Emerson Hough

“ Here you are, and here you stay, until—until I die or until God returns. You are the only woman in it for me when you step into that house there. You are its mistress. I rule here. But what you want shall be yours at any time you want it. You can think of nothing in the world that shall not be brought to you when you ask for it. My servants are yours. Choose from them as many as you like."
"Slaves for your slave? You are full of kindness indeed! But I shall never be what you delicately call the mistress of Tallwoods." ”

“ But I know that our diplomacy is all a-tangle. The reports are at variance, and we get them colored by partisan politics. This slavery agitation is simply a political game, at which both parties and all sides are merely playing. Party desirability, party safety—that is the cry in the South as much as in the North. Yet all the time I know, as you know, of the hundreds of thousands of men who are leaving Europe to come to this country. A wave of moral change is bound to sweep across the North. Madam, we dwell on the eve of revolution here in America as well as in Europe. ”

“ That young man Hector, he says that none in the country is so rich as Mr. Dunwodee—he does not know how rich he is himself. And such romance!"
"Jeanne, I forbid you to continue!" The eyes of her mistress had a dangerous sparkle.
"I obey, Madame, I am silent. But listen! I have followed the fortunes of madame quite across the sea. As madame knows, I do not lack intelligence. I have read—many romances, my heart not lacking interest. Always I have read, I have dreamed, of some man who should carry me away, who should oblige me—Ah, Madame! what girl has not in her soul some hero? ”

“ This is Missouri soil."
"It's no case for courts," answered the other sternly. "This will come before the court of God Himself."
A bitter smile played over the face of the Missourian. "You preach. Yet you yourself are lawless as the worst law-breakers. Who made our laws—you, or the whole people of this country? And if God is your court, why did you have no better aid to-night. It's the long arm wins. You see, we will fight."
"That I agree. It's force that wins, but not brute force. You will see."
"Argument!" exclaimed Dunwody. "The answer is here at our feet—it's in blood." ”

“ A country of tenures so mixed, of theories so diverse, could scarcely have been called a land of common government. It arrogated to itself, over all its dominion, the title of a free republic, yet by its own mutual covenant of national law, any owner of slaves in the southern states might pursue what he called his property across the dividing line, and invoke, in any northern state, the support of the state or national officers to assist him in taking back his slaves. As a republic we called ourselves even then old and stable. ”

“ The interest of the entire country is focused there to-day. Ah, yonder is the crux of all our compromise! Safe within the fold herself, that is to say above the fatal line of thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes, her case is simply irresistible in interest to-day, both for those who argue for and those who talk against the extension of slavery into our other territories."
"Yet your administration, to-day, my dear Sir, calls this 'finality.' Believe me, it is no more than a compromise with truth and justice! The entire North demands that slavery shall halt."
"The entire South refuses it!" ”

“ Dunwody nodded. "As when Missouri was admitted, for instance," he said smilingly.
"Precisely!" rejoined Clayton, biting meditatively at a plucked grass stem. "The South gets a state, the North demands one! When Missouri came in, Illinois also was admitted—one free against one slave state. Politics,—nothing more. Missouri would break the balance of power if she came alone and unpaired as a slave state, so the North paired her with Maine, and let her in, with a string tied to her! Slavery already existed here, as in all these other states that had been admitted with it existent. ”

“ Well, can I make you understand, that was what I felt over yonder, in that revolution, in mid-Europe. I felt it was just like seeing little plants set out, to grow. Those poor people! Those poor people! They're coming over here, to grow, here in America, in this great country out here, in this West. They'll grow, like plants extending, like grass multiplying, going out, edging westward, all the time. Ah, thousands of them, millions yet to come, plants, little human plants, with the right to live born with them. ”

“ There are things which ought not to be; but if you vote for oppression, if you vote yonder in your legislature for the protection of this institution, if you must some day vote yonder in Congress for its extension, for the right to carry it into other lands—the same lands where now the feet of freedom-seekers are hurrying from all over the world, so strangely, so wonderfully—then you vote for a compromise that God never intended to go through or to endure. ”

“ The hands of Josephine St. Auban were raised in the sign of her religion. Her lips moved in some swift prayer. She could hear the short, hard breathing of the man who stood near her, grimed, blistered, disfigured, in his effort to bring away into the light for a time at least this specter, so long set apart from all the usual ways of life.
"She has been there for years," he said, at last, thickly. "We kept her, I kept her, here for her sake. In this country it would be a sort of disgrace for any—any—feeble—person, you know, to go to an institution. Those are our graves over yonder in the yard. ”

“ There was no occupant of the saloon excepting one, who rose as she entered, hesitating. On the instant a sudden change swept over Dunwody's face. Was it at first assuredness it had borne? "I am glad that you have thus honored me," he said simply.
"It is much pleasanter to move about as one may," she answered. "But where is our friend, Captain Carlisle, this morning? Is he ill, or simply unmindful of one so unimportant as myself? I have not heard from him."
"He left the boat last night," answered Dunwody gravely, his eyes fixed on her face. ”

“ How strange a thing is man! That is the first argument he makes to a woman, the first promise he makes. Yet at once he forgets the argument and forgets the promise. What you desire is to be not my servant, but my master, I should say. You fancy you are my master? Well, then, the situation seems to me not without its amusing features. I am a prisoner, I am set free. I am sought to be again put in durance, under duress, by a man who claims to be my humble servitor—who also claims to be a gentleman! ”

“ CHAPTER IX TALLWOODS Meantime, events which might have held interest in certain circles in Washington had they been known, passed on their course, and toward that very region which had half in jest been named as the storm center of the day—the state of Missouri, anomalous, inchoate, discordant, half North, half South, itself the birth of compromise and sired by political jealousy; whither, against her will, voyaged a woman, herself engine of turbulence, doubt and strife, and in company now of a savage captor who contemplated nothing but establishing her for his own use in his own home. ”

“ Auban, yes, she pauses now with the cooper, Hector Fournier! Does one find such beauty, such distinction, such gentleness, such kindness, such courteousness elsewhere than among the nobility?"
"When did she come?" demanded Dunwody quietly.
"But yesterday, upon the boat; without announcement. She is at this very moment at my house yonder, busy with that baby, Josephine St. Auban Jeanne Marie Fournier, named for a countess! But do not turn back! Monsieur himself has not yet seen the baby. Come!" For one moment Dunwody paused; then, quietly, he accompanied Hector, making no comment. ”

“ For three quarters of a century this country had grown; for half a century it had been divided, one section fighting against another in all but arms. We spoke of America even then as a land of the free, but it was not free; nor on the other hand was it wholly slave. Never in the history of the world has there been so great a land, nor one of so diverse systems of government.
Before these travelers, for instance, who paused here at the head of the Ohio River, there lay the ancient dividing line between the South and the North. ”

“ The government at Washington perforce looked on, shivering, dreading lest this thing might fail, dreading also lest it might not fail. It was a day of compromise, of cowardice, of politics played as politics; a day of that political unwisdom which always is dangerous—the fear of riding straight, the ignorance of the saving quality of honest courage. Wherefore, matters went on thus, fit foundation now building for that divided and ill-ordered house of this republic, whose purification could only be found in the cleansing catastrophe of fire so soon to come. ”

“ Men will fight for that again, here, on this soil, not under man-made laws, but under a higher and greater law. You love my body. You do not love my mind. I love them, both. Yes, I am student of the law. Humanity! Is it not larger than we? Is this narrow, selfish life of yours all you can see—of life—of this law?"
"Yes," said Dunwody, grinning painfully. ”

“ But have not your brilliant faculties, my dear Countess, suggested any solution? We learned to value your counsel over yonder."
"What could a mere woman do in a matter vast as this? My General, not all the wisdom of this country has suggested a remedy. I am but a woman and not wise. He who attempts to solve this slavery question must do what no statesman in all history has been able to do, what human wisdom here has failed to do for fifty years or more. America has spent thirty years of statesmanship on this one question, and is just where it started. ”

“ But Europe does not understand America. America does not understand herself. I ask only that the great men of that country shall see the great problems of this. There we could win freedom by sword and gun. Here also that must yet be done. The time for such means has not yet arrived. Yet here also evil cries aloud. Soon war must come, here also—bloody war. We ask funds for Hungary. America soon will need funds for herself."
"Ah, you mean this problem of the North and South—of slavery." ”

“ Who thinks of a woman? Who is there whose hand is not raised against her? Each member of her own sex is her enemy. Each member of the opposite sex is her foe. One breath, one suspicion, and she becomes fair game, even under the strictest code among men; and then, the man who did not dare would be despised because he would not dare. Her life is one long war against suspicion. It is one long war against selfishness, a continued defense against desire, gratification. She is, even to-day, valued as chattel—under all the laws and conventions built about her runs the chattel idea. ”

“ Dunwody stood supporting himself on his rifle, the stock of it under his arm. "You call this peace!" he said. "We didn't intend to attack you. We're after a fugitive slave. I'm a United States marshal. You've killed some of our men, and you fired, first. You've no right—Who are you?" he cried, suddenly pushing closer to his prisoner in the half light. "I thought I knew your voice! You—Carlisle—What are you doing here?" ”

“ In all this work Lily, late servant of Josephine St. Auban, assumed a certain prominence, this being given to her not wholly with wisdom. Although but little negro blood remained in her veins, this former slave had not risen above the life that had surrounded her. Ignorant, emotional, at times working herself into a frenzy of religious zeal, she was farthest of all from being a sober judge or a fair-minded agent for the views of others. Yet in time her two guardians, Carlisle and Kammerer, unwisely allowed her more and more liberty. ”

“ Captain Edward Carlisle, soldier as he was, martinet as he was, felt a curious sensation of helplessness seize upon him as he met her, steady gaze, her alluring smile; he could not tell what this prisoner might do. He cursed the fate which had assigned such a duty, cursed especially that fate which forced a gallant soldier to meet so superb a woman as this under handicap so hard. ”

“ This country, as Thomas Jefferson said so long ago, still has the wolf by the ear, but has not killed it and dare not let it go. Out there—where I have been—in the West—there the new battle must be fought. Now, my General, what difference, whether America shall help Europe. or Europe shall help America? The battle for democracy must be fought, in this generation, perhaps again in the next. What would be the result of that war, if either section won to the destruction of this Union? Ah! there, my General, is the danger to Hungary, the danger to Europe, to the cause of freedom and humanity. ”