Achille’s fine manners and the easy tone of his conversation were really
a welcome relief to the uncomfortable strain introduced by the Burr
topic. Achille was cheery and agreeable, and had plenty of those little
critical things to say of acquaintances every one likes to
hear--critical, but not unkindly so. This night, also, he was even
unusually handsome, and his sumptuous dress only in the diapason of the
general air of luxury which was the distinguishing quality of his life.
To the gay persiflage of his conversation madame paid little attention.
She was lost in thoughtful reminiscence, and when she re-entered the
society of those around her she returned to the conversation which the
entrance of Achille had interrupted.
“I have been taking thought, Leonard,” she said, “and I wonder me at
you! Of good days are you tired? If so, then join yourself to Aaron
Burr. I am not pleased that you should do this, but so, nothing will
help, I fear--at least no ordinary advice.”
“Is not that a hard thing to say, madame?”
“Very well, but it is the truth. So then, to make short work of it, no
ordinary advice will I give you; but an extraordinary reason, that may
perhaps turn your mind another way. I know not--there are none so blind
as those who will not see.”
“First, madame, permit me to ask Mr. St. Ange, in your presence, if he
thinks I require either ordinary or extraordinary arguments against the
course I have marked out for myself.”
Madame moved her head in assent, and then Leonard, in a few sentences,
told Achille of his proposed study with Mr. Burr, and asked him frankly
“if he considered Mr. Burr’s duelling experience inimical to business
relations with him?”
And Achille answered promptly: “If Mr. Burr had not fought Mr. Hamilton
I should consider your engagement with him disastrous, both to your
social and business reputation. Mr. Hamilton had slandered Mr. Burr in
public and in private, and even while Mr. Burr supposed him to be his
friend he had disseminated the unguarded sallies of his host while a
guest at his dinner table. As I understand the subject, Mr. Burr had no
alternative between two inexorable facts--to fight, which might mean
physical death; not to fight, which would certainly mean social and
political death. Mr. Burr had, I think, a too great patience. I would
have appealed to the sword to stop the tongue long before Mr. Burr
did.”
Leonard was delighted and grateful, and said so, and Achille added: “We
must remember that Cheetham, who edited Hamilton’s newspaper, asked the
public through that organ: ‘Is the Vice-President sunk so low as to
submit to be insulted by General Hamilton?’ It seems to me then that
Cheetham really sent the challenge to Mr. Burr, and that the
Vice-President had no honourable alternative. He had to fight or be
eternally branded a poltroon, a dastardly coward!” And he uttered these
shameful words with such passionate scorn that they seemed to disturb
the air like wildfire.
“About duelling there may be two opinions,” said Madame, “but when
treason is the question, what then?”
“But that question was settled by Mr. Burr’s trial, madame,” answered
Leonard. “The law and the testimony, the judge, and the jury decided
that Mr. Burr was not guilty of treason. Should we go behind that
settlement?”
“The people have gone behind it, and will do so.”
“I doubt that as a final result,” said Leonard. “Many are of Mr.
Vanderlyn’s opinion, that the natural boundaries of the United States
are the Atlantic and Pacific, and that all foreign authority must be got
rid of within that territory. If Aaron Burr did not succeed, he thought
others would.”
“But Aaron Burr would have set up a monarchy for himself.”
“That is not conceivable, madame. I said so to Mr. Vanderlyn, and he
laughed at the idea. He said, ‘Burr had remarkable military genius, and
that his object was to atone for his political failure by some great
military feat, but whatever the feat he contemplated, it would have been
in the end for his country.’ Vanderlyn put aside all evidence to the
contrary, because given by men who had been at first confederate with
Burr, and then betrayed him. What reliance could be placed on anything
such men said? I believe,” said Leonard, with confident fervour, “that
Mr. Burr will outlive the memory of his faults and attain yet the
success his great abilities deserve.”
“_He will not!_” said madame. “The hatred of the living a man may fight,
and hope to conquer, but the vengeance of the dead, who then can escape
that? Sooner or later it drives ‘the one followed’ to destroy himself.
This trouble began twelve years gone by. Hamilton and Burr called it to
themselves, that night they tricked justice, slandered the innocent, and
let the guilty go free. Snuff the candles, Achille, the room is full of
shadows; more light give us, and I will tell you when, and how, the doom
of both men was called to them.”
There was a few minutes’ delay, during which the silence was unbroken,
and then madame continued:
“It was in the year of God eighteen hundred, in the month of March, and
we had come near to the spring. Mr. Hamilton was then of all the lawyers
in New York the most famous, and it was one of the sights of the city to
see him going to court with his papers and books. In that month came
the trial of Levi Weekes for the murder of the beautiful Gulielma Sands,
and Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Burr were united in the defence of Weekes. Very
well indeed I knew Elma Sands, for she lived with her uncle and aunt
Ring, who were tenants of mine for many years. At the time of her murder
they lived in Greenwich Street, near Franklin; and Weekes boarded with
them. He was a brother of Ezra Weekes, who kept the famous City Hotel,
and with his brother he could have boarded. But not so, with the Rings
he stayed, because of Elma, and every one said they were promised to
each other, and when the spring came were to be married. Well, then,
this dreadful thing happened--Elma Sands went out with Levi Weekes one
Sunday in December, 1799, and never again was she seen by any one.
Distracted were her uncle and aunt, and everywhere, far and near, Elma
was sought. It was no good. What I could do, I did, for I had watched
the orphan girl grow from her childhood to her womanhood, and so sorry
also was I for the uncle and aunt, who slept not, nor yet rested, and
whose terrible suspense was ended in five weeks, by the finding of
Elma’s body in a well eighty feet deep. Then the city went wild about
her murder; for the appearance of the body left no room for doubt as to
what poor Elma’s fate had been; and every one felt quite sure that Levi
Weekes was the criminal.” Here madame paused and appeared to be much
affected, and Achille, without a word, pushed a glass of water closer to
her, and having drank of it, she continued:
“It was Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Burr that defended the prisoner; the
prosecutor was Cadwallader D. Colden, and Chief Justice Lansing was the
judge. On both sides there were great lawyers, and the trial was long
and wearisome; but never were Elias Ring and his wife absent from it,
no, not for one hour. So the end came at last. It was a stormy night in
April that it came, and very late, and the court room was but dimly
lighted, for some of the candles had burned themselves away, and had not
been renewed, and the people had been listening to Hamilton’s speech,
and thinking of nothing else. A great speech it was; my son Judge
Bloommaert told me it was wonderful; and though every one was worn out,
none left the building.
“Then Aaron Burr arose. Some facts he set forth in such a way as to
throw all suspicion on the chief witness against Weekes; and while
people were amazed at the charge, and no time had been given to examine
it, or deny it, he lifted two candles from the table and flashed them in
the face of the man he had accused; and as he did this thing he cried
out in a voice like doom: ‘_Gentlemen, behold the murderer!_’ Shocked
and terrified was the man, and like a foolish one he rushed from the
room; and this cry of Aaron Burr’s the weary, excited jury took for the
truth, and so then, Levi Weekes was declared ‘not guilty.’ Stupefied
were all present, and before they could recover themselves from their
astonishment Catherine Ring stood up. She was a Quakeress and to speak
in public accustomed, and so, lifting her face and hands to heaven she
refused the verdict; and gave the case ‘_to the justice of God and the
vengeance of the Dead!_’
“I say plainly, every one was thrilled with awe and terror. Her voice
was low and even, but straight to every heart it went; and those
furthest away heard it clear and fateful as those close at her side. Mr.
Hamilton began to put up his papers, but she stepped close to his side
and said: ‘Alexander Hamilton, if there be justice in heaven, heaven
will see that thee dies a bloody death; and thy helper shall help thee
to it!’ At these words Burr rose, and looked at her with a smile, and
she continued, ‘Take thy time, Aaron Burr. Thee need not hurry; thee
will long for death, long before death will have thee. Nay, but thee
shall be a dead man long before thee can hide thyself in the grave. And
all that we have suffered in that long month of not knowing, thee shall
suffer many times over. Dost thee think God had no witness in this room?
Go thy way, Alexander Hamilton! Go thy way, Aaron Burr! There is _one
that follows after_!’ She turned then to Judge Lansing, but he had left
the bench. Then she touched her husband’s arm, and said: ‘Come, Elias,
the unrighteous judge cannot escape the righteous one. Some day he will
go out, and be heard of no more forever.’[2]
“And here is the wonderful thing--all the time she was dooming these
three great men not one soul moved or spoke. The entire audience sat or
stood silent and motionless; and when out of the court-room they went,
it was as if they were leaving a church. And Elias and Catherine Ring
passed through them, and though they had the pity and respect of all
there, no one spoke to them, and no one stayed them. For every word of
doom Catherine Ring had uttered had been heard; and her inspired face
spoke to the crowd; Elias walking at her side praying aloud as he
walked.
“My son Gerardus was present during the entire trial; he heard all, he
saw all, and he told me the story I have just told you. And what I say
is the truth--Hamilton’s earthly doom has been fulfilled; Burr is yet
learning the unpitying vengence of the dead. That insane idea of
conquest, who drove him to it? Who, at the critical hour, turned his
confederates against him? Who sent him to wander in Europe a degraded,
desperate man? What a cup of shame and poverty he drank there, I and a
few others know. Then, when reckless with his misfortune, back he comes
to New York, and for a short time he is lifted up by the many old
acquaintances who remember his abilities and his sufferings. But only to
be cast down is he lifted up. In less than one month he hears of the
death of his grandson, a beautiful, intelligent boy of twelve years old,
on whom all his future hopes were built. A terrible blow it was, but
only the beginning of sorrow. Six months afterwards his idolised
daughter left Charleston for New York. She was heartbroken by the loss
of her son, and was coming to her father to be comforted. She sailed on
the thirtieth of December, 1811, A. D., and ought to have been in New
York about the fifth of January. She did not come. She never came. She
was never heard of again. It was then Catherine Ring’s promised
retribution overtook him. Who can tell what agonies of suspense he
endured? There was daily hope, and there was daily despair! Such nights
of grief! Such days of watching! His worst unfriends pitied him. To have
heard of the unhappy woman would have pleased every one; but no, no,
never a word came. When some weeks were gone over, there was a report
that the ship in which she sailed had been taken by pirates, and all on
board murdered except Mr. Burr’s daughter. She, it was said, had been
put on shore a captive. The miserable man! He would not, he could not,
bear this idea. He said to me one morning, as I talked with him at the
garden gate, ‘Theodosia is dead! If she were not all the prisons in the
world could not keep her from me!’ Well, then, all of you must remember
the loss of Theodosia Burr Alston?”
“I was in New Orleans at the time,” said Leonard. “I heard nothing
there, or if so, have forgotten.”
“I also was in New Orleans,” said Achille. “I do not remember--no, not
at all.”
“I do remember,” said Sappha. “Mother was very sorry for Mr. Burr. We
often spoke of him.”
“You never told me about it, grandmother,” added Annette. “Why did you
not?”
“Good reasons had I. So much was there to say that could not be talked
about. A great many people had yet in mind Catherine Ring’s words, and
so Aaron Burr’s long watch for the child that never came was quietly
and pitifully passed over. Yes, people remember; and if they do not
remember they _feel_--they _feel_, they know not what. I have watched.
One by one, I have seen those that welcomed Aaron Burr home drop away
from him. This day a man stops and greets him, to-morrow he passes him
by. The unlucky, they only stick to him; because for a familiar they
know him. Aaron Burr is a doomed man--haunted by the wraiths of those he
has wronged--a doomed man, and nothing that he does shall ever prosper.”
She ceased speaking with these words, and after some desultory
conversation on the subject, Sappha said, “she must go home.” Then
Annette went upstairs with her, and Achille made an effort to continue
the subject; but neither madame nor yet Leonard were disposed for
discussion; and when Sappha returned to the parlour, cloaked and wrapped
in furs, Leonard hastily assumed his street costume and went out with
her. Then the conversation, the warmth, and the drowsy light, added to
the unusual feeling which the Ring tragedy had evoked, produced an
effect upon madame she did not anticipate--she gradually lost
consciousness, and finally fell asleep. For a while Achille and Annette
spoke in whispers, and Annette tried all her powers to win from her
companion the secret madame made so much of. He dallied with it, but
kept it inviolate; and she dropped her pretty head with a sense of
defeat that the circumstance hardly seemed to warrant. Quiet and
speechless she sat, and Achille held her hand and watched the shadow of
disappointment obliterate the dimples and smiles, not always as becoming
in his eyes as her graver deportment. The glow of the firelight, the
stillness thrilled through and through with that old tragedy of love,
the look of defeat in Annette’s pretty face, and her whole attitude of
submission to it, pleased the young man. He thought her more womanly and
exquisite than ever before; and he kissed the hand he held, and said in
the softest, sweetest voice: “I cannot tell you madame’s secret, but I
will tell you one of my own--Annette, beautiful Annette, I love you.”
And Annette behaved with the most amazing propriety. He felt the little
hand he held tremble to his words, and he saw on her face the
transfiguration of love, though she did not lift it, or answer him in
any other way. But this coy reticence was exactly the conduct Achille
approved; and in that dim room, where only sleep kept vigil, Achille
asked Annette to be his wife, and Annette answered him as he desired.
“I shall speak to madame in the morning,” he said; “to-night it will be
too much.”
“It is too much even for me,” answered Annette; “I never dreamed of
being so happy.”
“Nor I,” answered the fortunate lover. He then surrendered himself to
her charm. He forgot how often he had privately declared he would never
do so; forgot how often he had told himself that Annette de Vries was a
beauty with
[Illustration: “IN THAT DIM ROOM, WHERE ONLY SLEEP KEPT VIGIL, ACHILLE
ASKED ANNETTE TO BE HIS WIFE.”]
a heart like a little glacier. As for Annette, she was satisfied. In the
first days of her acquaintance with Achille St. Ange she had resolved to
be his wife; and her resolve was now in process of accomplishment. And
after all, it had not been a difficult end to attain; a little love, a
little listening, a little patience, a little persistence, and the man
was won. It was only another case of proving the folly of any resistance
to invincible woman. For has not all experience proved that if a woman
seriously determines to marry a certain man she is about as sure to
accomplish her end as if, wishing to reach Washington, she entered a
train bound for that city?
During this scene between Annette and Achille Sappha and Leonard Murray
were walking in the clear, frosty starlight. They were lovers, but their
conversation was too anxious to be loverlike. Sappha was entreating
Leonard to cancel his engagement with Mr. Burr. She was sure if he did
not her father would permit no engagement with his daughter. “You will
have to choose,” she said, “between Mr. Burr and myself. You cannot take
both into your life, Leonard; I am sure it is impossible.” She did not
name the Ring tragedy. She was far less impressed by it than Leonard had
been. It was her father’s opposition she feared.
Not so Leonard. He had inherited from his Scotch ancestors a vivid vein
of supernatural tendency. His own clan had numerous traditions of
posthumous revenge, so vindictive that Leonard’s first unconscious
commentary on madame’s narrative was the whispered exclamation--only
heard by Achille--“The vengeance of the dead is terrible!” But if there
was this latent fear in his heart, mingled with the personal one that
association might include him in that vengeance, the feeling was
strongly combated by another inherited tendency, so vital as to be
almost beyond reasoning with--the sentiment of loyalty to a person or a
cause to which he had once given his allegiance. It had been a kind of
insanity in his clan, for they had always gathered to the last man in
the cause of their exiled kings, though they knew right well that to
stand by the Stuarts was to stand by misfortune and death.
So, tossed between these two horns of a dilemma, Leonard could not make
Sappha the unconditional promise she asked. He had given to Aaron Burr a
fealty founded on an intense admiration for his great abilities and his
great wrongs. The physical charm of the man had also fascinated Leonard,
as it fascinated almost every one who came fairly under its influence;
and thus, though warned by one ancestral strain to retire from some
malignity he could not control, he was urged forward by another
sentiment which put his word, his honour, his friendship, and his
loyalty before all other considerations.
These underlying motives of action were but partially understood by
Leonard, and were not comprehended in any measure by Sappha. But at
eighteen years of age we do not need to know, in order to feel; we can
feel without knowledge; and Sappha was certain that the association of
her lover with a man so unfortunate as Mr. Burr would include both of
them in its inimical proneness to calamity.
The mingling of these elements in Leonard’s nature must be recognised
before we can understand how a lover, earnest and devoted, could
hesitate about casting adrift a friendship so recent when it threatened
a tie still fonder and more personal. But the most invulnerable
sentiments a man has to conquer are those he brings with him from
previous incarnations. Prejudices and opinions planted in his mind
during last year, or the present year, will have a demonstrative
vitality; but there is a stubborn quality about those we bring with us
that is only gained by passing through the grave and tasting of
immortality. If Sappha’s and Leonard’s love for each other was not of
the past, then it was hardly one year old; yet she was demanding for it
a sacrifice of feelings incorporate in Leonard’s nature from unknown
centuries.
They walked together talking only of Mr. Burr for more than an hour;
then Sappha said “she was cold and must go into the house.” She was not
so much cold as weary. We are always weary when we do not understand,
and Sappha could not understand why Mr. Burr should interfere in her
affairs. At the door Leonard spoke to her about the theatre on Friday
night, and she promised to give her father and mother his invitation.
“It is too late to detain you longer, my beloved,” he said; “but I will
call early in the morning for the answer. I hope they will accept my
offer. It will make me very proud and happy.”
Sappha was sure that her mother would do so. “My father is always
uncertain,” she said, “but I think he will go if I ask him.”
In the morning, however, there was no question of naming the subject.
The judge had come home late the previous night, and even then was
suffering all the premonitory symptoms of an attack of gout. Sappha was
accustomed to these evil periods, and quite aware that all Leonard’s
plans were useless. For no one but Mrs. Bloommaert and the two negro men
who nursed the judge were likely to see him; or, if they were wise, to
want to see him; and Sappha was compelled to add disappointment to the
already restless dissatisfaction which had somehow invaded the love
which Leonard really bore her.
The morning interview was, moreover, very hurried. Leonard was going to
court to hear Mr. Burr argue a certain case, and though he did not tell
Sappha this, she felt that Mr. Burr was the cause of her lover’s unusual
haste. Before he knew this objectionable person he had never worried
about time; now he was constantly consulting his watch. She felt as if
their love had been mingled with some element that robbed it of its
immortal beauty and bound it to the slavery of hours and minutes; nay,
she could not have defined her sense of loss, even thus far, accurately;
she was only wistfully conscious of a change that was not a gain.
Leonard came early in the morning, and was bitterly disappointed to find
that his little plan was absolutely abortive. The judge was suffering
much, and the subject had not even been named to him. Mrs. Bloommaert,
indeed, rather fretfully interrupted Sappha in the midst of her delivery
of Leonard’s invitation. “The theatre!” she ejaculated. “If you were in
your father’s room for ten minutes you would not have the courage to
name the place. I am sorry, of course, but theatre-going is out of the
question. Leonard does seem so unfortunate!”
“Do not be unjust, mother; don’t you think it is father that is
unfortunate? And then his misfortune makes you suffer, and I also; for I
did want to go to the theatre on Friday night so much. I suppose Annette
will be disappointed also, for of course she cannot go with Achille
alone. They were, no doubt, calculating on your presence.”
“It cannot be helped, Sappha. Your father must not be left; my place is
with him. I suppose Mrs. Clark will be going. Leonard and you can join
her party.”
But when this proposition was made to Leonard he refused it without
reservation. He was certain that the Clark party was already complete,
and he showed a touch of stubbornness in temper that pained and
astonished Sappha. If he could not have his pleasure exactly as he
wished it, there was no longer any pleasure in it; and he said with an
air of intense chagrin:
“I shall be the only young man of my circle who will not be there with
the girl he loves and the family into which he hopes to be admitted. I
feel it very much.” And with these words he went away.
All morning Sappha sat in a kind of listless grief. She was in a mesh of
circumstances against whose evil influence she was powerless. Nothing
could avail. The morning was damp and cold and full of melancholy, the
house strangely still; she could not sew, she could not read, she could
only suffer. And at eighteen years of age suffering is so acute, it
seems to youth’s dreams of happiness such a wrong; and the reasonable
indifference of age has, to its impatience, the very spirit of cruelty.
About noon Mrs. Bloommaert came into the room. She had a letter in her
hand, and there was a singular expression of discomposure both on her
countenance and in the fretful way in which she held the missive in her
outstretched hand.
“Sappha,” she said, “here comes news indeed! Your grandmother has
written to tell us that last night Achille St. Ange asked Annette to
marry him. And of course Annette accepted the offer,” commented
Annette’s aunt. “Your grandmother seems delighted with the match.”