CHAPTER XXIV—THAT HONEYMOON SUB ROSA
The Duchess kisses Aimee, and the good Marsan drives back to her palace with the blissful ones through the black midnight Paris streets. Commodore Paul Jones is in a trance of happiness. Aimee creeps into his arms and whispers “Mon Paul,” and the surrender of the Serapis is forgotten, as a thing trivial and transient, in the surrender of this girl with the glorious red-gold hair.
Summer runs away into autumn, and the brown tints of October show in the trees. The honeymoon has been one of secrecies and subterfuges, and perhaps the tenderer and sweeter because sub rosa. Commodore Paul Jones tears himself now and again from Aimee’s arms to urge the business of the Serapis. He is seconded by Aimee, to whom his glory is as dear as his love.
Doctor Franklin tells the king that he should give Commodore Paul Jones the ship, and is referred to de Sartine. The oily minister slips away from the proposal, and the king sends Commodore Paul Jones a “Sword of Honor” and the title of “Chevalier.” The impatient sailor bites his lip, and gives the plaything sword to Aimee.
“I asked for a ship, not a sword,” says he. “As for ‘Chevalier,’ since I’m already a Commodore, it looks like promotion down-hill.”
“The king,” explains Doctor Franklin, “does not, I fear, forgive your refusal of his captain’s commission when you lay at the Texel.”
“And I,” he returns, “continue to regard that offer of a commission as a piece of royal impertinence.”
Commodore Paul Jones determines to bring the king to a decision. He walks in the royal gardens with his ally, Genet, and comes upon the king feeding his interminable squirrels. The king—for democracy is becoming a fashion—greets Commodore Paul Jones with outstretched hands.
“But do not tell me,” concludes the king, “that you come for a ship.”
“It is to ask for the Serapis, sire.”
The poor king rubs his head, his vague lip twitches, while the unlocked jaw multiplies the feebleness of his weak face.
“Chevalier, I cannot,” he returns. In a tone of pathos, he continues: “Congratulate yourself, my friend, that you are not a king. You would be compelled to have ministers, and they would make a slave of you—as they have of me.”
“It is over,” says Commodore Paul Jones, to Doctor Franklin. “There is no hope of the Serapis.”
“Take the Ariel, then, and return to Philadelphia,” replies the Doctor. “There is the America, seventy-four guns, building on the Portsmouth stocks. I’ve written the Marine Committee to give you that.”
Commodore Paul Jones holds Aimee close. He kisses her dear lips. “In the spring I shall return, my love,” he promises. “Three little months, and you are in my arms again.”
Aimee whispers something, and then buries her face in his breast. The blush she is trying to hide spreads and spreads until it covers the back of the fair neck, and the red of it is lost in the roots of the red-gold hair.
“Good!” he cries in a burst of joy, holding her closer. “Good! Now I shall have something to dream of and return to.”
It is a raw, flawy February day when Commodore Paul Jones lands in Philadelphia. Arthur Lee, with his poisonous mendacities, has preceded him. He is called before the Marine Committee, to reply to a list of questions, that in miserable effect amount to charges. Anger eating his heart like fire, he answers the questions, and is then voted a resolution of thanks and confidence.
Knowing no other way, he seeks a quarrel with Arthur Lee, the fiery, faithful Cadwalader at his elbow. Mad Anthony Wayne, acting for him, meets Arthur Lee informally. The latter does not like the outlook.
“Who is he?” exclaims Arthur Lee, inventing a defensive sneer. “Either the son of a Scotch peasant or worse, and a man who has changed his name. By what right does such a person demand satisfaction of a gentleman!”
“Permit me to suggest,” returns Mad Anthony, beginning to bristle, “that I shall regard a refusal to fight, based on the ground you state, as a personal affront to myself. More; let me tell you, sir, that he who shall seek to bar Paul Jones from his plain rights, on an argument aimed at his gentility, will get nothing by his pains but the name of coward.”
“You think so!” responds Arthur Lee, his sneer somewhat in eclipse at the stark directness of Mad Anthony.
“I know so, sir. When you speak of Paul Jones, you speak of the conqueror of the Drake and the Serapis. Also, when you deal with me, you deal with one who is the equal of any Lee of your family, sir.”
Mad Anthony blows through his warlike nose ferociously, and Arthur Lee is silent. Meanwhile, the excellent Cadwalader, ever painstaking in matters of bloodshed, prepares a challenge, which he intends shall be a model for succeeding ages, when studying the literature of the duello.
It is at this pinch that the peace-loving Morris, helpless and a bit desperate, brings the weight of General Washington to bear upon the combative one. The “Father of his Country” succeeds where Mr. Morris has failed, and silences all talk of a duel. As a reward for that gentleman’s eleventh-hour docility, he prevails upon Congress to give Commodore Paul Jones command of the half-built America, in accord with the request of Doctor Franklin, already in its dilatory hands.
Commodore Paul Jones goes to Portsmouth to oversee the launching and the equipment of his new seventy-four. Disappointment dogs him; for Lord Cornwallis surrenders, and Congress, in a fit of foolish generosity, presents the America to France, as a slight expression of its thanks for the part she played in the capture of that English nobleman. Commodore Paul Jones sees his just-completed seventy-four, over which he has toiled like a poet over his verse, and wherein he was to presently sail away to conquer fresh honors for himself and his Aimee, hoist the French flag and receive a French captain on its quarter-deck. Steadying himself under the blow, with a grim philosophy which he has begun to cultivate, he goes back to Philadelphia. He finds letters from France awaiting him; one is from his Aimee, written in a tremulous, wavering hand. It must have borne wonderful news, for in his reply he says:
“Present my compliments to your sister. Tell her to exert her tenderest care toward you and her sweet little godson. Also cover him with kisses from me.”
CHAPTER XXV—CATHERINE OF RUSSIA
Commodore Paul Jones, nervously irritable with the loss of the America, asks leave of Congress to go as a volunteer with the French fleet, which hopes to find and fight the English in the West Indies. Congress consents, and he sails southward with Captain Vaudreuil, to fight yellow fever, not English, and return much shaken in health. As a solace and a recuperative, he sends divers cargoes of oil to Europe on a speculation, and makes forty thousand dollars. All the time he is pining to get back to Paris, his Aimee, the good Marsan, as well as Aimee’s sister’s “sweet little godson,” that must “be covered with kisses.” He is detained by his accounts with the government and his claims for prize money. After heart-breaking delays, his affairs are adjusted; again he finds himself outward bound for France. His Aimee meets him with kisses sweet as heaven. He unlocks her white arms from his neck, and asks in a whisper:
“Where is he?”
“He is dead!” she says, with a rush of tears.
Then she carries him to a quiet cemetery, and, taking his hand, leads him to a little grave, upon which the new grass has not grown two weeks. There is a tiny headstone of pale granite, and on it the one word:
“Paul.”
His gaze is long and steadfast as he holds fast by his Aimee’s hand. Then his tears are united with hers; they stand bowed above the little grave.
Commodore Paul Jones and his Aimee, while ever together, formally conceal the tie that binds them. He has business with the king about prize money; she has petitions before the king about the blood that is common to her veins and his; and both the good Marsan and Doctor Franklin say it is better that the king should not know. And so the king goes feeding his squirrels and forgetting his people, in ignorance of what took place on that midnight before the candle-lighted altar of Our Lady of Loretto. But the wise old world is not so thick, and winks and smiles and wags its wise old head; and whenever it passes a pretty cottage in the Rue Vivienne it points and whispers tolerantly. For the wise old world loves lovers; and because Aimee always officially resides with the good Marsan when her “Paul” is in Paris, and actually resides with that amiable gentlewoman when her “Paul” is in London, or Copenhagen, or elsewhere on the complex business of those prize moneys, no one finds fault. And so four years of love and truth and sweetness, four beautiful years, throughout which the birds sing and the sun shines always, come and go for Commodore Paul Jones and his Aimee; and every noble door in France swings open at their approach.
The prize money gets into a tangle, and Commodore Paul Jones consults his friends, Mirabeau and the venerable Malesherbes. Then he visits America, and is feted and feasted, while his Aimee—each year rounder and plumper and more bewitching—with the red-gold hair growing ever redder and more golden—stays in Paris by the side of the good Marsan, and keeps a loving eye on the vine-clothed cottage in the Rue Vivienne.
Nothing can exceed the honors wherewith Commodore Paul Jones is stormed upon and pelted while in America. He is banqueted by the Morrises, the Livingstons, the Hamiltons, the Jays, while—what is more to his heart’s comfort—he is visited by Dale and Fanning and Mayrant and Lunt and Stack and Potter and scores of his old sea wolves of the Ranger and Richard, who crowd round him to press his hand. In the end he drinks a last cup of wine at the Livingston Manor House, rides down to the foot of Cortlandt Street, and goes aboard the Governor Clinton, which, anchors hove short, awaits him. It is his last glass in America, his last glimpse of the shores for which he fought so valorously; November sees him in the Straits of Dover, nineteen days, out from Sandy Hook.
He goes to Paris, and the king has him to lunch at Versailles—a nine-days’ social wonder, the like of which has not been witnessed by a staring world since an elder Louis dined Jean Bart. The royal luncheon over, Commodore Paul Jones again settles down to the dear smiles and the love of his Aimee, while the aristocracy of France lionizes the one and worships the other.
One day Mr. Jefferson, now America’s Minister to Versailles, and greatly the friend of our two love birds, walks in upon them in that little vine-embowered cottage in the Rue Vivienne. He has big news. The Empress Catherine asks Commodore Paul Jones to become an admiral in the Russian navy. The Turks are troubling her; she wants him to sweep these turbaned pests from the Black Sea.
The cheek of Commodore Paul Jones flushes, his eye lights up. Between love and war his heart was formed to swing like a pendulum. Now he has loved for a season, he would like nothing better than another game with those “iron dice of destiny,” vide licet cannon balls; and where should be found a fitter table than the Black Sea, or a more eligible adversary than the Turk? Thus it befalls that his Aimee goes to court with Madam Campan, the noble daughter of the noble Genet, and translates English plays into French for the amusement of Versailles; while be, hot of heart and high of head, as one who snuffeth the battle afar off, makes a straight wake for St. Petersburg.
Commodore Paul Jones meets the Empress Catherine in her Palace of Czarsko-Selo. Outside the snow lies thick; for it is April, and winter is ever reluctant to quit St. Petersburg. He is pricked of curiosity concerning this Russian Empress, for whom he is to draw his sword. He hopes—somewhat against hope, it is true, when he recalls her sixty years—that she will prove beautiful. For he is so much the knight of romance that he fights with more pleasure for a pretty face than for a plain one.
The Empress is before him; he can now put his hopes to the test. His eyes fall upon a thick, gross figure—a woman the antithesis of romance.
Her mouth is coarse, her nose high and hawkish, her forehead full, her gaze hard and level, her whole face harsh—having been so often burned and swept of passion. And yet he feels the power of this white, fire-eyed savage, with her heart of a Phryne and her brain of a Henry the Eighth. There is so much that is palpable and brutish about her, however, that he stands off from her contact and remembers with regret his delicate Aimee of the red-gold locks.
Commodore Paul Jones has been too well trained as a courtier to let fall the polite mask which he wears, and nothing could be more elaborately suave than are the manners he assumes. The ferocious Catherine gets some glimmer of his inward thought for all that. Every inch the Empress, she is even more the woman. To the day of her death the unpardonable offence in any male of her species is a failure to fall in love with her. She receives some chilling touch of her new Admiral’s aversion, and it turns her into angry ice. Still, if he will not sigh for her, he shall serve her: so she says to herself. He remains in St.
Petersburg a fortnight; the Empress sees him more than once. When they are together, they talk of Potemkin, Suwarrow, the Turks, and the Black Sea.
CHAPTER XXVI—AN ADMIRAL OF RUSSIA
Admiral Paul Jones travels to the mouth of the Dnieper and joins Potemkin, who is a military fool. Suwarrow, old and cunning and vigilant and war-wise, is another man. He goes aboard his flagship, the Vladimir, of seventy guns. From the beginning he is befriended by the grizzled Suwarrow and thwarted by the foppish Potemkin. This latter is a discarded favorite of Catherine; and, since she is very loyal to a favorite out of favor, he knows he may take liberties. Old Suwarrow, over his brandy, tells Potemkin’s story to Admiral Paul Jones.
“He kept the Empress’ smiles for a season,” explains Suwarrow; “when all of a sudden, having seen Moimonoff, she fills Potemkin’s pockets with gold and jewels, gives him a two-thousand-serf estate, and bids him ‘travel,’ as she bid twenty of his predecessors travel. ‘In what have I offended?’ whines Potemkin. ‘In nothing,’ returns the Empress. ‘I liked you yesterday; I don’t like you to-day; that is all. So you see, my friend, that you can no longer stay in Petersburg, but must travel!’ This was ten years ago,” continues old Suwarrow. “Potemkin comes down here, and the Empress puts him in charge, and sustains him in all he says and does. My dear Admiral, you must get along with Potemkin to get along with her.”
Admiral Paul Jones is by no means sure that he must get along with Potemkin, and regrets that he quitted France, which holds his Aimee. However, being aboard the Vladimir, and having to his signal twenty ships, he resolves to strike one blow for the savage Catherine, if only to see how a Russian fights and what battering a Turk can stand. It will give him something to talk of, something by which he may compare the English and French and Americans, when next at his ease, with Genet or Jefferson or mayhap King Louis as a fellow conversationist.
The chance comes; Admiral Jones engages the Turkish fleet off Kinburn Head, and destroys it after sixteen hours’ fighting—sinking some, burning others, breaking completely the power of the Crescent. The Turks bear a loss of twenty-nine ships and more than three thousand sailors, while Admiral Paul Jones loses but three small ships. Having advantage of the victory, old Suwarrow brings his army across the Boug. At one blow, Admiral Paul Jones unlocks the Liman and throws it open to the victorious entrance of old Suwarrow.
Oczakoff falls; Admiral Paul Jones, sick of the cowardice and duplicity of Potemkin and his parasite Nassau-Siegen, relinquishes his command. He bids old Suwarrow good-bye, and travels in a manner of lordly leisure, not at all Russian, but particularly American, back to St. Petersburg and the Empress. As he bids farewell to old Suwarrow, the latter detains him:
“Wait!”
Then he takes from one of his camp chests a priceless cloak of sea-otter and sable, lined with yellow silk, and an ermine jacket, white as snow, set off with heavy gold frogs.
“Take them, mon Paul,” says the old soldier, pressing them upon Admiral Paul Jones. “They are too fine for me.” Here he looks complacently at his threadbare gray coat and muddy boots. “No; were I to wear such feathers, my soldiers, who are my children, wouldn’t know their old papa Suwarrow.”
The Empress receives Admiral Paul Jones in her palace of the Hermitage. She is affable, condescending, appreciative, and assigns him to command the naval forces in the Baltic. She makes him rich in gold; for, while the Empress will so far humor Potemkin as to remove Admiral Paul Jones out of his way, she will not fail of doubly rewarding that mariner for the victory which Potemkin is now trying to steal.
Admiral Paul Jones grows dissatisfied, however. The Russian nobility intrigues against him, and de Segur, the French Minister, must come to his rescue. They steal his letters from Aimee; and, not hearing from his beloved, he becomes homesick. He tells the Empress that he must go; she consents when he promises to continue drawing full pay as Admiral. That agreed to, she allows him leave of absence for two years, and back he goes to Paris and his Aimee’s arms. He calls on De Segur, the French Minister, before he starts, and thanks him for his friendship.
“But you will return?” says De Segur.
“Never! I want no more of Russia and its Russians! What is this Court of Catherine, but a place where vilest purposes are arrived at by agencies most wretched, and artifices that should disgrace a dog? I am of an honor unfit for such a place, as silk is unfit for mire. The very people are without charity or a commonest humanity. They are like the wolves of their own forests; should they discover one of their brothers, wounded or stricken down, instead of offering aid, they would fall upon him—rending and devouring him!”
“Sixteen long months! Sixteen dreary months you have been gone!” says Aimee, when they are again together at the cottage in the Rue Vivienne.
“They are over, little one,” he replies, “over, never to return. Aside from being separated from you, which is to be separated from the sun” —here he caresses her red-gold hair—“they were the sixteen months most miserable of my life.”
CHAPTER XXVII—THE HOUSE IN THE RUE TOURNON
And now dawn many days of love and peace and plenty for Admiral Panl Jones, days in the midst of friends, glad days made sumptuous by a beautiful woman, who is a king’s daughter crowned with a wealth of red-gold hair. He has his business, too, and embarks in speculation; wherein he shows himself as much a sailor of finance as of the sea. The imperial Catherine refuses to lose him; but pays to the last like an Empress, bidding him prolong his vacation while he will. He grows rich. He has twelve thousand pounds in the bank; while in America, Holland, Denmark, Belgium and England his interests flourish. He sells his plantation by the Rappahannock for twenty-five hundred dollars—less than a dollar an acre; for he says that he has no more heart to own slaves, and the plantation cannot be worked without them.
The little happy cottage in the Rue Vivienne grows small; neither is it magnificent enough for his Aimee, of whom each day he grows more proud and fond. So he removes, bag and baggage, to a mansion in the Rue Tournon. There the rooms are grand, ceilings tall, fireplaces hospitably wide.
The wide fireplaces will do for winter; just now he swings a hammock in the back garden, which is thick-sown of trees and made pleasant by a plushy green May carpet of grass. Here he lolls and reads and receives his friends. For the careful Aimee counsels rest, and much staying at home; because he is a long shot from a hale man, having been broken with that fever in the West Indies, and in no wise restored by the mists and the miasmas of the Dnieper marshes.
Through the summer the back garden is filled with chairs, and the chairs are filled by friends. In the autumn, and later when winter descends with its frosts, the chairs and the incumbent friends gather in a semicircle about the wide flame-filled crackling fireplaces. There be times when the wine passes; and the freighted mahogany sideboards discover that they have destinies beyond the ornamental.
French politics bubbles and then boils; Paris is split by faction. Mirabeau controls the Assembly; Lafayette has the army under his hand—a weak, vacillating hand! These two are of the Moderates.
Admiral Paul Jones, coolly neutral in what sentiments go shaking the hour, has admirers in the parties. They come to him, and talk with him, and drink his wines in the shade of the back garden, or by the opulent fireplaces. Robespierre and Danton, as well as Mirabeau and Lafayette, are there. Also, Bertrand Barère, who boasts that he is not French but Iberian, one whose forbears came in with Hannibal. Later, Barère will preach an open-air sermon on the “Life and Deeds of Admiral Paul Jones.” Just now in the Assembly he makes ferocious speeches, garnished of savage expletives culled from the language of the Basques.
Warmest among friends of Admiral Paul Jones is the Thetford corset-maker Tom Paine, with his encarmined nose and love of freedom. Also Gouverneur Morris, who has succeeded Mr. Jefferson as America’s Minister in France, comes often to the Rue Tournon. The pair are with him every day; and because all three like politics, and no two of them share the same views, dispute is deep. Aimee of the red-gold hair takes no part in these discussions, but sits watching her “Paul” with eyes of adoration, directing the servants, with a motion of the hand, to have a care that the debaters do not voice their beliefs over empty glasses.
Admiral Paul Jones, while a republican, gives his sympathies to the king, in whom there is much weakness, but no evil.
“They must not kill the king!” says he.
“And why not?” demands Tom Paine, whose bosom distills bitterness, and who holds there are no good kings save dead kings. “Has France no Cromwell? We are both born Englishmen, Paul; our own people ere this have killed a king.”
“Tom,” cries Admiral Paul Jones, heatedly,
“Cromwell and England should not be cited as precedents here. King Louis is no Charles; and, as for Cromwell, there isn’t the raw material in all France to make a Cromwell.”
Gouverneur Morris says nothing, but sips his wine; remembering that, as the minister of a foreign nation, he should bear no part in French politics.
The Parisian rabble insult the king, and Lafayette, in command of the military about the Tuileries, sadly lacks decision. Then comes the “Day of Daggers;” the poor king, advised by the irresolute Lafayette, yields to the mob, and the assembled notables are disarmed. The anger of Admiral Paul Jones is extreme. He breaks forth to his friend Tom Paine:
“Up to this time I’ve been able to find reasons for the king’s gentleness; but to-day’s action was not gentle, it was weak. I pity the man—beset as he is by situations to which he is unequal. Lafayette cannot long restrain the sinister forces that confront him. He has neither the head nor the heart nor the hand for it. This is a time for grapeshot. I only wish that I might be in command of those thirty cannon parked about the palace, and have with me, even for a day, my old war-dogs of the Ranger and the Richard. Believe me, I should offer the mob convincing reasons in support of conservatism and justice; I should teach it forbearance at the muzzles of my guns.”
“But the rabble might in its turn teach you,” retorts Tom Paine, with a republican grin.
“Bah!” he exclaims, snapping contemptuous fingers. “They of the mob are but sheep masquerading as tigers. One whiff of grapeshot, and they would disappear.” Then he continues, thoughtfully: “Their saddest trait is their levity. They are ridiculous even in their patriotism. Their emblems, representative of the grand sentiments they profess, are as childish as the language in which they proclaim them is fantastic. There is the red cap! Borrowed from the gutters, they make it the symbol of sovereignty! As though a ship were better for being keel up.”
Mirabeau, with his lion’s face, comes in. He is in a fury, and declares that Lafayette is a practising hypocrite in his pretences of attachment to the king.
“Hypocrisy!” cries Mirabeau. “That, at least, is a lesson in the school of liberty he never learned from Washington.”
Others of the Moderates arrive, and join in the conversation.
“You must understand, gentlemen,” observes Admiral Paul Jones warmly, “that I, in my time, have fought eight years for liberty. But I did not fight with the decrees of blood-mad Assemblies, or the plots of secret clubs.”
Those present smile tolerantly; for the mighty Paul is a person of many privileges, the one man in France who may speak his mind.
“You do not deeply respect the Assembly?” remarks Mirabeau, with a sour smile.
“The Assembly? What is it? A few who talk all the time, and a great many who applaud or hiss! Everything about it is theatrical. It struggles for epigram not principle, and the members would sooner say a smart thing than save France.”
Paris is turmoil and uproar and tumult. To keep his mind from that strife which surrounds him, and into which he longs to plunge, Admiral Paul Jones puts in hours with his secretary, Benoît-André, dictating his journals. Also, business calls him to London, where he is much celebrated by the Whigs. He hobnobs with Fox and Sheridan, while Walpole carries him away to Strawberry Hill. He is with Walpole, when word arrives that Mirabeau is dead.
“What will be the effect in Paris’?” asks Walpole.
“What will be the effect! It will unchain the worst elements. The Assembly will now go to every red extreme. While Mirabeau lived, that strange concourse of evil spirits had a master. He is gone; the animals are without a keeper.”
Admiral Paul Jones returns to Paris, and finds a letter from Mr. Jefferson, now Secretary of State. Mr. Jefferson asks him to discover how far Europe will co-operate to crush out piracy in the Mediterranean. Also, he explains that President Washington will want the services of Admiral Paul Jones when he sends an expedition against the Barbary States.
While he is reading Mr. Jefferson’s letter, a deputation from the Assembly waits on him, and sets forth informally that it is the present French purpose to reorganize the navy, and call him, Admiral Paul Jones, to the command.
“Would you accept?” asks the deputation.
“It would be, gentlemen,” he returns, “the part of prudence, and I think of modesty, to defer crossing that bridge till I come to it.”
When the deputation goes away, he calls Benoît-André, and sits long into the night dictating a treatise on reforming the French navy. He points out how its present inefficiency arises from the fact that, for centuries, it has been the feeding-ground of a voracious but incompetent aristocracy, a mere asylum for impoverished second sons, and other noble incapables. He sends a copy of his treatise to Walpole, who writes him a letter.
“My dear Admiral,” says he of Strawberry Hill; “let France go. Either return home to America and rest upon your laurels, or come over to England, where even those who do not love you admire you. You have fought under two flags; isn’t that enough? I take your pamphlet to be simply a bid for a commission in the new French navy, and, because I love and admire you, I hope it will fail. It will be better so. Your laurels, won off Flamboro’ Head, will else be turned to cypress, when, as a French admiral, you become the target of British broadsides, with none of your stout Yankee tars to stand by and man your guns.”
The winter is at an end; the grass of spring is starting. Admiral Paul Jones receives a letter from President Washington, who speaks of the Barbary States, and asks him to give up his commission in the Russian service. There have been two whose requests with him were ever final—Franklin and Washington. He does not hesitate, but forwards his resignation to Catherine. She will not accept, and puts forward old Suwarrow.
“Do not, my good brother,” writes the old soldier—“do not let any siren entice you from the service of the Empress. Your Frenchmen are preparing a stew of mischief that must soon keep all Western Europe busy to save themselves. That will be Russia’s time. We shall then have a free hand with the Turk. Our command of the Black Sea is safe. Since you were there, we have built nine new ships of the line, and six stout frigates. You shall have them all. Also, I can now protect you from Court intrigues, which I could not do before. Courtiers, since Ismail, no longer trouble me; I brush them away like flies. In a new Turkish campaign, I would be Generalissimo by land and sea; you would be responsible to no one but me—a situation which, I flatter myself, would not be intolerable to you. Now, my good brother, the Empress has a copy of this letter, and agrees with all I say. Make no entanglements in the west; return to your old papa Suwarrow as soon as you can, and we shall discuss plans.”
Old Suwarrow’s missive fails of its hoped-for effect. Admiral Paul Jones gets out President Washington’s letter and reads it again. Then he sends a polite but peremptory resignation to Catherine, and ends forever with the Russians.
“But, mon Paul,” says Aimee, who looks over his shoulder, “what a compliment! England, France, Russia, America—the whole world calls you! And the answer to all”—here a kiss—“is that you shall stay with your Aimee until she coaxes back your health.”
CHAPTER XXVIII—LOVE AND THOSE LAST DAYS
Aimee is right. Admiral Paul Jones, never his old sound self since that last cruise in the West Indies, is ill. Gourgaud says it is his lungs, and commands him to take care of himself. He obeys by sticking close to the red-gold Aimee, and the pleasant house in the Rue Tournon, with its fireplaces in the winter and its tree-shaded back garden in the summer—summer, when the hammock is swung.
Now a stream of visitors pours in upon him. Even the poor king, in the midst of his troubles, sends to ask after the health of the “Chevalier Jones.” At odd hours, when visitors do not overrun him, he dictates his journals to Benoît-Andre, while Aimee gently swings his hammock with her white hand.
It is a hazy July day; the drone of pillaging bees, busy among the flowers, fills the back garden in the Rue Tournon. It is one of Admiral Paul Jones’ “good days;” a-swing in his hammock, he chats with Major Beaupoil about a recent dinner at which he was the guest of Jacobin honor.
“It was at the Cafe Timon,” he says, “a favorite rendezvous of the Jacobins. Believe me, Major, while I cannot speak in highest terms of the Jacobins, I can of the Cafe Timon. One day I hope to take you there.”
Gouverneur Morris is announced. He tells Admiral Paul Jones of advices from Mr. Jefferson, and that Mr. Pinckney has been selected Minister to St. James.
“What, to my mind,” concludes Mr. Morris, “is of most consequence, Mr. Pinckney bears with him from President Washington your commission as an Admiral in the American navy. You are to be ready, you note, to sail against those Barbary robbers when the squadron arrives.
“I shall not alone be ready,” he returns, “I shall be delighted.” He springs from the hammock, and takes a quick turn up and down the garden. The prospect of a brush with the swarthy freebooters of the Mediterranean animates him mightily.
Other visitors are announced. Barère, Lafayette, Carnot, Cambon, Vergniaud, Marron, Collot, Billaud, Kersaint, Gensonne, Barbaroux and Louvet one after the other arrive. Laughter and jest and conversation become the order of the afternoon; for all are glad, and argue, from his high spirits, the soon return to health of Admiral Paul Jones. There has been no more cheerful hour in the Rue Tournon back garden. Corks are drawn and glasses clink.
The talk leaves politics for religion. “My church,” observes Admiral Paul Jones—“my church has been the ocean, my preacher the North Star, my choir the winds singing in the ship’s rigging.”
“And your faith?” asks Major Beaupoil.
“You may find it, my dear Major, in Pope’s Universal Prayer:
‘Teach me to feel another’s woe,
To hide the faults I see;
That mercy I to others show,
Such mercy show to me.’
“There!” he concludes, “I call that stanza a complete boxing of the religious compass.”
Gourgaud looks in professionally, and is inclined to take a solemn view of his patient’s health. He rebukes him for running about the garden among his guests.
“You should not have permitted it,” says Gourgaud, admonishing Aimee with upraised finger.
“But he refused to be restrained!” returns Aimee, ruefully.
“Gourgaud!” the patient breaks forth cheerily, “you know the aphorism: At forty every man is either a fool or a doctor. Now I am over forty; and, as a fellow-practitioner, I promise you that our patient, Paul Jones, is out of danger and on the mend.” Then, gayly: “Come, Gourgaud, don’t croak! Take a glass of wine, man; you frighten Aimee with your long looks.” Gourgaud takes his wine; but his looks are quite as long as before.
Abruptly and apropos of nothing, Admiral Paul Jones decides to make his will.
“Your will!” protests Gouverneur Morris, somewhat aghast. “But you haven’t been in such health for months.”
“Not on account of my health,” he explains, “but because of those Barbary pirates.”
Notaries are brought in by Benoît-André, and the will is drawn. The gallant testator is for giving all to his Aimee.
“The house you already have,” says he; “and also an annuity. Now I leave you the rest; and Beaupoil shall be executor, with Morris as a witness. There; it is arranged!”
But it is not arranged. The red-gold Aimee points out that he has certain nieces and nephews in Scotland and Virginia; they must not be forgotten. He yields to amendments in behalf of those nieces and nephews. Then the will is sealed and signed.
“It has eased my mind,” he says, giving the document into the hands of Major Beaupoil for safe-keeping—“it has eased my mind more than I supposed possible.” Then, with a look at Aimee: “There will be enough, petite, to take care of you, even though our friends here turn the country bottom-side up. Luckily, too, the property is in England and America and Holland, where values stand more steadily than they do in France.”
Aimee remembers the “Sword of Honor,” given by King Louis for that victory over the Serapis.
“You always declared it should go to your friend, Dale,” she says.
“So I do still!”
Aimee brings the sword. She presses the gilt scabbard to her lips; then she puts it in the hands of her “Paul.” He half draws the blade, and considers it with an eye of pride.
“You see this sword?” he remarks to Gouverneur Morris, “Should I die, carry it with my love to Dick Dale—my good old Dick, who did more than any other man to help me win it!”
It is nine o’clock; night has fallen. The many friends have gone their homeward ways. The back parlor of the house in the Rue Tournon is peaceful and still.
Admiral Paul Jones sits in his cushioned easy-chair reading a volume of Voltaire. Now and then he addresses to Aimee some comment of agreement or disagreement with his lively author. Aimee offers no counter comments, but smiles accord to everything; for her heart is lighter and her bosom more tranquil than for many a day, as she basks in the sunshine of new hopes for the restoration of her “Paul.”
Some duty of the house calls Aimee. She leaves her Paul the lamplight shining on the pages of the book, his loved face in the shadow. She pauses at the door, her deep, soft eyes full of worship.
Aimee is on the stair returning. An ominous sound reaches her ears! Her heart grows cold; alarm seizes her by the throat, as though a hand clutched her! She knows by some instinct that the end has come, and her “Paul” lies dead or dying! She can neither move nor cry out!
Presently she regains command of herself. With quaking limbs she mounts the stair. The door of the back drawing-room stands open. The lamp still burns, but its radiance no longer lights the pages of the philosopher of Fernay. They fall across the motionless body of her “Paul.” He lies with head and shoulder resting on a couch, which he was trying to reach when stricken down.
Aimee gazes for one horror-frozen moment. Then, with a wailing sob, as from the depths of her soul, she throws her arms about him. She covers the marble lips with kisses—those dauntless, defiant lips!—while her thick hair, breaking from its combs, hides, as with a veil of red and gold, the loved face from the prying lamp.
Napoleon is reading those gloomy despatches which tell of Trafalgar. Crushing the paper in his hand, he paces the floor, his pale, moody face swept by gusty emotions of pain and anger and disappointment.
“Berthier, how old was Paul Jones when he died?”
“Forty-five, sire.”
There comes a gloom-filled silence; the gray, brooding eyes seek the floor in thought. Then the pacing to and fro is resumed, that hateful despatch still clutched fast in the nervous fingers.
“Berthier: Paul Jones did not fulfil his destiny.”