The Conqueror. Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
the 25th of August, when all the Caribbean world prostrates itself in church while prayers for deliverance from the awful visitation are read, to the 25th of October, when the grateful or the survivors join in thanksgiving, every wind alarms the nervous, and every round woolly cloud must contain the white squall. Rachael knew that Nevis boats had turned over when minor squalls dashed down the Narrows between the extreme points of the Islands, and that they were most to be dreaded in the hurricane season. Hamilton's inclination was to spare in every possible way the woman who had sacrificed so much for him, and he asked little urging to idle his days in the cool library with his charming wife and son. Therefore his business suffered, for his partners took advantage of his negligence; and the decay of their fortunes began when Rachael, despite the angry protests of Archibald Hamn, sold her property on St. Kitts and gave Hamilton the money. He withdrew from the firm which had treated him inconsiderately, and set up a business for himself. For a few years he was hopeful, although more than once obliged to borrow money from his wife. She gave freely, for she had been brought up in the careless plenty of the Islands. Mary Fawcett, admirable manager as she was, had been lavish with money, particularly when her favourite child was in question; and Rachael's imagination had never worked toward the fact that money could roll down hill and not roll up again. She was long in discovering that the man she loved and admired was a failure in the uninteresting world of business. He was a brilliant and charming companion, read in the best literatures of the world, a thoughtful and adoring husband. It availed Archibald Hamn nothing to rage or Dr. Hamilton to remonstrate. Rachael gradually learned that Hamilton was not as strong as herself, but the maternal instinct, so fully aroused by her child, impelled her to fill out his nature with hers, while denying nothing to the man who did all he could to make her happy.
In the third year Hamilton gave up his sail-boat, and had himself rowed across the Narrows, where the overlooker of a salt estate he had bought awaited him with a horse. Once he would have thought nothing of walking the eight miles to Basseterre, but the Tropics, while they sharpen the nerves, caress unceasingly the indolence of man. During the hurricane season he crossed as often as he thought necessary, for with expert oarsmen there was little danger, even from squalls, and the distance was quickly covered.
Gradually Rachael's position was accepted. Nothing could alter the fact that she was the daughter of Dr. and Mary Fawcett, and Hamilton was of the best blood in the Kingdom. She was spoken of generally as Mistress Hamilton, and old friends of her parents began to greet her pleasantly as she drove about the Island with her beautiful child. In time they called, and from that it was but another step to invite, as a matter of course, the young Hamiltons to their entertainments. After all, Rachael was not the first woman in tropical Great Britain to love a man she could not marry, and it was fatiguing to ask the everlasting question of whether the honesty of a public irregular alliance were not counterbalanced by its dangerous example. It was a day of loose morals, the first fruit of the vast scientific movement of the century, whose last was the French Revolution. Moreover, the James Hamiltons were delightful people, and life on the Islands was a trifle monotonous at times; they brought into Nevis society fresh and unusual personalities, spiced with a salient variety. Hamilton might almost be said to have been born an astute man of the world. He opened his doors with an accomplished hospitality to the most intelligent and cultivated people of the Island, ignoring those who based their social pretensions on rank and wealth alone. In consequence he and his wife became the leaders of a small and exclusive set, who appreciated their good fortune. Dr. Hamilton and a few other Kittifonians were constant visitors in this hospitable mansion. Christiana Huggins, who had taken a bold stand from the first, carried her father there one day in triumph, and that austere parent laid down his arms. All seemed well, and the crumbling of the foundations made no sound.
And Alexander? He was an excitable and ingenious imp, who saved himself from many a spanking by his sparkling mind and entrancing sweetness of temper. He might fly at his little slaves and beat them, and to his white playmates he never yielded a point; but they loved him, for he was generous and honest, and the happiest little mortal on the Island. He could get into as towering a rage as old John Fawcett, but he was immediately amenable to the tenderness of his parents.
When he was four years old he was sent to a small school, which happened to be kept by a Jewess. In spite of his precocity his parents had no wish to force a mind which, although delightful to them in its saucy quickness, aroused no ambitious hopes; they sent him to school merely that there might be less opportunity to spoil him at home. His new experience was of a brief duration.
Hamilton on a Sunday was reading to Rachael in the library. Alexander shoved a chair to the table and climbed with some difficulty, for he was very small, to an elevated position among the last reviews of Europe. He demanded the attention of his parents, and, clasping his hands behind his back, began to recite rapidly in an unknown tongue. The day was very hot, and he wore nothing but a white apron. His little pink feet were bare on the mahogany, and his fair curls fell over a flushed and earnest face, which at all times was too thin and alert to be angelic or cherubic. Hamilton and Rachael, wondering whom he fancied himself imitating, preserved for a moment a respectful silence, then, overcome by his solemn countenance and the fluency of his outlandish utterance, burst into one of those peals of sudden laughter which seem to strike the most sensitive chord in young children. Alexander shrieked in wrath and terror, and made as if to fling himself on his mother's bosom, then planted his feet with an air of stubborn defiance, and went on with his recital. Hamilton listened a moment longer, then left the house abruptly. He returned in wrath.
"That woman has taught him the Decalogue in Hebrew!" he exclaimed. "'Tis a wonder his brains are not addled. He will sail boats in the swimming-bath and make shell houses in the garden for the next three years. We'll have no more of school."
II
Alexander Hamilton had several escapes from imminent peril when he was a boy, and the first occurred in the month of December, 1761. Hamilton had gone to St. Croix on business, and Rachael and the child spent the fortnight of his absence with Christiana Huggins. Rachael was accustomed to Hamilton's absences, but Nevis was in a very unhealthy condition, through lack of wind and rains during the preceding autumn. The sea had looked like a metal floor for months, the Island was parched and dry, the swamps on the lowlands were pestiferous. Many negroes had died in Charles Town, and many more were ill. The obeah doctors, with their absurd concoctions and practices, were openly defying the physicians of repute, for the terrified blacks believed that the English had prayed once too often that the hurricane should be stayed, and that he sulked where none might feel his faintest breath. Therefore they cursed the white doctor as futile, and flung his physic from the windows.
Rachael was glad to escape to the heights with Alexander. There it was almost as cool as it should be in December, and she could watch for her husband's sloop. He had gone with the first light wind, and there was enough to bring him home, although with heavy sail. She forgot the muttering negroes and the sickness below. Her servants had been instructed to nurse and nourish where assistance was needed, and up here there was nothing to do but wander with her friend and child through the gay beauty of the terraced garden, or climb the stone steps to the cold quiet depths of the forest.
At the end of a fortnight there was no sign of her husband's sloop, but the wind was strengthening, and she decided to return home and make ready for him. During the long drive she passed negroes in large numbers, either walking toward Charles Town or standing in muttering groups by the roadside. At one time the driveway was so thick with them that her coach could not pass until the postilion laid about him with his whip.
"This is very odd," she said to her nurse. "I have never seen anything like this before."
"Me no t'ink he nothin'. All go tee tick—oh, dis pic'nee no keep till one minit. Me no t'ink about he'n de road."
She lifted the child between her face and her mistress's eyes, and
Rachael saw that her hand trembled. "Can the negroes be rising?" she
wondered; and for a moment she was faint with terror, and prayed for
Hamilton's return.
But she was heroic by nature, and quickly recovered her poise. When she arrived at home she sent the nurse to Charles