ON that day when the farmers of Concord turn their rifles upon King
George, there dwells in Elizabeth a certain English Major Moncrieffe.
With him is his daughter, just ceasing to be a girl and beginning to
be a woman. Peggy Moncrieffe is a beauty, and, to tell a whole truth,
confident thereof to the verge of brazen. When her father is ordered
to his regiment he leaves her behind. The war to him is no more than a
riot; he looks to be back in Elizabeth before the month expires.
The optimistic Major Moncrieffe is wrong. That riot, which is not a riot
but a revolution, spreads and spreads like fire among dry grass. At last
a hostile line divides him from his daughter Peggy. This is serious;
for, aside from forbidding any word between them, it prevents him
sending what money she requires for her care. In her distress she writes
General Putnam, her father’s comrade in the last war with the French.
The old wolf killer invites the desolate Peggy to make one of his
own household. When young Aaron leaves the staff of Washington, Peggy
Moncrieffe is with the Putnams, whose house stands at the corner of
Broadway and the Battery.
The family of the old wolf killer is made up of Madam Putnam and two
daughters. Peggy Moncrieffe is received as a third daughter by the
kindly Madam Putnam. Also, like a third daughter, she is set to the
spinning wheel; for, while the old wolf killer fights the English, Madam
Putnam and her daughters work early and late, with spinning wheel and
loom, clothmaking for the continental troops. Peggy Moncrieffe offers
no demur; but goes at the spinning and weaving as though she is as much
puritan and patriot as are those about her. She is busy at the spinning
when young Aaron is presented. And in that presentation lurks a peril;
for she is eighteen and he is twenty.
Young Aaron, selfish, gallant, pleased with a pretty face as with a
poem, becomes flatteringly attentive to pretty Peggy Moncrieffe. She,
for her side, turns restless when he leaves her, to glow like the sun
when he returns. She forgets the spinning wheel for his conversation.
The two walk under the trees in the Battery, or, from the quiet steps of
St. Paul’s, watch the evening sun go down beyond the Jersey hills.
Madam Putnam is prudent, and does not like these symptoms. She issues
a whispered mandate to the old wolf killer, with whom her word is law.
Thereupon he sends the pretty Peggy to safer quarters near Kingsbridge.
That is to say, the Kingsbridge refuge, to which pretty Peggy
reluctantly retires, is safe until she arrives. It presently becomes
a theater of danger, since young Aaron is not a day in discovering a
complete military reason for visiting it. The old wolf killer is not
like Washington; there are no foolish orders or tedious dispatches for
his aide to write. This gives leisure to young Aaron, which he improves
in daily gallops to Kingsbridge. It is to be feared that he and pretty
Peggy Moncrieffe find walks as shady, and prospects as pleasant, and
moments as sweet, as when they had the Battery for a promenade and took
in the Jersey hills from the twilight steps of St. Paul’s. Also, the
pretty Peggy no longer pleads to join her father; albeit that parent has
just been sent with his regiment to Staten Island, not an hour’s sail
away.
This contentment of the pretty Peggy with things as they are, re-alarms
the prudence of Madam Putnam, who regards it as a sign most sinister.
Having a genius to be military, quite equal to that of her old
wolf-killing husband, she attacks this dangerously tender situation in
flank. She gives her commands to the old wolf killer, and at once he
blindly obeys. He dispatches young Aaron on a mission to Long Island.
The latter is to look up positions of defense, so as to be prepared for
the English, should they carry their arms in that direction.
In two days young Aaron returns, and makes an exhaustive report; whereat
the old wolf killer breaks into words of praise. This duty discharged,
young Aaron is into the saddle and off, clatteringly, for Kingsbridge.
The old wolf killer sees him depart and says nothing, while a cunning
twinkle dances in the old gray eye. Then the twinkle subsides, and is
succeeded by a self-reproachful doubt.
“He might have married her,” he observes tentatively to Madam Putnam.
“Never!” returns that clear matron. “Your young Major Burr is too coolly
the selfish calculating egotist. He would win her and wear her as he
might some bauble ornament, and cast her aside when the glitter was
gone. As for marrying her, he’d as soon think of marrying the rings on
his fingers, or the buckles on his shoes.”
Young Aaron comes clattering back from Kingsbridge. His black eyes
sparkle wickedly; his face, usually so imperturbable, is the seat of an
obvious anger. Moreover, he seems chokingly full of a question, which
even his ingenious self-confidence is at a loss how to ask. He gets the
old wolf killer alone.
“Miss Moncrieffe!” he breaks forth. Then he proceeds blunderingly: “I
had occasion to go to Kingsbridge, and was surprised to find her gone.”
The last concludes with a rising inflection.
“Why, yes!” retorts the old wolf killer, summoning the innocence of a
sheep. “I forgot to tell you that, seeing an opportunity, I yesterday
sent little Peg to Staten Island under a flag of truce. She is with her
father. Between us”--here he sinks his voice mysteriously--“I was afraid
the enemy might find some way to use little Peg as a spy.” Young Aaron
clicks his teeth savagely, but says nothing; the old wolf killer watches
him with the tail of his eye.
The “gentleman volunteer” strides down to the sea wall, and takes a long
and mayhap loving look at Staten Island, with the wind-ruffled expanse
of bay between.
And there the romance ends.
Two days later young Aaron is sipping his wine in black Sam Fraunces’
long room, the picture of that elegant indifference which he cultivates
as a virtue. Already the fancy for poor Peggy Moncrieffe has faded
from the agate surface of his nature, as the breath mists fade from the
mirror’s face, and he thinks only on how and when he shall lay down his
title of major for that of lieutenant colonel.
The woman’s heart is the heart loyal. While he sips wine at Fraunces’,
and weighs the chances of promotion, Peggy the forgotten finds in Staten
Island another Naxos, and like another Ariadne goes weeping for that
Theseus who has already lost her from out his thoughts.
It is unfortunate that, as aide to the old wolf killer, young Aaron is
not provided with more work for hand and head. As it is, his unfilled
hours afford him opportunity to think and talk unprofitably. He falls to
criticising Washington to the old wolf killer; which is about as sapient
as though he fell to criticising Madam Putnam to the old wolf killer.
“Of what avail,” cries young Aaron one afternoon, as he and his grizzled
chief stroll in the Bowling Green--“of what avail for General Washington
to hold the city, when he must give it up at last? New English ships
show in the bay with the coming up of every sun. He would be wiser if
he withdrew into the interior, and so forced the foe to follow him. This
would lose them the backing of their fleet, from which they gain not
only supplies, but what is of more consequence a kind of moral support.”
The old wolf killer looks at his opinionated aide for a moment. Then
without replying directly, he observes:
“Just as the Christian virtues are faith, hope, and charity, so the
military virtues are courage, endurance, and silence. And the greatest
of these is silence. You ought always to remember that a soldier’s sword
should be immeasurably longer than his tongue.”
Young Aaron reddens at what he feels is a rebuke. The following day,
when he is directed to join General McDougal on Long Island, he is glad
to go.
“He has had too little to do,” explains the old wolf killer to Madam
Putnam. “Like all workless folk he is beginning to talk; and his is the
sort of conversation that breeds enemies and brews trouble.”
Young Aaron is in the fight on Long Island. Upon the retreating back of
that lost battle, he supervises the crossing of the troops to Manhattan.
All night, cool and quick and vigilant, he labors on the Brooklyn side
to put the men aboard the transports. When the last is across the East
River, he himself embarks, bringing with him his horse, hog-tied, in the
bottom of the barge. It is early dawn when he leads the released animal
ashore on the Manhattan side. Mounting it, with two fellow officers,
he rides northward at a leisurely gait, a half mile to the rear of the
retreating army.
As young Aaron and his companions push north toward Kingsbridge, they
come across the baggage and stores of a battery of artillery. The
baggage and stores have been but the moment before abandoned.
“It looks,” observes young Aaron, who is as unruffled as upon the day
when he laid down theology for law, to the horrified distress of Dr.
Bellamy--“it looks as though the captain of that battery, whoever he is,
has permitted these English in our rear to get unnecessarily upon his
nerves. There is no such close occasion as to justify the abandonment of
these stores. At least he should have destroyed them.”
Twenty rods beyond, he finds one of the battery’s guns. He points to the
lost piece scornfully.
“There,” says he, “is the pure proof of some one’s cowardice!”
Spurring on, and led by the rumbling sounds of field guns in full
retreat, he overtakes the timid ones who have thrown away baggage and
gun. The captain who commands is a youth no older than young Aaron. As
the latter comes up, the boy captain is urging his cannoneers to double
speed.
“Let me congratulate you, captain,” observes young Aaron, extravagantly
polite the better to set off the sneer that marks his manner, “on not
having thrown away your colors. May I ask your name?”
“I, sir,” returns the artillery youth, as much moved of resentment at
young Aaron’s sneer, as is possible for one in his perturbed frame, “I,
sir, am Captain Alexander Hamilton.”
“And I, sir, am Major Burr. Let me compliment you, Captain Hamilton,
for the ardor you display in carrying your battery forward. One might
suppose from your headlong zeal that the English forces lie in that
direction. I must needs say, however, that the zeal which casts away its
stores and baggage, and leaves a gun behind, is ill considered.”
Captain Hamilton’s face clouds angrily; but, since he is thinking more
on the English than on insults that perilous morning, he does not reply
to the taunt. Young Aaron, feeling the better for his expressions of
contempt, wheels off to the left toward the Hudson, leaving the other to
bring on his battery with what breathless speed he may.
“Now, had that Captain Hamilton been in the light on Long Island,”
remarks young Aaron to his companions, “the hurry he shows might have
found partial excuse. As it is, I hold his flight too feverish, when
one remembers that it is from an enemy which as yet he has personally
neither faced nor seen.”
Young Aaron puts in divers idle months at Kingsbridge. His conduct on
Long Island, and during the retreat of the army toward the north, has
multiplied his fame for an indomitable hardihood. Indeed he is inclined
to compliment himself; though he hides the fact defensively in his own
breast.
This good opinion of his services teaches him to entertain ambitions of
the vaulting, not to say o’er-leaping sort. As he now, by the light of
recent achievement, measures his merits nothing short of a colonelcy
and the leadership of a regiment will do him justice. Conceive then, how
deeply he feels slighted when Washington fails to share these liberal
views, and promotes him to nothing higher than that lieutenant colonelcy
which his hopes have so much outgrown. He accepts; but he feels the
title fit him with an awkward nearness, as might a coat that some
blundering tailor has cut too small. The letter of acceptance which he
indites to Washington includes such paragraphs as this:
_I am constrained to observe that the late date of my appointment as
lieutenant colonel, subjects me to the command of officers who, in the
late campaign, were my juniors. With due submission, sir, I should like
to know whether it was misconduct on my part or extraordinary merit on
theirs, which has thus given them the preference. I desire, on my part,
to avoid equally the character of turbulent or passive, but as a decent
regard to rank is proper and necessary I hope the concern I feel in this
matter will be found excusable in one who regards his honor next to the
welfare of his country._
The old wolf killer is with Washington when that harassed commander
reads young Aaron’s effusion. With an exclamation of wrath the big
general tosses it across.
“By all that is ineffable!” he cries, “read that. Now here is a boy gone
stark staring mad for vanity! A stripling of twenty-one, with face as
hairless as an egg, and yet the second rank in a regiment is no match
for his majestic deserts! Putnam,” he continues, as the old wolf killer
runs his eye over the letter, “that young friend of yours will be the
death of me yet! As I told you, sir, he is a courageous prig--yes, sir,
a mere courageous prig!”
“What reply will you make? It should be a sharp one.”
“It shall be none at all. I’ll make no reply to such bombastic
fault-finding. One might as well pelt a pig with pearls, as waste common
sense on such self-conceit as we have here. Do me the honor, Putnam, to
write this boy-conqueror a note, saying it is my orders that he join his
regiment at once.”
Young Aaron finds the regiment to which he has been assigned on the
Ramapo, a day’s ride back from the Hudson. His superior in command,
Colonel Malcolm, is a shop-keeping, amiable gentleman, as short of
breath as of courage, who would as soon think of thrusting his hand
into the embers as his fat body into battle. Preeminently is he of that
peculiar war-feather that, for every reason in favor of going forward,
can give a dozen for falling back. Perceiving with delight young
Aaron to be possessed of a taste for carnage as well as command, the
peace-loving Colonel Malcolm promptly surrenders the regiment into his
hands.
“You shall drill it and fight it,” says he, “while I will be its
father.”
With this, the fat Colonel Malcolm retires twenty miles farther into the
interior; where he joins Madam Malcolm, as fat as himself, who unites
with five fat children, their offspring, to fatly welcome him.
Young Aaron, now when he finds himself in sole control, parades the
regiment, and does not like its appearance. He makes it a speech, and
is exceeding frank. He explains that it is more fitted to shine at
barbecues and barn-raisings than in war. Then he grasps it with a daily
hand of steel, and begins to crush it into disciplined shape. From break
of morning until the sun goes down, he puts it through its paces. As one
of the onlookers remarks:
“He drills ‘em till their tongues hang out.”
The fruits of this iron rule, so much a change from that picnic
character of control but lately exercised by the amiable Colonel
Malcolm, are twofold. Young Aaron is hated and respected by every soul
on the rolls. Caring nothing for the one and everything for the other,
he continues to drill the boots off their feet. Finally, the regiment
ceases to look like a mob, and dons a military expression. At which
young Aaron is privily exalted.
There still remain, however, a round score of thorns in his militant
flesh, being as many captains and lieutenants, who are better qualified
for the drawing-room than the field. He must rid himself of this element
of popinjay.
Since young Aaron is clothed of no power of dismissal over the offensive
popinjays, the situation bristles with difficulties. For all that they
must go. After one night’s thought, he gets up from his cogitations
inclined to exclaim, like another Archimedes: “I have found it!”
Young Aaron’s device is simplicity itself. Having no power of dismissal,
he will usurp it. Also, he will assert it in such fashion that not a
popinjay of them all will be able to make his dismissal the basis of
military inquiry, and keep his credit clean.
Young Aaron writes, word for word, the same letter to each of the
undesirable popinjay ones. He words it, skillfully, in this wise:
_Sir: You are unfitted for the duties you have assumed. For the good
of the service therefore, I demand the immediate resignation or your
commission. To be frank, sir, I think you lack the courage to lead your
men in the presence of a foe. Should I be wrong in this assumption, you
of course will demonstrate that fact by methods which readily suggest
themselves to every gentleman of spirit. Let me therefore urge that you
either forward your resignation as herein demanded by me, or dispatch
in its stead a request for that satisfaction which I, as a man of honor,
shall not for one moment deny. I beg leave to remain, sir,_
_Your very humble servant,_
_Aaron Burr, Acting Colonel._
“There!” thinks he, when the last letter is signed, sealed, and sent
upon its way to the popinjay hand for which it is designed, “that
should do nicely. I’ve ever held that the way to successfully deal with
humanity is to take humanity by the horns. That I’ve done. Likewise,
I flatter myself I’ve constructed my net so fine that none of them can
wriggle through. And as for breaking through by the dueling method I
hint at, I shall have guessed vastly to one side, if the best among them
own either the force or courage to so much as make the attempt.”
Young Aaron is justified of his perspicacity. The resignations of the
popinjays come pouring in, each seeming to take the initiative, and
basing his “voluntary” abandonment of a military career on grounds
wholly invented and highly honorable to himself. No reference, even of
the blindest, is made to that brilliant usurpation of authority. Neither
is young Aaron’s letter alluded to in any conversation.
There is one exception; a popinjay personage named Rawls, retorts in
a hectic epistle which, while conveying his resignation, avows a
determination to welter in young Aaron’s blood as a slight solace for
the outrage done his feelings. To this, young Aaron replies that he
shall, on the very next day, do himself the honor of a call upon the
ill-used and flaming Rawls, whose paternal roof is not an hour’s gallop
from the Ramapo. Accordingly, young Aaron repairs to the Rawls’s mansion
at eleven of next day’s clock. He has with him two officers, who are
dark as to the true purpose of the excursion.
Young Aaron and the accompanying duo are asked to dinner by the Rawls’s
household. The popinjay fiery Rawls is present, but embarrassed. After
dinner, when young Aaron asks popinjay Rawls to ride with his party a
mile or two on the return journey, the fiery, ill-used one grows more
embarrassed.
He does not, however, ride forth on that suggested mission of honor; his
alarmed sisters, of whom there are an angelic three, rush to his rescue
in a flood of terrified exclamation.
“O Colonel Burr!” they chorus, “what are you about to do with Neddy?”
“My dear young ladies,” protests young Aaron suavely, “believe me, I’m
about to do nothing with Neddy. I intend only to ask him what he desires
or designs to do with me. I am here to place myself at Neddy’s disposal,
in a matter which he well understands.”
The interfering angelic sisterly ones declare that popinjay Neddy meant
nothing by his letter, and will never write another. Whereupon young
Aaron observes he will be content with the understanding that popinjay
Neddy send him no more letters, unless they have been first submitted to
the sisterly censorship of the angelic three. To this everyone concerned
most rapturously consents; following which young Aaron goes back to his
camp by the Ramapo, while the sisterly angelic ones festoon themselves
about the neck of popinjay Neddy, over whom they weepingly rejoice as
over one returned from out the blackness of the shadow of death.