2
Her room under the eaves of the Hermitage was big and bright. The walls were covered with paper in a small, gay design; there were ruffled curtains at the windows. They looked down on the meadow where even on this chilly morning Andrew Jackson’s mares and colts picked at the frosty grass, lifting their heads now and then to watch for Philip to come trudging down from the stables to pour buckets of water and grain into the feeding troughs.
Later, Emily knew, every animal would be led back to the barns to be brushed and polished ready to meet the General’s critical eye.
The room was chilly. She had not bothered to light the fire laid on the hearth. She had delayed too long sitting up in her warm feather bed, a shawl around her shoulders, reading and rereading the letter. It made her heart beat quickly and her cheeks burn to read it, and when she pressed it against her heart it seemed to glow there, warming her all over.
He loved her! In stiff, formal, slightly legal language he had written it, plain to see, and the words danced before her eyes and got into her blood and did pirouettes there like little live things with silver bells on their feet. Lovely words! She kissed the letter now and then hid it inside her Bible that lay on the table beside the bed. What a pity that so much that was beautiful and wonderful must be hidden or face the chilly breath of adult disapproval!
“If you marry your own cousin all your children will be idiots,” the older people said, looking sombre, so desperately certain that they were right. They were the elders and knew the truth as young people could not be assumed to know it, not having lived long enough for experience to lay its cold blight upon them.
“I gave Andrew Jackson Donelson orders not to come home,” her uncle Jackson had said. The thrill in Emily’s heart was touched by panic now as she hurried into her clothes. Her chemise, chilly and crisp, the cramping stays, the long white ruffled drawers and petticoats. Her fingers were clumsy with cold and dread as she struggled with the fastenings. For Jack was coming! Already he was on the way. He must be riding southward on that road from Kentucky this minute, school left behind him—forever, the letter said.
He knew where he was needed, he had written. Aunt Jackson needed him. So would the General.
“Circumstances have arisen that will make it needful for our uncle to have assistance,” ran the letter. “So I shall return to offer my aid and I hope at that time that it will be proper for me to make my addresses to your family, my dear Emily, and request your hand in marriage. Farewell, then, my love, till I enter the gate at the Hermitage.”
There would be some kind of furious explosion of displeasure from uncle Jackson, she knew. He would be wrathy at being disobeyed, but her experience with the tempestuous old warrior led Emily to hope faintly that eventually he would give in. Especially if aunt Rachel should shed a few tears. That was his history, storming, shouting orders and blasting somebody with angry words, then softening instantly if he saw a look of hurt in Rachel Jackson’s eyes.
Breakfast, when the General was away, was usually a quiet meal at the Hermitage. Rachel never slept very well and rose, still and determined, setting about the multitude of tasks before her, level-eyed and grave. But when Andrew Jackson was at home there was hubbub. He was always noisy and impatient in the mornings, eating rapidly, summoning one servant after another to give orders about the cattle, the horses, the winter plowing. Negroes hurried in, stood hat in hand listening obediently. There was bedlam in the dining room when Emily went down on this morning of Christmas Eve.
“Mix some bran with the oats for those nursing mares,” uncle Jackson was barking at Philip.
“Yes, sah, Mista Jackson. That Truxton filly, she got sore foots. You want me to put tar and grease on her foots, sah?”
“Don’t get it too hot. You blistered all the hair off last time. Here!” Jackson slapped a piece of ham between the halves of a huge biscuit and handed it to the slave. “Eat that and get moving.”
“Yes, sah. Thank you, sah.”
“I need somebody around this place to take some of these chores off me,” grumbled the General. “You, boy!” He glared at Andrew, Junior, who was wolfing down a plateful of egg. “You go see to that filly’s feet. Got to learn. Got to learn some time.”
Young Andrew’s sensitive mouth jerked and his great eyes looked uneasy. “It’s raining, Papa,” he protested.
“It may turn to snow. It felt very raw to me when I went out to the dairy this morning,” Rachel put in gently.
“It rained on me at Fort Mimms and Chalmette,” snapped Andrew Jackson. “You have ridden miles in the rain, my love—so has this fellow! What are you, son, a lump of salt that a little rain can dissolve you? Or are you a paper man cut out to dance on a string while somebody picks a banjo?”
“No, Papa, I’ll go.” The boy hastily wiped his lips. “But Philip won’t pay any attention to me. He’ll just tell me to keep out of the way of that mare’s heels.”
“Make him obey you! How are you going to be master of this place when I’m gone if you can’t win the respect of the people? I may not be here much longer. I never thought to live long enough to sleep under this roof. Put that stuff on your wrist and be sure it’s not too hot.”
“You’ve been going to die before spring ever since I can remember, uncle Jackson,” teased Emily, when the boy had gone out.
“It’s that cold he gets in his chest every time he gets wet,” Rachel said. “And you get it too and so does Andy.”
“Let him get toughened up then,” growled the General. “You spoil all these young ones, my dear. Andy will have heavy responsibilities when I’m gone. He has to be trained to meet them. I’ve done fairly well with Andrew Jackson Donelson for all you women trying continually to soften him up. He’ll make a man.”
Emily’s heart was a bit happier. Uncle Jackson did need someone to help him, as Jack had written. She hoped that when Jack arrived, when the storm of her uncle’s ire had subsided, that the General would welcome young Jack’s assistance. Inevitably, it was certain, the General would be off again on some public service or other. He protested, he fumed, but always, when he was convinced that the call came from the people, he obeyed, and Rachel would be left alone again with the burden of this big plantation.
The slaves were willing but aunt Rachel was too soft with them, as she was too gentle, by the General’s standards, with the young people who surrounded her. She was continually protesting the overseer’s decisions, protecting shirkers and malcontents from punishment. She was too indulgent with young Andy—a spoiled boy already who, his cousin was convinced, was never going to learn the value of money.
Rachel excused herself now and hurried out—to see that the boy was adequately protected from the weather, Emily suspected. She would wrap him in coats and scarfs and when he returned from the pasture or the stable he would be put to bed, his feet soaked in hot mustard water and a plaster of goose grease and pepper on his chest if he so much as sneezed. Jack would be out there, seeing to the mares, without being told, his sweetheart believed worshipfully. Jack would be a great help to aunt Rachel.
“I’ll do my own room, aunt Rachel,” she called, as she went back through the house. “The girls have so much to do today.”
In the big buttery Rachel turned the keys in her hands anxiously. “I declare I keep forgetting how many people you counted, Emily.”
“I counted fifty-two, but with the weather so bad some of them might not get here. You know how awful the roads get when it rains very long. I wish it hadn’t rained today. I was going to have the boys cut some greens for me and decorate the house. There’s a big holly tree out there beyond the tulip grove covered with red berries.”
“Send George,” her aunt suggested. “Mr. Jackson gave George his old oilskin coat and a pair of boots. You could put holly on the mantelpieces. It would look right pretty but it would dry out mighty quick, I’m afraid. Emily, do you reckon Mr. Jackson has any idea of going to Russia? My patience, that would be a terrible place to go!”
“He said he had refused the appointment, aunt Rachel.”
“I know. But he refused to be governor of Florida too, and first thing I knew here I was packing to go to Pensacola. Emily, all I ask is so little—just to be allowed to stay in my home with my husband and my family. I don’t suit proud places. Sometimes I feel that Mr. Jackson must be ashamed of me.”
“Nonsense, aunt Rachel!” Emily gave the quivering figure a quick hug. “Uncle Jackson thinks you are perfect.”
“I wish I wasn’t getting so fat! It shortens my breath so.”
In her own room Emily quickly made her bed and hung her clothes away in the big wardrobe. Then she sat at the window again to read her letter. Words she had passed over lightly before in her happy daze now leaped out to trouble her. “Circumstances that have arisen,” Jack had written. A cold kind of prescience oppressed the girl, shot through with a breathless excitement, as though she had heard a trumpet blow.
It had come to her that there was always about Andrew Jackson that atmosphere of great events impending. Always when he seemed most intimate, familiar and dear, there was a cloak of aloofness shutting him in, a remote and dedicated sort of mystery. As though even when he was thinking homely thoughts—a lame mare, a fire that needed replenishing—he was listening to some far, calling drum. As though never could he belong entirely to this Hermitage, this woman that he loved, the young people he scolded and indulged impartially. Emily was very young and a trifle naïve, but there was a wisdom deep in her that recognized the destiny that cloaked this man she loved like a garment of silver, and her young mind dreaded it even while it thrilled her.
She remembered John Eaton’s words, that people were saying that Andrew Jackson should be President of the United States. She remembered, too, aunt Rachel’s positive declaration that this he could not be! No palaces for her, she had announced—but had there been a tinge of desperation in that declaration? Did aunt Rachel feel the pressure of destiny too, that remote glory that invested her man on horseback?
It would be exciting, Emily was thinking, to live in that new president’s palace in Washington. The British had burned it in retaliation for the sack of Toronto by the American forces, but it had been rebuilt, finer than ever, she had heard, and now it was as important as Buckingham Palace. Aunt Rachel had no wish to be a queen in a palace. Only too well Emily knew that aunt Rachel would be an unhappy queen.
“But I would love it!” she said suddenly aloud.
Silks and satins, servants bowing, diplomats with medals and ribbons on their gleaming shirt bosoms, sentries and bands playing, her thoughts raced and thrilled.
If only she and Jack could be guests in that palace! It was wonderful even to think about. She sat in a roseate dream for a chilly half hour, while her own fate hovered near, unfathomed. The fate that would make her, Emily Donelson, a young queen in a palace—and an unhappy queen!