The Conqueror

II

As the three men turned in­to Broad­way they salut­ed a man who was en­ter­ing Wall Street. It was Hamil­ton, has­ten­ing home to his fam­ily af­ter the day's work. He had lost his boy­ish slen­der­ness; his fig­ure had broad­ened and filled out suf­fi­cient­ly to add to his pres­ence while de­stroy­ing noth­ing of its sym­me­try or ag­ile grace, and it was dressed with the same care. His face was as gay and an­imat­ed as ev­er, re­spond­ed with the old mo­bil­ity to ev­ery pass­ing thought, but its lines and con­tours showed the hard work and se­vere thought of the last four years. When he was tak­ing a brief hol­iday with his friends, or tum­bling about the floor with his lit­tle brood, he felt as much a boy as ev­er, but no one ap­pre­ci­at­ed more ful­ly than he the ter­ri­ble re­spon­si­bil­ity of his po­si­tion in the Con­fed­er­ation. His abil­ities, com­bined with his pa­tri­otism, had forced him to the head of the Na­tion­al­ist Par­ty, for whose ex­is­tence he was in great­est mea­sure re­spon­si­ble; and he hard­ly dared to think of his per­son­al am­bi­tions, nor could he hes­itate to ne­glect his lu­cra­tive prac­tice when­ev­er the cry­ing needs of the coun­try de­mand­ed it. He had al­so giv­en much time to the cre­at­ing and or­ga­ni­za­tion of the Bank of New York. But Burr was not far wrong when he ac­cused him of im­pa­tience. His bear­ing was more im­pe­ri­ous, his eye flashed more in­tol­er­ant­ly, than ev­er. To im­pute to him monar­chi­cal am­bi­tions was but the fling of a smart­ing jeal­ousy, but it is quite true that he felt he knew what was best for the coun­try, and would have liked to reg­ulate its af­fairs with­out fur­ther hin­drance.

His house, be­yond the dip of Wall Street and with­in sight of the bay, was of red brick, and as un­beau­ti­ful ar­chi­tec­tural­ly as oth­er New York hous­es which had risen at ran­dom from the ru­ins. But with­in, it was very charm­ing. The long draw­ing-​room was fur­nished with ma­hogany, and rose-​coloured bro­cade, with spin­dle-​legged ta­bles and many bibelots sent by An­gel­ica Church, now liv­ing in Lon­don. The li­brary was fill­ing with valu­able books, and the pan­elled white­ness of the din­ing room glit­tered with sil­ver and glass, which in quan­ti­ty or val­ue was not ex­ceed­ed in the home of any young cou­ple in Amer­ica; the world had out­done it­self at the most in­ter­est­ing wed­ding of the Rev­olu­tion. Bet­sey's sit­ting room was be­hind the draw­ing-​room, and there Hamil­ton found her count­ing the mo­ments un­til his re­turn. She had lost noth­ing of her slim­ness, and ex­cept on dress oc­ca­sions wore her mass of soft black hair twist­ed in a loose knot and un­pow­dered. She looked younger and pret­ti­er than with pow­der or wig, and Hamil­ton begged her to de­fy the fash­ion; but yield­ing in all else, on this point she was in­flex­ible. “I am wis­er than you in just a few things,” she would say, play­ful­ly, for she firm­ly be­lieved him in­fal­li­ble; “my po­si­tion would suf­fer, were I thought ec­cen­tric. You can­not stand in rank with­out a uni­form. I shall not yield to Sarah Jay nor even Kit­ty Duer. I am a lit­tle Re­pub­li­can, sir, and know my rights. And I know how to keep them.”

To-​day, af­ter her usu­al pro­longed and un­mit­igat­ed greet­ing, she re­marked: “Speak­ing of ec­cen­tric peo­ple, I met to-​day, at La­dy Ster­ling's, that cu­ri­ous per­son, Mrs. Croix, or Miss Capet, as some will call her. Her hair was built up quite a foot and un­pow­dered. On top of it was an im­mense black hat with plumes, and her vel­vet gown was at least three yards on the floor. She cer­tain­ly is the hand­somest crea­ture in town, but, con­sid­er­ing all the gos­sip, I think it odd La­dy Ster­ling should take her up, and I be­lieve that Kit­ty is quite an­noyed. But La­dy Ster­ling is so good-​na­tured, and I am told that Dr. Franklin went per­son­al­ly and asked her to give this la­dy coun­te­nance. He calls her his Fairy Queen, and to-​day salut­ed her on the lips be­fore all of us. Poor dear Dr. Franklin is by now quite in the class with Cae­sar's wife, but still I think his con­duct rather re­mark­able.”

“Who is this wom­an?” asked Hamil­ton, in­dif­fer­ent­ly.

“Well!” ex­claimed his wife, with a cer­tain sat­is­fac­tion, “you _are busy_. She has been the talk of the town for quite three months, al­though she nev­er went _any­where_ be­fore to-​day.”

“I hear all my gos­sip from you,” said Hamil­ton, smil­ing from the hearth rug, “and con­sid­er­ing the labours of the past three months--but tell me about her. I be­lieve I love you best when gos­sip­ing. Your ef­fort to be caus­tic is the sweet­est thing in the world.”

She threw a ball of wool at him, which he caught and pulled apart, then show­ered on her head. It was yel­low wool, and vast­ly be­com­ing on her black hair. “You must have a yel­low hat at once, with plumes,” he said, “but go on.”

“You shall wind that this evening, sir. Well, she came here about three months ago with Cap­tain Croix of the British army, and ru­mour hath it that he left a wife in Eng­land, and that this la­dy's right to the roy­al name of Capet is still un­chal­lenged. The sto­ry goes that she was born about eigh­teen years ago, on a French frigate bound for the West In­dies, that her moth­er died, and that, there be­ing no one else of that roy­al name on board, the Cap­tain adopt­ed her; but that a ba­by and a ship be­ing more than he could man­age, he pre­sent­ed the ba­by to a hum­ble friend at New­port, by the name of Thomp­son, who brought her up vir­tu­ous­ly, but with­out erad­icat­ing the spir­it of the age, and one fine day she dis­ap­peared with Colonel Croix, and af­ter a hon­ey­moon which may have been spent in the neigh­bour­hood of any church be­tween here and Rhode Is­land, or of none, they ar­rived in New York, and took the finest lodg­ings in town. I sup­pose Dr. Franklin was a friend of her hum­ble guardian, he is so phil­an­thropic, and that he is will­ing to take my la­dy's word that all is well--and per­haps it is. I feel my­self quite vi­cious in re­peat­ing the vaguest sort of gos­sip--ac­tive, though. Who knows, if she had worn a wig, or an inch of pow­der, and em­ployed the ac­cept­ed ar­chi­tect for her tow­er, she would have passed with­out ques­tion? An­oth­er pil­lar for my ar­gu­ment, sir.”

“As it is, you are even will­ing to be­lieve that she is a daugh­ter of the house of France,” said Hamil­ton, with a hearty laugh. “Would that the world were as eas­ily per­suad­ed of what is good for it as of what tick­les its pet­ti­ness. Shall you ask this daugh­ter of the Capets to the house?”

“I have not made up my mind,” said Mrs. Hamil­ton, de­mure­ly.

The two old­er chil­dren, Philip and An­gel­ica, came tum­bling in­to the room, and Hamil­ton romped with them for a half-​hour, then flung them up­on their moth­er, and watched them from the hearth rug. Bet­sey was love­ly with her chil­dren, who were beau­ti­ful lit­tle crea­tures, and Hamil­ton was al­ways ar­rang­ing them in groups. The boy and girl pulled down her hair with the yel­low wool, un­til all her diminu­tive fig­ure and all her face, but its rogu­ish black eyes, were ex­tin­guished; and Hamil­ton for­got the coun­try.

Eliz­abeth Schuyler was a clev­er­er wom­an than her meed of cred­it has led the world to be­lieve. She un­der­stood Hamil­ton very well even then, al­though, as his faults but added to his fas­ci­na­tion in the eyes of those that loved him, the knowl­edge did not de­tract from her hap­pi­ness. In many ways she made her­self nec­es­sary to him; at that time she even kept his pa­pers in or­der. He talked to her freely on ev­ery sub­ject that in­ter­est­ed him, from hu­man na­ture to fi­nance, tax­es, and the law, and she nev­er per­mit­ted a yawn to threat­en. He read aloud to her ev­ery line he wrote, and while she would not have pre­sumed to sug­gest, her sym­pa­thy was one of his im­per­ative needs. When his er­rat­ic fan­cy flashed him in­to se­duc­tive mesh­es, she pulled a string and back he came. Per­haps this is the rea­son why no spe­cif­ic ac­count of his nu­mer­ous al­leged amours have come down to us. He is vague­ly ac­cused of be­ing the Lothario of his time, ir­re­sistible and in­de­fati­ga­ble; but of all fa­mous men whose names are en­livened with anec­dotes of gal­lantry in the vast bulk of the world's un­writ­ten his­to­ry, he alone is the hero of much mys­te­ri­ous af­fir­ma­tion but of no par­tic­ular ro­mance. The Reynolds af­fair is open his­to­ry and not a case in point. It is prob­able that, ow­ing to in­her­ent fick­le­ness and Bet­sey's gen­tle ma­nip­ula­tion, his af­fairs rarely last­ed long enough to at­tract at­ten­tion. It is one of the ac­ci­dents of life that the world bare­ly knew of his ac­quain­tance with Eliza Croix, she who has come down to us as Madame Jumel; and such a thing could not hap­pen twice. But whether or not he pos­sessed in all their per­fec­tion the pro­cliv­ities of so great and im­petu­ous and pas­sion­ate a ge­nius, it is cer­tain that he loved his wife de­vot­ed­ly, and above all oth­er wom­en, so long as his be­ing held to­geth­er. His home was al­ways his Mec­ca, and he left it on­ly when pub­lic du­ty com­pelled his pres­ence in ex­ile.