Doubtless, since my very palms itched to be about that employment, I
would have had my hands on others of the rogue crew, but I was granted
no chance. Rivera poured himself against the scoundrels like a torrent.
Quick, catlike, springing in and out, he smote upon two of them as with
a poleaxe, and they went to the grass like folk of wood. The sound of
the blows came to my ears as clearly as the click of balls in a billiard
game. Beholding the thunderbolt work of Rivera, the others, losing
courage, and with a concert of curses and growling cries, turned tail
and ran.
There was one, however, of those who were yet upon their ignoble feet,
to save himself this disgrace. When the rest ran off crying among the
trees, this man would tarry; he was that wide-shouldered fighting man
who was thought to match Rivera. For reasons of his own, and perhaps
they were in a rude sort chivalric and to his credit, this fellow had
not rushed upon us with the others, but stood at some distance looking
on, arms folded across his chest. Now, when all were down or vanished in
the dark, he, with arms still folded, came slowly towards Rivera.
“Volks tells me, lad,” said the fighting man as, arms still at peace,
he paused within a few yards of Rivera, who would be coolly waiting
for him, “volks tells me as 'ow you be summat of a boxer; and vor a
certainty, you does make beef of them coves in a vorkmanlike vay--you
does, upon my davy! But now, d'ye see, you settles vith me--me, Jim
Burns of W'itechapel.”
“Assuredly!” returned Rivera, and his deep tones, like the roll of an
organ, would carry the impression of one in wondrous good humor, “I
shall be most pleased to settle with you. See, you may take your time;
there is no hurry.”
The other, who seemed to have faith in the leisurely mood of Rivera,
softly doffed coat and waistcoat, and stood in his shirt of gray cloth,
trousers and shoes. Rivera similarly prepared himself; he would meet his
enemy in the same light costume.
“Best to turn up your trowsers, lad,” advised the fighting man, “as I
does. They may 'inder your veet, else, in steppin'.”
When these improvements had been wrought, the fighting man's thought
would double a new corner.
“And yet,” he remarked, complainingly, “w'at's the bloomin' use? 'Ere's
them coves all run away”--pointing to the last of the trio whom Rivera
had beaten down, as that unworthy staggered to his feet and lurched off
into the darkness--“an' no purse nor nothink to vight for. I sees no
use, lad, in our puttin' hup our 'ands.” This last in a grieved tone.
“But you must fight,” remonstrated Rivera, in a sharp, eager fashion.
“You came to this town to beat me. Will you now let yourself be stopped
and never a blow? Are you afraid?”
“Me, afeerd?” retorted the fighting man, fiercely, his little eyes like
sparks. “W'y, lad! th' cove doant stan' in leather as I'm afeerd on.
Me, a fourteen stoner, leery? An' of only one? Well, I likes that!” The
disgust of the fighting man was unmistakable.
It was a queer position, this waiting to be spectator of a fist duel
between these game-some ones, but I did not feel free to leave until the
thing should end. When the fighting man, arms crossed, came pacifically
up, I would have been for going forward to lay hold on him, but Rivera,
with a manner like a prayer and as he who seeks a favor for his soul,
besought me to withstay my hand.
“Don't,” pleaded Rivera, but never taking his gaze from the man, “don't;
he is mine.”
With that, giving over whatever of right I may have owned to the fellow,
I went to Peg where she stood on a little knoll among the deeper shadows
of the woods.
“I should take you to safety at once,” said I, in explanation of my
loitering lack of expedition, “but I would see Rivera through this.”
“I do not want to go,” replied Peg, gazing the while as with a kind of
fascination.
Peg's face wore a flush of excitement; this I could tell even in the
shadows, and her words had a great ring of interest. I did not remark
on the strangeness of it, nor frame a rebuke for that she should love to
look on while gladiators fought. I, myself,--for I confess to a mighty
lust of strife,--was hot to see what might follow, and it came to me as
quite the thing that Peg should share my feeling. It was the savage in
her blood, as the General would have said; but, a trifle strung of the
fracas and with the wolf in me at full stretch, I felt no amazement, but
only sympathy for Peg's sentiment.
As Peg and I stood considering the others in their words and motions,
Rivera pointed to a level, glady spot where no trees grew and the
moonlight came down in a white flood.
“That should be a fine place,” said Rivera to the fighting man, “for us
to try each other?”
“It does look a tidy bit of grass,” assented the fighting man.
As the two walked forward to this turfy spot of fairness it brought them
nearer to Peg and myself, and squarely under our eyes. It was as though
they set a stage, and would produce their drama of blows for us and in
such wise that we should not lose the least of it.
As the pair moved to the selected place, that moaning one whose arm
I had broken, and who, when the rest had fled, still lay in a fit of
fainting, so far recovered as to sit weakly up. But he could not yet
walk, being shaken and dizzy mayhap, and so he, too, would be a looker
on, albeit I do not think he was to see much, being taken with his own
woes and groaning over them.
“W'at a come-down is this!” exclaimed the fighting man, as he moved
into the center of the ground, “me, who should be champion, vighting
by moonlight in a vorest vith a mad Yankee! W'at a tale to tell in
W'itechapel!”
“I'm not a Yankee,” said Rivera, as if for the other's consolation, I
thought, “I'm an Irish-Jew.”
“An Irish-Jew!” returned the other, with a note of admiration. “Now
that's better, lad; Irish on Jew makes a bitter cross for the ring. But
all the same, it's a shame vor me to be 'ere millin' by moonlight in
voreign parts, an' never no purse nor ropes nor nothink, an' no 'igh
toby blokes to referee or even 'old a vatch. An' me, mind you, as should
be champion.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Rivera, in a hunger of boyish curiosity to
know how honorable the conquest was he went about. “Of what should you
be champion?”
“Hengland, lad, w'at else!” said the other. “It's all on account of an
accident that I beant. I vights vith Big Tom Brown of Bridgenorth, I
does; an' Tom, 'e naps it on the bugle so 'ard 'e's all vor bleedin' to
death. An' vith that, the beaks is vor puttin' me on a transport to go
to New South Wales, when I moseys down to Bristol an' goes aboard ship
an' comes over 'ere. If I could 'ave stayed at 'ome, I'd a-beat Bendigo
by now, an' been the champion 'stead of 'e. 'Owever, volks must do the
best vith w'at they has, so hup vith your mauleys, lad. Time!”
More than once I had seen our rough keel-boatmen of the Cumberland
indulge, when soaked of rum, in what they termed a “rough and tumble,”
but this, when Rivera and the fighting man of Whitechapel stood up to
one another, was the first time I was to observe how ones trained
to fisticuffs expound the game. My keel-boatmen fought in a biting,
clawing, gouging, wildcat way that was a climax of brutality and blood.
This would not be the story of Rivera and his foe, for their labors were
as cleanly accurate as a cameo, while yet the blows they dealt would
have shaken an oak to its core.
As the fighting man of Whitechapel exclaimed “Time!” Rivera and he drew
cautiously over to one another. I could see how each kept his left hand
well forward and his left foot advanced to bear it company, while the
right foot was planted with firm squareness, and no spring nor give to
the knee, but the leg stiff to prop against a blow. The right arm would
be used, too, more as a guard to save the body, but with hand in reserve
clenched like iron to deal a finishing blow whenever the vanguard or
left hand had opened the way with the enemy.
Rivera and the fighting man sparred carefully and as folk who would test
each other. And yet, while there abode with each a wealth of care and
a saving determination to be sure of guards and parries, there was no
slowness. They paced about and before one another like two fighting
panthers, each as ready as leven-flash to have advantage of a weakness
in the other's defence.
To me it was like a picture of motion, and a sense of delight coursed
in my veins. I was so held, too, I did not once cast my eyes on Peg, who
with her hand on my arm was crowded snug to my side and--as I remembered
later, when I would learn the reason of pain for it--leaning upon me
with all her slight weight. No, so rapt was my gaze for the moment that
I never once looked nor thought on Peg; and that, let me tell you, is a
deal to say, since such was our witch-child's sweet hold on me I could
number you few moments which did not find her in the fond foreground of
my fancy.
Of the suddenest, the fighting man fell upon Rivera like a storm. But it
would be of no avail. The blows he dealt, Rivera caught upon his
forearm; and that with so careless a confidence it would appear to sting
the other. In the last of the melee the fighting man, stepping swiftly
near, struck a slashing, swinging blow that should have cracked a skull
had one gotten in the way. Rivera leaped back, light as a goat and as
sure. As the big fist swept harmlessly on its journey, Rivera laughed as
at a jest.
Our fighting man, however, would own to no turn for humor. The laugh
hurt him like the lash of a rawhide. Without pause or space, and with a
sharpness that stood a marvel in one so bulky, he repeated the smashing
swing, but with the other hand. Rivera did not spring backward; indeed,
he had no time, even had he carried the inclination. But it would be
all one with Noah's protege, for he ducked his head like a wild fowl
who dives from the flash of a gun. Again the blow passed without scathe;
only, this time, over Rivera's cunning head. The force of the swing half
turned the fighting man; with that, and not striking him, but, as though
in a spirit of derision, pushing with open hand, and at the same moment
locking, as wrestlers would say, the enemy's ankle at the back with
his foot, Rivera tumbled our huge gentleman over on the grass. He fell
a-sprawl, but with no hurt to himself, and all as easy as delivering a
bale of goods at one's door.
The fighting man got slowly to his feet. Then he looked on Rivera with
an eye of puzzled discontent.
“Be you playin' vith me, lad?” said he at last. This in a manner of
injury.
Rivera made no retort other than his quiet laugh that told rather of
pleasure than amusement. Clearly, Rivera was in enjoyment's very heart
and his cup would come to him crowned of high delight.
The fighting man went now and leaned against a tree to breathe himself.
Presently he spoke again; I could tell by the way of it how his regard
for Rivera had been augmented.
“'Ow 'eavy be you, lad?” he asked, his breath still coming in short,
deep puffs.
“One hundred and eighty-two,” said Rivera.
“An' w'at would that be in stone?”
“Thirteen.”
“D'ye see now!” exclaimed the fighting man, dejectedly, “an' that should
be my veight. Only I'm a stone above; but it's fat an' does me 'arm. You
bees a 'ard un, young master, an' I doant know as 'ow I can do vor you,
an' me not trained. 'Owever, I shall try all I knows. Time!”
For the second occasion the two stood forth against one another in the
middle of the moonlighted glade; and again the fighting man was the
aggressor. It would be still the same old tale; Rivera foiled him and
beat him back upon himself at every angle of his effort. It was like,
a tune to simply see Rivera for his eye and hand and foot worked all
together in a fashion of harmony like the notes in music.
But the dour end was on its way, and it fell upon the victim like
the bursting of a bomb. The fighting man had stepped a pace backward
following a rally in which he won nothing save chagrin. As he retreated,
Rivera would seem to swoop on him. It was a feint--an artifice; it had
for result, however, the drawing of the fighting man again upon Rivera.
Straight from his shoulder, and by way of retort or counter to the
feint, the fighting man sent his left hand for Rivera's face. It would
be the situation wrought for. Rivera, with feet firm set, moved his
head aside so that the blow met nothing, but whistled across his left
shoulder. Then his left hand, arm as stiff as a bar of iron, met the
oncoming foe, carried forward with the momentum of his own wasted blow,
flush in the mouth. I heard the sound of it, and saw it jolt the other's
head back as though he had run against the pole of a baggage wagon. The
vicious emphasis of it shook his senses in their source; before he could
rally, Rivera dealt him a smashing blow above the heart with his right
hand; it was a buffet like the kick of a pony and one that would have
splintered a rock!
The fighting man fell forward senseless on the grass; the moonlight
played across his face and tiny streams of blood were running thinly
from his nose and ears. He lay without motion or quiver, and, after
considering him a bit with all the warmth an artist might bestow upon
a masterpiece, Rivera turned loungingly to Peg and myself where we
were viewing proceedings from our knoll. There was a dancing light in
Rivera's eyes such as comes to a child pleased of a new toy. As he stood
before us, a smile about his mouth, he stretched upward on his toes, and
raised his hands above his head, his vast chest arching and swelling
the while like a drum, and the muscles of his neck writhing until they
fairly burst the collar of his gray shirt and sent a button buzzing into
the darkness.
“He wasn't fit,” said Rivera, recovering himself from the
muscle-stretching, and beaming amiably; “the fellow was not in
condition.” Here he indicated with a nod the prostrate fighting man,
still stunned and bleeding where he fell.
“Have you killed him?” said Peg, with a deep breath. The girl was drawn
as tense as harpstrings. “I hope he will not die.”
“Oh, no,” declared Rivera; “he will not die. In two minutes, or at the
most in ten, he will be well again. If he do not come to his wits in ten
minutes, I shall help him with water on his face.”
“We have to thank you,” said I; “you are a brave fellow to match
yourself against a horde.”
“I was told always to follow them,” said Rivera. “I have been at their
heels for weeks. But they would do nothing until to-night.” Rivera's
manner when he related the long-drawn indolence of his quarry and
those weeks wherein they would “do nothing,” tasted of disappointment.
“However,”--this as though a wrong had been repaired,--“they got to work
at last, so after all it ends right.”
Now I walked across to my moaning one of the broken arm, who still sat
nursing his injuries.
“Why would you rob us?” I asked.
“Rob you?” he repeated between moans, and with a startled air. “No one
wanted to rob you.”
“You and your gang,” said I--for this was the story I meant to tell,
if made to tell one of the night's turmoil--“you and your gang are
footpads. You would have robbed us. Should you be in the town to-morrow,
I will find you a place of bars and bolts.”
Certainly, these brawling creatures were not highwaymen, but only
ruffians whom that Catron had hired for I know not what particular
purpose of revenge. But the wretch's exclamation, “Here is our big lover
and his light o' love!” alarmed me for Peg. I would not have that tale
told to thus bring forth her name. It were better to drive these fellows
off and have an end of it. That was my thought in calling them footpads
and talking of attempts to take a purse.
The argument of robbery put a measure of life into the moaning one; he
got upon his feet and made ready to betake himself to scenes of better
safety.
“My arm is broken,” said he, whiningly, and as hoping I might feel a
sympathy.
“It should have been your neck, instead,” said I, in no wise
sympathetic. “And so it would, had I owned the forethought to have had
you by the throat rather than your arm. You might better depart, sirrah;
else I may yet wring round your head, for my spirit is hard laid siege
to by some such twisting impulse.”
That was enough; our moaning one made shift to get himself away through
the trees and with not a trifle of expedition.
“And now, what will you do?” I asked Rivera.
“Oh, I shall remain here,” replied Rivera, simply, “and wait for him to
return to his wits,” Here he pointed to his enemy. “He is a very bold,
strong man, and perhaps when he has recovered and rested he may want to
fight again.” This last sentence was vibrant of a dim hope.
Turning from me, Rivera brought a little snow-water in his hat from a
hollow where it had collected during the thaws and began to sprinkle
the face of his fighting friend from Whitechapel. Leaving him upon these
labors of grace and philanthropy--albeit I believe the thought uppermost
in his innocent heart was that the smitten one, when duly revived, might
declare for another battle--I again sought Peg. I went to her something
stricken of my conscience and uneasy with the fear of having neglected
my duties as her cavalier. I found her sitting upon the little knoll,
her foot drawn under her, and she nursing her right ankle in a marked
peculiar way.
“Was not Rivera grand!” exclaimed Peg, as I came up. “And you, too,
watch-dog: I shall never forget the picture of you”--Peg spoke in a
bubbling way and as though she overflowed of ecstasy--“as you flung that
crying creature in the faces of the others. It was a moment of nobility;
I shall never miss it from my memory.”
“And what has gone wrong with your foot?” said I, for from her crouching
position and the manner in which she would caress her ankle I was struck
with the fear of some disaster; nor was I wrong.
“It is my ankle,” said Peg, and I could notice how her brow was wrung
with the pain of it. “As I climbed upon this knoll in the first of it,
my foot turned under me. I did not observe until just now how sharp was
the injury.”
That was the story; Peg's ankle, for all her strong high boots, had won
to a grievous wrench.
“Now that I've nothing else to think on,” said Peg, biting her lips to
smother a cry, “it gives me torture like a knife.”
“Your ankle,” said I, “is becoming swollen; and that in those
tight-laced boots, let me say, should mean a torment of the
inquisition.”
My years in the field had made me deft of strains and bruises and,
when need pressed, even broken bones and wounds more threatening. I
straightway knelt down before Peg and began with care to make loose her
footgear. What a little boot it was! “One and one-half” was the size, so
Peg told me. I slipped the boot off with mighty tenderness and put it in
the pocket of my coat.
“And I'm very proud of my small foot, watch-dog,” said Peg, a smile
struggling with the lines of pain which pinched the corners of her
mouth. “Yes, I am proud of my small foot. Why not? It came to me from
that same wareroom of nature where you got your great heart and that arm
of might, and where the good General found his honesty and his
courage. I've as much right to be proud of my foot as you folk of those
attributes of excellence I've named.”
Peg was striving to laugh down her pain with these compliments for her
foot; I could tell, moreover, that she was a far cry from success, for
her pretty argument ended in a halfsob as a pang more than commonly
severe crushed her poor ankle in its vise.
Gently I chafed Peg's foot; and while that would do little good, it
served to soothe and modify the instant agony. Meanwhile I told her
how I would carry her home in my arms so soon as the first grief of the
sprain was chafed away.
“Carry me in your arms!” cried Peg.
“What else?” said I. “You can't walk.”
So, then, Peg made no more demur; and presently, when her foot was well
enough, I lifted her and started through the woods. It would be no more
than just carrying a child; and since Peg put her arm about my neck, and
helped to keep her place, my own arms even failed of the full burden
of her. It was an easy task at any rate, and if you will be told it, a
sweet task, too; this walk with Peg held close, and her hair, which had
been caught up with a comb, to fall down and sweep across my throat
and face. I could taste a fragrance in that hair like a breath from the
Isles of Spice--a perfume that fair set my bosom in a flame.
It might have been the half of a mile that I carried Peg; however, I had
no knowledge of it, whether for the distance or the time, but only of a
bliss that was like a radiance, and a heart-willingness to go on and on
and on to the world's end.
It was Peg herself who at last would bring me to my senses; for I
was pressing forward as void of speculation as a drunken man to march
through the crowded avenues of the town, Peg on my breast and my two
arms holding her tight like a treasure.
“Put me down, watch-dog,” whispered Peg, for her mouth was at the very
door of my ear, “put me down. I can stand well enough. Have me down, and
let us wait here until we can call a carriage. It would be a perplexing
sight to quiet folk were you to go striding through the streets with
such a burden.”
With a sigh to end so dear a toil, I had Peg down carefully; and there
she stood, and as she would say it, “like a chicken on one foot.” It
fell our luck that one of those carriages of public livery, whereof
there was plentiful store in the town, drove by about this time. I
called to it, and placing Peg therein, soon had her at her own door.
“I am mighty sorry for the sprain,” said I, as I lifted Peg from the
carriage.
“Are you?” quoth Peg, with an archness that would almost cloak the pain.
“Now is that gallant of you, watch-dog?” Then, making a mock of my words
and manner: “I am mighty glad for the sprain. Only, I could wish my
mother lived farther away. I never knew how close she was till now.”
As the winter wore into spring, the talk to swell and grow was of
Nullification. Calhoun's state of South Carolina had laid aside
disguise, and while nothing worse than speeches, with now and then
a doughty resolution, were indulged in, these showed ever of that
rebellious sort that waited only to be turned into action to become
sufficient treason. The General sat brooding and watching the drift; his
plans of men and rifles and ships laid like a trap, and set to snap up
in the jaws of them the first traitor to be afoot for that secession the
Calhoun clique would claim was each state's holy right. Altogether, the
days were on a strain, and hair turned white and folk went pale of the
cheek with the worry of the question “How will this ferment end?”
The one query of most concern related to the General. What would he do?
To what line would his resentment travel? Folk knew how he was against
Secession and States Rights and Nullification, or whatever the name
might be wherewith iniquitous rebellion pleased itself for the moment,
but would he treat these sins of politics as stark treason? Would he
fall back on courts and hangman's ropes in dealing with them?
No one might tell. The General, after he made himself plain with that
Rhetz who came to spy out his resolves, would say no farther word. Ones
in interest might go wrong or go right; as for the General himself, he
would light no more lamps.
“Have I not told them what I will do?” cried the General. “Must I be
out of my bed o' nights to tell them again? No; let these would-be
treason-mongers proceed as they see their way. Besides, to hang the
right man now may save the lives of later thousands.”
This was said for my ear alone; to no other would the General so much as
give one look of yea or nay.
While the General would be the sphinx over Nullification, prudent
rebellionists argued for a waiting strategy. There would dawn the
anniversary of Jefferson's birthday; there would come that dinner at the
Indian Queen; the General's conduct if not his words on that occasion
must surely tell his story of decision. Should he remain away, they
would know he feared to face them. Should he be present, they would try
him with toasts of treason and mark his manner under fire. They would
ask him for a sentiment; what he said or did in retort might give them
every needed glimpse. Decidedly, it was wise to wait; Secession would
keep; in the name of one's neck and a rope, proceedings might better be
stayed until those toast experiments on the General were given a chance.
The General was well enough pleased with this uncertainty whereof he now
found himself the hub. He guarded his words, left every man to grope out
his own path for himself, and the days coursed on with the unanswered
question of the General's determination in their mouths. Thus dwelt the
business on that day of April from the developments whereof so much was
to be hoped.
For the prior space of eight weeks or more the General had said little
to me of that banquet planned of nullifiers to uncover him on those
topics of perilous statecraft. Seeing his taste to be mysterious, I
would say nothing to the General, whether to ask a question or give a
hint of conduct, but left him to himself. I knew what he would do; and
for the detail of how he would go upon its execution, I was the more
willing to miss a forecast of it since I have a weakness for the unknown
and am as prone as any other to save up surprise for myself. Wherefore,
I would have the General make his own maps and design his own
ambuscades, and leave me in blindness of them. On that April morning I
owned no sure knowledge that the General would even attend the banquet,
to say naught of what he might do or say if ever he once were there.
It was the middle of the afternoon when the General looked into my
workshop, pipe in mouth, and said with a twinkle in his eye, a twinkle
that was both mirthful and hard: “Major, I take it you and I will go to
that dinner to-night?”
The General would put this as though it were a question; not because it
stood unsettled and unsaid as a thing resolved, but it was the way of
him when he would pay you a compliment to pretend a consultation, and
coax you into a council, hoping you would advise those things he was
already resolved upon like iron and which were often half performed.
For all I was aware of this talent on the General's part to be polite,
and was certain, when he glanced in through my door, that both of us
would be of the band about those Indian Queen tables, I was quick to
humor his whim for the mysterious and undecided. I looked up as one who
turns a new proposal on the wheel of his thoughts.
“It is my idea,” said I at last, with the air of a man who likes the
notion's flavor, “that your presence would work for good. I should say
we might better go. We may count the enemy, and that at least should be
something.”
“You are right,” returned the General. “We will go; and I think, too, it
might be good policy to let the foe count us.”
The Indian Queen was a crowded hostelry that night. The halls and
waiting rooms of the tavern were thronged of eminent ones. Some were
present to attend the Jefferson dinner; others casually for gossip and
to hear the news.
As the General and I would be going up the stair, my eye was caught by
the heavy shoulders and lion face of Webster coming down.
“There's too much Secession in the wind for me,” remarked Webster, as
the General asked if he were going away.
“You did not leave the Senate for that,” responded the General. “If
Secession be here, it's a reason for remaining.”
Webster shrugged his big shoulders and went on.
As I gazed at the group--waiting, they were, for the opening of the
banquet hall--I met many a great face. Among those about the stair-head
and in the rooms beyond were Colonel Johnson of Kentucky, tall of form,
grave of eye, he who slew Tecumseh; Benton, big, pompous, wise but
with a bottomless conceit; the lean Rufus Choate, eloquent and sound;
Corwin, round, humorous, with a face of ruddy fun; White, the dignified,
in the Senate from my own state of Tennessee; Hill, gray and lame, the
General's friend in New Hampshire; Noah, my Hebrew with red hair; Van
Buren, Peg's “good little secretary” of state; Vaughn, the British
minister; the quickeyed Amos Kendall, with Blair by his side; the
recreant Duff Green, now wholly for Calhoun; Calhoun himself, pale,
scholarly and fine; Huygens, that ministerial tubby personage,
gin-bleary and dull; Krudener, the Russian; Eaton, easy, florid,
urbane; Branch and Berrien and Barry and Ingham and the reckless Marcy.
The dinner was spread. The decorations were studied in their democracy.
Hundreds of candles from many-armed iron branches blazed about the plain
walls of the room and made the light of day. For the rest, the hall was
hung with flags. The stars and stripes, to be a centerpiece, was draped
about a portrait of Jefferson just to the rear of the place where Lee of
Virginia, who was to preside, would sit. Extending around the four sides
of the room were festooned the flags of the several states.
With peculiar ostentation, and next to the national colors, flowed the
banner of South Carolina, with its palmetto and rattlesnake--Calhoun's
emblem.
“Do you see it?” said the General in a low tone, as we approached our
places, “do you see Calhoun's flag? That serpent may rattle but it must
not strike.”
“And if it strike?”
“If it strike, it dies.”
Profusion and elegance were displayed in the arrangements, with none of
that long-drawn foolishness of courses so dear to Whigs and Federals and
other imitators of an English nobility. Black servants came and went
to shift one's plate and knife, or to aid in carving at the call of a
guest. At hopeful intervals along the tables reposed huge sirloins and
smoking rounds of beef; there were quail pies and chickens fried and
turkeys roasted; there stood pies of venison and rabbit and pot-pies of
squirrels; soups and fishes and vegetables; boiled hams and giant dishes
of earthenware holding baked pork and beans; roast suckling pigs and
each with a crab-apple in its mouth. There were corn breads and
flour breads and pancakes rolled with jellies; sideboards upheld
puddings--Indian, rice and plum--quaking custards, and scores of kindred
dainties. Everywhere bristled ranks and double ranks of bottles and
decanters, and a widest range of drinks, from whisky to wine of the
cape, were at one's call. There, too, stood wooden bowls of salads on
side tables, supported of weighty cheeses; and to close in the flanks
were pies, mince and pumpkin and apple, with final coffee, and slim long
pipes with tobacco of Trinidad for folk who would smoke.
Before we were seated, and while we stood to our places, the sentiment
was proposed:
“The memory of Thomas Jefferson.” The toast was drunk in silence; all
could agree on Jefferson; and then with clatter of knife and fork, the
thirsty clink of glasses, and the murmurous hum of conversation over
all, the work of the night commenced.
As the moments roved on, Nullification and Secession became so much the
open objects of many present, and were withal so loosely in the common
air, that sundry gentlemen--more timorous than loyal, perhaps--made
excuses and withdrew.
The General's presence was a plain surprise to more than one; they could
not construe it. For himself, he carried it off as though his being
there were the most expected of possible things. The General sat on the
right hand of the presiding Lee. I was, myself, to the General's right
hand. Opposite was Calhoun with that Calhoun triangle of the cabinet,
Berrien, Branch and Ingham. The quartet got on most beamingly. The
General, as we came up, rendered them a sweeping bow which they might
share among them.
“Calhoun,” whispered the General, indicating the Vice-President with a
nod, “is, you see, openly claiming his half of my cabinet. I'll startle
him some day by making him a present of the three.”
An hour passed on; the banquet reached that glass-and-bottle stage which
Noah anticipated. There were a round score of regular toasts; each would
smell of secession, while the speeches were even more malodorous of that
villainy.
I, with a hundred others, was narrowly watching the General, and,
well as I knew him, I wondered at the calmness wherewith he maintained
himself. This man who had a genius for anger, who went head-free into
each debate, who offered you his last thoughts in an unrestricted stream
of talk, would now be as impassive as marble. The General, throughout
these wordy treasons of speech and toast, showed cold and stern and
master of a dignity that became both himself and the exalted character
of his station.
The hour was hurrying towards the late. Calhoun glanced across at the
General; there was a questioning uneasiness in his look. Evidently the
urgent moment was at hand.
Calhoun offered a slip of paper to Lee, presiding, and whispered a word.
“The Vice-President proposes a toast,” cried Lee.
There fell a stillness, laughter died and talk was hushed. The Chairman
read:
“'_The Federal Union. Next to our liberty, the most dear. May we all
remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the
States, and distributing equally the benefits and the burden of the
Union_.'”
That stillness of death continued, marked and profound. Folk strained
and craned at both the General and Calhoun as do ones who would observe
the effect of a shot. There were eyes replete of interrogation, and if
one must have it truly told, defiance, to be peculiarly turned upon the
General.
For his part, the General never wore a loftier look. He scribbled a
quick line and gave it to the Chairman.
“The President offers a toast.” Then solemnly, as one who feels its
import:
'”_The Federal Union: It must be Preserved_.'”
The General's glance was on Calhoun, as pointed as a sword. His eye was
fierce with a sort of gray fury like the eye of some fighting eagle.
Calhoun for a moment gave him look for look; then his glance fell, his
face whitened, he would seem to shrink and sear and wither before the
man of fire. It was as though he saw the future's danger, or felt some
gallows prophecy thereof. In the end he sat like one under a blackness
of shadow.
The General it was who broke the spell. Pushing back, he arose, and
bowing to the Chairman who still sat with that toast of menace in his
hand he began moving towards the door. His head was lifted, and he
bore himself as should one who flings a gauntlet to the world. Openly,
obviously, defiantly, he set his heel on Secession's head in the midst
of Secession's champions.
Pausing, the General swept those present, letting his look of challenge
rest on each one in his turn. It was as though he questioned them:
“Where, now, is your courage?”
There was none to retort to him. Folk scented peril on him as cattle
smell in the wind the unborn storm.
“The Federal Union. It must be preserved.” The General, as though to
call a last attention, repeated his toast. Then, with burning eye laid
full upon Calhoun, and thinking, doubtless, on Overton and Crockett and
Houston and Dale and Coffee and those riflemen in hunting shirts and
leggings, and on the ships and Scott and Castle Pinckney, he added: “And
it shall be preserved.”
It was the moment pregnant and mighty; the moment when one man foiled
a plot to stampede history itself, and calmed and turned and drove the
herd of events in a right national direction for the Union and to fields
of quiet peace. Treason's heart and Treason's hand were palsied with
a toast of seven words, when now the words came wedded with the grim,
relentless courage that would die or make them true.
The galleries about the big room were filled with women looking on, Peg
among the others. When the General and I were again at the White House,
late as stood the hour, we found Peg waiting. I never saw a being more
given over to fire than was our Peg.
“Was he not noble?” cried Peg, when she would have me alone for a
moment. “Was he not grand? I would give my life if for one hour I might
be a man, and be a man like that.”
And yet for all the plain sureness of that toast, and the General's
looks of decision which were sent to be its escort, the rebellionists
would ask a further sign. They sent the insinuating Rhetz to call upon
the General. That was the next morning.
The politic Rhetz presented himself, and the General met him with a
manner of studied distance. He would have the visitor to know how he
held him for no friend. This was meant to give the General's words more
weight-, since the other would understand that he stood upon guard and
spoke nothing he did not intend to carry out.
“Mr. President,” said Rhetz, suavely deferential, “I go back to my home
to-morrow. Have you any message for your South Carolina friends?”
“Yes,” returned the General, with his cold eye on the questioner, “yes,
I have a message for my friends of South Carolina.” The words were
coming with a slow emphasis like a sentence of death. “Their state is a
part of the Union, and a part of the Union it shall remain. You may
tell them, if one South Carolina finger be raised in defiance of this
government, that I shall come down there; and once I'm there, I'll hang
the first man I lay hands on to the first tree I can reach.”