CHAPTER XIII—THE GRINDING OF AARON’S MILL
AARON tells his friends that he will not go back to the Senate. He puts this resolution to retire on the double grounds of young Theodosia’s loneliness and a consequent paternal necessity of his presence at Richmond Hill, and the tangled condition of his business; which last after the death of Theodosia mère falls into a snarl. Never, by the lifting of an eyelash or the twitching of a lip, does he betray any corner of his political designs, or of his determination to destroy Hamilton. His heart is a furnace of white-hot throbbing hate against that gentleman of diagonal morals and biased veracities; but no sign of the fires within is visible on the arctic exterior.
Polite, on ceaseless guard, Aaron even becomes affable when Hamilton is mentioned. He goes so far with his strategy, indeed, as to imitate concern in connection with the political destinies of the rusty Schuyler, now exceedingly on the shelf. Aaron has the rusty Schuyler down from his shelved retirement, brushes the political dust from his cloak, and declares that, in a spirit of generosity proper in a young community toward an old, tried, even if rusty servant, the State ought to send the rusty one to fill the Senate seat which he, Aaron, is giving up. To such a degree does he work upon the generous sensibilities of mankind, that the rusty Schuyler is at once unanimously chosen to reassume those honors which he, Aaron, stripped from him six years before.
Hamilton falls into a fog; he cannot understand the Aaronian liberality. Aaron’s astonishing proposal, to return the rusty one to the Senate, smells dangerously like a Greek and a gift. In the end, however, Hamilton’s enormous vanity gets the floor, and he decides that Aaron—courage broken—is but cringing to win the Hamilton friendship.
“That is it,” he explains to President Adams. “The fellow has lost heart. This is his way of surrendering, and begging for peace.”
There are others as hopelessly lost in mists of amazement over Aaron’s benevolence as is Hamilton; one is Aaron’s closest friend Van Ness.
“Schuyler for the Senate!” he exclaims. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” whispers Aaron, with Machiavellian slyness, “that I want to get rid of the old dotard here. I am only clearing the ground, sir!”
“And for what?”