CHAPTER XXI—THE SAILING AWAY OF AARON.
SIX months creep by; May is painting Manhattan with its flowers. The house of the stubborn, loyal Swartwout is in Stone Street. Long ago, in the old Dutch beaver-peltry days, the home of the poet Steen-dam was there. Now it is the dwelling place of John Swartwout, and Aaron is his guest.
The lustrous Theo is with Aaron this sunny afternoon, luster something dimmed; for the hour is one sad and tearful with parting. It is a last parting; though the pair—the loving father! the adoring, clinging daughter!—hopefully, happily blind, believe otherwise.
“Yes,” Aaron is saying, “I must sail tonight. The ship is at anchor in the lower bay.” Theo, the lustrous, is too bravely the child of Aaron to break into lamentation, though the wrung heart fills her eyes with tears. “And should your plans fail,” she says, “you will come to us at the ‘Oaks.’ Joseph, you know, is no longer ‘Mr. Alston,’ but ‘Governor Alston.’ As father to the Governor of the State, and with your own high name, you may take what place you will in South Carolina. You promise, do you not? If by any trip of fortune your prospects are overthrown, you will come to us in the South?”
“But, dearling, my plans will not fail. I have had letters from Lords Mulgrave and Castlereagh, I bear with me the indorsement of the British Minister in Washington. Openly or secretly, England will support my project with men and money and ships. If, in some caprice of politics or a changing cabinet, she should refuse, I shall seek Napoleon. Mexico and an empire!—that should match finely the native color of his Corsican feeling.”
Night draws on; Aaron and the lustrous Theo say the sorrowful words of separation, and within the hour he is aboard the Clarissa, outward bound for England.
In London, full of new fire, Aaron throws away no time. Each day he is closeted with Mulgrave, Castlereagh and Canning. He goes to Holland House, and its noble master is seized with the fever for Montezuman conquest. The inventive Earl of Bridgewater—who is radical and goes readily to novel enterprises—catches the Mexican fury. The spirit of Cortez is abroad; the nobility of England fall quickly in with Aaron’s Western design. It will mean an augmentation of the world’s peerage. Also, Mexico should furnish an admirable grazing ground for second sons. Aaron’s affairs go swimmingly; he is full of hopeful anticipation. He writes the lustrous Theo at the “Oaks” that, “save for the unforeseen,” little Aaron Burr Alston shall yet wear an imperial crown as Aaron II.
Save for the unforeseen! The reservation is well put in. As Aaron sits in conference, one foggy London evening, with Mulgrave and Castlereagh, who have become principal figures in those Mexican designs, Canning comes hurriedly in.
“I am from the Foreign Office,” says he, “and I come with bad news. There is a lion in our path—two lions. Secret news was just received that Napoleon has driven the king and queen from Madrid, and established his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne. Mexico by that: stroke belongs to the Bonapartes; they will hardly consent to its loss.”
“That is one lion,” observes Mulgrave; “now for the other.”