WHILE Aaron, frostily contemptuous, but with manners as superfine as his ruffles, is saying those knife-thrust things to son-in-law Hamilton, that latter young gentleman’s face is a study in black and red. His expression is a composite of rage colored of fear. The defiance of Aaron is so full, so frank, that it seems studied. Son-in-law Hamilton is not sure of its purpose, or what intrigue it may hide. Deeply impressed as to his own importance, the thought takes hold on him that Aaron’s attack is parcel of some deliberate design, held by folk who either hate him or envy him, or both, to lure him to the dueling ground and kill him out of the way. He draws a long breath at this, and sweats a little; for life is good and death not at all desired. He makes no effort at retort, but stomachs in silence those words which burn his soul like coals of fire. What is strange, too, for all their burning, he vaguely finds in them some chilling touch as of death. He realizes, as much from the grim fineness of Aaron’s manner as from his raw, unguarded words, that he is ready to carry discussion to the cold verge of the grave.
Son-in-law Hamilton’s nature lacks in that bitter drop, so present in Aaron’s, which teaches folk to die but never yield. Wherefore, in his heart he now shrinks back, afraid to go forward with a situation grown perilous, albeit he himself provoked it. Saving his credit with ones who look, if they do not speak, their wonder at his mute tameness, he says he will talk with General Schuyler concerning what course he shall pursue. Saying which he gets away from the Fraunces long-room somewhat abruptly, feathers measurably subdued. Aaron lingers but a moment after son-in-law Hamilton departs, and then goes his polished, taciturn way.
The incident is a nine-days’ food for gossip; wagers are made of a coming bloody encounter between Aaron and son-in-law Hamilton. Those lose who accept the sanguinary side; the two meet, but the meeting is politely peaceful, albeit, no good friendliness, but only a wider separation is the upcome. The occasion is the work of son-in-law Hamilton, who is presented by Colonel Troup.
“We should know each other better, Colonel Burr,” he observes.
Son-in-law Hamilton seems the smiling picture of an affability that of itself is a kind of flattery. Aaron bows, while those affable rays glance from his chill exterior as from an iceberg.
“Doubtless we shall,” says he.
Son-in-law Hamilton gets presently down to the serious purpose of his coming. “General Schuyler,” he says gravely, for he ever speaks of his father-in-law as though the latter were a demi-god—“General Schuyler would like to meet you; he bids me ask you to come to him.”
Colonel Troup is in high excitement. No such honor has been tendered one of Aaron’s youth within his memory. Wholly the courtier, he looks to see the honored one eagerly forward to go to General Schuyler—that Jove who not alone controls the local thunderbolts but the local laurels. He is shocked to his courtierlike core, when Aaron maintains his cold reserve.
“Pardon me, sir!” says Aaron. “Say to General Schuyler that his request is impossible. I never call on gentlemen at their suggestion and on their affairs. When I have cause of my own to go to General Schuyler, I shall go. Until then, if there be reason for our meeting, he must come to me.”
“You forget General Schuyler’s age!” returns son-in-law Hamilton. There is a ring of threat in the tones.
“Sir,” responds Aaron stiffly, “I forget nothing. There is an age cant which I shall not tolerate. I desire to be understood as saying, and you may repeat my words to whomsoever possesses an interest, that I shall not in my own conduct consent to a social doctrine which would invest folk, because they have lived sixty years, with a franchise to patronize or, if they choose, insult gentlemen whose years, we will suppose, are fewer than thirty.”
“I am sorry you take this view,” returns son-in-law Hamilton, copying Aaron’s stiffness. “You will not, I fear, find many to support you in it.”
“I am not looking for support, sir,” observes Aaron, pointing the remark with one of those black ophidian stares. “I do you also the courtesy to assume that you intend no criticism of myself by your remark.”
There is an inflection as though a question is put. Son-in-law Hamilton so far submits to the inflection as to explain. He intends only to say that General Schuyler’s place in the community is of such high and honorable sort as to make his request to call upon him a mark of favor. As to criticism: Why, then, he criticised no gentleman.
There is much profound bowing, and the meeting ends; Colonel Troup, a trifle aghast, retiring with son-in-law Hamilton, whose arm he takes.
“There could be no agreement with that young man,” mutters Aaron, looking after the retreating Hamilton, “save on a basis of submission to his leadership. I’ll be chief or nothing.”
Aaron settles himself industriously to the practice of law. In the courts, as in everything else, he is merciless. Lucid, indefatigable, convincing, he asks no quarter, gives none. His business expands; clients crowd about him; prosperity descends in a shower of gold.
Often he runs counter to son-in-law Hamilton—himself actively in the law—before judge and jury. When they are thus opposed, each is the other’s match for a careful but wintry courtesy. For all his courtesy, however, Aaron never fails to defeat son-in-law Hamilton in whatever litigation they are about. His uninterrupted victories over son-in-law Hamilton are an added reason for the latter’s jealous hatred. He and his rusty father-in-law become doubly Aaron’s foes, and grasp at every chance to do him harm.
And yet, that antagonism has its compensations. It brings Aaron into favor with Governor Clinton; it finds him allies among the Livingstons. The latter powerful family invite him into their politics. He thanks them, but declines. He is for the law; hungry to make money, he sees no profit, but only loss in politics.
In his gold-getting, Aaron is marvelously successful; and, as he rolls up riches, he buys land. Thus one proud day he becomes master of Richmond Hill, with its lawn sweeping down to the Hudson—Richmond Hill, where he played slave of the quill to Washington, and suffered in his vanity from the big general’s loftily abstracted pose.
Master of a mansion, Aaron fills his libraries with books and his cellars with wine. Thus he is never without good company, reading the one and sipping the other. The faded Theodosia presides over his house; and, because of her years or his lack of them, her manner toward him trenches upon the maternal.
The household is a hive of happiness. Aaron, who takes the pedagogue instinct from sire and grandsire, puts in his leisure drilling the small Prévost boys in their lessons. He will have them talking Latin and reading Greek like little priests, before he is done with them. As for baby Theodosia, she reigns the chubby queen of all their hearts; it is to her credit not theirs that she isn’t hopelessly spoiled.
In his wine and his reading, Aaron’s tastes take opposite directions. The books he likes are heavy, while his best-liked wines are light. He reads Jeremy Bentham; also he finds comfort in William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft.
He adorns his study with a portrait of the lady; which feat in decoration furnishes the prudish a pang.
These book radicalisms, and his weaknesses for alarming doctrines, social and political, do not help Aaron’s standing with respectable hypocrites, of whom there are vast numbers about, and who in its fashion and commerce and politics give the town a tone. These whited sepulchers of society purse discreet yet condemnatory lips when Aaron’s name is mentioned, and speak of him as favoring “Benthamism” and “Godwinism.” Our dullard pharisee folk know no more of “Benthamism” and “Godwinism” in their definitions, than of plant life in the planet Mars; but their manner is the manner of ones who speak of evils tenfold worse than murder. Aaron pays no heed; neither does he fret over the innuendoes of these hypocritical ones. He was born full of contempt for men’s opinions, and has fostered and flattered it into a kind of cold passion. Occupied with the loved ones at Richmond Hill, careless to the point of blind and deaf of all outside, he seeks only to win lawsuits and pile up gold. And never once does his glance rove officeward.
This anti-office coolness is all on Aaron’s side. He does not pursue office; but now and again office pursues him. Twice he goes to the legislature; next, Governor Clinton asks him to become attorney general. As attorney general he makes one of a commission, Governor Clinton at its head, which sells five and a half million acres of the State’s public land for $1,030,000. The highest price received is three shillings an acre; the purchasers number six. The big sale is to Alexander McComb, who is given a deed for three million six hundred thousand acres at eight-pence an acre. The public howls over these surprising transactions in real estate. The popular anger, however, is leveled at Governor Clinton, he being a sort of Cæsar. Aaron, who dwells more in the background, escapes unscathed.
While these several matters go forward, the nation adopts a constitution. Then it elects Washington President, and sets up government shop in New York. Aaron’s part in these mighty doings is the quiet part. He does not think much of the Constitution, but accepts it; he thinks less of Washington, but accepts him, too. It is within the rim of the possible that son-in-law Hamilton, invited into Washington’s Cabinet as Secretary of the Treasury, helps the administration to a lowest place in Aaron’s esteem; for Aaron is a priceless hater, and that feud is in no degree relaxed.
When the national government is born, the rusty General Schuyler and Rufus King are chosen senators for New York. The rusty old general, in the two-handed lottery which ensues, draws the shorter term. This in no wise weighs upon him; what difference should it make? At the close of that short term, he will be reëlected for a full term of six years. To assume otherwise would be preposterous; the rusty old general feels no such short-term uneasiness.
Washington has two weaknesses: he loves flattery, and he is a bad judge of men. Son-inlaw Hamilton, because he flatters best, sits highest in the Washington esteem. He is the right arm of the big Virginian’s administration; also he is quite as confident, as the rusty General Schuyler, of that latter personage’s reelection. Indeed, if he could be prevailed upon to answer queries so foolish, he would say that, of all sure future things, the Senate reelection of the rusty general is surest. Not a cloud of doubt is seen in the skies.
And yet there lives one who, from his place as attorney general, is watching that Senate seat as a tiger watches its prey. Noiselessly, yet none the less powerfully, Aaron gathers himself for the spring. Both his pride and his hate are involved in what he is about. To be a senator is to wear a proudest title in the land. In this instance, to be a senator means a staggering blow to that Schuyler-Hamilton tribe whose foe he is. More; it opens a pathway to the injury of Washington. Aaron would be even for what long ago war slights the big general put upon him, slights which he neither forgets nor forgives. He smiles a pale, thin-lipped smile as he pictures with the eye of rancorous imagination the look which will spread across the face of Washington, when he hears of the rusty Schuyler’s overthrow, and him who brought that overthrow about. The smile is quick to die, however, since he who would strip his toga from the rusty Schuyler must not sit down to dreams and castle building.
Aaron goes silently yet sedulously about his plans. In their execution he foresees that many will be hurt; none the less the stubborn outlook does not daunt him. One cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs.
In his coming war with the rusty Schuyler, Aaron feels the need of two things: he must have an issue, and he must have allies. It is of vital importance to bring Governor Clinton to the shoulder of his ambitions. He looks that potentate over with a calculating eye, making a mental catalogue of his approachable points.
The old governor is of Irish blood and Irish temper. His ancestors were not the quietest folk in Galway. Being of gunpowder stock, he dearly loves a foe, and will no more forget an injury than a favor. Aaron shows the old governor that, in his late election, the Schuyler-Hamilton interest was slyly behind his opponent Judge Yates, and nearly brought home victory for the latter.
“You owe General Schuyler,” he says, “no help at this pinch. Still less are you in debt to Hamilton. It was the latter who put Yates in the field.”
“And yet,” protests the old governor, inclined to anger, but not quite convinced—“and yet I saw no signs of either Schuyler or his son-in-law in the business.”
“Sir, that is their duplicity. One so open as yourself would be the last to discover such intrigues. The young fox Hamilton managed the affair; in doing so, he moved only in the dark, walked in all the running water he could find.”
What Aaron says is true; in the finish he gives proof of it to the old governor. At this the latter’s Irish blood begins to gather heat.
“It is as you tell me!” he cries at last; “I can see it now! That West Indian runagate Hamilton was the bug under the Yates chip!”
“And you must not forget, sir, that for every scheme of politics ‘Schuyler’ and ‘Hamilton’ are interchangeable.”
“You are right! When one pulls the other pushes. They are my enemies, and I shall not be less than theirs.”
The governor asks Aaron what candidate they shall pit against the rusty Schuyler. Aaron has thus far said nothing of himself in any toga connection, fearing that the old governor may regard his thirty-six years as lacking proper gravity. Being urged to suggest a name, he waxes discreet. He believes, he says, that the Livingstons can be prevailed upon to come out against the rusty Schuyler, if properly approached. Such approach might be more gracefully made if no candidate is pitched upon at this time.
“From your place, sir, as governor,” observes the skillful Aaron, “you could not of course condescend to go in person to the Livingstons. My position, however, is not so high nor my years so many as are yours; I need not scruple to take up the matter with them. As to a candidate, I can go to them more easily if we leave the question open. I could tell the Livingstons that you would like a suggestion from them on that point. It would flatter their pride.”
The old governor is pleased to regard with favor the reasoning of Aaron. He remarks, too, that with him the candidate is not important. The main thought is to defeat the rusty Schuyler, who, with son-in-law Hamilton, so aforetime played the hypocrite, and pulled treacherous wires against him, in the hope of compassing his defeat. He declares himself quite satisfied to let the Livingstons select what fortunate one is to be the senate successor of the rusty Schuyler. He urges Aaron to wait on the Livingstons without delay, and discover their feeling.
Aaron confers with the Livingstons, and shows them many things. Mostly he shows them that, should he himself be chosen senator, it will necessitate his resignation as attorney general. Also, he makes it appear that, if the old governor be properly approached, he will name Morgan Lewis to fill the vacancy. The Livingston eye glistens; the mother of Morgan Lewis is a Livingston, and the office of attorney general should match the gentleman’s fortunes nicely. Besides, there are several ways wherein an attorney general might be of much Livingston use. No, the Livingstons do not say these things. They say instead that none is more nobly equipped for the rôle of senator than Aaron. Finally, it is the Livingstons who go back to the old governor. Nor do they find it difficult to convince him that Aaron is the one surest of defeating the rusty Schuyler.
“Colonel Burr,” say the Livingstons, “has no record, which is another way of saying that he has no enemies. We deem this most important; it will lessen the effort required to bring about him a majority of the legislature.”
The old governor, as Aaron feared, is inclined to shy at the not too many years of our ambitious one; but after a bit Aaron, as a notion, begins to grow upon him.
“He has brains, sir,” observes the old governor thoughtfully—“he has brains; and that is of more consequence than mere years. He has double the intelligence of Schuyler, although he may not count half his age. I call that to his credit, sir.” The chief of the clan-Livingston shares the Clinton view.
And now takes place a competition in encomium. Between the chief of the clan-Livingston, and the old governor, so many excellences are ascribed to Aaron that, did he own but the half, he might call himself a model for mankind. As for Morgan Lewis, who is a Livingston, the old governor sees in him almost as many virtues as he perceives in Aaron. He gives the chief of the clan-Livingston hand and word that, when Aaron steps out of the attorney generalship, Morgan Lewis shall step in.
Having drawn to his support the two most powerful influences of the State, Aaron makes search for an issue. He looks into the mouth of the public, and there it is. Politicians do not make issues, albeit poets have sung otherwise. Indeed, issues are so much like the poets themselves that they are born, not made. Every age has its issue; from it, as from clay, the politicians mold the bricks wherewith they build themselves into office. The issue is the question which the people ask; it is to be found only in the popular mouth. That is where Aaron looks for it, and his quest is rewarded.
The issue, so much demanded of Aaron’s destinies, is one of those big-little questions which now and then arise to agitate the souls of folk, and demonstrate the greatness of the small. There are twenty-eight members in the National Senate; and, since it is the first Senate and has had no predecessor, there exist no precedents for it to guide by. Also those twenty-eight senators are puffballs of vanity.
On the first day of their first coming together they prove the purblind sort of their conceit, by shutting their doors in the public’s face. They say they will hold their sessions in secret. The public takes this action in dudgeon, and begins filing its teeth.
Puffiest among those senate puffballs is the rusty Schuyler. As narrow as he is arrogant, as dull as vain, his contempt for the herd was never a secret. As a senator, he declares himself the guardian, not the servant, of a people too weakly foolish for the safe transaction of their own affairs.
It is against this self-sufficient attitude of the rusty Schuyler touching locked senate doors that Aaron wages war. He urges that, in a republic, but two keys go with government; one is to the treasury, the other to the jail. He argues that not even a senate will lock a door unless it be either ashamed or afraid of what it is about.
“Of what is our Senate afraid?” he asks.
“Of what is it ashamed? I cannot answer these questions; the people cannot answer them. I recommend that those who are interested ask General Schuyler.”
The public puts the questions to the rusty Schuyler. Not receiving an answer, the public carries the questions to the legislature, where the Clinton and Livingston influences come sharply to the popular support.
“Shall the Senate lock its door?”
The Clintons say No; the Livingstons say No; the people say No. Under such overbearing circumstances, the legislature feels driven to say No; and, as a best method of saying it, elects to the Senate Aaron, who is a “door-opener,” over the rusty Schuyler, who is a “door-closer,” by a majority of thirteen. It is no longer “Aaron Burr,” no longer “Colonel Burr,” it is “Senator Burr.” The news heaps the full weight of ten years on the rusty Schuyler. As for son-in-law Hamilton, the blasting word of it withers and makes sick his heart.
THE shop of government has been moved to Philadelphia. In the brief space between the overthrow of the rusty Schuyler by Aaron, and the latter taking his seat, the great ones talk of nothing but that overthrow. Washington vaguely and Jefferson clearly read in the victory of Aaron the beginning of a new order. It is extravagantly an hour of classes and masses; and the most dull does not fail to make out in the Senate unseating of the rusty but aristocratic Schuyler a triumphant clutch at power by the masses.
Something of the sort crops up in conversation about the President’s dinner table. The occasion is informal; save for Vice-President Adams, those present are of the Cabinet. Washington himself brings up the subject.
“It is the strangest news!” says he—“this word of the Senate success of Colonel Burr.”
Then, appealing to Hamilton: “Of what could your folk of New York have been thinking? General Schuyler is a gentleman of fortune, the head of one of the oldest families! This Colonel Burr is a young man of small fortune, and no family at all.”
“Sir,” breaks in Adams with pompous impetuosity, “you go wide. Colonel Burr is of the best blood of New England. His grandsire was Jonathan Edwards; on his father’s side the strain is as high. You would look long, sir, before you discovered one who has a better pedigree.”
“Whatever may be the gentleman’s pedigree,” retorts Hamilton splenetically, “you will at least confess it to be only a New England pedigree.”
“Only a New England pedigree!” exclaims Adams, in indignant wonder. “Why, sir, when you say ‘The best pedigree in New England,’ you have spoken of the best pedigree in the world!”
“Waiving that,” returns Hamilton, “I may at least assure you, sir, that in New York your best New England pedigree does not invoke the reverence which you seem to pay it. No, sir; the success of Colonel Burr was the result of no pedigree. No one cared whether he were the grandson of Jonathan Edwards or Tom o’ Bedlam. Colonel Burr won by lies and trickery; by the same methods through which a thief might win possession of your horse. Stripping the subject of every polite veneer of phrase, the fellow stole his victory.” At this harshness Adams looks horrified, while Jefferson, who has listened with interest, shrugs his wide shoulders.
Washington appears wondrously impressed. Strong, honest, slow, he is in no wise keen at reading men. Hamilton—quick, supple, subservient, a brilliant flatterer—has complete possession of him. He admires Hamilton, rejoices in him in a large, bland manner of patronage.
The pair, in their mutual attitudes, are not unlike a huge mastiff and some small vivacious, spiteful, half-bred terrier that makes himself the mastiff’s satellite. Terrier Hamilton—brisk, busy, overbearing, not always honest—rushes hither and yon, insulting one man, trespassing on another. Let the insulted one but threaten or the injured one pursue, at once Terrier Hamilton takes skulking refuge behind Mastiff Washington. And the latter never fails Terrier Hamilton. Blinded by his overweening partiality, a partiality that has no reason beyond his own innate love of flattery, Washington ever saves Hamilton blameless, whatever may have been his evil deeds.
Washington constitutes Hamilton’s stock in national trade. In New York, Hamilton is the rusty Schuyler’s son-in-law—heir to his riches, lieutenant of his name. In the nation at large, however, Hamilton traffics on that confident nearness to Washington, and his known ability to pull or haul or lead the big Virginian any way he will. To have a full-blown President to be your hand gun is no mean equipment, and Hamilton, be sure, makes the fullest, if not the most honest or honorable, use of it.
“Now I do not think it was either the noble New England blood of Colonel Burr, or his skill as a politician, that defeated General Schuyler.”
The voice—while not without a note of jeering—is bell-like and deep, the thoughtful, well-assured voice of Jefferson. Washington glances at his angular, sandy-haired Secretary of State.
“What was it, then,” he asks.
“I will tell you my thought,” replies Jefferson. “General Schuyler was beaten by that very fortune, added to that very headship of a foremost family, which you hold should have been unanswerable for his election. The people are reaching out, sir, for the republican rule that is their right, and which they conquered from England. You know, as well as I, what followed the peace of Paris in this country. It was not democracy, but aristocracy. The government has been taken under the self-sufficient wing of a handful of families, that, having great property rights, hold themselves forth as heaven-anointed rulers of the land. The people are becoming aroused to both their powers and their rights. In the going of General Schuyler and the coming of Colonel Burr, I find nothing worse than a gratifying notice that American mankind intends to have a voice in its own government.”
“You appear pleased, sir,” observes Hamilton bitterly.
“Pleased is but a poor word. It no more than faintly expresses the satisfaction I feel.”
“You amaze me!” interrupts Adams, as much the aristocrat as either Washington or Hamilton, but of a different tribe. “Do I understand, sir, that you will welcome the rule of the mob?”
“The ‘mob,’” retorts Jefferson, “can be trusted to guard its own liberty.. The mob won that liberty, sir! Who, then, should be better prepared to stand sentinel over it? Not a handful of rich snobs, surely, who, in the arrogant idleness which their money permits, play at caste and call themselves an American peerage.”
“Government by the mob!” gasps Adams, who, in the narrowness of his New England vanity—honest man!—has passed his life on a self-erected pedestal. “Government by the mob!”
“And why not, sir?” demands Jefferson sharply. “It is the mob’s government. Who shall contradict the mob’s right to control its own? Have we but shuffled off one royalty to shuffle on another?”
Adams, excellent pig-head, can say no more; besides, he fears the quick-tongued Secretary of State. Hamilton, too, is heedful to avoid Jefferson, and, following that democrat’s declarations anent mob right and mob rule, glances with questioning eye at Washington, as though imploring him to come to the rescue. With this the big President begins to unlimber complacently.
“Government, my dear Jefferson,” he says, wheeling himself like some great gun into argumentative position, “may be discussed in the abstract, but must be administered in the concrete. I think a best picture of government is a shepherd with his flock of sheep. He finds them a safety and a better pasturage than they could find for themselves. He is necessary to the sheep, as the sheep are necessary to him. He can be trusted; since his interest is the interest of the flock.”
Jefferson grins a hard, angular grin, in which there is wisdom, patience, courage, but not one gleam of humor. “I cannot,” says he, “accept your simile of sheep and shepherd as a happy one. The people of this country are far from being addle-pated sheep. Nor do I find our self-selected shepherds”—here he lets his glance rove cynically to Adams and Hamilton—“such profound scientists of civil rule. Your shepherd is a dictator. This republic—if it is a republic—might more justly be likened to a company of merchants, equal in interests, who appoint agents, but retain among themselves the control.”
“And yet,” observes Hamilton, who can think of nothing but Aaron and his own hatred for that new senator, “the present question is one, not of republics or dictatorships, but of Colonel Burr. I know him; know him well. You will find him a crooked gun.”
“It is ten years since I saw him,” observes Washington. “I did not like him; but that was because of a forward impertinence which ill became his years. Besides, I thought him egotistical, selfish, of no high aims. That, as I say, was ten years ago; he may have changed vastly for the better.”
“There has been no bettering change, sir,” returns Hamilton. His manner is purring, insinuating, the courtier manner, and conveys the impression of one who seeks only to protect Washington from betrayal by his own goodness of heart. “Sir, he is more egotistical, more selfish, than when you parted from him. I think it my duty, since the gentleman will have his place in government, to speak plainly. I hold Colonel Burr to be a veriest firebrand of disorder. None knows better than I the peril of this man. Bold at once and bad, there is nothing too high for his ambition to fly at, nothing too low for his intrigue to embrace. He is both Jack Cade and Cromwell. Like the one, he possesses a sinister attraction for the vulgar herd; like the other, he would not hesitate to lead the herd against government itself, in furtherance of his vile projects.”
Neither Adams nor Jefferson goes wholly unaffected by these malignancies; while Washington, whose credulity is measureless when Hamilton speaks, drinks them in like spring water.
“Well,” observes the cautious Jefferson, as closing the discussion, “the gentleman himself will soon be among us, and fairness, if not prudence, suggests that we defer judgment on him until experience has given us a basis for it.”
“You will find,” says Hamilton, “that he is, as I tell you, but a crooked gun.”
Aaron takes his oath as senator, and sinks into a seat among his reverend fellows. As he does so he cannot repress a cynical glance about him—cynical, since he sees more to despise than respect. It is the opening day of the session. Washington as President, severe, of an implacable dignity, appears and reads a solemn address. Later, according to custom, both Senate and House send delegations to wait upon Washington, and read solemn addresses to him.
His colleagues pitch upon Aaron to prepare the address for the Senate, since he is supposed to have a genius for phrases. The precious document in his pocket, Vice-President Adams on his arm, Aaron leads the Senate delegation to the President’s house. They find the big Virginian awaiting them in the long dining room, which apartment has been transformed into an audience chamber by the simple expedient of carrying out the table and shoving back the chairs.
Washington stands near the great fireplace. At his elbow and a step to the rear, a look of lackey fawning on his face, whispering, beaming, blandishing, basking, is Hamilton. Utterly the sycophant, wholly the politician, he holds onto Washington by those before-mentioned tendrils of flattery, and finds in him a trellis, whereon to climb and clamber and blossom, wanting which he would fall groveling to the ground. The big Virginian—and that is the worst of it—is as much led by him as any blind man by his dog.
Washington has changed as a figure since he and Aaron, on that far-off day, disagreed touching leaves of absence without pay. Instead of rusty blue and buff, frayed and stained of weather, he is clad in a suit of superb black velvet, with black silk stockings and silver buckles. His hair, white as snow with powder, is gathered behind in a silken bag. In one of his large hands, made larger by yellow gloves, he holds a cocked hat—brave with gold braid, cockade, and plume. A huge sword, with polished steel hilt and white scabbard, dangles by his side. It is in this notable uniform our President receives the Senate delegation, Aaron and Vice-President Adams at the head, as it gathers in a formal half-circle about him.
Being thus happily disposed, Adams in a raucous, pragmatic voice reads Aaron’s address. It is quite as hollow and pointless and vacant of purpose as was Washington’s. Its delivery, however, is loftily heavy, since the mummery is held a most important element of what tinsel-isms make up the etiquette of our American court. Save that the audience chamber is less sumptuous, the ceremony might pass for King George receiving his ministers, instead of President George receiving a delegation from the Senate.
No one is more disagreeably aroused by this paltry imitation of royalty than Aaron. Some glint of his contempt must show in his eyes; for Hamilton, eager to make the conqueror of the rusty Schuyler as offensive to Washington as he may, is swift to draw him out.
“Welcome to the Capitol, Senator Burr!” he exclaims, when Adams has finished. “This, I believe, is your earliest appearance here. I doubt not you find the opening of our Congress exceedingly impressive.”
Since Aaron came into the presence of Washington, he has arrived at divers decisions which will have effect in the country’s story, before the curtain of time descends and the play of government is played out. His first feeling is one of angry repugnance toward Washington himself. He liked him little as a general; he likes him less as a president.
“I shall be no friend to this man,” thinks he, “nor he to me.”
Aaron tries to believe that his resentment is due to Washington’s all but royal state. In his heart, however, he knows that his wrath is personal. He reconsiders that discouraging royalty, and puts his feeling upon more probable grounds.
“I distaste him,” he decides, “because he meets no man on level terms. He places himself on a plane by himself. He looks down to everybody; everybody must look up to him. He is incapable of friendship, and will either be guardian or jailer to mankind. He told Putnam I was vain, conceited. Was there ever such blind vanity as his own? No; he will be no man’s friend—this self-discovered demigod! He does not desire friends. What he hungers for is adulation, incense. He prefers none about him save knee-crooking sycophants—like this smirking parasitish Hamilton.”
Aaron, while the pompous Adams thunders forth that empty address, resolves to hold himself aloof from Washington and all who belt him round. Being in this high mood, he welcomes the opportunity which Hamilton’s remark affords him, to publicly notify those present of his position.
“It will be as well,” he ruminates, “to post, not alone these good people of Cabinet and Senate, but the royal Washington himself. I shall let them, and let him, know that I am not to be a follower of this republican king of ours.”
“Yes,” repeats Hamilton, with a side glance at Washington, who for the moment is talking in a courtly way with Adams, “yes; you doubtless find the opening ceremonies exceedingly impressive. Most newcomers do. However, it will wear down, sir; the feeling will wear down!” Hamilton throws off this last with an ineffable air of experience and elevation.
“Sir,” returns Aaron, preserving a thin shimmer of politeness, “sir, by these ceremonies, through which we have romped so deeply to your gratification, I confess I have been quite as much bored as impressed. There is something cheap, something antic and senseless to it all—as though we were sylvan apes! What are these wondrous ceremonies? Why then, the President ‘addresses> the Senate, the Senate ‘addresses’ the President; neither says anything, neither means anything, and the whole exchange comes to be no more than just an empty barter of bad English.” This last, in view of the fact that Aaron himself is the architect of the address of the Senate, sounds liberal, and not at all conceited. He goes on: “I must say, sir, that my little dip into government, confined as it has been to these marvelous ceremonies, leaves me with a poorer opinion of my country than I brought here. As for the ceremonies themselves, I should call them now about as edifying as the banging and the booming of a brace of Chinese gongs.”
Washington’s brow is red, his eye cold, as he bows a formal leave to Aaron when he departs with the others. Plainly, the views of the young successor to the rusty Schuyler, concerning addresses of ceremony, have not been lost upon him.
“I think,” mutters Aaron, icily complacent—“I think I pricked him.”
AARON finds a Senate existence inexpressibly dull. He writes his Theodosia: “There is nothing to do here. Everybody is idle; and, so far as I see, the one occupation of a senator is to lie sunning himself in his own effulgence. My colleague, Rufus King, and others I might name, succeed in that way in passing their days very pleasantly. For myself, not having their sublime imagination, and being perhaps better acquainted with my own measure, I find this sitting in the sunshine of self a failure.”
Mindful of his issue, Aaron offers a resolution throwing open the Senate doors. The Senate, whose notion of greatness is a notion of exclusion, votes it down. Aaron warns his puffball brothers of the toga:
“Be assured,” says he, “you fool no one by such trumpery tricks as this key-turning. You succeed only in bringing republican institutions into contempt, and getting yourselves laughed at where you are not condemned.”
Aaron reintroduces his open-door resolution; in the end he passes it. Galleries are thrown up in the chamber, and all who will may watch the Senate as it proceeds upon the transaction of its dignified destinies. At this but few come; whereupon the Senate feels abashed. It is not, it discovers, the thrilling spectacle its puffball fancy painted.
Carked of the weariness of doing nothing, Aaron bursts forth with an idea. He will write a history of the War of the Revolution. He begins digging among the papers of the State department, tossing the archives of his country hither and yon, on the tireless horns of his industry.
Hamilton creeps with the alarming tale to Washington. “He speaks of writing a history, sir,” says sycophant Hamilton. “That is mere subterfuge; he intends a libel against yourself.”
Washington brings his thin lips together in a tight, straight line, while his heavy forehead gathers to a half frown.
“How, sir,” he asks, after a pause, “could he libel me? I am conscious of nothing in my past which would warrant such a thought.”
“There is not, sir, a fact of your career that would not, if mentioned, make for your glory.” Hamilton deprecates with delicately outspread hands as he says this. “That, however, would not deter this Burr, who is Satanic in his mendacities. Believe me, sir, he has the power of making fiction look more like truth than truth itself. And there is another thought: Suppose he were to assail you with some trumped-up story. You could not come down from your high place to contradict him; it would detract from you, stain your dignity. That is the penalty, sir”—this with a sigh of unspeakable adulation—“which men of your utter eminence have to pay. Such as you are at the mercy of every gutter-bred vilifier; whatever his charges, you cannot open your mouth.”
Aaron hears nothing of this. His first guess of it comes when he is told by a State department underling that he will no longer be allowed to inspect and make copies of the papers.
Without wasting words on the underling, Aaron walks in upon Jefferson. That secretary receives him courteously, but not warmly.
“How, sir,” begins Aaron, a wicked light in his eye—“how, sir, am I to understand this? Is it by your order that the files of the department are withheld from me?”
“It is not, sir,” returns Jefferson, coldly frank. “My own theories of a citizen and his rights would open every public paper to the inspection of the meanest. I do not understand government by secrecy.”
“By whose order then am I refused?”
“By order of the President.”
Aaron ruminates the situation. At last he speaks out: “I must yield,” he says, “while realizing the injustice done me. Still I shall not soon forget the incident. You say it is the order of Washington; you are mistaken, sir. It is not the lion but his jackal that has put this affront upon me.”
Idle in the Senate, precluded from collecting the materials for that projected history, Aaron discovers little to employ himself about in Philadelphia. Not that he falls into stagnation; for his business of the law, and his speculations in land take him often to New York. His trusted Theodosia is his manager of business, and when he cannot go to New York she meets him half way in Trenton.
Aside from his concerns of law and land, Aaron devotes a deal of thought to little Theodosia—child of his soul’s heart! In his pride, he hurries her into Horace and Terence at the age of ten; and later sends her voyaging to Troy with Homer, and all over the world with Herodotus. Nor is this the whole tale of baby Theodosia’s evil fortunes. She is taught French, music, drawing, dancing, and whatever else may convey a glory and a gloss. Love-led, pride-blinded, Aaron takes up the rôle of father in its most awful form.
“Believe me, my dear,” he says to Theodosia mere, who pleads for an educational leniency—“believe me, I shall prove in our darling that women have souls, a psychic fact which high ones have been heard to dispute.”
At the age of twelve, the book-burdened little Theodosia translates the Constitution into French at Aaron’s request; at sixteen, she finds celebration as the most learned of her sex since Voltaire’s Emilie. Theodosia mere, however, is spared the spectacle of her baby’s harrowing erudition, for in the middle of Aaron’s term as senator death carries her away.
With that loss, Aaron is more and more drawn to baby Theodosia; she becomes his earth, his heaven, and stands for all his tenderest hopes. While she is yet a child, he makes her the head of Richmond Hill, and gives a dinner of state, over which she presides, to the limping Talleyrand, and Volney with his “Ruins of Empire.” For all her precocities, and that hothouse bookishness which should have spoiled her, baby Theodosia blossoms roundly into womanhood—beautiful as brilliant.
While Aaron finds little or nothing of public sort to engage him, he does not permit this idleness to shake his hold of politics. Angry with the royalties of Washington, he drifts into near if not intimate relations with the arch-democrat Jefferson. Aaron and the loose-framed secretary are often together; and yet never on terms of confidence or even liking. They are in each other’s society because they go politically the same road. Fellow wayfarers of politics, with “Democracy” their common destination, they are fairly compelled into one another’s company. But there grows up no spirit of comradeship, no mutual sentiment of admiration and trust.
Aaron’s feelings toward Jefferson, and the sources of them, find setting forth in a conversation which he holds with his new disciple, Senator Andrew Jackson, who has come on from his wilderness home by the Cumberland.
“It is not that I like Jefferson,” he explains, “but that I dislike Washington and Hamilton. Jefferson will make a splendid tool to destroy the others with; I mean to use him as the instrument of my vengeance.”
Jefferson, when speaking of Aaron to the wooden Adams, is neither so full nor so frank. The Bay State publicist has again made mention of that impressive ancestry which he thinks is Aaron’s best claim to public as well as private consideration.
“You may see evidence of his pure blood,” concludes the wooden one, “in his perfect, nay, matchless politeness.”
| “He is matchlessly polite, as you say,” assents Jefferson; “and yet I cannot fight down the fear that his politeness has lies in it.”
The days drift by, and Minister Gouverneur Morris is recalled from Paris. Washington makes it known to the Senate that he will adopt any name it suggests for the vacancy. The Senate decides upon Aaron; a committee goes with that honorable suggestion to the President.
Washington hears the committee with cloudy surprise. He is silent for a moment; then he says:
“Gentlemen, your proposal of Senator Burr has taken me unawares. I must crave space for consideration; oblige me by returning in an hour.”
The senators who constitute the committee retire, and Washington seeks his jackal Hamilton.
“Appoint Colonel Burr to France!” exclaims Hamilton. “Sir, it would shock the best sentiment of the country! The man is an atheist, as immoral as irreligious. If you will permit me to say so, sir, I should give the Senate a point-blank refusal.”
“But my promise!” says Washington.
“Sir, I should break a dozen such promises, before I consented to sacrifice the public name, by sending Colonel Burr to France. However, that is not required. You told the Senate that you would adopt its suggestion; you have now only to ask it to make a second suggestion.”
“The thought is of value,” responds Washington, clearing. “I am free to say, I should not relish turning my back on my word.”
The committee returns, and is requested to give the Senate the “President’s compliments,” and say that he will be pleased should that honorable body submit another name. Washington is studious to avoid any least of comment on the nomination of Aaron.
The committee is presently in Washington’s presence for the third time, with the news that the Senate has no name other than Aaron’s for the French mission.
“Then, gentlemen,” exclaims Washington, his hot temper getting the reins, “please report to the Senate that I refuse. I shall send no one to France in whom I have not confidence; and I do not trust Senator Burr.”
“What blockheads!” comments Aaron, when he hears. “They will one day wish they had gotten rid of me, though at the price of forty missions.”