Part 6 (1/2)

Her imagination had disa.s.sociated itself from all connected with it, but now it burst into hideous activity and pictured interminable years of scorching heat and blinding glare. For a moment she descended to the verge of hysteria, from which she struggled with so mighty an effort that it vitalized her spirit for the ordeal of her new life; and when Hamilton, cursing himself, came to a.s.sist her to land, she was able to remark that she recalled the beauty of Christianstadt, and to anathematize her sea-green maids.

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

Peter Lytton's coach awaited the Hamiltons, and at six o'clock they started for their new home. The long driveway across the Island was set with royal palms, beyond which rolled vast fields of cane. St. Croix was approaching the height of her prosperity, and almost every inch of her fertile acres was under cultivation. They rolled up and over every hill, the heavy stone houses, with their negro hamlets and mills, rising like half-submerged islands, unless they crowned a height. The roads swarmed with Africans, who bowed profoundly to the strangers in the fine coach, grinning an amiable welcome. Surrounded by so generous a suggestion of hospitality and plenty, with the sun low in the west, the spirits of the travellers rose, and Rachael thought with more composure upon the morrow's encounter with her elder sisters. She knew them very slightly, their husbands less. When her connection with Hamilton began, correspondence between them had ceased; but like others they had accepted the relation, and for the last three years Hamilton had been a welcome guest at their houses when business took him to St. Croix. Mrs.

Lytton had been the first to whom he had confided his impending failure, and she, remembering her mother's last letter and profoundly pitying the young sister who seemed marked for misfortune, had persuaded her husband to offer Hamilton the management of his grazing estates on the eastern end of the Island. She wrote to Rachael, a.s.suring her of welcome, and reminding her that her story was unknown on St. Croix, that she would be accepted without question as Hamilton's wife and their sister. But Rachael knew that the truth would come out as soon as they had attracted the attention of their neighbours, and she had seen enough of the world to be sure that what people tolerated in the wealthy they censured in the unimportant. To depend upon her sisters' protection instead of her own lifelong distinction, galled her proud spirit. For the first time she understood how powerless Hamilton was to protect her. The glamour of that first year when nothing mattered was gone for ever. She had two children, one of them uncommon, and they were to encounter life without name or property. True, Levine might die, or Hamilton make some brilliant coup, but she felt little of the buoyancy of hope as they left the cane-fields and drove among the dark hills to their new home.

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

Mrs. Lytton and Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l drove over for the eleven o'clock breakfast. They were very kind, but they were many years older than the youngest of their family, proudly conscious of their virtue, uncomprehending of the emotions which had nearly wrenched Rachael's soul from her body more than once. Moreover, Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l was the physical image of Mary Fawcett without the inheritance of so much as the old lady's temper; and there were moments, as she sat chattering amiably with Alexander, with whom she immediately fell in love, when Rachael could have flown at and throttled her because she was not her mother.

Mrs. Lytton was delicate and nervous, but more reserved, and Rachael liked her better. Nevertheless, she was heartily glad to be rid of both of them, and reflected with satisfaction that she was to live on the most isolated part of the Island. She had begged them to ask no one to call, and for months she saw little of anybody except her family.

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

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

This man, who was to play so important a part in the life of Alexander Hamilton, was himself a personality. At this time but little over thirty, he had, some years since, come to the West Indies with a cla.s.sical library and a determination to rescue the planters from that h.e.l.l which awaits those who drowse through life in a clime where it is always summer when it is not simply and blazingly West Indian. He soon threw the mantle of charity over the patient planters, and became the boon companion of many; but he made converts and was mightily proud of them. His was the zeal of the converted. When he arrived in the United States, in 1753, young, fresh from college, enthusiastic, and handsome, he found favour at once in the eyes of the Rev. Dr. Rogers of Middletown on the Delaware, to whom he had brought a letter of introduction.

Through the influence of this eminent divine, he obtained a school and many friends. The big witty Irishman was a welcome guest at the popular tavern, and was not long establis.h.i.+ng himself as the leader of its hilarities. He was a peculiarly good mimic, and on Sat.u.r.day nights his boon companions fell into the habit of demanding his impersonation of some character locally famous. One night he essayed a reproduction of Dr. Rogers, then one of the most celebrated men of his cloth. Knox rehea.r.s.ed the sermon of the previous Sunday, not only with all the divine's peculiarity of gesture and inflection, but almost word for word; for his memory was remarkable. At the start his listeners applauded violently, then subsided into the respectful silence they were wont to accord Dr. Rogers; at the finish they stole out without a word.

As for Knox, he sat alone, overwhelmed with the powerful sermon he had repeated, and by remorse for his own attempted levity. His emotional Celtic nature was deeply impressed. A few days later he disappeared, and was not heard of again until, some months after, Dr. Rogers learned that he was the guest of the Rev. Aaron Burr at Newark, and studying for the church. He was ordained in due course, converted his old companions, then set sail for St. Croix.

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

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

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

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

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

IV

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

Hamilton was one of those men whose gifts are ruined by their impulses, in whom the cultivation of sober judgement is interrupted by the excesses of a too sanguine temperament. He was honourable, and always willing to admit his mistakes, but years and repeated failure did little toward balancing his faults and virtues. In time he wore out the patience of even those who loved and admired him. His wife remained his one loyal and unswerving friend, but her part in his life was near its finish. The day came when Peter Lytton, exasperated once too often, after an ill-considered sale of valuable stock, let fly his temper, and further acceptance of his favour was out of the question. Hamilton, after a scene with his wife, in which his agony and remorse quickened all the finest pa.s.sions in her own nature, sailed for the Island of St.

Vincent, in the hope of finding employment with one of his former business connections. He had no choice but to leave his wife and children dependent upon her relatives until he could send for them; and a week later Rachael was forced to move to Peter Lytton's.

Her brother-in-law's house was very large. She was given an upstairs wing of it and treated with much consideration, but this final ignominy broke her haughty spirit, and she lost interest in herself. She was thankful that her children were not to grow up in want, that Alexander was able to continue his studies with Hugh Knox. He was beyond her now in everything but French, in which they read and talked together daily.

She also discussed constantly with him those heroes of history distinguished not only for great achievements, but for sternest honour.

She dreamed of his future greatness, and sometimes of her part in it.

But her inner life was swathed like a mummy.

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

Otherwise his life was vastly improved. He soon became intimate with boys of neighbouring estates, Edward and Thomas Stevens, and Benjamin Yard, and for a time they all studied together under Hugh Knox. At first there was discord, for Alexander would have led a host of cherubims or had naught to do with them, and these boys were clever and spirited.

There were rights of word and fist in the lee of Mr. Lytton's barn, where interference was unlikely; but the three succ.u.mbed speedily, not alone to the powerful magnetism in little Hamilton's mind, and to his active fists, but because he invariably excited pa.s.sionate attachment, unless he encountered jealous hate. When his popularity with these boys was established they adored the very blaze of his temper, and when he formed them into a soldier company and marched them up and down the palm avenue for a morning at a time, they never murmured, although they were like to die of the heat and unaccustomed exertion. Neddy Stevens, who resembled him somewhat in face, was the closest of these boyhood friends.

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