Defiant Brides (15 page)

After an awkward silence the meal ended and Smith returned to Haverstraw. Arnold then ordered Franks and Varick into his office where the trio argued. Varick declared Smith a “damned rascal, a scoundrel and a spy.” Acidly, Arnold bellowed, “If he asked the Devil to dine with him, the gentlemen of the family should be civil to him, I’m always willing to be advised by the gentlemen of [my] family but by God [I will] not be dictated by them.”
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Exasperated, Franks left the house and rode to Newburgh to deliver a military notice.

In the wake of Franks’s departure, Varick presented Arnold with a letter from an aide to the governor of New York State warning of Smith’s untrustworthy and “loose character.” Solemnly, the general listened. Then, to the younger man’s surprise, Arnold apologized for “treating [him] with such cavalier language” and promised to refrain from seeing Smith again.
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Later that evening, Varick developed flu-like symptoms, ran a high fever, and collapsed in bed. When servants told Peggy about his illness, she dashed to his side. Varick recalled that the “amiable lady had spent an hour while I lay in a high fever, made tea for me, and paid me the utmost attention in my illness.”
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Like other Revolutionary era-women, Arnold’s wife was an accomplished nurse. That she did not abandon Varick to her servants convinced everyone in the Robinson’s household that Peggy would never deliberately hurt others.

Between Thursday, September 21, and Friday, September 22, as sailors repaired the
Vulture
, neither Captain Sutherland nor Robinson had expected André’s return. By Saturday, September 23, though, they grew alarmed. “It is with the greatest concern that I must now acquaint your Excellency that we have not heard the least account of him since he left the ship,” Robinson finally informed Clinton on Sunday. “I shall do everything in my power to come at some knowledge of Major André.”
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That same day, Washington announced a change of plans: he would arrive at the Arnold’s residence on Monday morning, September 25. Accompanying him were the Marquis de Lafayette, twenty-three-year-old Alexander Hamilton, Henry Knox, and two French engineers. That morning, at around 9 a.m., as servants completed preparations for breakfast, Hamilton and Lafayette arrived to report that Washington was delayed. On their way to Robinson’s, the commander in chief, Knox, Lafayette, and the engineers had turned down a path towards the Hudson. “General, you are going in the wrong direction: you know that Mrs. Arnold is waiting breakfast for us, and that road will take us out of our way,” Lafayette reminded Washington.
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“Ah, Marquis, I know you young men are all in love with Mrs. Arnold and wish to get where she is as soon as possible,” the commander in chief had jovially replied. “You may go and take your breakfast with her, and tell her not to wait for me. I must ride down and examine the redoubts on this side of the river, and will be there in a short time.”
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Soon after Hamilton and Lafayette appeared for breakfast, Arnold received a letter. A Mr. John Anderson had been captured in Westchester County. Within the man’s boots were treasonous papers about West Point. Arnold, Franks recalled, immediately “went upstairs to his lady.”
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Above, in their bedroom, an agitated, whispered conversation took place as Arnold and Peggy realized their own lives were at risk.

“In about two minutes his Excellency General Washington’s servant came to the door and informed me that his Excellency was nigh at hand,” Franks added. “I went immediately upstairs and informed Arnold of it. He came down in great confusion and ordering a horse to be saddled, mounted him and told me to inform his Excellency that he was gone over to West Point and would return in about an hour.”
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Waves of fright swept over Peggy, set her trembling, and, perhaps, as historians later suspect, prompted her to burn her husband’s incriminating letters in the bedroom’s fireplace. As Arnold’s wife, Peggy would be subjected to questioning, possible imprisonment, and, if found guilty, hanged for treason. Those thoughts raced through Peggy’s head, and then a plan formed: she would become mad, jolted into insanity by the shock of Arnold’s betrayal of America. It would not be difficult; as a child, indeed as a half-grown woman, Peggy had thrown tantrums and feigned fits to get her way. Now her life depended upon her successful display of still another outburst.

As Peggy plotted her course of action, Washington arrived for breakfast. After the meal, he left for West Point where he anticipated meeting Arnold. Peggy, cowering in her bedroom, asked her housekeeper to check on the ailing Varick. Then, willing herself into a frenzy, she tore at her hair and clothes, weeping, her sobs accelerating in volume.

Suddenly an earth-piercing shriek emanated from the Arnolds’ bedroom, prompting Varick to throw off his bedclothes and dash upstairs. There stood a nearly unrecognizable Peggy. Instead of being tastefully dressed and coiffed, the young blonde was “mad to see him, with her hair disheveled and flowing about her neck,” Varick later wrote his sister. “Her morning-gown with few other clothes remained on her—too few to be seen even by gentlemen of the family, much less by many strangers. Peggy was raving, distracted. She seized me by the hand with this—to me—distressing address and a wild look; ‘Colonel Varick, have you ordered my child to be killed?’”
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Shocked, the young man wondered at the outburst from “this most amiable and distressed of her sex whom I most valued. Then, she fell on her knees at my feet with prayers and entreaties to spare her innocent babe. A scene too shocking for my feelings, in a state of body and nerves so weakened by indisposition and a burning fever.” Varick immediately summoned Dr. William Eustis from West Point. By then Franks, having returned from his errand at Newburgh, Varick, and the physician “carried her to her bed, raving mad.”

Repeatedly, Varick attempted to calm her. “When she seemed a little composed, she burst again into pitiable tears and exclaimed to me, alone on her bed with her, that she had not a friend left here,” he explained. After all, he reasoned, she had “Franks and me, and General Arnold would soon be home from West Point with General Washington.” To that, Peggy wildly retorted, “No, General Arnold will never return; he is gone, he is gone forever; there, there there, the spirits have carried [him] up there, they have put hot irons in his head—pointing that he was gone up to the ceiling.” By then, Varick sensed “something more than ordinary having occasioned her hysterics and utter frenzy.”

Washington, meanwhile, puzzled by Arnold’s absence at West Point, returned to his home in mid-afternoon. Hamilton handed him a packet of dispatches after which he was asked to summon Knox and Lafayette. “Arnold has betrayed us!” Washington exclaimed, holding the letters in his trembling hand. “Whom can we trust now?”
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That was the only time, said Lafayette, “that Washington ever gave way, even for a moment, under a reversal of fortune. I was the only being who ever witnessed in him, an exhibition of feeling so foreign to his temperament.”
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Hamilton and Lafayette’s aide, James McHenry, immediately raced to Verplanck in hopes of arresting the traitor. It was too late. Arnold had already boarded the
Vulture.

Upstairs at the Robinsons’, Peggy continued to rave about “a hot iron on her head and no one but General Washington could take it off, and [she] wanted to see the general.”
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Hearing that, the unsuspecting Dr. Eustis summoned Varick and Franks, roaring, “For God’s sake send for Arnold or the woman would die.”
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Judging from Peggy’s comments, the two aides suspected that after confessing treason to his wife, Arnold had defected. Fearful of overstepping their authority, Franks and Varick brought Washington to Peggy’s bedside, hoping the general could confirm their suspicions.

Peggy stared vacantly at Washington. “She said, no, it was not [him]. The general assured her he was, but she exclaimed, ‘No! that is not General Washington! That is the man who is going to assist Colonel Varick in killing my child.’ She repeated the same sad story about General Arnold; poor, distressed, unhappy, frantic and miserable lady,” Varick recalled.
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Washington then left the bedroom. “Come gentlemen; since Mrs. Arnold is unwell and the General is absent, let us sit down without ceremony,”
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Washington calmly told Lafayette, Knox, and Hamilton. “Never was there a more melancholy dinner,” Lafayette recalled. “The general was silent and reserved and none of us spoke of what we were thinking about. . . . Gloom and distrust seemed to pervade every mind.”
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At Verplanck, where Hamilton discovered Arnold had escaped to the
Vulture
, a messenger handed him a letter. Addressed to Washington, the traitor had written:

“Too often,” Arnold claimed, he had “experienced the ingratitude of my country” and now expected nothing else. He had only one request: “From the known humanity of your Excellency, I am induced to ask your protection for Mrs. Arnold from every insult and injury that a mistaken vengeance of my country may expose her to. It ought to fall only on me: she is as good and innocent as an angel, and is incapable of doing wrong. I beg she may be permitted to return to her friends in Philadelphia, or come to me, as she may choose.”

Within that envelope Arnold also enclosed a letter for Peggy, which read:

Even Arnold’s note did not calm Peggy, who remained “frantic with distress.” Her reaction, an overwhelmed Hamilton wrote his fiancée, Elizabeth Schuyler, was “the most affecting scene I was ever witness to. At one moment, she raved, another she melted into tears, sometimes pressing her baby to her breast and lamenting its fate by the imprudence of his father. All the sweetness of beauty, all the loveliness of innocence, all the tenderness of a wife, and all the fondness of a mother showed themselves in her appearance and conduct.” Consequently, he added, “We have every reason to believe that she was entirely unacquainted with the plan, and that the first knowledge of it was when Arnold went to tell her that he must banish himself from his country and from her forever.”
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Lafayette, too, was hoodwinked. “The unhappy Mrs. Arnold did not know a word of this conspiracy,” he insisted to Chevalier Luzerne. “Her husband told her before going away that he was flying never to come back, and he left her unconscious . . . we did everything we could to quiet her; but she looked upon us as the murderers of her husband, and it was impossible to restore her to her senses. The horror with which her husband’s conduct has inspired her, and a thousand other feelings, make her the most unhappy of women.”
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The next morning, Tuesday, September 26, Hamilton returned to Peggy’s bedside. Though more composed, “she is not easily to be consoled . . . very apprehensive of her country will fall upon her (who is unfortunate) for the guilt of her husband. I have tried to persuade her that her fears are ill-founded, but she will not be convinced.” The young woman’s suffering, Hamilton added, was “so eloquent that I wished myself her brother, to have a right to become her defender. As it is, I have entreated her to enable me to give her proofs of my friendship.”
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As outraged by Arnold’s betrayal of Peggy as of America, he wrote, “Could I forgive Arnold for sacrificing his honor, reputation, and duty, I could not forgive him for acting a part that must have forfeited the esteem of so fine a woman.” Yet to his astonishment, Peggy continued to worry about Arnold and replied to his letter. Her message has not been preserved, but judging from Hamilton’s comment, it was loving. “At present,” wrote the perplexed Hamilton, “she almost forgets his crime in his misfortunes and her horror at the guilt of the traitor is lost in her love of the man.”
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Exhausted by hours of crying and hysterics, Peggy fell into a restless sleep. Her marathon display of insanity, the grandest theatrical performance of her life, had successfully deceived Washington and Hamilton.

“
THE RAIN FELL IN
torrents, and it was the darkest and most dismal night I have ever known,” recalled army surgeon mate Dr. Isaac Bronson of the first hours of Tuesday, September 26.
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By 8 a.m. a soggy group of soldiers had arrived at the Arnold residence with an agitated Joshua Hett Smith in tow. Hearing the commotion, Washington appeared on the porch, eyed the prisoner coolly, then withdrew into the house.

Soldiers had awakened Smith at midnight as he slept in a relative’s house in Fishkill and forced him at bayonet point to march the eighteen miles to Arnold’s house. After confinement in a back room, the irate attorney was brought before Washington from whom he demanded an explanation. “Sir,” Washington icily replied, “do you know that Arnold has fled and that Mr. Anderson, whom you piloted through our lines, proves to be Major John André, the Adjutant General of the British Army, who is now our prisoner? I expect him here under guard of one-hundred horses to meet his fate as a spy.” Pointing to a tree outside the window, the commander in chief added, “Unless you confess who were your accomplices I shall suspend you both on that tree.”
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