2 A Lady and Others

The Six Buildings was crowded, for Washington was hard put to it then to hold the Government, small in numbers of men though the latter was. It was a large structure, complete in its ugliness, but the lights of candle and hearth fire were beginning to flame from the windows and cast bright streaks across the clumps of bushes and the heaps of fresh earth thrown up by the shovels from new streets. It was a cheerful sight, telling of warmth and comfort within, and I hastened to my room on the second floor, where I found that Caesar, the black boy bound to my service by various presents of silver coin of the republic, had provided well for me.

It was a small room with two windows, in which the white wooden sash rattled loudly when the wind was strong; a rag carpet partly covered the floor, and print pictures of General Washington and Mr. Jefferson, pasted on the plastered walls, looked across at each other. But a fine fire blazed on the brick hearth, and the hickory logs popped most merrily as the blaze ate into them. Moreover, Caesar handed me a warm glass of water and something else, a habit we have in Kentucky, and which I hope I have never abused. When I had drunk the grateful mixture and drawn a chair up to the fire, Caesar gave me a copy of the National Intelligencer and went out, leaving me to interest myself in the news as became one who lived in times that were full of stress and change.

The first thing in the type that my eye alighted upon was an account of the new Indian war in the Northwest. It was likely to be the most formidable, so the newspaper said, in all our long list of conflicts with the red men. As was well known, the Northwestern tribes were the most valiant on the continent, and the English agents from Canada were visiting them at their villages, bringing presents of whisky and money and guns, and urging them to take up the hatchet against the Long Knives, as they called us. The great chief Tecumseh, and his brother the Prophet, reverenced by all the tribes as the wisest and most powerful of medicine men, were eager for the war, and while one spoke incessantly for it, the other made medicine, and always drew from his spells the omen that the time had come to destroy the Long Knives, and their women and children with them. I put the paper down, the reading of the article ended, and stared into the fire, wondering how we would meet the new danger. I knew also that there was to be a great rising of the tribes in the Southwest, and thus we would be belted round by a ring of enemies, white and red, by land and by sea, and, if we declared war on the English, would have to struggle in good truth for our lives. It seems to me that no nation has been forced to fight for existence as ours, even from the first settlements at Jamestown and Plymouth. What with the English and the French and the many warlike tribes, we have found it wise to keep our guns loaded and beside us; and of all our enemies, we have found the red men of the forests the most wary, the most daring, and the most to be dreaded. Many a winter’s night have I, a little boy sitting on the hearthstone in my Kentucky home, gazing into the red coals, listened to my mother’s tales of the scalping parties, and how they would come down from the North and attack in the darkness and silence. I would tremble on my stool, and creep closer to my father’s side as I heard the whistle of wind and rustle of trees outside, and would think that the war parties had come again, though the last to visit our region had gone long since.

I have learned that it is not well for one who wishes to keep a cheerful and balanced mind to sit alone and nurse his wrongs; and, improving my toilet in the manner that my intentions demanded, I threw a cloak over my shoulders to protect me from the cool night air, and went out.

The raw little city, which by day rose only in spots from wood, bush, and swamp, was hid by night. The wilderness reclaimed its own in the darkness. The unfinished walls of the Capitol glimmered faintly from their hill, a blur showed where the Treasury stood, and darker splotches on the ordinary darkness marked a few of Washington’s scattered buildings. Some points of light, one or two from street lamps and the others from the windows of houses, twinkled feebly, as if they were making last and useless struggles before the invading night.

I was accustomed to all this; in truth, I had known nothing better, and one who has ridden all night over muddy paths, through endless forests, thinks but little of unlighted streets. But on this evening the rawness, the incompleteness of everything, discouraged me and gave me a sense of personal mortification. I knew well, without any tedious process of self-analysis, that it was Major Northcote’s manner in the Senate chamber that had put the poison in me, the half-concealed sneer, the faint suggestion of contempt that passed quickly over his face as if he would hide the slight affectation of aristocratic scorn which was so galling, because there were certain aspects of time and place which supplied some cause for it. Just then I was not disposed to give the proper credit for what had been achieved, great though it was when our difficulties and the fewness of our years were considered.

But I recalled my thoughts again and turned them toward one of the points of flame which seemed, to me at least, to twinkle more steadily than the others. This light shone from the house of Cyrus Pendleton, a conspicuous two-story wooden structure which had been built by one of the Notleys, great landowners in that vicinity, long before the Government had thought of founding a capital there. As I approached I saw other lights, and I concluded that I was not the only guest who had come. Cyrus Pendleton himself received me at the door. He wore black broadcloth and very white linen, above which rose his brown and seamed face. He could afford broadcloth, but he had worn tanned buckskin much oftener in his life, which had known many hardships and dangers. His manner to me at that moment was a curious mixture of welcome and suspicion, as if he were glad to see me and yet preferred that I would not come. I understood it, though pretending not to notice, from the double motive of policy and pride, and inquired politely, after the custom, about the health of his daughter and himself.

Then I passed into the house, and the old man followed me, his manner still bearing traces of embarrassment, as if he would detain me.

The room into which I had come was large, and everywhere showed a woman’s taste and supervision, though there was one feature which no visitor could fail to notice. Most conspicuous over the mantel were a rifle and an axe, crossed. The rifle had a beautiful carved stock and a long, slender barrel of fine steel, highly polished. The axe was of heavy steel, with a long, strong handle.

“There, Philip,” Cyrus Pendleton once had said to me, “are the weapons which we Americans should always keep before us, for with them we are winning the New World, which will all be ours some day if we want it. I used that old axe myself many and many a time, and that rifle is the best comrade I ever had. An American’s toast should be to the axe and rifle, which are his real coat of arms.”

Marian was coming toward me. She wore a flowered silk dress, and falls of creamy lace were about her throat and wrists, setting off their whiteness. In her hair, which was drawn up in the Eastern fashion, sparkled a jewelled comb. A brilliant complexion is perhaps the distinguishing mark of our Kentucky women, who are all kissed by the sun, but I thought I had never seen a face that equalled Marian’s that night. The red in her cheeks deepened perhaps a little at my coming, but the trace of embarrassment in her father’s manner was not in hers as she gave me her hand and bade me welcome, calling me by my first name. I saw her cast one swift glance at her father, and there seemed to be a note of defiance in her look. My heart warmed and my blood thrilled at this look more than if she had given one of another kind to me instead, for I knew that the defiance, or what I took to be such, was made in my cause.

I took a chair beside Marian. Bidwell, the man whom I disliked, dressed in the extreme of the European fashion, which he had learned in London and Paris, was on the other side. He must have taken his cue at some time from Cyrus Pendleton, for he said to me in a languid tone, though I could see easily enough the sneering meaning in his words:

“It seems that the Government, even at the most critical periods, does not work all the time, but takes its ease on occasion like other people.”

I would have made some sharp reply, for the intent of offence was manifest in his manner, but Marian’s eyes met mine in a warning look, and she interrupted lightly:

“Let the Government take care of itself; we will talk of other things.”

The look which she had given me, which had indicated a confidence, a feeling between us not shared by others, was sufficient to reward me for silence and a failure to reply to Bidwell’s sneer, and I spoke of such light topics as the time afforded—of “Tom Jones” and “Evelina,” and Mr. Irving’s ingenious Knickerbocker’s History of New York, and the latest dances that had come from Paris, where the court of Napoleon was acquiring new splendours and the old French taste for gaiety was blossoming again.

There were two ladies from the North present, the Misses Constance and Fanny Eastlake, handsome and of fine figure, but not so fair of complexion as our Kentucky women; and Mercer, of Tennessee, my friend, a thin, dry man, two or three years older than myself, who had spent a year or two abroad and knew the world to criticise it, wherefore he was now a lawyer in Washington; and two or three others of the capital’s society.

Cyrus Pendleton came over to me presently and began to scoff at what he called the Government’s indecision and cowardice, for he, like all our people of the West, was eager for war, sure that we could redress our wrongs only on the battlefield—an opinion which I shared though, owing to my position in the office of the Secretary of the Treasury, I was more chary in expressing it. As I have said, I have never seen a man animated with more hatred of the English, especially the ruling classes of England, though he and all the other rich men of Kentucky were seeking to build up in our own State a baronial and landed aristocracy, precisely like that which their ancestors had left behind them in the old country. That I knew to be the chief reason why Cyrus Pendleton looked with so much favour upon Bidwell, whose many acres adjoined the five thousand within a ring fence that were his own. The prospect of extending that five thousand so easily was too tempting for a man of his ambition to overlook.

Marian stood near her father for a moment, and the contrast between them, despite their resemblance, struck me with curious force: he so rugged and seamed, she so fair and gentle, yet with the same expression of strength and courage. But it should not have seemed strange to me; we see it throughout the West every day, fair daughters of rough fathers.

“Handsome, isn’t she?” said Mercer in my ear.

“You think so?” I replied.

His face flushed faintly, much to my surprise.

“One has no choice; one must think so,” he replied in his dry tones; “but remember, Philip, my boy, that there are other handsome women in the world, and the old gentleman has not chosen her for you.”

There seemed to be a suggestion of warning in his tone, and of sympathy too. Which preponderated I could not tell, and I affected to notice neither, though I could not account even to myself for the faint tinge of red that had come into his face when he spoke first.

I left early, before any of the others, and Marian, after the custom, accompanied me to the door, giving me her hand as I stepped out and permitting it to rest in mine for an infinitesimal moment.

“Marian,” I said, “I may continue to come?”

“Until I bid you stay away.”

“Which will be never, I hope.”

She smiled, and I walked away in the darkness, but before I had taken half a dozen steps I looked back and saw that she lingered for a few moments in the doorway.

She stood there, the lights of the room shining upon her, all else in darkness, like a picture illumined from above. The smile was still on her face, and I believed that it was for me.

Do not think I was over-sentimental, but my years were only twenty-four, and there are moments in every man’s life then that he wishes to remember.

The door closed and the darkness became complete, but, far from being oppressed by it, I felt a certain exhilaration and I trod with light step. The night was cloudy but cold, and, not caring to return just then to my bare little room, I turned into Pennsylvania Avenue and walked toward the Capitol.

Mists and clouds were gathered around the lofty walls of the unfinished building, yet the faint gleam of white stone and marble showed through the veil of vapour, though all the rest of the city was buried in darkness, save for the few lights that glimmered far apart.

My mental elation communicating itself to my muscles, I felt less than ever like sleep, and the brisk cold, too, inciting me to physical exertion, I walked on up Pennsylvania Avenue, avoiding the pools of water and the mud holes. Street lamps burned dimly at two corners, their lights flickering in the February wind, but I thought little of these things and continued swiftly on, the Capitol emerging from the clouds and mists as I approached, though its walls still remained shapeless and undefined, lofty columns of vapour against the darker vapours of the night.

►   ▲