YOUNG Aaron establishes himself in Litchfield with his pretty sister
Sally, who, because he is brilliant and handsome, is proud of him. Also,
Tappan Reeve, her husband, takes to him in a slow, bookish way, and is
much held by his trenchant powers of mind.
Young Aaron assumes the law, and makes little flights into Bracton’s
“Fleeta,” and reads Hawkins and Hobart, delighting in them for their
limpid English. More seriously, yet more privately, he buries himself in
every volume of military lore upon which he may lay hands; for already
he feels that Bunker Hill is on its way, without knowing the name of it,
and would have himself prepared for its advent.
In leisure hours, young Aaron gives Litchfield society the glory of his
countenance. He flourishes as a village Roquelaure, with plumcolored
coats, embroidered waistcoats, silken hose, and satin smalls, sent up
from New York. Likewise, his ruffles are miracles, his neckcloths works
of starched and spotless art, while at his hip he wears a sword--hilt of
gilt, and sharkskin scabbard white as snow.
Now, because he is splendid, with a fortune of four hundred annual
pounds, and since no girl’s heart may resist the mystery of those eyes,
the village belles come sighing against him in a melting phalanx
of loveliness. This is flattering; but young Aaron declines to be
impressed. Polished, courteous, in amiable possession of himself, he
furnishes the thought of a bright coldness, like sunshine on a field
of ice. Not that anyone is to blame. The difference between him and the
sighing ones, is a difference of shrines and altars. They sacrifice to
Venus; he worships Mars. While he has visions of battle, they dream of
wedding bells.
For one moment only arises some tender confusion. There is an Uncle
Thaddeus--a dotard ass far gone in years! Uncle Thaddeus undertakes,
behind young Aaron’s back, to make him happy. The liberal Uncle Thaddeus
goes so blindly far as to explore the heart of a particular fair one,
who mayhap sighs more deeply than do the others. It grows embarrassing;
for, while the sighing one thus softly met accepts, when Uncle Thaddeus
flies to young Aaron with the dulcet news, that favored personage
transfixes him with so black a stare, wherefrom such baleful serpent
rage glares forth, that our dotard meddler is fear-frozen in the very
midst of his ingenuous assiduities. And thereupon the sighing one is
left to sigh uncomforted, while Uncle Thaddeus finds himself the scorn
of all good village opinion.
While young Aaron goes stepping up and down the Litchfield causeways,
as though strutting in Jermyn Street or Leicester Square; while thus he
plays the fine gentleman with ruffles and silks and shark-skin sword,
skimming now the law, now flattering the sighing belles, now devouring
the literature of war, he has ever his finger on the pulse, and his ear
to the heart of his throbbing times. It is he of Litchfield who hears
earliest of Lexington and Bunker Hill. In a moment he is all action. Off
come the fine feathers, and that shark-skin, gilt-hilt sword. Warlock is
saddled; pistols thrust into holsters. In roughest of costumes the
fop surrenders to the soldier. It takes but a day, and he is ready for
Cambridge and the American camp.
As he goes upon these doughty preparations, young Aaron finds himself
abetted by the pretty Sally, who proves as martial as himself. Her
husband, Tappan Reeve, easy, quiet, loving his unvexed life, from the
law book on his table to the pillow whereon he nightly sleeps, cannot
understand this headlong war hurry.
“You may lose your life!” cries Tappan Reeve.
“What then?” rejoins young Aaron. “Whether the day be far or near, that
life you speak of is already lost. I shall play this game. My life is my
stake; and I shall freely hazard it upon the chance of winning glory.”
“And have you no fear?”
The timid Tappan’s thoughts of death are ashen; he likes to live.
Young Aaron bends upon him his black gaze. “What I fear more than any
death,” says he, “is stagnation--the currentless village life!”
Young Aaron, arriving at Cambridge, attaches himself to General Putnam.
The grizzled old wolf killer likes him, being of broadest tolerations,
and no analyst of the psychic.
There are seventeen thousand Americans scattered in a ragged fringe
about Boston, in which town the English, taught by Lexington and Bunker
Hill, are cautiously prone to lie close. Young Aaron makes the round of
the camps. He is amazed by the unrule and want of discipline. Besides,
he cannot understand the inaction, feeling that each new day should have
its Bunker Hill. That there is not enough powder among the Americans
to load and fire those seventeen thousand rifles twice, is a piece of
military information of which he lives ignorant, for the grave Virginian
in command confides it only to a merest few. Had young Aaron been aware
of this paucity of powder, those long days, idle, vacant of event, might
not have troubled him. The wearisome wonder of them at least would have
been made plain.
Young Aaron learns of an expedition against Quebec, to be led by Colonel
Benedict Arnold, and resolves to join it. That all may be by military
rule, he seeks General Washington to ask permission. He finds that
commander in talk with General Putnam; the old wolf killer does him the
favor of a presentation.
“From where do you come?” asks Washington, closely scanning young Aaron
whom he instantly dislikes.
“From Connecticut. I am a gentleman volunteer, attached to General
Putnam with the rank of captain.”
Something of repulsion shows cloudily on the brow of Washington.
Obviously he is offended by this cool stripling, who clothes his
hairless boy’s face with a confident maturity that has the effect of
impertinence. Also the phrase “gentleman volunteer,” sticks in his
throat like a fish bone.
“Ah, a ‘gentleman volunteer!’” he repeats in a tone of sarcasm scarcely
veiled. “I have now and then heard of such a trinket of war, albeit,
never to the trinket’s advantage. Doubtless, sir, you have made the
rounds of our array!”
Young Aaron, from his beardless five feet six inches, looks up at the
tall Virginian, and cannot avoid envying him his door-wide shoulders
and that extra half foot of height. He perceives, too, with a resentful
glow, that he is being mocked. However, he controls himself to answer
coldly:
“As you surmise, sir, I have made the rounds of your forces.”
“And having made them”--this ironically--“I trust you found all to your
satisfaction.”
“As to that,” remarks young Aaron, “while I did not look to find trained
soldiers, I think that a better discipline might be maintained.”
“Indeed! I shall make a note of it. And yet I must express the hope
that, while you occupy a subordinate place, you will give way as little
as may be to your perilous trick of thinking, leaving it rather to our
experienced friend Putnam, here, he being trained in these matters.”
The old wolf killer takes advantage of this reference to himself, to
help the interview into less trying channels.
“You were seeking me?” he says to the youthful critic of camps and
discipline.
“I was seeking the commander in chief,” returns young Aaron, again
facing Washington. “I came to ask permission to go with Colonel Arnold
against Quebec.”
“Against Quebec?” repeats Washington. “Go, with all my heart!”
There is a cut concealed in that consent, to the biting smart of which
young Aaron is not insensible. However, he finds in the towering
manner of its delivery something which checks even his audacity. After
saluting, he withdraws without added word.
“General,” observes Washington, when young Aaron has gone, “I fear I
cannot congratulate you on your new captain.”
“If you knew him better, general,” protests the good-hearted old wolf
killer, “you would like him better. He is a boy; but he has an old head
on his young shoulders.”
[Illustration: 0043]
“The very thing I most fear,” rejoins Washington. “A boy has no more
business with an old head than with old lungs or old legs. It is
unnatural, sir; and the unnatural is the wrong. I want only heads and
shoulders about me that were born the same day. For that reason, I am
glad your ‘gentleman volunteer’”--this with a shade of irony--“goes to
Quebec with that turbulent Norwich apothecary, Arnold. The army will be
bettered just now by the absence of these lofty spirits. They disturb
more than they help. Besides, a tramp of sixty days through the Maine
woods will improve such Hotspurs vastly. There is nothing like a
six-hundred mile march through an unbroken wilderness, with a fight in
the snow at the far end of it, to take the edge off beardless arrogance
and young conceit.”
What young Aaron carries away from that interview, as an impression
of the big commander in chief, crops out in converse with his former
college chum, young Ogden. The latter, like himself, is attached to the
military family of General Putnam.
“Ogden, we have begun wrong as soldiers--you and I!” says young Aaron.
“By flint and steel, man, we should have commenced like Washington, by
hoeing tobacco!”
“Now this is not right!” cries young Ogden, in reproof. “General
Washington is a soldier who has seen service.”
“Why,” retorts young Aaron, “I believe he was trounced with Braddock.”
Then, warmly: “Ogden, the man is Failure walking about in blue and
buff and high boots! I read him like a page of print! He is slow, dull,
bovine, proud, and of no decision. He lacks initiative; and, while he
might defend, he is incapable of attacking. Worst of all he has the soul
of a planter--a plantation soul! A big movement like this, which brings
the thirteen colonies to the field, is beyond his grasp.”
“Your great defect, Aaron,” cries young Ogden, not without indignation,
“is that you regard your most careless judgment as final. Half the time,
too, your decision is the product of prejudice, not reason. General
Washington offends you--as, to be frank, he did me--by putting a lower
estimate on your powers than that at which you yourself are pleased
to hold them. I warrant now had he flattered you a bit, you would have
found in him a very Alexander.”
“I should have found him what I tell you,” retorts young Aaron stoutly,
“a glaring instance of misplaced mediocrity. He is even wanting in
dignity!”
“For my side, then, I found him dignified enough.”
“Friend Ogden, you took dullness for dignity. Or I will change it; I’ll
even consent that he is dignified. But only in the torpid, cud-chewing
fashion in which a bullock is dignified. Still, he does very well by me;
for he says I may go with Colonel Arnold. And so, Ogden, I’ve but
time for ‘good-by!’ and then off to make myself ready to accompany our
swashbuckler druggist against Quebec.”