All these divers and sundry preparational matters, the subjection of the Clintons and the Livingstons, the political alignment of the Buck-tails swigging their cider at Martlings, and the launching of the Manhattan Bank to the yellow end that a supply of gold be assured, have in their accomplishment taken time. It is long since Aaron looked in at the Federal capitol, where the Hamilton-guided Adams is performing as President, with all those purple royalties which surrounded Washington, and Jefferson is abolishing ruffles, donning pantaloons, introducing shoelaces, cutting off his cue, and playing the democrat Vice-President at the other end of government. Aaron resolves upon a visit to these opposite ones. Jefferson must be his candidate; Adams will be the candidate of the foe. He himself is to manage for the one, while Hamilton will lead for the other. Such the situation, he holds it the part of a cautious sagacity to glance in at these worthies, pulling against one another, and discover to what extent and in what manner their straining and tugging may be used to make or mar the nation’s future. Hamilton is to be destroyed. To annihilate him a battle must be fought; and Aaron, preparing for that strife, is eager to discover aught in the present conduct or standing of either Adams or Jefferson which can be molded into bullets to bring down the enemy.
Aaron’s friend Van Ness goes with him, sharing his seat in the coach. Some worth-while words ensue. They begin by talking of Hamilton; as talk proceeds, Aaron gives a surprising hint of the dark but unsuspected bitterness of his feeling—a feeling which goes beyond politics, as the acridities of that savage science are understood and recognized.
Van Ness is wonder-smitten.
“Your enmity to Hamilton,” he says tentatively, “strikes deeper then than mere politics.”
“Sir,” returns Aaron slowly, the old-time black, ophidian sparkle flashing up in his eyes, “the deepest sentiment of my nature is my hatred for that man. Day by day it grows upon me. Also, it is he who furnishes the seed and the roots of it. Everywhere he vilifies me. I hear it east, north, west, south. I am his mania—his ‘phobia’. In his slanderous mouth I am ‘liar,’ ‘thief,’ and ‘scoundrel rogue.’ In such connection I would have you to remember that I, on my side, give him, and have given him, the description of a gentleman.”
“To be frank, sir,” returns Van Ness thoughtfully, “I know every word you speak to be true, and have often wondered that you did not parade our epithetical friend at ten paces, and refute his mendacities with convincing lead.”
Aaron’s look is hard as granite. There is a moment of silence. “Kill him!” he says at last, as though repeating a remark of his companion; “kill him! Yes; that, too, must come! But it must not come too soon for my perfect vengeance! First I shall uproot him politically; every hope he has shall die! I shall thrust him from his high places! When he lies prone, broken, powerless!—when he is spat upon by those in whose one-time downcast, servile presence he strutted lord paramount!—when his past is scoffed at, his future swallowed up!—when his word is laughed at and his fame become a farce!—then, when every fang of defeat pierces and poisons him, then I say should be the hour to talk of killing! That hour is not yet. I am a revengeful man, Van Ness—I am an artist of revenge! Believing as I do that with the going of the breath, all goes!—that for the Man there is no hereafter as there has been no past!—I must garner my vengeance on earth or forever lose it. So I take pains with my vengeance; and having, as I tell you, a genius for it, my vengeful pains shall find their dark and full-blown harvest. Hamilton, for whom my whole heart flows away in hate!—I shall build for him a pyramid of misery while he lives; and I shall cap that pyramid with his death—his grave! I can see, as one who looks down a lane, what lies before. I shall take from him every scrap of that power which is his soul’s food—strip him of each least fragment of position! When he has nothing left but life, I’ll wrest that from him. Long years after he is gone I’ll walk this earth; and I shall find a joy in his absence, and the thought that by my hand and my will he was made to go, beyond what the friendship of man or the favor of woman could bring me. Kill him! There is a grist in the hopper of my purposes, friend, and the mill stones of my plans are grinding!”
Aaron does not look at Van Ness as he thus brings the secrets of his soul to the light of day, but wears the manner of one preoccupied and in the spell of self. Van Ness shudders as he listens; and, while the slow words follow one another in hateful swart procession, a chill creeps over him, as from the evil monstrous nearness of something elemental, abnormal, fearsome. A sweat breaks out on his face. Neither his wits nor his tongue can frame remark for either good or ill. The brooding Aaron seems not to notice, but falls into a black muse.