The Conqueror | Page 6

old, Mistress Fawcett had the satisfaction to discover that the little girl
possessed a distinguished mind, and took to hard study, and to les

graces, as naturally as she rode a pony over the hills or shot the reef in
her boat.
For several years the women of St. Christopher held aloof, but many of
the planters who had been guests at the Great House in Gingerland
called on Mistress Fawcett at once, and proffered advice and service.
Of these William Hamilton and Archibald Hamn became her staunch
and intimate friends. Mr. Hamn's estate adjoined hers, and his
overlooker relieved her of much care. Dr. James Hamilton, who had
died in the year preceding her formal separation, had been a close
friend of her husband and herself, and his brother hastened with
assurance of his wish to serve her. He was one of the eminent men of
the Island, a planter and a member of Council; also, a "doctor of
physic." He carried Rachael safely through her childhood complaints
and the darkest of her days; and if his was the hand which opened the
gates between herself and history, who shall say in the light of the
glorified result that its master should not sleep in peace?
In time his wife called, and his children and stepchildren brought a new
experience into the life of Rachael. She had been permitted to gambol
occasionally with the "pic'nees" of her mother's maids, but since her
fourth year had not spoken to a white child until little Catherine
Hamilton came to visit her one morning and brought Christiana
Huggins of Nevis. Mistress Huggins had known Mary Fawcett too well
to call with Mistress Hamilton, but sent Christiana as a peace offering.
Mary's first disposition was to pack the child off while Mistress
Hamilton was offering her embarrassed explanations; but Rachael
clung to her new treasure with such shrieks of protest that her mother,
disconcerted by this vigour of opposition to her will, permitted the
intruder to remain.
The wives of other planters followed Mistress Hamilton, for in that soft
voluptuous climate, where the rush and fret of great cities are but a
witch's tale, disapproval dies early. They would have called long since
had they not been a trifle in awe of Nevis, more, perhaps, of Mistress
Fawcett's sharp tongue, then indolent. But when Mistress Hamilton
suddenly reminded them that they were Christians, and that Dr. Fawcett

was dead, they put on their London gowns, ordered out their coaches,
and called. Mary Fawcett received them with a courteous indifference.
Her resentment had died long since, and they seemed to her, with their
coaches and brocades and powdered locks, but the ghosts of the Nevis
of her youth. Her child, her estate, and her few tried friends absorbed
her. For the sake of her daughter's future, she ordered out her ancient
coach and made the round of the Island once a year. The ladies of St.
Kitts were as moderately punctilious.
And so the life of Rachael Fawcett for sixteen years passed
uneventfully enough. Her spirits were often very high, for she inherited
the Gallic buoyancy of her father as well as the brilliant qualities of his
mind. In the serious depths of her nature were strong passions and a
tendency to melancholy, the result no doubt of the unhappy conditions
of her birth. But her mother managed so to occupy her eager ambitious
mind with hard study that the girl had little acquaintance with herself.
Her English studies were almost as varied as a boy's, and in addition to
her accomplishments in the ancient and modern languages, she painted,
and sang, played the harp and guitar. Mary Fawcett, for reasons of her
own, never let her forget that she was the most educated girl on the
Islands.
"I never was one to lie on a sofa all day and fan myself, while my
children sat on the floor with their blacks, and munched sugar-cane, or
bread and sling," she would remark superfluously. "All my daughters
are a credit to their husbands; but I mean that you shall be the most
brilliant woman in the Antilles."
The immediate consequences of Rachael's superior education were two:
her girl friends ceased to interest her, and ambitions developed in her
strong imaginative brain. In those days women so rarely distinguished
themselves individually that it is doubtful if Rachael had ever heard of
the phenomenon, and the sum of her worldly aspirations was a wealthy
and intellectual husband who would take her to live and to shine at
foreign courts. Her nature was too sweet and her mind too serious for
egoism or the pettier vanities, but she hardly could help being
conscious of the energy of her brain; and if she had passed through

childhood in ignorance of her beauty,