I, Eliza Hamilton. Susan Holloway Scott

Чтение книги онлайн.

      CHAPTER 6

      My father did not write his fateful letter to Alexander until April. Though I shall never know for certain, I believe that it was my mother who finally pushed him to write, and if it had been left to Papa, I would still to this day be a spinster waiting for his blessing, he’d become that loath to part with me.

      The contents of the letter were simple enough—that he and my mother had accepted Alexander’s offer to me of marriage—but my life, and Alexander’s, were changed forever. With the weather and the roads improving, my mother made the journey from Albany to Morristown, and took up residence in the house Papa had rented. I was pleased that they wished to know Alexander better, and I was equally pleased that he in turn wished to know them as well. Having no family of his own, he was eager to become part of mine, and as often as he could be spared from headquarters he came to our little house. With his usual charm, quick wit, and perspicacity, Alexander discussed military matters with Papa and household economies with Mamma, and won them both so thoroughly that they became as happy to see him at our door as I was.

      Best of all was the glowing happiness that came with being betrothed to Alexander. My parents insisted on us marrying at our home in Albany, and we all hoped that Alexander would be able to procure leave to do so before the summer campaigns began. Our joy in one another was boundless, and whenever we were together, we planned and plotted our shared future together as husband and wife, and dreamed of the children we would have and the house where we’d live.

      But the unhappy truth was that we had increasingly less time to spend in each other’s company. It was not from lack of interest, of course, but on account of Alexander’s duties. By now he had become for all purposes the general’s chief of staff, and was as indispensable as any single officer in the army could be. I do not believe there was anyone that His Excellency trusted more. As can be imagined, I was thoroughly proud of Alexander, but his role meant that he was constantly either at the general’s side, or away executing a mission or order on his behalf.

      Privately I thought the general took advantage of Alexander’s great energy and ability to subsist on little sleep. Whenever he’d steal away a few moments to call upon me, he often looked weary, with circles of exhaustion beneath his eyes, and I thought he’d grown thinner, too, which he could ill afford. He could become preoccupied, his gaze turning blank in the middle of a conversation as his thoughts began to churn some problem or another. It was obvious he’d much on his mind, and I worried at the toll it was taking upon him. Yet I could hardly protest, since the very survival of our new country was at risk.

      For even as spring was returning and the fields around Morristown were turning green with new growth and optimism, the Continental Army was foundering; nor had I needed Peggy Arnold to tell me so, either. Most of us in Morristown were aware of it, and that knowledge hung like a forbidding cloud over the entire encampment.

      No one had expected the war to continue as long as it had, with seemingly so little achieved. There had been hints of mutiny in the snow-covered cabins of Jockey Hollow, from muted grumbling to out-and-out insubordination. Many of the men had enlisted in 1777 for a term of service of three years, and were well aware that their duty would be finished at the end of April.

      “Already the men are beginning to drift away,” Alexander said. It was early evening, and we were sitting side by side on a rough plank bench in the small yard behind my parents’ house, where we’d have a measure of privacy, if few comforts. Whatever cheer the sun had given earlier in the afternoon was gone, and I’d wrapped myself in a thick woolen shawl, with Alexander’s arm around me for extra warmth. Small ghostly patches of old snow still lingered in the shadows, dirty and tattered like worn lace, but at last the first shoots of green were beginning to appear in the sticky, muddy ground.

      Yet the way Alexander was explaining it, spring was bringing little cheer to General Washington.

      “Each morning’s muster shows more men have vanished overnight,” he continued. “Their guns are gone and their other belongings with them. They’ve had their fill of soldiering, and all that matters to them are new crops to be planted and sweethearts to kiss. Staying here another few weeks makes no difference to them, nor can I fault them for it.”

      “But if they’re captured, they’ll be charged as deserters, won’t they?” As a soldier’s daughter, I knew the unequivocal sentence for desertion—the most grievous sin in any army—was death.

      “The general will have no choice if he wants to maintain discipline,” Alexander said. “Yet most who flee are young, younger than I, and eager to return to homes they left as boys. They haven’t been paid in months, at least not in money that has any value to it. Many are sick, and all are near to starving from the poor rations. They believe Congress and the populace despise them, and they’re justified in that. And yet . . .”

      He let the words drift off unfinished, but I could complete СКАЧАТЬ