Her Christmas at the Hermitage, by Helen Topping Miller

COPYRIGHT · 1955
BY LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., INC.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE THIS BOOK, OR ANY PORTION THEREOF, IN ANY FORM

PUBLISHED SIMULTANEOUSLY IN THE DOMINION OF CANADA BY
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., TORONTO

HER CHRISTMAS
AT THE HERMITAGE

Hannah was fat and her knees were getting stiff. When she had a chance to rest on the well-polished stool before the fireplace, it was a groaning misery for her to get up again. Her head, wrapped in a starched white turban, thrust forward followed by a lunge of her shoulders till finally her legs could be persuaded to lift her erect. But once on foot she glared at the black women who giggled in corners, and at toothless old Moll. Moll had come all the way from Virginia. She remembered the long terrifying journey down the river to the Cumberland, the Indians, the hardships. She was privileged. She had no work to do now.

“You black trash better stir your stumps,” 2 Hannah snapped, “Heap of company comin’. You, Betty, you put more sage in that dressin’. I raised them turkeys. Ain’t goin’ to have ’em ruint. Mis’ Jackson, she like her turkey seasoned high.”

Betty, narrow-faced and thin-lipped, gave an irritated shrug. But she did not look about for sympathetic support from the others, from the heckling tyranny of old Hannah, knowing that it would be nonexistent. Betty was a pariah on the plantation, holding her place only because she was the best cook in the county. Last year she had been sent back from Pensacola for rebellious behavior. It was whispered that she had been ordered whipped by General Jackson, had escaped that bitter disgrace because the General’s lady had a heart as soft as butter. No other house servant at the Hermitage had ever been ordered whipped and the stigma of her disgrace lay now over Betty’s peaked brows, her bitter mouth. Nobody ever talked to her, they all shied away from her aura of wickedness. All but Emily Donelson, Rachel Jackson’s favorite niece.

“You let Betty alone,” Emily ordered now, looking up from counting out silver on a long table. “Dilsey, you see that Simmy rubs all these spoons with fuller’s earth and soda. Let’s see—I count fifty-two. There’ll be Hutchingses and Hayses, Eastins, Donelsons—we’ll have to set two tables and the children may have to wait. Has Sary got the napkins ironed good and stiff?”

“Sary ironin’ in the washhouse now, Young Miss. She just yelled for Goby fetch her more charcoal to hot her irons up good.”

“Hannah, you come along with me while I ask aunt Rachel to unlock the press. We’ll need all the long tablecloths and they’ll have to be pressed. I’ll need four more spoons. These are those lovely French ones uncle Jackson brought from New Orleans. You tell Simmy to be mighty careful with them, Dilsey. Come along, Hannah. People may begin coming in today. There’s a lot to do.”

“Young Master Jack, he comin’?” asked Hannah boldly, grinning at the bright flush that warmed the young girl’s face.

Emily, fifteen, imperiously lovely, red-haired, shook her head sadly. “Uncle Jackson won’t let him come. I think it’s mean. He’s making Jack stay on in that old law school when he wants to be at home for Christmas.”

“Learnin’,” commented Hannah. “It mighty fine. Do Mis’ Rachel read to me outen her Bible, glory just shine around. And when the General spout big words out of books I gits shivers up my back.”

Emily hurried along the bricked way that set the kitchen apart from the big house. The wind was fresh and keen off the Tennessee hills and she drew her shawl close around her slender shoulders. In the house huge wood fires burned in three fireplaces but the hall where the curving stairs came down was chilly. She opened the dining room door and slipped inside quickly.

Rachel Jackson, with a Negro woman helping and a half-grown boy up on a stool, was getting china down from a high corner cupboard.

Aunt Rachel was getting heavy, Emily noted, 5 and her breath quick and short. She gasped occasionally as she bent over the table, counting the plates the Negress set down, laughing a little as she straightened and drew a long breath.

“Law, I must be getting old, Emily. I get so short-winded every time I exert myself the least bit. I declare these china plates are still the prettiest ones I’ve got. Not a nick in one of them. That’s because I’ve always washed them myself. These came all the way from Pittsburgh by boat. My gracious, that was twenty-seven years ago! Brother Samuel went all the way up into Kentucky some place with the wagon to meet the boat and bring the goods to Nashville to your uncle Jackson’s store. Indians were everywhere too, those days. I was so nervous I couldn’t sleep till Brother Sam got back and my husband too—he was away off to Philadelphia. Sam was gone forty six days and my husband gone for two months.”

“You’ve been alone so much, aunt Rachel. If ever I get a husband I won’t let him leave me for even one day.”

Rachel let her breath out slowly. There was that little pain again, that came sometimes. She used Magic Sanitive Salve faithfully as her husband directed but it didn’t seem to do much good.

“When you get a husband he’ll go where duty calls him and you won’t be able to hold him back any more than any other woman. But it does look as though duty called Andrew Jackson more than most men and into more dangerous places. I declare I still like these old plates best of all. Maybe it’s because they were the first nice things ever I owned.”

“Uncle Jackson likes the dangerous places,” Emily said. “He wouldn’t have missed all that Indian fighting and defeating the British at New Orleans for anything.”

Rachel pursed her lips. “He didn’t like that business of being governor of Florida any better than I did. Thank the Lord we got away from that place! So hot there in Pensacola and all that babble-gabble around you, all Spanish so you couldn’t tell if they were calling you names or not. I was mighty thankful to turn my 7 face back towards Tennessee and poor little Andy was sick every minute we were there.”

“It was the mosquitoes,” declared Andrew Jackson, Junior, from his high perch on the stool. “They poisoned me. I can’t help it if my hide is thin. And all that pepper in the victuals—onions too, and I never could bear onions. What else do you want from up here, Mama? Nothing left but soup tureens and teapots.”

“We’ll need two tureens. Your Papa thinks he hasn’t had anything to eat unless he has soup. Count those plates again, will you, Emily? My head’s all in a swivet. As many crowds of people as I’ve fed on this place you’d think I’d get used to it but I always forget something.”

Hannah came in then for the tablecloths that Sary would press. Little Negroes would hold the corners and edges high so that they would not touch the floor and when the five-yard lengths of damask were glistening smooth they would be carried in ceremoniously and spread over a spare bed till Christmas morning.

Rachel Jackson liked to be proud of her table, and this was Christmas, the first Christmas that 8 she had had her husband at home with her for more years than she liked to remember. She walked through the rooms of her beautiful, new brick house trying not to feel too sinfully proud. Her new, lovely Hermitage, built under the huge trees exactly where she had wished it to be looked out upon the fields of the plantation through windows that in the parlors were curtained with lace.

Upstairs and in her own big bedroom below were the fine French beds the General had bought in New Orleans. Seven crates of beautiful furniture on which the freight bill alone had been two hundred and seventy-three dollars. Her own bed was elegantly fluted, of mahogany, with high posts, a mosquito canopy of the finest muslin and a knotted Marseilles counterpane.

There was the new sideboard in the dining room too, and in the cellar gallons of the best brandy, old Madeira, claret and porter, bottles of bitters in green glass and boxes of candied fruit. The turkeys and chickens old Hannah had raised so faithfully were fat, and five turkeys 9 were being readied for roasting now in the kitchen. Rachel paused at a south window and looked out across the wide lawn, a bit bleak now that the trees were bare and all the flowers of her garden brown and dead from frost. The pillared portico made her heart expand with pride.

A far cry, this palace of a house from the old log blockhouse in which they had lived for so many years, where she had lain alone for so many desolate nights, thinking of that audacious firebrand of a man she had married, that Andrew Jackson who had spent so much of a long life fighting enemies, red and white. Fighting the Creek and the Cherokee, fighting the British. Fighting Jesse Benton and young Charles Dickinson, who had died after that grim, dreadful duel in Kentucky.

Rachel shut her lips tight, remembering. All for her, that hot-headed encounter. All for her the bullet Andrew Jackson still carried so dangerously near to his heart that it could not be removed. Jesse Benton’s bullet had shattered the General’s arm too, so that he had carried 10 the arm in a sling through all the Indian war in Alabama. The arm still ached at night when a cold wind blew.

A fighting man whose eyes too quickly kindled to blue lightnings, whose reddish hair seemed to burn with some flame within him that was never cooled. Her own gentle counsel could damper it down now and then, but only briefly. Given the provocation, his temper leaped alive like a drawn sword and he became then, his wife was thinking sadly, as dangerous and unpredictable as one of those wild stallions that snorted and charged about the Hermitage meadows.

The amazing contradiction about him was that in his letters, in their quiet conversations in the big bright bedroom, he voiced only one passionate desire: to be able to live on here quietly for the rest of his days in this home he had built. He yearned, so he had written her so many times, to be free of wars and politics, answerable to no one but the call of his heart. Not to Madison nor Monroe nor any other president. Not to Sam Houston nor Governor Billy 11 Carroll of Tennessee, nor even to Major John Eaton who seemed, in Rachel’s mind, to be forever grooming Andrew Jackson for some job or other, always important, always controversial and inevitably always far from the Hermitage.

She saw them now, riding up the drive from the muddy road, the General and John Eaton. Her husband sat very tall and a little gaunt on the saddle and his gray horse seemed always to sense the mood of his master and hold his head very high. Andrew Jackson’s hair, graying a little now, blew wildly over his ears under his beaver hat. His high collar and stock hid the thinness of his throat.

He had been such a skinny lad, Rachel Jackson remembered, when John Overton had brought him, a stripling lawyer, to her mother’s house on the Cumberland, in that spring of 1789. And now it was 1823! Where had the years gone? The Widow Donelson had taken him in, and there in the house had been Rachel, Rachel Robards then, reconciled briefly to her 12 violent, unpredictable husband, Lewis Robards, after a separation that had seen Rachel vilified, discarded, and abused.

The widow had tried hard to put some meat on that lanky young lawyer’s frame, but now, thirty-four years and four wars later, he was still too thin, still coughed too much and was weakened by digestive distresses from living too long on parched corn and other scanty fare.

Philip, the horse handler, came running out to take the bridles of the mounts and even through the windowpanes Rachel could hear her husband giving Philip orders in his high, arresting voice, the same voice that had commanded the defeat of General Pakenham at New Orleans, shouted defiance at Red Feather at Tohopeka and the Spanish governor at Pensacola.

Now he came shouting into the house. “Mrs. Jackson! Mrs. Jackson! Where are you?”

Never had they called each other by their Christian names. In letters they wrote, “My dearest.” At home he was the General, to her, or simply Husband. She was Mrs. Jackson, the 13 woman he honored, adored, had fought for and would defend fiercely till her last breath.

“Here, Husband!” She hurried out into the hall where the two men were handing their damp cloaks to a servant. “Mr. Eaton, you are welcome as always here. Come in to the fire.”

“Feels like snow.” John Eaton slapped his gloves against his knee, shook moisture from his high-crowned hat. “Misting now, but it’s getting colder. Miss Emily,”—he made a courtly bow as they entered the warm parlor—“you grow more beautiful every day. How any young man can stay away from you is a puzzle in my mind.”

“All our girls are pretty,” stated the General, moving a chair near to the fire for his wife. “It’s the air here on this hill. We keep ’em here as long as we can, then sometimes we have to let ’em go home to their mothers, but not for long. Be seated, Mrs. Jackson. You look weary, my dear.”

“She is tired,” Emily said. “She’s been putting out dishes and silver all day, attending to the 14 Christmas dinner. Uncle Jackson,” she began timidly, “if Jack should ride home for Christmas—”

“He won’t,” declared the General testily, getting down his long clay pipe from the mantelpiece. “He won’t because I wrote and gave him his orders not to come. I told him that the important thing for him now is to finish his schooling and get admitted to the bar. I’ve raised that boy.” He filled the pipe and handed it to Eaton. “You smoke that, John. I like my old corncob best. I raised that boy, Andrew Jackson Donelson. Going to make a gentleman and a scholar out of him. He’ll have the chance I never had, he and young Andy.”

“Jack Donelson is your nephew, Mrs. Jackson?” Eaton drew on the pipe to which Emily held a spill she had lighted at the fire.

“My brother’s son. But we’ve had him here with us since he was four years old. Andy, our adopted son, is my brother Severn’s boy. We took him four days after he was born.”

“Twins,” remarked the General. “Severn’s wife was mighty frail and one baby was all she 15 could nurse. So we took Andy off her hands. All named after me,” he grinned, “a whole covey of ’em, Donelsons, Hutchingses and Hayeses.”

“I must see about supper, Mr. Jackson. You gentlemen will excuse me?” Rachel got up too quickly and the little pain caught at her and she put a quick hand to her breast.

“I’ll go, aunt Rachel, you sit still and rest,” Emily volunteered quickly.

“I want her to sit here and listen to my news,” said the General, thumbing down his pipe. “You too, Emily. Let the women attend to the supper. About a dozen of ’em around, ought to be able to manage to feed us.”

Rachel had turned pale. “Oh, no!” she cried. “Not Pensacola again! Not another war. I can’t bear it. You said we’d stay at home. Mr. Jackson, you swore we’d live here in peace in our new Hermitage.” Distress sharpened her voice, her eyes dimmed, and she dabbed at them nervously with a corner of her white shawl.

“Compose yourself, my dear,” comforted her husband. “This news I’ve brought is exciting. 16 You’ll be pleased. You’re being offered an opportunity to go where few women have ever gone—American women, anyway.”

“But I don’t want to go anywhere,” Rachel almost wailed. “I’ve been to Kentucky and Florida and Washington and Natchez and New Orleans and I hated all those places. I just want to stay in my home and I want you to stay in it with me. Mr. Eaton, we’ve been separated more than we have been together all these years we’ve been married, Mr. Jackson and I, and now were both getting old.”

“Old? You call yourself old, dear lady?” protested Eaton. “Why, the best part of your life is ahead of you.”

“It could be,” she sighed, pressing her hands together, strong, sun-browned hands that had helped to steer a heavy boat down the Ohio River, that had gripped the rein on many a weary ride through the wilderness, poured lead into bullet molds when savage enemies howled outside the stockades, spun thread, planted rosebushes, tenderly comforted many a child. “It could be,” she repeated, “if only I could 17 have those years in my home with my husband.”

The General’s eyes twinkled. He rapped out his pipe on an andiron, brushed tobacco from his tight, snuff-colored trousers.

“I’m disappointed in you, my dear,” he bantered. “Here I bring you news that you could have a chance to cross an ocean and see a new, strange, fascinating world, and you don’t even want to hear about it.”

Rachel’s face had drained gray. She pressed both hands hard on her chest where the pain sprang alive, shutting off her breath, making her ears throb. Eaton half rose from his chair, looking at her uneasily.

“Stop teasing her, General,” he warned. “Tell her about President Monroe’s magnificent offer—which you don’t mean to accept.”

Andrew Jackson took a pose on the hearth, a boyish grin lightening his long face. Emily drew a breath of relief, laid her hand against Rachel’s cold cheek.

Rachel relaxed a little. “I don’t like jokes,” she sighed. “Not when they scare me half to death.”

“But this is a splendid joke, my dear,” insisted her husband. “John and I laughed about it all the way home—especially we laughed at what Secretary Adams said about it. President Monroe has offered to send me as ambassador to Russia.”

“But you aren’t going, uncle Jackson?” Emily asked when the silence had stretched too long. “Why, it’s thousands and thousands of miles away! They have wolves there and snow all the year—I read it in a book.”

Rachel had never had time to read many books. There had always been too much to do. Russia was as vague, as far, and as uncivilized as China or Africa in her gentle mind. She sat rigidly waiting.

Jackson’s laughter pealed. “When the idea was talked about in Washington and Monroe proposed to the cabinet to send me over there—to get me out of the country, my love. That’s his motive and I’m not at all deceived by the flattering language of the letter of invitation. I know what James Monroe had in mind. Your husband is a disturbing influence in these United States. Mrs. Jackson,”—he leaned over and gave her a tweak on her soft arm—“your husband stirs up fights.”

“Marches an army in Florida and sets the governor back on his haunches,” put in Eaton. “Beats a British army with a little handful of farmers and hunters. And pirates! A dangerous man, Mrs. Jackson. He licked the Creeks and the Cherokee and made this southwest safe to live in. And there are some people who are talking around among themselves that Andrew Jackson ought to be President of the United States.”

“Well, he can’t be!” said Rachel firmly. “I 20 won’t hear of it. He’s not strong nor well, you know that, John Eaton. He can’t even eat plain victuals half the time, and he coughs at night no matter how much salve I rub on his chest. Besides,”—she got to her feet, smoothing out her black silk skirt—“I don’t want to live in any palace—anywhere! Not in Russia. Not in Washington. I’d rather be a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord than to live in the finest palace ever was.”

“It was really a compliment,” Eaton told them, “though I doubt if Adams intended it that way. He listened to the president’s proposal and snorted. He snorts very eloquently, the little man. ‘Send Andrew Jackson to represent this country in the court of the Czar,’ said he, ‘and that would be the end of peace with Russia!’”

The girl’s laughter rippled. She flew across the room and kissed the General’s chin. “You quarrelsome old thing! What a pity they don’t know you as we know you, that soft heart you 21 carry around under all those medals—and bristles!”

He kissed her, then pushed her away, his mouth set firmly. “Flattery will get you nothing, young woman! I am not going to let Jack Donelson come home for Christmas. A long trip for a few days’ visit. He spends too much now, the young rascal. All these youngsters,” he told Eaton, “think the old man is made of money. Thirteen-cent cotton and shippers take more than half of that. Sell a fine colt and you get less than the worth of the hay to raise him.”

“You shouldn’t have bought all that expensive furniture, Mr. Jackson,” worried Rachel. “We could have got along with what we had.”

“We lived in a log blockhouse then. Haven’t you earned a decent bed to sleep in, my dear, after thirty-two years of putting up with me?”

“But if the children need the money—” Rachel always spoke of her numerous nieces and nephews who considered the Hermitage their part-time home as “the children.”

“They just think they need it. Including you, 22 my spoiled pet.” He gave Emily a pinch, ignoring her downcast face. “All spoiled, the whole pack of you. Young Andy worst of all. Where is that scalawag, anyway? And where’s supper? Are we supposed to fast till Christmas? I’ve smelled cakes baking around this place for days and get set down to boiled meat and hominy. Right now I could eat a hog, tail, squeal, and all.”

The General looked sharply at his wife. “Don’t encourage this foolishness, my dear! That boy has got to buckle down to his law. Andy too, as soon as he’s old enough.”

Rachel said nothing. Her gentle face, with the round, firm chin, the dark eyes that held too often a brooding look under arched brows, grew thoughtful. Young love could be so beautiful! Oh, she knew! She knew! Never through all these years of struggle and anxiety and separation 23 had her own love faltered for this stormy, dynamic, explosive man who was her husband. His word was law, but even a just law could be harsh when it bruised what was young and sweet and trusting.

She went quietly out of the room and John Eaton watched her go, saw a troubled look darken the General’s long face. A face hewn from a hickory log, General Coffee had said once, at New Orleans. Only the eyes could tolerate pain and now they darkened with hurt, following Rachel.

“A sorrow—a great sorrow that she has no children of her own,” he said. “All her family—prolific all of them. Her mother bore ten children but her daughter has none. So she has to mother a whole tribe and suffer every small disappointment with them. These lads—Andrew Jackson Donelson, young Andy and Andrew Hutchings are sons to her—to me too. The problem is that I have to hurt her with my firmness to make men out of them. Too much softness in the Donelson strain. I have been blessed by it, but now I must fight against it and defeat it in those 24 boys. It’s not easy to do, John, not for a man who loves his wife as I love Rachel Jackson.”

Andrew Jackson shook his head. “Let her enjoy her Christmas. We’ve had mighty few of them together.”

A bell rang outside, and the General looked in dismay at his hands. “Supper’s ready and I forgot to wash. Come along with me, John. You, George!” He raised his voice in a shout. “Come here and mend this fire. Feels like snow!”

Her room under the eaves of the Hermitage was big and bright. The walls were covered with paper in a small, gay design; there were ruffled curtains at the windows. They looked down on the meadow where even on this chilly morning Andrew Jackson’s mares and colts picked at the frosty grass, lifting their heads now and then to watch for Philip to come trudging down from the stables to pour buckets of water and grain into the feeding troughs.

Later, Emily knew, every animal would be led back to the barns to be brushed and polished ready to meet the General’s critical eye.

The room was chilly. She had not bothered to light the fire laid on the hearth. She had delayed 26 too long sitting up in her warm feather bed, a shawl around her shoulders, reading and rereading the letter. It made her heart beat quickly and her cheeks burn to read it, and when she pressed it against her heart it seemed to glow there, warming her all over.

He loved her! In stiff, formal, slightly legal language he had written it, plain to see, and the words danced before her eyes and got into her blood and did pirouettes there like little live things with silver bells on their feet. Lovely words! She kissed the letter now and then hid it inside her Bible that lay on the table beside the bed. What a pity that so much that was beautiful and wonderful must be hidden or face the chilly breath of adult disapproval!

“If you marry your own cousin all your children will be idiots,” the older people said, looking sombre, so desperately certain that they were right. They were the elders and knew the truth as young people could not be assumed to know it, not having lived long enough for experience to lay its cold blight upon them.

“I gave Andrew Jackson Donelson orders not 27 to come home,” her uncle Jackson had said. The thrill in Emily’s heart was touched by panic now as she hurried into her clothes. Her chemise, chilly and crisp, the cramping stays, the long white ruffled drawers and petticoats. Her fingers were clumsy with cold and dread as she struggled with the fastenings. For Jack was coming! Already he was on the way. He must be riding southward on that road from Kentucky this minute, school left behind him—forever, the letter said.

He knew where he was needed, he had written. Aunt Jackson needed him. So would the General.

“Circumstances have arisen that will make it needful for our uncle to have assistance,” ran the letter. “So I shall return to offer my aid and I hope at that time that it will be proper for me to make my addresses to your family, my dear Emily, and request your hand in marriage. Farewell, then, my love, till I enter the gate at the Hermitage.”

There would be some kind of furious explosion of displeasure from uncle Jackson, she 28 knew. He would be wrathy at being disobeyed, but her experience with the tempestuous old warrior led Emily to hope faintly that eventually he would give in. Especially if aunt Rachel should shed a few tears. That was his history, storming, shouting orders and blasting somebody with angry words, then softening instantly if he saw a look of hurt in Rachel Jackson’s eyes.

Breakfast, when the General was away, was usually a quiet meal at the Hermitage. Rachel never slept very well and rose, still and determined, setting about the multitude of tasks before her, level-eyed and grave. But when Andrew Jackson was at home there was hubbub. He was always noisy and impatient in the mornings, eating rapidly, summoning one servant after another to give orders about the cattle, the horses, the winter plowing. Negroes hurried in, stood hat in hand listening obediently. There was bedlam in the dining room when Emily went down on this morning of Christmas Eve.

“Mix some bran with the oats for those nursing 29 mares,” uncle Jackson was barking at Philip.

“Yes, sah, Mista Jackson. That Truxton filly, she got sore foots. You want me to put tar and grease on her foots, sah?”

“Don’t get it too hot. You blistered all the hair off last time. Here!” Jackson slapped a piece of ham between the halves of a huge biscuit and handed it to the slave. “Eat that and get moving.”

“I need somebody around this place to take some of these chores off me,” grumbled the General. “You, boy!” He glared at Andrew, Junior, who was wolfing down a plateful of egg. “You go see to that filly’s feet. Got to learn. Got to learn some time.”

Young Andrew’s sensitive mouth jerked and his great eyes looked uneasy. “It’s raining, Papa,” he protested.

“It may turn to snow. It felt very raw to me when I went out to the dairy this morning,” Rachel put in gently.

“It rained on me at Fort Mimms and Chalmette,” 30 snapped Andrew Jackson. “You have ridden miles in the rain, my love—so has this fellow! What are you, son, a lump of salt that a little rain can dissolve you? Or are you a paper man cut out to dance on a string while somebody picks a banjo?”

“No, Papa, I’ll go.” The boy hastily wiped his lips. “But Philip won’t pay any attention to me. He’ll just tell me to keep out of the way of that mare’s heels.”

“Make him obey you! How are you going to be master of this place when I’m gone if you can’t win the respect of the people? I may not be here much longer. I never thought to live long enough to sleep under this roof. Put that stuff on your wrist and be sure it’s not too hot.”

“You’ve been going to die before spring ever since I can remember, uncle Jackson,” teased Emily, when the boy had gone out.

“It’s that cold he gets in his chest every time he gets wet,” Rachel said. “And you get it too and so does Andy.”

“Let him get toughened up then,” growled the General. “You spoil all these young ones, 31 my dear. Andy will have heavy responsibilities when I’m gone. He has to be trained to meet them. I’ve done fairly well with Andrew Jackson Donelson for all you women trying continually to soften him up. He’ll make a man.”

Emily’s heart was a bit happier. Uncle Jackson did need someone to help him, as Jack had written. She hoped that when Jack arrived, when the storm of her uncle’s ire had subsided, that the General would welcome young Jack’s assistance. Inevitably, it was certain, the General would be off again on some public service or other. He protested, he fumed, but always, when he was convinced that the call came from the people, he obeyed, and Rachel would be left alone again with the burden of this big plantation.

The slaves were willing but aunt Rachel was too soft with them, as she was too gentle, by the General’s standards, with the young people who surrounded her. She was continually protesting the overseer’s decisions, protecting shirkers and malcontents from punishment. She was too indulgent with young Andy—a spoiled boy already 32 who, his cousin was convinced, was never going to learn the value of money.

Rachel excused herself now and hurried out—to see that the boy was adequately protected from the weather, Emily suspected. She would wrap him in coats and scarfs and when he returned from the pasture or the stable he would be put to bed, his feet soaked in hot mustard water and a plaster of goose grease and pepper on his chest if he so much as sneezed. Jack would be out there, seeing to the mares, without being told, his sweetheart believed worshipfully. Jack would be a great help to aunt Rachel.

“I’ll do my own room, aunt Rachel,” she called, as she went back through the house. “The girls have so much to do today.”

In the big buttery Rachel turned the keys in her hands anxiously. “I declare I keep forgetting how many people you counted, Emily.”

“I counted fifty-two, but with the weather so bad some of them might not get here. You know how awful the roads get when it rains very long. I wish it hadn’t rained today. I was going to 33 have the boys cut some greens for me and decorate the house. There’s a big holly tree out there beyond the tulip grove covered with red berries.”

“Send George,” her aunt suggested. “Mr. Jackson gave George his old oilskin coat and a pair of boots. You could put holly on the mantelpieces. It would look right pretty but it would dry out mighty quick, I’m afraid. Emily, do you reckon Mr. Jackson has any idea of going to Russia? My patience, that would be a terrible place to go!”

“I know. But he refused to be governor of Florida too, and first thing I knew here I was packing to go to Pensacola. Emily, all I ask is so little—just to be allowed to stay in my home with my husband and my family. I don’t suit proud places. Sometimes I feel that Mr. Jackson must be ashamed of me.”

“Nonsense, aunt Rachel!” Emily gave the quivering figure a quick hug. “Uncle Jackson thinks you are perfect.”

In her own room Emily quickly made her bed and hung her clothes away in the big wardrobe. Then she sat at the window again to read her letter. Words she had passed over lightly before in her happy daze now leaped out to trouble her. “Circumstances that have arisen,” Jack had written. A cold kind of prescience oppressed the girl, shot through with a breathless excitement, as though she had heard a trumpet blow.

It had come to her that there was always about Andrew Jackson that atmosphere of great events impending. Always when he seemed most intimate, familiar and dear, there was a cloak of aloofness shutting him in, a remote and dedicated sort of mystery. As though even when he was thinking homely thoughts—a lame mare, a fire that needed replenishing—he was listening to some far, calling drum. As though never could he belong entirely to this Hermitage, this woman that he loved, the young people he scolded and indulged impartially. Emily was very young and a trifle naïve, but there was a 35 wisdom deep in her that recognized the destiny that cloaked this man she loved like a garment of silver, and her young mind dreaded it even while it thrilled her.

She remembered John Eaton’s words, that people were saying that Andrew Jackson should be President of the United States. She remembered, too, aunt Rachel’s positive declaration that this he could not be! No palaces for her, she had announced—but had there been a tinge of desperation in that declaration? Did aunt Rachel feel the pressure of destiny too, that remote glory that invested her man on horseback?

It would be exciting, Emily was thinking, to live in that new president’s palace in Washington. The British had burned it in retaliation for the sack of Toronto by the American forces, but it had been rebuilt, finer than ever, she had heard, and now it was as important as Buckingham Palace. Aunt Rachel had no wish to be a queen in a palace. Only too well Emily knew that aunt Rachel would be an unhappy queen.

Silks and satins, servants bowing, diplomats with medals and ribbons on their gleaming shirt bosoms, sentries and bands playing, her thoughts raced and thrilled.

If only she and Jack could be guests in that palace! It was wonderful even to think about. She sat in a roseate dream for a chilly half hour, while her own fate hovered near, unfathomed. The fate that would make her, Emily Donelson, a young queen in a palace—and an unhappy queen!

On Christmas Eve the servants all grew tense and garrulous with excitement. The field workers, freed from toil for three days, were in and out of their cabins, hanging around the kitchen door till Betty’s sharp tongue sent them packing. The rain had ended but the day was bleak and cloudy with the air bringing a threat of snow. But a wind rose and though it whined in the great chimneys and sent whorls of smoke and ashes drifting out into the rooms, Rachel was grateful for the wind.

At least it would dry up the mud so that the rutted, marshy road out to the Hermitage would be passable for the carriages and wagons 38 of the Christmas guests. Some who had a long way to come would arrive before night, and there was a frantic activity of black women airing blankets, ironing the stored dampness out of bed linen, making down pallets in the upper rooms and even in the hall. George lugged in ticks freshly stuffed with hay and these were beaten flat with whacking brooms before feather beds and quilts were spread over them.

The long tables in the dining room were set with the second-best linen and china. The ceremonial draping with the finest cloths would wait for Christmas morning. In the cellar the General and black Joey counted bottles of Madeira, of good Jamaica rum and peach brandy, broached charred kegs of whisky pounding in spigots, filling jugs that would be set out for the holiday “dram” for every slave on the plantation.

In the smokehouse Rachel directed the slicing of the heavy slabs of fat middling that would go, one to every cabin. There would be a chicken for each family too, and this year every hand on the place would be measured 39 for a new pair of shoes. The shoemaker would come and stay for weeks and the smell of the cured hides would be heavy on the air, but at least every one of the more than a hundred black feet would be shod. That was the big worry for Rachel, shoes. In summer the field hands preferred to trudge behind a plow or drag a cotton sack barefooted, but in winter the frosty ground brought chills and lung fevers and there was an endless sound of coughing in the quarters and inevitably some of the people died.

A fearful responsibility, all these black souls, but today they were all happy and noisy, adding to the confusion in the house by their laughter and singing—singing hushed whenever the voice of the master was heard belowstairs but begun again as soon as a door slammed on him.

In her room Emily lovingly folded the Christmas gift she had knitted for Jack Donelson. A crimson muffler with stripes and a fringe of bright blue at either end. It narrowed a little in the middle where she had knitted a bit too 40 tight, but she stretched it to make it even before she wrapped it in a square of white paper and tied it with a ribbon bow, sticking a tiny bunch of holly jauntily on top. She had gifts for aunt Rachel and uncle Jackson too, linen handkerchiefs she had hemstitched with neat, tiny stitches, then washed and bleached and ironed, with Sary standing around to keep the irons hot. She wrapped these too, along with the gifts for her own family, aware of the curious eyes of the two girls who were making an extra bed in the corner of the room. Some of the cousins would sleep in here, likely enough two of them with her in her own bed.

They would giggle and whisper about their beaus half the night and ply her with questions that she would evade, quite certain that she was fooling no one. She and Jack were a family anxiety, she knew. It was all part of that silly old superstition that cousins should not marry. Jack had more brains than all his relatives put together, she was fiercely certain; he was the cleverest and steadiest of all the Donelson clan; he was almost as smart as uncle Jackson. How 41 could a brilliant young man like Jack have children that were idiots?

The women, shaking out quilts, broke into delighted laughter. “No, Miss Emily, you sho’ ain’t no fool,” cried the older one, “You about the smartest white Miss we got, savin’ Mis’ Rachel herself.”

“Thank you, ’Relia. Don’t use that pillowcase. It’s got a rip in the seam.”

“Hit the very las’ one, Miss Emily. Done use every pillowcase Mis’ Jackson got.”

“Give it to me then. I’ll mend it. We can’t have guests sleeping on rags.”

“Not Miss Mary Eastin, no ways. She want everything mighty fine. Best we got ain’t none too good for Miss Mary.”

“Her hair mighty pretty. Smooth and shiny as a new colt. Got a nice long nose too.”

“We’ve all got long noses. It’s the Donelson curse. Mine’s longest of all. All of us but aunt 42 Rachel. Somehow it passed her by,” sighed Emily, threading a needle.

“Ain’t flat like mine, anyhow,” ’Relia echoed the sigh. “If the good Lord was to give me my dearest wish it would be to have a nice long nose like you got, Miss Emily.”

“Ain’t nobody satisfy,” stated Becky, the other maid. “White folks all wantin’ hair be curly. Colored folks all putting grease on they hair, make it straight. You reckon we be white when we git to Heaven, Miss Emily?”

“Law, we be angels with big white wings,” declared ’Relia. “Lord don’t want no black angels around, he got to make us white. I wants me a pyure white robe, white as Mis’ Rachel’s tablecloth. I goin’ put on my robe and sing praises to the Throne, day and night.”

“Are you going to sing tonight, Becky—all of you? It wouldn’t be Christmas if you people didn’t build a big fire out there behind the smokehouse and all gather round and sing.”

“Look a little like snow,” said Becky, peering out the window. Becky hated the cold. She 43 burned more wood in her cabin than any other servant on the place, Emily had heard her aunt complain. From the window now she could see the wagon coming down the lane loaded with firewood, George walking beside the team, cracking his whip and shouting. Great fires would roar in every fireplace in the house, over the holidays. Rachel Jackson was nervous about fire. Someday the General was going to burn the Hermitage to the ground, she was always prophesying.[1]

A carriageload of cousins and aunts arrived shortly after the family had finished dinner, and there was a confusion of greetings, band boxes and parcels to be carried in, shawls, bonnets and cloaks laid off to be hung up by maids, cold hands and feet to be warmed by the fires, the scurry of excited children. Then all the food had to be warmed up and brought in again and the guests fed.

Emily hurried about, setting out plates, getting 44 down glasses for the General, who insisted that everyone must have a tot of hot spiced rum to ward off a chill. She had little chance to slip to the front of the house to watch the drive from the windows, but while the company were eating, with Rachel hovering around and the General being the affable host, she did steal away to stand behind the long curtains, searching the approaching avenue anxiously.

Dusk was beginning to gather under the great trees. The smoke from the many chimneys eddied and settled to the ground. A few thin snowflakes drifted by on the wind, then drops of rain spattered the windowpanes. Bad weather for a young man riding alone. So many things could happen on a long journey. A horse stumbling at a ford, footpads on the road lying in wait for a solitary traveler, even the danger from Indians was not ended.

She was growing more tense with anxiety by the minute but she must not betray her unease, must keep her demeanor calm and be most surprised of all when Jack came riding in, or her uncle would never forgive her for hiding her 45 letter. She had let the curtains fall when Andrew, Junior, came up behind her.

She managed a light laugh. “Anybody! I hope if more are coming tonight they’ll get here before dark. We’d better light the candles. It’s going to be a gloomy night.”

“George is getting his fire going,” Andy looked from the window. “I suppose I’ll have to go out and help Papa dole out the Christmas Eve gifts all around. Looky yonder, the people are coming out with their cups and mugs and sacks already! You’ll have to light the candles, Emily. I’ve got to go out and be Young Marse Jackson.”

“It’s an honor, Andy. There are a lot of Donelson boys. You were the one chosen.”

“I know. It’s hard to live up to sometimes, ’specially when Jack’s around. I know he’s smarter than I am and Jack’s a fool for work and duty as I get reminded all the time.”

“You mustn’t be jealous. After all, they did pick you to be their son and heir. You’ll have everything, being Andrew Jackson’s son.”

“You have to admit, though, that Papa’s a hard man to follow. Came up from the direst kind of poverty, made it all for himself. I hear that too. And how he got thrown into that prison where his brother died, because he wouldn’t black some British officer’s boots.”

“He was no older than you are now, then, Andy. He’s just trying to inspire you. You’d better hurry. I hear the cellar door slamming. That means uncle Jackson and Joey are fetching out the jugs. Oh, Heaven, there’s aunt Rachel out there without her cloak! I’ll get it before she takes a chill. Run, Andy!”

Under the big trees all the Negroes on the place were gathering. George had persuaded the big bonfire to burn in spite of the thin, misting rain. Children, black and white, crowded close to it, their voices shrill with excitement. Little Negro boys poked sticks into the blazing fire, waved them smoking in air, dancing about till Betty laid about her with a switch, ordering the brands extinguished.

On long trestles the parcels of meat were laid out and the chickens, tied by the feet and squawking, were brought from the chicken house and handed around, one hen or rooster to a family. Instantly there was a bedlam of screaming joy, chickens’ necks being wrung, cries of, “Thank you, Massa, thank you, Mist’iss!” The General with Andy beside him and Joey at hand to lift a jug stood at the end of the table. A line formed, cups in hand.

“No crowding now—and no sneaking back to the end of the line for a second drink!” warned Andrew Jackson.

Headless chickens flopped on the ground, prodded by shrieking little Negroes with sticks. Emily wrapped a heavy cloak around her aunt’s shoulders, pulled her own shawl tighter as they watched the line of people file by to receive their portion of Christmas cheer. Even the small ones got a tot, weakened with water, and as each child passed Andrew Jackson tweaked a lock of kinky hair or pulled an ear, sending the small black person off into a hysteria of shrieks and giggles.

George had put a great washpot over the flames and when the water was hot the women would douse their fowls in the steaming cauldron and there would be a great chattering and ripping off of feathers, but before that all the people would gather in a phalanx to sing.

“We must go in and light all the candles,” Emily told a group of women. “The house must be bright when they sing.”

“You go, Emily,” Rachel said. “I ought to stay here. Becky and Dilsey both wanted that white rooster and they’re sure to get into a fight.”

“Let Mr. Field attend to it. It’s his business to keep the people in order, aunt Rachel. You are a hostess with a houseful of guests, you have enough to worry you.”

Rachel went reluctantly into the house, and presently every room was ablaze with firelight and candlelight. The other women and children drifted in, and Andy came too, standing before the fire balancing uneasily on first one foot, then the other.

“Mama,” he began abruptly, “you know Papa 49 said he was going to give me that chestnut colt. Why can’t he give it to me for Christmas? He gave Jack the sorrel and promised the chestnut to me when it was grown. Now every time I speak to Philip about it he says it’s not old enough to break yet. A two-year-old colt ought to be old enough to break to the saddle. You know that, Mama.”

Rachel looked harassed. “Son, Philip knows about the horses more than I. Your Papa has every confidence in Philip’s judgment. You have horses to ride. Good safe horses too. And that new saddle and bridle and everything. Goodness knows they cost plenty.”

“You’re too young to ride a stallion colt, Andy,” put in one of his Donelson aunts.

“Duke is a noble old horse,” stated Rachel sternly. “He carried your Papa through two wars. He’s earned his rest and feed.”

“And he still pays for his keep by dancing on three feet whenever anybody whistles ‘Yankee Doodle’,” laughed Emily. “Andy, you’re only 50 fourteen. Plenty of time for you to wrestle fractious stallion colts.”

“You could be killed,” worried his mother, “and you’ve got to live to comfort me in my old age. Sometimes I feel like it’s coming on mighty fast.”

“Nonsense, Rachel, you’ve got twenty good years ahead of you,” argued one of her sisters-in-law, “and all the struggle is behind. This fine house now—and everything fine in it and all the worry behind you.”

“If only they don’t decide that Mr. Jackson has to save the country in some other awful place far from home!” sighed Rachel. “I declare, with millions of men now in this country there ought to be enough to keep it going peacefully without Mr. Jackson being dragged away from this place again.”

“The trouble is,” remarked the other woman, “that Andrew Jackson was never born for peace. Not that he starts any trouble but the minute anything does start Andrew is the man they look for to put an end to it.”

“He’d start a fight soon enough if anybody 51 picked on Mama,” declared Andy. “He’s done that already. That’s why he’s carrying that bullet around right close to his heart.”

“That was very bad taste, Andy,” reproved his aunt, “and you should know better.”

“But it’s true!” protested the boy, his voice breaking in a contralto tremolo. “Even when I was little, boys used to yell at me that my father had killed a man—on account of Mama.”

“Andy, how dreadful—on Christmas Eve!” scolded an aunt, “I’ll go—”

“No,” urged Emily, “she’ll want to be alone, aunt Mary. But I’m ashamed of Andy.”

“Go outside and help your father. And remember that there are things never mentioned in your mother’s presence. One of them is 52 Charles Dickinson and that tragic duel that happened before you were ever born.”

“My boy, I hope that when you are grown a man you will find a woman as fine and faithful as Rachel Jackson,” said the older woman gravely. “If you are so fortunate as to win a wife like that and a man cast slurs on her in public, I think you will be moved to kill him too. Now go on out of here before I get the itch to box your ears, big as you are!”

In her room Rachel stood before her tall chest, her hands shaking, her throat cramping with an agonizing pain. Always in spring, when all about was new growth and beauty burgeoning the old terror twenty years past came back for a little to haunt her. Now Andy’s callous taunts had brought it again out of its grave to tear at her tender heart.

Always it was the same. She saw herself again sitting in the carriage beside that race track where the General’s fine horse Truxton, and a horse called Ploughboy owned by Charles Dickinson and his father were running a race. Gathered around the course was an enormous concourse of people: the women in carriages 54 and on horseback wearing their new spring bonnets gay with flowers and ribbons, or flowing habits of bright velvet; the men jaunty in tight breeches strapped under their ankles, ruffled shirts and tall beaver hats. An April wind was blowing sweet off the fields.

It was all as sharply clear to Rachel, here in her big room dimly lighted by one candle, as it had been on that fateful day when Truxton had gone lame in the third heat of the race.

She could even hear again her own voice saying naïvely and more loudly than she had intended, “If Truxton hadn’t gone lame he would have left Ploughboy out of sight.”

She could hear too that loud, sneering voice that still crackled in her ears though the young man who had spoken had lain twenty years in his grave. Angry and raucous from a bit too much drink, Charles Dickinson had shouted, “About as far out of sight as Mrs. Jackson left her first husband when she ran off with the General!”

It comforted her still to remember that she had not been the one who repeated that jeering 55 insult to Andrew Jackson. But there had been many ready to turn the knife in an old wound, to drag out again and bandy about the old, sordid story of Lewis Robards, who had married Rachel and discarded her, of the aborted divorce that had clouded Rachel Robards Jackson’s second marriage.

A chill ran over her body now as she remembered the furious, insulting letters that had been written, the General’s cold terrible rage, the town and county taking sides, eventually the irrevocable challenge. Her hands shook as she opened a drawer in the chest. Well hidden there under lavender-scented linen lay the browning copy of a paper that Andrew Jackson would have destroyed instantly, had he known that she still hoarded it. It was dated on the 23rd of May, 1806, and the lines that were hastily scrawled upon it were burned on Rachel Jackson’s heart.

On Friday, the 30th. Inst, we agree to meet at Harrison’s Mills, in Red River County, State of Kentucky for the Purpose of settling an Affair of Honor, between Andrew Jackson and 56 Charles Dickinson, Esq. Further arrangements to be made. It is understood that the Meeting will be held at seven o’clock in the morning.

It was signed with the General’s familiar scrawl and the neater hand of young Dickinson.

Charles Dickinson had been so young! Rachel ached now with remembering the anguish of dread for her own beloved and for the young wife and baby of the youth Andrew Jackson had set out across the Kentucky line that May morning to kill, if he could—if he were not himself slain by a youth known to be one of the most famous shots in Tennessee.

Duels were illegal in Tennessee so Jackson had started the day before with his friend, John Overton, for the long ride into Kentucky. He had tried to slip away without Rachel’s knowledge, tried to belittle the danger. And he had come home with a bullet close to his heart, too near to be safely removed by the surgeons, and that bullet he carried yet. But Charles Dickinson had been brought home dead and for a year the town had seethed with furious 57 criticism of the man who had survived that duel, Andrew Jackson. The affair had almost ended his public career. Rachel had known some moments when she wished that the tragedy had made it impossible for Andrew Jackson ever to be chosen for any high emprise again.

It had weighed heavily on her heart for years that the affair had been on her account, and there had been a long, unspoken family pact that the duel was never to be mentioned. She had nursed her husband for weeks through that hot summer, and he had hated the inactivity while Rachel was grateful that the spring ran cool and deep and the great trees gave comforting shade, and that she had her husband, wounded and restless as he was, by her side. He had not desired that tragic engagement, she knew. Faced with no honorable means of evading it, he had fought fairly according to the rules and borne his wound without capitalizing upon it.

She put away the old agreement, smoothed her hair and the lace of her collar, rubbed a bit of cotton dipped in rice powder over her swollen eyelids. This was Christmas Eve, the 58 past was past, though Truxton’s colts still ambled over the meadows, some of them growing old as the Jacksons were growing old. Perhaps they would have no more Christmas Eves under this roof, this proud house that they loved. Nothing must mar this holiday. She would hurry out and tell Andy that he was forgiven. The boy was impulsive and thoughtless. He had not meant to wound her.

The house was full of voices; children being led upstairs to bed reluctant and protesting, but outside were voices too, the songs of the black people gathered to sing to their master and mistress. Rachel snatched up a shawl, wrapped her head and shoulders in it and went out to stand and listen.

She saw her husband standing bareheaded near the fire, his hair blowing in the winter wind, the firelight casting deep shadows under his eyes. He had a hand on Andy’s shoulder, an 59 arm around Emily. No one heeded the mist that blew on the wind. Some of the older women were already picking their chickens on the lee side of the smokehouse.

“Go down, Moses, ’way down in Egypt’s lan’,” trilled a high voice, Becky’s. The humming chorus swelled, burst into tremendous melody. “Tell ole Phar’oh,—let my people go!”

Go down, Moses! Go down, Andrew Jackson! To Tohopeka, to Mobile, to New Orleans, to Pensacola. Go down, Andrew Jackson, and set a people free! No, no, moaned the heart of Rachel. Never any more. This was home, this was their Hermitage, this was Christmas Eve. Her eyes searched the air, challenged the air, the Heavens, as though somewhere out there in the murky dark lurked fate in wait for them, a prescience that would not lift.

Was it a charm or a curse that invested her man on horseback? What dark Nemesis had hovered over that little cabin back in the North Carolina sandhills where he had been born? What strange power had preserved him when all his family succumbed to the hardships of 60 that time of bitter war? What power of destiny had brought him up, an orphaned waif, led him through so many conflicts, made him a firebrand and a leader whom men would follow as they followed a flag?

Sick and coughing, his frail health her constant anxiety, he inspired strong men. Something was brewing now. Rachel felt it, but she must hold her tongue and quiet her unease with the drug of hope.

A horse came trotting up the drive and Rachel saw Emily start forward eagerly. Then the girl stopped as a slim figure in oilskin slid from the saddle.

“It’s Ralph!” Rachel hurried forward to greet the young artist, Ralph Earl. Off and on, for many years, the portrait painter had made his home at the Hermitage. He had done a fine portrait of the General, wooed and won Jane Caffrey, Rachel’s niece. There had been a fine wedding in the old log house that still stood there in the yard, but gentle Jane had lived only a year. Now Earl was a saddened and lonely man and Rachel mothered him after her habit 61 with all young, unmothered creatures. “How fine that you got back from the East for Christmas, Ralph!” she cried, taking his hand.

“I came to paint your picture,” he said. “The General will never give me any peace till I do your portrait, aunt Rachel.”

“Fiddlesticks!” She led him into the house. “You come get warm and dry this minute before you take a ptisic. I’ll make a hot toddy for you, myself. And you don’t want to paint a picture of a fat old woman like me. Nobody would look at it. We’d have to hang it in the wash-house.”

“A portrait of you might be hung on the walls of some very splendid place, aunt Rachel,” Earl argued, handing his damp garments to a servant.

“Oh—just an idea I had,” he soothed, seeing her perturbation. “People keep getting notions about what Andrew Jackson could do for this country. I hear about them—traveling around.”

She clutched at his arm. “No, Ralph—whatever 62 their notions are, he’s not going to go dashing off again on some wild adventure or other. He’s not strong, you know that. He’ll get that lung fever again and it almost caused his death last winter. And besides,”—her eyes misted and her voice croaked—“he’d have to leave our home! Our Hermitage!”

“But think of what great things could happen to you, aunt Rachel! Someday you might be one of the greatest ladies in the land.”

“I don’t want to be a great lady.” She held tight to the cold hand he had laid upon her cheek. “I want to stay here and raise young Andy and Andrew Hutchings. I want to see Emily well married and all our people taken care of. I never want to have to go dragging out again to make calls and leave cards and smile till my face aches. I have had enough of that.”

“You paint Emily. She’s filling out, she’s going to be a beauty. The General’s got that little picture of me that Anna Peale painted the year of 63 that New Orleans battle. He carries it around with him all the time, though he wrote to me once and said he didn’t need it, that he had my picture engraved on his heart. Nobody could ask for anything more beautiful than that, Ralph, no woman alive. He wouldn’t engrave a picture of me as I am now, on his heart—an old lady getting fat and out of breath!”

“I think he would,” said Earl. “I think he would prize any picture of you, aunt Rachel, more than his life.”

“He’s coming in,” she whispered. “I must get his bed warm so he won’t cough all night. You’ll have to sleep with Andy tonight. We’ve got a houseful already and more coming. And Ralph, don’t you let the General get notions about rushing off to be somebody important. It’s time he took care of himself.”

“I’ll tell him, aunt Rachel. But you know Andrew Jackson. If any call came from the people to serve anywhere, no one could hold him.”

Bugles and drums before dawn had trained Andrew Jackson to waken early. He tiptoed about in the dark, cracking a toe and muttering in irritation, fumbled into his clothes by the lingering glow of a dying fire, not wanting to light a candle and wake Rachel.

Then he discovered that she was already gone from the bed, her full ruffled night rail was spread out neatly to air, her cap perched on the post of the bed. Instantly his voice rose in the familiar falsetto shout.

The alacrity with which the man appeared, loaded to the chin with lightwood, betrayed 65 that he had been waiting near for a summons. “Yes, sah, Gin’ral Jackson! Christmas gif’, sah!”

“Christmas gift! I’ll gift you with my boot if you don’t stir yourself.”

“Yes, sah!” George burst into delighted chuckles. He knew his master well. “Mist’iss say, don’t disturb Marse Jackson, she say, let Marse Jackson git he rest. I git a fine fire here toreckly.”

The embers stirred, the lightwood crackled and flamed. Andrew Jackson liked fire to roar as he liked horses to gallop and men to spring into action when he shouted an order. George swept the hearth and set the fire tools in order.

“Here!” Jackson tossed a two-shilling piece. George caught it in midair, grinned and bowed elaborately.

“Thankee, sah! Thankee! Does you go to town I git you to buy me some store galluses, please, sah? I like some red galluses, wid big brass buckles.”

“Keep your money. Buy candy with it. I’ll 66 get you some red galluses. How you hitch your britches up now?”

“Dis yere piece of rope. But it mighty near wore out and Mister Field say he goin’ beat the next nigger cut off any his rope. Thankee, sah.”

“Now I reckon every hand on the place will have to have red galluses with brass buckles,” snorted the General. “You’re getting measured for shoes tomorrow, George. You wash your feet.”

Christmas morning! How few Christmas Days he had ever spent in his own home, Andrew Jackson was thinking. On the march, in cheerless camps with lonely men, in that strange mansion in Pensacola, riding eastward roads through Tennessee to Philadelphia, to Washington. And now perhaps the road eastward lay ahead of him again. He dreaded telling Rachel, rooted as she was to this hillside, fixed as one of the old trees and removed with almost as much agony. She might even refuse to take the road again. He might face more endless months of loneliness. He looked at the little 67 gold-framed miniature that had never been far from his gaze since it had been painted so many years ago.

Rachel’s direct eyes looked from it, her strong mouth was relaxed in a little smile, the lace cap and fichu she wore softened her high brow, where the dark hair curled, her rounded chin. Long earrings gave her an effect of gayety that always made him happy when he studied the picture. She had looked like that once—in Natchez where he had married her, believing her divorced from sadistic Lewis Robards. She needed gayety. She had had too much of responsibility, she had seen too much of sorrow.

Today should be gay. He would have fiddlers in and let the young folks dance. He would open the best wine and make a big bowl of punch. He jabbed his feet into his boots hurriedly, rejecting the heavy braided coat for a lighter hunting jacket of leather.

The house was fragrant with the evergreen Emily had hung about, and there was a comfortable odor of coffee. In the dining room Rachel was bustling about a long table following 68 Hannah who puffed and sputtered at two children who kept diving, squealing, under the table to peer out from beneath the cloth and pinch Hannah’s fat legs.

“Here—here!” barked the General. “You tads leave Hannah alone. Come out of there.”

Instantly the pair, in nightgowns and barefooted, swarmed up his long legs like squirrels.

He planted a spank on each of two small rears. “There’s your Christmas gift. Now go and get your clothes on. When you come down properly dressed you’ll get your Christmas gift.”

“Mother’s asleep, we don’t know where our clothes are,” protested a little boy.

“Yes, sir!” The two obeyed with alacrity, rushing out shrieking, “Wake up! Wake up! Christmas gift!”

“We have to get breakfast over so we can set the tables for dinner,” said Rachel, “and all the people are slow and lazy this morning. Betty 69 says the oven won’t get hot for her spoon bread and Dilsey cut the bacon too thick and then went off in a sulk when I scolded her.”

“I’ll get them all up,” threatened the General. He strode out through the house to the bricked passage to the kitchen, pulled on a rope dangling from a pole. The slave bell clanged loud and long.

“My patience,” Rachel exclaimed, “the neighbors will think the house is afire!”

“Get the mugs for the children, Hannah, and tell ’Relia to get herself upstairs to help the young ladies. And I want every bed made up right away.”

Hannah said, “Yas’m.” She loved ordering the other maids around, being middle-aged, faithful and privileged.

Breakfast was a gay and noisy meal. Emily was happy with a new gold chain and locket, kissing everybody impartially as she danced around the table. Rachel had a pearl brooch with a small blue stone in the center and yards 70 of white satin for caps and collars. One little boy pushed his toy monkey around the table, perched it on people’s shoulders till Andrew, Junior, said impatiently, “Oh, quit it, boy!”

“What are you so excited about?” the General asked Emily, when he had followed her into the parlor.

“Why, uncle Jackson, it’s Christmas! And my lovely locket. You shouldn’t have given me anything so fine. I’ll put a lock of your hair in it.”

“Put some young fellow’s hair in it—the right fellow, mind you! And were you looking down that road to see if Christmas was coming?”

“Oh, no. Just more company. Aunt Rachel says there should be ten more. Thank goodness the rain stopped.”

“Froze a little.” He took his pipe from the mantel, and the deep tobacco jar. “Kill hogs next week if the cold weather holds. Emily, get your aunt out of that dining room. Make her rest if you can.”

“I’ll try, but you know aunt Rachel. She won’t believe the Christmas dinner is fit to eat unless she has dipped a spoon in every dish. I 71 promised to oversee setting the tables as soon as the girls have cleared away. They’re all excited and they’ll get all the forks crooked.”

“In some ways it will be good for Rachel to get away for a while,” he mused, half to himself, as he lifted the coal from the fire.

“Why, I shall have to return to the Senate, my dear. Have you forgotten that I have been elected United States Senator from Tennessee? Of course, when I go back I shall want my wife to go with me.”

“And what,” he interrupted, “did Mister Andrew Jackson Donelson write to you?”

That he loved me leaped like a lovely tongue of fairy flame into her mind. She blinked very fast to keep uncle Jackson from reading it in her eyes.

“He said something about circumstances—about a ground swell in Kentucky—he was rather vague—”

He frowned, then his face lightened and his mouth quirked up at one corner in a halfway 72 impish grin. “So young Andrew has been hearing rumblings in Kentucky.” Always he had refused to call his nephew by the family nickname of Jack. “Why didn’t he write to me? Kentucky is the fighting ground of our friend Henry Clay. If there are any honors to be handed out, the Speaker of the House would like them for himself, no doubt? I will tell you this much, Emily, and you will keep it to yourself. In spite of all I can do, I have friends determined to push me into the forefront again. Now, they are talking about running me for the highest office in this land.”

“But that would be a great honor, uncle Jackson. Why must we keep it a secret?”

“I don’t want to spoil her Christmas. Some women would be elated at a chance to spend a winter in Washington, move in important circles, perhaps be elevated to the highest position in this land. But not your aunt Rachel. I want to talk her into the right mood, or she might refuse to leave here and then I’d be separated from her again for a long time.”

“But she must go! I won’t let her refuse,” 73 argued Emily. “We’ll buy her some beautiful clothes. She can be a fine lady.”

“She’s already a fine lady,” he sighed, “but she’d rather go on here dosing the bellyache of the most worthless hand I own than to be invited to dinner in the proudest house in the country. I love her for her simplicity, and I want her to enjoy peace as long as she can, so say nothing about any plans, Emily.”

“Yes, uncle Jackson, but you could be wrong about aunt Rachel. The thing she wants more than anything is to be with you.”

“And what I most desire is to be with her. I am singularly blessed. It troubles me now that I grow old that the people will not let me rest.”

“You could say no. You could refuse when they thrust these responsibilities upon you,” she reminded him, grave beyond her years.

He lifted his gaunt shoulders in a ponderous sigh. “This is a great country, Emily, my child. Where else could a gangling, country boy with no fortune and little education fight his way up to where he is honored as I have been honored 74 by my countrymen? I owe America a debt. Speaking of debts,” his mood changed, his face grew into a sardonic grimace, “the question is—where is the money coming from to pay for all this pride and eminence? It costs like the devil to live in Washington and the crops this year were disappointing. As things stand now I owe about twice as much as I’m worth. Of course there are a lot of people who owe me—”

“Then make them pay,” she counseled. “And you should never have spent so much money for this locket, uncle Jackson. I love you without gifts.”

“When I can’t buy a present for a pretty girl, I’ll let them cart me off to a debtor’s prison!” he declared. “As for asking my friends to repay money I’ve loaned them, that’s something a gentleman can’t do, Emily.”

“Then don’t be a gentleman,” she suggested boldly. “Be a politician. They seem to be able to ask for anything they want without any qualms whatever.”

He laughed so loudly that some of the guests came hurrying in to hear the joke. “When 75 James Monroe makes me ambassador to Mexico or Russia or some other heathen spot on this globe, I’m going to make Emily Donelson my prime counselor,” he said. “This gal has brains.”

Emily laughed and hurried out to help her aunt. She was feeling easier in her mind. If uncle Jackson was harassed about money, he might be relieved at hearing that Jack was not going back to school. There was young Andy coming along to be educated and Andrew Hutchings, also a ward of the Jacksons, and it must cost a tremendous lot to run this huge plantation and care for all the people, white and black. And anything aunt Rachel wanted she had, whether it was a pair of silk mitts, a ten-dollar hat or an expensive suite of furniture shipped in at enormous expense from halfway across the country. Somewhere Andrew Jackson found the money to gratify Rachel’s every desire.

That expensive saddle for Andy—and her locket—and it was very certain in her mind that there were some things that the General needed for himself. He needed new clothes anyway. 76 She had noted the shabbiness of his braided coat, shiny at the elbows, and all his waistcoats were worn on the edges.

Destiny might have planned great things for Andrew Jackson through his lifetime, decided his niece, but fate had certainly been stingy with the practical rewards.

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 78 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.”

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 79 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. 80 “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 81 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.

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.

“Uncle, I admit my disobedience,” Jack said 82 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.

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 83 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, 85 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 86 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!”

“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 87 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?”

“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 88 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 89 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.

Footnotes

Transcriber’s Notes

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Her Christmas at the Hermitage: A Tale About Rachel and Andrew Jackson

HER CHRISTMAS
AT THE
HERMITAGE

HER CHRISTMAS
AT THE HERMITAGE

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Footnotes

Transcriber’s Notes

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