“You have to admit, though, that Papa’s a hard man to follow. Came up from the direst kind of poverty, made it all for himself. I hear that too. And how he got thrown into that prison where his brother died, because he wouldn’t black some British officer’s boots.”
“He was no older than you are now, then, Andy. He’s just trying to inspire you. You’d better hurry. I hear the cellar door slamming. That means uncle Jackson and Joey are fetching out the jugs. Oh, Heaven, there’s aunt Rachel out there without her cloak! I’ll get it before she takes a chill. Run, Andy!”
Under the big trees all the Negroes on the place were gathering. George had persuaded the big bonfire to burn in spite of the thin, misting rain. Children, black and white, crowded close to it, their voices shrill with excitement. Little Negro boys poked sticks into the blazing fire, waved them smoking in air, dancing about till Betty laid about her with a switch, ordering the brands extinguished.
“You set the young Misses’ dresses afire,” she screamed at them.
On long trestles the parcels of meat were laid out and the chickens, tied by the feet and squawking, were brought from the chicken house and handed around, one hen or rooster to a family. Instantly there was a bedlam of screaming joy, chickens’ necks being wrung, cries of, “Thank you, Massa, thank you, Mist’iss!” The General with Andy beside him and Joey at hand to lift a jug stood at the end of the table. A line formed, cups in hand.
“No crowding now—and no sneaking back to the end of the line for a second drink!” warned Andrew Jackson.
Headless chickens flopped on the ground, prodded by shrieking little Negroes with sticks. Emily wrapped a heavy cloak around her aunt’s shoulders, pulled her own shawl tighter as they watched the line of people file by to receive their portion of Christmas cheer. Even the small ones got a tot, weakened with water, and as each child passed Andrew Jackson tweaked a lock of kinky hair or pulled an ear, sending the small black person off into a hysteria of shrieks and giggles.
George had put a great washpot over the flames and when the water was hot the women would douse their fowls in the steaming cauldron and there would be a great chattering and ripping off of feathers, but before that all the people would gather in a phalanx to sing.
“We must go in and light all the candles,” Emily told a group of women. “The house must be bright when they sing.”
“You go, Emily,” Rachel said. “I ought to stay here. Becky and Dilsey both wanted that white rooster and they’re sure to get into a fight.”
“Let Mr. Field attend to it. It’s his business to keep the people in order, aunt Rachel. You are a hostess with a houseful of guests, you have enough to worry you.”
Rachel went reluctantly into the house, and presently every room was ablaze with firelight and candlelight. The other women and children drifted in, and Andy came too, standing before the fire balancing uneasily on first one foot, then the other.
“Mama,” he began abruptly, “you know Papa said he was going to give me that chestnut colt. Why can’t he give it to me for Christmas? He gave Jack the sorrel and promised the chestnut to me when it was grown. Now every time I speak to Philip about it he says it’s not old enough to break yet. A two-year-old colt ought to be old enough to break to the saddle. You know that, Mama.”
Rachel looked harassed. “Son, Philip knows about the horses more than I. Your Papa has every confidence in Philip’s judgment. You have horses to ride. Good safe horses too. And that new saddle and bridle and everything. Goodness knows they cost plenty.”
“You’re too young to ride a stallion colt, Andy,” put in one of his Donelson aunts.
“I should ride some old bag of bones like Duke, I suppose?” flared the boy.
“Duke is a noble old horse,” stated Rachel sternly. “He carried your Papa through two wars. He’s earned his rest and feed.”
“And he still pays for his keep by dancing on three feet whenever anybody whistles ‘Yankee Doodle’,” laughed Emily. “Andy, you’re only fourteen. Plenty of time for you to wrestle fractious stallion colts.”
“You could be killed,” worried his mother, “and you’ve got to live to comfort me in my old age. Sometimes I feel like it’s coming on mighty fast.”
“Nonsense, Rachel, you’ve got twenty good years ahead of you,” argued one of her sisters-in-law, “and all the struggle is behind. This fine house now—and everything fine in it and all the worry behind you.”
“If only they don’t decide that Mr. Jackson has to save the country in some other awful place far from home!” sighed Rachel. “I declare, with millions of men now in this country there ought to be enough to keep it going peacefully without Mr. Jackson being dragged away from this place again.”
“The trouble is,” remarked the other woman, “that Andrew Jackson was never born for peace. Not that he starts any trouble but the minute anything does start Andrew is the man they look for to put an end to it.”
“He’d start a fight soon enough if anybody picked on Mama,” declared Andy. “He’s done that already. That’s why he’s carrying that bullet around right close to his heart.”
“Andy!” protested Emily, shocked at the quick whitening of Rachel’s face.
The Dickinson duel was never spoken of in her presence.
“That was very bad taste, Andy,” reproved his aunt, “and you should know better.”
“But it’s true!” protested the boy, his voice breaking in a contralto tremolo. “Even when I was little, boys used to yell at me that my father had killed a man—on account of Mama.”
Rachel walked away quickly and they heard the door of her room close.
“Andy, how dreadful—on Christmas Eve!” scolded an aunt, “I’ll go—”
“No,” urged Emily, “she’ll want to be alone, aunt Mary. But I’m ashamed of Andy.”
“Everybody picks on me,” mourned the boy.
“Go outside and help your father. And remember that there are things never mentioned in your mother’s presence. One of them is Charles Dickinson and that tragic duel that happened before you were ever born.”
“Papa did kill him!”
“My boy, I hope that when you are grown a man you will find a woman as fine and faithful as Rachel Jackson,” said the older woman gravely. “If you are so fortunate as to win a wife like that and a man cast slurs on her in public, I think you will be moved to kill him too. Now go on out of here before I get the itch to box your ears, big as you are!”
4
In her room Rachel stood before her tall chest, her hands shaking, her throat cramping with an agonizing pain. Always in spring, when all about was new growth and beauty burgeoning the old terror twenty years past came back for a little to haunt her. Now Andy’s callous taunts had brought it again out of its grave to tear at her tender heart.
Always it was the same. She saw herself again sitting in the carriage beside that race track where the General’s fine horse Truxton, and a horse called Ploughboy owned by Charles Dickinson and his father were running a race. Gathered around the course was an enormous concourse of people: the women in carriages and on horseback wearing their new spring bonnets gay with flowers and ribbons, or flowing habits of bright velvet; the men jaunty in tight breeches strapped under their ankles, ruffled shirts and tall beaver hats. An April wind was blowing sweet off the fields.
It was all as sharply clear to Rachel, here in her big room dimly lighted by one candle, as it had been on that fateful day when Truxton had gone lame in the third heat of the race.
She could even hear again her own voice saying naïvely and more loudly than she had intended, “If Truxton hadn’t gone lame he would have left Ploughboy out of sight.”
She could hear too that loud, sneering voice that still crackled in her ears though the young man who had spoken had lain twenty years in his grave. Angry and raucous from a bit too much drink, Charles Dickinson had shouted, “About as far out of sight as Mrs. Jackson left her first husband when she ran off with the General!”
It comforted her still to remember that she had not been the one who repeated that jeering insult to Andrew Jackson. But there had been many ready to turn the knife in an old wound, to drag out again and bandy about the old, sordid story of Lewis Robards, who had married Rachel and discarded her, of the aborted divorce that had clouded Rachel Robards Jackson’s second marriage.
A chill ran over her body now as she remembered the furious, insulting letters that had been written, the General’s cold terrible rage, the town and county taking sides, eventually the irrevocable challenge. Her hands shook as she opened a drawer in the chest. Well hidden there under lavender-scented linen lay the browning copy of a paper that Andrew Jackson would have destroyed instantly, had he known that she still hoarded it. It was dated on the 23rd of May, 1806, and the lines that were hastily scrawled upon it were burned on Rachel Jackson’s heart.
On Friday, the 30th. Inst, we agree to meet at Harrison’s Mills, in Red River County, State of Kentucky for the Purpose of settling an Affair of Honor, between Andrew Jackson and Charles Dickinson, Esq. Further arrangements to be made. It is understood that the Meeting will be held at seven o’clock in the morning.
It was signed with the General’s familiar scrawl and the neater hand of young Dickinson.
Charles Dickinson had been so young! Rachel ached now with remembering the anguish of dread for her own beloved and for the young wife and baby of the youth Andrew Jackson had set out across the Kentucky line that May morning to kill, if he could—if he were not himself slain by a youth known to be one of the most famous shots in Tennessee.
Duels were illegal in Tennessee so Jackson had started the day before with his friend, John Overton, for the long ride into Kentucky. He had tried to slip away without Rachel’s knowledge, tried to belittle the danger. And he had come home with a bullet close to his heart, too near to be safely removed by the surgeons, and that bullet he carried yet. But Charles Dickinson had been brought home dead and for a year the town had seethed with furious criticism of the man who had survived that duel, Andrew Jackson. The affair had almost ended his public career. Rachel had known some moments when she wished that the tragedy had made it impossible for Andrew Jackson ever to be chosen for any high emprise again.
It had weighed heavily on her heart for years that the affair had been on her account, and there had been a long, unspoken family pact that the duel was never to be mentioned. She had nursed her husband for weeks through that hot summer, and he had hated the inactivity while Rachel was grateful that the spring ran cool and deep and the great trees gave comforting shade, and that she had her husband, wounded and restless as he was, by her side. He had not desired that tragic engagement, she knew. Faced with no honorable means of evading it, he had fought fairly according to the rules and borne his wound without capitalizing upon it.
She put away the old agreement, smoothed her hair and the lace of her collar, rubbed a bit of cotton dipped in rice powder over her swollen eyelids. This was Christmas Eve, the past was past, though Truxton’s colts still ambled over the meadows, some of them growing old as the Jacksons were growing old. Perhaps they would have no more Christmas Eves under this roof, this proud house that they loved. Nothing must mar this holiday. She would hurry out and tell Andy that he was forgiven. The boy was impulsive and thoughtless. He had not meant to wound her.
The house was full of voices; children being led upstairs to bed reluctant and protesting, but outside were voices too, the songs of the black people gathered to sing to their master and mistress. Rachel snatched up a shawl, wrapped her head and shoulders in it and went out to stand and listen.
“Christmas is a-comin’, the goose is getting fat.
“Please to put a penny in the ole man’s hat,” caroled the slaves.
She saw her husband standing bareheaded near the fire, his hair blowing in the winter wind, the firelight casting deep shadows under his eyes. He had a hand on Andy’s shoulder, an arm around Emily. No one heeded the mist that blew on the wind. Some of the older women were already picking their chickens on the lee side of the smokehouse.
“Go down, Moses, ’way down in Egypt’s lan’,” trilled a high voice, Becky’s. The humming chorus swelled, burst into tremendous melody. “Tell ole Phar’oh,—let my people go!”
Go down, Moses! Go down, Andrew Jackson! To Tohopeka, to Mobile, to New Orleans, to Pensacola. Go down, Andrew Jackson, and set a people free! No, no, moaned the heart of Rachel. Never any more. This was home, this was their Hermitage, this was Christmas Eve. Her eyes searched the air, challenged the air, the Heavens, as though somewhere out there in the murky dark lurked fate in wait for them, a prescience that would not lift.
Was it a charm or a curse that invested her man on horseback? What dark Nemesis had hovered over that little cabin back in the North Carolina sandhills where he had been born? What strange power had preserved him when all his family succumbed to the hardships of that time of bitter war? What power of destiny had brought him up, an orphaned waif, led him through so many conflicts, made him a firebrand and a leader whom men would follow as they followed a flag?
Sick and coughing, his frail health her constant anxiety, he inspired strong men. Something was brewing now. Rachel felt it, but she must hold her tongue and quiet her unease with the drug of hope.
A horse came trotting up the drive and Rachel saw Emily start forward eagerly. Then the girl stopped as a slim figure in oilskin slid from the saddle.
“It’s Ralph!” Rachel hurried forward to greet the young artist, Ralph Earl. Off and on, for many years, the portrait painter had made his home at the Hermitage. He had done a fine portrait of the General, wooed and won Jane Caffrey, Rachel’s niece. There had been a fine wedding in the old log house that still stood there in the yard, but gentle Jane had lived only a year. Now Earl was a saddened and lonely man and Rachel mothered him after her habit with all young, unmothered creatures. “How fine that you got back from the East for Christmas, Ralph!” she cried, taking his hand.
“I came to paint your picture,” he said. “The General will never give me any peace till I do your portrait, aunt Rachel.”
“Fiddlesticks!” She led him into the house. “You come get warm and dry this minute before you take a ptisic. I’ll make a hot toddy for you, myself. And you don’t want to paint a picture of a fat old woman like me. Nobody would look at it. We’d have to hang it in the wash-house.”
“A portrait of you might be hung on the walls of some very splendid place, aunt Rachel,” Earl argued, handing his damp garments to a servant.
She looked at him in sudden alarm. “Now whatever do you mean by that?”
“Oh—just an idea I had,” he soothed, seeing her perturbation. “People keep getting notions about what Andrew Jackson could do for this country. I hear about them—traveling around.”
She clutched at his arm. “No, Ralph—whatever their notions are, he’s not going to go dashing off again on some wild adventure or other. He’s not strong, you know that. He’ll get that lung fever again and it almost caused his death last winter. And besides,”—her eyes misted and her voice croaked—“he’d have to leave our home! Our Hermitage!”
“But think of what great things could happen to you, aunt Rachel! Someday you might be one of the greatest ladies in the land.”
“I don’t want to be a great lady.” She held tight to the cold hand he had laid upon her cheek. “I want to stay here and raise young Andy and Andrew Hutchings. I want to see Emily well married and all our people taken care of. I never want to have to go dragging out again to make calls and leave cards and smile till my face aches. I have had enough of that.”
“Just the same I’m going to paint your portrait,” he insisted.
“You paint Emily. She’s filling out, she’s going to be a beauty. The General’s got that little picture of me that Anna Peale painted the year of that New Orleans battle. He carries it around with him all the time, though he wrote to me once and said he didn’t need it, that he had my picture engraved on his heart. Nobody could ask for anything more beautiful than that, Ralph, no woman alive. He wouldn’t engrave a picture of me as I am now, on his heart—an old lady getting fat and out of breath!”
“I think he would,” said Earl. “I think he would prize any picture of you, aunt Rachel, more than his life.”
“He’s coming in,” she whispered. “I must get his bed warm so he won’t cough all night. You’ll have to sleep with Andy tonight. We’ve got a houseful already and more coming. And Ralph, don’t you let the General get notions about rushing off to be somebody important. It’s time he took care of himself.”
“I’ll tell him, aunt Rachel. But you know Andrew Jackson. If any call came from the people to serve anywhere, no one could hold him.”
“No,” she said sadly. “Not even I!”
5
Bugles and drums before dawn had trained Andrew Jackson to waken early. He tiptoed about in the dark, cracking a toe and muttering in irritation, fumbled into his clothes by the lingering glow of a dying fire, not wanting to light a candle and wake Rachel.
Then he discovered that she was already gone from the bed, her full ruffled night rail was spread out neatly to air, her cap perched on the post of the bed. Instantly his voice rose in the familiar falsetto shout.
“You, George! Get in here and mend this fire!”
The alacrity with which the man appeared, loaded to the chin with lightwood, betrayed that he had been waiting near for a summons. “Yes, sah, Gin’ral Jackson! Christmas gif’, sah!”
“Christmas gift! I’ll gift you with my boot if you don’t stir yourself.”
“Yes, sah!” George burst into delighted chuckles. He knew his master well. “Mist’iss say, don’t disturb Marse Jackson, she say, let Marse Jackson git he rest. I git a fine fire here toreckly.”
The embers stirred, the lightwood crackled and flamed. Andrew Jackson liked fire to roar as he liked horses to gallop and men to spring into action when he shouted an order. George swept the hearth and set the fire tools in order.
“Christmas gif’, Gin’ral,” he repeated meekly.
“Here!” Jackson tossed a two-shilling piece. George caught it in midair, grinned and bowed elaborately.
“Thankee, sah! Thankee! Does you go to town I git you to buy me some store galluses, please, sah? I like some red galluses, wid big brass buckles.”
“Keep your money. Buy candy with it. I’ll get you some red galluses. How you hitch your britches up now?”
“Dis yere piece of rope. But it mighty near wore out and Mister Field say he goin’ beat the next nigger cut off any his rope. Thankee, sah.”
“Now I reckon every hand on the place will have to have red galluses with brass buckles,” snorted the General. “You’re getting measured for shoes tomorrow, George. You wash your feet.”
“Yes, sah, sho will!”
Christmas morning! How few Christmas Days he had ever spent in his own home, Andrew Jackson was thinking. On the march, in cheerless camps with lonely men, in that strange mansion in Pensacola, riding eastward roads through Tennessee to Philadelphia, to Washington. And now perhaps the road eastward lay ahead of him again. He dreaded telling Rachel, rooted as she was to this hillside, fixed as one of the old trees and removed with almost as much agony. She might even refuse to take the road again. He might face more endless months of loneliness. He looked at the little gold-framed miniature that had never been far from his gaze since it had been painted so many years ago.
Rachel’s direct eyes looked from it, her strong mouth was relaxed in a little smile, the lace cap and fichu she wore softened her high brow, where the dark hair curled, her rounded chin. Long earrings gave her an effect of gayety that always made him happy when he studied the picture. She had looked like that once—in Natchez where he had married her, believing her divorced from sadistic Lewis Robards. She needed gayety. She had had too much of responsibility, she had seen too much of sorrow.
Today should be gay. He would have fiddlers in and let the young folks dance. He would open the best wine and make a big bowl of punch. He jabbed his feet into his boots hurriedly, rejecting the heavy braided coat for a lighter hunting jacket of leather.
The house was fragrant with the evergreen Emily had hung about, and there was a comfortable odor of coffee. In the dining room Rachel was bustling about a long table following Hannah who puffed and sputtered at two children who kept diving, squealing, under the table to peer out from beneath the cloth and pinch Hannah’s fat legs.
“Here—here!” barked the General. “You tads leave Hannah alone. Come out of there.”
Instantly the pair, in nightgowns and barefooted, swarmed up his long legs like squirrels.
“Christmas gift, uncle Jackson! Christmas gift!”
He planted a spank on each of two small rears. “There’s your Christmas gift. Now go and get your clothes on. When you come down properly dressed you’ll get your Christmas gift.”
“Mother’s asleep, we don’t know where our clothes are,” protested a little boy.
“Wake her up. Wake everybody up. It’s Christmas morning.”
“Yes, sir!” The two obeyed with alacrity, rushing out shrieking, “Wake up! Wake up! Christmas gift!”
“We have to get breakfast over so we can set the tables for dinner,” said Rachel, “and all the people are slow and lazy this morning. Betty says the oven won’t get hot for her spoon bread and Dilsey cut the bacon too thick and then went off in a sulk when I scolded her.”
“I’ll get them all up,” threatened the General. He strode out through the house to the bricked passage to the kitchen, pulled on a rope dangling from a pole. The slave bell clanged loud and long.
“My patience,” Rachel exclaimed, “the neighbors will think the house is afire!”
“Git them triflin’ niggers stirrin’, anyways,” said Hannah.
“Get the mugs for the children, Hannah, and tell ’Relia to get herself upstairs to help the young ladies. And I want every bed made up right away.”
Hannah said, “Yas’m.” She loved ordering the other maids around, being middle-aged, faithful and privileged.
Breakfast was a gay and noisy meal. Emily was happy with a new gold chain and locket, kissing everybody impartially as she danced around the table. Rachel had a pearl brooch with a small blue stone in the center and yards of white satin for caps and collars. One little boy pushed his toy monkey around the table, perched it on people’s shoulders till Andrew, Junior, said impatiently, “Oh, quit it, boy!”
“What are you so excited about?” the General asked Emily, when he had followed her into the parlor.
“Why, uncle Jackson, it’s Christmas! And my lovely locket. You shouldn’t have given me anything so fine. I’ll put a lock of your hair in it.”
“Put some young fellow’s hair in it—the right fellow, mind you! And were you looking down that road to see if Christmas was coming?”
“Oh, no. Just more company. Aunt Rachel says there should be ten more. Thank goodness the rain stopped.”
“Froze a little.” He took his pipe from the mantel, and the deep tobacco jar. “Kill hogs next week if the cold weather holds. Emily, get your aunt out of that dining room. Make her rest if you can.”
“I’ll try, but you know aunt Rachel. She won’t believe the Christmas dinner is fit to eat unless she has dipped a spoon in every dish. I promised to oversee setting the tables as soon as the girls have cleared away. They’re all excited and they’ll get all the forks crooked.”
“In some ways it will be good for Rachel to get away for a while,” he mused, half to himself, as he lifted the coal from the fire.
“Away—where?” Emily stiffened.
“Why, I shall have to return to the Senate, my dear. Have you forgotten that I have been elected United States Senator from Tennessee? Of course, when I go back I shall want my wife to go with me.”
“Uncle Jackson, Jack wrote me—”
“And what,” he interrupted, “did Mister Andrew Jackson Donelson write to you?”
That he loved me leaped like a lovely tongue of fairy flame into her mind. She blinked very fast to keep uncle Jackson from reading it in her eyes.
“He said something about circumstances—about a ground swell in Kentucky—he was rather vague—”
He frowned, then his face lightened and his mouth quirked up at one corner in a halfway impish grin. “So young Andrew has been hearing rumblings in Kentucky.” Always he had refused to call his nephew by the family nickname of Jack. “Why didn’t he write to me? Kentucky is the fighting ground of our friend Henry Clay. If there are any honors to be handed out, the Speaker of the House would like them for himself, no doubt? I will tell you this much, Emily, and you will keep it to yourself. In spite of all I can do, I have friends determined to push me into the forefront again. Now, they are talking about running me for the highest office in this land.”
“But that would be a great honor, uncle Jackson. Why must we keep it a secret?”
“I don’t want to spoil her Christmas. Some women would be elated at a chance to spend a winter in Washington, move in important circles, perhaps be elevated to the highest position in this land. But not your aunt Rachel. I want to talk her into the right mood, or she might refuse to leave here and then I’d be separated from her again for a long time.”
“But she must go! I won’t let her refuse,” argued Emily. “We’ll buy her some beautiful clothes. She can be a fine lady.”
“She’s already a fine lady,” he sighed, “but she’d rather go on here dosing the bellyache of the most worthless hand I own than to be invited to dinner in the proudest house in the country. I love her for her simplicity, and I want her to enjoy peace as long as she can, so say nothing about any plans, Emily.”
“Yes, uncle Jackson, but you could be wrong about aunt Rachel. The thing she wants more than anything is to be with you.”
“And what I most desire is to be with her. I am singularly blessed. It troubles me now that I grow old that the people will not let me rest.”
“You could say no. You could refuse when they thrust these responsibilities upon you,” she reminded him, grave beyond her years.
He lifted his gaunt shoulders in a ponderous sigh. “This is a great country, Emily, my child. Where else could a gangling, country boy with no fortune and little education fight his way up to where he is honored as I have been honored by my countrymen? I owe America a debt. Speaking of debts,” his mood changed, his face grew into a sardonic grimace, “the question is—where is the money coming from to pay for all this pride and eminence? It costs like the devil to live in Washington and the crops this year were disappointing. As things stand now I owe about twice as much as I’m worth. Of course there are a lot of people who owe me—”
“Then make them pay,” she counseled. “And you should never have spent so much money for this locket, uncle Jackson. I love you without gifts.”
“When I can’t buy a present for a pretty girl, I’ll let them cart me off to a debtor’s prison!” he declared. “As for asking my friends to repay money I’ve loaned them, that’s something a gentleman can’t do, Emily.”
“Then don’t be a gentleman,” she suggested boldly. “Be a politician. They seem to be able to ask for anything they want without any qualms whatever.”
He laughed so loudly that some of the guests came hurrying in to hear the joke. “When James Monroe makes me ambassador to Mexico or Russia or some other heathen spot on this globe, I’m going to make Emily Donelson my prime counselor,” he said. “This gal has brains.”
Emily laughed and hurried out to help her aunt. She was feeling easier in her mind. If uncle Jackson was harassed about money, he might be relieved at hearing that Jack was not going back to school. There was young Andy coming along to be educated and Andrew Hutchings, also a ward of the Jacksons, and it must cost a tremendous lot to run this huge plantation and care for all the people, white and black. And anything aunt Rachel wanted she had, whether it was a pair of silk mitts, a ten-dollar hat or an expensive suite of furniture shipped in at enormous expense from halfway across the country. Somewhere Andrew Jackson found the money to gratify Rachel’s every desire.
That expensive saddle for Andy—and her locket—and it was very certain in her mind that there were some things that the General needed for himself. He needed new clothes anyway. She had noted the shabbiness of his braided coat, shiny at the elbows, and all his waistcoats were worn on the edges.
Destiny might have planned great things for Andrew Jackson through his lifetime, decided his niece, but fate had certainly been stingy with the practical rewards.
6
The heavy damask cloths had been spread. Another carriage full of cousins and aunts and uncles arrived to fill the house with more confusion. Mary Eastin and some of the other girls came to help Emily direct the placing of the great piles of china plates, the gleaming goblets and compotes that would be filled with uncle Jackson’s wine and aunt Rachel’s preserves and relishes. The heavy soup ladle was rubbed till it glittered, a mound of apples and nuts was heaped on a tray which Emily edged with holly.
Mary Eastin, very young and eager, had a cameo face and a lilting laugh. Life would always be gay for Mary. A president’s nephew would one day find her irresistible, but now she was a dancing sprite, doing pirouettes with a vinegar cruet for a partner, getting in everybody’s way.
“You’ll break something, Mary. Do go and coax uncle Jackson to tootle on his new flute,” urged Emily.
“He makes such silly noises on it,” protested Mary, “and he screws up his face till I’m scared to death I’ll laugh and offend him.”
“But he loves it and it gets politics out of his mind.”
Mary grabbed Emily’s arm. “Emmy, he’s coming isn’t he? I can see it sticking out all over you. Emmy, I think all these stuffy old people are crazy. If I had a boy in love with me, I’d have him, no matter if every Donelson alive croaked themselves to death.”
“Mary, for Heavens’ sake, hush! Things are going to be bad enough—I’m just holding my breath.”
“I think it’s wonderful!” Mary’s eyes were full of stars. “Let me tell you something though—don’t you start out being a dutiful wife like aunt Rachel. A woman can get herself simply subjugated by being so worshipful. I mean to keep my spirit and my personality, whoever I marry. Aunt Rachel’s kind of wife is going out of fashion.”
Emily bent her brows together. Of course Jack would expect a dutiful wife. Hadn’t he been trained by uncle Jackson, who had never known any other mode of life except to be master in his house? Jack would expect his wife to be a gracious copy of aunt Rachel—with a bit more style perhaps, and more ease in company, Emily amended, with no disloyalty. Aunt Rachel was good. She did not need a flair for clever conversation or the sly, pretty arts by which some women kept men enthralled, but as Mary had said, times were changing. Women even went to colleges now and read deep books.
Rachel came in then, followed by Hannah and the maids, all carrying steaming dishes.
“What are you moppets whispering about?” she asked. “Beaus, I’ll wager.”
“Oh, we’re far too young, aunt Rachel. And too utterly well bred,” Mary replied saucily.
“Plotting against the whites,” evaded Emily. “What’s in that dish, Dilsey? It smells wonderful.”
“Dilsey’s candied yams are always perfect,” Rachel said. “Mary, you run and fetch all the boys and tell them to carry in every extra chair. And tell Andy to have George ring the bell. Your uncle and the other men have likely wandered off to the stables. I never have put a meal on the table yet that didn’t have to compete for their concern with some colt. Hannah, we’ll set the ham at this end, and the turkeys at the other. Levin can carve at this other table and Mr. Jackson here, and you and Dilsey can serve the children their plates. That small table makes it crowded, but I couldn’t bear to make the little ones wait. I like all my family together at Christmas.”
Her family, all the Donelsons, whom the General, having no kin of his own, had taken to his heart generously, as he had taken John Eaton and John Overton, Ralph, the young painter, and, twenty years ago, Aaron Burr—too bad that charming man had come to be in bad repute!—even Sam Houston! Rachel glowed with happiness as the clan came noisily into the room. This was as things should be. She took the chair Ralph pulled out for her, bent her head in a little prayer of thankfulness, of entreaty to God that things would go on like this forever, so long as they lived, in peace here at their Hermitage.
Then there was the sudden crash of a door at the rear of the house, a chilly gust blew into the room and from the pantry there were squeals of delighted welcome from the waiting servants. The inner door was flung back and a travel-stained figure strode into the room.
“Christmas gift, everybody!” shouted Andrew Jackson Donelson.
Emily upset her glass as she half rose from her chair. Carving knife poised, Andrew Jackson stood drawn back sternly at the head of the table.
“Sir!” he barked in a military tone, “you have disobeyed me!”
Andrew Jackson Donelson made a little bow, while the others held their breath.
“Uncle, I admit my disobedience,” Jack said humbly. “I have come home because now you will have need of me. I have come home to help you win the nomination for the office of President of the United States.”
Rachel’s little cry of protest was lost in the gasps of the uninformed around the tables. A few of the men looked wise and complacent and Emily noted that John Eaton wore a smug grin.
Andrew Jackson made a slashing motion with the knife as though he flourished a defiant sword.
“Young man, I have no intention of seeking the nomination for the office of President of the United States!” he shouted.
“I should say not!” put in Rachel’s small, shaken voice.
Jack’s laughter echoed John Eaton’s grin. “You may not be seeking the nomination, sir, but that nomination is certainly out gunning for you! All over Kentucky they’re talking of nothing else—Jackson for President, in 1824—right under Henry Clay’s nose! They say Clay is looking for a ground-hog hole to crawl into dragging his whisky barrel after him. And look at this!” He pulled the ragged page of a newspaper from his pocket, marched to the head of the table and spread it before his uncle’s eyes. “I picked it up in Transylvania, brought it along—thought you might not have seen it.”
John Eaton sprang to study the paper. “The New York Post!” he exclaimed. “We missed that one. Let’s see what they say.”
“What they say,” reported Jack, while the General still glowered at the paper, “is that if the country was under martial law Andrew Jackson would be the proper choice for president. That not being the case, the Post will continue their support of Secretary of the Navy, Smith Thompson, for the nomination in 1824.”
“Smith Thompson—about as much chance for him as for me!” snorted one of the Donelson clan.
“Crawford will be in the running too,” remarked Ralph Earl. “Not a man in the Cabinet who doesn’t believe he would be a better president than John Quincy Adams, who is certain he’ll be elected president.”
“Nobody told me—nobody said a word!” mourned Rachel, looking stunned. “I knew he’d been elected senator—but president!”
Jack went to her quickly, put his hands on her quivering shoulders. “We’ll make you a queen, aunt Rachel. We’ll make you the grandest lady in the land!”
“And I’ll have to live in Washington—when I want to stay at home!” she protested. “I don’t want to be a queen. Jack, wash yourself and come and eat your dinner. Mr. Jackson, do serve the children! Hannah, pass the vegetables. All of you, eat your dinner—your Christmas dinner.”
Obediently, Andrew Jackson made wooden motions of slicing at the turkey. John Eaton took the knife from his hand.
“Sit and eat, sir. Let me finish this business. He’s bound to be nominated, you know,” he addressed the whole group. “It’s a ground swell, stirring all over the country. Why, just yesterday the Nashville Clarion stated that the General was unquestionably the choice of the people, in justice to themselves! Here, Hannah, here’s a fine drumstick for some hungry boy. Wait, you haven’t any gravy.”
Andrew Jackson looked down the long table at his wife with a look of humble pleading in his eyes that she had never seen there before.
“I was going to tell you tomorrow, my love,” he said meekly. “I had warned them all. But that young scoundrel ruined everything.” He glared at Jack Donelson who patted his aunt’s cheek unperturbed.
“He’s going to need me, aunt Rachel,” he said gleefully. “I deserve the rough edge of his tongue now, he thinks, maybe even his riding crop on my breeches. But he knows he’s going to be needing all the help he can get, and you too! You’ll need a strong, smart boy around here when all the furor starts, and I’m that boy. Just one more statement, sir.” Jack looked at his uncle, his chin high and firm. “I have a further announcement to make. I came home because I saw your situation and your need for assistance. Also I came home to marry Emily Donelson, if so be she will have me—with or without the consent of this assembled family, I mean to marry Emily.”
“And that,” shouted the General, rapping the table with his glass, “I will not countenance!”
Rachel got to her feet, startling them all a little.
“Then I will countenance it,” she said, in a tone few of them had ever heard her use before. “When young people are in love, that’s the important thing. Maybe you think I don’t know what it is to be in love, Mr. Jackson—but unless your memory is very short, you do! There was a time when you trampled all the difficulties down with fine scorn—and if Jack hasn’t the courage to do as we did, then he’s no nephew of mine!”
“My dear—” began Jackson, uncertainly, “I had no idea you felt this way!”
“Well, I do feel that way. And I say it’s fine and beautiful for these children who love each other to marry—and I say that nobody is going to oppose it.”
Jackson rose, smiling ruefully, and laid a hand on Emily’s cheek. “I seem to be outvoted,” he remarked.
“Sorry, sir.” Jack’s grin did not quiver. “You are outvoted. I vote against you—and aunt Rachel—and Emily too, I hope? My dear, are you standing with me against all these frowning elders?”
She sprang up and ran to stand beside him. “Oh—I am, I am!”
“The matter is now settled.” Jack kissed her gravely while all the children screamed their delight and some of the women began to cry, then, still jauntily, Jack picked up the glass of wine before his aunt’s plate. “A toast to the bride! And to the next President of the United States, Andrew Jackson!”
Chairs fell backward as the company got to their feet. The servants all shrilled approving cries. The hubbub and chatter drowned out Rachel’s admonishing voice, begging everybody to be quiet and eat before everything got cold. Somehow the dinner was finished. The General sat in silence through the rest of the meal, and aunt Rachel was still too, Emily observed, her fingers shaking as she handled her fork and spoon. Emily went quickly and kissed her on the cheek.
“You’ll have me beside you always, aunt Rachel,” she whispered. “Always!”
“I’ll need you, Emily,” Rachel whispered hoarsely. “I’ll need everybody.”
Her eyes looked far and strained as though she saw before her those next five stormy years. The year that would see Andrew Jackson defeated for the office of president when the election was carried into the Senate of the United States by the failure of any of the seven candidates to win a majority in the electoral college, defeated by the trades and connivings of Henry Clay and by the one vote in the New York delegation of a tremulous, undecided man named Van Rensselaer.
And after that the terrible years when the power and strength of Andrew Jackson would mount in an invincible tide, when her own name would be pilloried and long-buried agonies she had tried to forget dragged from their graves and published abroad to discredit her and her man on horseback. The years that would be too much for the faithful, failing heart of Rachel Jackson.
She would never be a queen in that palace in Washington. But she had no wish to be a queen. As the day darkened into dusk and the candles were lighted, she stood alone at her window looking out upon her quiet garden, sleeping its winter sleep that promised the wakening of beauty in the springtime.
It would be a pleasant place to sleep, she was thinking. But at least, at long last, she had had her Christmas at the Hermitage.