6
The heavy damask cloths had been spread. Another carriage full of cousins and aunts and uncles arrived to fill the house with more confusion. Mary Eastin and some of the other girls came to help Emily direct the placing of the great piles of china plates, the gleaming goblets and compotes that would be filled with uncle Jackson’s wine and aunt Rachel’s preserves and relishes. The heavy soup ladle was rubbed till it glittered, a mound of apples and nuts was heaped on a tray which Emily edged with holly.
Mary Eastin, very young and eager, had a cameo face and a lilting laugh. Life would always be gay for Mary. A president’s nephew would one day find her irresistible, but now she was a dancing sprite, doing pirouettes with a vinegar cruet for a partner, getting in everybody’s way.
“You’ll break something, Mary. Do go and coax uncle Jackson to tootle on his new flute,” urged Emily.
“He makes such silly noises on it,” protested Mary, “and he screws up his face till I’m scared to death I’ll laugh and offend him.”
“But he loves it and it gets politics out of his mind.”
Mary grabbed Emily’s arm. “Emmy, he’s coming isn’t he? I can see it sticking out all over you. Emmy, I think all these stuffy old people are crazy. If I had a boy in love with me, I’d have him, no matter if every Donelson alive croaked themselves to death.”
“Mary, for Heavens’ sake, hush! Things are going to be bad enough—I’m just holding my breath.”
“I think it’s wonderful!” Mary’s eyes were full of stars. “Let me tell you something though—don’t you start out being a dutiful wife like aunt Rachel. A woman can get herself simply subjugated by being so worshipful. I mean to keep my spirit and my personality, whoever I marry. Aunt Rachel’s kind of wife is going out of fashion.”
Emily bent her brows together. Of course Jack would expect a dutiful wife. Hadn’t he been trained by uncle Jackson, who had never known any other mode of life except to be master in his house? Jack would expect his wife to be a gracious copy of aunt Rachel—with a bit more style perhaps, and more ease in company, Emily amended, with no disloyalty. Aunt Rachel was good. She did not need a flair for clever conversation or the sly, pretty arts by which some women kept men enthralled, but as Mary had said, times were changing. Women even went to colleges now and read deep books.
Rachel came in then, followed by Hannah and the maids, all carrying steaming dishes.
“What are you moppets whispering about?” she asked. “Beaus, I’ll wager.”
“Oh, we’re far too young, aunt Rachel. And too utterly well bred,” Mary replied saucily.
“Plotting against the whites,” evaded Emily. “What’s in that dish, Dilsey? It smells wonderful.”
“Dilsey’s candied yams are always perfect,” Rachel said. “Mary, you run and fetch all the boys and tell them to carry in every extra chair. And tell Andy to have George ring the bell. Your uncle and the other men have likely wandered off to the stables. I never have put a meal on the table yet that didn’t have to compete for their concern with some colt. Hannah, we’ll set the ham at this end, and the turkeys at the other. Levin can carve at this other table and Mr. Jackson here, and you and Dilsey can serve the children their plates. That small table makes it crowded, but I couldn’t bear to make the little ones wait. I like all my family together at Christmas.”
Her family, all the Donelsons, whom the General, having no kin of his own, had taken to his heart generously, as he had taken John Eaton and John Overton, Ralph, the young painter, and, twenty years ago, Aaron Burr—too bad that charming man had come to be in bad repute!—even Sam Houston! Rachel glowed with happiness as the clan came noisily into the room. This was as things should be. She took the chair Ralph pulled out for her, bent her head in a little prayer of thankfulness, of entreaty to God that things would go on like this forever, so long as they lived, in peace here at their Hermitage.
Then there was the sudden crash of a door at the rear of the house, a chilly gust blew into the room and from the pantry there were squeals of delighted welcome from the waiting servants. The inner door was flung back and a travel-stained figure strode into the room.
“Christmas gift, everybody!” shouted Andrew Jackson Donelson.
Emily upset her glass as she half rose from her chair. Carving knife poised, Andrew Jackson stood drawn back sternly at the head of the table.
“Sir!” he barked in a military tone, “you have disobeyed me!”
Andrew Jackson Donelson made a little bow, while the others held their breath.
“Uncle, I admit my disobedience,” Jack said humbly. “I have come home because now you will have need of me. I have come home to help you win the nomination for the office of President of the United States.”
Rachel’s little cry of protest was lost in the gasps of the uninformed around the tables. A few of the men looked wise and complacent and Emily noted that John Eaton wore a smug grin.
Andrew Jackson made a slashing motion with the knife as though he flourished a defiant sword.
“Young man, I have no intention of seeking the nomination for the office of President of the United States!” he shouted.
“I should say not!” put in Rachel’s small, shaken voice.
Jack’s laughter echoed John Eaton’s grin. “You may not be seeking the nomination, sir, but that nomination is certainly out gunning for you! All over Kentucky they’re talking of nothing else—Jackson for President, in 1824—right under Henry Clay’s nose! They say Clay is looking for a ground-hog hole to crawl into dragging his whisky barrel after him. And look at this!” He pulled the ragged page of a newspaper from his pocket, marched to the head of the table and spread it before his uncle’s eyes. “I picked it up in Transylvania, brought it along—thought you might not have seen it.”
John Eaton sprang to study the paper. “The New York Post!” he exclaimed. “We missed that one. Let’s see what they say.”
“What they say,” reported Jack, while the General still glowered at the paper, “is that if the country was under martial law Andrew Jackson would be the proper choice for president. That not being the case, the Post will continue their support of Secretary of the Navy, Smith Thompson, for the nomination in 1824.”
“Smith Thompson—about as much chance for him as for me!” snorted one of the Donelson clan.
“Crawford will be in the running too,” remarked Ralph Earl. “Not a man in the Cabinet who doesn’t believe he would be a better president than John Quincy Adams, who is certain he’ll be elected president.”
“Nobody told me—nobody said a word!” mourned Rachel, looking stunned. “I knew he’d been elected senator—but president!”
Jack went to her quickly, put his hands on her quivering shoulders. “We’ll make you a queen, aunt Rachel. We’ll make you the grandest lady in the land!”
“And I’ll have to live in Washington—when I want to stay at home!” she protested. “I don’t want to be a queen. Jack, wash yourself and come and eat your dinner. Mr. Jackson, do serve the children! Hannah, pass the vegetables. All of you, eat your dinner—your Christmas dinner.”
Obediently, Andrew Jackson made wooden motions of slicing at the turkey. John Eaton took the knife from his hand.
“Sit and eat, sir. Let me finish this business. He’s bound to be nominated, you know,” he addressed the whole group. “It’s a ground swell, stirring all over the country. Why, just yesterday the Nashville Clarion stated that the General was unquestionably the choice of the people, in justice to themselves! Here, Hannah, here’s a fine drumstick for some hungry boy. Wait, you haven’t any gravy.”
Andrew Jackson looked down the long table at his wife with a look of humble pleading in his eyes that she had never seen there before.
“I was going to tell you tomorrow, my love,” he said meekly. “I had warned them all. But that young scoundrel ruined everything.” He glared at Jack Donelson who patted his aunt’s cheek unperturbed.
“He’s going to need me, aunt Rachel,” he said gleefully. “I deserve the rough edge of his tongue now, he thinks, maybe even his riding crop on my breeches. But he knows he’s going to be needing all the help he can get, and you too! You’ll need a strong, smart boy around here when all the furor starts, and I’m that boy. Just one more statement, sir.” Jack looked at his uncle, his chin high and firm. “I have a further announcement to make. I came home because I saw your situation and your need for assistance. Also I came home to marry Emily Donelson, if so be she will have me—with or without the consent of this assembled family, I mean to marry Emily.”
“And that,” shouted the General, rapping the table with his glass, “I will not countenance!”
Rachel got to her feet, startling them all a little.
“Then I will countenance it,” she said, in a tone few of them had ever heard her use before. “When young people are in love, that’s the important thing. Maybe you think I don’t know what it is to be in love, Mr. Jackson—but unless your memory is very short, you do! There was a time when you trampled all the difficulties down with fine scorn—and if Jack hasn’t the courage to do as we did, then he’s no nephew of mine!”
“My dear—” began Jackson, uncertainly, “I had no idea you felt this way!”
“Well, I do feel that way. And I say it’s fine and beautiful for these children who love each other to marry—and I say that nobody is going to oppose it.”
Jackson rose, smiling ruefully, and laid a hand on Emily’s cheek. “I seem to be outvoted,” he remarked.
“Sorry, sir.” Jack’s grin did not quiver. “You are outvoted. I vote against you—and aunt Rachel—and Emily too, I hope? My dear, are you standing with me against all these frowning elders?”
She sprang up and ran to stand beside him. “Oh—I am, I am!”
“The matter is now settled.” Jack kissed her gravely while all the children screamed their delight and some of the women began to cry, then, still jauntily, Jack picked up the glass of wine before his aunt’s plate. “A toast to the bride! And to the next President of the United States, Andrew Jackson!”
Chairs fell backward as the company got to their feet. The servants all shrilled approving cries. The hubbub and chatter drowned out Rachel’s admonishing voice, begging everybody to be quiet and eat before everything got cold. Somehow the dinner was finished. The General sat in silence through the rest of the meal, and aunt Rachel was still too, Emily observed, her fingers shaking as she handled her fork and spoon. Emily went quickly and kissed her on the cheek.
“You’ll have me beside you always, aunt Rachel,” she whispered. “Always!”
“I’ll need you, Emily,” Rachel whispered hoarsely. “I’ll need everybody.”
Her eyes looked far and strained as though she saw before her those next five stormy years. The year that would see Andrew Jackson defeated for the office of president when the election was carried into the Senate of the United States by the failure of any of the seven candidates to win a majority in the electoral college, defeated by the trades and connivings of Henry Clay and by the one vote in the New York delegation of a tremulous, undecided man named Van Rensselaer.
And after that the terrible years when the power and strength of Andrew Jackson would mount in an invincible tide, when her own name would be pilloried and long-buried agonies she had tried to forget dragged from their graves and published abroad to discredit her and her man on horseback. The years that would be too much for the faithful, failing heart of Rachel Jackson.
She would never be a queen in that palace in Washington. But she had no wish to be a queen. As the day darkened into dusk and the candles were lighted, she stood alone at her window looking out upon her quiet garden, sleeping its winter sleep that promised the wakening of beauty in the springtime.
It would be a pleasant place to sleep, she was thinking. But at least, at long last, she had had her Christmas at the Hermitage.