face.
The Dickinson duel was never spoken of in her presence.
“That was very bad taste, Andy,” reproved his aunt, “and you should know
better.”
“But it’s true!” protested the boy, his voice breaking in a contralto
tremolo. “Even when I was little, boys used to yell at me that my father
had killed a man—on account of Mama.”
Rachel walked away quickly and they heard the door of her room close.
“Andy, how dreadful—on Christmas Eve!” scolded an aunt, “I’ll go—”
“No,” urged Emily, “she’ll want to be alone, aunt Mary. But I’m ashamed
of Andy.”
“Everybody picks on me,” mourned the boy.
“Go outside and help your father. And remember that there are things
never mentioned in your mother’s presence. One of them is Charles
Dickinson and that tragic duel that happened before you were ever born.”
“Papa did kill him!”
“My boy, I hope that when you are grown a man you will find a woman as
fine and faithful as Rachel Jackson,” said the older woman gravely. “If
you are so fortunate as to win a wife like that and a man cast slurs on
her in public, I think you will be moved to kill him too. Now go on out
of here before I get the itch to box your ears, big as you are!”
4
In her room Rachel stood before her tall chest, her hands shaking, her
throat cramping with an agonizing pain. Always in spring, when all about
was new growth and beauty burgeoning the old terror twenty years past
came back for a little to haunt her. Now Andy’s callous taunts had
brought it again out of its grave to tear at her tender heart.
Always it was the same. She saw herself again sitting in the carriage
beside that race track where the General’s fine horse Truxton, and a
horse called Ploughboy owned by Charles Dickinson and his father were
running a race. Gathered around the course was an enormous concourse of
people: the women in carriages and on horseback wearing their new spring
bonnets gay with flowers and ribbons, or flowing habits of bright
velvet; the men jaunty in tight breeches strapped under their ankles,
ruffled shirts and tall beaver hats. An April wind was blowing sweet off
the fields.
It was all as sharply clear to Rachel, here in her big room dimly
lighted by one candle, as it had been on that fateful day when Truxton
had gone lame in the third heat of the race.
She could even hear again her own voice saying naïvely and more loudly
than she had intended, “If Truxton hadn’t gone lame he would have left
Ploughboy out of sight.”
She could hear too that loud, sneering voice that still crackled in her
ears though the young man who had spoken had lain twenty years in his
grave. Angry and raucous from a bit too much drink, Charles Dickinson
had shouted, “About as far out of sight as Mrs. Jackson left her first
husband when she ran off with the General!”
It comforted her still to remember that she had not been the one who
repeated that jeering insult to Andrew Jackson. But there had been many
ready to turn the knife in an old wound, to drag out again and bandy
about the old, sordid story of Lewis Robards, who had married Rachel and
discarded her, of the aborted divorce that had clouded Rachel Robards
Jackson’s second marriage.
A chill ran over her body now as she remembered the furious, insulting
letters that had been written, the General’s cold terrible rage, the
town and county taking sides, eventually the irrevocable challenge. Her
hands shook as she opened a drawer in the chest. Well hidden there under
lavender-scented linen lay the browning copy of a paper that Andrew
Jackson would have destroyed instantly, had he known that she still
hoarded it. It was dated on the 23rd of May, 1806, and the lines that
were hastily scrawled upon it were burned on Rachel Jackson’s heart.
_On Friday, the 30th. Inst, we agree to meet at Harrison’s Mills, in Red
River County, State of Kentucky for the Purpose of settling an Affair of
Honor, between Andrew Jackson and_ _Charles Dickinson, Esq. Further
arrangements to be made. It is understood that the Meeting will be held
at seven o’clock in the morning._
It was signed with the General’s familiar scrawl and the neater hand of
young Dickinson.
Charles Dickinson had been so young! Rachel ached now with remembering
the anguish of dread for her own beloved and for the young wife and baby
of the youth Andrew Jackson had set out across the Kentucky line that
May morning to kill, if he could—if he were not himself slain by a youth
known to be one of the most famous shots in Tennessee.
Duels were illegal in Tennessee so Jackson had started the day before
with his friend, John Overton, for the long ride into Kentucky. He had
tried to slip away without Rachel’s knowledge, tried to belittle the
danger. And he had come home with a bullet close to his heart, too near
to be safely removed by the surgeons, and that bullet he carried yet.
But Charles Dickinson had been brought home dead and for a year the town
had seethed with furious criticism of the man who had survived that
duel, Andrew Jackson. The affair had almost ended his public career.
Rachel had known some moments when she wished that the tragedy had made
it impossible for Andrew Jackson ever to be chosen for any high emprise
again.
It had weighed heavily on her heart for years that the affair had been
on her account, and there had been a long, unspoken family pact that the
duel was never to be mentioned. She had nursed her husband for weeks
through that hot summer, and he had hated the inactivity while Rachel
was grateful that the spring ran cool and deep and the great trees gave
comforting shade, and that she had her husband, wounded and restless as
he was, by her side. He had not desired that tragic engagement, she
knew. Faced with no honorable means of evading it, he had fought fairly
according to the rules and borne his wound without capitalizing upon it.
She put away the old agreement, smoothed her hair and the lace of her
collar, rubbed a bit of cotton dipped in rice powder over her swollen
eyelids. This was Christmas Eve, the past was past, though Truxton’s
colts still ambled over the meadows, some of them growing old as the
Jacksons were growing old. Perhaps they would have no more Christmas
Eves under this roof, this proud house that they loved. Nothing must mar
this holiday. She would hurry out and tell Andy that he was forgiven.
The boy was impulsive and thoughtless. He had not meant to wound her.
The house was full of voices; children being led upstairs to bed
reluctant and protesting, but outside were voices too, the songs of the
black people gathered to sing to their master and mistress. Rachel
snatched up a shawl, wrapped her head and shoulders in it and went out
to stand and listen.
“_Christmas is a-comin’, the goose is getting fat._
“_Please to put a penny in the ole man’s hat_,” caroled the slaves.
She saw her husband standing bareheaded near the fire, his hair blowing
in the winter wind, the firelight casting deep shadows under his eyes.
He had a hand on Andy’s shoulder, an arm around Emily. No one heeded the
mist that blew on the wind. Some of the older women were already picking
their chickens on the lee side of the smokehouse.
“_Go down, Moses, ’way down in Egypt’s lan’_,” trilled a high voice,
Becky’s. The humming chorus swelled, burst into tremendous melody.
“_Tell ole Phar’oh,—let my people go!_”
Go down, Moses! Go down, Andrew Jackson! To Tohopeka, to Mobile, to New
Orleans, to Pensacola. Go down, Andrew Jackson, and set a people free!
No, no, moaned the heart of Rachel. Never any more. This was home, this
was their Hermitage, this was Christmas Eve. Her eyes searched the air,
challenged the air, the Heavens, as though somewhere out there in the
murky dark lurked fate in wait for them, a prescience that would not
lift.
Was it a charm or a curse that invested her man on horseback? What dark
Nemesis had hovered over that little cabin back in the North Carolina
sandhills where he had been born? What strange power had preserved him
when all his family succumbed to the hardships of that time of bitter
war? What power of destiny had brought him up, an orphaned waif, led him
through so many conflicts, made him a firebrand and a leader whom men
would follow as they followed a flag?
Sick and coughing, his frail health her constant anxiety, he inspired
strong men. Something was brewing now. Rachel felt it, but she must hold
her tongue and quiet her unease with the drug of hope.
A horse came trotting up the drive and Rachel saw Emily start forward
eagerly. Then the girl stopped as a slim figure in oilskin slid from the
saddle.
“It’s Ralph!” Rachel hurried forward to greet the young artist, Ralph
Earl. Off and on, for many years, the portrait painter had made his home
at the Hermitage. He had done a fine portrait of the General, wooed and
won Jane Caffrey, Rachel’s niece. There had been a fine wedding in the
old log house that still stood there in the yard, but gentle Jane had
lived only a year. Now Earl was a saddened and lonely man and Rachel
mothered him after her habit with all young, unmothered creatures. “How
fine that you got back from the East for Christmas, Ralph!” she cried,
taking his hand.
“I came to paint your picture,” he said. “The General will never give me
any peace till I do your portrait, aunt Rachel.”
“Fiddlesticks!” She led him into the house. “You come get warm and dry
this minute before you take a ptisic. I’ll make a hot toddy for you,
myself. And you don’t want to paint a picture of a fat old woman like
me. Nobody would look at it. We’d have to hang it in the wash-house.”
“A portrait of you might be hung on the walls of some very splendid
place, aunt Rachel,” Earl argued, handing his damp garments to a
servant.
She looked at him in sudden alarm. “Now whatever do you mean by that?”
“Oh—just an idea I had,” he soothed, seeing her perturbation. “People
keep getting notions about what Andrew Jackson could do for this
country. I hear about them—traveling around.”
She clutched at his arm. “No, Ralph—whatever their notions are, he’s not
going to go dashing off again on some wild adventure or other. He’s not
strong, you know that. He’ll get that lung fever again and it almost
caused his death last winter. And besides,”—her eyes misted and her
voice croaked—“he’d have to leave our home! Our Hermitage!”
“But think of what great things could happen to you, aunt Rachel!
Someday you might be one of the greatest ladies in the land.”
“I don’t want to be a great lady.” She held tight to the cold hand he
had laid upon her cheek. “I want to stay here and raise young Andy and
Andrew Hutchings. I want to see Emily well married and all our people
taken care of. I never want to have to go dragging out again to make
calls and leave cards and smile till my face aches. I have had enough of
that.”
“Just the same I’m going to paint your portrait,” he insisted.
“You paint Emily. She’s filling out, she’s going to be a beauty. The
General’s got that little picture of me that Anna Peale painted the year
of that New Orleans battle. He carries it around with him all the time,
though he wrote to me once and said he didn’t need it, that he had my
picture engraved on his heart. Nobody could ask for anything more
beautiful than that, Ralph, no woman alive. He wouldn’t engrave a
picture of me as I am now, on his heart—an old lady getting fat and out
of breath!”
“I think he would,” said Earl. “I think he would prize any picture of
you, aunt Rachel, more than his life.”
“He’s coming in,” she whispered. “I must get his bed warm so he won’t
cough all night. You’ll have to sleep with Andy tonight. We’ve got a
houseful already and more coming. And Ralph, don’t you let the General
get notions about rushing off to be somebody important. It’s time he
took care of himself.”
“I’ll tell him, aunt Rachel. But you know Andrew Jackson. If any call
came from the people to serve anywhere, no one could hold him.”
“No,” she said sadly. “Not even I!”
5
Bugles and drums before dawn had trained Andrew Jackson to waken early.
He tiptoed about in the dark, cracking a toe and muttering in
irritation, fumbled into his clothes by the lingering glow of a dying
fire, not wanting to light a candle and wake Rachel.
Then he discovered that she was already gone from the bed, her full
ruffled night rail was spread out neatly to air, her cap perched on the
post of the bed. Instantly his voice rose in the familiar falsetto
shout.
“You, George! Get in here and mend this fire!”
The alacrity with which the man appeared, loaded to the chin with
lightwood, betrayed that he had been waiting near for a summons. “Yes,
sah, Gin’ral Jackson! Christmas gif’, sah!”
“Christmas gift! I’ll gift you with my boot if you don’t stir yourself.”
“Yes, sah!” George burst into delighted chuckles. He knew his master
well. “Mist’iss say, don’t disturb Marse Jackson, she say, let Marse
Jackson git he rest. I git a fine fire here toreckly.”
The embers stirred, the lightwood crackled and flamed. Andrew Jackson
liked fire to roar as he liked horses to gallop and men to spring into
action when he shouted an order. George swept the hearth and set the
fire tools in order.
“Christmas gif’, Gin’ral,” he repeated meekly.
“Here!” Jackson tossed a two-shilling piece. George caught it in midair,
grinned and bowed elaborately.
“Thankee, sah! Thankee! Does you go to town I git you to buy me some
store galluses, please, sah? I like some red galluses, wid big brass
buckles.”
“Keep your money. Buy candy with it. I’ll get you some red galluses. How
you hitch your britches up now?”
“Dis yere piece of rope. But it mighty near wore out and Mister Field
say he goin’ beat the next nigger cut off any his rope. Thankee, sah.”
“Now I reckon every hand on the place will have to have red galluses
with brass buckles,” snorted the General. “You’re getting measured for
shoes tomorrow, George. You wash your feet.”
“Yes, sah, sho will!”
Christmas morning! How few Christmas Days he had ever spent in his own
home, Andrew Jackson was thinking. On the march, in cheerless camps with
lonely men, in that strange mansion in Pensacola, riding eastward roads
through Tennessee to Philadelphia, to Washington. And now perhaps the
road eastward lay ahead of him again. He dreaded telling Rachel, rooted
as she was to this hillside, fixed as one of the old trees and removed
with almost as much agony. She might even refuse to take the road again.
He might face more endless months of loneliness. He looked at the little
gold-framed miniature that had never been far from his gaze since it had
been painted so many years ago.
Rachel’s direct eyes looked from it, her strong mouth was relaxed in a
little smile, the lace cap and fichu she wore softened her high brow,
where the dark hair curled, her rounded chin. Long earrings gave her an
effect of gayety that always made him happy when he studied the picture.
She had looked like that once—in Natchez where he had married her,
believing her divorced from sadistic Lewis Robards. She needed gayety.
She had had too much of responsibility, she had seen too much of sorrow.
Today should be gay. He would have fiddlers in and let the young folks
dance. He would open the best wine and make a big bowl of punch. He
jabbed his feet into his boots hurriedly, rejecting the heavy braided
coat for a lighter hunting jacket of leather.
The house was fragrant with the evergreen Emily had hung about, and
there was a comfortable odor of coffee. In the dining room Rachel was
bustling about a long table following Hannah who puffed and sputtered at
two children who kept diving, squealing, under the table to peer out
from beneath the cloth and pinch Hannah’s fat legs.
“Here—here!” barked the General. “You tads leave Hannah alone. Come out
of there.”
Instantly the pair, in nightgowns and barefooted, swarmed up his long
legs like squirrels.
“Christmas gift, uncle Jackson! Christmas gift!”
He planted a spank on each of two small rears. “There’s your Christmas
gift. Now go and get your clothes on. When you come down properly
dressed you’ll get your Christmas gift.”
“Mother’s asleep, we don’t know where our clothes are,” protested a
little boy.
“Wake her up. Wake everybody up. It’s Christmas morning.”
“Yes, sir!” The two obeyed with alacrity, rushing out shrieking, “Wake
up! Wake up! Christmas gift!”
“We have to get breakfast over so we can set the tables for dinner,”
said Rachel, “and all the people are slow and lazy this morning. Betty
says the oven won’t get hot for her spoon bread and Dilsey cut the bacon
too thick and then went off in a sulk when I scolded her.”
“I’ll get them all up,” threatened the General. He strode out through
the house to the bricked passage to the kitchen, pulled on a rope
dangling from a pole. The slave bell clanged loud and long.
“My patience,” Rachel exclaimed, “the neighbors will think the house is
afire!”
“Git them triflin’ niggers stirrin’, anyways,” said Hannah.
“Get the mugs for the children, Hannah, and tell ’Relia to get herself
upstairs to help the young ladies. And I want every bed made up right
away.”
Hannah said, “Yas’m.” She loved ordering the other maids around, being
middle-aged, faithful and privileged.
Breakfast was a gay and noisy meal. Emily was happy with a new gold
chain and locket, kissing everybody impartially as she danced around the
table. Rachel had a pearl brooch with a small blue stone in the center
and yards of white satin for caps and collars. One little boy pushed his
toy monkey around the table, perched it on people’s shoulders till
Andrew, Junior, said impatiently, “Oh, quit it, boy!”
“What are you so excited about?” the General asked Emily, when he had
followed her into the parlor.
“Why, uncle Jackson, it’s Christmas! And my lovely locket. You shouldn’t
have given me anything so fine. I’ll put a lock of your hair in it.”
“Put some young fellow’s hair in it—the right fellow, mind you! And were
you looking down that road to see if Christmas was coming?”
“Oh, no. Just more company. Aunt Rachel says there should be ten more.
Thank goodness the rain stopped.”
“Froze a little.” He took his pipe from the mantel, and the deep tobacco
jar. “Kill hogs next week if the cold weather holds. Emily, get your
aunt out of that dining room. Make her rest if you can.”
“I’ll try, but you know aunt Rachel. She won’t believe the Christmas
dinner is fit to eat unless she has dipped a spoon in every dish. I
promised to oversee setting the tables as soon as the girls have cleared
away. They’re all excited and they’ll get all the forks crooked.”
“In some ways it will be good for Rachel to get away for a while,” he
mused, half to himself, as he lifted the coal from the fire.
“Away—where?” Emily stiffened.
“Why, I shall have to return to the Senate, my dear. Have you forgotten
that I have been elected United States Senator from Tennessee? Of
course, when I go back I shall want my wife to go with me.”
“Uncle Jackson, Jack wrote me—”
“And what,” he interrupted, “did Mister Andrew Jackson Donelson write to
you?”
_That he loved me_ leaped like a lovely tongue of fairy flame into her
mind. She blinked very fast to keep uncle Jackson from reading it in her
eyes.
“He said something about circumstances—about a ground swell in
Kentucky—he was rather vague—”
He frowned, then his face lightened and his mouth quirked up at one
corner in a halfway impish grin. “So young Andrew has been hearing
rumblings in Kentucky.” Always he had refused to call his nephew by the
family nickname of Jack. “Why didn’t he write to me? Kentucky is the
fighting ground of our friend Henry Clay. If there are any honors to be
handed out, the Speaker of the House would like them for himself, no
doubt? I will tell you this much, Emily, and you will keep it to
yourself. In spite of all I can do, I have friends determined to push me
into the forefront again. Now, they are talking about running me for the
highest office in this land.”
“But that would be a great honor, uncle Jackson. Why must we keep it a
secret?”
“I don’t want to spoil her Christmas. Some women would be elated at a
chance to spend a winter in Washington, move in important circles,
perhaps be elevated to the highest position in this land. But not your
aunt Rachel. I want to talk her into the right mood, or she might refuse
to leave here and then I’d be separated from her again for a long time.”
“But she must go! I won’t let her refuse,” argued Emily. “We’ll buy her
some beautiful clothes. She can be a fine lady.”
“She’s already a fine lady,” he sighed, “but she’d rather go on here
dosing the bellyache of the most worthless hand I own than to be invited
to dinner in the proudest house in the country. I love her for her
simplicity, and I want her to enjoy peace as long as she can, so say
nothing about any plans, Emily.”
“Yes, uncle Jackson, but you could be wrong about aunt Rachel. The thing
she wants more than anything is to be with you.”
“And what I most desire is to be with her. I am singularly blessed. It
troubles me now that I grow old that the people will not let me rest.”
“You could say no. You could refuse when they thrust these
responsibilities upon you,” she reminded him, grave beyond her years.
He lifted his gaunt shoulders in a ponderous sigh. “This is a great
country, Emily, my child. Where else could a gangling, country boy with
no fortune and little education fight his way up to where he is honored
as I have been honored by my countrymen? I owe America a debt. Speaking
of debts,” his mood changed, his face grew into a sardonic grimace, “the
question is—where is the money coming from to pay for all this pride and
eminence? It costs like the devil to live in Washington and the crops
this year were disappointing. As things stand now I owe about twice as
much as I’m worth. Of course there are a lot of people who owe me—”
“Then make them pay,” she counseled. “And you should never have spent so
much money for this locket, uncle Jackson. I love you without gifts.”
“When I can’t buy a present for a pretty girl, I’ll let them cart me off
to a debtor’s prison!” he declared. “As for asking my friends to repay
money I’ve loaned them, that’s something a gentleman can’t do, Emily.”
“Then don’t be a gentleman,” she suggested boldly. “Be a politician.
They seem to be able to ask for anything they want without any qualms
whatever.”
He laughed so loudly that some of the guests came hurrying in to hear
the joke. “When James Monroe makes me ambassador to Mexico or Russia or
some other heathen spot on this globe, I’m going to make Emily Donelson
my prime counselor,” he said. “This gal has brains.”
Emily laughed and hurried out to help her aunt. She was feeling easier
in her mind. If uncle Jackson was harassed about money, he might be
relieved at hearing that Jack was not going back to school. There was
young Andy coming along to be educated and Andrew Hutchings, also a ward
of the Jacksons, and it must cost a tremendous lot to run this huge
plantation and care for all the people, white and black. And anything
aunt Rachel wanted she had, whether it was a pair of silk mitts, a
ten-dollar hat or an expensive suite of furniture shipped in at enormous
expense from halfway across the country. Somewhere Andrew Jackson found
the money to gratify Rachel’s every desire.
That expensive saddle for Andy—and her locket—and it was very certain in
her mind that there were some things that the General needed for
himself. He needed new clothes anyway. She had noted the shabbiness of
his braided coat, shiny at the elbows, and all his waistcoats were worn
on the edges.
Destiny might have planned great things for Andrew Jackson through his
lifetime, decided his niece, but fate had certainly been stingy with the
practical rewards.
6
The heavy damask cloths had been spread. Another carriage full of
cousins and aunts and uncles arrived to fill the house with more
confusion. Mary Eastin and some of the other girls came to help Emily
direct the placing of the great piles of china plates, the gleaming
goblets and compotes that would be filled with uncle Jackson’s wine and
aunt Rachel’s preserves and relishes. The heavy soup ladle was rubbed
till it glittered, a mound of apples and nuts was heaped on a tray which
Emily edged with holly.