21 Plain Talk
The night was not dark, a clear moon sailing in silver skies, and a skim of snow covering the earth. The wind too was softened, having shifted to the southwest, and the air felt pleasant. So the schoolmaster and I strolled on together, and for a little while were silent. I was attracted to him at that moment despite his reputation for physical cowardice. In truth he had shown none in the presence of the conspirators, and he had been so bold there and had cut so directly to the marrow of the matter that I could find it in my heart to forgive him for a defect, the cause of which was nature.
I glanced once at his face, pale usually, but lighted now by an inward fire, and I asked:
“What made you go there to-night and speak to those men as you did, Mr. Underwood?”
“It is because I love my country, and would see no part of it wanting in its duty,” he replied. “This talk of a Western empire is but a dream, as vague and unsubstantial as any that ever passed in Hamlet’s mind. The people do not want it, nor in truth do those men themselves in the house back yonder. They are filled with anger against the East, because of the great disaster that has befallen us and the criminal folly of St. Clair; so they say words to-day which they do not mean to-morrow. Even among those conspirators there are but two, perhaps three, who are really dangerous—Mr. Carew, because he has seen the Old World and dreams of the honours and station which the republic of the New can not give; and Curry, who is one of those foolish men, so headstrong that they can see only what they desire at the moment. The third, the doubtful character, is your cousin Jasper, whom I can not fathom.”
“How did you know of this plan?” I asked.
“Know of it?” he said, and he laughed for the first time. “They have scarce sought to conceal it. We are breeding here, Mr. Lee, a race hasty and hot, but true of heart. It is not a race that will ever go masked. What it intends to do it will announce to all the world; and if the intent is bad, frequently it will not do it.”
I saw that he was moved by strong emotion, and I was glad to hear him talk. Why he had chosen to say these things to me I did not know, but I believed it to be the accident of the moment—he was a recluse, even under a ban, as it were—and he wished to speak his feelings to some one. I had known the desire myself, and I had known, too, what an effort it was to crush it.
He laid much of his soul bare to me, and then I found that he, too, dreamed dreams. He would see the republic spread across all this Western country, and the fertile lands become the home of a great race.
“As for their wars with the savages,” he said, “they are terrible for the moment, but they will pass; the Indians are like a cork that the wave of the whites picks up and carries on. I feel sorrow for them—at times—but what else can happen?”
I had listened to the dream of another man, not long ago—the dream of the great Miami chief, Mechecunnaqua, and his mind then seemed to me to be like Underwood’s now; but it was not possible that both dreams should come true—the one destroyed the other.
His had been a silent tongue. I knew by the way his words flowed now when the check was once removed. His pale face was illumined more and more by the vividness of his thoughts. Kentucky, he said, which was about to become a State, should feel an increase of honour, because of her great sufferings. It would be said of her hereafter that she was the mother of the West; it had been her duty as the first outpost beyond the mountains to fight for all that vast empire, and so far she had not failed; now, when the Government in the East was weak, it behooved the people in Kentucky to prove themselves strong, and, as much as they could, redress the balance.
He found in me a willing listener. I could not contradict anything that he said, nor, in truth, did I seek to do so; it was my wish rather that we had among us more such as he. But when he ceased I made one request of him.
“Will you not, as far as you may, keep Mr. Carew’s complicity hidden from his daughter?” I asked.
He looked intently at me, and I felt my face redden through the tan. But there was a rare smile in his eyes when he gave my hand a hearty clasp and said:
“It is right that you should make this request, John Lee; and Miss Carew, whose truth is enough to redeem her father’s falsity, shall be protected, if it lies within my power.”
I thanked him, but he had not come to the end.
“I have more to say,” he continued, “and do not censure me if I use plain speech, because it is of your interest that I am thinking. You love Rose Carew. Nay, man, do not flush and grow angry; it is nothing of which one need be ashamed. Why not stay here and win her, and become a great man in this new State? It lies within your power.”
“Which?” I asked, “to win Miss Carew or to rise to a place of importance?”
“Both,” he replied, and his eyes would not turn aside from the gaze of mine.
“She could only feel aversion for me,” I said, “and even were it not so, how can I ask her to unite her pure life with that of a man whose history is like mine? My place is there,” and I pointed toward the northwest, where the great wilderness lay.
“The past is the past; it is not the present,” he said.
“No, but the present is based upon it, and grows out of it.”
He said nothing more upon the subject, and presently we parted. I awoke early the next morning, wondering what course Underwood would take, and in some fear, too, on Rose Carew’s account. But freshly returned to her people from captivity, it seemed hard to me that she should now hear her father called a traitor.