Part 2

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!”

2

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 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 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 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 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.”

“Yes, sah. Thank you, sah.”

“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,” 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, 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 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 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!”

“He said he had refused the appointment, aunt Rachel.”

“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.”

“I wish I wasn’t getting so fat! It shortens my breath so.”

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 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.

“But I would love it!” she said suddenly aloud.

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!

3

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 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 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 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 could a brilliant young man like Jack have children that were idiots?

“And I’m not a stupid fool either!” she said suddenly, aloud.

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.”

“Oh, Mary will sleep with me. She always does.”

“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 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 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 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 letter. She had let the curtains fall when Andrew, Junior, came up behind her.

“Who you watching for, Emmy?”

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.

“You set the young Misses’ dresses afire,” she screamed at them.

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 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.