The Conqueror | Page 4

planters of the Leeward Caribbees to immigrate,
tempting many who were dissatisfied with the British Government or

wished for larger estates than they could acquire on their own populous
islands. Members of the Lytton, Mitchell, and Stevens families of St.
Christopher were among the first to respond to the liberal offer of the
Danish Government. The two sons of James Lytton, Peter and James,
grew up on St. Croix, Danish by law, British in habit and speech; and
both married women of Nevis. Peter was the first to wed, and his
marriage to young Mary Fawcett was the last to be celebrated in the
Great House at Gingerland.
When Peter Lytton and his wife sailed away, as other sons and other
daughters had sailed before, to return to Nevis rarely,--for those were
the days of travel unveneered,--John and Mary Fawcett were left alone:
their youngest daughter, she who afterward became the wife of Thomas
Mitchell of St. Croix, was at school in England.
By this time Dr. Fawcett had given up his practice and was living on
his income. He took great interest in his cane-fields and mills, and in
the culture of limes and pine-apples; but in spite of his outdoor life his
temper soured and he became irritable and exacting. Gout settled in
him as a permanent reminder of the high fortunes of his middle years,
and when the Gallic excitability of his temperament, aggravated by a
half-century of hot weather, was stung to fiercer expression by the
twinges of his disease, he was an abominable companion for a woman
twenty years closer to youth.
In the solitudes of the large house Mary Fawcett found life unendurable.
Still handsome, naturally gay of temper, and a brilliant figure in society,
she frequently deserted her elderly husband for weeks at a time. The
day came when he peremptorily forbade her to leave the place without
him. For a time she submitted, for although a woman of uncommon
independence of spirit, it was not until 1740 that she broke free of
traditions and astonished the island of Nevis. She shut herself up with
her books and needlework, attended to her house and domestic negroes
with the precision of long habit, saw her friends when she could, and
endured the exactions of her husband with only an occasional but
mighty outburst.
It was in these unhappy conditions that Rachael Fawcett was born.

II
The last affliction the Fawcetts expected was another child. This little
girl came an unwelcome guest to a mother who hated the father, and to
Dr. Fawcett, not only because he had outgrown all liking for crying
babies, but because, as in his excited disturbance he admitted to his
wife, his fortune was reduced by speculations in London, and he had no
desire to turn to in his old age and support another child. Then Mary
Fawcett made up her definite mind: she announced her intention to
leave her husband while it was yet possible to save her property for
herself and the child to whom she soon became passionately attached.
Dr. Fawcett laughed and shut himself up in a wing where the sounds of
baby distress could not reach him; and it is doubtful if his glance ever
lingered on the lovely face of his youngest born. Thus came into the
world under the most painful conditions one of the unhappiest women
that has lived. It was her splendid destiny to become the mother of the
greatest American of his centuries, but this she died too soon to know,
and she accomplished her part with an immediate bitterness of lot
which was remorselessly ordained, no doubt, by the great Law of
Compensation.
There were no divorce laws on the Islands in the eighteenth century,
not even an act for separate maintenance; but Mary Fawcett was a
woman of resource. It took her four years to accomplish her purpose,
but she got rid of Dr. Fawcett by making him more than anxious to be
rid of her. The Captain-General, William Matthew, was her staunch
friend and admirer, and espoused her cause to the extent of issuing a
writ of supplicavit for a separate maintenance. Dr. Fawcett gradually
yielded to pressure, separated her property from his, that it might pass
under her personal and absolute control, and settled on her the sum of
fifty-three pounds, four shillings annually, as a full satisfaction for all
her dower or third part of his estate.
Mistress Fawcett was no longer a woman of consequence, for even her
personal income was curtailed by the great drought of 1737, and Nevis,
complaisant to the gallantry of the age, was scandalized at the novelty
of a public separation. But she was free, and she was the woman to feel

that freedom to her finger tips; she could live a