The Honorable Perkiomen Trappe was much delighted, on the morning
subsequent to the occurrences related in our last chapter, to see
Jabel Blake walk down Pennsylvania Avenue with the pensive air of a
man whose heart had been broken. The Honorable Perkiomen supposed that
Jabel had failed to receive some drawback or other upon his
income-tax, and he rejoiced in the reverses of the close and thrifty.
But Jabel Blake was now concerned solely with the sudden and violent
rupture between the MacNair brothers. He had little acquaintance with
Elk MacNair, and no great fondness for him; but, being well informed
as to the positive, combative traits of character in Arthur MacNair,
Jabel knew very well that what his counsel had threatened to do he
would do, though his own heart-strings might be sundered.
The deepest wish in Jabel's heart, next to establishing a national
bank in Ross Valley, was to see the marriage between Kate Dunlevy and
the MacNair family brought to pass; yet such was his reverence for the
Dunlevys and so great his antagonism to the Washington Lobby that he
was half inclined to be himself the means of breaking off the match
between the daughter of his great neighbor and exemplar and the son of
his old chum and companion.
Jabel took his way to the house of the old Circuit Judge, which was
one of a row of tall brown-stone structures not far from the city
hall, and when he rang the bell a servant showed him to a library in
the second story, where the Judge was dictating certain judicial
opinions to his daughter. The two elderly men retired to an adjacent
apartment, which seemed, from its appointments and the character of
needlework and literature strewn about, to be the _boudoir_ of Miss
Dunlevy; and the Judge, who was somewhat past the prime of life,
plunged into a long story about Ross Valley and its early settlement,
speaking much of the time with his eyes closed in a sort of half
reverie, while Jabel, who occupied a seat nearer to the library, was
meantime overhearing a conversation between Kate Dunlevy and young Elk
MacNair, who had followed hard upon Jabel's heels. The old Judge
meantime, used to their voices, paused only to remark that he thought
Elk MacNair one of the strongest, most brilliant, and most promising
men in the nation, and then went on with his dissertation upon pioneer
days among the spurs of the Alleghenies. Jabel, however, who was an
attentive, inquisitive busybody, and who lived in a part of the
country where folks of quality and large pursuits were few, observed
that the two voices in the next room were lowered, and that their
key, while not so high, was yet even more startling than before.
"Kate," said Elk MacNair, "I had counted upon my brother as an assured
ally in something of the most momentous importance to me at this
juncture, before our marriage. My brother is a man of power, but of
narrow views, and I have unconsciously aroused his animosity. He is
not to be appeased. Nothing can divert him from his purpose.
"It can be nothing, if Arthur is the arbiter and your happiness the
subject," said Miss Dunlevy.
"It is a point of honor differently taken by two men," said Elk
MacNair; "and the issue is a matter of character. It is a matter of
fortune besides, and if neither relents both will suffer."
These words were attended with some emotion which smote the rough
feelings of Jabel Blake, and he was a witness of some subsidiary
endearments, besides, which softened his indignation against the young
officer. So he followed Elk MacNair from the house and accosted him
upon the street.
"General," he said, "I claim the privilege of a guardian over you
boys--over your brother in particular, who is a true man and an
obstinate one. I know the matter of your difference. If you do not
yield, Arthur MacNair will keep his word! You will be exposed on the
floor of Congress, exactly as he promised, and your engagement with
Kitty Dunlevy broken forever."
"Jabel Blake," answered the soldier, "I know just what I am about. I
told my brother that I would blow my own head off if he sacrificed me
for a sentiment. And just that I mean to do."
"I know the devil in the MacNair blood," said Jabel Blake; "but you
are playing a false part and Arthur a true one. He fought his campaign
against the corruptions and chicanery of power, and he will trample
you out like a snake."
"He thinks he's correcting a boy," said Elk MacNair; "he shall find me
a soldier."
"And you will find him a Christian soldier, truer to his allegiance
than to rob his country!"
"Pshaw!" laughed Elk MacNair; "a skinflint who has raked up fortune
with his fingers, ground down his laborers, pinched his soul, and
stooped his stature for money, has no right to be my chaplain, Jabel
Blake! You have grown rich like a scavenger. What matter if I bring
down fortune with my rifle, though the American eagle be the bird. I
would spare my body some of the dirty crawling you have done to get
your bank!"
"Base boy!" cried Jabel Blake, with more contempt than anger; "I will
live to teach you that a life of thrift and honest toil is above your
power to insult it. You can neither repel me nor break your brother's
heart. The time will come when you will weep to deserve the respect
you have lost from these gray hairs."
He passed away with his old, heavy, deliberate gait, and left the
young man almost repentant.