WHILE young Aaron, in his camp by the Ramapo, is wringing the withers of his men with merciless drills, sixteen miles away, in the outskirts of the village of Paranius dwells Madam Theodosia Prévost. Madam Prévost is the widow of an English Colonel Prévost, who was swept up by yellow fever in Jamaica. With her are her mother, her sister, her two little boys. The family name is De Visme, which is a Swiss name from the French cantons.
The hungry English in New York are running short of food. Two thousand of them cross the Hudson, and commence combing the country for beef. Word of that cow-driving reaches young Aaron by the Ramapo. Hackensack is given as the theater of those beef triumphs of the hungry English.
From rustical ones bewailing vanished kine, young Aaron receives the tale first hand. Instantly he springs to the defense of the continental cow. He orders out his regiment, and marches away for that stricken Hackensack region of ravished flocks and herds.
At Paramus, excited by stories of a cow-conquering English, the militia of the neighborhood are fallen to a frenzied building of breastworks. Certain of these home guards look up from their breastwork building long enough to decide that Madam Prévost, as the widow of a former English colonel, is a Tory.
Arriving at this conclusion, the home guards make the next natural step, and argue—because of their nearness to Madam Prévost—that the mother and sister and little boys are Tories. The quietly elegant home of Madam Prévost is declared a nest of Tories, against which judgment a belief that the mansion is worth looting is not allowed to militate.
As young Aaron, on his rescuing way to Hackensack, marches into Paramus, the judgmatical home guards, in the name of a patriotism which believes in spoiling the Egyptian, are about to begin their work of sack and pillage. Young Aaron, who does not think that robbery assists the cause of freedom, calls a halt. He drives off the home guards at the point of his sword, and places sentinels upon the premises. Also he promises to hang the first home guard who, in the name of liberty, or for any more private reason, touches a shilling’s worth of Madam Prevost’s chattels.
Having established his protectorate in favor of the threatened Prévost household, young Aaron enters, hat in hand, with the pardonable purpose of discovering what manner of folk he has pledged himself to keep safe. It may be that he is beset by visions of distressed fair ones—disheveled, tearful, beautiful! If so, his dreams receive a shock. ‘Instead of that flushed, frightened, clinging, tear-stained loveliness, so common of romance, he is met by a severely angular lady who, plain of face, with high, harsh cheek bones, and a scar on her forehead, is two inches taller and twelve years older than himself.
Madam Prévost owns all these; and yet, beyond and above them, she also possesses an ineffable, impalpable something, which is like an atmosphere, a perfume, a melody of manner, and marks her as that greatest of graceful rarities, a well-bred, cultured woman of the world. Polished, fine, Madam Prévost is familiar with the society of two continents. She knows literature, music, art; she is wise, erudite, nobly high. These attributes invest her with a soft brilliancy, into which those uglinesses and bony angularities retreat as into a kind of moonlight, to recur in gentle reassertion as the poetic sublimation of all that charms.
Thus does she break upon young Aaron—young Aaron, who has said that he would no more love a woman for her beauty than a man for his money, and is to be won only by her who, mentally and sentimentally, meets him half way. This last Madam Prévost does; and, from the moment he meets her to the hour of her death, she draws him and holds him like a magnet. It illustrates the inexplicable in love, that this cool, cynical one, whose very youth is an iron element of hardest strength, should be fascinated and fettered by a worn, middle-aged woman with eyes of faded gray.
Young Aaron, on this first encounter with his goddess, remains no longer than is required to receive the arrow in his heart. He presses on with his followers for the Hackensack. A mile from Paramus he halts his soldiery, and, leaving the great body of them, goes forward in person with a scouting party of seventeen. In the middle watches of the night, he discovers a picket post of the cow-collecting English. Only one is awake; he is shot dead by young Aaron. The others, twenty-eight in number, are seized in their sleep.
In the wake of this exploit, young Aaron brings up his whole command. The cow-hunting redcoats, from the confidence of his advance, infer in his favor an overwhelming strength. Panic claims them; they make for the Hudson, leaving those collected cows behind. There is rejoicing among the Hackensack folk at this happy return of their property, and young Aaron goes back to the Ramapo rich in encomium and praise.
The camp by the Ramapo is given up, and young Aaron, love-drawn, brings his force within a mile of Paramus. Daily he seeks the society of Madam Prévost, as sick folk seek the sun. She speaks French, Spanish, German; she reads Voltaire, and is capable of admiring without approving the cynic of Fernay. More; she is familiar with Petrarch, Le Sage, Corneille, Rousseau, Chesterfield, Cervantes. Madam Prévost and young Aaron find much to talk of and agree about, in the way of romance and poetry and philosophy, and are never dull for lack of topics. And, as they converse, he worships her with his eyes, from which every least black trace of that ophidian sparkle has been extinguished.
The first snowflakes are falling when young Aaron receives orders to join Washington’s army at Valley Forge. Arriving, his hatred of the big general is rearoused. He suggests an expedition against the English on Staten Island, and offers to undertake it with three hundred men. Washington thinks well of the suggestion, but dispatches Lord Stirling to carry it out. Young Aaron, hot with disappointment, adds this to the list of injuries which he believes he has received from the Virginian.
Food is stinted, fire scarce at Valley Forge; there is a deal of cold and starving. Folk hungry and frozen are in no humor for work, and look on labor as an evil. Young Aaron takes no account of this, but has out his tattered, chilled, thin-flanked followers to those daily drills.
In the end a spirit of mutiny creeps in among the men. It finds concrete shape one frosty morning when private John Cook levels his musket at young Aaron’s heart. Private Cook means murder, and is only kept from it by the promptitude of young Aaron. With that very motion of the mutineer which aims the gun, young Aaron’s sword comes rasping from its scabbard, and a backhanded stroke all but severs the would-be homicide’s right arm. The wounded man falls bleeding to the ground. With that, young Aaron details a pale-faced, silent quartette to carry the wounded one to the hospital, and, drawing his blade through a handkerchief to wipe away the blood, proceeds with the hated drill.
While young Aaron serves at Valley Forge, a conspiracy, whereof General Conway is the animating heart and General Gates the figurehead, is hatched. The purpose is to remove Washington, and set the conqueror of Burgoyne in his place. Young Aaron joins the conspiracy, and is looked upon by his fellow plotters as ardent, but unimportant because of his youth.
The design falls to the ground; Washington retains his command, while Gates goes south to lose his Burgoyne laurels and get drubbed by Cornwallis. As for young Aaron, he swallows as best he may his disappointment over the poor upcome of that plot, and takes part in the battle of Monmouth. Here he has his horse shot under him, and lays up fresh hatreds against Washington for refusing to let him charge an English battery.
Sore, heart-cankered of chagrin, young Aaron asks for leave of absence. He declares that he is ill, and his hollow cheek and bilious eye sustain him. He says that, until his health mends, he will take no pay.
“You shall have leave of absence,” says Washington, to whom young Aaron prefers his request in person, “but you must draw pay.”
“And why draw pay, sir!” demands young Aaron warmly, for he somehow smells an insult. “I shall render no service. I think the proprieties much preserved by a stoppage of my pay.”
“If you were the only, one, sir,” returns Washington, “I might say as you do. But there be others on sick leave, who are not men of fortune like yourself. Those gentlemen must draw their pay, or see their people suffer. Should you be granted leave without pay, they might feel criticised. You note the point, sir.”
“Why,” replies young Aaron, with a tinge of sarcasm, “the point, I take it, is that you would not have me shine at the expense of folk of lesser fortune or more avarice than myself. Because others are not generous to their country, I must be refused the poor privilege of contributing even my absence to her cause.”
At young Aaron’s palpable sneer, the big general’s face darkens with anger. “You exhibit an insolence, sir,” he says at last, “which I succeed in overlooking only by remembering that I am twice your age. I understand, of course, that you intend a covert thrust at myself, because I draw my three guineas per day as commander in chief. Rather to enlighten you than defend my own conduct, I may tell you, sir, that I draw those three guineas upon the precise grounds I state as reasons why you, during your leave, must accept pay. There are men as brave, as true, as patriotic as either of us, who cannot—as we might—fight months on end, without some provision for their families. What, sir”—here the big general begins to kindle—“is it not enough that men risk their blood for these colonies? Must wives and children starve? The cause is not so poor, I tell you, but what it can pay its own cost. You and I, sir, will draw our pay, to keep in self-respecting countenance folk as good as ourselves in everything save fortune.”
Young Aaron shrugs his shoulders. “If it were not, sir,” he begins, “for that difference in our ages which you so opportunely quote, to say nothing of my inferior military rank, I might ask if your determination to make me accept pay, whether I earn it or no, be not due to a latent dislike for myself personally. I can think of much that justifies the question.”
“Colonel Burr,” observes the big general, with a dignity which is not without rebuking effect upon young Aaron, “because you are young and will one day be older, I am inclined to justify myself in your eyes. I make it a rule to seldom take advice and never give it. And yet there is room for a partial exception in your instance. There is a word, two, perhaps, which I think you need.”
“Believe me, sir, I am honored!”
“My counsel, sir, is to cease thinking of yourself. Give your life a better purpose and a higher aim. You will have more credit now, more fame hereafter, if you will lay aside that egotism which dominates you, and give your career a motive beyond and above a mere desire to advance yourself.”
The big general, from the commanding heights of those advantageous extra six inches, looks down upon young Aaron. In that looking down there is nothing of the paternal. Rather it is as though a pedagogue deals with some self-willed pupil.
Of all the big general’s irritating attitudes, young Aaron finds this pose of unruffled supremacy the one hardest to bear. He holds himself in hand, however, deeming it a time, now the ice is broken, to go to the bottom of his prospects, and learn what hope there is of honors which can come only through the other’s word.
“Sir,” observes young Aaron, “will you be so good as to make yourself clear. What you say is interesting; I would not miss its slightest meaning.”
“It should be confessed,” returns the big general, somewhat to one side, “that I am of a hot and angry temper. My one fear, having authority, is that in the heat of personal resentments I may do injustice. If it were not for such fear, you would have gone south with General Gates, for whom you plotted all you knew to bring about my downfall.”
Young Aaron is seized of a chilling surprise. This is his first news that Washington is aware of his part in that plot. However, he schools his features to a statuelike immobility, and evinces neither amazement nor dismay. The big general goes on:
“No, sir; your conduct as a soldier has been good. So I leave you with your regiment, retain you with me, because I can see no public reasons, but only private ones, for sending you away. I go over these things, sir, to convince you that I have not permitted personal bias to control my attitude toward you. Besides, I hope to teach you a present sincerity in what I say.”
“Why, sir,” interjects young Aaron, careful to maintain a coolness and self-possession equal with the big general’s; “you give yourself unnecessary trouble. I cannot think your sincerity important, since I shall not permit the question of it to in any way add to or subtract from your words. I listen gladly and with gratitude. None the less, I shall accept or reject your counsel on its abstract merits, unaffected by its honorable source.”
The insufferable impertinence of young Aaron’s manner would have got him drummed out of some services, shot in others. The big general only bites his lip.
“What I would tell you,” he resumes, “is this. You possess the raw material of greatness—but with one element lacking. You may rise to what heights you choose, if you will but cure yourself of one defect. Observe, sir! Men are judged, not for deeds but motives. A man injures you; you excuse him because no injury was meant. A man seeks to injure you, but fails; and yet you resent it, in spite of that defensive failure, because of the intent. So it is with humanity at large. It looks at the motive rather than the act. Sir, I have watched you. You have no motive but yourself. Patriotism plays no part when you come to this war; it is not the country, but Aaron Burr, you carry on your thoughts. Whatever you may believe, you cannot win fame or good repute on terms, so narrow. A man is so much like a gun that, to carry far, he must have some elevation of aim. You were born fortunate in your parts, save for that defective element of aim. There, sir, you fail, and will continue to fail, unless you work your own redemption. It is as though you had been born on a dead level—aimed point-blank at birth. You should have been born at an angle of forty-five degrees. With half the powder, sir, you would carry twice as far. Wherefore, elevate yourself; give your life a noble purpose! Make yourself the incident, mankind the object. Merge egotism in patriotism; forget self in favor of your country and its flag.”
The gray eyes of the big general rest upon young Aaron with concern. Then he abruptly retreats into the soldier, as though ashamed of his own earnestness. Without giving time for reply to that dissertation on the proper aim of man, he again takes up the original business of the leave.
“Colonel Burr,” says he, “you shall have leave of absence. But your waiver of pay is declined.”
“Then, sir,” retorts young Aaron, “you must permit me to withdraw my application. I shall not take the country’s money, without rendering service for it.”
“That is as you please, sir.”
“One thing stands plain,” mutters young Aaron, as he walks away; “the sooner I quit the army the better. For me it is ‘no thoroughfare,’ and I may as well save my time. He knows of my part in that Conway-Gates movement, too; and, for all his platitudes about justice and high aims, he’s no one to forget it.”
YOUNG Aaron, with his regiment, is ordered to West Point. Next he is dispatched to hold the Westchester lines, being that debatable ground lying between the Americans at White Plains and the English at Kingsbridge. It is still his half-formed purpose to resign his sword, and turn the back of his ambition on every hope of military glory. He says as much to General Putnam, whose real liking for him he feels and trusts. The wise old wolf killer argues in favor of patience.
“Washington is but trying you,” he declares. “It will all come right, if you but hold on. And to be a colonel at twenty-two is no small thing, let me tell you! Suck comfort from that!”
Young Aaron knows the old wolf killer so well that he feels he may go as far as he chooses into those twin subjects of Washington and his own military prospects.
“General,” he says, “believe me when I tell you that I accept what you say as though from a father. Let me talk to you, then, not as a colonel to his general, but as son to sire. I have my own views concerning Washington; they are not of the highest. I do not greatly esteem him as either a soldier or a man.”
“And there you are wrong!” breaks in the old wolf killer; “twice wrong.”
“Give me your own views, then; I shall be glad to change the ones I have.”
“You speak of Washington as no soldier. Without reminding you that you yourself own but little experience to guide by in coming to such conclusion, I may say perhaps that I, who have fought in both the French War and the war with Pontiac, possess some groundwork upon which to base opinion. Take my word for it, then, that there is no better soldier anywhere than Washington.”
“But he is all for retreating, and never for advancing.”
“Precisely! And, whether you know it or no, those tactics of falling back and falling back are the ones, the only ones, which promise final success. Where, let me ask, do you think this war is to be won?”
“Where should any war be won but on the battlefield?”
The old wolf killer smiles a wide smile of grizzled toleration. Plainly, he regards young Aaron as lacking in years quite as much as does Washington himself; and yet, somehow, this manner on his part does not fret the boy colonel. In truth, he meets the fatherly grin with the ghost of a smile.
“Where, then, should this war be won?” asks young Aaron.
“Not on the battlefield. I am but a plain farmer when I’m not wearing a sword, and no statesman like Adams or Franklin or Jefferson. For all that, I am wise enough to know that the war must, and, in the end, will be won in the Parliament of England. It must be won for us by Fox and Burke and Pitt and the other Whigs. All we can do is furnish them the occasion and the argument, and that can be accomplished only by retreating.”
Young Aaron sniffs his polite distrust of such topsy-turvy logic. “Now I should call,” says he, “these retreats, by which you and Washington seem to set so much store, a worst possible method of giving encouragement to our friends. I fear you jest with me, general. How can you say that by retreating, itself a confession of weakness, we give the English Whigs an argument which shall induce King George to recognize our independence?”
“If you were ten years older,” remarks the old wolf killer, “you would not put the question. Which proves some of us in error concerning you, and shows you as young as your age should warrant. Let me explain: You think a war, sir, this war, for instance, is a matter of soldiers and guns. It isn’t; it is a matter of gold. As affairs stand, the English are shedding their guineas much faster than they shed their blood. Presently the taxpayers of England will begin to feel it; they feel it now. Let the drain go on. Before all is done, their resolution will break down; they will elect a Parliament instructed to concede our independence.”
“Your idea, then, is to prolong the war, and per incident the expense of it to the English, until, under a weight of taxation, the courage of the English taxpayer breaks down.”
“You’ve nicked it. We own neither the force, nor the guns, nor the powder, nor—and this last in particular—the bayonets to wage aggressive warfare. To do so would be to play the English game. They would, breast to breast and hand to hand, wipe us out by sheerest force of numbers. That would mean the finish; we should lose and they would win. Our plan—the Washington plan—is, with as little loss as possible in men and dollars to ourselves, to pile up cost for the foe. There is but one way to do that; we must fall back, and keep falling back, to the close of the chapter.”
“At least,” says young Aaron, with a sour grimace, “you will admit that the plan of campaign you offer presents no peculiar features of attractive gallantry.”
“Gallantry is not the point. I am but trying to convince you that Washington, in this backwardness of which you complain, proceeds neither from ignorance nor cowardice; but rather from a set and well-considered strategy. I might add, too, that it takes a better soldier to retreat than to advance. As for your true soldier, after he passes forty, he talks not of winning battles but wars. After forty he thinks little or nothing of that engaging gallantry of which you talk, and never throws away practical advantage in favor of some gilded sentiment. You deem slightly of Washington, because you know slightly of Washington. The most I may say to comfort you is that Washington most thoroughly knows himself. And”—here the old wolf killer’s voice begins to tremble a little—“I’ll go further: I’ve seen many men; but none of a courage, a patriotism, a fortitude, a sense of honor to match with his; none of his exalted ideals or noble genius for justice.”
Young Aaron is silent; for he sees how moved is the old wolf killer, and would not for the ransom of a world say aught to pain him. After a pause he observes:
“Assuredly, I could not think of going behind your opinions, and Washington shall be all you say. None the less—and here I believe you will bear me out—he has of me no good opinion. He will not advance me; he will not give me opportunity to advance. And, after all, the question I originally put only touched myself. I told you I thought, and now tell you I still think, that I might better take off my sword, forget war, and see what is to be won in the law.”
“And you ask my advice?”
“Your honest advice.”
“Then stick to the head of your regiment. Convince Washington that his opinion of you is unjust, and he’ll be soonest to admit it. To convince him should not be difficult, since you have but to do your duty.”
“Very good,” observes Aaron, resignedly, “I shall, for the present at least, act upon your counsel. Also, much as I value your advice, general, you have given me something else in this conversation which I value more; that is, your expressed and friendly confidence.”
Following his long talk with the old wolf killer, young Aaron throws himself upon his duty, heart and hand. In his rôle as warden of the Westchester marches, he is as vigilant as a lynx. The English under Tryon move north from New York; he sends them scurrying back to town in hot and fear-spurred haste. They attempt to surprise him, and are themselves surprised. They build a doughty blockhouse near Spuyten Duyvel; young Aaron burns it, and brings in its defenders as captives. Likewise, under cloud of night—night, ever the ally of lovers—he oft plays Leander to Madam Prevost’s Hero; only the Hudson is his Hellespont, and he does not swim but crosses in a barge. These love pilgrimages mean forty miles and as many perils. However, the heart-blinded young Aaron is not counting miles or perils, as he pictures his gray goddess of Paramus sighing for his coming.
One day young Aaron hears tidings that mean much in his destinies. The good old wolf killer, his sole friend in the army, is stricken of paralysis, and goes home to die. The news is a shock to him; the more since it offers the final argument for ending with the military. He consults no one. Basing his action on a want of health, he forwards his resignation to Washington, who accepts. He leaves the army, taking with him an unfaltering dislike of the big general which will wax not wane as years wear on.
Young Aaron is much and lovingly about his goddess of the wan gray eyes; so much and so lovingly, indeed, that it excites the gossips. With war and battle and sudden death on every hand and all about them, scandal-mongering ones may still find time and taste for the discussion of the faded Madam Prévost and her boy lover. The discussion, however, is carried on in whispers, and made to depend on a movement of the shoulder or an eyebrow knowingly lifted. Madam Prévost and young Aaron neither hear nor see; their eyes and ears are sweetly busy over nearer, dearer things.
It is deep evening at the Prévost mansion. A carriage stops at the gate; the next moment a bold-eyed woman, the boldness somewhat in eclipse through weariness and fear, bursts in. Young Aaron’s memory is for a moment held at bay; then he recalls her. The bold-eyed one is none other than that Madam Arnold whom he saw on a Newburyport occasion, when he was dreaming of conquest and Quebec. Plainly, the bold-eyed one knows Madam Prévost; for she runs to her with outstretched hands.
“Oh, I’ve lied and played the hypocrite all day!”
Then the bold-eyed one relates the just discovered treason of her husband, and how she imitated tears and hysteria and the ravings of one abandoned, to cover herself from the consequences of a crime to which she was privy, and the commission whereof she urged.
“This gentleman!” cries the bold-eyed one, as she closes her story—she has become aware of young Aaron—“this gentleman! May I trust him?”
“As you would myself,” returns Madam Prévost.
And so, by the lips he loves, young Aaron is bound to permit, if he does not aid, the escape of the bold-eyed traitress. Wherefore, she goes her uninterrupted way; after which he forgets her, and again takes up the subject nearest his heart, his love for Madam Prévost.
Eighteen months slip by; young Aaron is eager for marriage. Madam Prévost is not so hurried, but urges a prudent procrastination. He is about to return to those law studies, which he took up aforetime with Tappan Reeve. She shows him that it would more consist with his dignity, were he able to write himself “lawyer” before he became a married man.
Lovers will listen to sweethearts when husbands turn blandly deaf to wives, and young Aaron accepts the advice of his goddess of faded years and experiences. He hunts up a certain Judge Patterson, a law-light of New Jersey—not too far from Paramus—and enters himself as a student under that philosopher of jurisprudence.
Judge Patterson and young Aaron do not agree. The one is methodical, and looks slowly out upon the world; he holds by the respectable theory that one should know the law before he practices it. The other favors haste at any cost, and argues that by practice one will most surely and sharply come to a profound knowledge of the law.
Perceiving his studies to go forward as though shod with lead, young Aaron remonstrates with his preceptor.
“This will never do,” he cries. “Sir, I shall be gray before I go to the bar!” He explains that it is his purpose to enter upon the practice of the law within a year. “Twelve months as a student should be enough,” he says.
“Sir,” observes the scandalized Judge Patterson in retort, “to talk of taking charge of a client’s interests after studying but a year is to talk of fraud. You would but sacrifice them to your own vain ignorance, sir. It would be a most flagrant case of the blind leading the blind.”
“Possibly now,” urges young Aaron the cynical, “the opposing counsel might be as blind as I, and the bench as blind as either.”
“Such talk is profanation!” exclaims Judge Patterson who, making a cult of the law, feels a priestly horror at young Aaron’s ribaldry. “Let me be plain, sir! No student shall leave me to engage upon the practice, unless I think him competent. As to that condition of competency, I deem you many months’ journey from it.”
Finding himself and Judge Patterson so much at variance, young Aaron bids that severe jurist adieu, and betakes himself to Haverstraw. There he makes a more agreeable compact with one Judge Smith, whom the English have driven from New York. While he waits for the day when—English vanished—he may return to his practice, Judge Smith accepts a round sum in gold from young Aaron, on the understanding that he devote himself wholly to that impatient gentleman’s education.
Judge Smith of Haverstraw does his honest best to earn that gold. Morning, noon, and night, and late into the latter, he and young Aaron go hammering at the old musty masters of jurisprudence. The student makes astonishing advances, and it is no more than a matter of weeks when Jack proves as good as his master. Still, the sentiment which animates young Aaron’s efforts is never high. He studies law as some folk study fencing, his one absorbing thought being to learn how to defeat an adversary and save himself. His great concern is to make himself past master of every thrust, parry, and sleighty trick of fence, whether in attack or guard, with the one object of victory for himself and the enemy’s destruction. Justice, and to assist thereat, is the thing distant from his thoughts.
At the end of six months, Judge Smith declares young Aaron able to hold his own with any adversary.
“Mark my words, sir,” he observes, when speaking of young Aaron to a fellow gray member of the guild—“mark my words, sir, he will prove one of the most dangerous men who ever sat down to a trial table. There is, of course, a right side and a wrong side to every cause. In that luck which waits upon the practice of the law, he may, as might you or I, be retained for the wrong side of a litigation. But whether right or wrong, should you some day be pitted against him, you will find him possessed of this sinister peculiarity. If he’s right, you won’t defeat him; if he’s wrong, you must exercise your utmost care or he’ll defeat you.”
Pronouncing which, Judge Smith refreshes himself with sardonic snuff, after the manner of satirical ones who feel themselves delivered of a smartish quip.
Following that profound novitiate of six months, young Aaron visits Albany and seeks admission to the bar. He should have studied three years; but the benignant judge forgives him those other two years and more, basing his generosity on the applicant’s services as a soldier.
“And so,” says young Aaron, “I at least get something from my soldier life. It wasn’t all thrown away, since now it saves me a deal of grinding study at the books.”
Young Aaron settles down to practice law in Albany. He prefers New York City, and will go there when the English leave. Pending that redcoat exodus, he cheers his spirit and improves his time by carrying Madam Prévost to church, where the Reverend Bogard declares them man and wife, after the methods and manners of the Dutch Reformed.
The boy husband and the faded middle-aged wife remain a year in Albany. There a daughter is born. She will grow up as the beautiful Theodosia, and, when the maternal Theodosia is no more, be all in all to her father. Young Aaron kisses baby Theodosia, calls the stars his brothers, and walks the sky. For once, in a way, that old innate egotism is well-nigh dead in his heart.
About this time the beaten English sail away for home, and young Aaron gives up Albany. Albany has three thousand; New York-is a pulsating metropolis of twenty-two thousand souls. There can be no question as to where the choice of a rising young barrister should fall.
He goes therefore to New York; and, with the two Theodosias and the two little Prévost boys, takes a stately mansion in that thoroughfare of fashion and fine society, Maiden Lane. He opens law offices by the Bowling Green, to a gathering cloud of clients.
The Right Reverend Doctor Bellamy of Bethlehem pays him a visit.
“With your few months of study,” observes the reverend doctor dryly, “I wonder you know enough of law to so much as keep it, let alone going about its practice.”
“Law is not so difficult,” responds young Aaron, quite as dry as the good doctor. “Indeed, in some respects it is vastly like theology. That is to say, it is anything which is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained.”
The good doctor says he will answer for young Aaron’s boldness of assertion.
“And yet,” continues the good doctor, with just a glimmer of sarcasm, “the last time I saw you, you gave me the catalogue of your virtues, and declared them the virtues of a soldier. How comes it, then, that in the midst of battles you laid down steel for parchment, gave up arms for law?”
“Washington drove me from the army,” responds young Aaron, with convincing gravity. “As I told you, sir, by nature I am a soldier, and turned lawyer only through necessity. And Washington was the necessity.”
NOW when young Aaron, in the throbbing metropolis of New York, finds himself a lawyer and a married man, with an office by the Bowling Green and a house in fashionable Maiden Lane, he gives himself up to a cool survey of his surroundings. What he sees is fairly and honestly set forth by the good Dr. Bellamy, after that dominie returns to Bethlehem and Madam Bellamy. The latter, like all true women, is curious, and gives the doctor no peace until he relates his experiences.
“The city,” observes the veracious doctor, looking up from tea and muffins, “is large; some say as large as twenty-seven thousand. I walked to every part of it, seeing all a stranger should. There is much opulence there. The rich, of whom there are many, have not only town houses, but cool country seats north of the town. Their Broad Way is a fine, noble street!—very wide!—fairer than any in Boston!”
“Doctor!” expostulates Madam Bellamy, who is from Massachusetts.
“Mother, it is fact! They have, too, a new church, which cost twenty thousand pounds. At their shipyard I saw an East Indiaman of eight hundred tons—an immense vessel! The houses are grand, being for the better part painted—even the brick houses.”
“What! Paint a brick house!”
“It is their ostentation, mother; their senseless parade of wealth. One sees the latter everywhere. I was to breakfast at General Schuyler’s; it was an elaborate affair. They assured me their best people were present; Coster, Livingston, Bleecker, Beekman, Jay were some of the names. A more elegant repast I never ate—all set as it was with a profusion of massive plate. There were a silver teapot and a silver coffeepot——-”
“Solid silver?”
“Ay! The king’s hall-mark was on them; I looked. And finest linen, too—white as snow! Also cups of gilt; and after the toast, plates of peaches and a musk melon! It was more a feast than a breakfast.”
“Why, it is a tale of profligacy!”
“Their manners, however, do not keep pace with their splendid houses and furnishings. There is no good breeding; they have no conversation, no modesty. They talk loud, fast, and all together. It is a mere theater of din and witless babble. They ask a question; and then, before you can answer, break in with a stream of inane chatter. To be short, I met but one real gentleman———”
“Aaron!”
“Ay, mother; Aaron. I can say nothing good of his religious side; since, for all he is the grandson of the sainted Jonathan Edwards, he is no better than the heathen that rageth. But his manners! What a polished contrast with the boorishness about him! Against that vulgar background he shines out like the sun at noon!”
Young Aaron, beginning to remember his twenty-seven years, objects to the descriptive “young.” He has ever scorned it, as though it were some epithet of infamy. Now he takes open stand against it.
“I am not so young,” says he, to one who mentions him as in the morning of his years—“I am not so young but what I have commanded a brigade, sir, on a field of stricken battle. My rank was that of colonel! You will oblige me by remembering the title.”
In view of the gentleman’s tartness, it will be as well perhaps to hereafter drop the “young”; for no one likes to give offense. Besides, our tart gentleman is married, and a father. Still, “colonel” is but a word of pewter when no war is on. “Aaron” should do better; and escape challenge, too, that irritating “young” being dropped.
As Aaron runs his glance along the front of the town’s affairs, he notes that in commerce, fashion, politics, and one might almost say religion, the situation is dominated of a quartette of septs. There are the Livingstons—numerous, rich. There are the Clintons, of whom Governor Clinton is chief. There are the Jays, led by the Honorable John of that ilk. Most and greatest, there are the Schuylers, in the van of which tribe towers the sour, self-seeking, self-sufficient General Schuyler. Aaron, in the gossip of the coffee houses, hears much of General Schuyler. He hears more of that austere person’s son-in-law, the brilliant Alexander Hamilton.
“I shall be glad to make his acquaintance,” thinks Aaron, when he is told of the latter. “I met him after the battle of Long Island, when in his pale eagerness to escape the English he had left baggage and guns behind. Yes; I shall indeed be glad to see him. That such as he can come to eminence in the town possesses its encouraging side.”
There is a sneer on Aaron’s face as these thoughts run in his mind; those praises of son-in-law Hamilton have vaguely angered his selflove.
Aaron’s opportunity to meet and make the young ex-artilleryman’s acquaintance, is not long in coming. The Tories, whom the war stripped of their property and civil rights, are praying for relief. A conference of the town’s notables has been called; the local great ones are to come together in the long-room of the Fraunces Tavern. Being together, they will consider how far a decent Americanism may unbend toward Tory relief.
Aaron arrives early; for the Fraunces long-room is his favorite lounge. The big apartment has witnessed no changes since a day when poor Peggy Moncrieffe, as the modern Ariadne, wept on her near-by Naxos of Staten Island, while a forgetful Theseus, in that same longroom, tasted his wine unmoved. Aaron is at a corner table with Colonel Troup, when son-in-law Hamilton arrives.
“That is he,” says Colonel Troup, for they have been talking of the gentleman.
Already nosing a rival, Aaron regards the newcomer with a curious black narrowness which has little of liking in it. Son-in-law Hamilton is a short, slim, dapper figure of a man, as short and slim as is Aaron himself. His hair is clubbed into an elaborate cue, and profusely powdered. He wears a blue coat with bright buttons, a white vest, a forest of ruffles, black velvet smalls, white silk stockings, and conventional buckled shoes.
It is not his clothes, but his countenance to which Aaron addresses his most searching glances. The forehead is good and full, and rife of suggestion. The eyes are quick, bright, selfish, unreliable, prone to look one way while the plausible tongue talks another. As for the face generally: fresh, full, sensual, brisk, it is the face of a flatterer and a politician, the face of one who will seek his ends by nearest methods, and never mind if they be muddy. Also, there is much that is lurking and secret about the expression, which recalls the slanderer and backbiter, who will be ever ready to serve himself by lies whispered in the dark.
Son-in-law Hamilton does not see Aaron and Colonel Troup, and goes straight to a group the long length of the room away. Taking a seat, he at once leads the conversation of the circle he has joined, speaking in a loud, confident tone, with the manner of one who regards his own position as impregnable, and his word decisive of whatever question is discussed. The pompous, self-consequence of son-in-law Hamilton arouses the dander of Aaron. Nor is the latter’s wrath the less, when he discovers that General Schuyler’s self-satisfied young relative thinks the suppliant Tories should be listened to, as folk overharshly dealt with.
As Aaron considers son-in-law Hamilton, and decides unfavorably concerning that young gentleman’s bumptiousness and pert forwardness, the company is rapped to order by General Schuyler himself. Lean, rusty, arrogant, supercilious, the general explains that he has been asked to preside. Being established in the chair, he announces in a rasping, dictatorial voice the liberal objects of the coming together. He submits that the Tories have been unjustly treated. It was, he says, but natural they should adhere to King George. The war being over, and King George beaten, he does not believe it the part of either a Christian or a patriot to hold hatred against them. These same Tories are still Americans. Their names are among the highest in the city. Before the Revolution they were one and all of a first respectability, many with pews in Trinity. Now when freedom has won its battle, he feels that the victors should let bygones be bygones, and restore the Tories, in property and station, to a place which they occupied before that pregnant Philadelphia Fourth of July in 1776.
All this and more to similar effect the austere, rusty Schuyler rasps forth. When he closes, a profound silence succeeds; for there is no one who does not know the Schuyler power, or believe that the rasping word of the rusty old general is equal to marring or furthering the fortunes of every soul in the room.
The pause is at last broken by Aaron. Self-possessed, steady, his remarks are brief but pointed. He combats at every corner what the rusty general has been pleased to advance. The Tories were traitors. They were worse than the English. It was they who set the Indians on our borders to torch and tomahawk and scalping knife. They have been most liberally, most mercifully dealt with, when they are permitted to go unhanged. As for restoring their forfeited estates, or permitting them any civil share in a government which they did their best to strangle in its cradle, the thought is preposterous. They may have been “respectable,” as General Schuyler states; if so, the respectability was spurious—a mere hypocritical cover for souls reeking of vileness. They may have had pews in Trinity. There are ones who, wanting pews in Trinity, still hope to make their worldly foothold good, and save their souls at last.
As Aaron takes his seat by Colonel Troup, a murmur of guarded agreement runs through the company. Many are the looks of surprised admiration cast in his young direction. Truly, the newcomer has made a stir.
Not that his stir-making is to go unopposed. No sooner is Aaron in his chair, than son-in-law Hamilton is upon him verbally; even while those approving ones are admiringly buzzing, he begins to talk. His tones are high and patronizing, his manner condescending. He speaks to Aaron direct, and not to the audience. He will do his best, he explains, to be tolerant, for he has heard that Aaron is new to the town. None the less, he must ask that daring person to bear his newness more in mind. He himself, he says, cannot escape the feeling that one who is no better than a stranger, an interloper, might with a nice propriety remain silent on occasions such as this. Son-in-law Hamilton ends by declaring that the position taken by Aaron, on this subject of Tories and what shall be their rights, is un-American. He, himself, has fought for the Revolution; but, now it is ended, he holds that gentlemen of honor and liberality will not be guided by the ugly clamor of partisans, who would make the unending punishment of Tories a virtue and call it patriotism. He fears that Aaron misunderstands the sentiment of those among whom he has pitched his tent, congratulates him on a youth that offers an excuse for the rashness of his expressions, and hopes that he may live to gain a better wisdom. Son-in-law Hamilton does himself proud, and the rusty old general erects his pleased crest, to find himself so handsomely defended.
The rusty general exhibits both surprise and anger, when the rebuked Aaron again signifies a desire to be heard. This time Aaron, following that orator’s example,-talks not to the audience but son-in-law Hamilton himself.
“Our friend,” says Aaron, “reminds me that I am young in years; and I think this the more generous on his part, since I have seen quite as many years as has he himself. He calls attention to the battle-battered share he took in securing the liberties of this country; and, while I hold him better qualified to win laurels as a son-in-law than as a soldier, I concede him the credit he claims. I myself have been a soldier, and while serving as such was so fortunate as to meet our friend. He does not remember the meeting. Nor do I blame him; for it was upon a day when he had forgotten his baggage, forgotten one of his guns, forgotten everything, in truth, save the English behind him, and I should be much too vain if I supposed that, under such forgetful circumstances, he would remember me. As to my newness in the town, and that crippled Americanism wherewith he charges me, I have little to say. I got no one’s consent to come here; I shall ask no one’s permission to stay. Doubtless I would have been more within a fashion had I gone with both questions to the gentleman, or to his celebrated father-in-law, who presides here today. These errors, however, I shall abide by. Also, I shall content myself with an Americanism which, though it possess none of those sunburned, West Indian advantages so strikingly illustrated in the gentleman, may at least congratulate itself upon being two hundred years old.”
Having returned upon the self-sufficient head of son-in-law Hamilton those courtesies which the latter lavished upon him, Aaron proceeds to voice again, but with more vigorous emphasis, the anti-Tory sentiments he has earlier expressed. When he ceases speaking there is no applause, nothing save a dead stillness; for all who have heard feel that a feud has been born—a Burr-Schuyler-Hamilton feud, and are prudently inclined to await its development before pronouncing for either side. The feeling, however, would seem to follow the lead of Aaron; for the resolution smelling of leniency toward Tories is laid upon the table.