of rulers, but they entertained
with a royal contempt of pieces of eight, and their adopted children had
neither the excuse nor the desire to return to their native isles.

Christianstadt, although rising straight from the harbour, has the
picturesque effect of a high mountain-village. As the road across the
Island finds its termination in King Street, the perceptible decline and
the surrounding hills, curving in a crescent to the unseen shore a mile
away, create the illusion. On the left the town straggles away in an
irregular quarter for the poor, set thick with groves of cocoanut and
palm. On the right, and parallel with the main road, is Company Street,
and above is the mountain studded with great white stone houses,
softened by the lofty roofs of the royal palm. All along King Street the
massive houses stand close together, each with its arcade and its
curious outside staircase of stone which leads to an upper balcony where
one may catch the breeze and watch the leisures of tropic life. Almost
every house has a court opening into a yard surrounded by the
overhanging balconies of three sides of the building; and here the
guinea fowl screech their matins, the roosters crow all night, there is
always a negro asleep under a cocoanut tree, and a flame of colour from
potted plants.

Down by the sea is the red fort, built on a bluff, and commanding a
harbour beautiful to look upon, with its wooded island, its sharp high
points, its sombre swamps covered with lacing mangroves, but locked from
all the world but that which can come in sailing ships, by the coral
reef on which so many craft have gone to pieces.

From Alexander's high window in Thomas Mitchell's house, he could see
the lively Park behind the Fort; the boats sail over from the blue peaks
of St. Thomas and St. John, the long white line of the sounding reef.
Above the walls of Government House was the high bold curve of the
mountain with its dazzling façades, its glitter of green. In the King
Street of that day gentlemen in knee breeches and lace shirts, their
hair in a powdered queue, were as familiar objects as turbaned blacks
and Danes in uniform. After riding over their plantations "to hear the
cane grow," they almost invariably brought up in town to talk over
prospects with the merchants, or to meet each other at some more jovial
resort. Sometimes they came clattering down the long road in a coach and
four, postilions shouting at the pic'nees in the road, swerving, and
halting so suddenly in some courtyard, that only a planter, accustomed
to this emotional method of travel, could keep his seat. Ordinarily he
preferred his horse, perhaps because it told no tales.

Thomas Mitchell had made his large fortune in the traffic of slaves, and
was on terms of doubtful courtesy with Peter Lytton, who disapproved the
industry. Blacks were by no means his only source of revenue; he had
one of the two large general stores of the Island--the other was
Nicholas Cruger's--and plantations of cane, whose yield in sugar,
molasses, and rum never failed him. He was not a pleasing man in his
family, and did not extend the hospitality of its roof to Alexander with
a spontaneous warmth. His own children were married, and he did not look
back upon the era of mischievous boys with sufficient enthusiasm to
prompt him to adopt another. He yielded to his wife's voluble
supplications because domestic harmony was necessary to his content, and
Mistress Mitchell had her ways of upsetting it. Alexander was
immediately too busy with his studies to pay attention to the
indifferent grace with which Mr. Mitchell accepted his lot, and,
fortunately, this industrious merchant was much away from home. Hugh
Knox, as the surest means of diverting the boy from his grief, put him
at his books the day after he arrived in Christianstadt. His own house
was on Company Street, near the woods out of which the town seemed to
spring; and in his cool library he gathered his boys daily, and crammed
their brains with Latin and mathematics. The boys had met at Peter
Lytton's before, but Knox easily persuaded them to the new arrangement,
which was as grateful to him--he was newly married--as to Alexander.
When the lessons were over he gave his favourite pupil a book and an
easy-chair, or made experiments in chemistry with him until it was cool
enough to ride or row. In the evening Alexander had his difficult
lessons to prepare, and when he tumbled into bed at midnight he was too
healthy not to sleep soundly. He spent two days of every week with his
friend Ned Stevens, on a plantation where there were lively people and
many horses. Gradually the heaviness of his grief sank of its weight,
the buoyancy and vivacity of his mind were released, the eager sparkle
returned to his eyes. He did not cease to regret his mother, nor
passionately to worship her memory; but he was young, the future was an
unresting magnet to his ambitious mind, devoted friends did their
utmost, and his fine strong brain, eager for novelty and knowledge,
opened to new impressions, closed with inherent philosophy to what was
beyond recall. So passed Rachael Levine.

A year later his second trial befell him. Ned Stevens, the adored, set
sail for New York to complete his education at King's College. Alexander
strained his eyes after the sails of the ship for an hour, then burst
unceremoniously into the presence of Hugh Knox.

"Tell me quick," he exclaimed; "how can I make two thousand pieces of
eight? I must go to college. Why didn't my uncles send me with Neddy? He
had no wish to go. He swore all day yesterday at the prospect of six
years of hard work and no more excuses for laziness. I am wild to go.
Why could it not have been I?"

"That's a curious way the world has, and you'll be too big a philosopher
in a few years to ask questions like that. If you want the truth, I've
wrangled with Peter Lytton,--it's no use appealing to Tom Mitchell,--but
he's a bit close, as you know, when it actually comes to putting his
hand in his pocket. He didn't send any of his own sons to New York or
England, and never could see why anyone else did. Schooling, of course,
and he always had a tutor and a governess out from England; but what the
devil does a planter want of a college education? I argued that I
couldn't for the life of me see the makings of a planter in you, but
that by fishing industriously among your intellects I'd found a certain
amount of respectable talent, and I thought it needed more training than
I could give it; that I was nearing the end of my rope, in fact. Then he
asked me what a little fellow like you would do with a college education
after you got it, for he couldn't stand the idea of you trying to earn
your living in a foreign city, where there was ice and snow on the
ground in winter; and when I suggested that you might stay on in the
college and teach, if you were afraid of being run over or frozen to
death in the street, he said there was no choice between a miserable
teacher's life and a planter's, and he'd leave you enough land to start
you in life. I cursed like a planter, and left the house. But he loves
you, and if you plead with him he might give way."

"I'd do anything else under heaven that was reasonable to get to New
York but ask any man for money. Peter Lytton knows that I want learning
more than all the other boys on this island; and if I'm little, I've
broken in most of his colts and have never hesitated to fight. He finds
his pathos in his purse. Why can't I make two thousand pieces of eight?"

"You'd be so long at it, poor child, that it would be too late to enter
college; for there's a long apprenticeship to serve before you get a
salary. But you must go. I've thought, thought about it, and I'll think
more." He almost wished he had not married; but as he had no other cause
to regret his venture, even his interest in young Hamilton did not urge
him to deprive his little family of the luxuries so necessary in the
West Indies. Economy on his salary would mean a small house instead of
large rooms where one could forget the heat; curtailment of the
voluminous linen wardrobes so soon demolished on the stones of the
river; surrender of coach and horses. He trusted to a moment of sudden
insight on the part of Peter Lytton, assisted by his own eloquent
argument; and his belief in Alexander's destiny never wavered. Once he
approached Mrs. Mitchell, for he knew she had money of her own; but, as
he had expected, she went into immediate hysterics at the suggestion to
part with her idol, and he hastily retreated.

Alexander turned over every scheme of making money his fertile brain
conceived, and went so far as to ask his aunt to send him to New York,
where he could work in one of the West Indian houses, and attend college
by some special arrangement. He, too, retreated before Mrs. Mitchell's
agitation, but during the summer another cause drove him to work, and
without immediate reference to the wider education.

Mr. Mitchell was laid up with the gout and spent the summer on his
plantation. His slaves fled at the sound of his voice, his wife wept
incessantly at this the heaviest of her life's trials, and it was not
long before Alexander was made to feel his dependence so keenly by the
irascible planter that he leaped on his horse one day and galloped five
miles under the hot sun to Lytton's Fancy.

"I want to work," he announced, with his usual breathless impetuosity
when excited, bursting in upon Mr. Lytton, who was mopping his face
after his siesta. "Put me at anything. I don't care what, except in
Uncle Mitchell's store. I won't work for him."

Mr. Lytton laughed with some satisfaction. "So you two have come to
loggerheads? Tom Mitchell, well, is insufferable. With gout in him he
must bristle with every damnable trait in the human category. Come back
and live with me," he added, in a sudden burst of sympathy, for the boy
looked hot and tired and dejected; and his diminutive size appealed
always to Peter Lytton, who was six feet two. "You're a fine little
chap, but I doubt you're strong enough for hard work, and you love your
books. Come here and read all day if you like. When you're grown I'll
make you manager of all my estates. Gad! I'd be glad of an honest one!
The last time I went to England, that devil, Tom Collins, drank every
bottle of my best port, smashed my furniture, broke the wind of every
horse I had, and kept open house for every scamp and loafer on the
Island, or that came to port. How old are you--twelve? I'll turn
everything over to you in three years. You've more sense now than any
boy I ever saw. Three years hence, if you continue to improve, you'll be
a man, and I'll be only too glad to put the whole thing in your hands."

Alexander struggled with an impulse to ask his uncle to send him to
college, but not only did pride strike at the words, but he reflected
with some cynicism that the affection he inspired invariably expressed
itself in blatant selfishness, and that he might better appeal to the
enemies he had made to send him from the Island. He shook his head.

"I'll remain idle no longer," he said. "I'm tired of eating bread that's
given me. I'd rather eat yours than his, but I've made up my mind to
work. What can you find for me now?"

"You are too obstinate to argue with in August. Cruger wants a reliable
clerk. I heard him say so yesterday. He'll take you if I say the word,
and give you a little something in the way of salary."

"I like Mr. Cruger," said Alexander, eagerly, "and so did my mother."

"He's a kind chap, but he'll work you to death, for he's always in a
funk that Tom Mitchell'll get ahead of him. But you cannot do better. I
have no house in town, but you can ride the distance between here and
Christianstadt night and morning, if my estimable brother-in-law--whom
may the gout convince of his sins--is too much for you."

But Alexander had no desire to return to the house where he had passed
those last terrible weeks with his mother, and Mrs. Mitchell begged him
on her knees to forgive the invalid, and sent him to the house in
Christianstadt, where he would be alone until December; by that time,
please God, Tom Mitchell would be on his way to Jamaica. But Alexander
had little further trouble with that personage. Mr. Mitchell had his
susceptibilities; he was charmed with a boy of twelve who was too proud
to accept the charity of wealthy relatives and determined to make his
living. Alexander entered Mr. Cruger's store in October. Mr. Mitchell
did not leave the Island again until the following spring, and moved to
town in November. He and Alexander discussed the prospects of rum,
molasses, and sugar, the price of mahogany, of oats, cheese, bread, and
flour, the various Island and American markets, until Mrs. Mitchell left
the table. Her husband proudly told his acquaintance that his nephew,
Alexander Hamilton, was destined to become the cleverest merchant in the
Caribbees.


VII

But Alexander had small liking for his employment. He had as much
affinity with the sordid routine of a general store and counting-house
as Tom Mitchell had with the angels. But pride and ambition carried him
through most of the distasteful experiences of his life. He would come
short in nothing, and at that tender age, when his relatives were
prepared to forgive his failures with good-humoured tact, he was willing
to sacrifice even his books to clerical success. He soon discovered that
he had that order of mind which concentrates without effort upon what
ever demands its powers,--masters the detail of it with incredible
swiftness. At first he was a general clerk, and attended to the loading
and unloading of Mr. Cruger's sloops; after a time he was made
bookkeeper; it was not long before he was in charge of the
counting-house. He got back to his books in time--for business in the
Islands finishes at four o'clock--and when he had learned all the Latin,
Greek, Hebrew, and mathematics Hugh Knox could teach him, he spent his
leisure hours with Pope, Plutarch, Shakespeare, Milton, Plato, and the
few other English poets and works of Greek philosophers which Knox
possessed, as well as several abridged histories of England and Europe.
These interested him more than aught else, purely literary as his
proclivities were supposed to be, and he read and reread them, and
longed for some huge work in twenty volumes which should reveal Europe
to his searching vision. But this was when he was fourteen, and had
almost forgotten what the life of a mere boy was like. Shortly after he
entered Mr. Cruger's store he wrote his famous letter to young Stevens.
It will bear republication here, and its stilted tone, so different from
the concise simplicity of his business letters, was no doubt designed to
produce an effect on the mind of his more fortunate friend. He became a
master of style, and before he was twenty; but there is small indication
of the achievement in this letter, lovable as it is:--


     ST. CROIX, November 11, 1769.

     DEAR EDWARD, This serves to acknowledge the receipt of yours per
     Capt. Lowndes, which was delivered me yesterday The truth of Capt.
     Lightbowen and Lowndes' information is now verified by the presence
     of your father and sister, for whose safe arrival I pray, and that
     they may convey that satisfaction to your soul, that must naturally
     flow from the sight of absent friends in health; and shall for news
     this way, refer you to them.

     As to what you say, respecting your soon having the happiness of
     seeing us all, I wish for an accomplishment of your hopes, provided
     they are concomitant with your welfare, otherwise not; though doubt
     whether I shall be present or not, for to confess my weakness, Ned,
     my ambition is prevalent, so that I contemn the grovelling
     condition of a clerk, or the like, to which my fortune condemns me,
     and would willingly risk my life, though not my character, to exalt
     my station. I am confident, Ned, that my youth excludes me from any
     hopes of immediate preferment, nor do I desire it; but I mean to
     prepare the way for futurity. I'm no philosopher, you see, and may
     be justly said to build castles in the air; my folly makes me
     ashamed, and beg you'll conceal it; yet, Neddy, we have seen such
     schemes successful, when the projector is constant. I shall
     conclude by saying I wish there was a war.

     I am, Dear Edward, Yours

     ALEX. HAMILTON.

     P.S. I this moment received yours by William Smith, and pleased to
     see you give such close application to study.

He hoped that in time Mr. Cruger would find it necessary to send him to
New York; but his employer found him too useful on St. Croix, and
recognized his abilities, not to the extent of advancing his
intellectual interests, but of taxing and developing his capacity for
business and its heavy responsibilities. In the following year he placed
him in temporary charge of his branch house, in Frederikstadt, and
Alexander never wished for war so desperately as when he stood under the
arcade on Bay Street and stared out at the shallow green roadstead and
the inimitable ocean beyond. Frederikstadt was a hamlet compared to
Christianstadt, and unredeemed--the arcades excepting--by any of the
capital's architectural or natural beauty. Alexander believed it to be
the hottest, dullest, and most depressing spot on either hemisphere. The
merchants and other residents were astonished that Nicolas Cruger should
send a lad of thirteen to represent him in matters which involved large
sums of money, but they recognized young Hamilton's ability even while
they stared with some rudeness at the small figure in white linen, and
the keen but very boyish face. When they passed him under the arcades,
and asked him what ship he expected to heave in sight, he was tempted to
say a man-of-war, but had no mind to reveal himself to the indifferent.
He read from sundown until midnight or later, by the light of two long
candles protected from draughts and insects by curving glass chimneys.
Mosquitoes tormented him and cockroaches as long as his hand ran over
the table; occasionally a land-crab rattled across the room, or a
centipede appeared on the open page. But he was accustomed to these
embellishments of tropic life, and although he anathematized them and
the heat, he went on with his studies. It was about this time that he
began to indulge in literary composition; and although less gifted boys
than Alexander Hamilton struggle through this phase of mental
development as their body runs the gamut of juvenile complaints, still
it may be that had not his enormous energies been demanded in their
entirety by a country in the terrible straits of rebirth, or had he
dwelt on earth twenty years longer, he would have realized the ambitions
of his mother and Hugh Knox, and become one of the greatest literary
forces the world has had. But although this exercise of his restless
faculties gave him pleasure, it was far from satisfying him, even then.
He wanted the knowledge that was locked up in vast libraries far beyond
that blinding stretch of sea, and he wanted action, and a sight of and a
part in the great world. Meanwhile, he read every book he could find on
the Island, made no mistakes in Mr. Cruger's counting-house, and stood
dreaming under the arcade for hours at a time, muttering his thoughts,
his mobile features expressing the ceaseless action of his brain.

Sometime during the previous year Peter Levine had returned to St. Croix
for his health, and he remained with relatives for some time. He and
Alexander met occasionally and were friendly. As he was a decent little
chap our hero forgave him his paternity, although he never could quite
assimilate the fact that he was his mother's child.

Alexander returned, after six months of Frederikstadt, to the East End
of the Island. A few months later, Mr. Cruger, whose health had failed,
went to New York for an extended sojourn, leaving the entire
responsibility of the business in young Hamilton's hands. Men of all
ages were forced to obey and be guided by a boy in the last weeks of his
fourteenth year, and there were many manifestations of jealous ill-will.
Some loved, others hated him, but few submitted gracefully to a
leadership which lowered their self-esteem. For the first time Alexander
learned that even a mercantile life can be interesting. He exercised all
the resources of his inborn tact with those who had loved and those who
did not hate him, and won them to a grateful acceptance of a mastership
which was far more considerate and sympathetic than anything they had
known. As for his enemies, he let them see the implacable quality of his
temper, mortified them by an incessant exposure of their failings,
struck aside their clumsy attempts to humiliate him with the keen blade
of a wit that sent them skulking. Finally they submitted, but they
cursed him, and willingly would have wrung his neck and flung him into
the bay. As for Hamilton, there was no compromise in him, even then,
where his enemies were concerned. He enjoyed their futile wrath, and
would not have lifted his finger to flash it into liking.

Only once the tropical passions of his inheritance conquered his desire
to dominate through the forces of his will alone. One of the oldest
employees, a man named Cutter, had shown jealousy of young Hamilton from
the first, and a few days after Mr. Cruger's departure began to manifest
signs of open rebellion. He did his work ill, or not at all, absented
himself from the store for two days, and returned to his post without
excuse, squaring his shoulders about the place and sneering his contempt
of youthful cocks of the walk. Alexander struggled to maintain a
self-control which he felt to be strictly compatible with the dignity of
his position, although his gorge rose so high that it threatened to
choke him. The climax came when he gave Cutter a peremptory order, and
the man took out a cigar, lit it, and laughed in his face. For the next
few moments Alexander had a confused impression that he was in hell,
struggling his way through the roar and confusion of his nether
quarters. When he was himself again he was in the arms of his chief
assistant, and Mr. Cutter bled profusely on the floor. He was informed
later that he had "gone straight over the counter with a face like a
hurricane" and assaulted his refractory hireling with such incredible
rapidity of scientific fist that the man, who was twice his size, had
succumbed from astonishment and an almost supernatural terror.
Alexander, who was ashamed of himself, apologized at once, but gave the
man his choice of treating him with proper respect or leaving the store.
Cutter answered respectfully that he would remain; and he gave no
further trouble.

"You'll get your head blown off one of these days," said Hugh Knox to
Alexander, on a Sunday, as they sat in the library over two long glasses
of "Miss Blyden," a fashionable drink made of sugar, rum, and the juice
of the prickly pear, which had been buried in the divine's garden for
the requisite number of months. "These Creoles are hot, even when
they're only Danes. It's not pleasant for those clerks, for it isn't as
if you had the look of the man you are. You look even younger than your
age, and for a man of thirty to say 'Yes, sir' to a brat like you chokes
him, and no wonder. I believe if there was a war this minute, you'd
rouse the Island and lead it to battle without a misgiving or an
apology. Well, don't let your triumphs lead to love of this business. I
happen to know that Cruger means to make a partner of you in a few
years, for he thinks the like of you never dropped into a merchant's
counting-house; but never forget that your exalted destiny is to be a
great man of letters, a historian, belike. You're taking to history, I
notice, and you're getting a fine vocabulary of your own."

"I'd like to know what I'll write the history of if I'm to rot in this
God-forsaken place. Caribs? Puling rows between French and English? I'd
as well be up on Grange with my mother if it wasn't for you and your
books. I want the education of a collegian. I want to study and read
everything there is to be studied and read. I've made out a list of
books to send for, when I've money enough, as long as you are. It's
pinned on the wall of my room."

"And I suppose you've never a qualm but that head of yours will hold it
all. You've a grand opinion of yourself, Alec."

"That's a cutting thing for you to say to me, sir," cried Alexander,
springing to his feet. "I thought you loved me. If you think I'm a fool,
I'll not waste more of your time."

"A West Indian temper beats the conceit out of the Irish. You'll control
yours when you're older, for there's nothing you won't do when you put
your mind to it, and you'll see the need for not making a fool of
yourself too often. But as for its present liking for exercise--it's a
long way the liveliest thing on St. Croix. However, you've forgiven me;
I know that by the twinkle in your eye, so I'll tell you that your brain
will hold all you care to put into it, and that you'll have made another
list as long as King Street before you're five years older. Meanwhile,
I've some books on theology and ethics you haven't had a dash at yet,
and you can't read my other old books too often. Each time you'll find
something new. Sitting up till midnight won't hurt you, but don't forget
to say your prayers."

Knox, long since, had laid siege to Alexander's susceptible and ardent
mind with the lively batteries of his religious enthusiasms. His
favourite pupil was edifyingly regular in attendance at church, and said
his prayers with much fervour. The burden of his petitions was
deliverance from St. Croix.

When this deliverance was effected by a thunderbolt from heaven, his
saving sense of humour and the agitated springs of his sympathy forbade
a purely personal application. But twenty years later he might have
reflected upon the opportune cause of his departure from St. Croix as
one of the ironies of the world's history; for an Island was devastated,
men were ruined, scores were killed, that one man might reach his proper
sphere of usefulness.


VIII

Early in August, 1772, Mr. Cruger sent him on a business tour to several
of the neighbouring Islands, including the great _entrepôt_ of the West
Indies,--St. Thomas. Despite the season, the prospect of no wind for
days at a time, or winds in which no craft could live, Alexander
trembled with delight at the idea of visiting the bustling brilliant
versatile town of Charlotte Amalie, in whose harbour there were
sometimes one hundred and eighty ships, where one might meet in a day
men of every clime, and whose beauty was as famous as her wealth and
importance. How often Alexander had stared at the blue line of the hills
above her! Forty miles away, within the range of his vision, was a bit
of the great world, the very pivot of maritime trade, and one cause and
another had prevented him from so much as putting his foot on a sloop
whose sails were spread.

As soon as the details of his tour were settled he rode out to the
plantations to take leave of his relatives. Mrs. Mitchell, who barred
the hurricane windows every time, the wind rose between July and
November, and sat with the barometer in her hand when the palms began to
bend, wept a torrent and implored him to abstain from the madness of
going to sea at that time of the year. Her distress was so acute and
real that Alexander, who loved her, forgot his exultation and would have
renounced the trip, had he not given his word to Mr. Cruger.

"I'll be careful, and I'll ride out the day after I return," he said,
arranging his aunt on the sofa with her smelling-bottle, an office he
had performed many times. "You know the first wind of the hurricane is a
delight to the sailor, and we never shall be far from land. I'm in
command, and I'll promise you to make for shore at the first sign of
danger. Then I shall be as safe as here."

His aunt sighed for fully a minute. "If I only could believe that you
would be careful about anything. But you are quite a big boy now, almost
sixteen, and ought to be old enough to take care of yourself."

"If I could persuade you that I am not quite a failure at keeping the
breath in my body we both should be happier. However, I vow not to set
sail from any island if a hurricane is forming, and to make for port
every time the wind freshens."

"Listen for that terrible roar in the southeast, and take my
barometer--Heaven knows what barometers are made for; there are not
three on the Island. I shall drive in to church every Sunday and besiege
Heaven with my supplications."

"Well, spare me a breeze or I shall pray for a hurricane."

He did not see Mrs. Lytton or James, but Mr. Lytton had scant
apprehension of hurricanes, and was only concerned lest his nephew roll
about in the trough of the sea under an August sun for weeks at a time.
"That's when a man doesn't repent of his sins; he knows there is nothing
worse to come," he said. "I'd rather have a hurricane," and Alexander
nodded. Mr. Lytton counted out a small bag of pieces of eight and told
the boy to buy his aunt a silk gown in Charlotte Amalie. "I've noticed
that if it's all one colour you're not so sure to have it accepted with
a sigh of resignation," he said. "But be careful of plaids and stripes."
And Alexander, with deeper misgivings than Mrs. Mitchell had inspired,
accepted the commission and rode away.

He set sail on the following day, and made his tour of the lesser
islands under a fair breeze. Late in the month he entered the harbour of
St. Thomas, and was delighted to find at least fifty ships in port,
despite the season. It was an unusually busy year, and he had dared to
hope for crowded waters and streets; exquisite as Charlotte Amalie might
be to look upon, he wanted something more than a lovely casket.

The town is set on three conical foot-hills, which bulge at equal
distances against an almost perpendicular mountain, the tip, it is said,
of a range whose foundations are four miles below. The three sections of
the town sweep from base to pointed apex with a symmetry so perfect,
their houses are so light and airy of architecture, so brilliant and
varied of colour, that they suggest having been called into being by the
stroke of a magician's wand to gratify the whim of an Eastern potentate.
Surely, they are a vast seraglio, a triple collection of pleasure houses
where captive maidens are content and nautch girls dance with feet like
larks. Business, commerce, one cannot associate with this enchanting
vista; nor cockroaches as long as one's foot, scorpions, tarantulas, and
rats.

When Alexander was in the town he found that the houses were of stone,
and that one long street on the level connected the three divisions.
Flights of steps, hewn out of the solid rock of that black and barren
range, led to the little palaces that crowned the cones, and there were
palms, cocoanuts, and tamarind trees to soften the brilliancy of façade
and roof. Above the town was Blackbeard's Castle; and Bluebeard's so
high on the right that its guns could have levelled the city in an hour.
Although not a hundred years old, and built by the Danes, both these
frowning towers were museums of piratical tradition, and travellers
returned to Europe with imaginations expanded.

The long street interested Alexander's practical mind more than legends
or architecture. Huge stone buildings--warehouses, stores, exchange- and
counting-houses--extended from the street to the edge of the water,
where ships were unloaded and loaded from doors at the rear. Men of
every nation and costume moved in that street; and for a day Mr.
Cruger's business was in abeyance, while the boy from the quiet Island
of St. Croix leaned against one of the heavy tamarind trees at the foot
of the first hill, and watched the restless crowd of Europeans,
Asiatics, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, North and South Americans. There were
as many national costumes as there were rival flags in the harbour.
There was the British admiral in his regimentals and powdered queue, the
Chinaman in his blouse and pigtail, the Frenchman with his earrings,
villanous Malays, solemn merchants from Boston, and negroes trundling
barrows of Spanish dollars. But it was the extraordinary assortment of
faces and the violent contrasts of temperament and character they
revealed which interested Alexander more than aught else. With all his
reading he had not imagined so great a variety of types; his mental
pictures had been the unconscious reflection of British, Danish, or
African. Beyond these he had come in contact with nothing more striking
than sailors from the neighbouring Islands, who had suggested little
besides the advisability of placing an extra guard over the money boxes
whilst they were in port. Most of these men who surged before him were
merchants of the first rank or the representatives of others as
important,--captains of large ships and their mates. The last sauntered
and cursed the heat, which was infernal; but the merchants moved rapidly
from one business house to another, or talked in groups, under the
tamarind trees, of the great interests which brought them to the Indies.
Upon the inherent characteristics which their faces expressed were
superimposed the different seals of those acquired,--shrewdness,
suspicion, a hawk-like alertness, the greed of acquisition. Alexander,
with something like terror of the future, reflected that there was not
one of these men he cared to know. He knew there were far greater cities
than the busy little _entrepôt_ of the West Indies, but he rightly
doubted if he ever should see again so cosmopolitan a mob, a more picked
assortment of representative types. Not one looked as if he remembered
his wife and children, his creed, or the art and letters of his land.
They were a sweating, cursing, voluble, intriguing, greedy lot,
picturesque to look upon, profitable to study, calculated to rouse in a
boy of intellectual passions a fury of final resentment against the
meannesses of commercial life. Alexander jerked his shoulders with
disgust and moved slowly down the street. After he had reflected that
great countries involved great ideas, and that there was no place for
either political or moral ideals in an isolated and purely commercial
town like little Charlotte Amalie, he recovered his poise, and lent
himself to his surroundings again with considerable philosophy.

He had almost crossed the foot of the third hill when he turned
abruptly into a large store, unlike any he had seen. It was full of
women, splendid creatures, who were bargaining with merchants' clerks
for the bales of fine stuffs which had been opened for the display of
samples to the wholesale buyers from other Islands. These women
purchased the exiled stuffs to sell to the ladies of the capital, and
this was the only retail trade known to the St. Thomas of that day.
Alexander bethought himself of his uncle's commission, and precipitately
bought from the open bale nearest the door, then, from the next, a
present for Mrs. Mitchell. Mrs. Lytton, who was an invalid and
fifty-eight, received, a fortnight later, a dress pattern of
rose-coloured silk, and Mrs. Mitchell, who aspired to be a leader of
fashion, one of elderly brown. But Alexander was more interested in the
sellers than in the possible dissatisfaction of his aunts. The women of
his acquaintance were fair and fragile, and the Africans of St. Croix
were particularly hideous, being still of parent stock. But these
creatures were tawny and magnificent, with the most superb figures, the
most remarkable swing, that ever a man had looked upon; and glorious
eyes, sparkling with deviltry. On their heads the white linen was wound
to a high point and surmounted by an immense hat, caught up at one side
with a flower. They wore for clothing a double skirt of coloured linen,
and a white fichu, open in a point to the waist and leaving their
gold-coloured arms quite bare. They moved constantly, if only from one
foot to the other. Occasionally their eyes flashed sparks, and they flew
at each other's throats, screeching like guinea fowl, but in a moment
they were laughing good-naturedly again, and chattering in voices of a
remarkable soft sweetness. Several of them noticed Alexander, for his
beauty had grown with his years. His eyes were large and gray and dark,
like his mother's, but sparkled with ardour and merriment. His mouth was
chiselled from a delicate fulness to a curving line; firm even then, but
always humorous, except when some fresh experience with the ingenuous
self-interest of man deepened the humour to cynicism. The nose was long,
sharply cut, hard, strong in the nostrils, the head massive, the brow
full above the eyes, and the whole of a boyish and sunburned fairness.
He could fetch a smile that gave his face a sweet and dazzling beauty.
His figure was so supple and well knit, so proud in its bearing, that no
woman then or later ever found fault with its inconsiderable inches; and
his hands and feet were beautiful. His adoring aunt attended to his
wardrobe, and he wore to-day, as usual, white linen knee-breeches, black
silk stockings, a lawn shirt much beruffled with lace. His appearance
pleased these gorgeous birds of plumage, and one of them snatched him
suddenly from the floor and gave him a resounding smack. Alexander, much
embarrassed, but not wholly displeased, retreated hurriedly, and asked
an Englishman who they were and whence they came.

"They are literally the pick of Martinique, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the
other Islands celebrated for beautiful women. Of course they've all got
a touch of the tar brush in them, but the French or the Spanish blood
makes them glorious for a few years, and during those few they come here
and make hay. Some come at certain seasons only, others perch here till
they change in a night from houri to hag. This daylight trade gives them
a _raison d'étre_, but wait till after dark. God! this is a hell hole;
but by moonlight or torchlight this street is one of the sights of the
earth. The magnificent beauty of the women, enhanced by silken stuffs of
every colour, the varied and often picturesque attire of the men, all
half mad with drink--well, if you want to sleep, you'd better get a room
high up."

"Mine is up one hundred and seventeen steps. I am but afraid I may not
see all there is to see."

But before the week was half out he had tired of St. Thomas by day and
by night. The picture was too one-sided, too heavily daubed with colour.
It made a palette of the imagination, sticky and crude. He began to
desire the green plantations of St. Croix, and more than ever he longed
for the snow-fields of the north. Two days of hard work concluded Mr.
Cruger's business, and on the thirtieth of the month he weighed anchor,
in company with many others, and set sail for St. Croix. He started
under a fair breeze, but a mile out the wind dropped, and he was until
midnight making the harbour of Christianstadt When they were utterly
becalmed the sun seemed to focus his hell upon the little sloop. It
rolled sickeningly in the oily wrinkled waters, and Alexander put his
Pope in his pocket. The sea had a curious swell, and he wondered if an
earthquake were imminent. The sea was not quite herself when her
foundations were preparing to shake. Earth-quakes had never concerned
him, but as the boat drifted past the reef into the harbour of
Christianstadt at midnight, he was assailed by a fit of terror so sudden
and unaccountable that he could recall but one sensation in his life
that approached it: shortly after he arrived on the Island he had stolen
down to the lagoon one night, fascinated by the creeping mist, the
scowling manchineels, the talk of its sinister inhabitant, and was
enjoying mightily his new feeling of creeping terror, when the silence
was broken by a heavy swish, and he saw the white belly of the shark not
three feet from him. He had scampered up the hill to his mother's skirts
as fast as his legs could carry him, nor visited the lagoon again until
the shark was mouldering on its bed. To-night a mist, almost
imperceptible except on the dark line of coast, changed the beauty of
the moonbeams to a livid light that gave the bay the horrid pallor of a
corpse. The masses of coral rock in the shallow waters looked leprous,
the surface was so glassy that it fell in splinters from the oars of the
boat that towed them to shore. There was not a sound from the reef, not
a sound from the land. The slender lacing mangroves in the swamp looked
like upright serpents, black and petrified, and the Fort on the high
bluff might have been a sarcophagus full of dead men but for the
challenge of the sentry.

Alexander began to whistle, then climbed down into the boat and took an
oar. When he had his feet on land he walked up King Street more hastily
than was his habit in the month of August. But here, although the town
might have been a necropolis, so quiet was it, it had not put on a death
mask. There was no mist here; the beautiful coral houses gleamed under
the moonbeams as if turned to marble, and Alexander forgot the horror of
the waters and paused to note, as he had done many times before, the
curious Alpine contrast of these pure white masses against the green and
burnished arches of tropic trees. Then he passed through the
swimming-bath to his bed, and a half-hour later slept as soundly as if
the terrible forces of the Caribbean world were safe in leash.


IX

When he awoke, at seven o'clock, he heard a dull low roar in the
southeast, which arrested his attention at once as a sound quite
dissimilar from the boom of the reef. As he crossed Strand Street to Mr.
Cruger's store, an hour later, he noticed that a strong wind blew from
the same direction and that the atmosphere was a sickly yellow. For a
moment, he thought of the hurricane which he had passed his life
expecting, but he had a head full of business and soon forgot both roar
and wind. He was immediately immersed in a long and precise statement of
his trip, writing from notes and memory, muttering to himself, utterly
oblivious to the opening of the windows or the salutations of the
clerks. Mr. Cruger arrived after the late breakfast. He looked worried,
but shook Alexander's hand heartily, and thanked heaven, with some
fervour, that he had returned the night before. They retired to the
private office on the court, and Mr. Cruger listened with interest to
young Hamilton's account of his trip, although it was evident that his
mind felt the strain of another matter. He said abruptly:--

"The barometer was down two-tenths when I visited the Fort at a quarter
to eleven. I'd give a good deal to know where it is now."

Alexander remembered his aunt's barometer, which he had hung in his room
before sailing, and volunteered to go over and look at it.

"Do," exclaimed Mr. Cruger; "and see if the wind's shifted."

As Alexander crossed Strand Street to the side door of Mr. Mitchell's
house he encountered the strongest wind he had ever known, and black
clouds were racing back and forth as if lost and distracted. He returned
to tell Mr. Cruger that the barometer stood at 30.03.

"And the wind hasn't shifted?" demanded Mr. Cruger. "That means we'll be
in the direct path of a hurricane before the day is half out, unless
things change for the better. If the barometer falls four-tenths"--he
spread out his hands expressively. "Of course we have many scares.
Unless we hear two double guns from the Fort, there will be no real
cause for alarm; but when you hear that, get on your horse as quick as
you can and ride to warn the planters. The Lyttons and Stevens and
Mitchells will do for you. I'll send out three of the other boys."

They returned to accounts. Mr. Cruger expressed his gratification
repeatedly and forgot the storm, although the wind was roaring up King
Street and rattling the jalousies until flap after flap hung on a broken
hinge. Suddenly both sprang to their feet, books and notes tumbling to
the floor. Booming through the steady roar of the wind was the quick
thunder of cannon, four guns fired in rapid succession.

As Alexander darted through the store, the clerks were tumbling over
each other to secure the hurricane windows; for until the last minute,
uneasy as they were, they had persuaded themselves that St. Croix was in
but for the lashing of a hurricane's tail, and had bet St. Kitts against
Monserrat as flattening in the path of the storm. The hurricane windows
were of solid wood, clamped with iron. It took four men to close them
against the wind.

Alexander was almost flung across Strand Street. Shingles were flying,
the air was salt with spray skimmed by the wind from the surface of
waves which were leaping high above the Fort, rain was beginning to
fall. Mr. Mitchell's stables were in the rear of his house. Every negro
had fled to the cellar. Alexander unearthed four and ordered them to
close the hurricane windows. He had saddled many a horse, and he urged
his into Strand Street but a few moments later. Here he had to face the
wind until he could reach the corner and turn into King, and even the
horse staggered and gasped as if the breath had been driven out of him.
He reared back against the wall, and Alexander was obliged to dismount
and drag him up the street, panting for breath himself, although his
back was to the wind and he kept his head down. The din was terrific.
Cannon balls might have been rattling against the stones of every house,
and to this was added a roar from the reef as were all the sounds of the
Caribbean Sea gathered there. Alexander would have pulled his hat down
over his ears, for the noise was maddening, but it had flown over the
top of a house as he left the store. He was a quarter of an hour
covering the few yards which lay between the stable and the corner, and
when he reached the open funnel of King Street he was nearly swept off
his feet. Fortunately the horse loved him, and, terrified as it was,
permitted him to mount; and then it seemed to Alexander, as they flew up
King Street to the open country, that they were in a fork of the wind,
which tugged and twisted at his neck while it carried them on. He
flattened himself to the horse, but kept his eyes open and saw other
messengers, as dauntless as himself, tearing in various directions to
warn the planters, many of whom had grown callous to the cry of "Wolf."

The horse fled along the magnificent avenue of royal palms which
connected the east and west ends of the Island. They were bending and
creaking horribly, the masses of foliage on the summits cowering away
from the storm, wrapping themselves about in a curiously pitiful manner;
the long blade-like leaves seemed striving each to protect the other.
Through the ever-increasing roar of the storm, above the creaking of the
trees, the pounding of the rain on the earth, and on the young cane,
Alexander heard a continuous piercing note, pitched upon one monotonous
key, like the rattle of a girl's castinets he had heard on St. Thomas.
His brain, indifferent now to the din, was as active as ever, and he
soon made out this particular noise to be the rattle of millions of
seeds in the dry pods of the "shaggy-shaggy," or "giant," a common
Island tree, which had not a leaf at this season, nothing but countless
pods as dry as parchment and filled with seeds as large as peas. Not for
a second did this castinet accompaniment to the stupendous bass of the
storm cease, and Alexander, whose imagination, like every other sense in
him, was quickening preternaturally, could fancy himself surrounded by
the orchestra of hell, the colossal instruments of the infernal regions
performed upon by infuriate Titans. He was not conscious of fear,
although he knew that his life was not worth a second's purchase, but he
felt a wild exhilaration, a magnificent sense of defiance of the most
powerful element that can be turned loose on this planet; his nostrils
quivered with delight; his soul at certain moments, when his practical
faculty was uncalled upon, felt as if high in the roaring space with the
Berserkers of the storm.

Suddenly his horse, in spite of the wall of wind at his back, stood on
his hind legs, then swerved so fiercely that his rider was all but
unseated. A palm had literally leaped from the earth, sprawled across
the road not a foot in front of the horse. The terrified brute tore
across the cane-field, and Alexander made no attempt to stop him, for,
although the rain was now falling as if the sea had come in on the high
back of the wind, he believed himself to be on the Stevens plantation.
The negro village was not yet deserted, and he rode to the west side of
the mill and shouted his warning to the blacks crouching there. On every
estate was a great bell, hung in an open stone belfry, and never to be
rung except to give warning of riot, flood, fire, or hurricane. One of
the blacks obeyed Alexander's peremptory command to ring this bell, and,
as it was under the lee of the mill, reached it in a moment. As
Alexander urged his horse out into the storm again, he heard the rapid
agitated clang of the bell mingle discordantly with the bass of the wind
and the piercing rattle of the giant's castinets. He rode on through the
cane-field, although if the horse stumbled and injured itself, he would
have to lie on his face till the storm was over. But there was a greater
danger in the avenue; he was close enough to see and hear tree after
tree go down, or their necks wrenched and the great green heads rush
through the air with a roar of their own, their long glittering leaves
extended before them as if in supplication.

The Lytton plantation was next on his way, and Alexander rode straight
for the house, as the mills and village lay far to the left. The
hurricane shutters on the sides encountering the storm were already
closed, and he rode round to the west, where he saw his uncle's anxious
face at a drawing-room window. Mr. Lytton flung himself across the sash
in an attempt to lift the boy from his horse into the room, and when
Alexander shouted that he was on his way to the Mitchell estate,
expostulated as well as he could without breaking his throat. He begged
him to rest half an hour at least, but when informed that the Fort for
the first time within the memory of man had fired its double warning, he
ran to fasten his hurricane windows more securely, and despatch a slave
to warn his blacks; their huts never would survive the direct attack of
a hurricane. He was horrified to think of his favourite exposed to a
fury, which, clever and intrepid as he was, he had small chance of
outwitting; but at least he had that one chance, and Mrs. Mitchell was
alone.

Alexander passed through one other estate before he reached Mr.
Mitchell's, terrifying those he warned almost as much by his wild and
ragged appearance--his long hair drove straight before him, and his thin
shirt was in sodden ribbons--as by his news that a first-class hurricane
was upon them. At last he was in the cane-fields of his destination, and
the horse, as if in communication with that ardent brain so close to his
own, suddenly accelerated his already mercurial pace, until it seemed to
Alexander that he gathered up his legs and darted like an inflated
swallow straight through crashing avenues and flying huts to the stable
door. Fortunately this solid building opened to the west, and Alexander
was but a few moments stalling and feeding the animal who had saved two
necks by his clever feet that day. He was sorry so poorly to reward him
as to close and bar the door, but he feared that he might forget to
attend to it when the hurricane veered, and in all the fury of
approaching climax was pouring out of the west.

The house was only an eighth of a mile away, but Alexander was half an
hour reaching it. He had to travel on his knees, sometimes on his
stomach, until he reached the western wall, keeping his arm pressed
close against his eyes; his sense of humour, not to be extinguished by a
hurricane, rebelling at the ignoble pass to which his pride had come.
When he reached the north wall he rose, thinking he could cling to the
projections, but he was still facing the storm; he flung himself
prostrate again to avoid being lifted off his feet and sailing with the
rubbish of Mr. Mitchell's plantation. As he reached the corner the wind
gave him a vicious flip, which landed him almost at the foot of the
steps, but he was comparatively safe, and he sat down to recover his
breath. He could afford a few moments' rest, for the heavy wooden
windows facing the east, north, and south, were closed. Here he was
sheltered in a way. The only two good words that can be said for a
hurricane are that it gives sufficient warning of its approach, and that
it blows from one point of the compass at a time. Alexander sat there
panting and watched the wild battle in mid-air of shingles, fences,
thatched roofs, and tree-tops; listened to the artillery of the storm,
which, with a stone building to break its steady roar, sounded as if a
hundred cannon were bombarding the walls and rattling here and there on
their carriages meanwhile; listened to crash after crash of tree and
wall, the terrified bowlings and bellowings of beasts, the shrieking and
grinding of trees, the piercing monotone of the dry seeds in their cases
of parchment, the groans and prayers of the negroes in the cellar behind
him. He turned his head and looked through the windows of the great
apartment, which, although above ground, was supposed to be safest in a
hurricane. All but the western blinds being closed, the cellar was
almost dark, but Alexander knew that it was packed: doubtless every
African on the estate was there; he could see, for some distance back,
row after row of rolling eyes and hanging tongues. Some knelt on the
shoulders of others to get the air. Alexander shuddered. The sight
reminded him of his uncle's slave-ships, where the blacks came, chained
together, standing in the hold, so closely packed that if one died he
could not fall, nor the others protect themselves from the poisons of a
corpse, which pressed hard against the living for twenty hours perhaps,
before it was unchained and flung to the sharks. Alexander went close to
one of the windows and shouted to them not to forget to secure the
western blinds when the lull came, then ran up the steps and vaulted
through an open window. It was a few minutes before he found his aunt,
and it must be recorded that on his way to the front of the house he
looked under two beds and into four wardrobes. He came upon her in the
drawing-room, valiantly struggling with a hurricane window. Her hair was
dishevelled, and her eyes bulged with horror, but even as Alexander came
to the rescue, she shoved the bar into place. Then she threw herself
into his arms and fainted. He had but time to fling water on her face,
when a loud rattle from another window sent him bounding to it, and for
ten minutes he struggled to fasten the blind soundly again, while it
seemed to him that a hundred malignant fingers were tugging at its edge.
He had no sooner secured it, than his aunt's voice at his ear begged him
to try every window on three sides of the house, and he went rapidly
from one to the other, finding most of them in need of attention--long
disuse had weakened both staples and hooks. His aunt trotted after him,
thumping every window, and reminding him that if one went, and the wind
burst in, the roof would be off and the torrents upon them before they
could reach the cellar.

Fortunately for those who fought the storm, the temperature had fallen
with the barometer, and these two dared not relax their vigilance for a
moment. Every negro had deserted to the lower region. Alexander was
unable to change his wet clothes or to refresh himself with so much as a
banana, but there was not a second's time to think of hunger or
discomfort. More than once that sense of wild exultation in fighting a
mighty element possessed him. His own weak hands and a woman's weaker
against one of the Titanic hurricanes of the world's history, with a
prospect of winning the fight, was a sight to move comfortable gods to
paean or laughter, according to their spiritual development.

But during much of that terrible day and night Alexander's brain was
obliged to work on device after device to strengthen those battered
boards which alone protected the house from destruction, its inmates,
perhaps, from death. A tamarind tree came down on a corner of the roof
with a crash; and when Mrs. Mitchell and Alexander reached the room,
which was in a wing, the rain was struggling past the heavy mass through
a hole in the roof. They closed up the room, as well as the jalousies of
the inner walls, but as they returned to the windows they heard the rain
fighting to pass the branches, and knew that if the wind snatched the
tree, the deluge would come in.

Mrs. Mitchell neither fainted again nor exhibited other sign of fear.
While that hurricane lasted she was all Mary Fawcett; and Alexander,
meeting her eyes now and again, or catching sight of her as she darted
forward at the first rattle of a shutter, recalled his mother's many
anecdotes of his redoubtable grandmother, and wondered if that valiant
old soul had flown down the storm to the relief of the fortress.

Toward evening that sudden lull came which means that at last the
besieged are in the very centre of the hurricane, and will have respite
while the monster is swinging his tail to the west. Alexander and Mrs.
Mitchell, after opening the windows on the east side of the house, and
securing those opening to the west, went to the pantry and made a
substantial meal without sitting or selecting. To his last day Alexander
could not remember what he ate that night, although he recalled the
candle in the long chimney, the constant craning of his aunt's head, the
incessant racing of the rats along the beams. He went to his room and
took a cold bath, which with the food and suspended excitement quite
refreshed him; put on dry clothes, nailed a board against the hole in
the roof, then sat down with Mrs. Mitchell in the western gallery to
await the hurricane's return.

"We have three windows where we had one before," remarked Mrs.
Mitchell; "and the hinges of that door are rusty. God knows! If you had
not come, the roof would have gone long before this."

"The silence is horrible," said Alexander.

It was, indeed, earsplitting. Not a sound arose from that devastated
land. Birds and beasts must lie dead by the thousand; not a horseman
ventured abroad; not a whisper came from the cellar, where two hundred
Africans might be dead from fright or suffocation. Mrs. Mitchell had lit
the candles, and there was something sinister and ironical in the steady
flames. How long before they would leap and add the final horror to what
must be a night of horrors? It was impossible to work in the dark, but
every yellow point was a menace.

They had not long to endure the silence. This time the hurricane sent no
criers before it. It burst out of the west with a fury so intensified
that Alexander wondered if one stone in Frederikstadt were left upon
another. It was evident that it had gathered its forces for a final
assault, and its crashing and roaring, as it tore across the unhappy
Island it had marked for destruction, was that of a gigantic wheel
whirling ten thousand cannon, exploding, and lashing each other in
mid-air. It seemed to Alexander that every ball they surely carried
rattled on the roof, and the heavy stone structure vibrated for the
first time. It was two hours before he and Mrs. Mitchell met again, for
they worked at opposite ends of the long gallery; but in the third both
rushed simultaneously to the door. It sprang back from its rusty
fastenings, and they were but in time to seize the bar which passed
through a staple in its middle, and pull it inward until it pressed hard
against the jamb on the right. There was no other way to secure it, and
for three hours Alexander and Mrs. Mitchell dragged at it alternately,
while the other attended to the windows. By this time Alexander had
ceased to wonder if he should see another morning, or much to care: the
storm was so magnificent in its almighty power, its lungs of iron
bellowed its purpose with such furious iteration, as if out of all
patience with the mortals who defied it, that Alexander was almost
inclined to apologize. More than once it took the house by the shoulders
and shook it, and then a yell would come from below, a simultaneous note
pitched in a key of common agony. Suddenly the house seemed to spring
from its foundations, then sink back as if to collapse. Alexander called
out that it had been uprooted and would go down the hill in another
moment, but Mrs. Mitchell, who was at the bar, muttered, "An earthquake.
I believe a hurricane shakes the very centre of the earth."

They feared that the foundations of the house had been loosened, and
that the next blast would turn it over, but the house was one of the
strongest in the Caribbees, built to withstand the worst that Nature
could do, so long as man saw to its needs; and when the hurricane at
last revolved its artillery away into the east, carrying with it that
piercing rattle of the giant's castinets, which never for a moment had
ceased to perform its part, roof and walls were firm. Mrs. Mitchell and
Alexander sank where they had stood, and slept for twenty hours.


X

Alexander rode back to Christianstadt two days later, and again and
again he drew a hard breath and closed his eyes. It was a sight to move
any man, and the susceptible and tender nature of young Hamilton bled
for the tragedy of St. Croix. There was not a landmark, not a
cane-field, to remind him that it was the beautiful Island on which he
had spent the most of his remembering years. Although all of the Great
Houses were standing, their mien and manner were so altered by the
disappearance of their trees and outbuildings, and by the surrounding
pulpy flats in place of the rippling acres of young cane, that they were
unrecognizable. Here and there were masses of débris, walls and thatched
roofs swept far from the village foundations; but as a rule there was
but a board here or a bunch of dried leaves there, a battered utensil or
a stool, to reward the wretched Africans who wandered about searching
for the few things they had possessed before the storm. They looked
hopeless and dull, as if their faculties had been stunned by the
prolonged incessant noise of the hurricane.

Alexander was riding down what a week ago had been the most celebrated
avenue in the Antilles. Where there were trees at all, they were
headless, the long gray twisted trunks as repulsive as they had once
been beautiful The road was littered with many of the fallen; but others
were far away in what had been the cane-fields, serpents and lizards
sunning themselves on the dead roots. Even stone walls were down, and
under them, sometimes, were men. Mills were in ruins; for no one had
remained to keep bars in their staples. Tanks of last year's rum and
treacle had been flung through the walls, and their odours mingled with
the stench of decomposing men and cattle. The horrid rattle of the
land-crab was almost the only sound in that desolate land. "The Garden
of the Antilles" looked like a putrid swamp, and she had not a beauty on
her.

Alexander turned at a cross-road into a path which led through the
Grange estate to the private burying-ground of the Lyttons. These few
moments taxed his courage more heavily than the ride with the hurricane
had done, and more than once he opened his clenched teeth and half
turned his horse's head. But he went on, and before long he had climbed
to the end of his journey. The west wall of the little cemetery had been
blown out, and the roof of old James Lytton's tomb lay with its débris.
A tree, which evidently had been torn from the earth and flung from a
distance, lay half in and half out of the enclosure. But his mother's
headstone, which stood against the north wall, was undisturbed, although
the mound above her was flat and sodden. The earth had been strong
enough to hold her. Alexander remembered its awful air of finality as it
opened to receive her, then closed over her. What he had feared was that
the burying-ground, which stood on the crest of a hill, would have been
uprooted and scattered over the cane-fields.

He rode on to Christianstadt. There the evidences of the hurricane were
less appalling, for the houses, standing close together, had protected
each other, and only two were unroofed; but everywhere the trees looked
like twisted poles, the streets and gardens were full of rubbish, and
down by the bay the shore was strewn with the wreckage of ships; the
Park behind the Fort was thick with decaying fish, which the blacks were
but just now sweeping out to the water.

After Alexander had ascertained that Mr. Mitchell's house was quite
unharmed, although a neighbour had lost half a roof and been deluged in
consequence, he walked out Company Street to see how it had fared with
Hugh Knox. That worthy gentleman was treating his battered nerves with
weak whiskey and water when he caught sight of Alexander through the
library window. He gave a shout that drew an exasperated groan through
the ceiling, flung open the door, and clasped his beloved pupil in his
arms.

"I knew you were safe, because you are you, although I've been afraid to
ask if you were dead or alive. Cruger sent out three others to warn the
planters, and they've all been brought home, one dead, one maimed, one
with chills and fever and as mad as a March hare. Good God! what a
visitation! I'd rather have been on a moving bog in Ireland. You
wouldn't have ridden out in that hurricane if I'd got you, not if I'd
been forced to tie you up. Fancy your being here alive, and not even a
cold in your head! But you've a grand destiny to work out, and the
hurricane--which I believe was the Almighty in a temper--knew what it
was about. Now tell me your experience. I'm panting to tell you mine.
I've not had a soul to talk to since the hour it started. The Missis
behaved like a Trojan while it lasted, then went to bed, and hasn't
spoken to me since; and as for everyone else in Christianstadt--well,
they've retired to calm their nerves in the only way,--prayer first and
whiskey after."

Alexander took possession of his own easy-chair and looked gratefully
around the room. The storm had not disturbed it, neither had a wench's
duster. Since his mother's death he had loved this room with a more
grateful affection than any mortal had inspired, well as he loved his
aunt, Hugh Knox, and Neddy. But the room did not talk, and the men who
had written the great books which made him indifferent to his island
prison for days and weeks at a time, were dead, and their selfishness
was buried with them.

Meanwhile Knox, forgetting his desire to hear the experience of his
guest, was telling his own. It was sufficiently thrilling, but not to be
compared with that of the planter's; and when he had finished, Alexander
began with some pride to relate his impressions of the storm. He, too,
had not talked for three days; his heart felt warm again; and in the
familiar comfortable room, the terrible picture of the hurricane seemed
to spring sharp and vivid from his memory; he had recalled it confusedly
hitherto, and made no effort to live it again. Knox leaned forward
eagerly, dropping his pipe; Alexander talked rapidly and brilliantly,
finally springing to his feet, and concluding with an outburst so
eloquent that his audience cowered and covered his face with his hands.
For some moments Knox sat thinking, then he rose and pushed a small
table in front of Alexander, littering it with pencils and paper, in his
untidy fashion.

"My boy," he said, "you're still hot with your own eloquence. Before you
cool off, I want you to write that down word for word as you told it to
me. If it twisted my very vitals, it will give a similar pleasure to
others. 'Twould be selfish to deny them. When it's done, I'll send it to
Tiebout. Now I'll leave you, and if my niggers are still too demoralized
to cook supper for you, I'll do it myself."

Alexander, whose brain, in truth, felt on fire, for every nerve had
leapt to the recreating of that magnificent Force that had gathered an
island into the hollow of its hand, crushed, and cast it back to the
waters, dashed at the paper and wrote with even more splendour than he
had spoken. When he had finished, he was still so excited that he
rushed from the house and walked till the hideous sights and smells
drove him home. He was quivering with the ecstasy of birth, and longed
for another theme, and hours and days of hot creation. But he was to be
spared the curse of the "artistic temperament."


XI

The description of the hurricane went to St. Christopher by sloop two
days later (there were no English papers on St. Croix), and was not
heard from for two weeks. Meanwhile Alexander forgot it, as writers have
a way of forgetting their infants of enthusiastic delivery. There was
much to do on St. Croix. The negroes were put at once to rebuilding and
repairing, and masters, as well as overlookers and agents, were behind
them from morning till night. Mr. Mitchell had not returned, and
Alexander was obliged to take charge of his estates. When he was not
galloping from village to village and mill to mill, driving the sullen
blacks before him, or routing them out of ruins and hollows, where they
huddled in a demoralized stupor, he was consoling his aunt for the
possible sacrifice of Mr. Mitchell to the storm. Alexander was quite
confident that the hurricane had spared Tom Mitchell, whomsoever else it
may have devoured, but his logic did not appeal to his aunt, who wept
whenever he was there to offer his arm and shoulder. At other times she
bustled about among her maids, who were sewing industriously for the
afflicted.

Alexander was grateful for the heavy task Mr. Mitchell's absence
imposed, for there was no business doing in Christianstadt, and his
nerves were still vibrating to the storm he had fought and conquered.
His rigorous self-control was gone, his suppressed energies and
ambitions were quick and imperious, every vial of impatience and disgust
was uncorked. As he rode through the hot sunlight or moved among the
Africans, coaxing and commanding, getting more work out of them by his
gay bright manner than the overlookers could extract with their whips,
his brain was thumping with plans of delivery from a life which he
hated so blackly that he would wrench himself free of it before the year
was out if he had to ship as a common sailor for New York. It seemed to
him that the vacancies in his brain ached. His imagination was hot with
the future awaiting him beyond that cursed stretch of blinding water.
For the first time he fully realized his great abilities, knew that he
had in him the forces that make history. All the encouragement of his
mother and Hugh Knox, the admiration and confidence of such men as Mr.
Cruger, the spoiling of his relatives, and his easy conquest or equally
flattering antagonism of the youth of the Island, had fostered his
self-confidence without persuading him that he was necessarily a genius.
Strong as his youthful ambitions had been, burning as his desire for
more knowledge, much in his brain had been dormant, and a humorous
philosophy, added to the sanguineness of youth and a deep affection for
a few people, had enabled him to bear his lot with unbroken
cheerfulness. But the clashing forces of the Universe had roused the
sleeping giant in his brain and whirled his youth away. His only
formulated ambition was to learn first all that schools could teach him,
then lead great armies to battle. Until the day of his death his desire
for military excitement and glory never left him, and at this time it
was the destiny which heated his imagination. It seemed to him that the
roar and rattle of the hurricane, in whose lead he had managed to
maintain himself unharmed, were the loud prophecy of battle and
conquest. At the same time, he knew that other faculties and demands of
his brain must have their way, but he could only guess at their nature,
and statesmanship was the one achievement that did not occur to him; the
American colonies were his only hope, and there was no means by which he
could know their wrongs and needs. Such news came seldom to the West
Indies, and Knox retained little interest in the country where he had
sojourned so short a while. And at this time their struggle hardly would
have appealed to young Hamilton had he known of it. He was British by
instinct and association, and he had never received so much as a
scratch from the little-finger nail of the distant mother, whose long
arm was rigid above her American subjects.

His deliverance was so quick and sudden that for a day or two he was
almost as dazed as the Africans after the hurricane. One day Hugh Knox
sent him out a copy of the St. Christopher newspaper which had published
his description of the storm. With some pride in his first-born, he read
it aloud to his aunt. Before he was halfway down the first column she
was on the sofa with her smelling-salts, vowing she was more terrified
than when she had expected to be killed every minute. When he had
finished she upbraided him for torturing people unnecessarily, but
remarked that he was even cleverer than she had thought him. The next
morning she asked him to read it again; then read it herself. On the
following day Hugh Knox rode out.

Alexander was at one of the mills. Knox told Mrs. Mitchell that he had
sent a copy of the newspaper to the Governor of St. Croix, who had
called upon him an hour later and insisted upon knowing the name of the
writer. Knox not only had told him, but had expanded upon Alexander's
abilities and ambitions to such an extent that the Governor at that
moment was with Peter Lytton, endeavouring to persuade him to open his
purse-strings and send the boy to college.

"He will not do all," added Knox, "and I rely upon you to do the rest.
Between you, Alexander can get, first the education he wants now more
than anything in life, then the chance to make a great reputation among
men. If you keep him here you're no better than criminals, and that's
all I have to say."

Mrs. Mitchell shuddered. "Do you think he really wants to go?" she
asked.

"Do I think he wants to go!" roared Hugh Knox. "Do I think--Good God!
why he's been mad to go for five years. He'd have thought of nothing
else if he hadn't a will like a bar of iron made for a hurricane door,
and he'd have grown morbid about it if he hadn't been blest with a
cheerful and a sanguine disposition. You adore him, and you couldn't
see that!"

"He never said much about it," said Mrs. Mitchell, meekly; "but I think
I can see now that you are right. It will make me ill to part with him,
but he ought to go, and if Peter Lytton will pay half his expenses, I'll
pay the other half, and keep him in pocket coin besides. Of course Tom
won't give a penny, but I have something of my own, and he is welcome to
it. Do have everything arranged before my husband's return. He is alive
and well. I had a letter from him by the sloop that came from St. Kitts,
and he'll be here by the next or the one after."

As soon as Knox had gone Mrs. Mitchell ordered her coach and drove to
Lytton's Fancy. Her love for Alexander had struggled quite out of its
fond selfishness, and she determined that go to New York he should and
by the next ship. She found her brother-in-law meditating upon the
arguments of the Governor, and had less difficulty in persuading him
than she had anticipated.

"I'm sorry we haven't sent him before," he said finally. "For if two men
like Walsterstorff and Knox think so highly of him, and if he can write
like that,--it gave me the horrors,--he ought to have his chance, and
this place is too small for him. I'll help you to keep him at college
until he's got his education,--and it will take him less time than most
boys to get it,--and then he'll be able to take care of himself. If he
sails on Wednesday, there's no produce to send with him to sell; but
I've silver, and so have you, and he can take enough to keep him until
the Island is well again. We'll do the thing properly, and he shan't
worry for want of plenty."

When Alexander came home that evening he was informed that the world had
turned round, and that he stood on its apex.


XII

The night before he sailed he rode out to the Grange estate. The wall of
the cemetery had been repaired, James Lytton's slab was in its place,
the tree had been removed, and he had rebuilt the mound above his
mother as soon as the earth was firm again. There was no evidence of the
hurricane here. The moon was out, and in her mellow bath the Island had
the beauty of a desert. Alexander leaned his elbows on the wall and
stared down at his mother's grave. He knew that he never should see it
again. What he was about to do was for good and all. He would no more
waste months returning to this remote Island than he would turn back
from any of the goals of his future. And it mattered nothing to the dead
woman there. If she had an immortal part, it would follow him, and she
had suffered too much in life for her dust to resent neglect. But he
passionately wished that she were alive and that she were sailing with
him to his new world. He had ceased to repine her loss, much to miss
her, but his sentiment for her was still the strongest in his life, and
as a companion he had found no one to take her place. To-night he wanted
to talk to her. He was bursting with hope and anticipation and the
enthusiasm of the mere change, but he was close to melancholy.

Suddenly he bent his head. From the earth arose the golden music of a
million tiny bells. They had hung rusty and warped since the hurricane,
but to-night they rang again, and as sweetly as on the night, seventeen
years ago, when their music filled the Universe, and two souls, whose
destiny it was to bring a greater into the world, were flooded with a
diviner music than that fairy melody. Alexander knew nothing of that
meeting of his parents, when they were but a few years older than he was
to-night, but the inherited echo of those hours when his own soul
awaited its sentence may have stirred in his brain, for he stood there
and dreamed of his mother and father as they had looked and thought when
they had met and loved; and this he had never done before. The tireless
little ringers filled his brain with their Lilliputian clamour, and his
imagination gave him his parents in the splendour of their young beauty
and passion. For the first time he forgave his father, and he had a deep
moment of insight: one of the mysteries of life was bare before him. He
was to have many of these cosmic moments, for although his practical
brain relied always on hard work, never on inspiration, his divining
faculty performed some marvellous feats, and saved him from much
plodding; but he never had a moment of insight which left a profounder
impression than this. He understood in a flash the weakness of the
world, and his own. At first he was appalled, then he pitied, then he
vibrated to the thrill of that exultation which had possessed his mother
the night on the mountain when she made up her mind to outstay her
guests. And then the future seemed to beckon more imperiously to the boy
for whose sake she had remained, the radiant image of his parents melted
in its crucible, and the world was flooded with a light which revealed
more than the smoke of battlefields and the laurels of fulfilled
ambition.


XIII

On the following day, as Alexander stood on the wharf with his tearful
relatives and friends, Hugh Knox detached him from Mrs. Mitchell and led
him aside.

"Alec," he said, "I've two pieces of parting advice for you, and I want
you to put them into the pocket of your memory that's easiest to find.
Get a tight rein on that temper of yours. It's improved in the last
year, but there's room yet. That's the first piece. This is the second:
keep your own counsel about the irregularity of your birth, unless
someone asks you point-blank who has the right; if anyone else does,
knock him down and tell him to go to hell with his impertinence. And
never let it hit your courage in the vitals for a moment. You are not
accountable; your mother was the finest woman I ever knew, and you've
got the best blood of Britain in your veins, and not a relative in the
world who's not of gentle blood. You're an aristocrat in body and brain,
and you'll not find a purer in the American colonies. The lack of a
priest at the right time can cause a good deal of suffering and trouble,
but it can't muddy a pure stream; and many a lawful marriage has done
that. So, mind you never bring your head down for a minute, nor
persuade yourself that anyone has a better right to keep it up. It would
be the death of you."

Alexander nodded, but did not reply. He was feeling very low, now that
the hour for parting was come, for his affections were strong and
tender, and they were all rooted in the Island he hated. He understood,
however.

He was six weeks reaching Boston, for even the wind seemed to have had
the life beaten out of it. He had a box of Knox's books, which he was to
return by the Captain; and although he had read them before, he read
them again, and wrote commentaries, and so kept his mind occupied for
the greater part of the voyage. But an active brain, inexperienced in
the world, and in no need of rest, is always bored at sea, and he grew
sick of the sight of that interminable blue waste; of which he had seen
too much all his life. When he had learned all there was to know about a
ship, and read all his books, he burned for change of any sort. The
change, when it came, was near to making an end of him: the ship caught
fire, and they were a day and a night conquering the flames and
preparing their philosophy to meet death; for the boats were
unseaworthy. Alexander had all the excitement he wanted, for he fought
the fire as hard as he had fought the hurricane, and he was delighted
when the Captain gave him permission to turn in. This was his third
touch-and-go with death.

He arrived in Boston late in October, and took passage immediately for
New York. There had been no time to announce his coming, and he was
obliged to find his own way to the house of Hercules Mulligan, a member
of the West Indian firm, to whom Mr. Cruger had given him a warm letter
of introduction. Mr. Mulligan, a good-natured Irishman, received him
hospitably, and asked him to stop in his modest house until his plans
were made. Alexander accepted the invitation, then started out in search
of his friend, Ned Stevens, but paused frequently to observe the queer,
straggling, yet imposing little city, the red splendour of the autumn
foliage; above all, to enjoy the keen and frosty air. All his life he
had longed for cold weather. He had anticipated it daily during his
voyage, and, although he had never given way to the natural indolence of
the Tropics, he had always been conscious of a languor to fight. But the
moment the sharp air of the North had tingled his skin his very muscles
seemed to harden, his blood to quicken, and even his brain to become
more alert and eager. If he had been ambitious and studious in an
average temperature of eighty-five degrees, what would happen when the
thermometer dropped below zero? He smiled, but with much contentment.
The vaster the capacity for study, the better; as for his ambitions,
they could rest until he had finished his education. Now that his feet
were fairly planted on the wide highway of the future, his impatience
was taking its well-earned rest; he would allow no dreams to interfere
with the packing of his brain.

It was late in the afternoon, and the fashionable world was promenading
on lower Broadway and on the Battery by the Fort. It was the first time
that Alexander had seen men in velvet coats, or women with hoopskirts
and hair built up a foot, and he thought the city, with its quaint Dutch
houses, its magnificent trees, and these brilliant northern birds, quite
like a picture book. They looked high-bred and intelligent, these
animated saunterers, and Alexander regarded the women with deep
inquisitiveness. Women had interested him little, with the exception of
his mother, who he took for granted _sui generis_. The sisters of his
friends were white delicate creatures, languid and somewhat affected;
and he had always felt older than either of his aunts. In consequence,
he had meditated little upon the sex to which poets had formed a habit
of writing sonnets, regarding them either as necessary appendages or
creatures for use. But these alert, dashing, often handsome women,
stirred him with a new gratitude to life. He longed for the day when he
should have time to know them, and pictured them gracing the solid
home-like houses on the Broadway, and in the fine grounds along the
river front, where he strayed alter a time, having mistaken the way to
King's College. He walked back through Wall Street, and his enthusiasm
was beginning to ebb, he was feeling the first pangs of a lonely
nostalgia, when he almost ran into Ned Stevens's arms. It was four years
since they had met. Stevens had grown a foot and Alexander a few inches,
but both were boyish in appearance still and recognized each other at
once.

"When I can talk," exclaimed Stevens, "when I can get over my
amazement--I thought at first it was my double, come to tell me
something was wrong on the Island--I'll ask you to come to Fraunces'
Tavern and have a tankard of ale. It's healthier than swizzle."

"That is an invitation, Neddy," cried Alexander, gaily. "Initiate me at
once. I've but a day or two to play in, but I must have you for
playfellow."

They dined at Fraunces' Tavern and sat there till nearly morning.
Alexander had much to tell but more to hear, and before they parted at
Mr. Mulligan's door he knew all of the New World that young Stevens had
patiently accumulated in four years. It was a stirring story, that
account of the rising impatience of the British colonies, and Stevens
told it with animation and brevity. Alexander became so interested that
he forgot his personal mission, but he would not subscribe to his
friend's opinion that the Colonials were in the right.

"Did I have the time, I should study the history of the colonies from
the day they built their first fort," he said. "Your story is
picturesque, but it does not convince me that they have all the right on
their side. England--"

"England is a tyrannical old fool," young Stevens was beginning,
heatedly, when a man behind arose and clapped a hand over his mouth.

"There are three British officers at the next table," he said. "We don't
want any more rows. One too many, and God knows what next."

Stevens subsided, but Alexander's nostrils expanded. Even the mental
atmosphere of this brilliant North was full of electricity.

The next day he presented to Dr. Rogers and Dr. Mason the letters which
Hugh Knox had given him. He interested them at once, and when he asked
their advice regarding the first step he should take toward entering
college, they recommended Francis Barber's Grammar School, at
Elizabethtown, New Jersey. Stevens had suggested the same institution,
and so did other acquaintances he made during his brief stay in the city
which was one day to be christened by angry politicians,
"Hamiltonopolis." Early in the following week he crossed to New Jersey
and rode through the forests to the village, with its quaint streets and
handsome houses, "the Burial Yard Lot," beside the main thoroughfare of
the proud little hamlet, and Mr. Barber's Grammar School at its upper
end. Hamilton was accepted immediately, but where to lodge was a
harassing question. The only rooms for hire were at the tavern, where
permanent lodgement would be intolerable. When he presented a letter to
Mr. Boudinot, which Mr. Cruger had given him, the problem was solved at
once. Mr. Boudinot, one of the men of his time, had a spacious and
elegant house, set amidst gardens, lawns, and forest trees; there were
many spare bedrooms, and he invited Hamilton to become a member of his
family. The invitation was given as a matter of course, and Hamilton
accepted it as frankly. All the pupils who were far from home visited in
the neighbourhood. Liberty Hall, on the Springfield turnpike, was
finishing when Hamilton arrived. When the family was installed and he
presented his letter to its owner, William Livingston, he received as
pressing an invitation as Mr. Boudinot's, and divided his time between
the two houses.

Mr. Boudinot was a large man, with a long nose and a kindly eye, who was
deeply attached to his children. Susan was healthy, pretty, lively, and
an ardent young patriot. The baby died, and Hamilton, having offered to
sit up with the little body, entertained himself by writing an
appropriate poem, which was long treasured by Mr. Boudinot.

At Liberty Hall life was even more interesting. William Livingston was
one of the ablest lawyers, most independent thinkers, and ardent
republicans of the unquiet times. Witty and fearless, he had for years
made a target of kingly rule; his acid cut deep, doing much to weaken
the wrong side and encourage the right. His wife was as uncompromising a
patriot as himself; his son, Brockholst, and his sprightly cultivated
daughters had grown up in an atmosphere of political discussion, and in
constant association with the best intellects of the day. Sarah, the
beauty, was engaged to John Jay, already a distinguished lawyer,
notoriously patriotic and high-minded. He was a handsome man, with his
dark hair brushed forward about his face, his nobility and classic
repose of feature. Mr. Livingston wore his hair in a waving mass, as
long as he had any. His nose was large and sharp, and he had a very
disapproving eye. He took an immediate liking to young Hamilton,
however, and his hospitality was frank and delightful. Brockholst and
Alexander liked and admired each other in those days, although they were
to become bitter enemies in the turbulent future. As for the lively bevy
of women, protesting against their exile from New York, but amusing
themselves, always, they adopted "the young West Indian." The
delicate-looking boy, with his handsome sparkling face, his charming
manners, and gay good humour captivated them at once; and he wrote to
Mrs. Mitchell that he was become shockingly spoiled. When Mr. Livingston
discovered that his brain and knowledge were extraordinary, he ceased at
once to treat him as a fascinating boy, and introduced him to the men
who were constantly entertained at his house: John Jay, James Duane, Dr.
Witherspoon, President of Princeton; and members of the Morris,
Schuyler, Ogden, Clinton, and Stockton families. The almost weekly
conversation of these men contributed to the rapid maturing of
Hamilton's mind. His recreation he found with the young women of the
family, and their conversation was not always political. Sarah
Livingston, beautiful, sweet, and clever, was pensively in love; but
Kitty and Susan were not, and they were handsome and dashing. They were
sufficiently older than Alexander to inspire him with the belief that he
was in love with each in turn; and if he was constant to either, it was
to Kitty, who was the first to reveal to him the fascination of her
sex. But they did not interrupt the course of his studies; and in the
dawn, when he repaired to the Burial Yard Lot to think out his difficult
task for the day, not a living face haunted the tombstones.

And when winter came and he walked the vast black forests alone, the
snow crunching under his feet, the blood racing in his body, a gun on
his shoulder, lest he meet a panther, or skated till midnight under the
stars, a crystal moon illuminating the dark woods on the river's edge,
the frozen tide glittering the flattering homage of earth, he felt so
alive and happy, so tingling and young and primeval, that had his
fellow-inhabitants flown to the stars he would not have missed them.
Until that northern winter embraced and hardened him, quickening mind
and soul and body, crowding the future with realized dreams, he never
had dared to imagine that life could be so fair and beautiful a thing.

On stormy winter nights, when he roasted chestnuts or popped corn in the
great fireplace of Liberty Hall, under the tuition of all the Livingston
girls, Sarah, Susan, Kitty, and Judith, he felt very sociable indeed;
and if his ears, sometimes, were soundly boxed, he looked so penitent
and meek that he was contritely rewarded with the kiss he had snatched.

The girls regarded him as a cross between a sweet and charming boy to be
spoiled--one night, when he had a toothache, they all sat up with
him--and a phenomenon of nature of which they stood a trifle in awe. But
the last was when he was not present and they fell to discussing him.
And with them, as with all women, he wore, because to the gay vivacity
and polished manners of his Gallic inheritance he added the rugged
sincerity of the best of Britons; and in the silences of his heart he
was too sensible of the inferiority of the sex, out of which, first and
last, he derived so much pleasure, not to be tender and considerate of
it always.

Before the year of 1773 was out Mr. Barber pronounced him ready for
college, and, his choice being Princeton, he presented himself to Dr.
Witherspoon and demanded a special course which would permit him to
finish several years sooner than if he graduated from class to class. He
knew his capacity for conquering mental tasks, and having his own way to
make in the world, had no mind to waste years and the substance of his
relatives at college. Dr. Witherspoon, who had long been deeply
interested in him, examined him privately and pronounced him equal to
the heavy burden he had imposed upon himself, but feared that the board
of trustees would not consent to so original a plan. They would not.
Hamilton, nothing daunted, applied to King's College, and found no
opposition there. He entered as a private student, attached to no
particular class, and with the aid of a tutor began his customary
annihilation of time. Besides entering upon a course of logic, ethics,
mathematics, history, chronology, rhetoric, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, all
the modern languages, and Belles Lettres, he found time to attend Dr.
Clossy's lectures on anatomy, with his friend Stevens, who was studying
medicine as a profession.

King's was a fine building facing the North River and surrounded by
spacious grounds shaded by old sycamores and elms. There were many
secluded corners for thought and study. A more favourite resort of
Alexander's was Batteau Street, under whose great elms he formed the
habit of strolling and muttering his lessons, to the concern of the
passer-by. In his hours of leisure he rollicked with Stevens and his new
friends, Nicolas Fish and Robert Troup. The last, a strong and splendid
specimen of the young American collegian, had assumed at once the
relation of big brother to the small West Indian, but was not long
discovering that Hamilton could take care of himself; was flown at
indeed by two agile fists upon one occasion, when protectiveness, in
Alexander's measurement, rose to interference. But they formed a deep
and lifelong friendship, and Troup, who was clever and alert, without
brilliancy, soon learned to understand Hamilton, and was not long
recognizing potentialities of usefulness to the American cause in his
genius.

It was Troup who took him for his first sail up the Hudson, and except
for the men who managed the boat, they went alone. Troup was a good
listener, and for a time Hamilton chattered gaily as the boat sped up
the river, jingling rhymes on the great palisades, which looked like the
walls of some Brobdingnagian fortress, and upon the gorgeous masses of
October colouring swarming over the perpendicular heights of Jersey and
the slopes and bluffs of New York. It was a morning, and a piece of
nature, to make the quicksilver in Hamilton race. The arch was blue, the
tide was bluer, the smell of salt was in the keen and frosty air. Two
boats with full white sails flew up the river. On either bank the
primeval forest had burst in a night into scarlet and gold, pale yellow
and crimson, bronze, pink, the flaming hues of the Tropics, and the
delicate tints of hot-house roses. Hamilton had never seen such a riot
of colour in the West Indies. They passed impenetrable thickets close to
the water's edge, ravines, cliffs, irregular terraces on the hillside,
gorges, solitary heights, all flaunting their charms like a vast booth
which has but a day in which to sell its wares. They sped past the
beautiful peninsula, then the lawns of Philipse Manor. Hamilton stepped
suddenly to the bow of the boat and stood silent for a long while.

The stately but narrow end of the Hudson was behind; before him rolled a
wide and ever widening majestic flood, curving among its hills and
palisades, through the glory of its setting and the soft mists of
distance, until the far mountains it clove trembled like a mirage. The
eye of Hamilton's mind followed it farther and farther yet. It seemed to
him that it cut the world in two. The sea he had had with him always,
but it had been the great chasm between himself and life, and he had
often hated it. This mighty river, haughty and calm in spite of the
primeval savagery of its course, beat upon the gates of his soul, beat
them down, filled him with a sense of grandeur which made him tremble.
He had a vision of the vastness and magnificence of the New World, of
the great lonely mountains in the North, with their countless lakes
hidden in the immensity of a trackless forest, of other mountain ranges
equally wild and lonely, cutting the monotony of plains and prairies,
and valleys full of every delight. All that Hamilton had read or heard
of the immense area beyond or surrounding the few cities and hamlets of
the American colonies, flew to coherence, and he had a sudden
appreciation of the stupendousness of this new untravelled world,
understood that with its climate, fertility, and beauty, its large
nucleus of civilization, its destiny must be as great as Europe's, nor
much dissimilar, no matter what the variance of detail. The noblest
river in the world seemed to lift its voice like a prophet, and the time
came--after his visit to Boston--when Hamilton listened to it with a
thrill of impatient pride and white-hot patriotism. But to-day he felt
only the grandeur of life as he never had felt it before, felt his soul
merge into this mighty unborn soul of a nation sleeping in the infinity,
which the blue flood beneath him spoke of, almost imaged; with no
premonition that his was the destiny to quicken that soul to its birth.

       *       *       *       *       *

While on the ship, Alexander had written to his father, asking for news
of him and telling of the change in his own fortunes. James Hamilton had
replied at once, gratefully, but with melancholy; by this time he knew
himself to be a failure, although he was now a planter in a small way.
Alexander's letter, full of the hope and indomitable spirit of youth,
interested as keenly as it saddened him. He recalled his own high
courage and expectant youth, and wondered if this boy had stronger
mettle than his own equipment. Then he remembered Rachael Levine and
hoped. He lived to see hope fulfilled beyond any achievement of his
imagination, although the correspondence, brisk for a time, gradually
subsided. From Hugh Knox and Mrs. Mitchell Alexander heard constantly,
and it is needless to state that his aunt kept him in linen which was
the envy of his friends. His beruffled shirts and lace stocks were
marvels, and if he was an exquisite in dress all his life, it certainly
was not due to after-thought. Meanwhile, he lodged with the family of
Hercules Mulligan, and wrote doggerel for their amusement in the
evening. Troup relates that Hamilton presented him with a manuscript of
fugitive poetry, written at this period. Mercifully, Troup lost it.
Hamilton has been peculiarly fortunate in this respect. He lies more
serenely in his grave than most great men.

When he was not studying, or joking, or rhyming, during those two short
years of college life, he read: Cudworth's "Intellectual System,"
Hobbes's "Dialogues," Bacon's "Essays," Plutarch's "Morals," Cicero's
"De Officiis," Montaigne's "Essays," Rousseau's "Émile," Demosthenes's
"Orations," Aristotle's "Politics," Ralt's "Dictionary of Trade," and
the "Lex Mercatoria."

He accomplished his mental feats by the--to him--simple practice of
keeping one thing before his mind at a time, then relegating it
uncompromisingly to the background; where, however, it was safe in the
folds of his memory. What would have sprained most minds merely
stimulated his, and never affected his spirits nor his health, highly as
nature had strung his nerves. He was putting five years college work
into two, but the effect was an expansion and strengthening of the
forces in his brain; they never weakened for an instant.


XIV

In the spring of 1774 Hamilton visited Boston during a short holiday.
His glimpse of this city had been so brief that it had impressed his
mind but as a thing of roofs and trees, a fantastic woodland
amphitheatre, in whose depths men of large and solemn mien added daily
to the sum of human discomfort. He returned to see the important city of
Boston, but with no overwhelming desire to come in closer contact with
its forbidding inhabitants. He quickly forgot the city in what those
stern sour men had to tell him. For to them he owed that revelation of
the tragic justice of the American cause which enabled him to begin with
the pen his part in the Revolution, forcing the crisis, taking rank as a
political philosopher when but a youth of seventeen; instead of bolting
from his books to the battlefield at the first welcome call to arms. Up
to this time he had adhered to his resolution to let nothing impede the
progress of his education, to live strictly in the hour until the time
came to leave the college for the world. Therefore, although he had
heard the question of Colonies versus Crown argued week after week at
Liberty Hall, and at the many New York houses where he dined of a Sunday
with his friends, Stevens, Troup, and Fish, he had persistently refused
to study the matter: there were older heads to settle it and there was
only one age for a man's education. Moreover, he had grown up with a
deep reverence for the British Constitution, and his strong aristocratic
prejudices inclined him to all the aloofness of the true conservative.
So while the patriots and royalists of King's were debating, ofttimes
concluding in sequestered nooks, Hamilton remained "The young West
Indian," an alien who cared for naught but book-learning, walking
abstractedly under the great green shade of Batteau Street while Liberty
Boys were shouting, and British soldiers swaggered with a sharp eye for
aggression. This period of philosophic repose in the midst of electric
fire darting from every point in turn and sometimes from all points at
once, endured from the October of his arrival to its decent burial in
Boston shortly after his seventeenth birthday.

Boston was sober and depressed, stonily awaiting the vengeance of the
crown for her dramatic defiance in the matter of tea. Even in that
rumbling interval, Hamilton learned, the Committee of Correspondence,
which had directed the momentous act, had been unexcited and methodical,
restraining the Mohawks day after day, hoping until the last moment that
the Collector of Customs would clear the ships and send the tea whence
it came. Hamilton heard the wrongs of the colonies discussed without any
of the excitement or pyrotechnical brilliancy to which he had become
accustomed. New York was not only the hot-bed of Toryism, but even such
ardent Republicans as William Livingston, George Clinton, and John Jay
were aristocrats, holding themselves fastidiously aloof from the rank
and file that marched and yelled under the name of Sons of Liberty. To
Hamilton the conflict had been spectacular rather than real, until he
met and moved with these sombre, undemonstrative, superficially
unpleasing men of Boston; then, almost in a flash, he realized that the
colonies were struggling, not to be relieved of this tax or that, but
for a principle; realized that three millions of people, a respectable
majority honourable, industrious, and educated, were being treated like
incapables, apprehensive of violence if they dared to protest for their
rights under the British Constitution. Hamilton also learned that Boston
was the conspicuous head and centre of resistance to the crown, that she
had led the colonies in aggressiveness since the first Stamp Act of 1765
had shocked them from passive subjects into dangerous critics. He had
letters which admitted him to clubs and homes, and he discussed but one
subject during his visit. There were no velvet coats and lace ruffles
here, except in the small group which formed the Governor's court. The
men wore dun-coloured garments, and the women were not much livelier. It
was, perhaps, as well that he did not see John Hancock, that ornamental
head-piece of patriotic New England, or the harmony of the impression
might have been disturbed; but, as it was, every time he saw these men
together, whether sitting undemonstratively in Faneuil Hall while one of
their number spoke, or in church, or in groups on Boston Common, it was
as if he saw men of iron, not of flesh and blood. Every word they
uttered seemed to have been weighed first, and it was impossible to
consider such men giving their time and thought, making ready to offer
up their lives, to any cause which should not merit the attention of all
men. Although Hamilton met many of them, they made no individual
impression on him; he saw them only as a mighty brain, capable of
solving a mighty question, and of a stern and bitter courage.

He returned to New York filled with an intense indignation against the
country which he had believed too ancient and too firm in her highest
principles to make a colossal mistake, and a hot sympathy for the
colonists which was not long resolving itself into as burning a
patriotism as any in the land. It was not in him to do anything by
halves, it is doubtful if he ever realized the half-hearted tendency of
the greater part of mankind. He studied the question from the first
Stamp Act to the Tea Party. The day he was convinced, he ceased to be a
West Indian. The time was not yet come to draw the sword in behalf of
the country for which he conceived a romantic passion, which satisfied
other wants of his soul, but he began at once on a course of reading
which should be of use to her when she was free to avail herself of
patriotic thinkers. He also joined the debating club of the college. His
abrupt advent into this body, with his fiery eloquence and remarkable
logic, was electrical. In a day he became the leader of the patriot
students. There were many royalists in King's, and the president, Dr.
Myles Cooper, was a famous old Tory. He looked upon this influential
addition to the wrong side with deep disfavour, and when he discovered
that the most caustic writer of Holt's Whig newspaper, who had carved
him to the quick and broken his controversial lances again and again,
was none other than his youngest and most revolutionary pupil, his wrath
knew no bounds.

With the news of the order to close the port of Boston, the wave of
indignation in the colonies rose so high that even the infatuated clergy
wriggled. Philadelphia went so far as to toll her muffled bells for a
day, and as for New York, then as now, the nerve-knot of the country,
she exploded. The Sons of Liberty, who had reorganized after the final
attempt of England to force tea on the colonies, paraded all day and
most of the night, but were, as yet, more orderly than the masses, who
stormed through the streets with lighted torches, shrieking and yelling
and burning the king and his ministers in effigy.

The substantial citizens also felt that the time was come to prepare for
the climax toward which their fortunes were hastening. That spiteful
fist would be at their own skulls next, beyond a doubt. The result of a
long and hot debate in the Exchange between the Sons of Liberty and the
more conservative patriots was an agreement to call a Congress of the
Colonies. The contest over the election of delegates was so bitter,
however, the Committee of the Assembly, which was largely ministerial,
claiming the right to nomination, that it was determined to submit the
question to the people at large.


XV

In the early morning Hamilton still sauntered beneath the college trees
or those of Batteau Street, pondering on his studies, and abstracting
himself from the resting city, but in the evenings and during half the
night he inhaled the hot breath of rebellion; and the flaring torches,
the set angry faces, the constant shouting, the frightened pallor of the
women at the windows of the great houses on the line of march, the
constant brawls with British soldiers, stormed the curb he had put on
his impatient spirit. He realized that the colonies were not yet
prepared to fight, and he had no thought of doing anything rash, but it
was his propensity to do a thing at once if it were to be done at all,
and this last indignity should result in something except talk. He was
present at the meeting in the Exchange and listened carefully to all
that was said, feeling that he could add to that whirlwind of ideas, but
forbearing on account of his youth. His mind, by now, was so mature that
he reminded himself, with some difficulty, that he was but seventeen. He
was as lively and as happy as ever, but that was temperamental and would
endure through all things; mentally he had no youth in him, had had
little since the day he began to ask questions.

The meeting in the Fields--at which it was hoped to effect a choice of
delegates by the people at large--was called for the 6th of July, and a
great multitude assembled. Alexander McDougall, the first patriot to
have suffered imprisonment at the hands of the Tyrant, presided, and
celebrated speakers harangued. It was here that Hamilton's impatience
got rid of its curb. He heard much that was good, more that was bad,
little that was new; and he found the radicals illogical and the
conservatives timid. Nicolas Fish and Robert Troup pushed their way
through the crowd to where Hamilton stood, his uplifted face expressing
his thoughts so plainly to those who knew him that these friends
determined to force him to the platform.

At first he protested; and in truth, the idea, shaping concretely,
filled his very legs with terror; but the young men's insistence, added
to his own surging ideas, conquered, and he found himself on the
platform facing a boundless expanse of three-cornered hats. Beneath were
the men who represented the flower as well as the weeds of the city, all
dominated by the master passion of the civilized world. There was little
shade in the Fields and the day was hot. It was a crowded,
uncomfortable, humid mass whose attention he was about to demand, and
their minds were already weary of many words, their calves of the
ruthless mosquito. They stared at Hamilton in amazement, for his slender
little figure and fair curling hair, tied loosely with a ribbon, made
him look a mere boy, while his proud high-bred face, the fine green
broadcloth of his fashionably cut garments, the delicate lawn of his
shirt and the profusion of lace with which it was trimmed, particularly
about his exquisite hands, gave him far more the appearance of a court
favourite than a champion of liberty. Some smiled, others grunted, but
all remained to listen, for the attempt was novel, and he was beautiful
to look upon.

For a moment Hamilton felt as if the lower end of his heart had grown
wings, and he began falteringly and in an almost inaudible voice. Pride
hastened to his relief, however, and his daily debates in college had
given him assurance and address. He recovered his poise, and as ideas
swam from his brain on the tide of a natural eloquence, he forgot all
but the great principle which possessed him in common with that jam of
weary men, the determination to inspire them to renewed courage and
greater activity. He rehearsed their wrongs, emphasized their
inalienable rights under the British Constitution--from which the
ministerial party and a foolish sovereign had practically divorced them.
He insisted that the time had come in their history to revert to the
_natural_ rights of man--upon which all civil rights were founded--since
they were no longer permitted to lead the lives of self-respecting
citizens, pursuing the happiness which was the first instinct of the
human intelligence; they had been reduced almost to the level of their
own slaves, who soon would cease to respect them.

He paused so abruptly that the crowd held its breath. Then his ringing
thrilling voice sounded the first note of the Revolution. "It is war!"
he cried. "It is war! It is the battlefield or slavery!"

When the deep roar which greeted the startling words had subsided, he
spoke briefly of their immense natural advantages, in the event of war,
the inability of England to gain any permanent advantage, and finally of
the vast resources of the country, and its phenomenal future, when the
"waves of rebellion, sparkling with fire, had washed back to the shores
of England the wrecks of her power, her wealth, and her glory."

His manner was as fiery and impetuous as his discourse was clear,
logical, and original. The great crowd was electrified. It was as if a
blade of lightning had shot down from the hot blue sky to illuminate the
doubting recesses of their understandings. They murmured repeatedly "It
is a collegian," "a collegian," and they thundered their applause when
he finished.

Troup and Fish bore him off in triumph to Fraunces' Tavern, where
Stevens joined them immediately, hot, but exultant.

"I've just passed our president, looking like an infuriated bumblebee,"
he cried. "I know he heard your speech from some hidden point of
vantage. It was a great speech, Alec. What a pity Hugh Knox, Mr. Lytton,
and Benny Yard were not there to hear. I'll write them about it
to-night, for St. Croix ought to burn a bonfire for a week. It was a
hurricane with a brain in it that whirled you straight to these
shores--as opportune for this country as for your own ambitions, for,
unless I'm much mistaken, you're going to be a prime factor in getting
rid of these pestiferous redcoats--we've a private room, so I can talk
as I please. One tried to trip me up just now, thinking I was you."

Fish leaned across the table and looked penetratingly at Hamilton, who
was flushed and nervous. The young New Yorker had a chubby face, almost
feminized by a soft parted fringe, but his features were strong, and his
eyes preternaturally serious.

"You've committed yourself, Hamilton," he said. "That was no college
play. Whether you fight or not doesn't so much matter, but you must give
us your pen and your speech. I'm no idle purveyor of compliments, but
you are extraordinary, and there isn't a man living can do for the cause
with his pen what you can do. Write pamphlets, and they'll be published
without an hour's delay."

"Ah, I see!" cried Hamilton, gaily. "I was a bit bewildered. You think
my new patriotism needs nursing. 'After all, he is a West Indian, born
British, brought up under Danish rule, which is like being coddled by
one's grandmother. He sympathizes with us, his mind is delighted with a
new subject for analysis and discourse, but patriotism--that is
impossible,' Is it not true?"

"You have read my thought," said Fish, with some confusion. "And you
have a great deal to occupy your mind. I never have known anyone whose
brain worked at so many things at once. I am selfish enough to want you
to give a good bit of it to us."

"I never was one to make fierce demonstrations," said Alexander; "but
fill up another bumper--the first has calmed my nerves, which were like
to jump through my skin--and stand up, and I'll drink you a pledge."

The three other young men sprang to their feet, and stood with their
glasses raised, their eyes anxiously fixed on young Hamilton. They had
believed him to be preparing himself for a great career in letters, and
knowing his tenacity and astonishing powers of concentration, had
doubted the possibility of interesting him permanently in politics. They
all had brains and experience enough--it was a hot quick time--to
recognize his genius, and to conceive the inestimable benefit it could
confer upon the colonial cause. Moreover, they loved him and wanted to
see him famous as quickly as possible.

"Stand up on the table," cried Troup. "It is where you belong; and
you're the biggest man in New York, to-day." As Hamilton, although
self-confident, was modest, Troup put down his bumper, seized the hero
in his big arms and swung him to the middle of the table. Then the
three, raising their glasses again, stood in a semi-circle. Hamilton
threw back his head and raised his own glass. His hand trembled, and his
lips moved for a moment without speaking, after his habit when excited.

"The pledge! The pledge!" cried Fish. "We want it."

"It is this," said Hamilton. "I pledge myself, body and soul and brain,
to the most sacred cause of the American colonies. I vow to it all my
best energies for the rest of my life. I swear to fight for it with my
sword; then when the enemy is driven out, and all the brain in the
country needed to reconstruct these tattered colonies and unify them
into one great state, or group of allied states, which shall take a
respectable place among nations, to give her all that I have learned,
all that my brain is capable of learning and conceiving. I believe that
I have certain abilities, and I solemnly swear to devote them wholly to
_my country_. And I further swear that never, not in a single instance,
will I permit my personal ambitions to conflict with what must be the
lifelong demands of this country."

He spoke slowly and with great solemnity. The hands of the three young
men shook, as they gulped down a little of the wine. Hamilton rarely was
serious in manner; even when discussing literature, politics, or any of
the great questions before the world, his humour and wit were in
constant play, a natural gift permitting this while detracting nothing
from the weight of his opinions. But his words and his manner were so
solemn to-day that they impressed his hearers profoundly, and they all
had a vague presentiment of what the unborn Country would owe to that
pledge.

"You'll keep that, Alexander," said Fish. "Perhaps it were better for
you had you not made it so strong. I burn with patriotism, but I'd not
have you sacrificed--"

"I've made my vows," cried Hamilton, gaily, "and I'll not have you
mention the fact again that I'm not an American born. Here's not only to
liberty, but to a united people under the firmest national constitution
ever conceived by man."

"Amen," said Troup, "but that's looking well ahead. Hard as it will be
to get England out, it will be harder still to make New York and New
England love each other; and when it comes to hitching Massachusetts and
Virginia about each other's necks, I vow my imagination won't budge."

"It will come," said Hamilton, "because in no other way can they
continue to exist, much less become one of the nations of the earth.
This war is but an interlude, no matter how long it may take. Then will
come the true warfare of this country--the Great Battle of Ideas, and
our real history will begin while it is raging, while we are
experimenting; and there will be few greater chapters in any country. I
shall take part in that battle; how, it is too soon to know, except that
for union I shall never cease to strive until it is a fact. But it has
grown cooler. Let us ride up to the village of Harlem and have supper
under the trees."


XVI

It was not long after this that he wrote the pamphlets in reply to the
tracts assailing the Congress and aimed particularly at setting the
farmers against the merchants. These tracts were by two of the ablest
men on the Tory side, and were clever, subtle, and insinuating.
Hamilton's pamphlets were entitled, "A Full Vindication of the Measures
of Congress from the Calumnies of Their Enemies," and "The Farmer
Refuted; or a More Comprehensive and Impartial View of the Disputes
between Great Britain and the Colonies, Intended as a Further
Vindication of the Congress." It is not possible to quote these
pamphlets, and they can be found in his "Works," but they were
remarkable not only for their unanswerable logic, their comprehensive
arraignment of Britain, their close discussion of the rights of the
colonists under the British Constitution, their philosophical definition
of "natural rights," and their reminder that war was inevitable, but for
their anticipation of the future resources of the country, particularly
in regard to cotton and manufactures, and for the prophecies regarding
the treatment of the colonies by Europe. The style was clear, concise,
and bold, and with a finish which alone would have suggested a pen
pointed by long use.

These pamphlets, which created a profound sensation, were attributed to
William Livingston and John Jay, two of the ablest men on the patriot
side. That side was profoundly grateful, for they put heart into the
timid, decided the wavering, and left the Tory writers without a leg to
stand on. Nothing so brilliant had been contributed to the cause.

It was not long before the public had the author's name. Troup had been
present at the writing of the pamphlets, and he called on Dr. Cooper,
one day, and announced the authorship with considerable gusto.

"I'll not believe it," exclaimed the president, angrily; "Mr. Jay wrote
those pamphlets, and none other. A mere boy like that--it's absurd. Why
do you bring me such a story, sir? I don't like this Hamilton, he's too
forward and independent--but I have no desire to hear more ill of him."

"He wrote them, sir. Mulligan, in whose house he lives, and I, can prove
it. He's the finest brain in this country, and I mean you shall know
it."

He left Dr. Cooper foaming, and went to spread the news elsewhere. The
effect of his revelation was immediate distinction for Hamilton. He was
discussed everywhere as a prodigy of intellect; messages reached him
from every colony. "Sears," said Willets, one of the leaders of the
Liberty party, "was a warm man, but with little reflection; McDougall
was strong-minded; and Jay, appearing to fall in with the measures of
Sears, tempered and controlled them; but Hamilton, after these great
writings, became our oracle."

Congress met in May, 1775, and word having come that Chatham's
conciliation bill had been rejected, and that Britain was about to send
an army to suppress the American rebellion, this body assumed sovereign
prerogatives. They began at once to organize an army; Washington was
elected Commander-in-chief, and they ordered that five thousand men be
raised to protect New York, as the point most exposed. The royal troops
were expelled, and the city placed in command of General Charles Lee, an
English soldier of fortune, who had fought in many lands and brought to
the raw army an experience which might have been of inestimable service,
had he been high-minded, or even well balanced. As it was, he very
nearly sacrificed the cause to his jealousy of Washington and to his
insane vanity.

Hamilton, meanwhile, published his two pamphlets on the Quebec Bill, and
took part in a number of public debates. At one of these, as he rose to
speak, a stranger remarked, "What brings that lad here? The poor boy
will disgrace himself." But the merchants, who were present in force,
listened intently to all he had to say on the non-importation agreement,
and admitted the force of his arguments toward its removal, now that war
practically had been declared. One of the most interesting of the
phenomena in the career of Hamilton was the entire absence of struggle
for an early hearing. People recognized his genius the moment they came
in contact with it, and older men saw only the extraordinary and mature
brain, their judgement quite unaffected by the boyish face and figure.
Those who would not admit his great gifts were few, for except in the
instances where he incurred jealous hate, he won everybody he met by his
charming manner and an entire absence of conceit. He was conscious of
his powers, but took them as a matter of course, and thought only of
what he would do with them, having no leisure to dwell on their quality.
In consequence, he already had a large following of unhesitating
admirers, many of them men twice his age, and was accepted as the
leading political philosopher of the country.

Dr. Cooper sent for him after his third pamphlet. He, too, was a patriot
in his way, and although he bristled whenever Hamilton's name was
mentioned, he had come in contact with too many minds not to recognize
ability of any sort; he knew that Hamilton would be invaluable to the
Royalist cause.

"Ask your own price, sir," he said, after suggesting the higher service
to which he could devote his pen. "You will find us more liberal--" But
Hamilton had bolted. It is impossible to knock down one's venerable
president, and his temper was still an active member in the family of
his faculties. To the numerous other offers he received from the Tory
side he made no reply, beyond inserting an additional sting into his pen
when writing for Holt's _Journal_. In the press he was referred to, now,
as "The Vindicator of Congress," and it was generally conceded that he
had done more to hasten matters to a climax, by preparing and whetting
the public mind, than anyone else in America.

There is no doubt that the swiftness and suddenness of Hamilton's
conversion, his abrupt descent from a background of study and alien
indifference, gave him a clearer and more comprehensive view of the
wrongs and needs of the colonists than they possessed themselves. They
had been muttering ever since the passage of the first stamp tax,
threatening, permitting themselves to be placated, hoping, despairing,
hoping again. Hamilton, from the first moment he grasped the subject,
saw that there was no hope in ministerial England, no hope in anything
but war. Moreover, his courage, naturally of the finest temper, and an
audacity which no one had ever discouraged, leapt out from that far
background of the West Indies into an arena where the natives moved in
an atmosphere whose damps of doubt and discouragement had corroded them
for years. Even among men whose courage and independence were of the
first quality, Hamilton's passionate energy, fearlessness of thought,
and audacity of expression, made him remarkable at once; and they drew
a long breath of relief when he uncompromisingly published what they had
long agreed upon over the dining-table, or built up the doctrine of
resistance with argument as powerful as it was new.

But the time rapidly approached for deeds, and Hamilton had been
occupied in other ways than writing pamphlets. During the past six
months he had studied tactics and gunnery, and had joined a volunteer
corps in order to learn the practical details of military science. All
his friends belonged to this corps, which called itself "Hearts of Oak,"
and looked very charming in green uniforms and leathern caps, inscribed
"Freedom or Death." They soon attracted the attention of General Greene,
a superior man and an accomplished officer. He took an especial fancy to
Hamilton, and great as was their disparity in years, they were close
friends until the General's death. It was Greene who first attracted
Washington's attention to the youngest of his captains, and Hamilton was
able to render the older man, whose services and talents have even yet
not been properly recognized by his country, exceptional service. The
company exercised in the churchyard of St. George's chapel, early in the
morning; for in spite of the swarms of recruits clad in every variety of
uniform, deserted houses, and daily flights of the timid into Jersey,
earthworks and fortifications, college went on as usual.

It was not long before the "Hearts of Oak" had an opportunity to
distinguish themselves. The provincial committee ordered them to remove
the cannon stationed at the Battery. In the harbour was the British
war-ship, _Asia_, which immediately sent off a boat to enquire into this
proceeding. A large number of armed citizens had escorted the little
corps to the Battery, and several lost their heads and fired at the
boat. There was an immediate broadside from the _Asia_. Three of the
militia were wounded, and one fell dead by Hamilton's side. "It is
child's play to a hurricane," he thought. "I doubt if a man could have a
better training for the battlefield." They removed the guns.

The result of this attack was another explosion of New York's nerves.
The Sons of Liberty made it unsafe for a Tory to venture abroad. They
marched through the streets shouting vengeance, burning in effigy, and
making alarming demonstrations before the handsome houses of certain
loyalists. Suddenly, about ten o'clock at night, they were animated by a
desire to offer up Dr. Cooper, and they cohered and swarmed down toward
King's. Hamilton and Troup happened to be walking in the grounds when
the sudden flare of torches and the approaching tide of sound, warned
them of the invasion. They ran like deer to head them off, but reached
the portico only a moment ahead of the mob, which knew that it must be
sudden and swift to be victorious.

"I can talk faster than you," whispered Hamilton, "I'll harangue them,
and it won't take Dr. Cooper long to understand and flee through the
back door--and may the devil fly away with him."

"A moment!" he cried, "I've something to say, and I may not have another
chance, war is so close upon us."

"'Tis young Hamilton," cried someone in the crowd. "Well, make us a
speech; we're always glad to hear you, but we'll not go home without old
Cooper. Don't think it."

Hamilton never remembered what nonsense he talked that night.
Fortunately words always came with a rush, and he could mix up politics,
wrongs, the clergy, and patriotism, in so picturesque a jumble that an
excited crowd would not miss his usual concise logic. "Do you suppose
he's gone?" he whispered, pausing to take breath.

"Go on, go on," said Troup nervously, "I hear someone moving."

"Ah-h-h!"

There was a wild yell from the crowd, and a hoarse roar from above.
Hamilton and Troup looked up. Dr. Cooper's infuriated visage, surrounded
by a large frill, projected from his bedroom window. "Don't listen to
him," he shrieked, thrusting his finger at Hamilton. "He's crazy! He's
crazy!"

"The old fool," fumed Troup, "he thinks you're taking your just revenge.
If I could get inside--"

Dr. Cooper was jerked back by a friendly hand and the window slammed.
"Someone understands," whispered Troup, excitedly; "and they'll have him
out in two minutes. Go on, for heaven's sake."

Hamilton, who had been tearful with laughter, began again:--

"I appeal to you, my friends, am I crazy?" Indignant shouts of "No! No!"
"Then let me, I pray, make a few remarks on the possibility of holding
New York against the advancing fleet, that you can testify to my sanity
to-morrow, and save me from whatever unhappy fate this irascible
gentleman has in store for me."

"Go ahead! Go ahead!" cried someone in the mob. "We won't let him touch
you."

And again Hamilton harangued them, until Troup slipped round to the rear
of the big building and returned with word that Dr. Cooper was safely
over the back fence and on his way to the _Asia_. When Hamilton
announced the flight, there was muttering, but more laughter, for the
mob was in a better humour than when it came.

"Well, that silver tongue of yours did the old man a good turn to-night,
but you shan't make fools of us again." And a few days later, when
Alexander attempted to head off the same mob as it made for the press of
Rivington, the Tory printer, they would not listen to him. But the
effort raised him still higher in the estimation of the patriots, for
they saw that his love of law and order was as great as his passion for
war.


XVII

In January the convention of New York gave orders that a company of
artillery be raised. Hamilton, through Colonel McDougall of the First
New York regiment, at once applied for the captaincy, underwent an
examination that convinced the Congress of his efficiency, and on the
14th of March was appointed Captain of the Provincial Company of
Artillery. McDougall had already applied for "coarse blue cloth," with
which to clothe in a semblance of uniform those who already had
enlisted, and Hamilton took even better care of them. On May 26th he
wrote a brief, pointed, and almost peremptory letter to the Congress,
representing the injustice of paying his men less than the wages
received by the Continental artillery, adding that there were many marks
of discontent in his ranks, and that in the circumstances it was
impossible for him to get any more recruits. "On this account I should
wish to be immediately authorized to offer the same pay to all who may
be inclined to recruit," he wrote. He then went on to demand ten
shillings a head for every man he should be able to enlist, and that
each man of his company be allowed a frock as a bounty.

Congress passed a resolution as soon as the letter was read, granting
him all he asked for, but limiting his company to one hundred men. When
it was recruited to his satisfaction, it numbered ninety-one, exclusive
of himself and his four officers. Besides his Captain-Lieutenant, and
first, second, and third Lieutenants, he had three sergeants, three
corporals, six bombardiers, three gunners, two drummers, two fifers, a
barber, and seventy-one matrosses, or assistant gunners.

He had his troubles, and Congress came to the rescue whenever it
received one of his singularly unboyish letters, expressed, moreover,
with little more diffidence than if he had been Commander-in-chief. But
he knew what he wanted, and he never transcended courtesy; he was
evidently a favourite with the Congress. On July 26th he wrote demanding
a third more rations for his men, and on the 31st a resolution was
passed which marked an end to the disposition to keep his little company
on a level with the militia rather than with the regular army.
Thereafter he had no further complaints to carry to headquarters; but he
was annoyed to discover that one of his officers was a hard drinker, and
that the Lieutenant Johnson who had recruited the larger number of his
men before he assumed command, had disobeyed orders and enlisted them
for a year instead of for the term of war.

Meanwhile, although the very air quivered and every man went armed to
the teeth, if a war-ship fired a gun the streets were immediately filled
with white affrighted faces; and although redoubts were building day and
night, still Congress came out with no declaration, and the country
seemed all nerves and no muscle. The English fleet arrived and filled
the bay,--a beautiful but alarming sight. Washington came and made New
York his headquarters, called for more troops, and Brooklyn Heights were
fortified, lest the English land on Long Island and make an easy descent
on the city.

It is doubtful if the Americans have ever appreciated all they owe to
Lord Howe. He sat out in the harbour day after day, while they completed
their preparations, practically waiting until they announced themselves
ready to fight. But no man ever went to the wars with less heart for his
work, and he put off the ugly business of mowing down a people he
admired, hoping from day to day for an inspired compromise. It was not
until after the Declaration of Independence by the Congress, the wild
enthusiasm it excited throughout the colonies, and the repeated
declination of Washington to confer with Howe as a private citizen, that
our Chief received word the British Commander was landing troops on Long
Island, near Gravesend.

Several thousand troops were ordered across to reinforce the Brooklyn
regiments, and Hamilton's artillery was among them. He stood up in his
boat and stared eagerly at the distant ridge of hills, behind which some
twenty thousand British were lying on their arms with their usual easy
disregard of time, faint, perhaps, under the torrid sun of August. But
they were magnificently disciplined and officered, and nothing in
history had rivalled the rawness and stubborn ignorance of the American
troops. Hamilton had not then met Washington, but he knew from common
friends that the Chief was worried and disgusted by what he had seen
when inspecting the Brooklyn troops the day before. Greene, second only
to Washington in ability, who had been in charge of the Brooklyn
contingent, knowing every inch of the ground, was suddenly ill. Putnam
was in command, and the Chief was justified in his doubt of him, for
nothing in the mistakes of the Revolution exceeded his carelessness and
his errors of judgement during the battle of Long Island.

There were still two days of chafing inactivity, except in the matter of
strengthening fortifications, then, beginning with dawn of the 28th,
Hamilton had his baptism of fire in one of the bloodiest battlefields of
the Revolution.

The Americans were outgeneralled and outnumbered. Their attention was
distracted by land and water, while a British detachment, ten thousand
strong, crept over the ridge of hills by night, and through the Bedford
Pass, overpowering the guards before their approach was suspected. At
dawn they poured down upon the American troops, surprising them, not in
one direction, but in flank, in rear, and in front. The green woods
swarmed with redcoats, and the Hessians acted with a brutality
demoralizing to raw troops. Hamilton's little company behaved well, and
he was in the thick of the fight all day. The dead were in heaps, the
beautiful green slopes were red, there was not a hope of victory, but he
exulted that the colonies were fighting at last, and that he was acting;
he had grown very tired of talking.

He was driven from his position finally, and lost his baggage and a
field-piece, but did not take refuge within the redoubts until
nightfall. There, in addition to fatigue, hunger, a bed on the wet
ground, and the atmosphere of hideous depression which pressed low upon
the new revolutionists, he learned that Troup had been taken prisoner.
Then he discovered the depths to which a mercurial nature could descend.
He had been fiercely alive all day; the roar of the battle, the plunging
horses, the quickening stench of the powder, that obsession by the devil
of battles which makes the tenderest kill hot and fast, all had made him
feel something more than himself, much as he had felt in the hurricane
when he had fancied himself on high among the Berserkers of the storm.
In his present collapse he felt as if he were in a hole underground.

Washington arrived on the scene next morning, and for forty-eight hours
he barely left the saddle, encouraging the wretched men and exercising
an unceasing vigilance. For two long days they were inactive in the
rain. The Chief, having assured himself that the British aimed to obtain
command of the river, determined upon the retreat which ranks as one of
the greatest military achievements in history. On the night of the 29th,
under cover of a heavy fog, the feat of embarking nine thousand men,
with all the ammunition and field-pieces of the army, and ferrying them
across the East River with muffled oars, was accomplished within earshot
of the enemy. Washington rode from regiment to regiment, superintending
and encouraging, finally taking his stand at the head of the ferry
stairs. He stood there until the last man had embarked at four in the
morning. The last man was Hamilton. His was one of the regiments, and
the rear one, detailed to cover the retreat, to attract fire to itself
if necessary. His position was on the Heights, just outside the
intrenchments, at the point closest to the enemy. For nine hours he
hardly moved, his ear straining for the first indication that the
British heard the soft splashing of bare feet in the mud. The fog was so
thick that he could see nothing, not even the battalions of retreating
Americans; the forms of his own men were vague and gray of outline. He
never had fancied an isolation so complete, but his nerves stood the
strain; when they began to mutter he reminded himself of Mr. Cruger's
store and St. Croix. There was a false summons, and after turning his
back upon his post with a feeling of profound relief, he was obliged to
return and endure it for two hours longer. Did the fog lift he would
never see another. It was dawn when a messenger came with the news that
his turn positively had come, and he marched his men down the slope to
the ferry stairs. He passed close enough to Washington to see his
dejected, haggard face.

On the 15th of the following month, after much correspondence with
Congress, discussion, and voting, it was determined to abandon New York
City, and intrench the army on the Heights of Harlem. Hamilton was
bitterly disappointed; he wanted to defend the city, and so had three
of the generals, but they were overruled, and the march began on a
blazing Sunday morning. It was not only the army that marched, but all
the inhabitants of the town who had not escaped to the Jersey shore. The
retreat was under the command of General Putnam, and guided through all
the intricacies of those thirteen winding miles by his aide-de-camp,
Aaron Burr. The last man in the procession was Alexander Hamilton.

"So, you're covering again, Alexander," said Fish, as he passed him on
his way to his own regiment,--the New York, of which he was
brigade-major. "You can't complain that your adopted country doesn't
make use of you. By the way, Troup is in the Jersey prison-ship, safe
and sound."

"Can't we exchange him?" asked Hamilton, eagerly, "Do you think General
Washington would listen to us?"

"If we have a victory. I shouldn't care to approach him at present. God!
This is an awful beginning. The whole army is ready to dig its own
grave. The only person of the lot who has any heart in him to-day is
little Burr. He's like to burst with importance because he leads and we
follow. He's a brave little chap, but such a bantam one must laugh.
Well, I hate to leave you here, the very last man to be made a target
of. You won't be rash?" he added anxiously.

"No, granny," said Hamilton, whose gaiety had revived as he heard of
Troup's safety. "And I'd not exchange my position for any."

"Good-by."

Handshakes in those days were solemn. Fish feared that he never should
see Hamilton again, and his fear was close to being realized.

It was a long, hot, dusty, miserable march; some lay down by the wayside
and died. Hamilton had been bred in the heat of the Tropics, but he had
ridden always, and to-day he was obliged to trudge the thirteen miles on
foot. He had managed to procure horses for his guns and caissons, but
none for himself and his officers.

It was on the Hoagland farm at the junction of the Kingsbridge and
Bloomingdale roads that a serious skirmish occurred, and Hamilton and
his men stood the brunt of it. The tired column was almost through the
pass, when a detachment of British light infantry suddenly appeared on
the right. Fortunately the cannon had not entered the pass, and were
ready for action. Hamilton opened fire at once. There was a sharp
engagement, but the British were finally driven off. Then the defenders
of the column made good their own retreat, for they knew that by now the
redcoats were swarming over the island.

Toward night a cold wind and rain swept in from the ocean. When the
little army finally reached Harlem Heights they were obliged to sleep on
the wet ground without so much as a tent to cover them, then arise at
dawn and dig trenches. But by night they were men again, they had ceased
to be dogged machines: the battle of Harlem Heights had been fought and
won. The British had begun the battle in the wrong place and at the
wrong time, and all the natural advantages of that land of precipices,
forests, gorges, wooded hills, and many ravines, were with the
Americans. Again Hamilton worked in the thick of the fight during the
four hours it lasted, but like everybody else he went to sleep happy.


XVIII

He rose at dawn the next morning, and rousing his men, set them at work
throwing up redoubts. He was standing some distance from them, watching
the sun rise over the great valley they had been forced to abandon, with
its woods and beautiful homes, now the quarters of British officers,
when every nerve in his body became intensely aware that some one was
standing behind him. He knew that it was a man of power before he
whirled round and saw Washington.

"This is Captain Hamilton?" said the Chief, holding out his hand.
"General Greene spoke to me, weeks ago, about you, but I have been in no
mood until to-day for amenities. I know of your part in the retreat
from Long Island, and I noticed you as you passed me on the ferry
stairs. What a lad you are! I am very proud of you."

"I had asked for no reward, sir," cried Hamilton, with a smile so
radiant that Washington's set face caught a momentary reflection from
it, and he moved a step nearer, "but I feel as if you had pinned an
order on my coat."

"I have heard a great deal more about you," said Washington, "and I want
to know you. Will you come up and have breakfast with me?"

"_Oh, yes, I will_," said Hamilton, with such seriousness that they both
laughed. Hamilton's personal pride was too great to permit him to feel
deeply flattered by the attentions of any one, but the halo about
Washington's head was already in process of formation; he stood aloft,
whether successful or defeated, a strong, lonely, splendid figure, and
he had fired Hamilton's imagination long since. At that time he was
ready to worship the great Chief with all a boy's high enthusiasm, and
although he came to know him too well to worship, he loved him, save at
intervals, always. As for Washington, he loved Hamilton then and there,
and it is doubtful if he ever loved any one else so well. When they were
alone he called him "my boy," an endearment he never gave another.

On that September morning they breakfasted together, and talked for
hours, beginning a friendship which was to be of the deepest
consequences to the country they both were striving to deliver.

During the following month Hamilton had much leisure, and he spent it in
the library of the Morris house, which its owner, a royalist, had
abandoned on the approach of the American troops, fleeing too hurriedly
to take his books. The house was now General Washington's headquarters,
and he invited Hamilton to make what use of the library he pleased. It
was a cool room, and he found there many of the books he had noted down
for future study. He also wrote out a synopsis of a political and
commercial history of Great Britain. As the proclivities and furnishing
of a mind like Hamilton's cannot fail to interest the students of
mankind, a digression may be pardoned in favour of this list of books
he made for future study, and of the notes scattered throughout his pay
book:--

     Smith's History of New York; Leonidas; View of the Universe;
     Millot's History of France; Memoirs of the House of Brandenburgh;
     Review of the Characters of the Principal Nations of Europe; Review
     of Europe; History of Prussia; History of France; Lassel's Voyage
     through Italy; Robertson's Charles V; Present State of Europe;
     Grecian History; Baretti's Travels; Bacon's Essays; Philosophical
     Transactions; Entick's History of the Late War; European
     Settlements in America; Winn's History of America.

     The Dutch in Greenland have from 150 to 200 sail and ten thousand
     seamen.... It is ordered that in their public prayers they pray
     that it should please God to bless the Government, the Lords, the
     States, and their great and small fisheries.

     Hamburg and Germany have a balance against England--they furnish
     her with large quantities of linen.

     Trade with France greatly against England.... The trade with
     Flanders in favour of England.... A large balance in favour of
     Norway and Denmark.

     Rates of Exchange with the several Nations in 52, viz.: To Venice,
     Genoa, Leghorn, Amsterdam, Hamburgh. To Paris--Loss, Gain.

     Postlethwaite supposes the quantity of cash necessary to carry on
     the circulation in a state one third of the rents to the land
     proprietors, or one ninth of the whole product of the lands. See
     the articles, Cash and Circulation.

     The par between land and labour is twice the quantity of land whose
     product will maintain the labourer. In France one acre and a half
     will maintain one. In England three, owing to the difference in the
     manner of living.

     Aristotle's Politics, chap. 6, definition of money, &c.

     The proportion of gold and silver, as settled by Sir Isaac Newton's
     proposition, was 1 to 14. It was generally through Europe 1 to 15.
     In China I believe it is 1 to 10.

     It is estimated that the labour of twenty-five persons, on an
     average, will maintain a hundred in all the necessaries of life.

     Postlethwaite, in his time, supposes six millions of people in
     England. The ratio of increase has been found by a variety of
     observations to be, that 100,000 people augment annually, one year
     with another to--. Mr. Kerseboom, agreeing with Dr. Halley, makes
     the number of people thirty-five times the number of births in a
     year.

     Extracts from Demosthenes' Orations.

     Philippic. "As a general marches at the head of his troops, so
     ought wise politicians, if I dare use the expression, to march at
     the head of affairs; insomuch that they ought not to wait _the
     event_, to know what measures to take; but the measures which they
     have taken ought to produce the _event_."

     "Where attack him? it will be said. Ah, Athenians--war, war, itself
     will discover to you his weak sides, if you will seek them."

     Sublimely simple. Vide Long. C. 16.

     Are the limits of the several states and the acts on which they are
     founded ascertained, and are our ministers provided with them? What
     intelligence has been given to Congress by our ministers of the
     designs, strength by sea and land, actual interests and views of
     the different powers in Europe?

     The government established (by Lycurgus) remained in vigour about
     five hundred years, till a thirst of empire tempted the Spartans to
     entertain foreign troops, and introduce Persian gold to maintain
     them; then the institutions of Lycurgus fell at once, and avarice
     and luxury succeeded.

     He (Numa) was a wise prince, and went a great way in civilizing the
     Romans. The chief engine he employed for this purpose was religion,
     which could alone have sufficient empire over the minds of a
     barbarous and warlike people to engage them to cultivate the arts
     of peace.

     Dr. Halley's Table of Observations exhibiting the probabilities of
     life; containing an account of the whole number of people of
     Breslau, capital of Silesia, and the number of those of every age,
     from one to a hundred. (Here follows the table with comments by
     A.H.)

     When the native money is worth more than the par in foreign,
     exchange is high; when worth less, it is low.

     Portugal trade--Spanish trade--Artificers--Money--Exchange--Par of
     exchange--Balance of
     trade--Manufactures--Foundry--Coin--Gold--Silver--Naval
     Power--Council of trade--Fishery.

     Money coined in England from the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

     Quere. Would it not be advisable to let all taxes, even those
     imposed by the States, be collected by persons of Congressional
     appointment; and would it not be advisable to pay the collectors so
     much per cent. on the sums collected?

Hamilton was nineteen at this time, and while there are many instances
of mental precocity in the history of mankind, it is doubtful if there
is a parallel case of so great a _range_ of intellectual curiosity, or
such versatility combined with pursuit of knowledge as distinct from
information. But the above notes are chiefly significant as showing that
long before he could have dreamed of directing the finances of the
United States, while he was wild with delight at the prospect of
military excitement and glory, a part of his mind was imperiously
attracted to the questions which were to become identified in American
history with his name.

Washington often came in and sat for an hour with him; and although they
talked military science and future campaigns invariably,--for
Washington was a man of little reading and his thoughts moved in a
constant procession to one tune,--this was perhaps the happiest period
of their intercourse. The Chief demanded nothing, and his young friend
was free to give or not, as he chose. In that interval nothing gave
Hamilton such pleasure as to see Washington come into the cool library,
his face softening.

"You have a streak of light in you that never goes out," said the man of
many burdens once. "When I catch a spark of it, I am cheered for the
rest of the day. When I am close to it for a time, I can feel the iron
lid on my spirits lifting as if it were on a bubbling pot. I believe you
are something more than human."

During the first of these conversations Hamilton suggested the
advisability of keeping up the spirits of the raw troops by drawing the
enemy in separate detachments into constant skirmishes, a plan in which
the Americans were sure to have every advantage; and this policy was
pursued until Washington fell back into Westchester County.

The American troops under Washington numbered about nineteen thousand
men, in one-third of whom the Chief felt something like confidence. Many
were grumbling at the prospect of a winter in the discomforts of camp
life; others were rejoicing that their time of service drew to a close;
all were raw. Nevertheless, he determined to give the British battle on
the shore of the Bronx River, where they were camped with the intention
of cutting him off from the rest of the country.

Both armies were near White Plains on the morning of the 28th of
October. Most of the Americans were behind the breastworks they had
thrown up, and the British were upon the hills below, on the opposite
side of the Bronx. On the American side of the stream was an eminence
called Chatterton's Hill, and on the evening of the 27th Colonel Haslet
was stationed on this height, with sixteen hundred men, in order to
prevent the enfilading of the right wing of the army. Early the next
morning McDougall was ordered to reinforce Haslet with a small corps
and two pieces of artillery under Hamilton, and to assume general
command.

At ten o'clock the British army began its march toward the village, but
before they reached it, Howe determined that Chatterton's Hill should be
the first point of attack, and four thousand troops under Leslie moved
off to dislodge the formidable looking force on the height.

Hamilton placed his two guns in battery on a rocky ledge about halfway
down the hill, and bearing directly upon that part of the Bronx which
the British were approaching. He was screened from the enemy by a small
grove of trees. The Hessians, who were in the lead, refused to wade the
swollen stream, and the onslaught was checked that a bridge might
hastily be thrown together for their accommodation. Hamilton waited a
half-hour, then poured out his fire. The bridge was struck, the workmen
killed, the Hessians fell back in a panic. Leslie appealed to the
loyalty of the British, forded the river at another point, and rushed up
the hill with bayonets fixed, resolved to capture the guns. But the guns
flashed with extraordinary rapidity. Both the British and the watching
Americans were amazed. There were no tin canisters and grape-shot in the
American army, even the round shot were exhausted. Loading cannon with
musket balls was a slow process; but Hamilton was never without
resource. He stood the cannon on end, filled his three-cornered hat with
the balls, and loaded as rapidly as had he leaped a century. His guns
mowed down the British in such numbers that Leslie fell back, and
joining the Hessian grenadiers and infantry, who had now crossed the
stream, charged up the southwestern declivity of the hill and
endeavoured to turn McDougall's right flank. McDougall's advance opposed
them hotly, while slowly retreating toward the crown of the eminence.
The British cavalry attacked the American militia on the extreme right,
and the raw troops fled ignominiously. McDougall, with only six hundred
men and Hamilton's two guns, sustained an unequal conflict for an hour,
twice repulsing the British light infantry and cavalry. But the attack
on his flank compelled him to give way and retreat toward the
intrenchments. Under cover of a heavy rainstorm and of troops despatched
in haste, he retreated in good order with his wounded and artillery,
leaving the victors in possession of a few inconsiderable breastworks.

Fort Washington was betrayed, and fell on the 16th of November. Then
began that miserable retreat of the American army through the Jerseys,
with the British sometimes in full pursuit, sometimes merely camping on
the trail of the hapless revolutionists. For Washington's force was now
reduced to thirty-five hundred, and they were ragged, half fed, and
wretched in mind and body. Many had no shoes, and in one regiment there
was not a pair of trousers. They left the moment their leave expired,
and recruits were drummed up with great difficulty. Washington was
obliged to write eight times to General Lee, who was at North Castle
with a considerable force, before he was able to hope for relief in that
quarter.

Hamilton had a horse at times, at others not. But his vitality was proof
against even those endless days and nights of marching and
countermarching, through forests and swamps, in the worst of late autumn
and winter weather; and he kept up the spirits of his little regiment,
now reduced from bullets, exposure, and the expiration of service to
thirty men. Nevertheless, he held the British in check at the Raritan
River while the Americans destroyed the bridge, and when Washington,
after having crossed the Delaware, determined to recross it on Christmas
night and storm Trenton, he was one of the first to be chosen, with what
remained of his men and guns.

As they crossed the Delaware that bitter night, the snow stinging and
blinding, the river choked with blocks of ice, Hamilton for the first
time thought on St. Croix with a pang of envy. But it was the night for
their purpose, and all the world knows the result. The victory was
followed on the 3d of January by the capture of Princeton; and here
Hamilton's active military career came to an end for the present.

     Well do I recollect the day [wrote a contemporary] when Hamilton's
     company marched into Princeton. It was a model of discipline. At
     their head was a boy, and I wondered at his youth; but what was my
     surprise, when, struck with his slight figure, he was pointed out
     to me as that Hamilton of whom we had heard so much.

     I noticed [a veteran officer said many years after] a youth, a mere
     stripling, small, slender, almost delicate in frame, marching
     beside a piece of artillery, with a cocked hat pulled down over his
     eyes, apparently lost in thought; with his hand resting on a
     cannon, and every now and again patting it as if it were a
     favourite horse or a pet plaything.




BOOK III

THE LITTLE LION

I

Hamilton's body succumbed to the climax of Trenton and Princeton upon
months of hardship and exposure, and he was in hospital for a week with
a rheumatic fever. But Troup, whose exchange had been effected, was with
him most of the time, and his convalescence was made agreeable by many
charming women. He was not the only brilliant young man in the army, for
Troup, Fish, Burr, Marshall, were within a few months or, at most, a
year or two of his age, and there were many others; men had matured
early in that hot period before the Revolution, when small boys talked
politics, and even the women thought of little else; but Hamilton,
through no fault of his, had inspired his friends with the belief that
he was something higher than human, and they never tired of sounding his
praises. Moreover, Washington had not hesitated to say what he thought
of him, and the mere fact that he had won the affection of that austere
Chieftain was enough to give him celebrity. At all events, he was a
dazzling figure, and pretty women soothed many a weary hour. As for
Troup, who was unpleasantly anatomical, he had a fresh story for every
day of the horrors of the prison cattle-ship _Mentor_, where half the
prisoners had died of filth, starvation, and fever, from putrid water
and brutal treatment.

But never was there a more impatient invalid than Hamilton. He was
astonished and disgusted that his body should defy his mind, and at the
first moment possible he was up and about his duties with the army at
Morristown. Troup was ordered to join the army under Gates in the North.

Morristown was a natural fortress, a large fertile valley, protected by
precipitous hills and forests, yet with defiles known to the Americans,
through which they could retreat if necessary. It was within striking
distance of New Brunswick and Amboy, in which towns Washington kept the
British cooped up for months, not permitting them to cut a stick of
forest wood without fighting for it. "Here was seen," to quote Hamilton,
"the spectacle of a powerful army straitened within narrow limits by the
phantom of a military force, and never permitted to transgress those
limits with impunity; in which skill supplied the place of means, and
disposition was the substitute for an army."

Congress had invested Washington with such extraordinary powers after
the brilliant exploit at Trenton, that in Europe he was called "The
Dictator of America." Therein lay the sole cause of the ultimate victory
of the Revolutionists, and had the States been more generous, and less
jealous of delegating powers to Congress, he would have driven out the
British in short order.

Mrs. Washington had joined her General--she kept an eye on him--at
Freeman's Tavern, which had been converted into comfortable
headquarters, and he was happy in his military family: Colonel Harrison,
indefatigable and fearless, affectionately known as "Old Secretary";
Tench Tilghman of Maryland, young, accomplished, cheerful, devoted to
Washington and serving without pay, for his fortune was considerable;
Richard Kidder Meade, sprightly, enthusiastic, always willing to slave;
and John Fitzgerald,--all in an attitude of perpetual adoration. But he
lacked a secretary of the requisite ability, and as soon as he heard of
Hamilton's return to camp he sent for him.

Hamilton was feeling almost well, and he walked rapidly across the
village green to headquarters, delighted at the prospect of seeing
Washington again. He had acquired a military air and walked more erectly
than ever, for he was somewhat sensitive of his juvenile appearance. He
found Washington in a front room on the second floor. The General wore
his usual blue and buff, and looked less harassed and worn than when he
had last seen him. He rose and shook hands warmly with Hamilton, who
thanked him again for the messages he had received while in hospital.

"I would have had you brought here if there had been any place to make
you comfortable; and I am going to ask you to come and live with me
now--as my aide and secretary."

Hamilton sprang to his feet impetuously. "Oh, sir!" he exclaimed, "I
don't want to leave the regular line of promotion! I don't want to leave
my men. I'm much attached to them. And I'll not deny my ambition, sir; I
want opportunities to distinguish myself. I've already refused two
generals. This war will last for years. There is no reason in the world
why I should not be a general in three."

"No," said Washington, "there is none; there is every possibility of
your becoming one of the most brilliant figures on the revolutionary
battlefields. I admit that, and I understand your ambition.
Nevertheless, I think I can prove to you that there is another way in
which you can serve your country better. I know your uncompromising
sense of duty and your high patriotism, and I am sure you will accept my
invitation when I prove to you that while there are hundreds to fight
valorously, even brilliantly, there is scarcely a man I can get to write
my letters who can do more than punctuate properly or turn a sentence
neatly. You must know the inexpressible value of a brilliant
accomplished versatile secretary, with a brain capable of grasping every
question that arises--and you can imagine how many of that sort have
come my way. I have been driven nearly distracted, dictating,
explaining, revising--when I have so much else to think of. Besides the
constant correspondence with the Congress and the States, something else
is always turning up--to-day it is the exchange of prisoners, a most
important and delicate matter. Were you my secretary, you would also be
my brain: a word would be sufficient. I could trust you so implicitly
that if matters pressed I could confidently sign my name to whatever you
wrote without reading it over. There is no one else living of whom I can
say that. You are the most useful young man in America, and if you will
give your great brain to this country from this time on, she will be far
more grateful to you than if you merely continued to fight, splendidly
as you have done that. And _I_ need you--I have no words to tell you how
much."

"Sir," said Hamilton, deeply touched, "no human being could withstand
such an appeal, and your words of praise are glory enough. I will come
as soon as you say, and do the best I can."

"Come at once. The British persist in treating us as rebels. It is for
you, with your inspired pen, to force and coax them to regard us with
the respect an educated thinking people--not a horde of ignorant rebels,
as they imagine--deserve. If you do that, you will do a greater service
to your country than if you rose to be first in military rank. Here are
some notes. When you have finished, write to Congress and ask for the
rank of Lieutenant-Colonel; and move up here to-day, if possible. I
cannot tell you how happy I shall be to have you a member of my family."

Washington had won his point. A shrewd judge of men, he had calculated
upon Hamilton succumbing to an appeal to his sense of patriotic
duty--the strongest passion in his passionate nature. Much as he loved
Hamilton, he had no hesitation in using him, and our petted young hero
was to learn what work meant for the first time in his life. He wrote
most of the day, often half the night; but although he chafed angrily at
the confinement, beat many a tattoo on the floor with his heels, and
went for a hard ride more than once that he might keep his temper, the
result was that mass of correspondence, signed "George Washington,"
which raised the commander of the American forces so high in the
estimation of Europe, adding to his military renown the splendour of a
profound and luminous intellect.

There was, also, some correspondence with the Congress regarding the
disposition of his artillery men. He insisted upon definite provision
for them, and they were permitted to enlist in the Continental Army.
They loved him, and the final parting on March 18th, with cannon as
well as men!--made him ill for half a day.

Otherwise his life at Headquarters was very pleasant Tilghman and Meade
became two of the most congenial friends he ever made. The tavern was
comfortable, and he had a room to himself for a time. The dining room
reunions were agreeable in spite of their formality. Besides the amiable
military family, and the most motherly of women, who knit him stockings
and kept his wardrobe in order, there were frequent visitors. The
Livingston girls were spending the winter with their aunt, Lady
Sterling, and, with their beautiful cousin, the Lady Kitty Alexander,
often drove over to a five o'clock dinner or the more informal supper.
The Boudinots and Morgans, the generals in camp at Morristown and their
wives, and the more distinguished officers, were frequently dined at
Headquarters. Washington sat halfway in the table's length, with Mrs.
Washington opposite. Hamilton was placed at the head of the table on the
day of his arrival, a seat he retained while a member of the family. The
Chief encouraged him to talk, and it must be confessed that he talked
from the time he sat down till the meal finished. His ideas were always
on the rush, and talking was merely thinking aloud. As he expressed
himself with wit and elegance, and on subjects which interested them all
profoundly, illuminating everything he touched, old men and young would
lean forward and listen with respect to the wisdom of a young man who
was yet an infant in the eyes of the law. How he escaped being
insufferably spoiled can only be explained by the ceaseless activity of
his brain, and the fact that the essence of which prigs are made was not
in him. That he was utterly without commonplace conceit is indisputable,
for he was the idol of the family. Harrison christened him "The Little
Lion," a name his friends used for their aptest designation as long as
he lived, and assumed a paternal relation which finished only with the
older man's death. The Lady-in-chief made such a pet of him that he was
referred to in the irreverent Tory press as "Mrs. Washington's
Tom-cat."

"Alexander," said Kitty Livingston to him, one day, "have a care. You
are too fortunate. The jealous gods will smite you."

But Hamilton, thinking of those terrible months in the previous year, of
mental anxiety and physical hardship, when, in bitter weather, he had
often gone hungry and insufficiently clothed, and of his present arduous
duties, concluded there was a fine balance in his affairs which
doubtless would placate the gods.


II

In May and July there were illustrious additions to Washington's
family,--John Laurens and Lafayette. Both became the intimate friends of
Hamilton, the former one of the few passionate attachments of his life.
Although Hamilton was by no means indifferent to the affection he
inspired in nine-tenths of the people he met, he did not himself love
easily. He was too analytical, he saw people too precisely as they were,
and his acquaintance with human nature had made him too cynical to
permit the flood gates of his affections to open except under uncommon
stress. He dreaded disappointment. For Troup, Fish, Stevens, Meade, and
Tilghman he had a deep affection and served their interests ardently;
for Washington a contradictory budget of emotions, which were sometimes
to be headed "respectful affection," at others "irritated resentment,"
now and again a moment of adoration. While he could not pay sufficient
tribute to Washington's magnanimity and generosity, he had by now seen
him in too many tempers, had been ground too fine in his greedy machine,
to think on him always with unqualified enthusiasm. Lafayette,
brilliant, volatile, accomplished, bubbling with enthusiasm for the
cause of Liberty, and his own age within a few months, he liked
sincerely and always. There was no end to the favours he did him, and
Lafayette loved no one better in his long and various career. Women,
Hamilton fancied sharply and forgot quickly.

But Laurens, the "young Bayard of the Revolution," fresh from the
colleges and courts of Europe, a man so handsome that, we are told,
people experienced a certain shock when he entered the room, courtly,
accomplished to the highest degree, of flawless character, with a mind
as noble and elevated as it was intellectual, and burning with the most
elevated patriotism,--he took Hamilton by storm, capturing judgement as
well as heart, and loving him as ardently in return.

Like Hamilton, Laurens was of Huguenot descent; he was born in South
Carolina, of a distinguished family. Against the expressed wish of his
father he had returned to America, made his way to Headquarters and
offered his services to Washington, who immediately attached him to his
military household. The unhappiest of men, praying for death on every
battlefield, he lived long enough to distinguish himself by a bravery so
reckless, by such startling heroic feats, that he was, beyond all
question, the popular young hero of the Revolution. He worshipped
Washington as one might worship a demi-god, and risked his life for him
on two occasions. But Hamilton was the friend of his life; the bond
between them was romantic and chivalrous. Each burned to prove the
strength of his affection, to sacrifice himself for the other. Laurens
slaved at Washington's less important correspondence, and Hamilton's
turn came later. The age has passed for such friendships; but at that
time, when young men were nurtured on great ideas, when they were
sacrificing themselves in a sacred cause, and had seen next to nothing
of the frivolities of life, they were understandable enough.

Hamilton was obliged to share his room with both the young men, and they
slept on three little cots in a small space. When the nights were
insufferably hot they would go out and lie on the grass and talk until
they were in a condition to sleep anywhere. Hamilton would forecast the
next movement of the enemy; Laurens and Lafayette would tell all they
knew about military science in Europe; and then they would discuss the
future of the liberated country and the great ideals which must govern
her. And when men can be idealistic while fighting the Jersey mosquito,
it must be admitted that they are of the stuff to serve their country
well.

But all this delightful intercourse was interrupted in August.
Washington gave battle to the British at Brandywine, was defeated, and
in the following month surprised them at Germantown, and was defeated
again. Nevertheless, he had astonished the enemy with his strength and
courage so soon after a disastrous battle. To hold Philadelphia was
impossible, however, and the British established themselves in the
Capital of the colonies, making, as usual, no attempt to follow up their
victories.

Washington went into temporary quarters near the village of Whitemarsh.
His own were in a baronial hall at the head of a beautiful valley. Old
trees shaded the house, and a spring of pure water bubbled in a fountain
before the door. The men were encamped on the hills at the north.

There was a great hall through the centre of the mansion, and here
Washington held his audiences and councils of war. The house throughout
was of extreme elegance, and much to the taste of the younger members of
the family, particularly of Hamilton, who spent the greater part of his
leisure in the library. But his enjoyment of this uncommon luxury was
brief.

Washington must have reinforcements or his next engagement might be his
last. There was but one source from which he could obtain a considerable
supply, and that was from the army of Gates in the North. But Gates was
swollen with the victory of Saratoga and the capture of Burgoyne, and
was suspected to be in the thick of an intrigue to dethrone Washington
and have himself proclaimed Commander-in-chief. At the moment he was the
idol of the army, and of the northern and eastern States, for his
victories were tangible and brilliant, while Washington's surer
processes were little appreciated. Therefore to get troops from him
would be little less difficult than to get them from Lord Howe, short of
a positive command, and this prerogative Washington did not think it
politic to use. He called a council of war, and when it was over he
went to his private office and sent for Alexander Hamilton.

He looked haggard, as if from sleepless nights, and for a moment after
Hamilton entered the room, although he waved his hand at a chair, he
stared at him without speaking. Hamilton divined what was coming--he
attended all councils of war--and sat forward eagerly. The prospect of a
holiday from clerical work would alone have filled him with youth, and
he knew how great a service he might be able to render the cowering
Republic.

"Hamilton," said Washington, finally, "you are as much in my secret
thoughts as I am myself. If I attempted to deceive you, you would divine
what I withheld. It is a relief to speak frankly to you, I dare not
demand these troops from Gates, because there is more than a possibility
he would defy me, and that the Congress and a large part of the army
would sustain him. He has given sufficient evidence of his temper in
sending me no official notice of the battle of Saratoga. But unless I am
to meet with overwhelming disaster here, I must have reinforcements. It
may be possible to extract these by diplomacy, and I have selected you
for the mission, because I feel sure that you will not forget the issues
at stake for a moment, because you never lose your head, and because you
will neither be overawed by Gates's immediate splendour, nor will you
have any young desire to assert the authority which I give you as a last
resort. There is another point: If you find that Gates purposes to
employ his troops on some expedition, by the prosecution of which the
common cause will be more benefited than by their being sent down to
reinforce this army, you must suspend your consideration for me. God
knows I am tender of my reputation, and I have no wish to be disgraced,
but we are or should be fighting for a common cause and principle, and
should have little thought of individual glory. However, I do not
believe in the disinterestedness of Gates, nor in his efficiency on a
large scale. But I leave everything in your hands."

Hamilton stood up, his chest rising, and stared at his Chief.

"Sir," he said, after a moment, "do you appreciate that you are placing
your good name and your future in my hands?" For a moment he realized
that he was not yet of age.

"You are the only being to whom I can confide them, and who can save
this terrible situation."

"And you have the magnanimity to say that if Gates has a chance of other
victories to let him go unhindered?" He had one of his moments of
adoration and self-abnegation for this man, whose particular virtues, so
little called upon in ordinary affairs, gave him so lonely a place among
men.

Washington jerked his head. There was nothing more to say. Hamilton's
head dropped for a moment, as if he felt the weight of an iron helmet,
and his lips moved rapidly.

"Are you saying your prayers when your lips work like that?" asked
Washington, crossly.

Hamilton threw back his head with a gay laugh. His eyes were sparkling,
his nostrils dilating; his whole bearing was imperious and triumphant.
"Never mind that. I'll undertake this mission gladly, sir, and I think
I'll not fail. My old friend Troup is his aide. He will advise me of
many things. I'll bring you back those regiments, sir. One way or
another a thing can always be managed."

The light in Hamilton's face was reflected on Washington's. "You are my
good genius," he said shortly. "Take care of yourself. You will have to
ride hard, for there is no time to lose, but be careful not to take
cold. I shall give you orders in writing. Come back as soon as you can.
I believe I am not lacking in courage, but I always have most when you
are close by."

There is a print somewhere representing Hamilton setting forth on this
mission. He is mounted on a handsome white horse, and wears a long green
cloak, one end thrown over a shoulder. His three-cornered hat is pulled
low over his eyes. In the rear is an orderly.

He started on the 30th of October, riding hard through the torn desolate
country, toward Newburg on the Hudson. He was three days making the
distance, although he snatched but a few hours' rest at night, and but
a few moments for each meal. From Newburg he crossed to Fishkill and,
acting on his general instructions, ordered Putnam to despatch southward
three brigades; and on his own account despatched seven hundred Jersey
militia on the same expedition.

He then started hot and hard for Albany, a dangerous as well as
exhausting journey, for neither savage tribes nor redcoats could be far
in the distance. His mental anxiety by now wore as severely as the
physical strain. None knew better than he that his talents were not for
diplomacy. He was too impatient, too imperious, too direct for its
sinuous methods. On the other hand, he had a theory that a first-rate
mind could, for a given time, be bent in any direction the will
commanded, and he had acquired an admirable command of his temper. But
the responsibility was terrific, and he was half ill when he reached
Albany. He presented himself at General Gates's headquarters at once.

Gates, like Lee, was a soldier of fortune; and low-born, vain, weak, and
insanely ambitious. He had been advised of Hamilton's coming, and had no
intention of giving Washington an opportunity to rival his own
achievements and reëstablish himself with the army and the Congress. He
received Hamilton surrounded by several of his military family; and for
the first time our fortunate hero encountered in high places active
enmity and dislike. He had incurred widespread jealousy on account of
his influence over Washington, and for the important part he was playing
in national affairs. To the enemies of the Commander-in-chief he
represented that exalted personage, and was particularly obnoxious.
Never was a youth in a more difficult position.

"I cannot expose the finest arsenal in America," said Gates, pompously,
"to the possibility of destruction. Sir Henry Clinton may return at any
minute. Nor could I enterprise against Ticonderoga were my army
depleted. Nor can I leave the New England States open to the ravages and
the depredations of the enemy."

These statements made no impression on Hamilton, and he argued
brilliantly and convincingly for his object, but Gates was inflexible.
He would send one brigade and no more.

Hamilton retired, uneasy and dejected. Gates had an air of omnipotence,
and his officers had not concealed their scorn. He hesitated to use his
authority, for a bold defiance on the part of Gates might mean the
downfall of Washington, perhaps of the American cause. That Washington
was practically the American army, Hamilton firmly believed. If he fell,
it was more than likely that the whole tottering structure would
crumble.

Another reason inclined him not to press Gates too far. He had been able
to order seventy-seven hundred troops from Fishkill, which was more than
Washington had expected, although by no means so many as he needed. He
therefore wrote to the Chief at length, sent for Troup, and threw
himself on the bed; he was well-nigh worn out.

Troup was already in search of him, and met the messenger. Big and
bronzed, bursting with spirits, he seemed to electrify the very air of
the room he burst into without ceremony. Hamilton sat up and poured out
his troubles.

"You have an affinity for posts of danger," said Troup. "I believe you
to be walking over a powder-mine here. I am not in their confidence, for
they know what I think of Washington, but I believe there is a cabal on
foot, and that Gates may be in open rebellion any minute. But he's a
coward and a bully. Treat him as such. Press your point and get your
troops. He is but the tool of a faction, and I doubt if they could make
him act when it came to the point. He wants to make another grand coup
before striking. Look well into what regiment he gives you. Which are
you to have?"

"General Patterson's."

"I thought as much. It is the weakest of the three now here, consists of
but about six hundred rank and file fit for duty. There are two hundred
militia with it, whose time of service is so near expiring that they
will have dissolved ere you reach Headquarters."

Hamilton had sprung to his feet in a fury. He forgot his pains, and let
his temper fly with satisfaction in the exercise. "If that is the case,"
he cried, when he had finished his anathema of Gates, "I'll have the
men;" and he dashed at his writing materials. But he threw his pen aside
in a moment. "I'll wait till to-morrow for this. I must be master of
myself. Tell me of Saratoga. You distinguished yourself mightily, and no
one was more glad than I."

Troup talked while Hamilton rested. That evening he took him to call at
the Schuyler mansion, high on the hill.

Philip Schuyler was the great feudal lord of the North. He had served
the colonial cause in many ways, and at the outbreak of the Revolution
had been one of its hopes and props. But brilliant as his exploits had
been, the intrigues of Gates, after the fall of Ticonderoga, had been
successful, and he was deprived of the army of the North before the
battle of Saratoga. The day of exoneration came, but at present he was
living quietly at home, without bitterness. A man of the most exalted
character, he drew added strength from adversity, to be placed at the
service of the country the moment it was demanded. Mrs. Schuyler,
herself a great-granddaughter of the first patroon, Killian Van
Rensselaer, was a woman of strong character, an embodied type of all the
virtues of the Dutch pioneer housewife. She had a lively and turbulent
family of daughters, however, and did not pretend to manage them. The
spirit of our age is feeble and bourgeois when compared with the
independence and romantic temper of the stormy days of this Republic's
birth. Liberty was in the air; there was no talk but of freedom and
execration of tyrants; young officers had the run of every house, and
Clarissa Harlowe was the model for romantic young "females." Angelica
Schuyler, shortly before the battle of Saratoga, had run off with John
Barker Church, a young Englishman of distinguished connections, at
present masquerading under the name of Carter; a presumably fatal duel
having driven him from England. Subsequently, both Peggy and Cornelia
Schuyler climbed out of windows and eloped in a chaise and four,
although there was not an obstacle worth mentioning to union with the
youths of their choice. It will shock many good mothers of the present
day to learn that all these marriages were not only happy, but set with
the brilliance of wealth and fashion. When Hamilton was introduced to
the famous white hall of the Schuyler mansion on the hill, Cornelia and
Peggy were still free in all but fancy; Elizabeth, by far the best
behaved, was the hope of Mrs. Schuyler's well-regulated soul and one of
the belles of the Revolution. Hamilton was enchanted with her, although
his mind was too weighted for love. Her spirits were as high as his own,
and they talked and laughed until midnight as gaily as were Gates's army
marching south. But Hamilton was a philosopher; nothing could be done
before the morrow; he might as well be happy and forget. He had met many
clever and accomplished American women by this, and Lady Kitty Alexander
and Kitty and Susan Livingston were brilliant. He had also met Angelica
Church, or Mrs. Carter, as she was called, one of the cleverest and most
high-spirited women of her time. It had crossed his mind that had she
been free, he might have made a bold dash for so fascinating a creature,
but it seemed to him to-night that on the whole he preferred her sister.
"Betsey" Schuyler had been given every advantage of education,
accomplishment, and constant intercourse with the best society in the
land. She had skill and tact in the management of guests, and without;
being by any means a woman of brilliant parts, understood the questions
of the day; her brain was informed with shrewd common sense. Hamilton
concluded that she was quite clever enough, and was delighted with her
beauty, her charm of manner, and style. Her little figure was graceful
and distinguished, her complexion the honey and claret that artists
extol, and she had a pair of big black eyes which were alternately
roguish, modest, tender, sympathetic; there were times when they were
very lively, and even suggested a temper. She was bright without
attempting to be witty, but that she was deeply appreciative of wit
Hamilton had soothing cause to know. And he had learned from the
admiring Troup that she was as intrepid as she was wholly and daintily
feminine. Altogether, Hamilton's fate was sealed when he bent over her
hand that night, although he was far from suspecting it, so heavily did
duty press the moment he was alone in his rooms.

On the following morning he asked for an interview with General Schuyler
and several other military men whom he knew to be friendly to
Washington, and they confirmed the advice of Troup. In the afternoon he
wrote to Gates a letter that was peremptory, although dignified and
circumspect, demanding the addition of a superior brigade. He expressed
his indignation in no measured terms, and in more guarded phrases his
opinion of the flimsiness of the victorious General's arguments. Gates
sent the troops at once, and despatched a volume of explanation to
Washington.

Hamilton set out immediately for New Windsor, Troup bearing him company
the greater part of the way, for he was feeling very ill. But he forgot
his ailments when he arrived. To his fury he discovered that not a
regiment had gone south. Two of the brigades, which had received no pay
for eight months, had mutinied, and he was obliged to ask Governor
Clinton to borrow $5000, with which to pay them off. He had the
satisfaction of despatching them, wrote a peremptory letter to Putnam,
who had other plans brewing, another to Gates, asking for further
reinforcements, then went to bed in Governor Clinton's house with fever
and rheumatism. But he wrote to Washington, apprising him of a scheme
among the officers of the northern department to recover the city of New
York, and denouncing Putnam in the most emphatic terms. Two days later
he recovered sufficiently to proceed to Fishkill, where he wrested
troops from Putnam, and ascertained that heavy British reinforcements
had gone from that neighbourhood to Howe. He wrote at once to
Washington, advising him of his peril, and endeavoured to push on; but
his delicate frame would stand no more, and on the 15th he went to bed
in Mr. Kennedy's house in Peekskill, with so violent an attack of
rheumatism that to his bitter disgust he was obliged to resign himself
to weeks of inactivity. But he had the satisfaction to receive a letter
from Washington approving all that he had done. And in truth he had
saved the situation, and Washington never forgot it.


III

Hamilton rejoined the army at Valley Forge and soon recovered his health
and spirits. It was well that the spirits revived, for no one else
during that terrible winter could lay claim to any. The Headquarters
were in a small valley, shut in by high hills white with snow and black
with trees that looked like iron. The troops were starving and freezing
and dying a mile away, muttering and cursing, but believing in
Washington. On a hill beyond the pass Lafayette was comfortable in
quarters of his own, but bored and fearing the worst. Laurens chafed at
the inaction; he would have had a battle a day. As the winter wore on,
the family succumbed to the depressing influence of unrelieved monotony
and dread of the future, and only Hamilton knew to what depths of
anxiety Washington could descend. But despair had no part in Hamilton's
creed. He had perfect faith in the future, and announced it
persistently. He assumed the mission of keeping the family in good
cheer, and they gave him little time for his studies. As for Washington,
even when Hamilton was not at his desk, he made every excuse to demand
his presence in the private office; and Hamilton in his prayers
humorously thanked his Almighty for the gift of a cheerful disposition.
It may be imagined what a relief it was when he and Laurens, Meade, or
Tilghman raced each other up the icy gorge to Lafayette's, where they
were often jollier the night through than even a cheerful disposition
would warrant. Hamilton, although he had not much of a voice, learned
one camp-song, "The Drum," and this he sang with such rollicking abandon
that it fetched an explosive sigh of relief from the gloomiest breast.

There were other duties from which Hamilton fled to the house on the
hill for solace. Valley Forge harboured a heterogeneous collection of
foreigners, whose enthusiasm had impelled them to offer swords and
influence to the American cause: Steuben, Du Portail, De Noailles,
Custine, Fleury, Du Plessis, the three brothers Armand, Ternant,
Pulaski, and Kosciusko. They had a thousand wants, a thousand
grievances, and as Washington would not be bothered by them, their daily
recourse was Hamilton, whom they adored. To him they could lament in
voluble French; he knew the exact consolation to administer to each, and
when it was advisable he laid their afflictions before Washington or the
Congress. They bored him not a little, but he sympathized with them in
their Cimmerian exile, and it was necessary to keep them in the country
for the sake of the moral effect. But he congratulated himself on his
capacity for work.

"I used to wish that a hurricane would come and blow Cruger's store to
Hell," he said one day to Laurens, "but I cannot be sufficiently
thankful for that experience now. It made me as methodical as a machine,
gave my brain a system without which I never could cope with this mass
of work. I have this past week dried the tears of seven Frenchmen,
persuaded Steuben that he is not Europe, nor yet General Washington, and
without too much offending him, written a voluminous letter to Gates
calculated to make him feel what a contemptible and traitorous ass he
is, yet giving him no chance to run, blubbering, with it to the
Congress, and official letters _ad nauseum_. I wish to God I were out of
it all, and about to ride into battle at the head of a company of my
own."

"And how many widows have you consoled?" asked Laurens. He was huddled
in his cot, trying to keep warm.

"None," said Hamilton, with some gloom. "I haven't spoken to a woman for
three weeks."

It was a standing joke at Headquarters that Washington always sent
Hamilton to console the widows. This he did with such sympathy and tact,
such address and energy, that his friends had occasionally been forced
to extricate him from complications. But it was an accomplishment in
which he excelled as long as he lived.

"The Chief will never let you go," pursued Laurens. "And as there is no
one to take your place, you really should not wish it. Washington may be
the army, but you are Washington's brain, and of quite as much
importance. You should never forget--"

"Come out and coast. That will warm your blood," interrupted Hamilton.
His own sense of duty was not to be surpassed, but he had rebellious
moods, when preaching suggested fisticuffs.

Outside they met a messenger from Lafayette, begging them to repair to
his quarters at once. There they found him entertaining a party of
charming women from a neighbouring estate; and a half-hour later the
dignity and fashion of Washington's family might have been seen coasting
down a steep hill with three Philadelphian exiles, who were as
accomplished in many ways as they were satisfying to look upon.

It was one of those days when a swift freeze has come with a rain-storm.
Hamilton had stood at the window of the office for an hour, early in the
day, biting the end of his quill, and watching the water change to ice
as it struck the naked trees, casing every branch until, when the sun
came out, the valley was surrounded by a diamond forest, the most
radiant and dazzling of winter sights. The sun was still out, its light
flashed back from a million facets, the ground was hard and white, the
keen cold air awoke the blood, and the three young men forgot their
grumblings, and blessed the sex which has alleviated man's burdens so
oft and well.


IV

In June the military ardours of this distinguished young trio were
gratified to the point of temporary exhaustion. The British evacuated
Philadelphia on the 18th, and proceeded up the Delaware in New Jersey.
Captain Allan McLane had, as early as May 25th, reported to Washington
the enemy's intention to change their quarters for New York, and
Washington's desire was to crush them by a decisive blow. At a council
of war, however, it was decided merely to hang upon the skirts of the
retreating army and avoid an engagement. Lee was aggressive, almost
insulting, in counselling inaction, Washington, much embarrassed, but
hesitating to ignore the decisions of the council, followed the enemy by
a circuitous route, until he reached the neighbourhood of Princeton. The
British were in and about Allentown. Washington called another council
of war, and urged the propriety of forcing an engagement before the
enemy could reach the Heights of Monmouth. Again Lee overruled, being
sustained by the less competent generals, who were in the majority. As
soon as the council broke up, Hamilton sought out General Greene and led
him aside, Greene was white and dejected, but Hamilton's face was hot,
and his eyes were flashing.

"I believe that Lee is in the pay of the British or the Conway Cabal,"
he exclaimed. "I've always believed him ready at any minute to turn
traitor. It's a pity he wasn't left to rot in prison. Washington must
fight. His honour is at stake. If he lets the British walk off while we
sit and whistle, his influence with the army will be gone, Europe will
have no more of him, the Conway Cabal will have the excuse it's been
watching at keyholes for, and Gates will be Commander-in-chief
to-morrow. Will you come with me and persuade him to fight?"

"Yes," said Greene. "And I believe he will. You are like a sudden cold
wind on an August day. Come on."

They walked rapidly toward Washington's tent. He was sitting on his
camp-stool, but rose as they approached.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I anticipate the object of your visit. You wish
me to fight."

"Yes!" exclaimed Hamilton. "As much as you wish it yourself. Why should
you regard the councils of the traitorous and the timorous, who, for
aught you know, may be in the pay of the Cabal? If the British retreat
unmolested, the American army is disgraced. If Congress undertake to
manage it, the whole cause will be lost, and the British will be
stronger far than when we took up arms--"

"Enough," said Washington. "We fight"

He ordered a detachment of one thousand men, under General Wayne, to
join the troops nearest the enemy. Lafayette was given the command of
all the advance troops--Lee sulkily retiring in his favour--which
amounted to about four thousand. Hamilton was ordered to accompany him
and reconnoitre, carry messages between the divisions, and keep
Washington informed of the movements of the enemy. There was but a
chance that he would be able to fight, but the part assigned to him was
not the least dangerous and important at Washington's disposal. The
Chief moved forward with the main body of the army to Cranbury.

Clinton had no desire to fight, being encumbered with a train of
baggage-wagons and bathorses, which with his troops made a line on the
highroad twelve miles long. It being evident that the Americans intended
to give battle, he encamped in a strong position near Monmouth
Court-house, protected on nearly all sides by woods and marshes. His
line extended on the right about a mile and a half beyond the
Court-house, and on the left, along the road toward Allentown, for about
three miles.

This disposition compelled Washington to increase the advance corps, and
he ordered Lee to join Lafayette with two brigades. As senior officer,
Lee assumed command of the whole division, under orders to make the
first attack. Both Lafayette and Hamilton were annoyed and apprehensive
at this arrangement. "Washington is the shrewdest of men in his
estimates until it is a matter of personal menace," said Hamilton, "and
then he is as trusting as a country wench with a plausible villain. I
thought we had delivered him from this scoundrel, and now he has
deliberately placed his fortunes in his hands again. Mark you, Lee will
serve us some trick before the battle is over."

Hamilton had been galloping back and forth night and day between
Lafayette's division and Headquarters, wherever they happened to be,
and reconnoitring constantly. The weather was intensely hot, the soil so
sandy that his horse often floundered. He had not had a full night's
sleep since Washington announced his decision to give battle, and he
would have been worn out, had he not been too absorbed and anxious to
retain any consciousness of his body. Early on the morning of the 28th,
a forward movement being observed on the part of the enemy, Washington
immediately put the army in motion and sent word to Lee to press forward
and attack.

Lee looked uglier and dirtier than usual, and the very seat of his
breeches scowled as he rode forward leisurely. In a few moments he
halted, word having been brought him that the main body of the British
was advancing.

"If we could but court-martial him on the spot," groaned Lafayette,
whose delicate boyish face was crumpled with anxiety.

"He meditates treason!" exclaimed Hamilton. "It is writ all over him."

Having ascertained that the rumour was false, Lee consented to move on
again, and the division entered the forest, their advance covered from
the British on the plains beyond. For a time Lee manoeuvred so cleverly
that Hamilton and Lafayette permitted themselves to hope. Under cover of
the forest he formed a portion of his line for action, and with Wayne,
Hamilton, and others, rode forward to reconnoitre. Concluding that the
column of the British deploying on the right was only a covering party
of two thousand, he manoeuvred to cut them off from the main army. Wayne
was detached with seven hundred men to attack the covering party in the
rear. Lee, with a stronger force, was to gain its front by a road to the
left. Small detachments were concealed in the woods. At nine o'clock,
the Queen's dragoons being observed upon an eminence near the wood, Lee
ordered his light-horse to decoy them to the point where Wayne was
posted. The dragoons appeared to fall into the trap, but upon being
attacked from the wood, galloped off toward the main column. Wayne
started in pursuit; his artillery was raking them, and he had ordered a
charge at the point of the bayonet, when, to his amazement, he received
an order from Lee to make but a feint of attack and pursuit. He had no
choice but to obey, brilliant as might be the victory wrested from him.
Lee, meanwhile, dawdled about, although his troops were on one foot with
impatience.

Suddenly Sir Henry Clinton, learning that the Americans were marching in
force on both his flanks, with the design of capturing his baggage,
changed the front of his army by facing about in order to attack Wayne
with such deadly fire that the enemy on his flanks would be obliged to
fly to the succour of that small detachment. Lafayette immediately saw
the opportunity for victory in the rear of the enemy, and rode up to Lee
asking permission to make the attempt.

Lee swung his loose head about and scowled at the ardent young
Frenchman. "Sir," he replied witheringly, "you do not know British
soldiers. We cannot stand against them. We certainly shall be driven
back at first. We must be cautious."

"It may be so, General," replied Lafayette, who would have given much to
see that head rolling on the sands; "but British soldiers have been
beaten, and they may be again. At any rate, I am disposed to make the
trial."

Lee shrugged his shoulders, but as Lafayette sat immovable, his clear
hazel eyes interrogating and astonished, he reluctantly gave the Marquis
the order to wheel his column to the right and attack the enemy's left.
He simultaneously weakened Wayne's detachment and went off to
reconnoitre. He afterward claimed that he saw what looked to be the
approach of the entire army, and he ordered his right to fall back. The
brigades of Scott and Maxwell on the left were already moving forward
and approaching the right of the Royal forces, when they received an
order from Lee to reënter the wood. At the same time an order was sent
to Lafayette to fall back to the Court-house. With a face as flaming as
his unpowdered head, he obeyed. Upon reaching the Court-house he learned
that a general retreat had begun on the right, under the immediate
command of Lee. He had no choice but to follow.

Hamilton, hardly crediting that his worst fears were realized in this
unwarranted retreat, galloped over to Lee and urged that possession be
taken of a neighbouring hill that commanded the plain on which the enemy
were advancing. But Lee protested violently that the Americans had not a
chance against that solid phalanx, and Hamilton, now convinced that he
meditated the disgrace of the American arms, galloped with all speed in
search of Washington.

The retreat, by this, was a panic. The troops fled like an army of
terrified rabbits, with that reversion to the simplicity of their dumb
ancestors which induces the suspicion that all the manly virtues are
artificial. In times of panic man seems to exchange his soul for a tail.
These wretches trampled each other into the shifting sand, and crowded
many more into the morass. The heat was terrific. They ran with their
tongues hanging out, and many dropped dead.

Washington heard of the retreat before Hamilton found him. He was
pushing on to Lee's relief when a country-man brought him word of the
disgraceful rout. Washington refused to credit the report and spurred
forward. Halfway between the meeting-house and the morass he met the
head of the first retreating column. He commanded it to halt at once,
before the panic be communicated to the main army; then made for Lee.
Lee saw him coming and braced himself for the shock. But it was a
greater man than Lee who could stand the shock of Washington's temper.
He was fearfully roused. The noble gravity of his face had disappeared.
It was convulsed with rage.

"Sir," he thundered, "I desire to know what is the reason of this?
Whence arises this confusion and disorder?"

"Sir--" stammered Lee, "sir--" He braced himself, and added impudently:
"I thought it best not to beard the enemy in such a situation. It was
contrary to my opinion--"

"_Your_ opinion!" And then the Chief undammed a torrent of profanity
Washingtonian in its grandeur.

He wheeled and galloped to the rallying of the troops. At this moment
Hamilton rode up. He had ridden through the engagement without a hat. It
seemed to him that he could hear the bubbling of his brain, that the
very air blazed, and that the end of all things had come. That day of
Monmouth ever remained in his memory as the most awful and hopeless of
his life. An ordinary defeat was nothing. But the American arms branded
with cowardice, Washington ignobly deposed, inefficient commanders
floundering for a few months before the Americans were become the
laughing-stock of Europe,--the whole vision was so hideous, and the day
so hopeless in the light of those cowardly hordes, that he galloped
through the rain of British bullets, praying for death; he had lost all
sense of separate existence from the shattered American cause. He did
not perceive that Washington had reached the column, and resolved to
make one more appeal to Lee, he rode up to that withered culprit and
exclaimed passionately:--

"I will stay with you, my dear General, and die with you! Let us all die
here, rather than retreat!"

Lee made no reply. His brain felt as if a hot blast had swept it.

"At least send a detachment to the succour of the artillery," said
Hamilton, with quick suspicion. And Lee ordered Colonel Livingston to
advance.

At the same moment some one told Hamilton that Washington was in the
rear, rallying the troops. He spurred his horse and found that the
General had rallied the regiments of Ramsay and Stewart, after a rebuke
under which they still trembled, and was ordering Oswald to hasten his
cannon to the eminence which his aide had suggested to Lee. Hamilton
himself was in time to intercept two retreating brigades. He succeeded
in rallying them, formed them along a fence at hand, and ordered them to
charge at the point of the bayonet. He placed himself at their head, and
they made a brilliant dash upon the enemy. But his part was soon over.
His horse was shot under him, and as he struck the ground he was
overcome by the shock and the heat, and immediately carried from the
field. But the retreat was suspended, order restored, and although the
battle raged all day, the British gained no advantage. The troops were
so demoralized by the torrid heat that at sunset both Commanders were
obliged to cease hostilities; and Washington, who had been in the saddle
since daybreak, threw himself under a tree to sleep, confident of a
victory on the morrow.

"I had a feeling as if my very soul were exploding," said Hamilton to
Laurens, as they bathed their heads in a stream in the woods, with the
bodies of dead and living huddled on every side of them. "I had a
hideous vision of Washington and the rest of us in a huge battle
picture, in which a redcoat stood on every squirming variety of
continental uniform, while a screeching eagle flew off with the
Declaration of Independence. But after all, there is something
magnificent in so absolutely identifying yourself with a cause that you
go down to its depths of agony and fly to its heights of exaltation. I
was mad to die when the day--and with it the whole Cause--seemed lost.
Patriotism surely is the master passion. Nothing else can annihilate the
ego."

Laurens, who had performed prodigies of valour, sighed heavily. "I felt
as you did while the engagement lasted," he replied. "But I went into
the battle with exultation, for death this time seemed inevitable. And
the only result is a headache. What humiliation!"

"You are morbid, my dear," said Hamilton, tenderly. "You cannot persuade
me that at the age of twenty-five naught remains but death--no matter
what mistakes one may have made. There is always the public career--for
which you are eminently fitted. I would begin life over again twenty
times if necessary."

"Yes, because you happen to be a man of genius. I am merely a man of
parts. There are many such. Not only is my life ruined, but every day I
despair anew of ever attaining that high ideal of character I have set
for myself. I want nothing short of perfection," he said passionately.
"Could I attain that, I should be content to live, no matter how
wretched. But I fall daily. My passions control me, my hatreds, my
impulses of the moment. When a man's very soul aches for a purity which
it is in man to attain if he will, and when he is daily reminded that he
is but a whimperer at the feet of the statue, the world is no place for
him."

"Laurens," said Hamilton, warmly, "you refine on the refinements of
sensibility. You have brooded until you no longer are normal and capable
of logic. Compare your life with that of most men, and hope. You are but
twenty-five, and you have won a deathless glory, by a valour and
brilliancy on these battlefields that no one else has approached. Your
brain and accomplishments are such that the country looks to you as one
of its future guides. Your character is that of a Bayard. It is your
passions alone, my dear, which save you from being a prig. Passion is
the furnace that makes greatness possible. If, when the mental energies
are resting, it darts out tongues of flame that strike in the wrong
place, I do not believe that the Almighty, who made us, counts them as
sins. They are natural outlets, and we should burst without them. If one
of those tongues of flame was the cause of your undoing, God knows you
have paid in kind. As a rule no one is the worse, while most are better.
A certain degree of perfection we can attain, but absolute
perfection--go into a wilderness like Mohammed and fast. There is no
other way, and even then you merely would have visions; you would not be
yourself."

Laurens laughed. "It is not easy to be morbid when you are by. Acquit me
for the rest of the night. And it is time we slept. There will be hot
work to-morrow. How grandly the Chief rallied! There is a man!"

"He was in a blazing temper," remarked Hamilton. "Lee and Ramsay and
Stewart were like to have died of fright. I wish to God he'd strung the
first to a gibbet!"

They sought out Washington and lay down beside him. The American army
slept as though its soul had withdrawn to another realm where repose is
undisturbed. Not so the British army. Sir Henry Clinton did not share
Washington's serene confidence in the morrow. He withdrew his weary army
in the night, and was miles away when the dawn broke.

Once Washington awoke, raised himself on his elbow, and listened
intently. But he could hear nothing but the deep breathing of his weary
army. The stars were brilliant. He glanced about his immediate vicinity
with a flicker of amusement and pleasure in his eyes. The young men of
his household were crowded close about him; he had nearly planted his
elbow on Hamilton's profile. Laurens, Tilghman, Meade, even Lafayette,
were there, and they barely had left him room to turn over. He knew that
these worshipping young enthusiasts were all ready and eager to die for
him, and that in spite of his rigid formality they were quite aware of
his weak spot, and did not hesitate to manifest their affection. For a
moment the loneliest man on earth felt as warmly companioned as if he
were raising a family of rollicking boys; then he gently lifted Hamilton
out of the way, and slept again. He was bitterly disappointed next
morning; but to pursue the enemy in that frightful heat, over a sandy
country without water, and with his men but half refreshed, was out of
the question.

The rest of the year was uneventful, except for the court-martialling of
Lee and his duel with Laurens, who challenged him for his defamation of
Washington. Then came the eventful winter of 1779-80, when the army went
into quarters at Morristown, Washington and his military family taking
possession of a large house belonging to the Widow Ford.


V

"Alexander!" cried a musical but imperious voice.

Hamilton was walking in the depths of the wood, thinking out his
financial policy for the immediate relief of the country. He started and
faced about. Kitty Livingston sat on her horse, a charming picture in
the icy brilliance of the wood. He ran toward her, ripped off her
glove, kissed her hand, replaced the glove, then drew back and saluted.

"You are a saucy boy," said Miss Livingston, "and I've a mind to box
your ears. I've brought you up very badly; but upon my word, if you were
a few years older, I believe I'd marry you and keep you in order,
something no other woman will ever be able to do. But I've a piece of
news for you--my dear little brother. Betsey Schuyler is here."

Alexander, much to his annoyance, blushed vividly. "And how can you know
that I have ever even seen Miss Schuyler?" he asked, rather sulkily.

"_She_ told me all about it, my dear. And I inferred from the young
lady's manner that she lived but to renew the experience. She is down at
Surgeon-General Cochraine's. Mrs. Cochraine is her aunt. Seriously, I
want you to be a good little beau, and keep her here as long as
possible. She is a great addition to our society; for she is not only
one of the belles of the country, accomplished and experienced, but she
has an amazing fine character, and I am anxious to know her better. You
are still too young to marry, _mon enfant_, but you are so precocious
and Miss Schuyler is so charming--if you will marry at your absurd age,
you could not do better; for you'll get fine parents as well as a wife,
and I've never known a youth more in need of an entire family."

Hamilton laughed. "If I accumulate any more parents," he said, "I shall
share the fate of the cat. This morning Colonel Harrison--one of my
fathers--almost undressed me to see if my flannels were thick enough,
Mrs. Washington gave me a fearful scolding because I went out without a
muffler, and even the General is always darting edged glances at the
soles of my boots. Yesterday, Laurens, who is two-thirds English, tried
to force an umbrella into my hand, but at that I rebelled. If I marry,
it will be for the pleasure of taking care of someone else."

He escorted Miss Livingston out to the highroad, and returned to
Headquarters, his imagination dancing. He had by no means forgotten Miss
Schuyler. That merry roguish high-bred face had shone above many dark
horizons, illuminated many bitter winter nights at Valley Forge. He was
excited at the prospect of seeing her again, and hastened to arrange a
dinner, to which she must be bidden. The young men did as they chose
about entertaining, sure of Washington's approval.

"Ah, I know Miss Schuyler well," exclaimed Tilghman, when Hamilton
remarked that they should immediately show some attention to the
daughter of so illustrious a man as General Schuyler. "I've fetched and
carried for her--in fact I once had the honour to be despatched by her
mamma to buy her a pair of stays. I fell at her little feet immediately.
She has the most lively dark good-natured eyes I ever saw--Good God,
Hamilton, are you going to run me through?"

Hamilton for the moment was so convulsed with jealous rage that his very
fingers curved, and he controlled them from his friend's throat with an
effort. Tilghman's words brought him to his senses, and he laughed
heartily. "I was as jealous as Othello, if you'll have the truth, and
just why, I vow I don't know, for I met this young lady only once, and
that a year ago. I was much attracted, but it's not possible I'm in love
with her."

"It's love, my dear boy," said Tilghman, gravely. "Go and ask Steuben if
I am not right. Laurens and I will arrange the dinner. You attend to
your case immediately."

Hamilton, much concerned, repaired to the house of Baron Steuben. This
old courtier and rake was physician in ordinary to all the young men in
their numerous cardiacal complications. Hamilton found him in his little
study, smoking a huge meerschaum. His weather-beaten face grinned with
delight at the appearance of his favourite, but he shook his head
solemnly at the revelation.

"I fear this time you are shot, my dear little Hamilton," he said, with
much concern. "Have you told me all?"

"All that I can think of." Hamilton was sitting forward on the edge of
the chair in considerable dejection. He had not expected this
intrication, had hoped the Baron would puff it away.

"Has she a neat waist?"

Hamilton admitted, with some surprise, that her waist was exceptional.

"And her eyes?--I have heard of them--benevolent, yet sparkling;--and a
daughter of the Schuylers. Hamilton, believe me, there are worse things
than love."

"But I have affairs of the utmost moment on hand at present. I'm
revolving a whole financial system, and the correspondence grows heavier
every day. I've no time for love."

"My boy," said the former aide to the great Frederick, with emphasis,
"when you can work in the sun, why cling to the cold corner of a public
hearth? Your brain will spin the faster for the fire underneath. You
will write great words and be happy besides. Think of that. What a
combination! Mein Gott! You will be terribly in love, my son, but your
balance is so extraordinary that your brain will work on just the same.
Otherwise I would not dare give such counsel, for without you General
Washington would give up, and your poor old Steuben would not have money
for tobacco. Give me just one half-sovereign," he added coaxingly.

Hamilton examined the big tobacco pouch and found it two-thirds full.
"Not a penny," he said gaily. "The day after to-morrow I will buy you
some myself, but I know where that last sovereign went to."

Hamilton took care of the old spendthrift's money, and not only then but
as long as he lived. "The Secretary of the Treasury is my banker," said
Steuben, years after. "My Hamilton takes care of my money when he cannot
take care of his own."

Hamilton retired in some perturbation, and the result of much thinking
was that he spent an unconscionable time over his toilet on the evening
of the dinner. In his nervousness he tore one of his lace ruffles.
Laurens attempted to mend it, and the rent waxed. Hamilton was forced to
knock at Mrs. Washington's door and ask her to repair the injury. She
was already dressed, in a black lutestring, her hair flat and natural.
She looked approvingly at Hamilton, who, not excepting Laurens, was
always the most faultlessly dressed member of the family. To-night he
wore dark green velvet, fitting closely and exquisitely cut, white silk
stockings, and a profusion of delicate lace. His hair was worn in a
queue and powdered. It was not till some years later that he conformed
to the prevailing fashion and wore a wig.

Mrs. Washington mended the lace, retied the bow of his queue, kissed him
and told him to forget the cares of war and correspondence, and enjoy
himself. Hamilton retired, much comforted.

It was an imposing family which, a half-hour later, awaited the guests
in the drawing-room. Washington was in black velvet and silk stockings,
his best white wig spreading in two symmetrical wings. It was a cold
grave figure always, and threw an air of solemnity over every scene it
loomed upon, which only Hamilton's lively wit could dispel. Laurens wore
plum-coloured velvet and much lace, a magnificent court costume. His own
figure was no less majestic than Washington's, but his brown eyes and
full mouth were almost invariably smiling, despite the canker. He wore a
very close wig. Tilghman was in blue, the other men in more sober dress.
Lafayette some time since had departed for France, Hamilton having
suggested that the introduction of a French military force of six or
seven thousand troops would have a powerful effect upon the American
army and people.

Lady Sterling arrived with Lady Kitty--the bride of Colonel William Duer
since July--her undistinguished homeliness enhancing the smart
appearance of her daughter, who was one of the beauties of the time.
Lady Kitty had a long oval face, correct haughty little features, and a
general air of extreme high breeding. Her powdered hair was in a tower,
and she had the tiniest waist and stood upon the highest heels of all
the belles. She wore white satin over an immense hoop, a flounce of
Spanish lace and a rope of pearls. Kitty Livingston wore yellow which
outshone the light of the candles. Susan Boudinot and the other girls
were dressed more simply. Mr. Boudinot's eyes were as keen and as kind
as ever, his nose seemed longer, and the flesh was accumulating beneath
his chin.

The Cochraines and Miss Elizabeth Schuyler were the last to arrive. The
northern belle's wardrobe had been an object of much concern to the
young ladies now cut off from New York shops, and lamenting the
demoralized condition of those in Philadelphia. In Albany all things
were still possible. Miss Schuyler wore a pink brocade of the richest
and most delicate quality, and a bertha of Brussels lace. The pointed
bodice and large paniers made her waist look almost as small as Kitty
Duer's, and her feet were the tiniest in the world. She turned them in
and walked with a slight shuffle. Hamilton had never seen a motion so
adorable. Her hair was rolled out from her face on both sides as well as
above, and so thickly powdered that her eyes looked as black as General
Washington's coat, while her cheeks and lips were like red wine on pale
amber. She blushed as Hamilton bowed before her and offered his arm, and
then she felt his heart thump. As for Hamilton, he gave himself up for
lost the moment she entered the room, and with the admission, his
feelings concentrated with their usual fiery impetuosity. As it was too
soon for an outlet, they rushed to his eyes and camped there, to Miss
Schuyler's combined discomfort and delight.

For once Hamilton was content to listen, and Miss Schuyler was not loath
to entertain this handsome young aide, of whom all the world was
talking, and who had haunted her dreams for a year. She had read Milton,
Shenstone, and Dodsworth, "The Search after Happiness," by Hannah More,
the works of Madame de Genlis, the "Essay on Man," and Shakespeare's
lighter plays. Her learning was not oppressive, merely sufficient to
give distinction to her mind, and Hamilton was enchanted once more; but
he found her most interesting when relating personal anecdotes of
encounters with savage warriors in that dark northern land where she had
been born and bred, of hideous massacres of which her neighbours had
been the victims, of adventurous journeys she had taken with her father,
of painted chieftains they had been forced to entertain. She talked
with great spirit and no waste of words, and it was evident that she was
both sensible and heroic. Hamilton ate little and forgot that he was in
a company of twenty people. He was recalled by an abraded shin.

He turned with a jump and encountered Meade's agonized face thrust
across Susan Livingston, who sat between them.

"For God's sake, Hamilton, come forth and talk," said Meade, in a hoarse
whisper. "There hasn't been a word said above a mutter for
three-quarters of an hour. Tilghman gave out long ago. Unless you come
to the rescue we'll all be moaning in each other's arms in three
minutes."

Hamilton glanced about the table. Washington, looking like himself on a
monument, was making not a pretence to entertain poor Lady Sterling, who
was almost sniffling. Lord Sterling, having gratified, an hour since,
Mrs. Washington's polite interest in his health, was stifling yawn after
yawn, and his chubby little visage was oblong and crimson. Tilghman,
looking guilty and uncomfortable,--it was his duty to relieve Hamilton
at the table,--was flirting with Miss Boudinot. Lady Kitty and Baron
Steuben always managed to entertain each other. Laurens and Kitty
Livingston were sitting back and staring at each other as they had
stared many times before. The others were gazing at their plates or at
Hamilton. It was, indeed, a Headquarters dinner at the worst.

It has been remarked that Hamilton had a strong sense of duty. He felt
himself unable, even with the most charming girl on the continent beside
him, to resist the appeal of all those miserable eyes, and launched
forth at once upon the possibilities of Lafayette returning with an
army. Everybody responded, and he had many subjects of common interest
to discourse brilliantly upon until the long meal finished. Even
Washington gave him a grateful glance, and the others reattacked their
excellent food with a lost relish, now that the awful silence and sense
of personal failure were dispelled by their "bright particular star," as
the letters of the day from Morristown and the vicinity cleped our
hero. But with Miss Schuyler he had no further word that night, and he
retired with the conviction that there were times when there was no
satisfaction whatever in doing one's duty.


VI

But a few nights later there was a subscription ball in the commissary
storehouse, and Hamilton danced with Miss Schuyler no less than ten
times, to the merciless amusement of the family. The ball, the first of
any size since the war began, was a fine affair, and had been organized
by Tilghman, Meade, and several of the Frenchmen; they were determined
upon one gay season, at least. The walls were covered with flags and
holly; the women wore their most gorgeous brocades; feathers and jewels
were on becoming white wigs or on the towers of powdered hair. All the
foreigners were in full regimentals, Steuben, in particular, being half
covered with gold lace and orders; the music and supper were admirable.
Even Washington looked less careworn than usual, and as he stood apart
with Lord Sterling, General Knox, and General Greene, he shed no
perceptible chill. Miss Schuyler wore white, with a twist of black
velvet in her powdered hair and another about her throat, and would have
been the belle of the party had Hamilton permitted other attentions. But
she gave him all the dances he demanded, and although her bright manner
did not lapse toward sentiment for a moment, he went home so elated that
he sat scribbling poetry until Laurens pelted him with pillows and
extinguished the candle.

The next day there was a sleighing party to Lord Sterling's, and he
drove Miss Schuyler, her aunt, and the wife of General Knox through the
white and crystal and blue of a magnificent winter day. Mrs. Cochraine
made no secret of her pride in her niece's capture of Washington's
celebrated favourite, and assured him of a hearty welcome at her house
if he felt disposed to call. He promptly established the habit of
calling every evening.

But although he was seriously and passionately in love, and quite sure
that Miss Schuyler loved him in return, he hesitated for the first time
in his life before precipitating a desired consummation. That he had no
money did not worry him in the least, for he knew himself capable of
earning any amount, and that the Republic, when free, would bristle with
opportunities for young men of parts. But he was in honour bound to tell
her of the irregularity of his birth. And in what manner would she
regard a possible husband with whose children she never could discuss
their father's parents? She was twenty-two, a small woman-of-the-world,
not a romantic young miss incapable of reason. And the Schuylers? The
proudest family in America! Would they take him on what he had made of
himself, on the promise of his future, or would their family pride prove
stronger than their common sense? He had moments of frantic doubt and
depression, but fortunately there was no time for protracted periods of
lover's misery. Washington demanded him constantly for consultation upon
the best possible method of putting animation into the Congress and
extracting money for the wretched troops. He frequently accompanied the
General, as at Valley Forge, in his visits to the encampment on the
mountain, where the emaciated tattered wretches were hutting with all
possible speed against the severity of another winter. The snow was
already on the ground, and every prospect of a repetition of the horrors
of Valley Forge. The mere sight of Washington put heart into them, and
Hamilton's lively sallies rarely failed to elicit a smile in return.

It so happened that for a fortnight the correspondence with Congress,
the States, the Generals, and the British, in regard to the exchange of
prisoners, was so heavy, the consultations with Washington so frequent,
that Hamilton saw nothing of Miss Schuyler, and had little time for the
indulgence of pangs. When he emerged, however, his mind was the freer to
seek a solution of the problem which had tormented him, and he quickly
found it. He determined to write the truth to Miss Schuyler, and so save
the embarrassment he had dreaded for both. To think was to act. He
related the facts of his birth and of his ancestry in the briefest
possible manner, adding a description of his mother which would leave no
question of the place she held in his esteem. He then stated, with the
emphasis of which he was master, that he distractedly awaited his
dismissal, or Miss Schuyler's permission to declare what he had so
awkwardly concealed.

He sent the letter by an orderly, and attacked his correspondence with a
desire to put gunpowder on his quill. But Miss Schuyler was a
tender-hearted creature and had no intention that he should suffer. She
scrawled him a hasty summons to come to her at once, and bade the
orderly ride as for his life. Hamilton, hearing a horse coming up the
turnpike at runaway pace, glanced out of the window to see what neck was
in danger, then flung his quill to the floor and bolted. He was out of
the house before the orderly had dismounted, and secured possession of
the note. When he had returned to his office, which was in a log
extension at the back of the building, he locked the door and read what
he could of Miss Schuyler's illegible chirography. That it was a command
to wait upon her at once he managed to decipher, but no more at the
moment; and feeling as if the heavens had opened, he despatched a hasty
note, telling her that he could not leave his work before night, when he
would hasten with the pent-up assurances of a love which had been his
torment and delight for many weeks. And then he answered a summons to
Washington's office, and discussed a letter to the Congress as if there
were no such person in the world as Elizabeth Schuyler, as indeed for
the hour there was not, nor for the rest of the afternoon.

But at eight o'clock he presented himself at the Cochraine quarters, and
Miss Schuyler was alone in the drawing-room. It was some time before
they arrived at the question which had weighed so heavily on Hamilton's
mind. When, however, they came down to conversation, Miss Schuyler
remarked:--

"I am sure that it will make no difference with my dear father, who is
the most just and sensible of men. I had never thought of your parentage
at all. I should have said you had leapt down from the abode of the
gods, for you are much too remarkable to have been merely born. But if
he should object--why, we'll run away."

Her eyes danced at the prospect, and Hamilton, who had vowed that
nothing should induce him to enter a family where he was not welcome,
was by now so hopelessly in love that he was ready to order the chaise
and four at once. He remained until Mrs. Cochraine sent him home, then
walked up the hill toward Headquarters, keeping to the road by instinct,
for he was deep in a reverie on the happiness of the past hours. His
dreams were cruelly shattered by the pressure of a bayonet against his
breast.

"What?" he demanded. "Oh, the countersign." He racked his memory. It had
fled, terrified, from his brain under the rush of that evening's
emotions.

"I can't remember it," he said haughtily; "but you know who I am. Let me
pass." The sentry stood like a fate.

"This is ridiculous!" cried Hamilton, angrily, then the absurdity of the
situation overcame him, and he laughed. Once more he searched his brain
for the countersign, which he remembered having given to little Ford
just after dinner. Mrs. Ford and her son retained two rooms in the
house, and Hamilton frequently gave the youngster the word, that he
might play in the village after dark. Suddenly he saw him approaching.
He darted down the road, secured the password, and returned in triumph
to the sentry.

"Sir," exclaimed the soldier, in dismay, "is this quite regular? Will
you give me your word, sir, that it is all right?"

"I vow that no harm shall come to you," said Hamilton. "Shoulder your
musket." And there the incident ended, so far as the soldier was
concerned, but young Ford carried the story to Headquarters, and it was
long before Hamilton heard the last of it.

There was no sleep in him that night. He went to his office and laboured
for hours over a verse which should adequately express the love
consuming him, and then he awoke Laurens and talked into that
sympathetic ear until it was time to break the ice and freshen himself
for work.

His work that day was of a vastly different character from the
impassioned trifle of the night before. He obtained exemption from other
duty, and ordered luncheon and dinner brought to his office. One of the
most remarkable examples of Hamilton's mature genius at this age of
twenty-three is his long and elaborate letter to Robert Morris on the
financial condition of the country, written during the earliest period
of his love for Elizabeth Schuyler. As passionate and impatient as he
was tender, alive in every part of his nature to the joy of a real
affection and to the prospect of a lasting happiness, he yet was able
for twelve hours at a time to shut his impending bride in the remotest
cupboard of his mind, nor heed her sighs. But there was an older love
than Elizabeth Schuyler: a ragged poverty-stricken creature by this,
cowering before dangers within and without, raving mad at times,
imbecile at others, filling her shattered body with patent nostrums, yet
throughout her long course of futilities and absurdities making a
desperate attempt to shade the battered lamp of liberty from the fatal
draught. Her name was the United States of America, and never was there
a more satiric misnomer. If the States chose to obey the requisitions of
the Congress, they obeyed them; but as a rule they did not. There was no
power in the land to enforce obedience; and they hated each other. As
the Congress had demonstrated its inefficiency to the most inactive in
public affairs, the contempt of the States is hardly to be wondered at.
It is not too much to say that troops were recruited by Washington's
influence alone, and kept from mutiny by his immortal magnetism. The
finances of the Revolution were in such a desperate condition that Sir
Henry Clinton built his hopes of success--now he had discovered that no
victory gave him a permanent advantage--upon the dissolution of the
American army, possibly an internal war. With depreciated bills in
circulation amounting to one hundred and sixty millions of dollars, a
public debt of nearly forty millions in foreign and domestic loans, the
Congress had, in March, ordered a new emission of bills; the result had
been a season of crazy speculation and the expiring gasp of public
credit. In addition to an unpaid army, assurances had been given to the
French minister that not less than twenty-five thousand men should be
ready for the next campaign; and how to force the States to recruit
them, and how to pay them when in the field, was the present question
between Headquarters and Congress.

From the time that Hamilton's mind had turned to finance, in his
nineteenth year, he had devoted the greater part of his leisure to the
study and thought of it. Books on the subject were few in those days;
the science of political economy was unborn, so far as Hamilton was
concerned, for Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations," published in 1776, had
not made its way to America. He assimilated all the data there was to be
found, then poured it into the crucible of his creative faculty, and
gradually evolved the great scheme of finance which is the locomotive of
the United States to-day. During many long winter evenings he had talked
his ideas over with Washington, and it was with the Chief's full
approval that he finally went to work on the letter embodying his scheme
for the immediate relief of the country. It was addressed to Robert
Morris, the Financier of the Revolution.

The first part of the letter was an essay on inflated and depreciated
currency, applied personally, the argument based on the three following
points: There having been no money in the country, Congress had been
unable to avoid the issuance of paper money. The only way to obtain and
retire this immense amount of depreciated paper money was to obtain real
money. Real money could be obtained in one way only,--by a foreign loan.
He then elaborately disposed of the proposed insane methods of applying
this projected loan which were agitating the Congress. But he was an
architect and builder as well as an iconoclast, and having shown the
futility of every financial idea ever conceived by Congress, he
proceeded to the remedy. His scheme, then as ever, was a National Bank,
to be called The Bank of the United States; the capital to be a foreign
loan of two millions sterling.

This letter, even in its details, in the knowledge of human nature it
betrays, and in its scheme to combine public and private capital that
the wealthy men of the country should, in their own interests, be
compelled to support the government, reads like an easy example in
arithmetic to-day; but a hundred and twenty years ago it was so bold and
advanced that Morris dared to adopt several of its suggestions in part
only, and founded the bank of Pennsylvania on the greater plan, by way
of experiment. No one but Hamilton could carry out his own theories.

Hamilton, who often had odd little attacks of modesty, signed the
letter, James Montague; address, Morristown. He read it to Washington
before posting.

The Chief, whose men were aching, sighed heavily.

"They will pick a few crumbs out of it," he said. "But they will not
make a law of it in toto; the millennium is not yet come. But if it
gives them one idea we should be thankful, it being a long and weary
time since they have experienced that phenomenon. If it does not, I
doubt if these men fight another battle. I wonder if posterity will ever
realize the indifference of their three million ancestors to the war
which gave them their independence--if we accomplish that end. I ask for
soldiers and am treated much as if I had asked for my neighbour's wife.
I ask for money to keep them from starving and freezing and am made to
feel like an importunate beggar."

"I had a letter from Hugh Knox not so long since," said Hamilton, in his
lightest tone; for Washington was on the verge of one of his attacks of
infuriated depression, which were picturesque but wearing. "He
undertakes to play the prophet, and he is an uncommon clever man, sir:
he says that you were created for the express purpose of delivering
America, to do it single-handed, if necessary, and that my proud destiny
is to be your biographer. The first I indorse, so does every thinking
man in the country. But for the second--alas! I am not equal to a post
of such exalted honour."

Washington smiled. "No one knows better than your old Chief that your
destiny is no such ha'penny affair as that. But at least you wouldn't
make an ass of me. God knows what is in store for me at the hands of
scribblers."

"You lend yourself fatally well to marble and stone, sir," said
Hamilton, mischievously. "I fear your biographers will conceive
themselves writing at the feet of a New World Sphinx, and that its
frozen granite loneliness will petrify their image of you."

"I like the prospect! I am unhappily conscious of my power to chill an
assemblage, but the cold formality of my manner is a safeguard, as you
know. My nature is one of extremes; if I did not encase myself, I should
be ramming every man's absurd opinions down his throat, and letting my
cursed temper fly at each of the provocations which constantly beset me.
I have not the happy gift of compromise; but I am not unhuman, and I
like not the prospect of going down to posterity a wooden figurehead
upon some emblematic battle-ship. Perhaps, my boy, you, who best know
me, will be moved by charity to be my biographer, after all."

"I'll make it the business of my old age, sir; I pledge you my word, and
no one loves you better nor can do you such justice as I. When my work
in the National Family is done, then shall I retire with my literary
love, an old and pleasant love; and what higher subject for my pen?"

He spoke in a tone of badinage, for he was bent on screwing up
Washington's spirits, but he made his promise in good faith,
nevertheless, and Washington looked at him with deep affection.

"My mind is certainly easier," he said, in a tone that was almost light.
"Go now and post your letter, and give your evening to Miss Schuyler.
Present my compliments to her."

"I became engaged to her last night, sir."

"Ah! had you forgotten to tell me?"

"No, sir; I have but just remembered it."

Washington laughed heartily. "Mind you never tell her that," he said.
"Women love the lie that saves their pride, but never an unflattering
truth. You have learned your lesson young,--to put a tempting face aside
when duty demands every faculty; it is a lesson which takes most men
longest to learn. I could tell you some amusing stories of rough and
tumbles in my mind between the divine image of the hour and some affair
of highest moment. But to a brain like yours all things are possible."

He rose, and took Hamilton's hand and shook it warmly.

"God bless you," he said. "Your future unrolls to my vision, brilliant
and happy. I deeply wish that it may be so."


VII

The letter from General Schuyler, giving his consent to the engagement,
has not been preserved; but some time after he had occasion to write
Hamilton a business letter, in which the following passage occurs:--

     You cannot, my dear sir, be more happy at the connexion you have
     made with my family than I am. Until the child of a parent has made
     a judicious choice, his heart is in continual anxiety; but this
     anxiety was removed on the moment I discovered it was on you she
     had placed her affections. I am pleased with every instance of
     delicacy in those who are so dear to me; and I think I read your
     soul on the occasion you mention. I shall therefore only entreat
     you to consider me as one who wishes in every way to promote your
     happiness.

General Schuyler was ordered by Congress to Morristown to confer with
Washington. He took a house, sent for his family, and remained until
late in the summer. The closest friendship was formed between Schuyler
and Hamilton, which, with common political interests and deepening
sympathy, increased from year to year. The good fairies of Nevis who had
attended Hamilton's birth never did better for him than when they gave
him Elizabeth Schuyler for wife and Philip Schuyler for father and
friend. And they had blasted the very roots of the chief impediment to
success, for he triumphed steadily and without effort over what has
poisoned the lives of many men; and triumphed in spite of the fact that
the truth was vaguely known always, and kept in the quiver of his
enemies.

As Hamilton was absent from Headquarters but seldom during General
Schuyler's sojourn, the lovers met almost every evening, and
occasionally Washington, who possessed certain sympathies based on long
experience, would give Hamilton a morning free, and suggest a ride
through the woods. Never were two people happier nor more inherently
suited. Hamilton's instinct had guided him safely past more brilliant
women to one who willingly would fold herself round his energetic
individuality of many parts, fitting into every division and crevice.
She was receptive, sympathetic, adaptive, with sufficient intelligence
to appreciate the superlative brain of the man whom she never ceased to
worship and to regard as a being of unmortal clay. A brilliant ambitious
wife in the same house with Hamilton might have written a picturesque
diary, but the domestic instrument would have twanged with discords.
Hamilton was unselfish, and could not do enough for those he loved; but
he was used to the first place, to the unquestioned yielding of it to
his young high-mightiness by his clever aspiring friends, by the army of
his common acquaintance, and in many ways by Washington himself. Had he
married Angelica Schuyler, that independent, high-spirited, lively,
adorable woman, probably they would have boxed each other's ears at the
end of a week.

Hamilton made the dash on Staten Island with Lord Sterling, and in March
went with General St. Clair and Colonel Carrington to negotiate with the
British commissioners for the exchange of prisoners; before the battle
of Springfield he was sent out to reconnoitre. Otherwise his days were
taken up bombarding the Congress with letters representing the necessity
of drafting troops to meet the coming emergencies.

He and Miss Betsey Schuyler had a very pretty plan, which was nothing
less than that they should go to Europe on their wedding tour, Congress
to find his presence necessary at the Court of France. The suggestion
originated with Laurens, who had been asked to go as secretary to
Franklin. He had no wish to go, and knowing Hamilton's ardent desire to
visit Europe and growing impatience with his work, had recommended his
name to the Congress. General Schuyler would have procured a leave of
absence for his impending son-in-law, and sent the young couple to
Europe with his blessing and a heavy wallet, but Hamilton would as soon
have forged a man's name as travelled at his expense. He hoped that the
Congress would send him. He was keenly alive to the value of studying
Europe at first hand before he was called upon to help in the modelling
of the new Republic, and the vision of wandering in historic lands with
his bride kept him awake at night. Moreover, he was desperately tired of
his life at Headquarters. When the expedition to Staten Island was in
question, he asked Washington, through Lafayette, to give him the
command of a battalion which happened to be without a field-officer.
Washington refused, partly from those motives of policy to which he ever
showed an almost niggling adherence, but more because he could not spare
his most useful aide. Hamilton, who was bursting for action of any sort,
retired to his detested little office in angry disappointment. But he
was a philosopher. He adjusted himself to the Inevitable, and dismissed
the matter from his mind, after registering a vow that he would take
advantage of the first excuse which might offer to resign his position.

The Schuylers returned to Albany. The French fleet arrived, and hovered
well beyond the range of British guns, having no desire to risk an
engagement until reinforced. Its Admiral, Count Rochambeau, having a
grievance, Hamilton advised a personal conference.

"We might suggest that he meet us halfway--say at Wethersfield, near
Hartford," he added. "That would save us something in travelling
expenses."

Washington sighed heavily. "We are worse off than you think," he said.
"I might scrape together money enough for half the journey, but no more.
Lafayette and his aide must go with us--to say nothing of the escort.
Think of the innkeepers' bills, for ourselves and horses. What to do I
confess I do not know, for I should confer with this Frenchman at once."

"Go we must, sir," said Hamilton, decidedly, "if we have to take up a
collection--why not? If an object cannot be accomplished one way, try
another." He stood up and emptied the contents of his pockets on the
table. "Only five hundred beggarly continentals," he said ruefully.
"However, who knows what treasures may line more careful pockets than
mine? I know they will come forth as spontaneously. Have I your
permission to try, sir?"

Washington nodded, and Hamilton ran downstairs, pressed Meade into
service, and together they made the round of the officers' quarters. He
returned at the end of an hour and threw a huge bundle of paper on the
table. "Only eight thousand dollars, sir," he said. "It's the best that
any man could do. But I think it may carry us through."

"It will have to," said Washington. "Remind me, my dear boy, if you see
me eating too much. I have such an appetite!"

They set out on their journey a week later, having communicated with
Rochambeau, who agreed to meet them at Wethersfield. All went well, for
the wretched inns were not exorbitant, until they reached Hartford. They
arrived late in the afternoon, weary and ravenous. After a bath and a
glimpse of luxurious beds, they marched to the dining room and sat down
to a sumptuous repast, whose like had greeted neither nostril nor palate
for many a day. The wines were mellow, the tobacco green, the
conversation gay until midnight. Hamilton sang "The Drum," and many
another song rang among the rafters. Washington retired first, bidding
the youngsters enjoy themselves. The young men arose at their accustomed
hour next morning, with appetites renewed, but waited in vain for their
Chief. Hamilton finally knocked at his door. There was no response, and
a servant told him that the General had gone out nearly an hour before.
He went in search, bidding Lafayette and M'Henry remain behind. As he
had anticipated, he found Washington in a secluded nook, engaged in
prayer. He waited a few moments, then coughed respectfully. Washington
immediately rose, his harassed face showing little relief.

"Is anything wrong, sir?" asked Hamilton, anxiously.

"Alas!" said the General, "I wonder that you, too, are not driven to
prayer, to intercede for help in this distressing predicament. Think of
that extravagant repast we consumed last night. God help me, but I was
so famished I never gave a thought to consequences. Unquestionably, the
breakfast will be on a like scale. _And we have but eight thousand
dollars with which to pay the bill_!"

"It is true! I never gave the matter a thought--I am cursedly
extravagant. And we must get home! I suppose we shall have to fast all
the way. Well, we've fasted before, and the memory of last night's
dinner may sustain us--"

"But this man's bill! How are we to meet it?"

"Shall I speak to him, sir? Tell him unreservedly our predicament--that
these wretched eight thousand dollars are all we have in the world?
Perhaps he is a good patriot, and will call the account square."

"Do," said Washington, "and come here and tell me what he says. I am too
mortified to show my face. I shall not enter the house again."

Hamilton walked slowly to the house, little caring for his errand. He
returned on a dead run.

"We are saved, sir!" he cried, almost in Washington's arms. "Governor
Trumbull has sent word to all the hostelries that we are to be his
guests while we are in the state of Connecticut!"

Washington said his prayers again, and ate two chickens for breakfast.

On the return from this conference, when approaching the house of
General Benedict Arnold, opposite West Point, where they were invited
for breakfast, Washington suddenly decided to accompany Lafayette, who
wished to inspect some earthworks.

"You need not come," he said to Hamilton and M'Henry.
"I know that you are both in love with Mrs. Arnold. Go on. We will join
you presently."

The young men were greeted with effusion by the pretty hostess, with
absent reserve by her husband. Mrs. Arnold left the room to order that
the breakfast be delayed. While she was absent, a note was brought to
Arnold. He opened it, turned green, and rising hastily, announced that
his presence was demanded at West Point and left the room. The sound of
a smothered scream and fall came from above. A moment later the aides
heard the sound of galloping hoofs.

Their suspicions aroused, they ran outside. A messenger, with a despatch
from Colonel Jameson, awaited Washington's arrival. Hamilton tore open
the paper. It contained the news that a British spy had been captured
within the lines. In an instant Hamilton and M'Henry were on their
horses and off in pursuit of the fugitive. That Arnold was a traitor and
had fled to the British war-ship, _Vulture_, hovering in Haverstraw Bay,
a slower wit than Hamilton's would have assumed. The terrified scoundrel
was too quick for them. He had ridden over a precipice to the shore
below, and under protection of a flag of truce was far down the river
when his pursuers sighted him. They returned with all speed.

I shall not repeat the oft-told tale of André's capture, trial, and
death. Nowhere has it been so well told as by Hamilton himself, in a
letter to Laurens, printed at the time and universally read. It is only
necessary here to allude to his share in that unhappiest episode of the
war. When Washington reached the house his aide was engaged in consoling
Mrs. Arnold, who was shrieking and raving, weeping and fainting;
imposing on Hamilton a task varied and puzzling, even to one of his
schooling. But she was very young, very charming, and in a tragic
plight. Washington himself wiped away a tear, and for a moment forgot
the barely averted consequences of her husband's treason, while he
assisted Hamilton in assuaging a grief so bitter and so appealing. As
soon as was possible he sent her through the British lines.

But Hamilton quickly forgot Mrs. Arnold in his sympathy and admiration
for the unfortunate André. He conceived a quick and poignant friendship
for the brilliant accomplished young Englishman, with the dreamy soft
face of a girl, and a mettle which had brought him to destruction.
Hamilton did all he could to save him, short of suggesting to André to
ask Sir Henry Clinton to offer Arnold in exchange. He enlisted the
sympathy of the officers at West Point in the prisoner's behalf, gave up
his leisure to diverting André's mind, and persuaded Washington to delay
the execution and send an indirect suggestion to Clinton to offer the
exchange himself. When all hope was over, he personally begged
Washington to heed André's request for a soldier's death, and not
condemn such a man to the gibbet. Washington gladly would have saved his
interesting prisoner's life, and felt deeply for him, but again those
motives of policy prevailed, and André was executed like a common
malefactor.


VIII

Washington was in temporary quarters--a cramped and wretched tavern--at
Liberty Pole, New Jersey. The inaction being oppressive, Hamilton
concentrated his thoughts on the condition and needs of the country.

     I am sorry that the same spirit of indifference to public affairs
     prevails, [he wrote to Sears]. It is necessary we should rouse and
     begin to do our business in earnest, or we shall play a losing
     game. We must have a government with more power. We must have a tax
     in kind. We must have a foreign loan. We must have a bank on the
     true principles of a bank. We must have an administration distinct
     from Congress, and in the hands of single men under their orders.
     We must, above all things, have an army for the war.... We are told
     here there is to be a Congress of the neutral powers at the Hague
     for meditating of peace. God send it may be true. We want it; but
     if the idea goes abroad, ten to one if we do not fancy the thing
     done, and fall into a profound sleep till the cannon of the enemy
     waken us next campaign. This is our national character.

Hamilton, the High Priest of Energy, had long since declared war against
the genius of the American people, who believed in God and the art of
leisure. Hamilton believed in God and a cabinet of zealous ministers. He
was already a thorn in the side of estimable but hesitant patriots, and
in times to come his unremitting and remorseless energy was to be a
subject of reproach by associates and enemies alike. Even Jefferson,
that idol of the present as of the past democracy, had timidly declared
against separation in 1774, while Hamilton, a boy of seventeen, had been
the first to suggest the resort to arms, and incessant in his endeavours
until the great result was accomplished. He had countless other schemes,
and he knew that eventually he would succeed in driving the American
people before the point of his quill. That his task would be long and
arduous did not daunt him for a moment. By this time he knew every want
of the country, and was determined upon the reorganization of the
government. The energy which is one of the distinguishing
characteristics of the American nation to-day was generated by Hamilton,
might, indeed, be said to be the persistence and diffusion of his ego.
For the matter of that, all that is greatest in this American evolution
of a century was typified in Hamilton. Not only his formidable energy,
but his unqualified honour and integrity, his unquenchable optimism, his
extraordinary nimbleness of mind and readiness of resource, his gay
good-nature, high spirits, and buoyancy, his light philosophy
effervescing above unsounded depths, his inability to see when he was
beaten, his remorseless industry, his hard common sense, combined with a
versatile cleverness which makes for shallowness in another race, his
careless generosity, his aptitude for detail and impatience of it, his
reckless bravery in war and intrepidity in peace, even his highly strung
nerves, excitability, and obliging readiness at all times for a fight,
raise him high above history as the genius of the American race. The
reverse side of the national character we owe to the greatest of his
rivals; as will be seen hereafter.

During the sojourn at Liberty Pole, Washington and he sat through many
nights discussing the imperative need of the reorganization of the
government, and the best methods by which it could be accomplished. The
result was Hamilton's letter to James Duane, an important member of the
Congress.

This letter, no doubt the most remarkable of its kind ever written, and
as interesting to-day as when Hamilton conceived it, is far too long to
be quoted. It began with an exhaustive analysis of the reasons for the
failure of Congress to cope with a situation which was becoming more
threatening every hour, and urged the example of the Grecian republics
and the Swiss cantons against the attempted confederation of the States
without a strong centralized government. Lacking a common tie of
sufficient strength, the States would inevitably drift toward
independent sovereignty, and they had given signal proof in the matter
of raising troops, contributing money, and in their everlasting disputes
about boundary lines, as to the absolute lack of any common public
spirit. His remedy, in brief, was a convention of the States for the
purpose of creating a Federal Constitution, the distributing of the
powers of government into separate departments, with Presidents of War,
Marine, and Trade, a secretary of Foreign Affairs, and a Financier,
defining their prerogatives; the States to have no privileges beyond an
internal police for the protection of the property and the rights of
individuals, and to raise money by internal taxes; the army to be
recruited on a permanent establishment. In addition, there was an
elaborate system of taxation, by which the country could be supported in
all its emergencies. His favourite plan of a National Bank was
elaborated in minute detail, the immediate necessity for a foreign loan
dwelt upon with sharp reproof, and examples given of the recruiting of
armies in European states.

Out of a multitude of suggestions a few were adopted within a short
time, but the great central suggestion, the calling of a convention for
the purpose of creating a Federal Constitution, was to be hammered at
for many weary years before jealous States and unconfident patriots
could be persuaded to a measure so monarchical and so bold. But the
letter is on record, and nothing more logical, far-sighted, and
comprehensive ever was written. It contained the foundation-stones upon
which this government of the United States stands to-day. Congress put
on its spectacles and read it with many grunts, magnanimously expressing
admiration for a youth who had fearlessly grappled with questions which
addled older brains; but its audacious suggestions of a government
greater than Congress, and of a bank which would add to their troubles,
were not taken seriously for a moment.

Hamilton also found time to write a good many love letters. Here is one
of them:--

     I would not have you imagine, Miss, that I write you so often to
     gratify your wishes or please your vanity; but merely to indulge
     myself, and to comply with that restless propensity of my mind
     which will not be happy unless I am doing something in which you
     are concerned. This may seem a very idle disposition in a
     philosopher and a soldier, but I can plead illustrious examples in
     my justification. Achilles liked to have sacrificed Greece and his
     glory to a female captive, and Anthony lost a world for a woman. I
     am very sorry times are so changed as to oblige me to go to
     antiquity for my apology, but I confess, to the disgrace of the
     present time, that I have not been able to find as many who are as
     far gone as myself in the laudable Zeal of the fair sex. I suspect,
     however, if others knew the charm of my sweetheart as I do, I could
     have a great number of competitors. I wish I could give you an idea
     of her. You can have no conception of how sweet a girl she is. It
     is only in my heart that her image is truly drawn. She has a lovely
     form and still more lovely mind. She is all goodness, the gentlest,
     the dearest, the tenderest of her sex. Ah, Betsey, how I love her!

His reiterated demand for a foreign loan, and the sending of a special
envoy to obtain it, at last wrung a reluctant consent from Congress.
Lafayette was his politic suggestion, and Congress would have indorsed
it, but that adventurous young hero had not come to America to return
and beg money on his own doorstep. There was a prospect of fighting in
the immediate future, and he was determined to add to his renown. The
choice then lay between Hamilton and Laurens, who had received the
thanks of Congress for his distinguished services in the field, and
whose father had been a president of that body. Lafayette and all the
Frenchmen were anxious that the mission be given to Hamilton. The former
went to Philadelphia and talked to half the Congress. He offered
Hamilton private letters which would introduce him to the best society
of Europe; adding, "I intend giving you the _key_ of the cabinet, as
well as of the societies which influence them."

Laurens, by this time, was eager to go. His father, who had started for
Holland as Minister Plenipotentiary, had been captured by the British
and confined in the Tower of London; the foreign mission would give him
an opportunity to attempt his liberation. Moreover, life was very dull
at present, and he knew himself to be possessed of diplomatic talents.
But he was also aware of Hamilton's ardent desire to visit Europe, all
that it would mean to that insatiate mind, his weariness of his present
position. Washington would give his consent to the temporary absence of
Hamilton, for the French money was the vital necessity of the Republic's
life, and he knew that his indomitable aide would not return without it
Therefore Laurens wrote to Hamilton, who was in Albany awaiting his
wedding-day, that he should resign in his favour, and congratulated him
on so brilliant and distinguished a honeymoon.

The struggle in Hamilton's mind was brief. The prospect of sailing with
his bride on a long and delightful journey that could not fail to bring
him highest honour had made his blood dance. Moreover, in the previous
month Washington had again refused his request for an independent
command. It took him but a short time to relinquish this cherished dream
when he thought of the unhappy plight of Mr. Laurens, and remembered the
deep anxiety of the son, often expressed. He wrote to Laurens,
withdrawing in the most decisive terms. Laurens was not to be outdone.
He loved his father, but he loved Hamilton more. He pressed the
appointment upon his friend, protesting that the affairs of the elder
Laurens would be quite as safe in his hands. Hamilton prevailed, and
Congress, having waited amiably while the two martial youths had it out,
unanimously appointed Laurens. He could not sail until February, and as
soon as the matter was decided obtained leave of absence and repaired in
all haste to Albany, to be present at Hamilton's wedding.


IX

The wedding of Alexander Hamilton and Elizabeth Schuyler was the most
notable private event of the Revolution. The immense social and
political consequence of the Schuylers, and the romantic fame of the
young aide, of whom the greatest things possible were expected, brought
the aristocracy of New York and the Jersies to Albany despite the
inclement winter weather. The large house of the Schuylers gave a
prolonged hospitality to the women, and the men lodged in the
patriarchal little town. But although Hamilton was glad to see the
Livingstons, Sterlings, and Boudinots again, the greater number of the
guests interested him far less than a small group of weather-beaten
soldiers, of which this occasion was the happy cause of reunion. Troup
was there, full of youth and honours. He had received the thanks of
Congress for his services at Saratoga, and been appointed secretary of
the Board of War. Recently he had resigned from the army, and was
completing his law studies. Nicolas Fish came with Lafayette, whose
light artillery he commanded. He was known as a brave and gallant
soldier, and so excellent a disciplinarian that he had won the approval
and confidence of Washington. He still parted his little fringe in the
middle, and his face was as chubby as ever, his eyes as solemn.
Lafayette, who had brought a box full of clothes that had dazzled Paris,
embraced Hamilton with tears, but they were soon deep in conjectures of
the next campaign. Laurens, looking like a king in exile, wrung many
hearts. Hamilton's brother aides, unfortunately, were the more closely
bound by his absence, but they had despatched him with their blessing
and much chaffing.

The hall of the Schuyler mansion was about twenty feet square and
panelled in white. It was decorated with holly, and for three nights
before the wedding illuminated by hundreds of wax candles, while the
young people danced till three in the morning. The Schuyler house, long
accustomed to entertaining, had never been gayer, and no one was more
content than the chatelaine. Although she had been reasonably sure of
Elizabeth, there was no telling at what moment the maiden might yield to
the romantic mania of the time, and climb out of her window at night
while Hamilton stood shivering below. Now all danger was past, and Mrs.
Schuyler moved, large, placid, and still handsome, among her guests,
beaming so affectionately whenever she met Mrs. Carter's flashing eyes
that Peggy and Cornelia renewed their vows to elope when the hour and
the men arrived. General Schuyler, once more on the crest of public
approval, was always grave and stern, but he, too, breathed satisfaction
and relief. He was a tall man of military appearance, powerful,
muscular, slender; but as his nose was large and fleshy, and he wore a
ragged-looking wig with wings like Washington's, he could not be called
handsome. It was a noble countenance, however, and his black eyes
flashed and pierced.

As for Hamilton and Miss Schuyler, who had a trunk full of charming new
gowns, they were as happy as two children, and danced the night through.
They were married on the 20th, in the drawing-room, in front of the
splendid mantel, which the housewives had spent much time in admiring.
The bride wore the white which became her best, made with a long pointed
bodice and paniers, and lace that had been worn by the wife of the first
patroon. She had risen to the dignity of a wig, and her mass of black
hair was twisted mercilessly tight under the spreading white monstrosity
to which her veil was attached. Hamilton wore a black velvet coat, as
befitting his impending state. Its lining and the short trousers were of
white satin. His shapely legs were in white silk, his feet in pumps with
diamond buckles, the present of Lafayette. He, too, wore a wig,--a close
one, with a queue,--but he got rid of it immediately after the ceremony,
for it heated his head.

Hamilton had then reached his full height, about five feet six. His
bride was perhaps three inches shorter. The world vowed that never had
there been so pretty a couple, nor one so well matched in every way.
Both were the perfection of make, and the one as fair and fresh as a
Scot, the other a golden gipsy, the one all fire and energy, the other
docile and tender, but with sufficient spirit and intelligence. It is
seldom that the world so generously gives its blessing, but it might
have withheld it, for all that Hamilton and his bride would have cared.

Hamilton's honeymoon was brief. There was a mass of correspondence
awaiting him, and no place for a bride in the humble Dutch house at New
Windsor where Washington had gone into winter quarters. But the distance
was not great, and he could hope for flying leaves of absence.
Washington was not unsympathetic to lovers; he had been known to unbend
and advise his aides when complications threatened or a siege seemed
hopeless; and he had given Hamilton the longest leave possible.
Nevertheless, the bridegroom set forth, one harsh January morning, on
his long journey, over roads a foot deep in snow, and through solitary
winter forests, with any thing but an impassioned desire to see General
Washington again. Had he been returning to the command of a corps, with
a prospect of stirring events as soon as the snow melted, he would have
spurred his horse with high satisfaction, even though he left a bride
behind him; but to return to a drudgery which he hated the more for
having escaped it for three enchanted weeks, made his spirit turn its
back to the horse's head. He resolved anew to resign if an opportunity
offered. Four years of that particular sort of devotion to the patriot
cause were enough. He wished to demonstrate his patriotism in other
ways. He had accomplished the primary object for which Washington had
pressed him into service, and he believed that the war was nearing its
finish; there was nothing he could now do at Headquarters which the
other aides could not do as well, and he wanted military excitement and
renown while their possibilities existed.


X

The first task awaiting him upon his arrival at Headquarters was to draw
up a letter of instruction for Laurens, a task which required minute
care; for on its suggestions, as much as on Laurens's brilliant talents,
depended the strength of a mission whose failure might mean that of the
American arms. Laurens had requested the letter, and told Hamilton that
he should be guided by it. He did not anticipate a royal condition of
mind which would prompt him practically to carry off the French
money-bags under the king's astonished nose, and he knew Hamilton's
command of every argument connected with the painful subject of
financial needs. Hamilton drew up a lucid and comprehensive letter, in
nine parts, which Laurens could study at his leisure on the frigate,
_Alliance_; then attacked his accumulated duties. They left him little
leisure to remember he was a bridegroom, although he occasionally
directed his gaze toward the North with some longing. His freedom
approached, however, and it was swift and unexpected.

It came on the 16th of February. His office was in his bedroom. He had
just completed a letter containing instructions of an important nature
for the commissary, and started in search of Tilghman, whose duty it was
to see it safely delivered. On the stairs he passed Washington, whose
brow was heavy. The General, with that brevity which was an indication
of his passionate temper fighting against a self-control which he must
have knocked flat with great satisfaction at times, ejaculated that he
wished to speak with him at once. Hamilton replied that he would wait
upon him immediately, and hastened to Tilghman's office, wondering what
had occurred to stir the depths of his Chief. He was but a moment with
Tilghman, but on the stairs he met Lafayette, who was in search of him
upon a matter of business. It is possible that Hamilton should not have
permitted himself to be detained, but at all events he did, for perhaps
two minutes. Suddenly he became conscious that Washington was standing
at the head of the stairs, and wondering if he had awaited him there, he
abruptly broke off his conversation with Lafayette, and ran upward.
Washington looked as if about to thunder anathema upon the human race.
He had been annoyed since dawn, and his passions fairly flew at this
last indignity.

"Colonel Hamilton!" he exclaimed. "You have kept me waiting at the head
of the stairs these ten minutes. I must tell you, sir, you treat me with
disrespect."

Hamilton's eyes blazed and his head went back, but his quick brain leapt
to the long-desired opportunity. He replied as calmly as if his heart
were not thumping, "I am not conscious of it, sir, but since you have
thought it necessary to tell me so, we part."

"Very well, sir!" replied Washington, "if it be your choice!" He turned
his back and strode to his office.

Hamilton went to his room with a light heart, feeling as if the
pigeon-holes were marching out of his brain. The breach was
Washington's; he himself had answered with dignity, and could leave with
a clear conscience. He had not kept Washington waiting above four
minutes, and he did not feel that an apology was necessary.

"Oh," he thought aloud, "I feel as if I had grown wings." He would
return to his bride for a few weeks, then apply once more for a command.

There was a knock, and Tilghman entered. The young men looked at each
other in silence for a moment; Tilghman with an almost comical anxiety,
Hamilton with alert defiance.

"Well?" demanded Hamilton.

"I come from the Chief--ambassador extraordinary. Look out of the
window, or I shall not have courage to go on. He's put the devil to bed
and is monstrous sorry this misunderstanding has occurred--"

"Misunderstanding?" snorted Hamilton.

"You know my love of euphony, Hamilton. Pray let me finish. I'd rather
be Laurens on my way to beg. What is a king to a lion? But seriously, my
dear, the Chief is desperately sorry this has occurred. He has deputed
me to assure you of his great confidence in your abilities, integrity,
and usefulness, and of his desire, in a candid conversation, to heal a
difference which could not have happened but in a moment of passion. Do
go and see him at once, and then we shall all sleep in peace to-night."

But Hamilton shook his head decidedly. "You know how tired I am of all
this," he said, "and that I can be as useful and far more agreeably
active in the field. If I consent to this interview, I am lost. I have
never doubted the Chief's affection for me, but he is also the most
astute of men, and knows my weakness. If, arguments having failed, he
puts his arm about my shoulders and says, 'My boy, _do_ not desert me,'
I shall melt, and vow that neither bride nor glory could beckon me from
him. So listen attentively, mon ami, and deliver my answer as follows:
1st. I have taken my resolve in a manner not to be revoked, 2d. As a
conversation could serve no other purpose than to produce explanations,
mutually disagreeable, though I certainly will not refuse an interview
if he desires it, yet I should be happy if he would permit me to decline
it. 3d. That, though determined to leave the family, the same principles
which have kept me so long in it will continue to direct my conduct
toward him when out of it. 4th. That I do not wish to distress him or
the public business by quitting him before he can derive other
assistance by the return of some of the gentlemen who are absent. 5th.
And that in the meantime it depends on him to let our behaviour to each
other be the same as if nothing had happened."

Tilghman heaved a deep sigh. "Then you really mean to go?" he said.
"Heartless wretch! Have you no mercy on us? Headquarters will be a tomb,
with Washington reposing on top. Think of the long and solemn
breakfasts, the funereal dinners, the brief but awful suppers.
Washington will never open his mouth again, and I never had the courage
to speak first. If ever you deign to visit us, you will find that we
have lost the power of speech. I repeat that you have no heart in your
body."

Hamilton laughed. "If you did not know that I love you, you would not
sit there and revile me. No family has ever been happier than ours. In
four years there has not been a quarrel until to-day. I can assure you
that my heart will ache when the time comes to leave you, but I really
had got to the end of my tether. I have long felt as if I could not go
on another day."

"'Tis grinding, monotonous work," admitted Tilghman, "and we've all
wondered how you have stood it as long as this--every bit of you was
made for action. Well, I'll take your message to the Chief."

Washington consented to waive the explanation and sent Hamilton another
message, thanking him for consenting to remain until Harrison and Meade
returned.


XI

Little Mrs. Hamilton was delighted with the course affairs had taken,
and pleaded for resignation from the army. But to this Hamilton would
not hearken. Anxious as he was for the war to finish, that he might
begin upon the foundations of home and fortune, he had no intention of
deserting a cause to which he had pledged himself, and in which there
still was a chance for him to achieve distinction. So far, his ambitions
were wholly military. If the profound thought he had given to the
present and future needs of the Republic was not wholly impersonal; if
he took for granted that he had a part to play when the Revolution
finished, it was little more than a dream at present. His very
temperament was martial, the energy and impetuosity of his nature were
in their element on the battlefield, and he would rather have been a
great general than the elder Pitt. But although there is no reason to
doubt that he would have become a great general, had circumstance
favoured his pet ambition, yet Washington was a better judge of the
usefulness of his several abilities than he was himself. Not only had
that reader of men made up his mind that a brain like his favourite's
should not be wasted on the battlefield,--left there, perhaps, while
dolts escaped, for Hamilton had no appreciation of fear or danger,--but
he saw in him the future statesman, fertile, creative, executive,
commanding; and he could have no better training than at a desk in his
office. Phenomenally precocious, even mature, as Hamilton's brain had
been when they met that morning on the Heights of Harlem, these four
years had given it a structural growth which it would not have acquired
in camp life, and to which few men of forty were entitled. Of this fact
Hamilton was appreciative, and he was too philosophical to harbour
regrets; but that period was over now, and he wanted to fight.

On April 27th he wrote to Washington, asking for employment during the
approaching campaign, suggesting the command of a light corps, and
modestly but decidedly stating his claims.

Washington was greatly embarrassed. Every arbitrary appointment caused a
ferment in the army, where jealousies were hotter than martial ardours.
Washington was politic above all things, but to refuse Hamilton a
request after their quarrel and parting was the last thing he wished to
do. He felt that he had no choice, however, and wrote at once,
elaborating his reasons for refusal, ending as follows:--

     My principal concern rises from an apprehension that you will
     impute my refusal of your request to other motives than those I
     have expressed, but I beg you to be assured I am only influenced by
     the reasons I have mentioned.

Hamilton knew him too well to misunderstand him, but he was deeply
disappointed. He retired into the library behind the drawing-room of the
Schuyler mansion, and wrote another and a more elaborate letter to
Robert Morris. He began with a reiteration of the impotence of Congress,
its loss of the confidence of this country and of Europe, the necessity
for an executive ministry, and stated that the time was past to indulge
in hopes of foreign aid. The States must depend upon themselves, and
their only hope lay in a National Bank. There had been some diffidence
in his previous letter. There was none in this, and he had a greater
mastery of the subject. In something like thirty pages of close writing,
he lays down every law, extensive and minute, for the building of a
National Bank, and not the most remarkable thing about this letter is
the psychological knowledge it betrays of the American people. Having
despatched it, he wrote again to Washington, demonstrating that his case
was dissimilar from those the Chief had quoted. He disposed of each case
in turn, and his presentation of his own claims was equally
unanswerable. Washington, who was too wise to enter into a controversy
with Hamilton's pen, did not reply to the letter, but made up his mind
to do what he could for him, although still determined there should be
no disaffection in the army of his making.

Meanwhile Hamilton received letters from Lafayette, begging him to
hasten South and share his exile; from Washington, asking advice; and
from members of the family, reminding him of their affection and regret.
Tilghman's is characteristic:--

Headquarters, 27th April.

     MY DEAR HAMILTON: Between me and thee there is a gulf, or I should
     not have been thus long without seeing you. My faith is strong, but
     not strong enough to attempt walking on the waters. You must not
     suppose from my dealing so much in Scripture phrase that I am
     either drunk with religion or with wine, though had I been inclined
     to the latter I might have found a jolly companion in my lord, who
     came here yesterday. We have not a word of news.... I must go over
     and see you soon, for I am not yet weaned from you, nor do I desire
     to be. I will not present so cold words as compliments to Mrs.
     Hamilton. She has an equal share of the best wishes of

     Your most affectionate

     TILGHMAN.

The following was from Laurens:--

     I am indebted to you, my dear Hamilton, for two letters: the first
     from Albany, as masterly a piece of cynicism as ever was penned;
     the other from Philadelphia, dated the second March; in both you
     mention a design of retiring, which makes me extremely unhappy. I
     would not wish to have you for a moment withdraw from the public
     service; at the same time my friendship for you, and knowledge of
     your value to the United States, makes me most ardently desire that
     you should fill only the first offices of the Republic. I was
     flattered with an account of your being elected a delegate from New
     York, and am much mortified not to hear it confirmed by yourself. I
     must confess to you that at the present stage of the war, I should
     prefer your going into Congress, and from thence becoming a
     minister plenipotentiary for peace, to your remaining in the army,
     where the dull system of seniority, and the _tableau_, would
     prevent you from having the important commands to which you are
     entitled; but, at any rate, I will not have you renounce your rank
     unless you entered the career above mentioned. Your private affairs
     cannot require such immediate and close attention. You speak like a
     _paterfamilias_ surrounded with a numerous progeny.

On the 26th of May he had an appreciative letter from Robert Morris,
thanking him for his suggestions, and assuring him of their
acceptability. He promises a bank on Hamilton's plan, although with far
less capital; still it may afterward be increased to any extent.

The northern land was full of amenities, the river gay with pleasure
barges. The French gardens about the Schuyler mansion were romantic for
saunterings with the loveliest of brides; the seats beneath the great
trees commanded the wild heights opposite. Forty of the finest horses in
the country were in General Schuyler's stables, and many carriages.
There was a constant stream of distinguished guests. But Hamilton, who
could dally pleasurably for a short time, had no real affinity for
anything but work. There being no immediate prospect of fighting, he
retired again to the library and began that series of papers called _The
Continentalist_, which were read as attentively as if peace had come.
They examined the defects of the existing league of states, their
jealousies, which operated against the formation of a Federal
government, then proceeded to enumerate the powers with which such a
government should be clothed.

Hamilton did not wait with any particular grace, but even the desired
command came to him after a reasonable period of attempted patience. At
Washington's request he accompanied him to Newport to confer with
Rochambeau. Although the Chief did not allude to Hamilton's last letter,
their intercourse on this journey was as natural and intimate as ever;
and Washington did not conceal his pleasure in the society of this the
most captivating and endearing of his many young friends. After the
conference was over, Hamilton returned to Albany for a brief visit, then
determined to force Washington to show his hand. He joined the army at
Dobbs Ferry, and sent the Chief his commission. Tilghman returned with
it, express haste, and the assurance that the General would endeavour to
give him a command, nearly such as he could desire in the present
circumstance of the army, Hamilton had accomplished his object. He
retained his commission and quartered with General Lincoln.

When Washington arrived at Dobbs Ferry and went into temporary quarters,
he gave a large dinner to the French officers, and invited Hamilton to
preside.

     His graceful manners and witty speeches provoked universal
     admiration [runs the pen of a contemporary]. He was the youngest
     and smallest man present. His hair was turned back from the
     forehead, powdered, and queued at the back. His face was boyishly
     fair, and lighted up with intelligence and genius. Washington,
     grave, elegant and hospitable, sat at the side of the table, with
     the accomplished Count de Rochambeau on his right. The Duke de
     Luzerne occupied a seat opposite. General Knox was present, and so
     was Baron Steuben.

Shortly afterward, Hamilton attended a council of war, at Washington's
invitation. The squadron of De Grasse was approaching the coast of
Virginia. For the second time, Washington was obliged to give up his
cherished scheme of marching on New York, for it was now imperative to
meet Cornwallis in the South. The Chief completely hoodwinked Clinton as
to his immediate plans, Robert Morris raised the funds for moving the
army, and Hamilton obtained his command. To his high satisfaction, Fish
was one of his officers. Immediately before his departure for the South
he wrote to his wife. He had attained his desire, but he was too unhappy
to be playful. A portion of the letter is as follows:--

     A part of the army, my dear girl, is going to Virginia, and I must,
     of necessity, be separated at a much greater distance from my
     beloved wife. I cannot announce the fatal necessity without feeling
     everything that a fond husband can feel. I am unhappy;--I am
     unhappy beyond expression. I am unhappy because I am to be so
     remote from you; because I am to hear from you less frequently than
     I am accustomed to do. I am miserable because I know you will be
     so; I am wretched at the idea of flying so far from you, without a
     single hour's interview, to tell you all my pains and all my love.
     But I cannot ask permission to visit you. It might be thought
     improper to leave my corps at such a time and upon such an
     occasion. I must go without seeing you--I must go without embracing
     you:--alas! I must go.

The allied armies moved on the 22d of August and arrived within two
miles of the enemy's works at York Town, on the 28th of September.
Hamilton's light infantry was attached to the division of Lafayette, who
joined the main army with what was left of his own. Laurens was also in
command of a company of light infantry in the young French general's
division. He had acquitted himself brilliantly in France, returning, in
spite of all obstacles and the discouragement of Franklin, with two and
a half million livres in cash, part of a subsidy of six millions of
livres granted by the French king; but he felt that to be in the field
again with Washington, Hamilton, Lafayette, and Fish was higher fortune
than successful diplomacy.

The allied army was twelve thousand strong; Cornwallis had about
seventy-eight hundred men. The British commander was intrenched in the
village of York Town, the main body of his troops encamped on the open
grounds in the rear. York Town is situated on a peninsula formed by the
rivers York and James, and into this narrow compass Cornwallis had been
driven by the masterly tactics of Lafayette. The arrival of De Grasse's
fleet cut off all hope of retreat by water. He made but a show of
opposition during the eight days employed by the Americans in bringing
up their ordnance and making other preparations. On the 9th the trenches
were completed, and the Americans began the bombardment of the town and
of the British frigates in the river. It continued for nearly
twenty-four hours, and so persistent and terrific was the cannonading,
that the British, being unfortunate in their embrasures, withdrew most
of their cannon and made infrequent reply. On the night of the 11th new
trenches were begun within two and three hundred yards of the British
works. While they were completing, the enemy opened new embrasures, from
which their fire was far more effective than at first. Two redoubts
flanked this second parallel and desperately annoyed the men in the
trenches. It was determined to carry them by assault, and the American
light infantry and De Viomenil's grenadiers and chasseurs were ordered
to hold themselves in readiness for the attack. Laurens, with eighty
men, was to turn the redoubt in order to intercept the retreat of the
garrison, but Hamilton, for the moment, saw his long-coveted
opportunity glide by him. Washington had determined to give it to our
hero's old Elizabethtown tutor, Colonel Barber, conceiving that the
light infantry which had made the Virginia campaign was entitled to
precedence. Hamilton was standing with Major Fish when the news of this
arrangement was brought to him. He reached the General's tent in three
bounds, and poured forth the most impetuous appeal he had ever permitted
himself to launch at Washington. But he was terribly in earnest, and the
prospect of losing this magnificent opportunity tore down the barriers
of his self-possession. "It is my right to attack, sir!" he concluded
passionately, "I am the officer on duty!" Washington had watched his
flushed nervous face and flashing eyes, which had far more command in
their glances than appeal, and he never made great mistakes: he knew
that if he refused this request, Hamilton never would forgive him.

"Very well," he said. "Take it."

Hamilton ran back to Fish, crying: "We have it. We have it;" and
immediately began to form his troops. The order was issued to advance in
two columns, and after dark the march began, Hamilton leading the
advance corps. The French were to attack the redoubt on the right.

The signal was a shell from the American batteries, followed by one from
the French. The instant the French shell ascended, Hamilton gave the
order to advance at the point of the bayonet; then his impatience, too
long gnawing at its curb, dominated him, and he ran ahead of his men and
leaped to the abatis. For a half moment he stood alone on the parapet,
then Fish reached him, and together they encouraged the rest to come on.
Hamilton turned and sprang into the ditch, Fish following. The infantry
was close behind, and surmounting the abatis, ditch, and palisades,
leaped into the work. Hamilton had disappeared, and they feared he had
fallen, but he was investigating; he suddenly reappeared, and formed the
troops in the redoubt. It surrendered almost immediately. The attack
took but nine minutes, so irresistible was the impetuosity of the
onslaught. Hamilton gave orders at once to spare every man who had
ceased to fight. When Colonel Campbell advanced to surrender, one of the
American captains seized a bayonet and drew back to plunge it into the
Englishman's breast. Hamilton thrust it aside, and Campbell was made
prisoner by Laurens. Washington was delighted. "Few cases," he said,
"have exhibited greater proofs of intrepidity, coolness, and firmness
than were shown on this occasion." On the 17th, when Washington received
the proposition for surrender from Cornwallis, he sent for Hamilton and
asked his opinion of the terms. To Laurens was given the honour of
representing the American army at the conference before the surrender.
Tilghman rode, express haste, to Philadelphia with the first news of the
surrender of Cornwallis and his army.

Hamilton's description of his part in the conquest that virtually put an
end to the war is characteristic.

     Two nights ago, my Eliza [he wrote], my duty and my honour obliged
     me to take a step in which your happiness was too much risked. I
     commanded an attack upon one of the enemy's redoubts; we carried it
     in an instant and with little loss. You will see the particulars in
     the Philadelphia papers. There will be, certainly, nothing more of
     this kind; all the rest will be by approach; and if there should be
     another occasion, it would not fall to my turn to execute it.

"It is to be hoped so," she said plaintively to her mother. "Else shall
I no longer need to wear a wig."


XII

The next few years may be passed over quickly; they are not the most
interesting, though not the least happy of Hamilton's life. He returned
home on furlough after the battle of York Town and remained in his
father-in-law's hospitable home until the birth of his boy, on the 22d
of January. Then, having made up his mind that there was no further work
for him in the army, and that Britain was as tired of the war as the
States, he announced his intention to study for the bar. His friends
endeavoured to dissuade him from a career whose preparation was so long
and arduous, and reminded him of the public offices he could have for
the asking. But Hamilton was acquainted with his capacity for
annihilating work, and at this time he was not conscious of any
immediate ambition but of keeping his wife in a proper style and of
founding a fortune for the education of his children. His military
ambition had been so possessing that the sudden and brilliant finish at
York Town of his power to gratify it had dwarfed for a while any other
he may have cherished.

He took a little house in the long street on the river front, and
invited Troup to live with him. They studied together. He had been the
gayest of companions, the most courted of favourites, since his return
from the wars. For four months even his wife and Troup had, save on
Sundays, few words with him on unlegal matters. His brain excluded every
memory, every interest. For the first time he omitted to write regularly
to Mrs. Mitchell, Hugh Knox, and Peter Lytton. All day and half the
night he walked up and down his library, or his father-in-law's,
reading, memorizing, muttering aloud. His friends vowed that he marched
the length and width of the Confederacy. He never gave a more striking
exhibition of his control over the powers of his intellect than this.
The result was that at the end of four months he obtained a license to
practise as an attorney, and published a "Manual on the Practice of
Law," which, Troup tells us, "served as an instructive grammar to future
students, and became the groundwork of subsequent enlarged practical
treatises." If it be protested that these feats were impossible, I can
only reply that they are historic facts.

It was during these months of study that Aaron Burr came to Albany.

This young man, also, was not unknown to fame; and the period of the
Revolution is the one on which Burr's biographers should dilate, for it
was the only one through which he passed in a manner entirely to his
credit. He was now in Albany, striving for admittance to the bar, but
handicapped by the fact that he had studied only two years, instead of
the full three demanded by law.

While Burr did not belong to the aristocracy of the country, his family
not ranking by any means with the Schuylers, Van Rensselaers,
Livingstons, Jays, Morrises, Roosevelts, and others of that small and
haughty band, still he came of excellent and respectable stock. His
father had been the Rev. Aaron Burr, President of Princeton College, and
his mother the daughter of the famous Jonathan Edwards. He was
quick-witted and brilliant; and there is no adjective which qualifies
his ambition. He was a year older than Hamilton, about an inch taller,
and very dark. His features were well cut, his eyes black, glittering,
and cold; his bearing dignified but unimposing, for he bent his
shoulders and walked heavily. His face was not frank, even in youth, and
grew noticeably craftier. He and Hamilton were the greatest fops in
dress of their time; but while the elegance and beauty of attire sat
with a peculiar fitness on Hamilton, seeming but the natural
continuation of his high-bred face and easy erect and graceful bearing,
Burr always looked studiously well-dressed. In regard to their height, a
similar impression prevailed. One never forgot Burr's small stature, and
often commented upon it. Comment upon Hamilton's size was rare, his
proportions and motions were so harmonious; when he was on the platform,
that ruthless test of inches, he dominated and controlled every brain in
the audience, and his enemies vowed he was in league with the devil.

Burr brought letters to General Schuyler, and was politely given the run
of the library. He and Hamilton had met casually in the army, but had
had no opportunity for acquaintance. At this time the law was a subject
of common interest, and they exchanged many opinions. There was no shock
of antagonism at first, and for that matter they asked each other to
dinner as long as Hamilton lived. But Hamilton estimated him justly at
once, although, as Burr was as yet unconscious of the depths of his own
worst qualities, the most astute reader of character hardly would
suspect them. But Hamilton read that he was artificial and
unscrupulous, and too selfish to serve the country in any of her coming
needs. Still, he was brilliant and fascinating, and Hamilton asked him
to his home. Burr, at first, was agreeably attracted to Hamilton, whose
radiant disposition warmed his colder nature; but when he was forced to
accept the astounding fact that Hamilton had prepared himself for the
bar in four months, digesting and remembering a mountain of knowledge
that cost other men the labour of years, and had prepared a Manual
besides, he experienced the first convulsion of that jealousy which was
to become his controlling passion in later years. Indeed, he established
the habit with that first prolonged paroxysm, and he asked himself
sullenly why a nameless stranger, from an unheard-of Island, should have
the unprecedented success which this youth had had. Social victory,
military glory, the preference of Washington, the respect and admiration
of the most eminent men in the country, a horde of friends who talked of
him as if he were a demi-god, an alliance by marriage with the greatest
family in America, a father-in-law to advance any man's ambitions, a
fascination which had kept the women talking until he married, and
finally a memory and a legal faculty which had so astounded the
bar--largely composed of exceptional men--that it could talk of nothing
else: it was enough for a lifetime, and the man was only twenty-five.
What in heaven's name was to be expected of him before he finished? The
more Burr brooded, the more enraged he became. He had been brought up to
think himself extraordinary, although his guardian had occasionally
birched him when his own confidence had disturbed the peace; he was
intensely proud of his military career, and aware of his fitness for the
bar. But in the blaze of Hamilton's genius he seemed to shrivel; and as
for having attempted to prepare himself for practice in four months, he
might as well have grafted wings to his back and expected them to grow.
It was some consolation to reflect that, as aide and confidential
secretary for four years to Washington, Hamilton had been a student of
the law of nations, and that thus his mind was peculiarly fitted to
grasp what confronts most men as a solid wall to be taken down stone by
stone; also that himself acknowledged no rival where the affections of
women were concerned. But while he lifted the drooping head of his
pride, and tied it firmly to a stake with many strong words, he chose to
regard Hamilton as a rival, and the idea grew until it possessed him.

In July Robert Morris, after some correspondence, persuaded Hamilton to
accept the office of Continental Receiver for a short time.

     Your former situation in the army [he wrote], the present situation
     of that very army, your connexions in the state, your perfect
     knowledge of men and measures, and the abilities with which heaven
     has blessed you, will give you a fine opportunity to forward the
     public service.

Hamilton, who had no desire to interrupt his studies, was placed in a
position which gave him no choice; his sense of public duty grew
steadily.

     For my part [he wrote to Morris], considering the late serious
     misfortune to our ally, the spirit of reformation, of wisdom, and
     of unanimity, which seems to have succeeded to that of blunder and
     dissension in the British government, and the universal reluctance
     of these states to do what is right, I cannot help viewing our
     situation as critical, and I feel it the duty of every citizen to
     exert his faculties to the utmost.

But in spite of the onerous and disagreeable duties of his position, he
continued to pursue the course of study necessary for admission to the
bar as a counsellor. He also found time to write a letter to Meade. The
following extract will show that the severity of his great task was
over, and that he was once more alive to that domestic happiness to
which so large a part of his nature responded.

     You reproach me with not having said enough about our little
     stranger. When I wrote last I was not sufficiently acquainted with
     him to give you his character. I may now assure you that your
     daughter, when she sees him, will not consult you about her choice,
     or will only do it in respect to the rules of decorum. He is truly
     a very fine young gentleman, the most agreeable in conversation and
     manners of any I ever knew, nor less remarkable for his
     intelligence and sweetness of temper. You are not to imagine by my
     beginning with his mental qualifications that he is defective in
     personal. It is agreed on all hands that he is handsome; his
     features are good, his eye is not only sprightly and expressive,
     but it is full of benignity. His attitude in sitting is, by
     connoisseurs, esteemed graceful, and he has a method of waving his
     hand that announces the future orator. He stands, however, rather
     awkwardly, and as his legs have not all the delicate slimness of
     his father's, it is feared he may never excel as much in dancing,
     which is probably the only accomplishment in which he will not be a
     model. If he has any fault in manners, he laughs too much. He has
     now passed his seventh month.

Happy by temperament, Hamilton was at this time happier in his
conditions--barring the Receivership--than any vague, wistful, crowded
dream had ever presaged. His wife was adorable and pretty, sprightly and
sympathetic, yet accomplished in every art of the Dutch housewife; and
although he was far too modest to boast, he was privately convinced that
his baby was the finest in the Confederacy. He had a charming little
home, and Troup, the genial, hearty, and solid, was a member of it. In
General and Mrs. Schuyler he had found genuine parents, who strove to
make him forget that he had ever been without a home. He had been forced
to refuse offers of assistance from his father-in-law again and again.
He would do nothing to violate his strong sense of personal
independence; he had half of the arrears of his pay, Troup his share of
the expenses of the little house. He knew that in a short time he should
be making an income. The cleverest of men, however, can be hoodwinked by
the subtle sex. The great Saratoga estate of the Schuylers furnished the
larder of the Hamiltons with many things which the young householder was
far too busy to compare with his slender purse.

He heard constantly from his friends in the army, and finally was
persuaded to sit for a portrait, to be the common property of six or
eight of them. Money was desperately tight, they could not afford a copy
apiece, but each was to possess it for two months at a time so long as
he lived; he who survived the others to dispose of it as he chose. For
Hamilton to sit still and look in one direction for half an hour was
nothing short of misery, even with Betsey, Troup, and the Baby to amuse
him; and only the head, face, stock, and front of the coat were
finished. But the artist managed to do himself justice with the massive
spirited head, the deep-set mischievous eyes, whose lightnings never
were far from the surface; the humour in the remarkable curves of the
mouth, the determination and suppressed energy of the whole face. It was
a living portrayal, and Betsey parted from it with tears. When she saw
it again her eyes were dim with many tears. The last of its owners to
survive fell far into poverty, and sold it to one of her sons. It is
to-day as fresh, as alive with impatient youth and genius, as when
Hamilton estimated portrait painters thieves of time.

Meanwhile a compliment was paid to him which upset his plans, and placed
him for a short time in the awkward position of hesitating between
private desires and public duty: he was elected by the New York
legislature, and almost unanimously, a delegate to Congress. Troup
brought him the news as he was walking on the broad street along the
river front, muttering his Blackstone, oblivious of his fellow-citizens.

"Go to Congress!" he exclaimed. "Who goes to that ramshackle body that
is able to keep out of it? Could not they find someone else to send to
distinguish himself by failure? I've my living to make. If a man in
these days manages to support his wife and child, there is nothing else
he can do which so entitles him to the esteem of his fellow-citizens."

"True," said Troup, soothingly; "there certainly is nothing in that body
of old women and lunatics, perpetually bickering with thirteen
sovereign, disobedient, and jealous States, to tempt the ambition of any
man; nor, ordinarily, to appeal to his sense of usefulness. But just at
present there are several questions before it with which it is thought
you can cope more successfully than any man living. So I think you ought
to go, and so does General Schuyler. I know all that you will sacrifice,
domestic as well as pecuniarily--but remember, you solemnly dedicated
yourself to the service of this country."

"I'm not likely to forget it, and I am willing to sacrifice anything if
I am convinced of my usefulness in a given direction, but I see no
chance of accomplishing aught in Congress, of doing this country any
service until it is a nation, not a sack of scratching cats."

Not only was great pressure brought to bear upon him, but he was not
long convincing himself that it was his duty to take his knowledge of
certain subjects vexing the Confederation, to the decrepit body which
was feebly striving to save the country from anarchy. He had given
little attention to the general affairs of the country during the past
six months, but an examination of them fired his zeal. He accepted the
appointment, and returned to his law books and his dispiriting struggle
with the taxes.

In the autumn Hamilton received the second of those heavy blows by which
he was reminded that in spite of his magnetism for success he was to
suffer like other mortals. Laurens was dead--killed in a petty skirmish
which he was so loath to miss that he had bolted to it from a sick-bed.
Hamilton mourned him passionately, and never ceased to regret him. He
was mercurial only among his lighter feelings. The few people he really
loved were a part of his daily thoughts, and could set his heartstrings
vibrating at any moment. Betsey consoled, diverted, and bewitched him,
but there were times when he would have exchanged her for Laurens. The
perfect friendship of two men is the deepest and highest sentiment of
which the finite mind is capable; women miss the best in life.

In October Hamilton resigned the Receivership, having brought an
honourable amount of order out of chaos and laid down the law for the
guidance of future officials. November came, and he set off for
Philadelphia philosophically, though by no means with a light heart. The
baby was too young to travel; he was obliged to send his little family
to General Schuyler's, with no hope of seeing them again for months, and
a receding prospect of offering them a home in New York. His
father-in-law, not unmindful that consolation was needed, drove him
two-thirds of the distance, thus saving him a long ride, or its
alternative, the heavy coach. In Philadelphia he found sufficient work
awaiting him to drive all personal matters out of his head.

It was during this year of hard work and little result that he renewed
an acquaintance with James Madison, Jr., afterward fourth President of
the United States, and Gouverneur Morris, one of the most brilliant and
disinterested young men in the country, now associated with Robert
Morris in the Department of Finance. With the last the acquaintance
ripened into a lifelong and intimate friendship; with Madison the
friendship was equally ardent and intimate while it lasted. Madison had
the brain of a statesman, energy and persistence in crises, immense
industry, facility of speech, a broad contempt for the pretensions and
mean bickerings of the States, and a fairly national outlook. As
Hamilton would have said, he "thought continentally." But he lacked
individuality. He was too patriotic, too sincere to act against his
principles, but his principles could be changed by a more powerful and
magnetic brain than his own, and the inherent weakness in him demanded a
stronger nature to cling to. It happened that he and Hamilton, when they
met again in Congress, thought alike on many subjects, and they worked
together in harmony from the first; nevertheless, he was soon in the
position of a double to that towering and energetic personality, and
worshipped it. In their letters the two young men sign themselves,
"yours affectionately," "yours with deep attachment," which between
men--I suppose--means something. So noticeable was Madison's devotion to
the most distinguished young man of the day, and a few years later so
absorbed was he into the huge personality of his early friend's
bitterest enemy, that John Randolph once exclaimed in wrath, "Madison
always was some great man's mistress--first Hamilton's, then
Jefferson's:" a remark which was safe in the days of our ancestors, when
life was all work and no satiety.

Gouverneur Morris had sacrificed home, inheritance, and ties in the
cause of the Revolution, most of his family remaining true to the crown.
His education was thorough, however, and subsequently he had nine years
of Europe, of which he left to posterity an entertaining record. Tall,
handsome, a wit, a beau, notable for energy in Congress, erratic,
caustic, cynical, but the warmest of friends, he was a pet of society, a
darling of women, and trusted by all men. He and Hamilton had much in
common, and to some degree he took Laurens's place; not entirely, for
Laurens's idealism gave him a pedestal in Hamilton's memory which no
other man but Washington ever approached; and Morris was brutal in his
cynicism, placing mankind but a degree higher than the beasts of the
forest. But heart and brain endeared him to Hamilton, and no man had a
loftier or more burning patriotism. As for himself, he loved and admired
Hamilton above all men. He was as strong in his nationalism, believing
Union under a powerful central government to be the only hope of the
States. Both he and Madison were leaders; but both, even then, were
willing to be led by Hamilton, who was several years their junior.

The three young enthusiasts made a striking trio of contrasts as they
sat one evening over their port and walnuts in a private room of a
coffee-house, where they had met to discuss the problems convulsing the
unfortunate country. Madison had the look of a student, a taciturn
intellectual visage. He spoke slowly, weightily, and with great
precision. Morris had, even then, an expression of cynicism and contempt
on his handsome bold face, and he swore magnificently whenever his new
wooden leg interfered with his comfort or dignity. Hamilton, with his
fair mobile face, powerful, penetrating, delicate, illuminated by eyes
full of fire and vivacity, but owing its chief attraction to a mouth as
sweet as it was firm and humorous, made the other men look almost heavy.
Madison was carelessly attired, the other two with all the picturesque
elegance of their time.

"A debt of $42,000,000," groaned Morris, "interest $2,400,000; Robert
Morris threatening to resign; delirious prospect of panic in
consequence; national spirit with which we began the war, a stinking
wick under the tin extinguisher of States' selfishness, stinginess, and
indifference--caused by the natural reversion of human nature to first
principles after the collapse of that enthusiasm which inflates mankind
into a bombastic pride of itself; Virginia pusillanimous, Rhode Island
an old beldam standing on the village pump and shrieking disapproval of
everything; Jay, Adams, and Franklin, after years of humiliating
mendicancy, their very hearts wrinkled in the service of the stupidest
country known to God or man, shoved by a Congress not fit to black their
boots under the thumb of the wiliest and most disingenuous diplomatist
in Europe--much France cares for our interests, provided we cut loose
from Britain; Newburg address and exciting prospect, in these monotonous
times, of civil war, while peace commission is sitting in London; just
demands of men who have fought, starving and naked, for a bare
subsistence after the army disbands, modest request for arrears of
pay,--on which to relieve the necessities of their families turned out
to grass for seven years,--pleasantly indorsed by the Congress, which
feels safe in indorsing anything, and rejected by the States, called
upon to foot the bill, as a painful instance of the greed and depravity
of human nature--there you are: no money, no credit, no government, no
friends,--for Europe is sick of us,--no patriotism; immediate prospects,
bankruptcy, civil war, thirteen separate meals for Europe. What do you
propose, Hamilton? I look to you as your Islanders flee to a stone house
in a hurricane. You are an alien, with no damned state roots to pull up,
your courage is unhuman, or un-American, and you are the one man of
genius in the country. Madison is heroic to a fault, a roaring
Berserker, but we must temper him, we must temper him; and meanwhile we
will both defer to the peculiar quality of your mettle."

Madison, who had not a grain of humour, replied gravely, his rich
southern brogue seeming to roll his words down from a height: "I have a
modest hope in the address I prepared for the citizens of Rhode Island,
more in Hamilton's really magnificent letter to the Governor. Nothing
can be more forcible--nay, beguiling--than his argument in that letter
in favour of a general government independent of state machinery, and
his elaborate appeal to that irritating little commonwealth to consent
to the levying of the impost by Congress, necessary to the raising of
the moneys. I fear I am not a hero, for I confess I tremble. I fear the
worst. But at all events I am determined to place on record that I left
no stone unturned to save this miserable country."

"You will go down to posterity as a great man, Madison, if you are never
given the chance to be one," replied the father of American humour and
coinage; "for it is not in words but in acts that we display the faith
that is not in us. Well, Hamilton?"

"I must confess," said Hamilton, "that Congress appears to me, as a
newcomer, rooted contentedly to its chairs, and determined to do
nothing, happy in the belief that Providence has the matter in hand and
but bides the right moment to make the whole world over. But I see no
cause to despair, else I should not have come to waste my time. I fear
that Rhode Island is too fossilized to listen to us, but I shall urge
that we change the principle of the Confederation and vote to make the
States contribute to the general treasury in an equal proportion to
their means, by a system of general taxation imposed under continental
authority. If the poorer States, irrespective of land and numbers, could
be relieved, and the wealthier taxed specifically on land and houses,
the whole regulated by continental legislation, I think that even Rhode
Island might be placated. It may be that this is not agreeable to the
spirit of the times, but I shall make the attempt--"

"Considering there is no spirit _in_ the times, we might as well expect
to inform its skull with genius by means of a lighted candle. You think
too well of human nature, my boy; expect nothing, that ye be not
disappointed, especially in the matter of revenue."

"I have no exalted opinion of human nature, but if I did not think more
hopefully of it than you do, I should yield up that enthusiasm without
which I can accomplish nothing. You have every gift, but you will end as
a dilettante because your ideal is always in the mud; and it is only
now and again that you think it worth while to pick it up and give it a
bath."

"Right, right," murmured Morris, good-naturedly. "Would that I had your
unquenchable belief in the worth while. Allied to your abilities it will
make the new world over and upset the wicked plans of the old. Analyst
and disbeliever in man's right to his exaggerated opinion of himself,
how do you keep enthusiasm abreast with knowledge of human kind? Tell
me, Hamilton, how do you do it?"

"I fear 'tis the essence of which I am made. My energies will have
outlet or tear me to pieces. When there is work to do, my nostrils
quiver like a war-horse's at the first roar and smoke--"

"Your modesty does you infinite honour; the truth is, you have the holy
fire of patriotism in an abnormal degree. I have it, but I still am
normal. I have made sacrifices and shall make more, but my ego curls its
lip. Yours never does. That is the difference between you and most of
us. Hundreds of us are doggedly determined to go through to the bitter
end, sacrifice money, youth and health; but you alone are happy. That is
why we love you and are glad to follow your lead. But, I repeat, how can
you labour with such undying enthusiasm for the good of human kind when
you know what they amount to?"

"Some are worth working for, that is one point; I don't share your
opinion of general abasement, for the facts warrant no such opinion. And
the battle of ideas, the fight for certain stirring and race-making
principles,--that is the greatest game that mortals can play. And to
play it, we must have mortals for puppets. To create a new government, a
new race, to found what may become the greatest nation on the
earth,--what more stupendous destiny? Even if one were forgotten, it
would be worth doing, so tremendous would be the exercise of the
faculties, so colossal the difficulties. I would have a few men do it
all; I have no faith in the uneducated. The little brain, half opened by
a village schoolmaster, is pestilential; but in the few with sufficient
power over the many,--from whom will be evolved more and more to rank
with the first few,--in those I have faith, and am proud to work with
them."

"Good. I'd not have a monarchy, but I'd have the next thing to it, with
a muzzle on the rabble. Perhaps I, too, have faith in a few,--in
yourself and George Washington; and in Madison, our own Gibraltar. But
the pig-headed, selfish, swinish--well, go on with your present plans.
'Tis to hear those we met to-night, not to analyze each other. Tell us
all, that we may not only hope, but work with you."

"The army first. If retirement on half pay is impossible, then full pay
for, say six years,--and the arrears,--paid upon the disbanding of the
army. Washington, by the exercise of the greatest moral force, but one,
that has appeared in this world, has averted a civil war--I am persuaded
that horror is averted, and I assume that the country does not care
eternally to disgrace itself by letting its deliverers, who have
suffered all that an army can suffer, return to their ruined homes
without the few dollars necessary for another start in life. I have
resigned my claim to arrears of pay, that my argument may not be
weakened. Then a peace establishment. Fancy leaving our frontiers to the
mercy of state militia! I shall urge that the general government have
exclusive power over the sword, to establish certain corps of infantry,
artillery, cavalry, dragoons, and engineers, a general system of land
fortifications, establishment of arsenals and magazines, erection of
founderies and manufactories for arms, of ports and maritime
fortifications--with many details with which I will not bore you. I
shall urge the necessity of strengthening the Federal government through
the influence of officers deriving their appointment directly from
Congress--always, always, the necessity of strengthening the central
government, of centralizing power, and of putting the States where they
belong. It is federation or anarchy. Then--moderate funds permanently
pledged for the security of lenders. I have preached that since I have
dared to preach at all, and that is the only solution of our present
distress, for we'll never get another foreign loan--"

"We've accepted your wisdom, but we can't apply it," interposed Morris.
"Our only hope lies in your national government--but go on."

"A moment," said Madison. "This, in regard to the peace establishment:
Do we apply a war congress to a state of peace, I fear we shall too
clearly define its limits. The States may refuse obedience, and then the
poor invalided body will fall into greater disrepute than ever."

"I have thought of that," replied Hamilton, "and if the worst comes to
the worst, I have a radical plan to propose,--that Congress publish
frankly its imperfections to the country--imperfections which make it
impossible to conduct the public affairs with honour to itself or
advantage to the United States; that it ask the States to appoint a
convention, with full powers to revise the Confederation, and to adopt
and propose all necessary alterations--all to be approved or rejected,
in the last instance, by the legislatures of the several States. That
would be the first step toward a national government. With that, all
things would be possible,--the payment of our foreign loan, of our army,
duties on foreign goods, which is a source of revenue to which they are
incredibly blind; the establishment of a firm government, under which
all will prosper that are willing to work, of a National Bank, of a
peace army--"

"Of Utopia!" exclaimed Morris. "Hamilton, you are the least visionary
man in this country, but you are God knows how many years ahead of your
times. If we are ever on two legs again, you will put us there; but your
golden locks will thin in the process, and that rosy boyish face we love
will be lined with the seams of the true statesman. Only you could
contemplate imbuing these fossilized and commonplace intellects,
composing our Congress of the Confederation--mark the ring of it!--with
a belief in its own impotency and worthlessness. You are not mortal. I
always said it. When Duane gave me your letter to read, I remarked: 'He
withdrew to heaven, and wrote that letter on the knee of the Almighty;
never on earth could he have found the courage and the optimism.' No,
Hamilton, I would embrace you, did my wooden leg permit me to escape
your wrath, but I can give you no encouragement. You will fail
here--gloriously, but you will fail. Mark my words, the army will go
home cursing, and scratch the ground to feed its women. The States will
have no peace establishment to threaten their sovereign rights, we will
pay nobody, and become more and more poverty-stricken and contemptible
in our own eyes, and in the eyes of Europe; we will do nothing that is
wise and everything that is foolish--"

"And then, when the country is sick unto death," interrupted Hamilton,
"it will awake to the wisdom of the drastic remedy and cohere into a
nation."

"Query," said Madison, "would it not be patriotic to push things from
bad to worse as quickly as possible? It might be a case of justifiable
Jesuitism."

"And it might lead to anarchy and the jaws of Europe," said Hamilton.
"It is never safe to go beyond a certain point in the management of
human affairs. What turn the passions of the people may take can never
be foretold, nor that element of the unknown, which is always under the
invisible cap and close on one's heels. God knows I have not much
patience in my nature, and I do not believe that most of my schemes are
so far in advance of even this country's development; but certain
lessons must be instilled by slow persistence. I have no faith in
rushing people at the point of the bayonet in times of peace."

"I think you are right there," said Morris. "But mark my words, you'll
propagate ideas here, and the result in time will be the birth of a
nation--no doubt of that; but you must rest content to live on hope for
the present. I was a fettered limb in this body too long. I know its
inertia."

He knew whereof he spoke. Hamilton won little but additional reputation,
much admiration, half resentful, and many enemies. The army went home
unpaid; the peace establishment consisted of eighty men; little or
nothing was done to relieve the national debt or to carry on the
business of government. Even his proposition to admit the public to the
galleries of Congress, in the hope of interesting it in governmental
affairs, only drew upon him the sneer that he could go out on the
balcony and make his speeches if he feared his eloquence was wasted. He
was accused of writing the Newburg address inciting the officers to
civil war, because it was particularly well written, and of hurrying
Congress to Trenton, when threatened by a mutinous regiment. But he
worked on undaunted, leaving his indelible mark; for he taught the
States that their future prosperity and happiness lay in giving up to
the Union some part of the imposts that might be levied on foreign
commodities, and incidentally the idea of a double government; he
proposed a definite system of funding the debts on continental
securities, which gradually rooted in the common sense of the American
people, and he inveighed with a bitter incisiveness, which was tempered
by neither humour nor gaiety, against the traitorous faction in the pay
of France. He dissuaded Robert Morris from resigning, and introduced a
resolution in eulogy of Washington's management of his officers in the
most critical hour of the Union's history. But his immediate
accomplishment was small and discouraging, although his foresight may
have anticipated what George Ticknor Curtis wrote many years later:--

     The ideas of a statesman like Hamilton, earnestly bent on the
     discovery and inculcation of truth, do not pass away. Wiser than
     those by whom he was surrounded, with a deeper knowledge of the
     science of government than most of them, and constantly enunciating
     principles which extended far beyond the temporizing policy of the
     hour, the smiles of his opponents only prove to posterity how far
     he was in advance of them.

The following extract from a letter of James M'Henry, Lafayette's former
aide, and a member of the Congress, is interesting as a commentary on
the difficulties of our hero's position while a member of that body.

     DEAR HAMILTON: The homilies you delivered in Congress are still
     remembered with pleasure. The impressions they made are in favour
     of your integrity; and no one but believes you a man of honour and
     of republican principles. Were you ten years older and twenty
     thousand pounds richer, there is no doubt but that you might obtain
     the suffrages of Congress for the highest office in their gift.
     You are supposed to possess various knowledge, useful, substantial,
     and ornamental. Your very grave and your cautious, your men who
     measure others by the standard of their own creeping politics,
     think you sometimes intemperate, but seldom visionary: and that
     were you to pursue your object with as much cold perseverance as
     you do with ardour and argument, you would become irresistible. In
     a word, if you could submit to spend a whole life in dissecting a
     fly you would be, in their opinion, one of the greatest men in the
     world. Bold designs; measures calculated for their rapid execution;
     a wisdom that would convince from its own weight; a project that
     would surprise the people into greater happiness, without giving
     them an opportunity to view it and reject it, are not adapted to a
     council composed of discordant elements, or a people who have
     thirteen heads, each of which pay superstitious adorations to
     inferior divinities.

     Adieu, my dear friend, and in the days of your happiness drop a
     line to your

     M'HENRY.

At the end of 1783 Hamilton was convinced that he was of no further
immediate use to the country, and refused a reelection to the Congress,
despite entreaty and expostulation, returning to the happiness of his
domestic life and to his neglected law-books. The British having
evacuated New York, he moved his family there and entered immediately
upon the practice of his profession.




BOOK IV

"ALEXANDER THE GREAT"

INCLUDING THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED
STATES


I

It was the autumn of 1786. New York had risen from her charred and
battered ruins. There were cows on her meadows, a lake with wooded
shores as merely traditional, groves, gardens, orchards, fields, and
swamps; but her business houses and public buildings were ambitious once
more, her spires more lofty and enduring, her new dwelling-houses,
whether somewhat crowded in Wall Street and Broadway, or on the terraces
of less busy streets, or along the river fronts and facing a wild and
lovely prospect, were square, substantial, and usually very large. And
every street was an avenue of ancient trees. Mrs. John Jay, with her
experience of foreign courts, her great beauty, and the prestige of her
distinguished husband, was the leader of society, holding weekly
receptions, and the first to receive the many distinguished strangers.
Although society was not quite as gay as it became three years later,
under a more settled government and hopeful outlook, still there was
quiet entertaining by the Hamiltons, who lived at 58 Wall Street, the
Duers, Watts, Livingstons, Clintons, Duanes, Jays, Roosevelts, Van
Cortlandts, and other representatives of old New York families, now
returned to their own. Congress was come to New York and established in
the City Hall in Wall Street. It had given the final impetus to the
city, struggling under the burden of ruins and debt left by the British;
and society sauntered forth every afternoon in all the glory of velvet
and ruffles, three-cornered hats recklessly laced, brocades, hoopskirts,
and Rohan hats, to promenade past the building where the moribund body
was holding its last sessions. The drive was down the Broadway into the
shades of the Battery, with the magnificent prospect of bay and wooded
shores beyond. Politics, always epidemic among men and women alike, had
recently been animated by Hamilton's coup at Annapolis, and the prospect
of a general convention of the States to consider the reorganization of
a government which had reduced the Confederation to a condition
fearfully close to anarchy, the country to ruin, and brought upon the
thirteen sovereign independent impotent and warring States the contempt
of Europe and the threat of its greed.

A group of men, standing on a corner of Wall Street and the Broadway,
were laughing heartily: a watch was dragging off to jail two citizens
who had fallen upon each other with the venom of political antithesis;
the one, a Nationalist, having called Heaven to witness that Hamilton
was a demi-god, begotten to save the wretched country, the other
vociferating that Hamilton was the devil who would trick the country
into a monarchy, create a vast standing army, which would proclaim him
king and stand upon the heads of a people that had fought and died for
freedom, while the tyrant exercised his abominable functions.

The men in the group were Governor Clinton, Hamilton's bitterest
opponent, but sufficiently amused at the incident; William Livingston,
Governor of New Jersey, now with but a few hairs on the top of his head
and a few at the base, his nose more penetrating, his eye more
disapproving, than ever; James Duane, Mayor of New York; John Jay, the
most faultless character in the Confederation, honoured and unloved, his
cold eyes ever burning with an exalted fire; and John Marshall of
Virginia, munching an apple, his attire in shabby contrast to the
fashionable New Yorkers, the black mane on his splendid head unpowdered
and tossing in the ocean breeze.

"I like your Hamilton," he announced, "and I've come to the conclusion
that I think with him on all matters. He's done more to educate the
people up to a rational form of government during the last seven years
than all the rest of us put together. He's shone upon them like a fixed
star. Other comets have come and gone, whirling them forward to
destruction, but they have always been forced to turn and look at him
again and again, and he has always shone in the same place."

"Sir," exclaimed Clinton, who was flushed with rage, "are you aware that
I am present, and that I entirely disapprove of Mr. Hamilton's attempt
to reduce the States to a condition of ignominious subserviency to an
ambitious and tyrannical central power?"

"I had heard of you, sir," replied Marshall, meekly, "and I am glad to
have the opportunity to ask you what _your_ remedy is for the existing
state of things? You will admit that there must be a remedy, and
quickly. If not a common government with a Constitution empowering it to
regulate trade, imposts, reduce the debt, enter into treaties with
foreign powers which will not be sneered at, administer upon a thousand
details which I will not enumerate, and raise the country from its
slough of contempt, then what? As the personage who has taken the most
decided stand against the enlightened and patriotic efforts of Mr.
Hamilton, I appeal to you for a counter suggestion as magnificent as
his. I am prepared, sir, to listen with all humility."

Clinton, whose selfish fear of his own downfall with that of State
supremacy was so well known that a smile wrinkled across the polite
group of gentlemen surrounding him, deepened his colour to purple under
this assault, and stammered: "Sir, have I not myself proposed an
enlargement of the powers of Congress, in order to counteract the
damnable policy of Britain? Did not your Hamilton harangue that crowd I
sanctioned till he got nearly all he asked for?"

"But he knew better than to ask for too much, in the conditions,"
replied Marshall, suavely. "May I suggest that you have not answered my
humble and earnest questions?"

"I answer no questions that I hold to be impertinent and unimportant!"
said Clinton, pompously, and with a dignified attempt to recover his
poise. He swept his hat from his head; the New Yorkers were as
punctilious; Marshall lifted his battered lid from the wild mass
beneath, and the popular Governor sauntered down the street, saluted
deferentially by Nationalists and followers alike. When he had occasion
to sweep his gorgeous hat to his knees, the ladies courtesied to the
ground, their draperies taking up the entire pavement, and His
Excellency was obliged to encounter the carriages in the street.

"If Clinton were sure of figuring as powerfully in a national government
as he does in the state of New York, he would withdraw his opposition,"
said Livingston, contemptuously. "He has been Governor for nine years.
New York is his throne. He is a king among the common people, who will
elect him indefinitely. Were it not for Hamilton, he would be New York,
and the awful possibilities lying hidden in the kernel of change haunt
his dreams at night. You embarrassed him in a manner that rejoiced my
heart, Mr. Marshall. I beg you will do me the honour to dine with me
to-night. I beg to assure you that your fame is as known to me as were I
a Virginian."

"I'll accept the invitation with pleasure," replied Marshall, whose
manners were all that his attire was not. "I shall be glad to talk with
you on many subjects. To-morrow I shall pay my respects to Mr. Hamilton.
His has been a trying but not a thankless task. He has addressed himself
to the right class of men all over the country, winning them to his
sound and enlightened views, giving them courage, consolidating them
against the self-interested advocates of State sovereignty. That he has
so often neglected a legal practice which must bring him a large income,
as well as sufficient personal glory, out of a sincere pity for and
patriotic interest in this afflicted country, gives New York deep cause
for congratulation that she was in such close communication with that
Island of his youth. I wish that fate had steered him to Virginia."

"Surely you have enough as it is," said Duane, laughing: "Washington,
yourself, Patrick Henry, Jefferson, Madison, Randolph. Spare us
Hamilton. We shall need him badly enough. The Clinton faction is very
strong. That the Hamilton embraces the best spirits of the community
means that it is in the minority, and needs the unremitting exercise of
his genius to counteract the disadvantage in numbers."

"I think that what I admire most in Hamilton," remarked a newcomer, a
small dark man of vivid personality, "are his methods of manipulation.
He picks out his own men, Duer, Troup, Malcolm, has them sent to the
legislature, where they blindly and indefatigably obey his behest and
gain the consent of that body to the convention at Annapolis, then see
that he is elected as principal delegate. He goes to Annapolis
ostensibly to attend a commercial convention: while its insufficient
numbers are drowsing, he springs upon them an eloquent proposal for a
national convention for reforming the Union, and forces it through
before they know what they are about. Certainly Mr. Hamilton is a man of
genius."

"Do I understand. Mr. Burr," said Jay, from his glacial height, "that
you are impugning the purity of Mr. Hamilton's motives?"

"No, sir," replied Burr, whom an archangel could not have rebuked. "In
the present condition of things all methods are justifiable. Hamilton is
great but adaptable. I respect him for that quality above all others,
for he is quite the most imperious character in America, and his natural
instinct is to come out and say, 'You idiots, fall into line behind me
and stop twaddling. I will do your thinking; be kind enough not to delay
me further.' On the other hand, he is forced to be diplomatic, to
persuade where he would command, to move slowly instead of charging at
the point of the bayonet. So, although I have no sympathy with his
pronounced monarchical inclinations, I respect his acquired methods of
getting what he wants."

"What do you mean by pronounced monarchical inclinations?" snorted
Governor Livingston, who could not endure Burr.

Burr gave his peculiar sardonic laugh. "Will you deny it, sir?"

"Deny it? I certainly am in Mr. Hamilton's confidence to no such extent,
and I challenge you to indicate one sentence in his published writings
which points to such a conclusion."

"Ah, he is too clever for that; but his very walk, his whole personality
expresses it, to say nothing of the fact that he never thinks of denying
his admiration of the British Constitution. And did he not defend the
Tories after the evacuation, when no other lawyer would touch them? I
admired his courage, but it was sufficient evidence of the catholicity
of his sentiments."

"Mr. Hamilton defended the abstract principle of right against wrong in
defending the wretched Tories against the persecutions of an
unmagnanimous public sentiment," said Jay, witheringly. "I should advise
you, young gentleman, to become a disciple of Mr. Hamilton. I can
recommend no course which would prove so beneficial." And he turned on
his heel.

He had hit Burr. The jealousy born in Albany had thriven with much
sustenance since. Hamilton was by far the most prominent figure at the
New York bar, and was hastening to its leadership. Burr was conspicuous
for legal ability, but never would be first while Hamilton was in the
race. Moreover, although Hamilton had not then reached that dizzy height
from which a few years later he looked down upon a gaping world, he was
the leader of a growing and important party, intelligently followed and
worshipped by the most eminent men in the Confederation, many of them
old enough to be his father; and he was the theme of every drawing-room,
of every coffee-house group and conclave. His constant pamphlets on the
subject nearest to all men's hearts, his eloquent speeches on the same
theme upon every possible occasion, and the extraordinary brilliance of
his legal victories, gave people no time to think of other men. When he
entered a drawing-room general conversation ceased, and the company
revolved about him so long as he remained. When he spoke, all the world
went to hear. For an ambitious young man to be told to attach himself to
the train of this conquering hero was more than poor Burr could stand,
and he replied angrily:--

"I have the privilege of being true to my own convictions, I suppose.
They are not Mr. Hamilton's and never will be. I do not impugn the
purity of his motives, but I have no desire to see George Washington
king, nor Hamilton, neither. I wish you good day, sirs," and he strode
up Broadway to the Fields with dignity in every inch of him.

"This constant talk of Hamilton's monarchical principles makes my gorge
rise," said Livingston. "Did he not fight as hard as he was permitted,
to drive monarchy out of the country? Was he not the first to sound the
call to arms?"

"Hamilton's exact attitude on that question is not clearly understood,"
replied Duane, soothingly, for the heat of Livingston's republicanism
had never abated. "I fancy it is something like this: So far no
constitution has worked so well as the British. Montesquieu knew whereof
he praised. The number of men in this country equal to the great problem
of self-government are in a pitiful minority. The anarchic conditions of
the States, the disgrace which they have brought upon us, their
inefficiency to cope with any problem, the contemptible depths of human
nature which they have revealed to the thinking members of the
community--all these causes inspire Hamilton, incomparably the greatest
brain in the country, with a dread of leaving any power whatever in
their hands. He believes firmly in the few of tried brain and
patriotism. I very much doubt if he has considered the subject of actual
monarchy for a moment, for he is no dreamer, and he knows that even his
followers have been Republicans too long. But that he will fight for the
strongest sort of national government, with the least possible power
vested in the States--oh, no doubt of that."

"Our people are hopeless, I fear," said Livingston, with a sigh. "This
period of independency seems to have demoralized them when it should
have brought out their best elements. Well, Mr. Marshall, what say you?
You have been modestly silent, and we have been rudely voluble when so
distinguished a guest should have had all the floor."

"I have been deeply entertained," replied Marshall, with a grin. "My
visit to New York is by no means wasted. I envy Mr. Hamilton; but let
him look out for Mr. Burr. There are just five feet seven inches of
jealous hate in that well-balanced exterior, and its methods would be
sinuous, I fancy, but no less deadly. But Hamilton has had many escapes.
What was that atrocious story I heard of a duelling cabal? When the
rolling stone of gossip reaches Virginia from New York, it has gathered
more moss than you would think."

"It would be difficult to exaggerate that story," snorted Livingston."
Hamilton defended his course in regard to the Tories in two pamphlets,
signed 'Phocion.' They were answered by a Mr. Ledyard, who signed
himself 'Mentor,' and was a conspicuous advocate of the damnable spirit
of revenge possessing this country. It is a bold man ind