THE MORNING AFTER
Events had somewhat hurried me in the two days since my arrival at
Jefferson Barracks, but on the morning following the awkward ending of
my match with Orme I had both opportunity and occasion to take stock of
myself and of my plans. The mails brought me two letters, posted at
Wallingford soon after my departure; one from Grace Sheraton and one
from my mother. The first one was--what shall I say? Better perhaps that
I should say nothing, save that it was like Grace Sheraton herself,
formal, correct and cold. It was the first written word I had ever
received from my fiancée, and I had expected--I do not know what. At
least I had thought to be warmed, comforted, consoled in these times of
my adversity. It seemed to my judgment, perhaps warped by sudden
misfortune, that possibly my fiancée regretted her hasty promise, rued
an engagement to one whose affairs had suddenly taken an attitude of so
little promise. I was a poor man now, and worse than poor, because
lately I had been rich, as things went in my surroundings. In this
letter, I say, I had expected--I do not know what. But certainly I had
not expected to see sitting on the page written in my fiancée's hand,
the face of another woman. I hated myself for it.
The second letter was from my mother, and it left me still more
disconcerted and sad. "Jack," it said, "I grieve unspeakably. I am sad
beyond all imaginings of sadness. I need thee. Come back the first day
thee can to thy mother."
There was indeed need for me at home. Yet here was I with my errand not
yet well begun; for Captain Stevenson told me this morning that the Post
Adjutant had received word from Colonel Meriwether saying that he would
be gone for some days or weeks on the upper frontier. Rumor passed about
that a new man, Sherman, was possibly to come on to assume charge of
Jefferson, a man reported to be a martinet fit to stamp out any
demonstration in a locality where secession sentiment was waxing strong.
Meriwether, a Virginian, and hence suspected of Southern sympathy, was
like many other Army officers at the time, shifted to points where his
influence would be less felt, President Buchanan to the contrary
notwithstanding. The sum of all which was that if I wished to meet
Colonel Meriwether and lay before him my own personal request, I would
be obliged to seek for him far to the West, in all likelihood at Fort
Leavenworth, if not at the lower settlements around the old town of
Independence. Therefore I wrote at once both to my fiancée and to my
mother that it would be impossible for me to return at the time, nor at
any positive future time then determinable. I bade a hasty good-by to my
host and hostess, and before noon was off for the city. That night I
took passage on the _River Belle_, a boat bound up the Missouri.
Thus, somewhat against my will, I found myself a part of that motley
throng of keen-faced, fearless American life then pushing out over the
frontiers. About me were men bound for Oregon, for California, for the
Plains, and not a few whose purpose I took to be partisanship in the
border fighting between slavery and free soil. It was in the West, and
on the new soils, that the question of slavery was really to be debated
and settled finally.
The intenseness, the eagerness, the compelling confidence of all this
west-bound population did not fail to make the utmost impression upon my
own heart, hitherto limited by the horizon of our Virginia hills. I say
that I had entered upon this journey against my will. Our churning
wheels had hardly reached the turbid flood of the Missouri before the
spell of the frontier had caught me. In spite of sadness, trouble,
doubt, I would now only with reluctance have resigned my advance into
that country which offered to all men, young and old, a zest of deeds
bold enough to banish sadness, doubt and grief.