BOOK I

THE CONQUEROR

BEING THE TRUE AND ROMANTIC STORY OF

ALEXANDER HAMILTON

BY

GERTRUDE FRANKLIN ATHERTON

"Je considère Napoleon, Fox, et Hamilton comme les trois plus

grands hommes de notre époque, et si je devais me prononcer entre

les trois, je donnerais sans hesiter la première place à Hamilton.

Il avait deviné l'Europe."

TALLEYRAND, _Études sur la République_

New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.

1904

Set up, electrotyped, and published March, 1902. Reprinted May, July

twice, August, September, October, December, 1902; February, 1903;

February, 1904.

Special edition June, 1904.

Norwood Press J.S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass.,

U.S.A.

TO THE DISTINGUISHED MEN WITHOUT WHOSE SUGGESTION AND ENCOURAGEMENT THIS

ATTEMPT TO RECREATE THE GREATEST OF OUR STATESMEN WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN

MADE

THE RT. HON. JAMES BRYCE, M.P.

DR. ALLAN McLANE HAMILTON

CONTENTS

NEVIS

BOOK I RACHAEL LEVINE

BOOK II ALEXANDER HAMILTON. HIS YOUTH IN THE WEST INDIES AND IN THE

COLONIES OF NORTH AMERICA

BOOK III THE LITTLE LION

BOOK IV "ALEXANDER THE GREAT"

BOOK V THE LAST BATTLE OF THE GIANTS AND THE END

EXPLANATION

It was my original intention to write a biography of Alexander Hamilton

in a more flexible manner than is customary with that method of

reintroducing the dead to the living, but without impinging upon the

territory of fiction. But after a visit to the British and Danish West

Indies in search of the truth regarding his birth and ancestry, and

after a wider acquaintance with the generally romantic character of his

life, to say nothing of the personality of this most endearing and

extraordinary of all our public men, the instinct of the novelist proved

too strong; I no sooner had pen in hand than I found myself working in

the familiar medium, although preserving the historical sequence. But,

after all, what is a character novel but a dramatized biography? We

strive to make our creations as real to the world as they are to us.

Why, then, not throw the graces of fiction over the sharp hard facts

that historians have laboriously gathered? At all events, this

infinitely various story of Hamilton appealed too strongly to my

imagination to be frowned aside, so here, for better or worse, is the

result. Nevertheless, and although the method may cause the book to read

like fiction, I am conscientious in asserting that almost every

important incident here related of his American career is founded on

documentary or published facts or upon family tradition; the few that

are not have their roots among the probabilities, and suggested

themselves. As for the West Indian part, although I was obliged to work

upon the bare skeleton I unearthed in the old Common Records and Church

Registers, still the fact remains that I did find the skeleton, which I

have emphasized as far as is artistically possible. No date is given nor

deed referred to that cannot be found by other visitors to the Islands.

Moreover, I made a careful study of these Islands as they were in the

time of Hamilton and his maternal ancestors, that I might be enabled to

exercise one of the leading principles of the novelist, which is to

create character not only out of certain well-known facts of heredity,

but out of understood conditions. In this case I had, in addition, an

extensive knowledge of Hamilton's character to work backward from, as

well as his estimate of the friends of his youth and of his mother.

Therefore I feel confident that I have held my romancing propensity well

within the horizon of the probabilities; at all events, I have depicted

nothing which in any way interferes with the veracity of history.

However, having unburdened my imagination, I shall, in the course of a

year or two, write the biography I first had in mind. No writer, indeed,

could assume a more delightful task than to chronicle, in any form,

Hamilton's stupendous services to this country and his infinite variety.

G.F.A.

NEVIS

In the eighteenth century Nevis was known as The Mother of the English

Leeward Caribbees. A Captain-General ruled the group in the name of the

King, but if he died suddenly, his itinerant duties devolved upon the

Governor of Nevis until the crown heard of its loss and made choice of

another to fill that high and valued office. She had a Council and a

House of Assembly, modelled in miniature upon the Houses of Peers and

Commons; and was further distinguished as possessing the only court in

the English Antilles where pirates could be tried. The Council was made

up of ten members appointed by the Captain-General, but commanded by

"its own particular and private Governor." The freeholders of the Island

chose twenty-four of their number to represent them in the House of

Assembly; and the few chronicles of that day agree in asserting that

Nevis during her hundred proud years of supremacy was governed

brilliantly and well. But the careful administration of good laws

contributed in part only to the celebrity of an Island which to-day,

still British as she is, serves but as a pedestal for the greatest of

American statesmen. In these old days she was a queen as well as a

mother. Her planters were men of immense wealth and lived the life of

grandees. Their cane-fields covered the mountain on all its sides and

subsidiary peaks, rising to the very fringe of the cold forest on the

cone of a volcano long since extinct. The "Great Houses," built

invariably upon an eminence that commanded a view of the neighbouring

islands.--St. Christopher, Antigua, Montserrat,--were built of blocks

of stone so square and solid and with a masonry so perfect that one

views their ruins in amazement to-day. They withstood hurricanes,

earthquakes, floods, and tidal waves. They were impregnable fortresses

against rioting negroes and spasmodically aggressive Frenchmen. They

even survived the abolition of slavery, and the old gay life went on for

many years. English people, bored or in search of health, came for the

brilliant winter, delighted with the hospitality of the planters, and to

renew their vitality in the famous climate and sulphur baths, which, of

all her possessions, Time has spared to Nevis. And then, having

weathered all the ills to which even a West Indian Island can be

subject, she succumbed--to the price of sugar. Her great families

drifted away one by one. Her estates were given over to the agent for a

time, finally to the mongoose. The magnificent stone mansions, left

without even a caretaker, yielded helplessly to the diseases of age, and

the first hurricane entering unbarred windows carried their roofs to the

sea. In Charles Town, the capital since the submergence of James Town in

1680, are the remains of large town houses and fine old stone walls,

which one can hardly see from the roadstead, so thick are the royal

palms and the cocoanut trees among the ruins, wriggling their slender

bodies through every crevice and flaunting their glittering luxuriance

above every broken wall.

But in the days when the maternal grandparents of Alexander Hamilton

looked down a trifle upon those who dwelt on other isles, Nevis recked

of future insignificance as little as a beauty dreams of age. In the

previous century England, after the mortification of the Royalists by

Cromwell, had sent to Nevis Hamiltons, Herberts, Russells, and many

another refugee from her historic houses. With what money they took

with them they founded the great estates of the eighteenth century, and

their sons sent their own children to Europe to become accomplished men

and women. Government House was a miniature court, as gay and splendid

as its offices were busy with the commerce of the world. The Governor

and his lady drove about the Island in a carriage of state, with

outriders and postilions in livery. When the Captain-General came he

outshone his proud second by the gorgeousness of his uniform only, and

both dignitaries were little more imposing than the planters themselves.

It is true that the men, despite their fine clothes and powdered

perukes, preferred a horse's back to the motion of a lumbering coach,

but during the winter season their wives and daughters, in the shining

stuffs, the pointed bodices, the elaborate head-dress of Europe, visited

Government House and their neighbours with all the formality of London

or Bath. After the first of March the planters wore white linen; the

turbaned black women were busy among the stones of the rivers with

voluminous wardrobes of cambric and lawn.

Several estates belonged to certain offshoots of the ducal house of

Hamilton, and in the second decade of the eighteenth century Walter

Hamilton was Captain-General of the English Leeward Caribbees and

"Ordinary of the Same." After him came Archibald Hamilton, who was,

perhaps, of all the Hamiltons the most royal in his hospitality.

Moreover, he was a person of energy and ambition, for it is on record

that he paid a visit to Boston, fleeing from the great drought which

visited Nevis in 1737. Then there were William Leslie Hamilton, who

practised at the bar in London for several years, but returned to hold

official position on Nevis, and his brother Andrew, both sons of Dr.

William Hamilton, who spent the greater part of his life on St.

Christopher. There were also Hugh Hamilton, Charles, Gustavus, and

William Vaughn Hamilton, all planters, most of them Members of Council

or of the Assembly.

And even in those remote and isolated days, Hamiltons and Washingtons

were associated. The most popular name in our annals appears frequently

in the Common Records of Nevis, and there is no doubt that when our

first President's American ancestor fled before Cromwell to Virginia, a

brother took ship for the English Caribbees.

From a distance Nevis looks like a solitary peak in mid-ocean, her base

sweeping out on either side. But behind the great central cone--rising

three thousand two hundred feet--are five or six lesser peaks, between

which are dense tropical gorges and mountain streams. In the old days,

where the slopes were not vivid with the light green of the cane-field,

there were the cool and sombre groves of the cocoanut tree, mango,

orange, and guava.

Even when Nevis is wholly visible there is always a white cloud above

her head. As night falls it becomes evident that this soft aggravation

of her beauty is but a night robe hung on high. It is at about seven in

the evening that she begins to draw down her garment of mist, but she is

long in perfecting that nocturnal toilette. Lonely and neglected, she

still is a beauty, exacting and fastidious. The cloud is tortured into

many shapes before it meets her taste. She snatches it off, redisposes

it, dons and takes it off again, wraps it about her with yet more

enchanting folds, until by nine o'clock it sweeps the sea; and Nevis,

the proudest island of the Caribbees, has secluded herself from those

cynical old neighbours who no longer bend the knee.

BOOK I

RACHAEL LEVINE

I

Nevis gave of her bounty to none more generously than to John and Mary

Fawcett. In 1685 the revocation of the Edict of Nantes had sent the

Huguenots swarming to America and the West Indies. Faucette was but a

boy when the Tropics gave him shelter, and learning was hard to get;

except in the matter of carving Caribs. But he acquired the science of

medicine somehow, and settled on Nevis, remodelled his name, and became

a British subject. Brilliant and able, he was not long accumulating a

fortune; there were swamps near Charles Town that bred fever, and the

planters lived as high and suffered as acutely as the English squires of

the same period. His wife brought him money, and in 1714 they received a

joint legacy from Captain Frank Keynall; whether a relative of hers or a

patient of his, the Records do not tell.

Mary Fawcett was some twenty years younger than her husband, a

high-spirited creature, with much intelligence, and a will which in

later years John Fawcett found himself unable to control. But before

that period, when to the disparity in time were added the irritabilities

of age in the man and the imperiousness of maturity in the woman, they

were happy in their children, in their rising fortunes, and, for a

while, in one another.

For twenty-eight years they lived the life of the Island. They built a

Great House on their estate at Gingerland, a slope of the Island which

faces Antigua, and they had their mansion in town for use when the

Captain-General was abiding on Nevis. While Mary Fawcett was bringing up

and marrying her children, managing the household affairs of a large

estate, and receiving and returning the visits of the other grandees of

the Island, to say nothing of playing her important part in all social

functions, life went well enough. Her children, far away from the swamps

of Charles Town, throve in the trade winds which temper the sun of Nevis

and make it an isle of delight. When they were not studying with their

governesses, there were groves and gorges to play in, ponies to ride,

and monkeys and land crabs to hunt. Later came the gay life of the

Capital, the routs at Government House, frequent even when the Chief was

elsewhere, the balls at neighbouring estates, the picnics in the cool

high forests, or where more tropical trees and tree ferns grew thick,

the constant meeting with distinguished strangers, and the visits to

other islands.

The young Fawcetts married early. One went with her husband, Peter

Lytton, to the island of St. Croix. The Danish Government, upon

obtaining possession of this fertile island, in 1733, immediately issued

an invitation to the planters of the Leeward Caribbees to immigrate,

tempting many who were dissatisfied with the British Government or

wished for larger estates than they could acquire on their own populous

islands. Members of the Lytton, Mitchell, and Stevens families of St.

Christopher were among the first to respond to the liberal offer of the

Danish Government. The two sons of James Lytton, Peter and James, grew

up on St. Croix, Danish by law, British in habit and speech; and both

married women of Nevis. Peter was the first to wed, and his marriage to

young Mary Fawcett was the last to be celebrated in the Great House at

Gingerland.

When Peter Lytton and his wife sailed away, as other sons and other

daughters had sailed before, to return to Nevis rarely,--for those were

the days of travel unveneered,--John and Mary Fawcett were left alone:

their youngest daughter, she who afterward became the wife of Thomas

Mitchell of St. Croix, was at school in England.

By this time Dr. Fawcett had given up his practice and was living on his

income. He took great interest in his cane-fields and mills, and in the

culture of limes and pine-apples; but in spite of his outdoor life his

temper soured and he became irritable and exacting. Gout settled in him

as a permanent reminder of the high fortunes of his middle years, and

when the Gallic excitability of his temperament, aggravated by a

half-century of hot weather, was stung to fiercer expression by the

twinges of his disease, he was an abominable companion for a woman

twenty years closer to youth.

In the solitudes of the large house Mary Fawcett found life unendurable.

Still handsome, naturally gay of temper, and a brilliant figure in

society, she frequently deserted her elderly husband for weeks at a

time. The day came when he peremptorily forbade her to leave the place

without him. For a time she submitted, for although a woman of uncommon

independence of spirit, it was not until 1740 that she broke free of

traditions and astonished the island of Nevis. She shut herself up with

her books and needlework, attended to her house and domestic negroes

with the precision of long habit, saw her friends when she could, and

endured the exactions of her husband with only an occasional but mighty

outburst.

It was in these unhappy conditions that Rachael Fawcett was born.

II

The last affliction the Fawcetts expected was another child. This little

girl came an unwelcome guest to a mother who hated the father, and to

Dr. Fawcett, not only because he had outgrown all liking for crying

babies, but because, as in his excited disturbance he admitted to his

wife, his fortune was reduced by speculations in London, and he had no

desire to turn to in his old age and support another child. Then Mary

Fawcett made up her definite mind: she announced her intention to leave

her husband while it was yet possible to save her property for herself

and the child to whom she soon became passionately attached. Dr. Fawcett

laughed and shut himself up in a wing where the sounds of baby distress

could not reach him; and it is doubtful if his glance ever lingered on

the lovely face of his youngest born. Thus came into the world under the

most painful conditions one of the unhappiest women that has lived. It

was her splendid destiny to become the mother of the greatest American

of his centuries, but this she died too soon to know, and she

accomplished her part with an immediate bitterness of lot which was

remorselessly ordained, no doubt, by the great Law of Compensation.

There were no divorce laws on the Islands in the eighteenth century, not

even an act for separate maintenance; but Mary Fawcett was a woman of

resource. It took her four years to accomplish her purpose, but she got

rid of Dr. Fawcett by making him more than anxious to be rid of her. The

Captain-General, William Matthew, was her staunch friend and admirer,

and espoused her cause to the extent of issuing a writ of supplicavit

for a separate maintenance. Dr. Fawcett gradually yielded to pressure,

separated her property from his, that it might pass under her personal

and absolute control, and settled on her the sum of fifty-three pounds,

four shillings annually, as a full satisfaction for all her dower or

third part of his estate.

Mistress Fawcett was no longer a woman of consequence, for even her

personal income was curtailed by the great drought of 1737, and Nevis,

complaisant to the gallantry of the age, was scandalized at the novelty

of a public separation. But she was free, and she was the woman to feel

that freedom to her finger tips; she could live a life with no will in

it but her own, and she could bring up her little girl in an atmosphere

of peace and affection. She moved to an estate she owned on St.

Christopher and never saw John Fawcett again. He died a few years later,

leaving his diminished property to his children. Rachael's share was the

house in Charles Town.

The spot on which Rachael spent her childhood and brief youth was one of

the most picturesque on the mountain range of St. Christopher. Facing

the sea, the house stood on a lofty eminence, in the very shadow of

Mount Misery. Immediately behind the house were the high peaks of the

range, hardly less in pride than the cone of the great volcano. The

house was built on a ledge, but one could step from the terrace above

into an abrupt ravine, wrenched into its tortuous shape by earthquake

and flood, but dark for centuries with the immovable shades of a virgin

tropical forest. The Great House, with its spacious open galleries and

verandahs, was surrounded with stone terraces, overflowing with the

intense red and orange of the hybiscus and croton bush, the golden

browns and softer yellows of less ambitious plants, the sensuous tints

of the orchid, the high and glittering beauties of the palm and

cocoanut. The slopes to the coast were covered with cane-fields, their

bright young greens sharp against the dark blue of the sea. The ledge on

which the house was built terminated suddenly in front, but extended on

the left along a line of cliff above a chasm, until it sloped to the

road. On this flat eminence was an avenue of royal palms, which, with

the dense wood on the hill above it, was to mariners one of the most

familiar landmarks of the Island of "St. Kitts." From her verandah Mary

Fawcett could see, far down to the right, a large village of negro huts,

only the thatched African roofs visible among the long leaves of the

cocoanut palms with which the blacks invariably surround their

dwellings. Beyond was Brimstone Hill with its impregnable fortress. And

on the left, far out at sea, her purple heights and palm-fringed shores

deepening the exquisite blue of the Caribbean by day, a white ever

changing spirit in the twilight, and no more vestige of her under the

stars than had she sunk whence she came--Nevis. Mary Fawcett never set

foot on her again, but she learned to sit and study her with a whimsical

affection which was one of the few liberties she allowed her

imagination. But if the unhappiest years of her life had been spent

there, so had her fairest. She had loved her brilliant husband in her

youth, and all the social triumphs of a handsome and fortunate young

woman had been hers. In the deep calm which now intervened between the

two mental hurricanes of her life, she sometimes wondered if she had

exaggerated her past afflictions; and before she died she knew how

insignificant the tragedy of her own life had been.

Although Rachael was born when her parents were past their prime, the

vitality that was in her was concentrated and strong. It was not enough

to give her a long life, but while it lasted she was a magnificent

creature, and the end was abrupt; there was no slow decay. During her

childhood she lived in the open air, for except in the cold nights of a

brief winter only the jalousies were closed; and on that high shelf even

the late summer and early autumn were not insufferable. Exhausted as the

trade winds become, they give what little strength is in them to the

heights of their favourite isles, and during the rest of the year they

are so constant, even when storms rage in the North Atlantic, that Nevis

and St. Christopher never feel the full force of the sun, and the winter

nights are cold.

Rachael was four years old when her parents separated, and grew to

womanhood remembering nothing of her father and seeing little of her

kin, scattered far and wide. Her one unmarried sister, upon her return

from England, went almost immediately to visit Mrs. Lytton, and married

Thomas Mitchell, one of the wealthiest planters of St. Croix. Mary

Fawcett's children had not approved her course, for they remembered

their father as the most indulgent and charming of men, whose frequent

tempers were quickly forgotten; and year by year she became more wholly

devoted to the girl who clung to her with a passionate and uncritical

affection.

Clever and accomplished herself, and quick with ambition for her best

beloved child, she employed the most cultivated tutors on the Island to

instruct her in English, Latin, and French. Before Rachael was ten years

old, Mistress Fawcett had the satisfaction to discover that the little

girl possessed a distinguished mind, and took to hard study, and to _les

graces_, as naturally as she rode a pony over the hills or shot the reef

in her boat.

For several years the women of St. Christopher held aloof, but many of

the planters who had been guests at the Great House in Gingerland called

on Mistress Fawcett at once, and proffered advice and service. Of these

William Hamilton and Archibald Hamn became her staunch and intimate

friends. Mr. Hamn's estate adjoined hers, and his overlooker relieved

her of much care. Dr. James Hamilton, who had died in the year preceding

her formal separation, had been a close friend of her husband and

herself, and his brother hastened with assurance of his wish to serve

her. He was one of the eminent men of the Island, a planter and a member

of Council; also, a "doctor of physic." He carried Rachael safely

through her childhood complaints and the darkest of her days; and if his

was the hand which opened the gates between herself and history, who

shall say in the light of the glorified result that its master should

not sleep in peace?

In time his wife called, and his children and stepchildren brought a new

experience into the life of Rachael. She had been permitted to gambol

occasionally with the "pic'nees" of her mother's maids, but since her

fourth year had not spoken to a white child until little Catherine

Hamilton came to visit her one morning and brought Christiana Huggins of

Nevis. Mistress Huggins had known Mary Fawcett too well to call with

Mistress Hamilton, but sent Christiana as a peace offering. Mary's first

disposition was to pack the child off while Mistress Hamilton was

offering her embarrassed explanations; but Rachael clung to her new

treasure with such shrieks of protest that her mother, disconcerted by

this vigour of opposition to her will, permitted the intruder to remain.

The wives of other planters followed Mistress Hamilton, for in that soft

voluptuous climate, where the rush and fret of great cities are but a

witch's tale, disapproval dies early. They would have called long since

had they not been a trifle in awe of Nevis, more, perhaps, of Mistress

Fawcett's sharp tongue, then indolent. But when Mistress Hamilton

suddenly reminded them that they were Christians, and that Dr. Fawcett

was dead, they put on their London gowns, ordered out their coaches, and

called. Mary Fawcett received them with a courteous indifference. Her

resentment had died long since, and they seemed to her, with their

coaches and brocades and powdered locks, but the ghosts of the Nevis of

her youth. Her child, her estate, and her few tried friends absorbed

her. For the sake of her daughter's future, she ordered out her ancient

coach and made the round of the Island once a year. The ladies of St.

Kitts were as moderately punctilious.

And so the life of Rachael Fawcett for sixteen years passed uneventfully

enough. Her spirits were often very high, for she inherited the Gallic

buoyancy of her father as well as the brilliant qualities of his mind.

In the serious depths of her nature were strong passions and a tendency

to melancholy, the result no doubt of the unhappy conditions of her

birth. But her mother managed so to occupy her eager ambitious mind with

hard study that the girl had little acquaintance with herself. Her

English studies were almost as varied as a boy's, and in addition to her

accomplishments in the ancient and modern languages, she painted, and

sang, played the harp and guitar. Mary Fawcett, for reasons of her own,

never let her forget that she was the most educated girl on the Islands.

"I never was one to lie on a sofa all day and fan myself, while my

children sat on the floor with their blacks, and munched sugar-cane, or

bread and sling," she would remark superfluously. "All my daughters are

a credit to their husbands; but I mean that you shall be the most

brilliant woman in the Antilles."

The immediate consequences of Rachael's superior education were two: her

girl friends ceased to interest her, and ambitions developed in her

strong imaginative brain. In those days women so rarely distinguished

themselves individually that it is doubtful if Rachael had ever heard of

the phenomenon, and the sum of her worldly aspirations was a wealthy and

intellectual husband who would take her to live and to shine at foreign

courts. Her nature was too sweet and her mind too serious for egoism or

the pettier vanities, but she hardly could help being conscious of the

energy of her brain; and if she had passed through childhood in

ignorance of her beauty, she barely had entered her teens when her happy

indifference was dispelled; for the young planters besieged her gates.

Girls mature very early in the tropics, and at fourteen Rachael Fawcett

was the unresponsive toast from Basseterre to Sandy Point. Her height

was considerable, and she had the round supple figure of a girl who has

lived the out-door life in moderation; full of strength and grace, and

no exaggeration of muscle. She had a fine mane of reddish fair hair, a

pair of sparkling eager gray eyes which could go black with passion or

even excited interest, a long nose so sensitively cut that she could

express any mood she chose with her nostrils, which expanded quite

alarmingly when she flew into a temper, and a full well-cut mouth. Her

skin had the whiteness and transparency peculiar to the women of St.

Kitts and Nevis; her head and brow were nobly modelled, and the former

she carried high to the day of her death. It was set so far back on her

shoulders and on a line so straight that it would look haughty in her

coffin. What wonder that the young planters besieged her gates, that her

aspirations soared high, that Mary Fawcett dreamed of a great destiny

for this worshipped child of her old age? As for the young planters,

they never got beyond the gates, for a dragon stood there. Mistress

Fawcett had no mind to run the risk of early entanglements. When Rachael

was old enough she would be provided with a distinguished husband from

afar, selected by the experienced judgement of a woman of the world.

But Mary Fawcett, still hot-headed and impulsive in her second

half-century, was more prone to err in crises than her daughter. In

spite of the deeper passions of her nature, Rachael, except when under

the lash of strong excitement, had a certain clearness of insight and

deliberation of judgement which her mother lacked to her last day.

III

Rachael had just eaten the last of her sixteenth birthday sweets when,

at a ball at Government House, she met John Michael Levine. It was her

début; she was the fairest creature in the room, and, in the idiom of

Dr. Hamilton, the men besieged her as were she Brimstone Hill in

possession of the French. The Governor and the Captain General had

asked her to dance, and even the women smiled indulgently, disarmed by

so much innocent loveliness.

Levine, albeit a Dane, and as colourless as most of his countrymen, was

her determined suitor before the night was half over. It may be that he

was merely dazzled by the regal position to which the young men had

elevated her, and that his cold blood quickened at the thought of

possessing what all men desired, but he was as immediate and persistent

in his suit as any excitable creole in the room. But Rachael gave him

scant attention that night. She may have been intellectual, but she was

also a girl, and it was her first ball. She was dazzled and happy,

delighted with her conquests, oblivious to the depths of her nature.

The next day Levine, strong in the possession of a letter from Mr. Peter

Lytton,--for a fortnight forgotten,--presented himself at Mistress

Fawcett's door, and was admitted. The first call was brief and

perfunctory, but he came the next day and the next. Rachael, surprised,

but little interested, and longing for her next ball, strummed the harp

at her mother's command and received his compliments with indifference.

A week after his first call Mary Fawcett drove into town and spent an

hour with the Governor. He told her that Levine had brought him a

personal letter from the Governor of St. Croix, and that he was wealthy

and well born. He was also, in his Excellency's opinion, a distinguished

match even for the most beautiful and accomplished girl on the Island.

Peter Lytton had mentioned in his letter that Levine purposed buying an

estate on St. Croix and settling down to the life of a planter. On the

following day Levine told her that already he was half a West Indian, so

fascinated was he with the life and the climate, but that if she would

favour his suit he would take Rachael to Copenhagen as often as she

wished for the life of the world.

Mary Fawcett made up her mind that he should marry Rachael, and it

seemed to her that no mother had ever come to a wiser decision. Her

health was failing, and it was her passionate wish not only to leave her

child encircled by the protection of a devoted husband, but to realize

the high ambitions she had cherished from the hour she foresaw that

Rachael was to be an exceptional woman.

Levine had not seen Rachael on the morning when he asked for her hand,

and he called two days later to press his suit and receive his answer.

Mistress Fawcett told him that she had made up her own mind and would

perform that office for Rachael at once, but thought it best that he

should absent himself until the work was complete. Levine, promised an

answer on the morrow, took himself off, and Mary Fawcett sent for her

daughter.

Rachael entered the library with a piece of needlework in her hand. Her

mind was not on her books these days, for she had gone to another ball;

but her hands had been too well brought up to idle, however her brain

might dream. Mary Fawcett by this time wore a large cap with a frill,

and her face, always determined and self-willed, was growing austere

with years and much pain: she suffered frightfully at times with

rheumatism, and her apprehension of the moment when it should attack her

heart reconciled her to the prospect of brief partings from her

daughter. Her eyes still burned with the fires of an indiminishable

courage however; she read the yellow pages of her many books as rapidly

as in her youth, and if there was a speck of dust on her mahogany

floors, polished with orange juice, she saw it. Her negroes adored her

but trembled when she raised her voice, and Rachael never had disobeyed

her. She expected some dissatisfaction, possibly a temper, but no

opposition.

Rachael smiled confidently and sat down. She wore one of the thin white

linens, which, like the other women of the Islands, she put aside for

heavier stuffs on state occasions only, and her hair had tumbled from

its high comb and fallen upon her shoulders. Mary Fawcett sighed as she

looked at her. She was too young to marry, and had it not been for the

haunting terror of leaving her alone in the world, the Dane, well

circumstanced as he was, would have been repulsed with contumely.

"Rachael," said her mother, gently, "put down your tapestry. I have

something to say to you, something of great import."

Rachael dropped her work and met her mother's eyes. They were hard with

will and definite purpose. In an instant she divined what was coming,

and stood up. Her face could not turn any whiter, but her eyes were

black at once, and her nostrils spread.

"It cannot be possible that you wish me to marry that man--Levine," she

stammered. "I do not know how I can think of such a thing--but I do--it

seems to me I see it in your eyes."

"Yes," said her mother, with some uneasiness. "I do; and my reasons are

good--"

"I won't listen to them!" shrieked Rachael. "I won't marry him! His

whiteness makes me sick! I know he is not a good man! I feel it! I never

could be happy with him! I never could love him!"

Mary Fawcett looked at her aghast, and, for a moment, without answering;

she saw her own will asserting itself, heard it on those piercing notes,

and she knew that it sprang from stronger and more tragic foundations

than had ever existed in her own nature; but believing herself to be

right, she determined to prevail.

"What do you know about men, my darling?" she said soothingly. "You have

been dreaming romantic dreams, and young Levine does not resemble the

hero. That is all. Women readjust themselves marvellously quick. When

you are married to him, and he is your tender and devoted husband, you

will forget your prince--who, no doubt, is dark and quite splendid. But

we never meet our princes, my dear, and romantic love is only one of the

things we live for--and for that we live but a little while. Levine is

all that I could wish for you. He is wealthy, aristocratic, and

chivalrously devoted."

Her long speech had given her daughter time to cool, but Rachael

remained standing, and stared defiantly into the eyes which had relaxed

somewhat with anxious surprise.

"I _feel_ that he is not a good man," she repeated sullenly, "and I hate

him. I should die if he touched me. I have not danced with him. His

hands are so white and soft, and his eyes never change, and his mouth

reminds me of a shark's."

"Levine is a remarkably handsome man," exclaimed Mistress Fawcett,

indignantly. "You have trained your imagination to some purpose, it

seems. Forget your poets when he comes to-morrow, and look at him

impartially. And cannot he give you all that you so much desire, my

ambitious little daughter? Do you no longer want to go to Europe? to

court? to be _grande dame_ and converse with princes?"

"Oh, yes," said Rachael. "I want that as much as ever; but I want to

love the man. I want to be happy."

"Well, _do_ love him," exclaimed her mother with energy. "Your father

was twenty years older than myself, and a Frenchman, but I made up my

mind to love him, and I did--for a good many years."

"You had to leave him in the end. Do you wish me to do the same?"

"You will do nothing of the kind. There never was but one John Fawcett."

"I don't love this Levine, and I never shall love him. I don't believe

at all that that kind of feeling can be created by the brain, that it

responds to nothing but the will. I shall not love that way. I may be

ignorant, but I know that."

"You have read too much Shakespeare! Doubtless you imagine yourself one

of his heroines--Juliet? Rosalind?"

"I have never imagined myself anybody but Rachael Fawcett. I _cannot_

imagine myself Rachael Levine. But I know something of myself--I have

read and thought enough for that. I could love someone--but not this

bleached repulsive Dane. Why will you not let me wait? It is my right.

No, you need not curl your lip--I am _not_ a little girl. I may be

sixteen. I may be without experience in the world, but you have been

almost my only companion, and until just now I have talked with

middle-aged men only, and much with them. I had no real childhood. You

have educated my brain far beyond my years. To-day I feel twenty, and it

seems to me that I see far down into myself--much deeper than you do. I

tell you that if I marry this man, I shall be the most hopeless wretch

on earth."

Mary Fawcett was puzzled and distressed, but she did not waver for a

moment. The cleverest of girls could not know what was best for herself,

and the mother who permitted her daughter to take her life into her own

hands was a poor creature indeed.

"Listen, my dear child," she said tenderly, "you have always trusted in

me, believed me. I _know_ that this is a wise and promising marriage for

you. And--" she hesitated, but it was time to play her trump. "You know

that my health is not good, but you do not know how bad it is. Dr.

Hamilton says that the rheumatism may fly to my heart at any moment, and

I _must_ see you married--"

She had ejaculated the last words; Rachael had shrieked, and flung

herself upon her, her excitement at this sudden and cruel revelation

bursting out in screams and sobs and a torrent of tears. Her mother had

seen her excited and in brief ungovernable tempers, but she never had

suspected that she was capable of such passion as this; and, much

disturbed, she led her off to bed, and sent for her advisers, Archibald

Hamn and Dr. Hamilton.

IV

Mr. Hamn responded at once to the widow's call, his adjacence giving him

the advantage of Dr. Hamilton, of whom he was a trifle jealous. He was

an old bachelor and had proposed to Mistress Fawcett--a captivating

woman till her last hour--twice a year since her husband's death. But

matrimony had been a bitter medicine for Mary after her imagination had

ceased to sweeten it, and her invariable answer to her several suitors

was the disquieting assertion that if ever she was so rash as to take

another husband, she certainly should kill him. Archibald was not the

man to conquer her prejudices, although she loved the sterling in him

and attached him to her by every hook of friendship. He was a dark

nervous little man, spare as most West Indians, used a deal of snuff,

and had a habit of pushing back his wig with a jerking forearm when in

heated controversy with Dr. Hamilton, or expounding matrimony to the

widow.

Dr. Hamilton, for whose arrival Mr. Hamn was kept waiting,--Mistress

Fawcett tarried until her daughter fell asleep,--was a large square man,

albeit lean, and only less nervous than the widow's suitor. His white

locks were worn in a queue, a few escaping to soften his big powerful

face. Both men wore white linen, but Dr. Hamilton was rarely seen

without his riding-boots, his advent, except in Mistress Fawcett's

house, heralded by the clanking of spurs. Mary would have none of his

spurs on her mahogany floors, and the doctor never yet had been able to

dodge the darkey who stood guard at her doorstep.

The two men exchanged mild surmises as to the cause of the summons; but

as similar summons occurred when newly wedded blacks were pounding each

other's heads, provoked thereto by the galling chain of decency, or an

obeah doctor had tied a sinister warning to Mistress Fawcett's knocker,

neither of the gentlemen anticipated serious work. When Mary Fawcett

entered the long room, however, both forgot the dignity of their years

and position, and ran forward.

Dr. Hamilton lifted her as if she had been a palm leaf, and laid her on

the sofa. He despatched Mr. Hamn for a glass of Spanish port, and

forbade her to speak until he gave permission.

But Mary Fawcett made brief concessions to the weakness of the flesh.

She drank the wine, then sat up and told her story.

"Oh, Mary," said Dr. Hamilton, sadly, "why do you ask our advice? Your

ear may listen, but never your mind. If it were a matter of business, we

might even be allowed to act for you; but in a domestic--"

"What?" cried Mistress Fawcett; "have I not asked your advice a thousand

times about Rachael, and have I not always taken it?"

"I recall many of the conversations, but I doubt if you could recall the

advice. However, if you want it this time, I will give it to you. Don't

force the girl to marry against her will--assuredly not if the man is

repulsive to her. For all your brains you are a baby about men and

women. Rachael knows more by instinct. She is an extraordinary girl, and

should be allowed time to make her own choice. If you are afraid of

death, leave her to me. I will legally adopt her now, if you choose--"

"Yes, and should you die suddenly, your wife would think Rachael one too

many, what with your brood and the Edwardses to boot." Mistress Fawcett

was nettled by his jibe at the limit of her wisdom. "I shall leave her

with a husband. To that I have made up my mind. What have you to say,

Archibald?"

This was an advantage which Mr. Hamn never failed to seize; he always

agreed with the widow; Dr. Hamilton never did. Moreover, he was

sincerely convinced that--save, perhaps, in matters of money--Mary

Fawcett could not err.

"I like the appearance of this Dane," he said, reassuringly, "and his

little country has a valiant history. This young man is quite

prince-like in his bearing, and his extreme fairness is but one more

evidence of his high breeding--"

"He looks like a shark's belly," interrupted Dr. Hamilton, "I don't

wonder he sickens Rachael. I have nothing against him but his

appearance, but if he came after Kitty I'd throw him out by the seat of

his breeches."

"He never looked at Kitty, at Government House, nor at Mistress

Montgomerie's," cried Mary. "You are jealous, Will, because Rachael has

carried off the foreign prize."

Dr. Hamilton laughed, then added seriously, "I am too fond of the girl

to forbear to give my advice. Let her choose her own husband. If you

dare to cut out her future, as if it were one of her new frocks, you

have more courage than I. She has more in her than twenty women. Let her

alone for the next five years, then she will have no one to answer to

but herself. Otherwise, my lady, you may find yourself holding your

breath in a hurricane track, with no refuge from the storm you've

whipped up but five feet underneath. If you won't give her to me, there

are her sisters. They are all wealthy--"

"They are years older than Rachael and would not understand her at all."

"I can't see why they should not understand her as well as a strange

man."

"He will be her husband, madly in love with her."

"Levine will never be madly in love with anybody. Besides, it would not

matter to Rachael if her sisters did not understand her; she has too

strong a brain not to be independent of the ordinary female nonsense;

moreover, she has a fine disposition and her own property. But if her

husband did not understand her,--in other words, if their tastes proved

as opposite as their temperaments,--it would make a vast deal of

difference. Sisters can be got rid of, but husbands--well, you know the

difficulties."

"I will think over all you have said," replied Mary, with sudden

humility; she had great respect for the doctor. "But don't you say a

word to Rachael."

"I'm far too much afraid of you for that. But I wish that Will were home

or Andrew old enough. I'd set one of them on to cut this Dane out. Well,

I must go; send for me whenever you are in need of advice," and with a

parting laugh he strode out of the house and roared to the darkey to

come and fasten his spurs.

Archibald Hamn, who foresaw possibilities in the widow's loneliness, and

who judged men entirely by their manners, remained to assure Mistress

Fawcett of the wisdom of her choice, and to offer his services as

mediator. Mary laughed and sent him home. She wrote to Levine not to

call until she bade him, and for several days pondered deeply upon her

daughter's opposition and Dr. Hamilton's advice. The first result of

this perturbing distrust in her own wisdom was a violent attack of

rheumatism in the region of her heart; and while she believed herself to

be dying, she wrung from her distracted daughter a promise to marry

Levine. She recovered from the attack, but concluded that, the promise

being won, it would be folly to give it back. Moreover, the desire to

see her daughter married had been aggravated by her brush with death,

and after another interview with Levine, in which he promised all that

the fondest mother could demand, she opened her chests of fine linen.

Rachael submitted. She dared not excite her mother. Her imagination,

always vivid though it was, refused to picture the end she dreaded; and

she never saw Levine alone. His descriptions of life in Copenhagen

interested her, and when her mother expatiated upon the glittering

destiny which awaited her, ambition and pride responded, although

precisely as they had done in her day dreams. She found herself

visioning Copenhagen, jewels, brocades, and courtiers; but she realized

only when she withdrew to St. Kitts, that Levine had not entered the

dream, even to pass and bend the knee. Often she laughed aloud in

merriment. As the wedding-day approached, she lost her breath more than

once, and her skin chilled. During the last few days before the ceremony

she understood for the first time that it was inevitable. But time--it

was now three months since the needlewomen were set at the

trousseau--and her unconscious acceptance of the horrid fact had trimmed

her spirit to philosophy, altered the habit of her mind. She saw her

mother radiant, received the personal congratulations of every family on

the Island. Her sisters came from St. Croix, and made much of the little

girl who was beginning life so brilliantly; beautiful silks and laces

had come from New York, and Levine had given her jewels, which she tried

on her maid every day because she thought the mustee's tawny skin

enhanced their lustre. She was but a child in spite of her intellect.

Her union with the Dane came to appear as one of the laws of life, and

she finished by accepting it as one accepted an earthquake or a

hurricane. Moreover, she was profoundly innocent.

V

Mary Fawcett accompanied the Levines to Copenhagen, but returned to St.

Christopher by a ship which left Denmark a month later, being one of

those women who picture their terrestrial affairs in a state of

dissolution while deprived of their vigilance. She vowed that the North

had killed her rheumatism, and turned an absent ear to Rachael's appeal

to tarry until Levine was ready to return to St. Croix. She remained

long enough in Denmark, however, to see her daughter presented at court,

and installed with all the magnificence that an ambitious mother could

desire. There was not a misgiving in her mind, for Rachael, if somewhat

inanimate, could not be unhappy with an uxorious husband and the world

at her feet; and although for some time after her marriage she had

behaved like a naughty child caught in a trap, and been a sore trial to

her mother and Mr. Levine, since her arrival in Copenhagen she had

deported herself most becomingly and indulged in no more tantrums.

Levine had conducted himself admirably during his trying honeymoon. Upon

his arrival in Copenhagen he had littered his wife's boudoir with

valuable gifts, and exhibited the beauty he had won with a pride very

gratifying to his mother-in-law. In six months he was to sail for his

estates on St. Croix, and pay an immediate visit to St. Kitts, whence

Mistress Fawcett would return with her daughter for a sojourn of several

months. She returned to her silent home the envy of many Island mothers.

Rachael wrote by every ship, and Mary Fawcett pondered over these

letters, at first with perplexity, finally with a deep uneasiness. Her

daughter described life in Denmark, the court and society, her new gowns

and jewels, her visits to country houses, the celebrities she met. But

her letters were literary and impersonal, nor was there in them a trace

of her old energy of mind and vivacity of spirit. She never mentioned

Levine's name, nor made an intimate allusion to herself.

"Can she no longer love me?" thought Mary Fawcett at last and in terror;

"this child that I have loved more than the husband of my youth and all

the other children I have borne? It cannot be that she is unhappy. She

would tell me so in a wild outburst--indeed she would have run home to

me long since. Levine will never control her. Heaven knows what would

have happened if I had not gone on that wedding-journey. But she settled

down so sweetly, and I made sure she would have loved him by this. It is

the only thing to do if you have to live with one of the pests. Perhaps

that is it--she has given him all her love and has none left for me."

And at this she felt so lonely and bitter that she almost accepted

Archibald Hamn when he called an hour later. But in the excitement of

his risen hopes his wig fell on the floor, and she took offence at his

yellow and sparsely settled scalp.

There were few gleams of humour left in life for Mary Fawcett. Rachael's

letters ceased abruptly. Her mother dared not sail for Denmark, lest she

pass the Levines on their way to St. Croix. She managed to exist through

two distracted months, then received a note from her daughter, Mrs.

Mitchell.

"Rachael is Here," it ran, "but refuses to see Us. I do not know what to

think. I drove over as soon as I heard of Their arrival. Levine received

Me and was as Courteous and Polished as ever, but Rachael had a

_Headache_ and did not come out. Mary and I have been there Twice since,

and with the _same_ result. Levine assured us that he had begged her to

see her Sisters, but that She is in a very _low_ and _melancholy_ state,

owing doubtless to her Condition. He seemed much _concerned_, but More,

I could not help thinking, because he feared to lose an Heir than from

any _love_ for my little Sister. Peter and Mary agree with Me, that _You

had best come here_ if You can."

Mary Fawcett, whatever her foibles, had never failed to spring upright

under the stiffest blows of her life. Ignoring her physical pains, which

had been aggravated by the mental terrors of the last two months, and

sternly commanding the agony in her heart to be silent, she despatched a

note at once to Dr. Hamilton,--Archibald Hamn was in Barbados,--asking

him to charter a schooner, if no ship were leaving that day for the

Danish Islands, and accompany her to St. Croix. He sent her word that

they could sail on the following morning if the wind were favourable,

and the black women packed her boxes and carried them on their heads to

Basseterre.

That evening, as Mary Fawcett was slowly walking down the avenue,

leaning heavily on her cane, too wretched to rest or sleep, a ship

flying the German colours sailed past. She wondered if it had stopped at

St. Croix, then forgot it in the terrible speculations which her will

strove to hold apart from her nerves.

Wearied in body, she returned to the house and sat by the window of her

room, striving to compose her mind for sleep. She was forcing herself to

jot down instructions for her housekeeper, whom she had taught to read,

when she heard a chaise and a pair of galloping horses enter the avenue.

A moment later, Dr. Hamilton's voice was roaring for a slave to come and

hold his horses. Then it lowered abruptly and did not cease.

Mary Fawcett knew that Rachael had come to her, and without her husband.

For a moment she had a confused idea that the earth was rocking, and

congratulated herself that the house was too high for a tidal wave to

reach. Then Dr. Hamilton entered with Rachael in his arms and laid her

on the bed. He left at once, saying that he would return in the morning.

Mary Fawcett had not risen, and her chair faced the bed. Rachael lay

staring at her mother until Mary found her voice and begged her to

speak. She knew that her hunger must wait until she had stood at the bar

and received her sentence.

Rachael told her mother the story of her married life from the day she

had been left alone with John Levine,--a story of unimaginable horrors.

Like many cold men to whom the pleasures of the world are, nevertheless,

easy, Levine was a voluptuary and cruel. Had his child been safely born,

there would have been no measure in his brutality. Rachael had watched

for her opportunity, and one night when he had been at a state function

in Christianstadt, too secure in her apparent apathy to lock her door,

she had bribed a servant to drive her to Frederikstadt, and boarded the

ship her maid had ascertained was about to leave. She knew that he would

not follow her, for there was one person on earth he feared, and that

was Mary Fawcett. He would not have returned to St. Croix, had his

investments been less heavy; but on his estates he was lord, and had no

mind that his mother-in-law should set foot on them while he had slaves

to hold his gates.

Mary Fawcett listened to the horrid story, at first with a sort of

frantic wonder, for of the evil of life she had known nothing; then her

clear mind grasped it, her stoicism gave way, and she shrieked and raved

in such agony of soul that she had no fear of hell thereafter. Rachael

had to rise from the bed and minister to her, and the terrified blacks

ran screaming about the place, believing that their mistress had been

cursed.

She grew calm in time, but her face was puckered like an old apple, and

her eyes had lost their brilliancy for ever. And it was days before she

realized that her limbs still ached.

Rachael never opened her lips on the subject again. She went back to bed

and clung to her mother and Dr. Hamilton until her child was born. Then

for three months she recognized no one, and Dr. Hamilton, with all his

skill, did not venture to say whether or not her mind would live again.

The child was a boy, and as blond as its father. Mary Fawcett stood its

presence in the house for a month, then packed it off to St. Croix. She

received a curt acknowledgment from Levine, and an intimation that she

had saved herself much trouble. As for Rachael, he would have her back

when he saw fit. She wrote an appeal to the Captain-General and he sent

her word that the Danes would never bombard Brimstone Hill, and there

was no other way by which Levine could get her daughter while one of her

friends ruled the Leeward Caribbees.

Many thoughts flitted through the brain of Mary Fawcett during that long

vigil. Her mind for the first time dwelt with kindness, almost with

softness, on the memory of her husband. Beside this awful Dane his

shadow was god-like. He had been high-minded and a gentleman in his

worst tantrums, and there was no taint of viciousness in him. A doubt

grew in her brain, grew to such disquieting proportions that she

sometimes deserted Rachael abruptly and went out to fatigue herself in

the avenue. Had she done wrong to leave him alone in his old age, to

bear, undiverted, the burden of a disease whose torments she now could

fully appreciate, to die alone in that great house with only his slaves

to tend him? It had seemed to her when she left him that human nature

could stand no more, and that she was justified; but she was an old

woman now and knew that all things can be endured. When that picture of

his desolate last years and lonely death had remorselessly shaped itself

in her imagination, and she realized that it would hang there until her

hands were folded, she suffered one more hour of agony and abasement,

then caught at the stoicism of her nature, accepted her new dole, and

returned to her daughter.

VI

Rachael's mind struggled past its eclipse, but her recovery was very

slow. Even after she recognized her mother and Dr. Hamilton, she sat for

months staring at Nevis, neither opening a book nor looking round upon

the life about her. But she was only eighteen, and her body grew strong

and vital again. Gradually it forced its energies into her brain,

released her spirit from its apathy, buried memory under the fresher

impressions of time. A year from the day of her return, if there were

deep and subtle changes in her face and carriage, which added ten years

to her appearance, she was more beautiful to experienced eyes than when

she had flowered for the humming-birds. She took up her studies where

she had dropped them, a little of her old buoyancy revived; and if her

girlishness was buried with ideals and ambitions, her intellect was

clear and strong and her character more finely balanced. She flew into

no more rages, boxed her attendants' ears at rarer intervals, and the

deliberation which had seemed an anomaly in her character before, became

a dominant trait, and rarely was conquered by impulse. When it worked

alone her mother laid down her weapons, edged as they still were, and

when impulse flew to its back, Mary Fawcett took refuge in oblivion. But

she made no complaint, for she and her daughter were more united than

when the young girl had seemed more fit to be her grandchild.

The Governor of St. Christopher had written a letter to his friend, the

Governor of St. Croix, which had caused that estimable functionary to

forbid Levine the door of Government House. Levine could not endure

social ostracism. He left St. Croix immediately, and took his son Peter

with him. To this child Rachael never referred, and her mother doubted

if she remembered anything associated with its impending birth. Perhaps

she believed it dead. At all events, she made no sign. Except that she

was called Mistress Levine, there was nothing in her outer life to

remind her that for two years the markers in her favourite books had not

been shifted. She had studied music and painting with the best masters

in Copenhagen, and in the chests which were forwarded by her sisters

from St. Croix, there were many new books. She refused to return to

society, and filled her time without its aid; for not only did she have

the ample resources of her mind, her mother, the frequent companionship

of Dr. Hamilton and four or five other men of his age and attainments,

but she returned to the out-door life with enthusiasm. On her spirit was

an immovable shadow, in her mind an indelible stain, but she had strong

common sense and a still stronger will. An experience which would have

embittered a less complete nature, or sent a lighter woman to the

gallantries of society, gave new force and energy to her character, even

while saddening it. To the past she never willingly gave a thought;

neither was she for a moment unconscious of its ghost.

VII

Two years passed. Rachael was twenty, a beautiful and stately creature,

more discussed and less seen than any woman on the islands of Nevis and

St. Christopher. Occasionally Christiana Huggins paid her a visit, or

Catherine Hamilton rode over for the day; but although Christiana at

least, loved her to the end, both were conscious of her superiority of

mind and experience, and the old intimacy was not resumed.

Dr. Hamilton had used all his influence in the Council to promote a

special bill of divorce, for he wanted Rachael to be free to marry

again. He had no faith in the permanent resources of the intellect for a

young and seductive woman, and he understood Rachael very thoroughly.

The calm might be long, but unless Levine died or could be legally

disposed of, she would give the Islands a heavier shock than when the

innovation of Mary Fawcett had set them gabbling. Against the

conservatism of his colleagues, however, he could make no headway, and

both the Governor and Captain-General disapproved of a measure which

England had never sanctioned.

But Dr. Hamilton and her mother were more disturbed at the failure of

the bill than Rachael. Time had lifted the shadow of her husband from

the race, but, never having loved, even a little, her imagination

modelled no pleasing features upon the ugly skull of matrimony. It is

true that she sometimes thought of herself as a singularly lonely being,

and allowed her mind to picture love and its companionships. As time

dimmed another picture she caught herself meditating upon woman's chief

inheritance, and moving among the shadows of the future toward that

larger and vitalizing part of herself which every woman fancies is on

earth in search of her. When she returned from these wanderings she

sternly reminded herself that her name was Levine, and that no woman

after such an escape had the right to expect more. She finally compelled

herself to admit that her avoidance of society was due to prudence as

well as to her stern devotion to intellect, then studied harder than

ever.

But it is a poor fate that waits upon the gathering together of many

people.

VIII

Rachael was riding home one afternoon from Basseterre, where she had

been purchasing summer lawns and cambrics. It was March, and the winter

sun had begun to use its summer fuel; but the trades blew softly, and

there was much shade on the road above the sea. There was one long

stretch, however, where not a tree grew, and Rachael drew rein for a

moment before leaving the avenue of tamarinds which had rustled above

her head for a mile or more. Although it was a hot scene that lay before

her, it was that which, when away from home, for some reason best known

to her memory, had always been first to rise. The wide pale-gray road

rose gradually for a long distance, dipped, and rose again. On either

side were cane-fields, their tender greens sharp against the deep hard

blue of the sea on the left, rising to cocoanut groves and the dark

heights of the mountains above the road. Far away, close to the sea, was

Brimstone Hill, that huge isolated rock so near in shape to the crater

of Mount Misery. Its fortifications showed their teeth against the faded

sky, and St. Christopher slept easily while tentative conquerors

approached, looked hard at this Gibraltar of the West Indies, and sailed

away.

But there scarcely was a sail on the sea to-day. Its blue rose and fell,

in that vast unbroken harmony which quickens the West Indian at times

into an intolerable sense of his isolation. Rachael recalled how she had

stared at it in childish resentment, wondering if a mainland really lay

beyond, if Europe were a myth. She did not care if she never set foot on

a ship again, and her ambitions were in the grave with her desire for a

wealthy and intellectual husband.

On the long road, rising gray and hot between the bright green

cane-fields, horsemen approached, and a number of slave women moved

slowly: women with erect rigid backs balancing large baskets or stacks

of cane on their heads, the body below the waist revolving with a

pivotal motion which suggests an anatomy peculiar to the tropics. They

had a dash of red about them somewhere, and their turbans were white.

Rachael's imagination never gave her St. Kitts without its slave women,

the "pic'nees" clinging to their hips as they bore their burdens on the

road or bent over the stones in the river. They belonged to its

landscape, with the palms and the cane-fields, the hot gray roads, and

the great jewel of the sea.

Rachael left the avenue and rode onward. One of the horsemen took off

his Spanish sombrero and waved it. She recognized Dr. Hamilton and shook

her whip at him. He and his companion spurred their horses, and a moment

later Rachael and James Hamilton had met.

"An unexpected pleasure for me, this sudden descent of my young

kinsman," said the doctor, "but a great one, for he brings me news of

all in Scotland, and he saw Will the day before he sailed."

"It is too hot to stand here talking," said Rachael. "Come home with me

to a glass of Spanish port, and cake perhaps."

The doctor was on his way to a consultation, but he ordered his relative

to go and pay his respects to Mistress Fawcett, and rode on whistling.

The two he had recklessly left to their own devices exchanged

platitudes, and covertly examined each other with quick admiration.

There are dark Scots, and Hamilton was one of them. Although tall and

slight, he was knit with a close and peculiar elegance, which made him

look his best on a horse and in white linen. His face was burnt to the

hue of brick-dust by the first quick assault of the tropic sun, but it

was a thin face, well shaped, in spite of prominent cheek bones, and set

with the features of long breeding; and it was mobile, fiery, impetuous,

and very intelligent: ancestral coarseness had been polished fine long

since.

They left the road and mounted toward the dark avenue of the Fawcett

estate, Rachael wondering if her mother would be irritated at the

informality of the stranger's first call; he should have arrived in

state with Dr. Hamilton at the hour of five. Perhaps it was to postpone

the moment of explanation that she permitted her horse to walk, even

after they had reached the level of the avenue, and finally to crop the

grass while she and Hamilton dismounted and sat down in a heavy grove of

tamarinds on the slope of the hill.

"I'm just twenty-one and have my own way to make," he was telling her.

"There are three before me, so I couldn't afford the army, and as I've a

fancy for foreign lands, I've come out here to be a merchant. I have so

many kinsmen in this part of the world, and they've all succeeded so

well, I thought they'd be able to advise me how best to turn over the

few guineas I have. My cousin, the doctor, has taken me in hand, and if

I have any business capacity I shall soon find it out. But I ached for

the army, and failing that, I'd have liked being a scholar--as I know

you are, by your eyes."

His Scotch accent was not unlike that of the West Indians, particularly

of the Barbadians; but his voice, although it retained the huskiness of

the wet North, had, somewhere in its depths, a peculiar metallic quality

which startled Rachael every time it rang out, and was the last of all

memories to linger, when memories were crumbling in a brain that could

stand no more.

How it happened, Rachael spent the saner hours of the morrow attempting

to explain, but they sat under the tamarinds until the sun went down,

and Nevis began to robe for the night. Once they paused in their

desultory talk and listened to the lovely chorus of a West Indian

evening, that low incessant ringing of a million tiny bells. The bells

hung in the throats of nothing more picturesque than grasshoppers,

serpents, lizards, and frogs so small as to be almost invisible, but

they rang with a harmony that the inherited practice of centuries had

given them. And beyond was the monotonous accompaniment of the sea on

the rocks. Hamilton lived to be an old man, and he never left the West

Indies; but sometimes, at long and longer intervals, he found himself

listening to that Lilliputian orchestra, his attention attracted to it,

possibly, by a stranger; and then he remembered this night, and the

woman for whom he would have sacrificed earth and immortality had he

been lord of them.

Heaven knows what they talked about. While it was light they stared out

at the blue sea or down on the rippling cane-fields, not daring to

exchange more than a casual and hasty glance. Both knew that they should

have separated the moment they met, but neither had the impulse nor the

intention to leave the shade of the wood; and when the brief twilight

fell and the moon rose, there still was Nevis, and after her the many

craft to divert their gaze. Hamilton was honourable and shy, and Rachael

was a woman of uncommon strength of character and had been brought up by

a woman of austere virtue. These causes held them apart for a time, but

one might as well have attempted to block two comets rushing at each

other in the same orbit. The magnetism of the Inevitable embraced them

and knit their inner selves together, even while they sat decorously

apart. Rachael had taken off her hat at once, and even after it grew

dark in their arbour, Hamilton fancied he could see the gleam of her

hair. Her eyes were startled and brilliant, and her nostrils quivered

uneasily, but she defined none of the sensations that possessed her but

the overwhelming recrudescence of her youth. It had seemed to her that

it flamed from its ashes before Dr. Hamilton finished his formal words

of introduction, and all its forgotten hopes and impulses, timidity and

vagueness, surged through her brain during those hours beside the

stranger, submerging the memory of Levine. Indeed, she felt even younger

than before maturity so suddenly had been thrust upon her; for in those

old days she had been almost as severely intellectual as yesterday, and

when she had dreamed of the future, it had been with the soberness of an

overtaxed brain. But to-day even the world seemed young again. She

fancied she could hear the unquiet pulses of the Island, so long grown

old, and Nevis had never looked so fair. She hardly was conscious of her

womanhood, only of that possessing sense of happiness in youth. As for

Hamilton, he had never felt otherwise than young, although he was a

college-bred man, something of a scholar, and he had seen more or less

of the world since his boyhood. But the intensity and ardour of his

nature had received no check, neither were they halfway on their

course; and he had never loved. It had seemed to him that the Island

opened and a witch came out, and in those confused hours he hardly knew

whether she were good or bad, his ideal woman or his ideal devil; but he

loved her. He was as pale as his sunburn would permit him to be, and his

hands were clasped tightly about his knees, when relief came in the

shape of Mary Fawcett.

Her daughter's horse had gone home and taken the stranger with him, and

Mistress Fawcett, with quick suspicion, new as it was, started at once

down the avenue. Rachael heard the familiar tapping of her mother's

stick, hastily adjusted her hat, and managed to reach the road with

Hamilton before her mother turned its bend.

Mary Fawcett understood and shivered with terror. She was far from being

her imperious self as her daughter presented the stranger and remarked

that he was a cousin of Dr. Hamilton, characteristically refraining from

apology or explanation.

"Well," she said, "the doctor will doubtless bring you to call some day.

I will send your horse to you. Say good evening to the stranger,

Rachael, and come home." She was one of the most hospitable women in the

Caribbees, and this was the kinsman of her best friend, but she longed

for power to exile him out of St. Kitts that night.

Hamilton lifted his hat, and Rachael followed her mother. She was cold

and frightened, and Levine's white malignant face circled about her.

Her mother requested her support, and she almost carried the light

figure to the house. Mistress Fawcett sent a slave after Hamilton's

horse, then went to her room and wrote a note to Dr. Hamilton, asking

him to call on the following day and to come alone. The two women did

not meet again that night.

But there is little privacy in the houses of St. Kitts and Nevis. Either

the upper part of almost every room is built of ornamental lattice-work,

or the walls are set with numerous jalousies, that can be closed when a

draught is undesirable but conduct the slightest sound. Rachael's room

adjoined her mother's. She knew that the older woman was as uneasily

awake as herself, though from vastly different manifestations of the

same cause. At four o'clock, when the guinea fowl were screeching like

demons, and had awakened the roosters and the dogs to swell the infernal

chorus of a West Indian morning, Rachael sat up in bed and laughed

noiselessly.

"What a night!" she thought. "And for what? A man who companioned me for

four hours as no other man had ever done? and who made me feel as if the

world had turned to fire and light? It may have been but a mood of my

own, it is so long since I have talked with a man near to my own

age--and he is so near!--and yet so real a man.... No one could call him

handsome, for he looks like a flayed Carib, and I have met some of the

handsomest men in Europe and not given them a thought. Yet this man kept

me beside him for four hours, and has me awake a whole night because he

is not with me. Has the discipline of these last years, then, gone for

nothing? Am I but an excitable West Indian after all, and shall I have

corded hands before I am twenty-five? It was a mistake to shut myself

away from danger. Had I been constantly meeting the young men of the

Island and all strangers who have come here during the last two years, I

should not be wild for this one--even if he has something in him unlike

other men--and lie awake all night like the silly women who dream

everlastingly of the lover to come. I am a fool."

She lit her candle and went into her mother's room. Mary Fawcett was

sitting up in bed, her white hair hanging out of her nightcap. It seemed

to her that the end of the world had come, and she cursed human nature

and the governors of the Island.

"I know what has kept you awake," said Rachael, "but do not fear. It was

but a passing madness--God smite those guinea fowl! I have lived the

life of a nun, and it is an unnatural life for a young woman. Yesterday

I learned that I have not the temperament of the scholar, the

recluse--that is all. I should have guessed it sooner--then I should not

have been fascinated by this brilliant Scot. It was my mind that flew

eagerly to companionship--that was all. The hours were pleasant. I would

not regret them but for the deep uneasiness they have caused you. To-day

I shall enter the world again. There are many clever and accomplished

young men on St. Kitts. I will meet and talk to them all. We will

entertain them here. There is a ball at Government House to-night,

another at Mistress Irwin's on Wednesday week. I promise you that I will

be as gay and as universal as a girl in her first season, and this man

shall see no more of me than any other man."

Her mother watched her keenly as she delivered her long tirade. Her face

was deeply flushed. The arm that held the candle was tense, and her hair

fell about her splendid form like a cloud of light. Had Hamilton seen

anything so fair in Europe? What part would he play in this scheme of

catholicity?

"You will meet this man if you go abroad," she replied. "Better stay

here and forbid him the gates."

"And think about him till I leap on my horse and ride to meet him? A

fevered imagination will make a god of a Tom Noddy. If I see him

daily--with others--he will seem as commonplace as all men."

Mary Fawcett did not speak for some moments. Then she said: "Hark ye,

Rachael. I interfered once and brought such damnable misery upon you

that I dare not--almost--(she remembered her note to Dr. Hamilton)

interfere again. This time you shall use your own judgement, something

you have taught me to respect. Whatever the result, I will be to the end

what I always have been, the best friend you have. You are very strong.

You have had an awful experience, and it has made a woman of thirty of

you. You are no silly little fool, rushing blindly into the arms of the

first man whose eyes are black enough. You have been brought up to look

upon light women with horror. In your darkest days you never sought to

console yourself as weaker women do. Therefore, in spite of what I saw

in both your faces yesterday, I hope."

"Yes--and give yourself no more uneasiness. Could _I_ look upon the

love of man with favour? Not unless I were to be born again, and my

memory as dead as my body."

"If you love, you will be born again; and if this man overmasters your

imagination, your memory might quite as well be dead. One of the three

or four things in my life that I have to be thankful for is that I never

had to pass through that ordeal. You are far dearer to me than I ever

was to myself, and if you are called upon to go through that wretched

experience, whose consequences never finish, and I with so little time

left in which to stand by and protect you--" She changed abruptly.

"Promise me that you will do nothing unconsidered, that you will not

behave like the ordinary Francesca--for whom I have always had the most

unmitigated contempt. The hour. The man. The fall. The wail: 'The earth

rocked, the stars fell. I knew not what I did!' You have deliberation

and judgement. Use them now--and do not ramble alone in the gorge with

this handsome Scot--for he is a fine man; I would I could deny it. I

felt his charm, although he did not open his mouth."

Rachael's eyes flashed. "Ah! did you?" she cried. "Well, but what of

that? Are not our creoles a handsome race, and have not all but a few

been educated in England? Yes, I will promise you--if you think all this

is serious enough to require a promise."

"But you care so little for the world. You would be sacrificing so much

less than other women--nevertheless it would make you wretched and

humiliate just as much; do not forget that. I almost am tempted to wish

that you had a lighter nature--that you would flirt with love and brush

it away, while the world was merely amused at a suspected gallantry. But

_you_--you would love for a lifetime, and you would end by living with

him openly. There is no compromise in you."

"Surely we have become more serious than an afternoon's talk with an

interesting stranger should warrant. I am full of a sudden longing for

the world, and who knows but I shall become so wedded to it that I would

yield it for no man? Besides, do I not live to make you happy, to

reward as best I can your unselfish devotion? If ever I could love any

man more than I love you, then that love would be overwhelming indeed.

But although I can imagine myself forgetting the world in such a love, I

cannot picture you on the sacrificial altar."

IX

Rachael was asleep when Dr. Hamilton called. Mistress Fawcett received

him in the library, which was at the extreme end of the long house. He

laughed so heartily at her fears that he almost dispelled them. Whatever

he anticipated in Rachael's future, he had no mind to apprehend danger

in every man who interested her.

"For God's sake, Mary," he exclaimed, "let the girl have a flirtation

without making a tragedy of it. She is quite right. The world is what

she wants. If ever there was a woman whom Nature did not intend for a

nun it is Rachael Levine. Let her carry out her plan, and in a week she

will be the belle of the Island, and my poor cousin will be consoling

himself with some indignant beauty only a shade less fair. I'll engage

to marry him off at once, if that will bring sleep to your pillow, but I

can't send him away as you propose. I am not King George, nor yet the

Captain-General. Nor have I any argument by which to persuade him to go.

I have given him too much encouragement to stay. I'll keep him away from

routs as long as I can--but remember that he is young, uncommonly

good-looking, and a stranger: the girls will not let me keep him in

hiding for long. Now let the girl alone. Let her think you've forgotten

my new kinsman and your fears. I don't know any way to manage women but

to let them manage themselves. Bob Edwards failed with Catherine. I have

succeeded. Take a leaf out of my book. Rachael is not going through life

without a stupendous love affair. She was marked out for it, specially

moulded and equipped by old Mother Nature. Resign yourself to it, and go

out and put up your hands against the next tidal wave if you want an

illustration of what interference with Rachael would amount to. I wish

Levine would die, or we could get a divorce law through on this Island.

But the entire Council falls on the table with horror every time I

suggest it. Don't worry till the time comes. I'll fill my house with all

the pretty girls on St. Kitts and Nevis, and marry this hero of romance

as soon as I can."

Rachael went to the ball at Government House that night, glittering in a

gown of brocade she had worn at the court of Denmark: Levine had sent

her trunks to Peter Lytton's, but not her jewels. She was the most

splendid creature in the rooms, and there was no talk of anyone else.

But before the night was a third over she realized that the attention

she would receive during this her second dazzling descent upon society

would differ widely from her first. The young men bowed before her in

deep appreciation of her beauty, then passed on to the girls of that

light-hearted band to which she no longer belonged. She was a woman with

a tragic history and a living husband; she had a reputation for severe

intellectuality, and her eyes, the very carriage of her body, expressed

a stern aloofness from the small and common exteriorities of life. The

Governor, the members of Council, of the Assembly, of the bench and bar,

and the clergy, flocked about her, delighted at her return to the world,

but she was the belle of the matrons, and not a young man asked her to

dance.

She shrugged her shoulders when she saw how it was to be.

"Can they guess that I am younger than they are?" she thought. "And

would I have them? Would I share that secret with any in the world--but

one? Do I want to dance--to _dance_--Good God! And talk nonsense and the

gossip of the Island with these youths when I have naught to say but

that my soul has grown wings and that the cold lamp in my breast has

blown out, and lit again with the flame that keeps the world alive? Even

if I think it best never to see him again, he has given me that, and I

am young at last."

When she returned home, as the guinea fowl were at their raucous matins,

she was able to tell her mother that the Scot had not attended the ball,

and Mary Fawcett knew that Dr. Hamilton had managed to detain him.

But a fortnight later they met again at the house of Dr. George Irwin,

an intimate friend of the Hamiltons.

The Irwin's house in Basseterre was on the north side of the Park, which

was surrounded by other fine dwellings and several public buildings. The

broad verandahs almost overhung the enclosure, with its great banyan

tree, the royal palms about the fountain, the close avenues, the flaming

hedges of croton and hybiscus, and the traveller's palm and tree ferns

brought from the mountains. When a ball was given at one of the houses

about this Park on a moonlight night, there was much scheming to avoid

the watchful eyes of lawful guardians.

It was inevitable that Hamilton should attend this ball, for the Irwins

and his relatives were in and out of each other's houses all day and

half the night. By this time, however, he had met nearly every girl on

St. Kitts, and his cousin had ridden out that afternoon to assure

Mistress Fawcett that the danger weakened daily.

But for an hour, he did not leave Rachael's side that night. The

beauties of St. Christopher--and they were many, with their

porcelain-like complexions and distinguished features--went through all

their graceful creole paces in vain. That he was recklessly in love with

Rachael Levine was manifest to all who chose to look, and as undaunted

by her intellect and history as any man of his cousin's mature coterie.

As for Rachael, although she distributed her favours impartially for a

while, her mobile face betrayed to Dr. Hamilton that mind and body were

steeped in that tremulous content which possesses a woman when close to

an undeclared lover in a public place; the man, and Life and her own

emotions unmortalized, the very future bounded by the gala walls, the

music, the lights, and the perfume of flowers. These walls were hung

with branches of orange trees loaded with fruit, and with ferns and

orchids brought fresh from the mountains. A band of blacks played on

their native instruments the fashionable dances of the day with a weird

and barbaric effect, and occasionally sang a wailing accompaniment in

voices of indescribable softness. There was light from fifty candles,

and the eternal breeze lifted and dispersed the heavy perfume of the

flowers. Hamilton had been in many ball-rooms, but never in one like

this. He abstained from the madeiras and ports which were passed about

at brief intervals by the swinging coloured women in their gay frocks

and white turbans; but he was intoxicated, nevertheless, and more than

once on the point of leaving the house. The unreality of it all held him

more than weakness, for in some things James Hamilton was strong enough.

The weakness in him was down at the roots of his character, and he was

neither a feathercock nor a flasher. He had no intention of making love

to Rachael until he saw his future more clearly than he did to-night.

During the fortnight that had passed since he met her, he had thought of

little else, and to-night he wanted nothing else, but impulsive and

passionate as he was, he came of a race of hard-headed Scots. He had no

mind for a love affair of tragic seriousness, even while his quickened

imagination pictured the end.

He deliberately left her side after a time and joined a group of men who

were smoking in the court. After an hour of politics his brain had less

blood in it, and when he found himself standing beside Rachael on the

verandah he suggested that they follow other guests into the Park. He

gave Rachael his arm in the courtly fashion of the day, and they walked

about the open paths and talked of the negroes singing in the

cane-fields, and the squalid poverty of the North, as if their hearts

were as calm as they are to-day. People turned often to look at them,

commenting according to the mixing of their essences, but all concurring

in praise of so much beauty. Hamilton's sunburn had passed the acute

stage, leaving him merely brown, and his black silk small clothes and

lace ruffles, his white silk stockings and pumps, were vastly becoming.

His hair, lightly powdered, was tied with a white ribbon, but although

he carried himself proudly, there was no manifest in his bearing that

the vanities consumed much of his thought. He was gallanted like a young

blood of the period, and so were the young men of St. Kitts. Rachael

wore a heavy gold-coloured satin, baring the neck, and a stiff and

pointed stomacher, her hair held high with a diamond comb. Her fairness

was dazzling in the night-light, and it was such a light as Hamilton

never had seen before: for in the Tropics the moon is golden, and the

stars are crystal. The palm leaves, high on their slender shafts,

glittered like polished dark-green metal, and the downpour was so

dazzling that more than once the stranger shaded his eyes with his hand.

Had it not been for the soft babble of many voices, the silence would

have been intense, until the ear was tuned to the low tinkle of the

night bells, for the sea was calm.

Once, as if in explanation for words unspoken, he commented nervously on

the sensation of unreality with which these tropic scenes inspired him,

and Rachael, who longed to withdraw her hand from his arm, told him of

an entertainment peculiar to the Islands, a torchlight hunt for

land-crabs, which once a year travel down from the mountains to the sea,

to bathe and shed their shells. Words hastened. Before she drew breath

she had arranged a hunt for the night of the 10th of April, and received

his promise to be one of her guests. They were not so happy as they had

been within doors, for the world seemed wider. But their inner selves

pressed so hard toward each other that finally they were driven to

certain egotisms as a relief.

"I think little of the future," she said, after a direct question, "for

that means looking beyond my mother's death, and that is the one fact I

have not the courage to face. But of course I know that it holds nothing

for me. A ball occasionally, and the conversation of clever men who

admire me but care for some one else, books the rest of the week, and

life alone on a shelf of the mountain. The thought that I shall one day

be old does not console me as it may console men, for with women the

heart never grows old. The body withers, and the heart in its awful

eternal youth has the less to separate and protect it from the world

that has no use for it. Then the body dies and is put away, but the

heart is greedily consumed to feed the great pulses of the world that

lives faster every year. We give, and give, and give."

"And are only happy in giving," said Hamilton, quickly. "But if men

preserve the balance of the world by taking all that women give them, at

least the best of us find our happiness in the gifts of one woman, and a

woman so besought dare not assert that her heart is empty. I

understand--and no one more clearly than I do to-night--that if she give

too much, she may curse her heart and look out bitterly upon the

manifold interests that could suppress it for weeks and months--if life

were full enough. Is yours? What would you sacrifice if you came to me?"

He asked the question calmly, for there were people on every side of

them, but he asked it on an uncontrollable impulse, nevertheless; he had

vowed to himself that he would wait a month.

His natural repose was greater than hers, for she had the excitable

nerves of the Tropics. He felt her arm quiver before she dropped her

hand from his arm. But she replied almost as calmly: "Nothing after my

mother's death. Absolutely nothing. When a woman suffers as I have done,

and her future is ruined in any case, the world counts for very little

with her, unless it always has counted for more than anything else. We

grow the more cynical and contemptuous as we witness the foolish

gallantries of women who have so much to lose. I am not hard. I am very

soft about many things, and since you came I am become the very tragedy

of youth; but I have no respect for the world as I have seen it. For

many people in the world I have a great deal, but not for the substance

out of which Society has built itself. One never loses one's real

friends, no matter what one does. Every circumstance of my life has

isolated me from this structure called society, forced me to make my own

laws. I may never be happy, because my capacity for happiness is too

great, but in my own case there is no alternative worth considering.

This is the substance of what I have thought since we met, but you are

not to speak to me of it again while my mother lives."

"I do not promise you that--but this: that I will do much thinking

before I speak again."

X

But although they parted with formal courtesy, it was several nights

before either slept. Rachael went home to her bed and lay down, because

she feared to agitate her mother, but her disposition was to go out and

walk the circuit of the Island, and she rose as soon as she dared, and

climbed to the highest crest behind the house. It was cold there, and

the wind was keen. She sat for hours and stared out at Nevis, who was

rolling up her mists, indifferent to the torment of mortals.

During the past fortnight she had conceived a certain stern calm, partly

in self-defence, due in part to love for her mother. But since she had

left Hamilton, last night, there had been moments when she had felt

alone in the Universe with him, exalted to such heights of human passion

that she had imagined herself about to become the mother of a new race.

Her genius, which in a later day might have taken the form of mental

creation, concentrated in a supreme capacity for idealized human

passion, and its blind impulse was a reproduction of itself in another

being.

Were she and Hamilton but the victims of a mighty ego roaming the

Universe in search of a medium for human expression? Were they but

helpless sacrifices, consummately equipped, that the result of their

union might be consummately great? Who shall affirm or deny? The very

commonplaces of life are components of its eternal mystery. We know

absolutely nothing. But we have these facts: that a century and a half

ago, on a tropical island, where, even to common beings, quick and

intense love must seem the most natural thing in the world, this man and

woman met; that the woman, herself born in unhappy conditions, but

beautiful, intellectual, with a character developed far beyond her years

and isolated home by the cruel sufferings of an early marriage, reared

by a woman whose independence and energy had triumphed over the narrow

laws of the Island of her birth, given her courage to snap her fingers

at society--we know that this woman, inevitably remarkable, met and

loved a stranger from the North, so generously endowed that he alone of

all the active and individual men who surrounded her won her heart; and

that the result of their union was one of the stupendous intellects of

the world's history.

Did any great genius ever come into the world after commonplace

pre-natal conditions? Was a maker of history ever born amidst the

pleasant harmonies of a satisfied domesticity? Of a mother who was less

than remarkable, although she may have escaped being great? Did a woman

with no wildness in her blood ever inform a brain with electric fire?

The students of history know that while many mothers of great men have

been virtuous, none have been commonplace, and few have been happy. And

lest the moralists of my day and country be more prone to outraged

virtue, in reading this story, than were the easy-going folk who

surrounded it, let me hasten to remind them that it all happened close

upon a hundred and fifty years ago, and that the man and woman who gave

them the brain to which they owe the great structure that has made their

country phenomenal among nations, are dust on isles four hundred miles

apart.

A century and a half ago women indulged in little introspective

analysis. They thought on broad lines, and honestly understood the

strength of their emotions. Moreover, although Mary Wollstonecraft was

unborn and "Émile" unwritten, Individualism was germinating; and what

soil so quickening as the Tropics? Nevertheless, to admit was not to lay

the question, and Rachael passed through many hours of torment before

hers was settled. She was not unhappy, for the intoxication lingered,

and behind the methodical ticking of her reason, stood, calmly awaiting

its time, that sense of the Inevitable which has saved so many brains

from madness. She slept little and rested less, but that sentinel in her

brain prevented the frantic hopelessness which would have possessed her

had she felt herself strong enough to command James Hamilton to leave

the Island.

She met him several times before the night of her entertainment, and

there were moments when she was filled with terror, for he did not

whisper a reference to the conversation in the Park. Had he thought

better of it? Would he go? Would he conquer himself? Was it but a

passing madness? When these doubts tormented her she was driven to such

a state of jealous fury that she forgot every scruple, and longed only

for the bond which would bind him fast; then reminded herself that she

should be grateful, and endeavoured to be. But one day when he lifted

her to her horse, he kissed her wrist, and again the intoxication of

love went to her head, and this time it remained there. Once they met up

in the hills, where they had been asked with others to take a dish of

tea with Mistress Montgomerie. They sat alone for an hour on one of the

terraces above the house, laughing and chattering like children, then

rode down the hills through the cane-fields together. Again, they met in

the Park, and sat under the banyan tree, discussing the great books they

had read, all of Europe they knew. For a time neither cared to finish

that brief period of exquisite happiness and doubt, where imagination

rules, and the world is unreal and wholly sweet, and they its first to

love.

The wrenching stage of doubt had passed for Hamilton, but he thought on

the future with profound disquiet. He would have the woman wholly or not

at all, after Mary Fawcett's death; he knew from Dr. Hamilton that it

would occur before the year was out. He had no taste for intrigue. He

wanted a home, and the woman he would have rejoiced to marry was the

woman he expected to love and live with for the rest of his life. Once

or twice the overwhelming sense of responsibility, the certainty of

children, whom he could not legalize, the possible ruin of his worldly

interests, as well as his deep and sincere love for the woman, drove him

almost to the bows of a homeward-bound vessel. But the sure knowledge

that he should return kept him doggedly on St. Christopher. He even had

ceased to explain his infatuation to himself by such excuse as was given

him by her beauty, her grace, her strong yet charming brain. He loved

her, and he would have her if the skies fell.

It is doubtful if he understood the full force of the attraction between

them. The real energy and deliberation, the unswerving purpose in her

magnetized the weakness at the roots of his ardent, impulsive, but

unstable character. Moreover, in spite of the superlative passion which

he had aroused in her, she lacked the animal magnetism which was his in

abundance. Her oneness was a magnet for his gregariousness and

concentrated it upon herself. That positive quality in him overwhelmed

and intoxicated her; and in intellect he was far more brilliant and far

less profound than herself. His wit and mental nimbleness stung and

pricked the serene layers which she had carefully superimposed in her

own mind to such activities as mingled playfully with his lighter moods

or stimulated him in more intellectual hours. While the future was yet

unbroken and imagination remodelled the face of the world, there were

moments when both were exalted with a sense of completeness, and

terrified, when apart, with a hint of dissolution into unrelated

particles.

When a man and woman arrive at that stage of reasoning and feeling, it

were idle for their chronicler to moralize; her part is but to tell the

story.

XI

Mary Fawcett encouraged her daughter's social activity, and as

Hamilton's name entered the rapid accounts of revels and routs in the

most casual manner, she endeavoured to persuade herself that the madness

had passed with a languid afternoon. She was a woman of the world, but

the one experience that develops deepest insight had passed her by, and

there were shades and moods of the master passion over which her sharp

eyes roved without a shock.

As she was too feeble to sit up after nine o'clock, she refused to open

her doors for the crab hunt, but gave Rachael the key of a little villa

on the crest of a peak behind the house, and told her to keep her

friends all night if she chose.

This pavilion, designed for the hotter weeks of the hurricane season,

but seldom used by the Fawcetts, was a small stone building, with two

bedrooms and a living room, a swimming bath, and several huts for

servants. The outbuildings were dilapidated, but the house after an

airing and scrubbing was as fit for entertainment as any on St. Kitts.

The furniture in the Tropics is of cane, and there are no carpets or

hangings to invite destruction. Even the mattresses are often but

plaited thongs of leather, covered with strong linen, and stretched

until they are hard as wood. All Mary Fawcett's furniture was of

mahogany, the only wood impervious to the boring of the West Indian

worm. This tiny house on the mountain needed but a day's work to clean

it, and another to transform it into an arbour of the forest. The walls

of the rooms were covered with ferns, orchids, and croton leaves. Gold

and silver candelabra had been carried up from the house, and they would

hold half a hundred candles.

All day the strong black women climbed the gorge and hill, their hips

swinging, baskets of wine, trays of delicate edibles, pyramids of linen,

balanced as lightly on their heads as were they no more in weight and

size than the turban beneath; their arms hanging, their soft voices

scolding the "pic'nees" who stumbled after them.

Toward evening, Rachael and Kitty Hamilton walked down the mountain

together, and lingered in the heavy beauty of the gorge. The ferns grew

high above their heads, and palms of many shapes. The dark machineel

with its deadly fruit, the trailing vines on the tamarind trees, the

monkeys leaping, chattering with terror, through flaming hybiscus and

masses of orchid, the white volcanic rock, the long torn leaves of the

banana tree, the abrupt declines, crimson with wild strawberries, the

loud boom of the sunset gun from Brimstone Hill--Rachael never forgot a

detail of that last walk with her old friend. Hers was not the nature

for intimate friendships, but Catherine Hamilton had been one of her

first remembered playmates, her bridesmaid, and had hastened to

companion her when she emerged from the darkness of her married life.

But Catherine was an austere girl, of no great mental liveliness, and

the friendship, although sincere, was not rooted in the sympathies and

affections. She believed Rachael to be the most remarkable woman in the

world, and had never dared to contradict her, although she lowered her

fine head to no one else. But female virtue, as they expressed it in the

eighteenth century, stood higher in her estimation than all the gifts of

mind and soul which had been lavished upon Rachael Levine, and she was

the first to desert her when the final step was taken. But on this

evening there was no barrier, and she talked of her future with the man

she was to marry. She was happy and somewhat sentimental. Rachael sighed

and set her lips. All her girlhood friends were either married or about

to be--except Christiana, who had not a care in her little world. Why

were sorrow and disgrace for her alone? What have I done, she thought,

that I seem to be accursed? I have wronged no one, and I am more gifted

than any of these friends of mine. Not one of them has studied so

severely, and learned as much as I. Not one of them can command the

homage of such men as I. And yet I alone am singled out, first, for the

most hideous fate which can attack a woman, then to live apart from all

good men and women with a man I cannot marry, and who may break my

heart. I wish that I had not been born, and I would not be dead for all

the peace that is in the most silent depths of the Universe.

At ten o'clock, that night, the hills were red with the torches of as

gay a company as ever had assembled on the Island. The Governor and Dr.

Hamilton were keen sportsmen, and nothing delighted them more than to

chase infuriated land-crabs down the side of a mountain. There were some

twenty men in the party, and most of them followed their distinguished

elders through brush and rocky passes. Occasionally, a sudden yell of

pain mingled with the shouts of mirth, for land-crabs have their methods

of revenge. The three or four girls whom Rachael had induced to attend

this masculine frolic, kept to the high refuge of the villa, attended by

cavaliers who dared not hint that maiden charms were less than

land-crabs.

Hamilton and Rachael sat on the steps of the terrace, or paced up and

down, watching the scene. Just beyond their crest was the frowning mass

of Mount Misery. The crystal flood poured down from above, and the moon

was rising over the distant hills. The sea had the look of infinity.

There might be ships at anchor before Basseterre or Sandy Point, but the

shoulders of the mountain hid them; and below, the world looked as if

the passions of Hell had let loose--the torches flared and crackled, and

the trees took on hideous shapes. Once a battalion of the pale

venomous-looking crabs rattled across the terrace, and Rachael, who was

masculine in naught but her intellect, screamed and flung herself into

Hamilton's arms. A moment later she laughed, but their conversation

ceased then to be impersonal. It may be said here, that if Hamilton

failed in other walks of life, it was not from want of resolution where

women were concerned. And he was tired of philandering.

The hunters returned, slaves carrying the slaughtered crabs in baskets.

There were many hands to shell the victims, and in less than half an

hour Mary Fawcett's cook sent in a huge and steaming dish. Then there

were mulled wines and port, cherry brandy and liqueurs to refresh the

weary, and sweets for the women. A livelier party never sat down to

table; and Hamilton, who was placed between two chattering girls, was a

man of the world, young as he was, and betrayed neither impatience nor

ennui. Rachael sat at the head of the table, between the Governor and

Dr. Hamilton. Her face, usually as white as porcelain, was pink in the

cheeks; her eyes sparkled, her nostrils fluttered with triumph. She

looked so exultant that more than one wondered if she were intoxicated

with her own beauty; but Dr. Hamilton understood, and his supper lost

its relish. Some time since he had concluded that where Mary Fawcett

failed he could not hope to succeed, but he had done his duty and

lectured his cousin. He understood human nature from its heights to its

dregs, however, and promised Hamilton his unaltered friendship, even

while in the flood of remonstrance. He was a philosopher, who invariably

held out his hand to the Inevitable, with a shrug of his shoulders, but

he loved Rachael, and wished that the ship that brought Levine to the

Islands had encountered a hurricane.

The guests started for home at one o'clock, few taking the same path.

The tired slaves went down to their huts. Rachael remained on the

mountain, and Hamilton returned to her.

XII

It was a month later that Rachael, returning after a long ride with

Hamilton, found her mother just descended from the family coach.

"Is it possible that you have been to pay visits?" she asked, as she

hastened to support the feeble old woman up the steps.

"No, I have been to Basseterre with Archibald Hamn."

"Not to St. Peter's, I hope."

"Oh, my dear, I do not feel in the mood to jest. I went to court to

secure the future of my three dear slaves, Rebecca, Flora, and Esther."

Rachael placed her mother on one of the verandah chairs and dropped upon

another.

"Why have you done that?" she asked faintly. "Surely--"

"There are several things I fully realize, and one is that each attack

leaves me with less vitality to resist the next. These girls are the

daughters of my dear old Rebecca, who was as much to me as a black ever

can be to a white, and that is saying a good deal. I have just signed a

deed of trust before the Registrar--to Archibald. They are still mine

for the rest of my life, yours for your lifetime, or as long as you live

here; then they go to Archibald or his heirs. I want you to promise me

that they shall never go beyond this Island or Nevis."

"I promise." Rachael had covered her face with her hand.

"I believe you kept the last promise you made me. It is not in your

character to break your word, however you may see fit to take the law

into your own hands."

"I kept it."

"And you will live with him openly after my death. I have appreciated

your attempt to spare me."

"Ah, you _do_ know me."

"Some things may escape my tired old eyes, but I love you too well not

to have seen for a month past that you were as happy as a bride. I shall

say no more--save for a few moments with James Hamilton. I am old and

ill and helpless. You are young and indomitable. If I were as vigorous

and self-willed as when I left your father, I could not control you now.

I shall leave you independent. Will Hamilton, Archibald, and a few

others will stand by you; but alas! you will, in the course of nature,

outlive them all, and have no friend in the world but Hamilton--although

I shall write an appeal to your sisters to be sent to them after my

death. But oh, how I wish, how I wish, that you could marry this man."

Mary Fawcett was attacked that night by the last harsh rigours of her

disease and all its complications. Until she died, a week later,

Rachael, except for the hour that Hamilton sat alone beside the bed of

the stricken woman, did not leave her mother. The immortal happiness of

the last month was forgotten. She was prostrate, literally on her knees

with grief and remorse, for she believed that her mother's discovery had

hastened the end.

"No, it is not so," said Mary Fawcett, one day. "My time has come to

die. Will Hamilton will assure you of that, and I have watched the space

between myself and death diminish day by day, for six months past. I

have known that I should die before the year was out. It is true that I

die in sorrow and with a miserable sense of failure, for you have been

my best-beloved, my idol, and I leave you terribly placed in life and

with little hope of betterment. But for you I have no reproach. You have

given me love for love, and duty for duty. Life has treated you

brutally; what has come now was, I suppose, inevitable. Human nature

when it is strong enough is stronger than moral law. I grieve for you,

but I die without grievance against you. Remember that. And Hamilton? He

is honourable, and he loves you utterly--but is he strong? I wish I

knew. His emotions and his active brain give him so much apparent

force--but underneath? I wish I knew."

Rachael was grateful for her mother's unselfish assurance, but she was

not to be consoled. The passions in her nature, released from other

thrall, manifested themselves in a grief so profound, and at times so

violent, that only her strong frame saved her from illness. For two

weeks after Mary Fawcett's death she refused to see James Hamilton; but

by that time he felt at liberty to assert his rights, and her finely

poised mind recovered its balance under his solace and argument. Her

life was his, and to punish him assuaged nothing of her sorrow. He had

decided, after consultation with his cousin, to take her to Nevis, not

only to seclude her from the scandalized society she knew best, but that

he might better divert her mind, in new scenes, from her heavy

affliction. Hamilton had already embarked in his business enterprise,

but he had bought and manned a sail-boat, which would carry him to and

from St. Kitts daily. In the dead calms of summer there was little

business doing.

"I attempted no sophistry with my cousin," said Hamilton, "and for that

reason I think I have put the final corking-pin into our friendship.

Right or wrong we are going to live together for the rest of our lives,

because I will have no other woman, and you will have no other man; and

we will live together publicly, not only because neither of us has the

patience for scheming and deceit, but because passion is not our only

motive for union. There is gallantry on every side of us, and doubtless

we alone shall be made to suffer; for the world loves to be fooled, it

hates the crudeness of truth. But we have each other, and nothing else

matters."

And to Rachael nothing else mattered, for her mother was dead, and she

loved Hamilton with an increasing passion that was long in culminating.

XIII

They sailed over to Nevis, accompanied by a dozen slaves, and took

possession of Rachael's house in Main Street. It stood at the very end

of the town, beyond the point where the street ceased and the road round

the Island began. The high wall of the garden surrounded a grove of

palms and cocoanut trees. Only sojourners from England had occupied the

big comfortable house, and it was in good repair.

When the acute stage of her grief had passed, it was idle for Rachael to

deny to Hamilton that she was happy. And at that time she had not a care

in the world, nor had he. Their combined incomes made them as careless

of money as any planter on the Island. Every ship from England brought

them books and music, and Hamilton was not only the impassioned lover

but the tenderest and most patient of husbands. Coaches dashed by and

the occupants cast up eyes and hands. The gay life of Nevis pulsed

unheeded about the high walls, whose gates were always locked. The

kinsman of the leading families of the Island and the most beautiful

daughter of old John and Mary Fawcett were a constant and agitating

theme, but two people lived their life of secluded and poignant

happiness, and took Nevis or St. Kitts into little account.