The Conqueror. Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
more than all the other boys on this island; and if I'm little, I've broken in most of his colts and have never hesitated to fight. He finds his pathos in his purse. Why can't I make two thousand pieces of eight?"
"You'd be so long at it, poor child, that it would be too late to enter college; for there's a long apprenticeship to serve before you get a salary. But you must go. I've thought, thought about it, and I'll think more." He almost wished he had not married; but as he had no other cause to regret his venture, even his interest in young Hamilton did not urge him to deprive his little family of the luxuries so necessary in the West Indies. Economy on his salary would mean a small house instead of large rooms where one could forget the heat; curtailment of the voluminous linen wardrobes so soon demolished on the stones of the river; surrender of coach and horses. He trusted to a moment of sudden insight on the part of Peter Lytton, assisted by his own eloquent argument; and his belief in Alexander's destiny never wavered. Once he approached Mrs. Mitchell, for he knew she had money of her own; but, as he had expected, she went into immediate hysterics at the suggestion to part with her idol, and he hastily retreated.
Alexander turned over every scheme of making money his fertile brain conceived, and went so far as to ask his aunt to send him to New York, where he could work in one of the West Indian houses, and attend college by some special arrangement. He, too, retreated before Mrs. Mitchell's agitation, but during the summer another cause drove him to work, and without immediate reference to the wider education.
Mr. Mitchell was laid up with the gout and spent the summer on his plantation. His slaves fled at the sound of his voice, his wife wept incessantly at this the heaviest of her life's trials, and it was not long before Alexander was made to feel his dependence so keenly by the irascible planter that he leaped on his horse one day and galloped five miles under the hot sun to Lytton's Fancy.
"I want to work," he announced, with his usual breathless impetuosity when excited, bursting in upon Mr. Lytton, who was mopping his face after his siesta. "Put me at anything. I don't care what, except in Uncle Mitchell's store. I won't work for him."
Mr. Lytton laughed with some satisfaction. "So you two have come to loggerheads? Tom Mitchell, well, is insufferable. With gout in him he must bristle with every damnable trait in the human category. Come back and live with me," he added, in a sudden burst of sympathy, for the boy looked hot and tired and dejected; and his diminutive size appealed always to Peter Lytton, who was six feet two. "You're a fine little chap, but I doubt you're strong enough for hard work, and you love your books. Come here and read all day if you like. When you're grown I'll make you manager of all my estates. Gad! I'd be glad of an honest one! The last time I went to England, that devil, Tom Collins, drank every bottle of my best port, smashed my furniture, broke the wind of every horse I had, and kept open house for every scamp and loafer on the Island, or that came to port. How old are you—twelve? I'll turn everything over to you in three years. You've more sense now than any boy I ever saw. Three years hence, if you continue to improve, you'll be a man, and I'll be only too glad to put the whole thing in your hands."
Alexander struggled with an impulse to ask his uncle to send him to college, but not only did pride strike at the words, but he reflected with some cynicism that the affection he inspired invariably expressed itself in blatant selfishness, and that he might better appeal to the enemies he had made to send him from the Island. He shook his head.
"I'll remain idle no longer," he said. "I'm tired of eating bread that's given me. I'd rather eat yours than his, but I've made up my mind to work. What can you find for me now?"
"You are too obstinate to argue with in August. Cruger wants a reliable clerk. I heard him say so yesterday. He'll take you if I say the word, and give you a little something in the way of salary."
"I like Mr. Cruger," said Alexander, eagerly, "and so did my mother."
"He's a kind chap, but he'll work you to death, for he's always in a funk that Tom Mitchell'll get ahead of him. But you cannot do better. I have no house in town, but you can ride the distance between here and Christianstadt night and morning, if my estimable brother-in-law—whom may the gout convince of his sins—is too much for you."
But Alexander had no desire to return to the house where he had passed those last terrible weeks with his mother, and Mrs. Mitchell begged him on her knees to forgive the invalid, and sent him to the house in Christianstadt, where he would be alone until December; by that time, please God, Tom Mitchell would be on his way to Jamaica. But Alexander had little further trouble with that personage. Mr. Mitchell had his susceptibilities; he was charmed with a boy of twelve who was too proud to accept the charity of wealthy relatives and determined to make his living. Alexander entered Mr. Cruger's store in October. Mr. Mitchell did not leave the Island again until the following spring, and moved to town in November. He and Alexander discussed the prospects of rum, molasses, and sugar, the price of mahogany, of oats, cheese, bread, and flour, the various Island and American markets, until Mrs. Mitchell left the table. Her husband proudly told his acquaintance that his nephew, Alexander Hamilton, was destined to become the cleverest merchant in the Caribbees.
VII
But Alexander had small liking for his employment. He had as much affinity with the sordid routine of a general store and counting-house as Tom Mitchell had with the angels. But pride and ambition carried him through most of the distasteful experiences of his life. He would come short in nothing, and at that tender age, when his relatives were prepared to forgive his failures with good-humoured tact, he was willing to sacrifice even his books to clerical success. He soon discovered that he had that order of mind which concentrates without effort upon what ever demands its powers—masters the detail of it with incredible swiftness. At first he was a general clerk, and attended to the loading and unloading of Mr. Cruger's sloops; after a time he was made bookkeeper; it was not long before he was in charge of the counting-house. He got back to his books in time—for business in the Islands finishes at four o'clock—and when he had learned all the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and mathematics Hugh Knox could teach him, he spent his leisure hours with Pope, Plutarch, Shakespeare, Milton, Plato, and the few other English poets and works of Greek philosophers which Knox possessed, as well as several abridged histories of England and Europe. These interested him more than aught else, purely literary as his proclivities were supposed to be, and he read and reread them, and longed for some huge work in twenty volumes which should reveal Europe to his searching vision. But this was when he was fourteen, and had almost forgotten what the life of a mere boy was like. Shortly after he entered Mr. Cruger's store he wrote his famous letter to young Stevens. It will bear republication here, and its stilted tone, so different from the concise simplicity of his business letters, was no doubt designed to produce an effect on the mind of his more fortunate friend. He became a master of style, and before he was twenty; but there is small indication of the achievement in this letter, lovable as it is:—
ST. CROIX, November 11, 1769.
DEAR EDWARD, This serves to acknowledge the receipt of yours per Capt. Lowndes, which was delivered me yesterday The truth of Capt. Lightbowen and Lowndes' information is now verified by the presence of your father and sister, for whose safe arrival I pray, and that they may convey that satisfaction to your soul, that must naturally flow from the sight of absent friends in health; and shall for news this way, refer you to them.
As to what you say, respecting your soon having the happiness of seeing us all, I wish for an accomplishment of your hopes, provided they are concomitant with your welfare, otherwise not; though doubt whether I shall be present or not, for to confess my weakness, Ned, my ambition is prevalent, so that I contemn the grovelling condition of a clerk, or the like, to which my fortune condemns me, and would willingly risk my life, though not my character, to exalt my station. I am confident, Ned, that my youth excludes me from any hopes of immediate preferment, nor do I desire it; but I mean to prepare the way for futurity. I'm no philosopher, you see, and may be justly said to build castles in the air; my folly makes me ashamed, and beg you'll conceal it; yet, Neddy, we have seen such schemes successful, when the projector is constant. I shall conclude by saying I wish there was a war.
I am, Dear Edward, Yours
ALEX.