by Desmond Dilg
Hamilton, after he had bade farewell to Burr, also began (as was his wont) to inwardly reflect on all that happened during that eventful night.
“Damn,” he thought to himself, “what an infernal ass I was to tell the secret of my love to Burr of all men. He will never rest now till he makes her acquaintance and then it is all over with me. Every woman who beholds him becomes his captive. He has a wonderful influence over women. They crowd around him like moths around a candle. Even Betsy, whom I felt so sure of until tonight, is no longer sure. She has met this Puritan Lovelace. However, there is as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it.”
V
The Enchanted Clearing
A horn of elfland
Faintly blowing.
The lightning flashed in blinding sheets. The heavens were veined with flame. The rain poured down in drowning torrents. The bitter wind howled ferociously, driving icily from the iron North. It seemed as if the traditional windows of the sky had suddenly burst open. Thunder roared and rolled like the growling of some wild aerial monster. The world shivered. All nature shook in terror.
The entire army halted. It was impossible to march further in the teeth of such a snarling hurricane. It was more than human nature could do, to stand up against such a tempest. The wind actually lifted men off their feet. Into the faces of soaked and hungry regiments the shrieking blast hurled its whorling floods of sleet and water.
The troop-horses turned end-for-end in the ranks and shook with cold. Their ears drooped sadly. They looked the very picture of misery. Neither by whip nor spur could they be prevailed upon to face the angry blast. No trooper moved out of the saddle for to do so would be more unpleasant still. Horses and horsemen stood there and shivered, while the storm moaned and howled and the rain splashed down. The men wrapped their overcoats and cloaks about themselves (those who had any) and waited patiently “for orders.”
The ground rapidly became soaked with water. What had been dry soil a few hours before was soon a morass. The hoofs of the horses, the wheels of the wagons and cannon, ploughed it up like a furrowfield. The rear regiments closed, to where the advance guard halted. It seemed as if the army was as an islet of men and horses in the midst of a yellow muddy, gurgling sea. The creeks went rumbling down in tawny flood, and the great river swelled higher and ever higher up its sloping banks.
The infantrymen soon broke their ranks and crowded under the lee of nearby rocks and boulders, or sought shelter in hollow half-burned trees that slowly rotted black and solitary in the dreary valley. Some of the men, too tired to move, stood out in the open, huddled together, sheltering one another even as wild animals do when overtaken by a blizzard on the open prairie.
After about an hour of waiting the rain abated, but the wind increased in violence and frigidity. From over the mountains and ice fields of Canada it raced. Then cloaks and coats and beards froze hard and stiff. Icicles hung to moustaches and to the manes and tails of the horses; while away in the distance the passing thunder boomed and reverberated towards the South. Then with approach of evening, the welcome order was given to off-saddle and pitch camp for the night. Whereupon everybody felt happy. Even the horses whinnied with evident satisfaction. Soon the tents were pitched in rows, the horses picketed, the wagons hauled up together, and tarpaulins stretched over them as shelter for the teamsters. Gradually and with infinite patience the wet, weary and footsore soldiers scattered, to gather damp wood which they quickly split up with tomahawks carried in their belts. Before long a thousand bivouac fires were burning and steaming on the muddy ground, while the soldiers sat around cooking meat on the end of ramrods, or building shelters, or drying their clothes, or trying to keep warm, and yet outside the smoke of the fires.
As darkness rolled down, the scene became extremely picturesque to those who had time or inclination to think of such an unpractical thing.
The camp was in a valley, surrounded by low hills and on the bank of a river. Here and there forest trees stood up gaunt and bare, wintrified, ghastly, and charred black by bush fires.
For miles the bivouac fires spread over the valley and reflected themselves on the swollen river—now level with its banks. The camp fires gleamed and glittered and sputtered in the darkness. From a distance they looked like the lamps of some great city as seen from the sea, or as a galaxy of stars and will-o'-the-wisps dancing a wild fandango along the distant shores of some enchanted island.
Around the outside of the camp, sentries were posted at stated distances, and in the center thereof stood a square marquee tent over which flew a pennant. The tent was that of General Benedict Arnold, commander of the American army—the army that invaded Canada in 1775. The expedition having been badly managed was a failure and the army was in slow retreat upon its base.
From the start of this expedition everything seemed to go wrong, especially the commissariat, which is the backbone of an army, inasmuch as men cannot fight well or march well who are not well fed. The bravery of the soldiers, their endurance and fortitude could not have been surpassed, but what use is bravery and endurance if the directing genius be missing? Verily soldiers are plentiful and brave men are not scarce, but great generals are rare.
Night closed down. General Arnold sat in his tent by a rough table of newly split pine slabs. He was a tall handsome man, evidently fond of “good living.” He was eating and drinking heartily while outside many of his very best men were shivering without rations and without shelter of any kind. This, however, did not in any way disturb General Arnold. He was not built like a Caesar. He cared nothing for the comfort of his men. He thought only of his own comfort—his own beef and wine.
On the table before him were steaming dishes of grilled venison, roasted potatoes, and flat corn-cakes, and nearby were two casks of liquor, one of Jamaica rum and one of Spanish wine.
In the center of the tent a brazier of charcoal burned, its purpose being to heat and dry the tent. Soldier-servants bustled about, putting things in order and making their commander as snug as possible. On the tent pole hung the general's hat, cloak and sword. By the door of the tent lay two or three half frozen saddles and not far away stood a row of black field guns, from the black muzzles of which, and also from their muddy wheels, hung icicles.
In the distance, behind, the camp-fires flashed and flamed. Now and then the wind would take a whirl and fling high in the air millions of blazing sparks.
While in the act of gulping down a large tumbler of liquor, the general was surprised to see the slight form of Aaron Burr, his favorite aide, enter. Upon Burr's handsome but somewhat emaciated face there was a look of some set purpose.
General Arnold gazed at him inquiringly. “General,” spake Burr, “I have come to place my resignation in your hands. I am sick unto death of this business. There is no more fighting to be done here and I have certain private affairs to attend at home.”
“Mr. Burr, this is most surprising to me. What is the matter with you?” replied the general wonderingly.
“Sir,” answered Burr. (At this time he was a major, having been promoted to that rank for conspicuous bravery in the field and 'special service' at Montreal.) “All through this unfortunate expedition, I have served both you and General Montgomery most faithfully. As long as there was any fighting to be done I have always done my share. You know I never shirked any hardship nor any duty, however arduous, however desperate.”
“I know,” interrupted General Arnold, “but continue.”
“Now that there is no more prospect of battle (for we are marching homeward), I am desirous of returning direct to Albany, where more exciting things than a slow and orderly retreat are happening. I would go back to where there is some hope of participating in real war. If I stay with you I must gradually degenerate into a mere drill-instructor like the rest. That is not my ambition. I feel as if somehow I was made for higher things. I therefore officially place my resignation in your hands.”
Burr handed him a paper, whereupon the general pou
red a glass of wine and courteously but unsteadily handed it over to the young officer. Burr drank it to the last drop, for the night was one in which a glass of good strong liquor could not fail to be other than acceptable, especially to a rain-soaked, storm-battered soldier.
“Major Burr,” spake the general kindly, “your words astonish me; you almost take away my breath. Why should you retire? You are one of my bravest, most vigilant, and most trusted officers. Just as you are getting seasoned to military life (and accustomed to me) you wish to resign. This seems unreasonable. Why not stay with me and I will see that you get all the promotion you desire? You have already been highly recommended for your bravery in front of Quebec; and as to your conduct in carrying my dispatch to the late General Montgomery, it was and is beyond all praise.[*] Stay with me, Major Burr, and before you are 25 I guarantee, if the war goes on, you shall be a brigadier-general. What more can any man wish for? I see you are overflowing with ambition and I like you for it. Ambition becomes a man.
“I will even admit that your natural military talent perhaps equals my own, but then your youth—you are not yet 21, and your very boyish appearance, is somewhat against you, for appointment to positions of sole responsibility.
“I have now with me very few officers of first rate ability, foresight and resolution. Most of them take their knowledge of strategy from antiquated drill books. They do not attempt to think for themselves. They rely too much on superior orders. This is the weakness, the unfortunate weakness of my force: and it is also the very reason why I particularly desire you to remain with me. You seem to know instinctively how to keep my motley command together, without any discouraging martinetism, and at the same time without imperiling the essentials of battle. Besides that you have a commendable talent for Guerilla tactics.
“I know I can depend on you to do the right thing, at the right time, even without orders. You are a most self-reliant man, Major Burr, and in such a war as this men like you are invaluable. You seem to understand the tremendous possibilities that are latent in things.”
“General, I thank you for your very high opinion of my military capacity. Nevertheless I must go. I am a volunteer officer—not bound in any way—and my resolution to resign is final.
“Indeed I have a boat waiting in readiness on the river for my departure. I have employed six discharged soldiers to row me down to Albany. I start tomorrow morning from Crow Point, near the Hanging Rock ford.”
“Burr,” said the general with asperity, “I have not yet accepted your resignation. I appreciate your services too highly to part with you. I wish you to sleep upon it. The physical miseries of our march are nearly at an end.”
“My general's appreciation of my services is very gratifying. But it would have been more gratifying still if you and Montgomery had adopted my suggestion and captured Quebec. I still believe, if that suggestion had been acted upon, this army would have accomplished the mission it was sent by Congress to perform. Now we would have been camping as conquerors within the great Canadian citadel.
“It fills me therefore with bitter humiliation and wrath to think that I should be wasting my time and any talents that I possess to no practical purpose; and at the same time exist in this state of semi-hunger and camp misery.
“If Montgomery had given me the scaling party (as I wished) and then deployed his own men in extended order instead of quarter column (with instructions to close in and charge at the critical moment) we would certainly have captured the blockhouse and through it the entire city.
“Then afterwards, General Arnold, if you also had considered my proposition, Quebec would have had to surrender through sheer starvation. You remember I advised the systematic denudation of the country around the city, and the burning of all possible supplies. Is it not ever characteristic of a good general to strike at his enemies’ chief source of supplies? Here again I failed to gain your ear, though you now commend me in words—mere words.
“Consequently your command is retreating without credit. All this I have brooded over. It makes me sore and determined not any longer to serve under a commander who needlessly marches his men to failure, disaster and defeat.”
At this Benedict Arnold arose from his seat, his face purple with anger. He made as if to reach for his sword but on second thoughts withdrew his hand, saying in tones of half-drunken asperity:
“Major Burr, do you wish to insult me, sir? Do you know who I am, sir? Beware, sir. You carry your self-sufficiency too far. But I will discipline you sir. I now positively refuse to accept your resignation. Here, take it back. Go away sir. Go to your tent sir. Consider yourself under arrest and do not leave the camp without my positive orders.”
“General Arnold,” answered Burr, “I have made every arrangement for going and I am going.”
“If you leave this camp without orders, sir, I will court martial you for mutiny and have you shot— shot sir—shot like a mutineer. You are a brave man, sir, in action, but you do not understand discipline. Go. to your tent, sir; consider yourself a prisoner,” said the general foaming at the mouth with anger.
“General Arnold,” replied Burr haughtily (now thoroughly aroused and boiling with youthful indignation), “I will leave your camp when it pleases me. You talk of having me court martialed. Do you know that there is not an officer or a man in your whole army who would lift a hand against 'little Burr.' In this matter you are 'general' only in name. You imagine you have the power to 'discipline' me and have me shot, but you are mistaken. You haven't the force to do it. You have my written resignation in your hands. I am free—I leave the camp. If this is mutiny make the most of it. I am Aaron Burr.”
Whereupon the young major turned on his heel and strode out of the tent. “The drunken beast” thought Burr to himself as he mounted his old troop horse in the darkness and straightway rode out of camp toward the Hanging Rock ford. “Does he think to imprison me in his camp like a raw recruit?
“Such incompetent commanding officers would ruin any army. They are only fit to be drill sergeants. He has no control of himself, little real self-confidence and his strategy is that of an old apple wife. He cannot contend with our new American conditions. He hasn’t the brains nor the organizing instinct. And he smiles and flatters too fulsomely to be genuine. How he praised my 'military capacity' because he wished to annex my brains, and gain for himself the credit of my study and my plans. But I see through him. I know every move of his mind.
“Verily he would have made a famous politician. That's just where General Arnold would have shone—filling his paunch with beef and wine, his pockets with other peoples' money, betraying his friends, selling his country and looking pious.
“Only for me the entire expedition would have been wiped out. I have but saved from total ruin an incompetent general. Why should I have done it? What good have I done? Would it not have been better to let him be ruined? There are better men waiting for a chance to distinguish themselves. For the future I will not give my brains to build up the reputation of any man.”
Now Major Burr's horse was not in good condition on account of the hard marching and general insufficiency of corn and grass. Consequently, although the distance was only about 15 miles to the spot where his boat lay waiting, Burr calculated that it would take the best part of a night to accomplish the journey.
When about half way, one of his horse's fore feet got jammed in a tangle of roots that littered the road. In struggling to recover itself, the horse dragged off a shoe, together with a portion of the hoof attached. This caused the weary animal to go lame entirely, and Burr thereupon concluded to leave the horse at some convenient place along the road and walk the remainder of the distance on foot.
Now the road to the ford was only a narrow bridle track, cut through the dense woods, and winding around and over low hills, with here and there a clearing. Burr had never traveled it before and therefore it is not surprising that in the pitch-darkness he lost his way at a point where several trails crossed one another.
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After traveling along for about an hour, leading his lame horse slowly by the bridle, he came to a small natural clearing in the woods or what appeared to be such.
In the midst of the clearing shone a round, glassy, inky-looking lake, from which steam arose. Alongside the lake was a pyramidal mound shaped like a woman’s breast. A grass grown footpath wound around it to the top, where stood a square altar of unhewn stones upon which a fire flickered. Halfway up the mound a small log cabin had been roughly erected, the chimney of which rose through the side of the mound. A big fire was burning inside for the smoke rolled out in dense clouds, that coiled up in fantastic shapes against the light of the sinking moon, across the face of which the clouds rushed south as if in wild pursuit of each other.
Burr walked up the mound leaving his horse below and looked down the wide open slab chimney. “What a strange spot,” he thought, “for a home, perhaps it is a place of robbers or a hermit's hut.”
Through the chimney he could see nearly all the interior. A strange sight met his gaze.
Upon a couch of dry leaves alongside the fire lay a young and very beautiful woman. She had an Oriental appearance with long wavy hair and brown tinted skin. She was slumbering. The color of her hair was golden red, (the color of greatness and power). She was half-covered with a long gauzy robe.
Over the fire hung an old-fashioned iron pot (with three legs) from which arose a pungent but not disagreeable odor. All around the woman was a halo or emanation of peculiar undefinable luminance. She was dreaming and talking in her sleep. Every now and then she kept repeating alternately in French and English: “Come unto me O my true love, come unto me. Over waters and forests I waft my spirit unto thy side—my wish to thy ear. My dark-eyed Conqueror, I behold thee once more. Come to me my true love, my true love. Come to me that I may clasp thee to my bosom, for ever and for ever—that all may be fulfilled.”