Alfred Henry Lewis

“ It is a moonless night, and what light the stars might furnish is withheld by a blanket-screen of thick clouds. No night could be darker; for, lest an occasional star find a cloud-rift and peer through, a fog drifts up from the river. This is good for the English, since it hides their watch fires, which one by one are lost in the mists. The darkness deepens until even the hawk-eyed hunting-shirt men, trained by much night fighting to a nocturnal keenness of vision, are unable to make out their nearest comrades.
The pitch blackness, and the fog chill creeping over him, tell on Papa Plauche. ”

“ Storri looked into Richard's eyes; they were less ferocious, but infinitely more relentless than his own. There was that, too, in the other's look which appalled the Tartar soul of Storri—something in the drawn brow, the eye like agate, the jaw as iron as the hand! And ever more and a little more that fearful grip came grinding. The onyx eyes glared in terror; the tortured forehead, white as paper, became spangled with drops of sweat.
There arose a smothered feline screech as from a tiger whose back is broken in a deadfall. ”

“ Peg began to weep, and I could hear the sharp catching of her sobs. Suddenly the moan came sighing up to me:
“Oh, if there were no such word as right or justice or duty, but only love—just love!” Then with a quick backward twist of her form that was like an impulse, and as replete of a swift grace as any suppleness of that long ago leopard whereof she would so often make me think, Peg turned herself in my arms, and with her own encircling my neck lay crying on my bosom. ”

“ Aaron does not look at Van Ness as he thus brings the secrets of his soul to the light of day, but wears the manner of one preoccupied and in the spell of self. Van Ness shudders as he listens; and, while the slow words follow one another in hateful swart procession, a chill creeps over him, as from the evil monstrous nearness of something elemental, abnormal, fearsome. A sweat breaks out on his face. Neither his wits nor his tongue can frame remark for either good or ill. The brooding Aaron seems not to notice, but falls into a black muse. ”

“ At twenty-six, Captain Jack Paul is the very flower of a quarter-deck nobility. He has not the advantage of commanding height; but the lean, curved nose, clean jaw, firmly-lined month, steady stare of the brown eyes, coupled at the earliest smell of opposition with a frowning falcon trick of brow like a threat, are as a commission to him, signed and countersigned by nature, to be ever a leader of men. In figure he is five feet seven inches, and the scales telling his weight consent to one hundred and forty-five pounds. His hands and feet are as small as a woman’s. ”

“ I remark on men, and upon their conditions of the moral, the mental, and the physical!—on the indomitable courage of restoration as against the ceaseless industry of decay!—on the high and the low, the good and the bad, the weak and the strong, the right and the wrong, the top and the bottom, the past and the future, the white and the black, and all those other things that are not!—and I laugh at all. ”

“ Full of this urbane purpose, they wheel their bristling ranks on the town. Approaching double-quick, they casually lick up, as with a tongue of flame, a brace of abortive blockhouses which obstruct their path. At this, an interior fort opens fire with grapeshot and shrapnel, and the hunting-shirt men spring upon it with the ruthless ferocity of panthers. To quench it is no more than the fighting work of a moment. The General, with his flag already on the ramparts of Fort St. Michael, now feels his clutch at the very throat of Pensacola. ”

“ She could seize on no one element as distinct and separate from a whirling whole, made up of blur and smoke and yell and rifle crash, with feathers dancing and little ponies charging like meteors! She was sure only of the rock-bound fact to which she clung that Mr. Masterson never moved from where he stood. She heard the spitting, whip-like crack of the Winchester, so different from the menacing voice of the buffalo gun, as working it with the rapidity of a bell-punch he fired it faster than she could count. ”

“ She hardly required those warnings of Senator Hanway; there was no wish now to insult or humble him. In truth, Mrs. Hanway-Harley was in the best possible temper to carry forward her side of the conference in manner most creditable to herself and most helpful for her purposes. More than ever, since she had heard him, she knew the perilous sway this man must own over her daughter. While he talked, the deep, true tones were like a spell; the great, tender, persistent will of a man in loving earnest seemed as with a thousand soft, resistless hands to draw her whither it would. ”

“ He could work cattle; he could rope, throw, and hog-tie his steer; he could keep up his end at flanking, branding, and ear-marking in a June corral; he could saddle and ride a wild, unbroken bronco; he could make baking-powder biscuit so well flavored and light as to compel the compliments of those jealous epicures of the cow-camps who devoured them.
Yet Chicken Bill would not work on the ranges. There were no cards permitted in the camps, and whiskey was debarred as if each bottle held a rattlesnake. Altogether a jovial soul, and one given to revelry, would fly from them in disgust. ”

“ On they crawl, broadside talking to broadside; only the Americans are smarter with their guns, and fire three to the Drake’s two.
Twilight now invests the scene in gray, as the sun sinks behind the close, dark Irish headlands to the west. Night, cloudless and serene, comes down; the round, full moon shines out, and its mild rays mingle and merge with the angry glare of the battle-lanterns. Captain Paul Jones from his narrow quarterdeck watches the Drake through his night glass.
“Good! Very good!” he murmurs, as the Drake’s foremast is splintered by a round shot. ”

“ I had been a ragged boy about the streets. I had grown up ignorant; I had climbed, if climbing be the word, unaided of any pedigree or any pocketbook, into a place of riches and autocratic sway. Wherefore, to have surrounded my daughter with the children of ones who had owned those advantages which I missed—folk of the purple, all!—and they to accept her, would have been a victory, and to do me honor. I shall not ask the pardon of men because I longed for it; nor do I scruple to confess the blow my hopes received when I learned how those ambitions would never find a crown. ”

“ Even as I gazed, the ground under my eyes turned from a new spring green to white, while the trees across were snow from roots to very finger-tips, and showed in milky fretwork against the low dullness of the sky.
As I stood watching these white changes in the face of things—for the spectacle would charm me like mesmerism and made me forget my forebodes—the General laid a gentle hand upon my shoulder. This, too, had its side to startle, for the General, while as tender as a woman, was in nowise demonstrative, and not one to be patting your shoulder or slapping your back. ”

“ The moment the English approach within two hundred yards of the General's line, a sheet of fire hisses all along. The English melt away like smoke. They break and run, seeking refuge in the cross ditches which drain the stubble lands. Once in the ditches, they are made to sit fast by the watchful hunting-shirt men, whose aim is death and who shoot at every exposed two square inches of English flesh and blood.
All day the English must crouch in the saving mud and water of those ditches, and it ruffles their self-regard. With darkness for a shield, Sir Edward brings them off. ”

“ Most formidable is Aaron’s rear guard, the thunderous Luther Martin—coarse, furious, fearless—gay clothes stained and soiled—ruffles foul and grimy—eye fierce, bleary, bloodshot—nose bulbous, red as a carbuncle—a hoarse, roaring, threatening voice—the Thersites of the hour. Never sober, he rolls into court as drunk as a Plantagenet. Ever dangerous, he reads, hears, sees everything, and forgets nothing. Quick, rancorous, headlong as a fighting bull, he lowers his horns against Wirt, whenever that polished one puts himself within forensic reach. ”

“ It gives the tender Aimee a dull ache of the heart. A lone feeling of helplessness overwhelms her, as fears rise up for her poor love that, in so short a space, has become the one sweet thing in life. True, she herself is a Bourbon! But with the bar sinister. How then shall she, obscure and poor and by the left hand, hope to sustain herself in the heart of her lover against the wiles and siren wooings of one who is at once the most legitimate, the most beautiful, and the most wealthy woman in France! ”

“ The confident vigor of the reputable old gentleman disconcerted him and made him wary.
“I am a taxpayer,” said the reputable old gentleman; “yes,” donning an air as though the thunders and lightnings of politics dwelt in the word, “yes, your honor, a taxpayer. I do not know this boy, but here are his father and sister to speak for him.” Then, as he caught sight of the captain who had ordered him out of the station: “There is a man, your honor, who by the hands of his minions drove me from a public police office—me, a taxpayer!” ”

“ Storri could not have told whether he loved or hated Dorothy; he was only conscious of a fire-fed passion that consumed him. He must possess her; or, if not that, then he must grind her into the earth. He would torture her as he was tortured; he would blacken her by blackening Mr. Harley; with her pride in the dirt, with disgrace upon her, where then was that man who would wed her? The daughter of a forger—she would stain the name of wife! Richard might have her then; Storri would give her to him for a revenge! ”

“ I had lived a life half-bitted, and for the main with bridle on my neck; the last I cared for were the frowns or the smiles of folk. If it were a woman to talk against the teeth of my fancy, I would turn my back on her; if a man, I had a way to gag his tongue if it should be no better than the butt of my pistol. And yet, however loose my habit or dull my knowledge of those matters, I did not go without a fashion of cold shock on Peg's behalf when I was so far my own man again as to dwell on our position—we, plodding through the snow and the darkness, locked in that carriage. ”

“ The harsh horse-face is seamed of care and worn by sickness; but the slim form is still erect and lance-like, and the blue eyes gleam as hawkishly dangerous as when, behind his low mud walls with the faithful Coffee and his hunting-shirt men, he broke down England's pride at New Orleans. Everywhere the people press about him; for republics are not ungrateful, and for once in a way of politics it is the setting, not the rising sun upon which all eyes are centered. ”

“ While young Aaron goes stepping up and down the Litchfield causeways, as though strutting in Jermyn Street or Leicester Square; while thus he plays the fine gentleman with ruffles and silks and shark-skin sword, skimming now the law, now flattering the sighing belles, now devouring the literature of war, he has ever his finger on the pulse, and his ear to the heart of his throbbing times. It is he of Litchfield who hears earliest of Lexington and Bunker Hill. In a moment he is all action. Off come the fine feathers, and that shark-skin, gilt-hilt sword. ”

“ I pity the man—beset as he is by situations to which he is unequal. Lafayette cannot long restrain the sinister forces that confront him. He has neither the head nor the heart nor the hand for it. This is a time for grapeshot. I only wish that I might be in command of those thirty cannon parked about the palace, and have with me, even for a day, my old war-dogs of the Ranger and the Richard. Believe me, I should offer the mob convincing reasons in support of conservatism and justice; I should teach it forbearance at the muzzles of my guns. ”

“ I wanted only Peg, would heed no other call, and whether it were right or wrong or black or white I cared not. Caught fast in the mills, I was wholly ground between Peg and my mighty love for her. In a supreme egotism and the selfishness that goes wanting heart or conscience, I would set torch to the skies before I gave her up.
It is the fair wellhead of amazement how a man is thus strange to himself; how he will defeat his own best prophecy and be as opposite as night and day to all he promised. Folk have never accounted me weak, and I myself would have said I was a man of stone. ”

“ At sight of Richard, however, Dorothy's fortitude gave way, and went whirling down-stream in a tempest of tears and sobs. With her poor hands outstretched as if for protection, she felt her way blindly into the shelter of those arms; and Richard drew her close and closer, holding her to his heart as though she were a child. He asked no question, said no word, sure only as granite that, whatever the trouble, it should not take her from him. These rock-founded natures, self-reliant, world-defying, made all of love and iron, are a mighty comfort to weak ones ”

“ CHAPTER XIX—THE SON OF THE WIDOW VAN FLANGE WHEN now I was rich with double millions, I became harrowed of new thoughts and sown with new ambitions. It was Blossom to lie at the roots of it—Blossom, looking from her window of young womanhood upon a world she did not understand, and from which she drew away. The world was like a dark room to Blossom, with an imagined fiend to harbor in every corner of it. She must go forth among people of manners and station. The contact would mend her shyness; with time and usage she might find herself a pleasant place in life. ”

“ The sulky, hungry hunting-shirt men scowl at the General. He scowls back at them, with the wicked ferocity of a tiger and an iron determination not to be revoked. And thus they stand glaring—one against hundreds! Then the courage of the hungry hundreds oozes away, and they fall back before that menacing apparition which glowers at them along the rifle barrel. They melt away by the rear, those hunting-shirt men, and lurk off to their quarters—ashamed of their weakness, yet afraid to go on. ”

“ To be a senator is to wear a proudest title in the land. In this instance, to be a senator means a staggering blow to that Schuyler-Hamilton tribe whose foe he is. More; it opens a pathway to the injury of Washington. Aaron would be even for what long ago war slights the big general put upon him, slights which he neither forgets nor forgives. He smiles a pale, thin-lipped smile as he pictures with the eye of rancorous imagination the look which will spread across the face of Washington, when he hears of the rusty Schuyler’s overthrow, and him who brought that overthrow about. ”

“ Her latest glance, as our day died in the west, was for it; and when the valley and all about were dark, her last rays crowned it. And the vivid day, with her love for that unregardful mountain, the rich day wasting herself on the desert peak that would neither respond nor understand, was as the marvel of Peg's love.
It is all the mystery that never ends; woman in her love-reasons is not to be fathomed nor made plain. The cry of her soul is to love rather than to be loved; her happiness lives in what she gives, not what she gets. This turns for the good fortunes of men ”

“ Hanway-Harley the last secret her bosom hid. There was no sympathy, nothing of mother's love; Mrs. Hanway-Harley, in the narrowness of her egotism, could consider no feelings not her own.
"Don't; don't touch me!" she cried. "Don't add hypocrisy to your ingratitude!" Then, in tones that seemed to pillory Dorothy as reprobate and lost, she cried: "You have disgraced me—disgraced your father, your uncle, and me!"
"Another word," cried Dorothy, moving with a resentful swoop towards the bell, "and I'll call Uncle Pat to judge between us! Yes; he is in his study. Uncle Pat shall hear you!" ”

“ The General, doubly quiet, doubly stern, issues forth of that ordeal another man. He is as one who lives because it is his duty, and not for love of life. Plainly, his hopes like his heart are buried with the blooming Rachel. In his soul he lays her death to the doors of Statesman Adams and Statesman Clay; throughout the years to follow he will never forget nor forgive. To the end he will cultivate his hatred of them, and tend it as he might a flower. ”

“ The boy husband and the faded middle-aged wife remain a year in Albany. There a daughter is born. She will grow up as the beautiful Theodosia, and, when the maternal Theodosia is no more, be all in all to her father. Young Aaron kisses baby Theodosia, calls the stars his brothers, and walks the sky. For once, in a way, that old innate egotism is well-nigh dead in his heart.
About this time the beaten English sail away for home, and young Aaron gives up Albany. Albany has three thousand; New York-is a pulsating metropolis of twenty-two thousand souls. ”

“ It is not a hand's-breadth behind a miracle how a girl—and you a steady man of years, and twice her age—will wrap you in perplexities like a parcel. It was so with me; the witch would wind and unwind me as though I were a ball of knitting-yarn! She would darn and patch her laughter with me!
“Watch-dog,” said Peg, severely, “watchdog, you know you are jealous! And how long do you count it since I told you that jealously was but love turned upside down?” This came off trippingly, and with superior wave of wrist, as settling a thing beyond debate. ”

“ Harley's growing sense of helplessness as he, Storri, set forth how Mr. Harley lay in the toils. Now, when Mr. Harley was prostrate beneath the harrow of every alarm, Storri, sure of success, went off on an easier tack—that is, easier for Mr. Harley.
"But why do we lose our self-control?" cried Storri, voice and manner changed from black to white, clouds to sunshine; "we are men, not angry children! See, now, I want nothing a gentleman of honor might not grant. I love your daughter—good! a Russian nobleman loves your daughter! ”

“ Thus does she break upon young Aaron—young Aaron, who has said that he would no more love a woman for her beauty than a man for his money, and is to be won only by her who, mentally and sentimentally, meets him half way. This last Madam Prévost does; and, from the moment he meets her to the hour of her death, she draws him and holds him like a magnet. It illustrates the inexplicable in love, that this cool, cynical one, whose very youth is an iron element of hardest strength, should be fascinated and fettered by a worn, middle-aged woman with eyes of faded gray. ”

“ Suddenly her head was in its old resting place over my heart, with the cloak to again become its cover.
“Watch-dog,” whispered Peg, and I might tell how deeply she was stricken by the quaver of her voice, as much as by a trembling that swept her as a gust rumples the surface of a tarn; “watch-dog, I felt that I would not live unless I saw you. Do you contemn me? Do you own shame for your little friend? I could not help it; I sent for Rivera, and made him fetch this carriage. We are alone—hidden from the world's eyes. I have torn a night from the hands of Time to be no one's night save ours. ”

“ Fill his pockets with gold, give him wine of his fancy, have the woman he loves by his side, so surround him that the eye, the ear, the stomach, the heart, the pocket, or whatever is the soul of his soul may be appealed to and enthralled—this artist, with whom love is a religion, wine a cult, music a passion, and pictures are as dreams! ”

“ Then from a corner of the East Room I announced the fact with a loud voice.
It was as though my words bore a charm; in a twinkling the White House proper approached desertion. Folk decent and civilized might again move about, and quiet ones have peace. The mob never came back, for I made it my duty that no lack of punch should occur on the lawn; there the uproarious remained and drank, and at last—those who could walk—they drifted away, each deviously to his habitat, and something akin to quiet settled again about the eaves and rafters of the mansion. ”

“ All this wild driftwood of conjecture came riding down on the swift, tumbling currents of the San Reve's thoughts, and to her these mad conclusions were as prophecy. What should she do—she and her poor love? She must not lose her idol—her Storri! What should she do? She had written this Mr. Storms of the French shares and nothing had come of that! Should she disclose herself to Miss Harley? Of what avail? What woman was ever withheld from wedding a man by the word of that man's mistress? The San Reve could have scorned herself for a fool! ”

“ For myself, and I take no shame for it, I say freely that of the charges laid against her by common tongue, I was convinced of her innocence by the mere beauty of her face, just as the loveliness of that Greek girl aforetime convinced the judges and wrought a verdict in her favor. There be flowers so purely beautiful as to refuse and refute a stain; and such a blossom was the lustrous Peg O'Neal. ”

“ Richard said that no woman was ever loved as he loved Dorothy. Dorothy the beloved replied that no man was ever loved as she loved Richard. Both believed both statements as they did the Word. And yet Adam said the same thing when, wandering in Eden, he first met lovely Eve, and every lover has said the same thing ever since. Every fire boasts itself the hottest, every lover does the same. It is the virtue of love that this is so, and none will object while Dorothy and Richard work out their tinted destiny on lines of paradise. ”

“ Calhoun would have led us to the left where no man could be sure of national continuance over night. But the General ruled; he was for the right hand. By his iron courage, and the brisk, white clearness of his mental lights, the General was to triumph. As descendant of such victory the States were to be unified and secession beaten down. Nor shall that hour find its morning in all time when the mighty excellences of the General's labors are not to have their evidence, and the tree he planted bear into the hands of men its fruits upon the earth. ”