The Conqueror

III

Hamil­ton re­joined the army at Val­ley Forge and soon re­cov­ered his health and spir­its. It was well that the spir­its re­vived, for no one else dur­ing that ter­ri­ble win­ter could lay claim to any. The Head­quar­ters were in a small val­ley, shut in by high hills white with snow and black with trees that looked like iron. The troops were starv­ing and freez­ing and dy­ing a mile away, mut­ter­ing and curs­ing, but be­liev­ing in Wash­ing­ton. On a hill be­yond the pass Lafayette was com­fort­able in quar­ters of his own, but bored and fear­ing the worst. Lau­rens chafed at the in­ac­tion; he would have had a bat­tle a day. As the win­ter wore on, the fam­ily suc­cumbed to the de­press­ing in­flu­ence of un­re­lieved monotony and dread of the fu­ture, and on­ly Hamil­ton knew to what depths of anx­iety Wash­ing­ton could de­scend. But de­spair had no part in Hamil­ton's creed. He had per­fect faith in the fu­ture, and an­nounced it per­sis­tent­ly. He as­sumed the mis­sion of keep­ing the fam­ily in good cheer, and they gave him lit­tle time for his stud­ies. As for Wash­ing­ton, even when Hamil­ton was not at his desk, he made ev­ery ex­cuse to de­mand his pres­ence in the pri­vate of­fice; and Hamil­ton in his prayers hu­mor­ous­ly thanked his Almighty for the gift of a cheer­ful dis­po­si­tion. It may be imag­ined what a re­lief it was when he and Lau­rens, Meade, or Tilgh­man raced each oth­er up the icy gorge to Lafayette's, where they were of­ten jol­lier the night through than even a cheer­ful dis­po­si­tion would war­rant. Hamil­ton, al­though he had not much of a voice, learned one camp-​song, “The Drum,” and this he sang with such rol­lick­ing aban­don that it fetched an ex­plo­sive sigh of re­lief from the gloomi­est breast.

There were oth­er du­ties from which Hamil­ton fled to the house on the hill for so­lace. Val­ley Forge har­boured a het­ero­ge­neous col­lec­tion of for­eign­ers, whose en­thu­si­asm had im­pelled them to of­fer swords and in­flu­ence to the Amer­ican cause: Steuben, Du Por­tail, De Noailles, Cus­tine, Fleury, Du Plessis, the three broth­ers Ar­mand, Ter­nant, Pu­las­ki, and Kosciusko. They had a thou­sand wants, a thou­sand grievances, and as Wash­ing­ton would not be both­ered by them, their dai­ly re­course was Hamil­ton, whom they adored. To him they could lament in vol­uble French; he knew the ex­act con­so­la­tion to ad­min­is­ter to each, and when it was ad­vis­able he laid their af­flic­tions be­fore Wash­ing­ton or the Congress. They bored him not a lit­tle, but he sym­pa­thized with them in their Cim­me­ri­an ex­ile, and it was nec­es­sary to keep them in the coun­try for the sake of the moral ef­fect. But he con­grat­ulat­ed him­self on his ca­pac­ity for work.

“I used to wish that a hur­ri­cane would come and blow Cruger's store to Hell,” he said one day to Lau­rens, “but I can­not be suf­fi­cient­ly thank­ful for that ex­pe­ri­ence now. It made me as me­thod­ical as a ma­chine, gave my brain a sys­tem with­out which I nev­er could cope with this mass of work. I have this past week dried the tears of sev­en French­men, per­suad­ed Steuben that he is not Eu­rope, nor yet Gen­er­al Wash­ing­ton, and with­out too much of­fend­ing him, writ­ten a vo­lu­mi­nous let­ter to Gates cal­cu­lat­ed to make him feel what a con­temptible and traitorous ass he is, yet giv­ing him no chance to run, blub­ber­ing, with it to the Congress, and of­fi­cial let­ters _ad nau­se­um_. I wish to God I were out of it all, and about to ride in­to bat­tle at the head of a com­pa­ny of my own.”

“And how many wid­ows have you con­soled?” asked Lau­rens. He was hud­dled in his cot, try­ing to keep warm.

“None,” said Hamil­ton, with some gloom. “I haven't spo­ken to a wom­an for three weeks.”

It was a stand­ing joke at Head­quar­ters that Wash­ing­ton al­ways sent Hamil­ton to con­sole the wid­ows. This he did with such sym­pa­thy and tact, such ad­dress and en­er­gy, that his friends had oc­ca­sion­al­ly been forced to ex­tri­cate him from com­pli­ca­tions. But it was an ac­com­plish­ment in which he ex­celled as long as he lived.

“The Chief will nev­er let you go,” pur­sued Lau­rens. “And as there is no one to take your place, you re­al­ly should not wish it. Wash­ing­ton may be the army, but you are Wash­ing­ton's brain, and of quite as much im­por­tance. You should nev­er for­get--”

“Come out and coast. That will warm your blood,” in­ter­rupt­ed Hamil­ton. His own sense of du­ty was not to be sur­passed, but he had re­bel­lious moods, when preach­ing sug­gest­ed fisticuffs.

Out­side they met a mes­sen­ger from Lafayette, beg­ging them to re­pair to his quar­ters at once. There they found him en­ter­tain­ing a par­ty of charm­ing wom­en from a neigh­bour­ing es­tate; and a half-​hour lat­er the dig­ni­ty and fash­ion of Wash­ing­ton's fam­ily might have been seen coast­ing down a steep hill with three Philadel­phi­an ex­iles, who were as ac­com­plished in many ways as they were sat­is­fy­ing to look up­on.

It was one of those days when a swift freeze has come with a rain-​storm. Hamil­ton had stood at the win­dow of the of­fice for an hour, ear­ly in the day, bit­ing the end of his quill, and watch­ing the wa­ter change to ice as it struck the naked trees, cas­ing ev­ery branch un­til, when the sun came out, the val­ley was sur­round­ed by a di­amond for­est, the most ra­di­ant and daz­zling of win­ter sights. The sun was still out, its light flashed back from a mil­lion facets, the ground was hard and white, the keen cold air awoke the blood, and the three young men for­got their grum­blings, and blessed the sex which has al­le­vi­at­ed man's bur­dens so oft and well.