It is a soundless, soft December evening. The quietly falling flakes
are cloaking in thin white the streets and roofs of Norfolk. Off shore,
a cable’s length, an English sloop of war, eighteen guns, lies tugging
at her anchors. In shore from the sloop of war rides the peaceful
twenty-ton sloop of Planter Paul Jones. The sailor-planter, loitering
homeward from a cruise to Charleston and the coast towns of the
Carolinas, is calling on friends in Norfolk. Both the war sloop and the
peace sloop seem almost deserted in the falling snow. Aside from the
harbor light burning high in the rigging, and an anchor watch of two
sailors muffled to the ears, the decks of neither craft show signs of
life.
Norfolk’s public hall is candle-lighted to a pitch of unusual
brilliancy; the waxed floors are thronged with the beauty and gentility
of the Old Dominion, as the same find Norfolk expression. It is indeed
a mighty social occasion; for the local élite have seized upon the
officers of the sloop of war, and are giving a ball in their honor. The
honored ones attend to a man--which accounts for the deserted look of
their sloop--and their gold lace blazes bravely by the light of the
candles, and with tremendous gala effect.
Planter Paul Jones is also among the guests. Since he is in town,
his coming to the ball becomes the thing most natural. Already he is
regarded as the Admirable Crichton, of tide-water Virginia, and the
function wanting his presence would go down to history as incomplete.
Paul Jones, planter for two years, has made himself a foremost figure in
Virginia. Twenty-eight, cultured, travelled, gallant, brilliant, and a
bachelor, he is welcome in every drawing-room. Besides, is there not the
Jones plantation, with its mile of river front, its noble mansion house,
its tobacco teeming acres, its well-trained slaves, and all turning in
those yearly one thousand yellow guineas under the heedful managing
thumb of canny Duncan Macbean? Planter Paul Jones is a prince for
hospitality, too; and the high colonial dames, taking pity on his
wifeless state, preside at his table, or chaperone the water parties
which he gives on his great sloop. Also--still considering his
wifelessness--they seek to marry him to one of their colonial daughters.
In this latter dulcet intrigue, the high colonial dames fail wholly. The
young planter-sailor is not a marrying man. There is in truth a blushing
story which lasts throughout a fortnight in which he is quoted as about
to yield. Rumor gives it confidently forth that the Jones mansion will
have a mistress, and its master carry altar-ward Betty Parke, the pretty
niece of Madam Martha Washington. But pretty Betty Parke, in the very
face of this roseate rumor, becomes Mrs. Tyler, and it will be one of
her descendants who, seventy-five years later, is chosen President--a
poor President, but still a President. Planter Paul Jones rides to the
wedding of pretty Betty Parke, and gives it his serene and satisfied
countenance. From which sign it is supposed that Dame Rumor mounts by
the wrong stirrup when she goes linking the name of pretty Betty Parke
with that of Planter Paul Jones; and no love-letter scrap, nor private
journal note, will ever rise from the grave to disparage the assumption.
That Planter Paul Jones has thus lived for two years, and moved and had
his social being among the most beautiful of women, and escaped hand
free and heart free to tell the tale, is strange to the brink of
marvellous. It is the more strange since no one could be more than he
the knight of dames. And he can charm, too--as witness a letter which
two years farther on the unimpressionable Doctor Franklin will write to
Madam d’Haudetot:
“No matter, my dear madam,” the cool philosopher will say, “what the
faults of Paul Jones may be, I must warn your ladyship that when face
to face with him neither man nor, so far as I learn, woman, can for a
moment resist the strange magnetism of his presence, the indescribable
charm of his manner; a commingling of the most compliant deference with
the most perfect self-esteem that I have ever seen in a man; and above
all the sweetness of his voice and the purity of his language.”
Paul Jones is not alone the darling of colonial drawing-rooms, he is
also the admiration of the men. This is his description as given by one
who knew him afloat and ashore:
“Though of slender build, his neck, arms and shoulders were those of a
heavy, powerful man. The strength of his arms and shoulders could hardly
be believed. And he had equal use of both hands, even to writing with
the left as well as with the right. He was a past master of the art of
boxing. To this he added a quickness of motion that cannot be described.
When roused he could strike more blows and cause more havoc in a second
than any other could strike or cause in a minute. Even when calm
and unruffled his gait and all his bodily motions were those of the
panther--noiseless, sleek, the perfection of grace.”
The above, by way of portrait: When one adds to it that Planter Paul
Jones rides like a Prince Rupert, fences like a Crillon, gives blows
with his fist that would stagger Jack Slack, and is death itself with
either gun or pistol, it will be seen how he owns every quality that
should pedestal him as a paragon in the best circles of his day.
It is towards the hour of midnight when Planter Paul Jones, attired like
a Brummel, stands in quiet converse with his friend Mr. Hurst. Their
talk runs on the state of sentiment in the colonies, and the chance of
trouble with the motherland.
“Hostilities are certain, my dear Hurst,” says Planter Paul Jones. “I
hear it from Colonel Washington, Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Henry. They make
no secret of it in Williamsburg about the House of Burgesses.”
“But the other colonies’?”
“Mr. Morris of Philadelphia, as well as Mr. Pynckney of Charleston,
agrees with the gentlemen I’ve quoted. They say, sir, there will soon be
an outbreak in Boston.”
“In Boston!” repeats Mr. Hurst doubtfully.
“Have the Massachusetts men the courage, think you?”
“Courage, ay! and the strength, my friend! Both Colonel Washington and
Mr. Jefferson assured me that, although slow to anger, they are true
sons of Cromwell’s Ironsides.
“And what shall be our attitude?”
“We must sustain them at all hazards, sir--sustain them to the death!”
It is now that a knot of English officers drift up--a little flushed of
wine, are these guests of honor. They, too, have been talking, albeit
thickly, of a possible future full of trouble for the colonies.
“I was observing,” says Lieutenant Parker, addressing Planter Paul Jones
and Mr. Hurst, “that the insolence of the Americans, which is more or
less in exhibition all the way from Boston to Savannah, will never get
beyond words. There will be no blows struck.”
“And why are you so confident?” asks Planter Paul Jones, eye agate,
voice purringly soft. “Now I should say that, given provocation, the
colonies would strike a blow, and a heavy one.”
“When do you sail?” interrupts Mr. Hurst, speaking to Lieutenant Parker.
Mr. Hurst would shift conversation to less perilous ground. As a mover
of the ball, he is in sort host to the officers, as well as to Planter
Paul Jones, and for the white credit of the town desires a peaceful
evening. “I hear,” he concludes, “that your sloop is for a cruise off
the French coast.”
“She and the fleet she belongs to,” responds Lieutenant Parker,
utterance somewhat blurred, “will remain on this station while a word of
rebel talk continues.”
“Now, instead of keeping you here,” breaks in Planter Paul Jones,
vivaciously, “to hector peaceful colonies, if I were your king I should
send you to wrest Cape Good Hope from the Dutch.”
“Cape Good Hope from the Dutch?”
“Or the Isles of France and Bourbon from the French--lying, as they
do, like lions in the pathway to our Indian possessions. If I were your
king, I say, those would be the tasks I’d set you.”
“And why do you say ‘your king?’ Is he not also _your_ king?”
“Why, sir, I might be pleasantly willing,” observes Planter Paul Jones
airily, “to give you my share in King George. In any event, I do not
propose that you shall examine into my allegiance. And I say again that,
if I were your king, sir, I’d find you better English work to do than an
irritating and foolish patrol of these coasts.”
“You spoke of the Americans striking a blow,” says Lieutenant Parker,
who is gifted of that pertinacity of memory common to half-drunken men;
“you spoke but a moment back of the Americans striking a blow, and a
heavy one.”
“Ay, sir! a blow--given provocation.”
Lieutenant Parker wags his head with an air of sagacity both bibulous
and supercilious. He smiles victoriously, as a fortunate comparison bobs
up to his mind.
“A blow!” he murmurs. Then, fixing Planter Paul Jones with an eye of
bleary scorn: “The Americans would be quickly lashed into their kennels
again. The more easily, if the courage of the American men, as I think’s
the case, is no more firmly founded than the chastity of the American
women.”
[Illustration: 0006]
Planter Paul Jones deals Lieutenant Parker a blow with his clenched
fist, the like of which was never before seen even in the violent port
of Norfolk. Lieutenant Parker’s nose is crushed flat with his face; he
falls like some pole-axed ox. His fellow-officers lift him to his feet,
bleeding, stunned beyond words.
“You shall hear from us!” is the fierce cry from his comrades, as they
hurry the stricken Parker from the ballroom.
“I shall be pleased to hear from any or all of you,” replies Planter
Paul Jones; “or from what other dogs in king’s coats shall question the
honor of American women.” Then, turning to Mr. Hurst: “You, sir, shall
act for me! Accept every challenge they send! Make it pistols, ten
paces, with Craney Island for the place; and fix the time to suit their
English convenience.”