“In fairness, Angelica, I do not believe Alexander can still be called a ‘worldly gentleman,’ ” I said. “In the past, perhaps, but no longer.”
But my sister only shrugged. “Hamilton is a man, Eliza, and not even marriage to your saintly person will change that,” she said. “When a woman such as Mrs. Arnold throws out her best snares, men are as helpless as weakling rabbits.”
“Mrs. Arnold should not have cast herself upon his good nature,” I said, wishing I didn’t sound quite so prim. “It’s her fault, not Alexander’s.”
“Mrs. Arnold has done a good many things she shouldn’t have.” Angelica leaned forward in confidence, though there was no one else in the garden to overhear. “Gossip says that she and André have long been lovers, and that she married General Arnold only to serve him up more easily to the British. It appears she’s played both men false, however, and now must lie and simper further to save her own plump neck from the rope.”
Somehow that sordid scenario sounded much more like fact than gossip, and fit with other rumors I’d heard of the Arnolds whilst I was in Morristown. Poor John André, to be sacrificed on such a traitorous altar! I didn’t give a fig if Peggy Arnold ended her short life on the gallows, but I resolved to do what I could to help save him.
“As adjutant general, André should be a prisoner of considerable value,” I said, refolding the letters to read again later. “Perhaps the British would consider trading Arnold for him. Alexander is so skilled at negotiating prisoner exchanges that I’m sure he could arrange it.”
I rose, determined to answer his two letters at once, but Angelica caught my hand.
“You’re not going to write to Alexander about André, are you?” she asked, reading my intentions as clear as the day. “Because if you are, Eliza, it would be a most grievous mistake.”
I didn’t deny my intention. “I’m acting to preserve an old friend. There’s no harm to that.”
“There will be to Hamilton,” she said firmly. “Consider his response when you plead for the life of another gentleman—an enemy!—whom you once considered yourself to love.”
“I was too young then to know what real love could be,” I said quickly. “He was a friend, nothing more. If I ask Alexander to act on André’s behalf, it’s because I have perfect faith that he can save another worthy gentleman’s life.”
“Eliza, please,” Angelica warned. “André knew full well the risk he took by his actions, and the consequences, too. Hamilton won’t be able to save him, because his fate will be decided in a trial by His Excellency and the other generals. It has nothing to do with your ‘perfect faith’ in his abilities, and meddling in army affairs will only bring you—”
“I know perfectly how to write to Alexander,” I said tartly, “and I do not require your advice to do so.”
With that I left her behind and returned to the house, and nothing further was said that day, or the next, about Major André between Angelica and me.
I would, however, have done much better to have heeded her sage advice, and not let myself be led by impulse and sentiment, and a measure of shameful petty jealousy. If Alexander hadn’t been so quick to champion Mrs. Arnold, then I might not have done the same for Major André, and more, I wouldn’t have praised his virtues, his talents, and his dignity to the degree I did.
But instead I wrote not one letter to Alexander, but two, begging him in the strongest possible language to save the British major. Both letters were carried away swiftly by the same messenger who’d brought Alexander’s to me. I prayed they’d accomplish their mission, and I prayed for both the British major as well as my own lieutenant colonel.
The next week crept slowly along, and with each day I fretted and doubted myself, and what I’d written even more. Through my father’s dispatches came word that André had been found guilty, and had been hung as a common spy on the second of October. As can be expected, I wept for him bitterly, but if I were honest, a few of those tears were for myself and the girl I’d been when I’d loved him.
Yet there was more to my sorrow, too. I grieved that we lived in a time where such choices were forced upon us, and tragedies like this were commonplace. If André and Arnold had succeeded in their plan regarding West Point, then not only would the fortress have been captured, but likely His Excellency and his staff with it. I could just as easily have been mourning Alexander’s execution as André’s, a possibility I couldn’t bear to contemplate.
Soon after the first news came my reply from Alexander, and if I’d hoped for absolution for my letters, I found none in his words. His account of André’s execution was brief, though he promised a longer description to follow. Nor was there any mention this time of Mrs. Arnold.
For that matter, there weren’t any of his usual effusive and poetical compliments to me, either. I wasn’t his sorceress, his jewel, his angel, his charmer, his dearest black-eyed girl. Instead his tone was subdued and melancholy, even forlorn, and filled with reflection and humility. The self-doubt fair broke my heart.
He’d tried to have the method of André’s execution changed from being hanged to being shot, but with no success. He’d been compelled to refuse a proposal for an exchange of prisoners because André himself had not wanted it. He’d attempted everything he could in the situation, and failed.
He’d failed, and though he did not say it outright, he clearly believed he’d failed me. As Angelica had warned, my unreasonable confidence in his abilities had made my request impossible for him to achieve, and for a man who found failure unbearable, it was a crushing blow.
Worse yet, he’d realized my sentimental infatuation for André (though I’d only called him a friend), and his imagination had blown it into much more of a romance than it had been. He didn’t reproach me as I deserved, which would have been much easier to bear. Instead he once again found only faults in himself, comparing his own talents and accomplishments, his lack of fortune, even his appearance, unfavorably to the dead English officer.
Each humble word cut me to the quick. I’d done this to him. I’d been selfish, unthinking, impetuous, and interfering, and I’d hurt him more deeply than I’d ever dreamed possible. I was the unworthy one, not he, and with his letters clutched tightly in my hands, I wept anew for the pain I’d never wanted to cause so good a man.
How I wished we could be together, and I could tell him to his face how wrong I’d been, and how sorry I was to have wounded him, and how very, very much I loved him. We’d been apart too long, Alexander and I, and the strain of the separation was wearing upon us both. Letters were no longer enough. I wanted to hold him close, and kiss him, and make everything right once again the way it should be.