GULF AND BARRIER
There may be more disagreeable tasks than waiting on the uncertain favor
of public officials. If so, I have never chanced upon them. Backed by
letters of introduction from prominent men in New Orleans and St. Louis
and by my father's old-time friend Senator Adair of Kentucky, I had
thought to obtain the coveted leadership of the westward expedition for
the asking.
To my surprise, even the letter of so great a merchant as Daniel Clark
met with scant consideration from the Eastern office-holders, and
Senator Adair soon confessed to his lack of influence with the
Government with regard to my interest. At the same time he intimated to
me that should I be able to gain the good word of Colonel Burr, it was
not unlikely I might receive my appointment direct from General
Wilkinson.
"But, sir," I protested, "what has Colonel Burr to do with a military
expedition planned by the Commander-in-Chief of the Army?"
The Senator gave me a sharp glance, and considered for some moments
before replying: "Young man, one of the greatest aids to success in life
is the ability to recognize helpful friends. I have received a letter
from Colonel Burr in the last Philadelphia post. You met him at the
President's House, and I gather from his remarks regarding the occasion
that he was greatly taken with yourself."
"Unfortunately the favorable impression was not mutual," I said.
"It is indeed unfortunate--for you, John," reproved the Senator. "Such
men as Colonel Burr can pick and choose from thousands."
"I am willing to be passed over."
"Tut! a boyish whim! Do not say no to me. You will cultivate the
friendship of the Colonel." I made an impatient gesture. "At the least,
you will not rebuff him."
"Sir, I have not sought his advances. But since it is you who ask, I
will not take positive stand against him."
"That is better. It might be more--yet enough for the time. Let me tell
you, John, Colonel Burr is still a man of mark in this Republic, and I
shall be vastly surprised if he does not add laurels to those he has
already gathered."
"It is I who am surprised," I replied. "A once successful politician,
now discredited from Maine to Virginia,--a man who seven years ago tied
with Mr. Jefferson in the vote for the Presidency, and last election was
all but unanimously rejected, alike by the people and by the electoral
college,--for you to speak of such a man winning other laurels!"
"You forget the West."
"The West?"
"Consider his reception west of the Alleghanies this past year,--his
triumphant progress from Pittsburg to New Orleans and return."
"The West will elect no Presidents in many years to come."
The Senator gave me an odd look. "Perhaps not--perhaps not. These people
of the original States would not consider it a possibility even of the
remotest future," he murmured. Again he considered. At last, "Has it
occurred to you, John, that this expedition may have other object than
the exploration of our Western boundaries?"
"There will be treaties to make with the powerful tribes of plains
Indians,--the Pawnees and perhaps the Ietans, or Comanches, as some call
them."
"Ah, yes; with the Pawnees--and others. Did you never hear it said that,
could an overland trade with Santa Fe be established, it would be of no
small profit to those fortunate enough to obtain the concession from the
Spanish authorities? Santa Fe is the nearest gateway to the mines of
Mexico,--to El Dorado."
"I know a certain Senor Liza of St. Louis who would not forego a chance
to join in such a venture," I replied.
"True--true. But he is a Spanish Creole, and, I fear, not too well
disposed toward us. My point is, would it be too great an improbability
that a certain projected expedition should chance to come in friendly
touch with the authorities of northern New Spain?"
Having given me food for thought to last me many a day, the Senator
dropped the subject. During all my subsequent months of waiting I could
not induce him to discuss it again.
The time of this conversation was the third week of my stay in
Washington. Being well supplied with funds and on agreeable terms both
socially and professionally with Dr. Frederick May, I had settled down
in my comfortable boarding-house, prepared, if need were, to besiege the
Government throughout the Winter. Should I fail to attain my desired
end, I had only to return West to find a fair practice awaiting me
either at St. Louis or New Orleans. At the worst there would be ample
recompense for my expenditures in the experience of a Winter in the
Federal City.
Even had I been certain of the rejection of the formal application
which, a few days after the dinner at the White House, I had placed on
file in the War Office, I should have prolonged my stay for some time.
Within the week I had taken advantage of the invitations to call
tendered me by the ladies of the President's party. Within another week
I found myself fairly launched in the social swim.
It is not remarkable that a man well under thirty, who has spent many of
his years riding the wilderness traces, should plunge into social
affairs with a zest unknown to the city dweller. To this zest there was
added in my case the keen desire to meet again my haughty Senorita
Alisanda. Yet devote myself as I might to attendance at balls, _fetes_,
dinners, routs, and calls innumerable, it was only to meet with repeated
disappointments. Although, thanks to the kindness of Dr. May and my lady
patronesses, there were few social gatherings, small or great, to which
I was not invited, I failed to gain another meeting with the lady of my
heart. She was not present even at the grand New Year's _fete_ at the
White House, when Mr. Jefferson, as was his custom, received and
entertained all Washington.
That I was desperately in love with the senorita I had soon found myself
compelled to admit. For nothing less than the depth and passion of my
feeling could have prevented me from laughing myself out of it for the
sheer absurdity of such a thing.
Reared among a people whose daughters marry at sixteen and their sons at
nineteen and twenty, I had safely survived my calf-love, had even run
the seductive gantlet of the creole belles of New Orleans,--only to fall
victim in my mature twenties to the first glance of this haughty Spanish
senorita. What could I hope from one who doubtless regarded me as our
Western girls regard the red Indian? I do not mean with the like horror,
but with a like contempt.
Not alone was she a Spanish Catholic, to whom marriage with a heretic
would mean little less than sacrilege,--she was the daughter of a
Castilian family whose name implied kinship with one of the royal houses
of France. I was a man without a grandfather, and, what gave me real
concern, a citizen of a Republic which, in return for the carrying trade
of the world, was grovelling at the feet of England and France,
submissive to their contemptuous kicks.
True, Spain also bowed beneath the iron hand of Napoleon, but it was
because of the might of that hand, and not, as with us, because of a
willingness to endure shame rather than part with the commerce of which
our humiliation was the price. Far better war and death than such barter
of principles for gold!
As I thought of my abject countrymen I did not wonder that my lady had
looked upon me with hauteur; and yet I could not but reflect on the
graciousness of her thanks from the carriage window and that inscrutable
glance at our last parting. Hope interpreted the glance to mean that she
was heart-free and to be won by him who could stir her heart. Despair
said that she had gone forever beyond my reach, to the far distant home
of her uncle in New Spain. One answer to this last was the wild fancy
that, could I but attain the leadership of the Western expedition, I
might penetrate the wilderness and seek her out in the midst of her
people.
At the height of my fantastic scheming, gossip at last enlightened me to
the fact that my lady was yet in the city, stopping with a humble family
of Catholics, and precluded from attendance at social functions by the
absence of her uncle on a trip to Philadelphia.
Rumor added that the senor had gone to the old Capitol in company with
Colonel Burr, who, having spent much time at the British Legation with
Mr. Merry, the English Minister, had hurried North to confer with the
Marquis de Casa Yrujo. But Rumor and Colonel Burr were old bedmates, and
I gave little heed to the report at the time.
My interest was centred on the joyous news that the senorita was still
in Washington, not upon the curious information that her uncle and
Colonel Burr were supposed to have business with the Spanish Minister,
who, though he had severed diplomatic relations with our Government some
months since, yet lingered at Philadelphia.
Significant as should have been this report to one with my interests and
information, I must confess that not even the mention of Senor Vallois
drew second thought from me. For the time being my whole intent was to
find myself once more in the presence of the senorita. The question was
how and where? She was not to be seen in society, and I was not quite so
mad as to thrust myself in upon her at her retreat.
Hope flamed up again when all seemed darkest. As is well known to all
people of information, the Sunday assemblage in the Hall of
Representatives at the Capitol is frequently varied by the preaching of
distinguished clergymen of various sects and denominations. Being rather
given to Free Thought, though not to Atheism, I had thus far refrained
from attending these quasi-official services, much as I had heard about
them as the social levees of the city.
Chance, however, brought to Washington a noted Catholic bishop, and the
announcement that he would preach the following Sabbath in place of the
chaplain stirred me with the hope of a pleasant possibility. That Sunday
I went early to the assemblage hall, dressed in my best attire, my chin
swathed high enough by my pudding cravat to shame a London beau, my
trousers cut to the most modish, baggy shape and flapping loosely about
my shins.
Early as I arrived, I found no small part of the crowd ahead of me, and
I had to thrust and elbow my way here and there among the beaux, across
the hall, before I could satisfy myself that the senorita was not
present. Dashed, but by no means disheartened, I chose a post of vantage
on the elevated edge of a niche, from which I could watch the entrance.
Already I had had occasion to make my bows to the fashionably costumed
dames and misses whose gay talk and manners lent to the Hall more the
aspect of a ballroom than that of a house of worship or a legislative
chamber. As the company thronged in the gallant Representatives yielded
their seats to the ladies and stood beside them if acquainted, or, if
the fair ones came attended, left the aisles to the escorts and
withdrew into the lobbies or warmed themselves at the fireplaces.
Seeing the rapidity with which the seats were being filled by the
ladies, it occurred to me to pay one of the House attendants to bring me
a chair. By the time the man fetched it the aisles were so crowded with
extra seats and the throng of standing men that the only available space
left for a chair was in the statueless niche behind me. Though the width
of the Hall lay between it and the platform behind the Speaker's chair,
I could do no better, and the elevation of the position would, as I had
found, enable one to see, if not hear, over the heads of the noisy
assembly. The nearness to the entrance was in another way a decided
advantage, since it would enable me to address the senorita without
abandoning my seat to capture by the nearest beau of the many chairless
ladies.
From the moment the chair was handed me I was subjected to the wordless
attack of numerous fair ones, whose glances ranged all the way from soft
appeal to scornful reproach. And still the senorita failed to appear!
Mr. Jefferson, as negligently dressed as usual, had come in and taken
his seat beside his secretary; and the Marine Band, a resplendent
cluster of scarlet uniforms and polished brass instruments in the
gallery, had played the opening bars of "Hail Columbia," when a stir at
the entrance caused me to redouble my despairing vigil.
Greatly to my disappointment, I saw only the stately form of the
Catholic bishop. Ushered by an attendant, the priest made his way with
serene dignity through the laughing, chattering crowds whom he was to
address.
My heart sank into my boots. The service had begun, the hall was packed
almost to suffocation, the bishop had arrived, and still the senorita
failed to appear. To have kept waiting longer the nearest of the ladies
who had signalled to me for my chair would have been most ungracious. I
turned to speak to the lady's friend, hesitated, and turned back for a
last look at the entrance.
A rawboned Irishwoman was thrusting her way in through a group of men,
who seemed none too willing to give passage to her. The plainness of her
dress was enough of explanation for that, even had not the crowd been so
close. As she paused for breath, her big face red from exertion and the
quick anger of her race, it flashed upon me what a just mockery of the
beaux' gallantry it would be to give the woman my cherished seat. No
sooner had the thought entered my head than I caught her eye and
beckoned her to the chair.
The woman stared. I nodded and repeated my gesture. Promptly she pushed
a little to one side and turned half about. The movement brought to my
view the figure of another woman who had followed her in. My heart
sprang into my throat. Though the face of the second woman was downbent
and her dress all of black, it was enough for my enlightenment that the
covering of her graceful head was a Spanish mantilla.
At a word from the Irish woman she looked up and toward me, and I
thrilled at the level gaze of her glorious eyes. I bowed and pointed to
my chair. Without a sign of recognition she turned to look across the
hall. Unmasked to the men about her by the changed position of her
attendant, they were already making room for her beauty where the rude
strength of the woman had met with counter elbowing. Nine in ten of
those who surrounded her would gladly have given her their seats had
they been in possession of chair or bench. But mine was the only vacant
seat in the hall. The Irishwoman, who stood half a span taller even than
the senorita, had already perceived the fact. I saw her bend to whisper.
This time the senorita met my salute with a slight bow of recognition,
and advanced toward me, followed closely by her duenna. Had there been
no other ladies in the throng her passage would have been along an open
lane of admiring gallants. But not until she was within arm's-length did
I dare step down from my post of defence to meet her. We alike had the
other ladies to face and avoid. Half a dozen beaux were already before
me to proffer their assistance. I thrust aside the nearest and offered
my hand.
She placed her gloved fingers in my big palm and stepped up, without so
much as a word or a glance. For all that I found myself in an exultant
glow. Had I not had the forethought to procure the chair for her? and,
what was far more, had I not exercised sufficient courage to retain it
for her, despite the other ladies? The big Irishwoman gave me a glance
as kindly as it was shrewd, and took up her position beside me, her
coal-scuttle bonnet on a level with my curls.
Having done the senorita a service, it seemed to me fitting that I
should wait for her to speak before pressing her with further
attentions. Accordingly I stood with unturned head, gazing across toward
the Speaker's stand, and drinking in with appreciative ears the sonorous
bars of "Columbia."
With the last note of the national anthem ringing in my ears I became
aware of a far more musical sound,--the low-pitched voice of the
senorita: "There is space for one to stand beside the chair. Dr.
Robinson has my permission to step up and discover for me if Mrs. Merry
is present."
"Dr. Robinson accepts the invitation of Senorita Vallois with pleasure,"
I replied, hoping to bring a smile to the scarlet lips. They did not
bend, and I could see nothing but hauteur in her pale face and the
drooping lashes of her eyes. I stepped up into the narrow space beside
the chair, but it was not to stare about in search of Mrs. Merry.
"You do not look," she said with a trace of impatience.
"There is no need," I replied, my gaze downbent upon her cheek.
"No need?"
"The wife of the British Minister is not here."
"You have heard that she is ill?"
"No, senorita."
"Then how should you know that she is not here?"
"Because I have looked into the face of every lady present."
She smiled with a touch of scorn. "I had not thought the American
gentlemen so gallant!"
"I looked into the faces of all, senorita, searching for one."
To this she made no reply; and I, fearing that I had gone too far, stood
silent, under pretence of listening to the service. It was indeed a
pretence, for had I been in sober earnest I could have heard little
other than the band above the whispering and giggling all about the
room, the occasional loud talk in the lobbies, and the open laughter and
conversation of the young ladies and their lovers warming themselves at
the fireplaces. Throughout the service these gay young couples came and
went from their seats whenever the ladies felt chilled or took the whim,
the freedom of their movements seemingly limited only by the closeness
of the aisles.
When the time came for the bishop to preach there was a lull, owing to
his stately appearance and forceful oratory. The lull was brief. Once
more the young couples fell to whispering and tittering. A group of
Representatives and a Senator near us began a muttered disputation about
the question of naval appropriations. The senorita bent forward,
straining her ears to catch the words of the bishop. It was hopeless. In
the most favorable circumstances the Hall of Representatives has a bad
name for its wretched acoustic properties.
In the midst, at the stroke of noon, the attendant who had brought my
chair, came in with a great sack and, escorted by an officer of the
House, passed across the hall through the thick of the throng to the
letter-box on the far side. Having emptied the box, he returned with his
official escort in the same fashion, the bag on his shoulder bulging
with letters. The spectacle did not tend to lessen the lively spirits of
the assembly.
For the first time since I had taken my place beside her the senorita
looked up at me. Her face was still cold, but in the sombre depths of
her eyes glowed a fire of anger.
"Is it so you republican heretics meet the words of a most venerable
prelate?" she demanded.
"From what I hear, senorita, preachers of other churches receive, if
anything, still less consideration than this."
"It is a mockery of worship!"
"With the thoughtless, perhaps. I see many who listen. Another time it
would be advisable to come early and find a seat nearer the speaker."
"There will be no other time."
"Senorita!" I murmured, "you leave?"
"Within the week."
"So soon! You go by water. Would that I were a sailor in the West Indian
trade!"
She gave me a curious glance. "Why in the West Indian trade?"
"Ships carry passengers. Aboard even the greatest of ships the sailors
have glimpses of the passengers."
"Sometimes passengers stay below, in the cabin," she said coldly.
"That may well be in times of storm," I replied. "Then the sailor is
above, striving to save those who are in his care from shipwreck. But in
the warm waters of the Gulf the passengers show themselves on deck,
pleased to leave the narrow bounds of their staterooms."
"There are some who would rather stifle in their staterooms than be
stared at by the common herd."
"There are others, born in state, who would rather stand beneath the
open sky, side by side with a true man, than share the tinsel display of
kings," I persisted.
"Rousseau is somewhat out of style."
"No less is royalty."
"The French murdered their king, and God sent them a tyrant."
"A tyrant not for France alone. All Europe trembles at the word of the
Corsican."
"And your country, the glorious free Republic."
The bitter words forced past my lips: "My country writhes and bends
beneath the insults of the fighting bullies, and clutches eagerly at the
price of shame,--the carrying trades of the world."
She raised her eyes to mine, grave but no longer scornful. "At last I
have found an American!"
"There are others beyond the Alleghanies. We of the West are not sold to
the shipping trade."
"No; you do not take by commerce. You have ever been given to taking by
force."
"We have conquered the Indian with our rifles, and the wilderness with
our axes."
"Yet you turned to your East for it to buy you Louisiana, through a
conspiracy with that arch-liar the Corsican!"
"No conspiracy, senorita! It is well known that Napoleon bought
Louisiana from Spain for the sole purpose of extending his empire to the
New World. It was the fear of losing New Orleans to England that induced
him to sell the Territory to us--that alone."
"Yet he had given his pledge to my country not to sell!"
"Let your people look to it that he does not sell Spain itself."
"Ah, my poor country!" she murmured, and her head sank forward.
"I had gathered that your uncle was among those who seek to free Mexico
from Spanish rule," I said.
"Those whose misrule rests so heavily upon my people in New Spain have
little more regard for the welfare of my people in the mother country."
Again there was silence between us, this time until the close of the
bishop's sermon. As the prelate left the stand, the Irishwoman turned
about with an expectant look.
"Enough of this mockery!" said the senorita.
I stepped down at the word, and had the pleasure of receiving her hand
the second time. She made no objection to my escorting her from the hall
and to the outer door. In the portico she stopped for the Irishwoman to
come up on her other hand.
"You have my thanks, senor," she said.
I was not prepared to receive my dismissal so soon.
"With your kind permission, senorita, I will see you to your door," I
ventured, astonished at my own audacity.
Whatever her own feeling, she turned without so much as a lift of her
black eyebrows, and signed the woman to drop behind again. We descended
the marble steps together, and passed down a side street. She walked as
she spoke, flowingly, her step the perfect poetry of motion as her voice
was the poetry of sound. Her mere presence at my side should have been
enough to content me. But my thoughts returned to the dismal news of her
intended departure.
"You go within the week?" I questioned.
"Without regret," she replied.
I passed over the thrust. "You have been nowhere. It must have been
dull."
"Less so than may be thought. I have spent much of my time in the
company of Mrs. Merry."
"Lord have mercy upon us!" I mocked. "If you have been imbibing the
opinions of the Lady of the British Legation--!"
"I have heard some sharp truths regarding the ridiculousness of your
republican regime."
"And could tell of as many, from your own observation, regarding the
Court of St. James."
It was a chance shot, but it hit the mark.
"I had not thought you so quick," she said, with a note of sincerity
under the mockery.
"I am not quick, senorita," I replied. "It is no more than the
reflection of your own wit."
"That does not ring true."
"It is true that you raise me above my dull self."
"Have I said that I have found you dull?"
"I have never succeeded in acquiring the modish smartness of the
gallants and the wits."
"That, senor, is beyond the power of a man to acquire." I looked for
mockery in her eyes, and saw only gravity. The scarlet lips were curved
in scorn, but not of myself. "It is only those born as brainless magpies
who can chatter. You were right when you said that I could tell of
truths from my own observation. I left England with as little regret as
I shall--"
"Do not say it, senorita!" I protested.
"You Americans! You have the persistence of the British, with no small
share of French alertness!"
"We are a mixed people--" I began.
"Mongrel!" she thrust at me, with a flash of hauteur.
"Not so ill a name for a race," I replied. "History tells of a people
called Iberians. The Ph[oe]nicians and Carthagenians landed on their
shores. Then came the Romans; later, the barbaric hordes from the
North,--Goths, Vandals, Suevi; later still, the Moors."
The last was too much for her restraint. "Moors!--Moors! Mohammedan
slaves!" she exclaimed. "We drove them out--man, woman, and
child--before your land was so much as discovered."
"Yet not before they had done what little could be done toward
civilizing barbaric Europe, and not before their blood had mingled--"
"_Santisima Virgen!_" she cried, in a passion which was all the more
striking for the restraint that held it in leash--"I, a daughter of such
blood!--you say it?"
"I do not say it, senorita," I replied, with such steadiness as I could
command under the flashing anger of her glance.
"Then what?" she demanded.
"I spoke of your race in general, senorita. There are self-evident
facts. Even were the fact which you so abhor true as to yourself, would
your eyes be any the less wondrously glorious? Your dusky hair--"
She burst into a rippling laugh, more musical than the notes of any
instrument. "_Santa Maria!_" she murmured. "You miss few
opportunities--for an Anglo-American!"
"A man asks only for reasonable opportunities, senorita,--a fair field
and no favors."
"The last is easy to grant."
"You mean--?"
"No favors."
She had me hard. I rallied as best I could. "But a fair field--?"
"Can there be such?" she countered. "You are Anglo-American; I am
Spanish."
"Vallois has a French sound."
Her chin rose a trifle higher. "It is a name that crowns the most
glorious pages in the history of France."
I thought of St. Bartholomew, and smiled grimly. "I, too, can trace back
to one ancestor of French blood. He died by command of Charles de
Valois. He was a shoemaker and a Huguenot."
She looked at me with a level gaze. "It is evident you are one who does
not fear to face the truth. You have yourself named the barrier and the
gulf between us."
"Barriers have been leaped; gulfs spanned."
"None such as these!"
"Senorita, we each had four grandparents, they each had four. That is
sixteen in the fourth generation back. How many in ten generations? Who
can say he is of this blood or that?"
"I do not pretend to the skill to refute specious logic, and--here is
the gate. My thanks to you."
"Senorita!" I protested.
"_Adios_, senor! Open your eyes to the barrier and the gulf."
"I see them, and they shall not stop me from crossing!" Again I
encountered the inscrutable glance that opened to me the darkness in the
fathomless depths of her eyes. "I swear it!" I vowed.
Still gazing full at me, she replied: "It may be that in the Spring we
shall pass through New Orleans."
I would have protested--asked for a word more to add to this meagre
information. But she turned in at the gate, and the Irishwoman was at my
elbow.
"Till then, if not before, _au revoir_, senorita!" I called in parting.
She did not glance about or speak.