And to Rachael nothing else mattered, for her mother was dead, and she loved Hamilton with an increasing passion that was long in culminating.

XIII

They sailed over to Nevis, accompanied by a dozen slaves, and took possession of Rachael’s house in Main Street.  It stood at the very end of the town, beyond the point where the street ceased and the road round the Island began.  The high wall of the garden surrounded a grove of palms and cocoanut trees.  Only sojourners from England had occupied the big comfortable house, and it was in good repair.

When the acute stage of her grief had passed, it was idle for Rachael to deny to Hamilton that she was happy.  And at that time she had not a care in the world, nor had he.  Their combined incomes made them as careless of money as any planter on the Island.  Every ship from England brought them books and music, and Hamilton was not only the impassioned lover but the tenderest and most patient of husbands.  Coaches dashed by and the occupants cast up eyes and hands.  The gay life of Nevis pulsed unheeded about the high walls, whose gates were always locked.  The kinsman of the leading families of the Island and the most beautiful daughter of old John and Mary Fawcett were a constant and agitating theme, but two people lived their life of secluded and poignant happiness, and took Nevis or St. Kitts into little account.

BOOK II

ALEXANDER HAMILTON

HIS YOUTH IN THE WEST INDIES AND IN THE COLONIES OF NORTH AMERICA

I

I should have been glad to find an old Almanac of Nevis which contained a description of its 11th of January, 1757.  But one January is much like another in the Leeward Islands, and he who has been there can easily imagine the day on which Alexander Hamilton was born.  The sky was a deeper blue than in summer, for the sun was resting after the terrific labours of Autumn, and there was a prick in the trade winds which stimulated the blood by day and chilled it a trifle at night.  The slave women moved more briskly, followed by a trotting brood of “pic’nees,” one or more clinging to their hips, all bewailing the rigours of winter.  Down in the river where they pounded the clothes on the stones, they vowed they would carry the next linen to the sulphur springs, for the very marrow in their bones was cold.  In the Great Houses there were no fires, but doors and windows were closed early and opened late, and blankets were on every bed.  The thermometer may have stood at 72 deg..