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.