"Well!" exclaimed his wife, with a certain satisfaction, "you are busy. She has been the talk of the town for quite three months, although she never went anywhere before to-day."
"I hear all my gossip from you," said Hamilton, smiling from the hearth rug, "and considering the labours of the past three months—but tell me about her. I believe I love you best when gossiping. Your effort to be caustic is the sweetest thing in the world."
She threw a ball of wool at him, which he caught and pulled apart, then showered on her head. It was yellow wool, and vastly becoming on her black hair. "You must have a yellow hat at once, with plumes," he said, "but go on."
"You shall wind that this evening, sir. Well, she came here about three months ago with Captain Croix of the British army, and rumour hath it that he left a wife in England, and that this lady's right to the royal name of Capet is still unchallenged. The story goes that she was born about eighteen years ago, on a French frigate bound for the West Indies, that her mother died, and that, there being no one else of that royal name on board, the Captain adopted her; but that a baby and a ship being more than he could manage, he presented the baby to a humble friend at Newport, by the name of Thompson, who brought her up virtuously, but without eradicating the spirit of the age, and one fine day she disappeared with Colonel Croix, and after a honeymoon which may have been spent in the neighbourhood of any church between here and Rhode Island, or of none, they arrived in New York, and took the finest lodgings in town. I suppose Dr. Franklin was a friend of her humble guardian, he is so philanthropic, and that he is willing to take my lady's word that all is well—and perhaps it is. I feel myself quite vicious in repeating the vaguest sort of gossip—active, though. Who knows, if she had worn a wig, or an inch of powder, and employed the accepted architect for her tower, she would have passed without question? Another pillar for my argument, sir."
"As it is, you are even willing to believe that she is a daughter of the house of France," said Hamilton, with a hearty laugh. "Would that the world were as easily persuaded of what is good for it as of what tickles its pettiness. Shall you ask this daughter of the Capets to the house?"
"I have not made up my mind," said Mrs. Hamilton, demurely.
The two older children, Philip and Angelica, came tumbling into the room, and Hamilton romped with them for a half-hour, then flung them upon their mother, and watched them from the hearth rug. Betsey was lovely with her children, who were beautiful little creatures, and Hamilton was always arranging them in groups. The boy and girl pulled down her hair with the yellow wool, until all her diminutive figure and all her face, but its roguish black eyes, were extinguished; and Hamilton forgot the country.
Elizabeth Schuyler was a cleverer woman than her meed of credit has led the world to believe. She understood Hamilton very well even then, although, as his faults but added to his fascination in the eyes of those that loved him, the knowledge did not detract from her happiness. In many ways she made herself necessary to him; at that time she even kept his papers in order. He talked to her freely on every subject that interested him, from human nature to finance, taxes, and the law, and she never permitted a yawn to threaten. He read aloud to her every line he wrote, and while she would not have presumed to suggest, her sympathy was one of his imperative needs. When his erratic fancy flashed him into seductive meshes, she pulled a string and back he came. Perhaps this is the reason why no specific account of his numerous alleged amours have come down to us. He is vaguely accused of being the Lothario of his time, irresistible and indefatigable; but of all famous men whose names are enlivened with anecdotes of gallantry in the vast bulk of the world's unwritten history, he alone is the hero of much mysterious affirmation but of no particular romance. The Reynolds affair is open history and not a case in point. It is probable that, owing to inherent fickleness and Betsey's gentle manipulation, his affairs rarely lasted long enough to attract attention. It is one of the accidents of life that the world barely knew of his acquaintance with Eliza Croix, she who has come down to us as Madame Jumel; and such a thing could not happen twice. But whether or not he possessed in all their perfection the proclivities of so great and impetuous and passionate a genius, it is certain that he loved his wife devotedly, and above all other women, so long as his being held together. His home was always his Mecca, and he left it only when public duty compelled his presence in exile.
III
In February he went to the Assembly to fight Clinton's opposition to the harassing need of conferring a permanent revenue upon Congress. He had already written a memorial, distributed over the State, setting forth the dangerous position of the country. But Clinton was lord of the masses, and their representatives in the Legislature had been trained to think as he thought. They honoured him because he had made New York the greatest State in the Union, not yet realizing that he had brought her into disrepute at home and abroad, and that his selfish policy was now hastening her to her ruin. To increase the power of Congress was to encourage the spirit of Nationalism, and that meant the sure decline of the States and of himself. The fight was hot and bitter. Clinton won; but the thinking men present took Hamilton's words home and pondered upon them, and in time they bore fruit.