Homepage
Login
Profile
BookClubs
dmBox
Read Ebook: 54-40 or Fight by Hough Emerson Keller Arthur Ignatius Illustrator
Font size:
Background color:
Text color:
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page
Ebook has 1800 lines and 90672 words, and 36 pages
CHAPTER
THE MAKERS OF MAPS
"Then you offer me no hope, Doctor?" The gray mane of Doctor Samuel Ward waved like a fighting crest as he made answer:
"Not the sort of hope you ask." A moment later he added: "John, I am ashamed of you."
The cynical smile of the man I called my chief still remained upon his lips, the same drawn look of suffering still remained upon his gaunt features; but in his blue eye I saw a glint which proved that the answer of his old friend had struck out some unused spark of vitality from the deep, cold flint of his heart.
"I never knew you for a coward, Calhoun," went on Doctor Ward, "nor any of your family I give you now the benefit of my personal acquaintance with this generation of the Calhouns. I ask something more of you than faint-heartedness."
The keen eyes turned upon him again with the old flame of flint which a generation had known--a generation, for the most part, of enemies. On my chief's face I saw appear again the fighting flush, proof of his hard-fibered nature, ever ready to rejoin with challenge when challenge came.
"Did not Saul fall upon his own sword?" asked John Calhoun. "Have not devoted leaders from the start of the world till now sometimes rid the scene of the responsible figures in lost fights, the men on whom blame rested for failures?"
"Cowards!" rejoined Doctor Ward. "Cowards, every one of them! Were there not other swords upon which they might have fallen--those of their enemies?"
"Free?" The old doctor shrugged his shoulders and smiled at the arch pro-slavery exponent.
"Then, since you mention it, yes!" retorted Calhoun fretfully. "But I shall not go into the old argument of those who say that black is white, that South is North. It is only for my own race that I plan a wider America. But then--" Calhoun raised a long, thin hand. "Why," he went on slowly, "I have just told you that I have failed. And yet you, my old friend, whom I ought to trust, condemn me to live on!"
Doctor Samuel Ward took snuff again, but all the answer he made was to waggle his gray mane and stare hard at the face of the other.
"Yes," said he, at length, "I condemn you to fight on, John;" and he smiled grimly.
"Why, look at you, man!" he broke out fiercely, after a moment. "The type and picture of combat! Good bone, fine bone and hard; a hard head and bony; little eye, set deep; strong, wiry muscles, not too big--fighting muscles, not dough; clean limbs; strong fingers; good arms, legs, neck; wide chest--"
"Then you give me hope?" Calhoun flashed a smile at him.
"No, sir! If you do your duty, there is no hope for you to live. If you do not do your duty, there is no hope for you to die, John Calhoun, for more than two years to come--perhaps five years--six. Keep up this work--as you must, my friend--and you die as surely as though I shot you through as you sit there. Now, is this any comfort to you?"
A gray pallor overspread my master's face. That truth is welcome to no man, morbid or sane, sound or ill; but brave men meet it as this one did.
"Time to do much!" he murmured to himself. "Time to mend many broken vessels, in those two years. One more fight--yes, let us have it!"
But Calhoun the man was lost once more in Calhoun the visionary, the fanatic statesman. He summed up, as though to himself, something of the situation which then existed at Washington.
"Yes, the coast is clearer, now that Webster is out of the cabinet, but Mr. Upshur's death last month brings in new complications. Had he remained our secretary of state, much might have been done. It was only last October he proposed to Texas a treaty of annexation."
"Yes, and found Texas none so eager," frowned Doctor Ward.
"But, John, another will have to make it, the one way or the other," said his friend.
"Yes!" The long hand smote on the table.
"President Tyler has offered you Mr. Upshur's portfolio as secretary of state?"
"Yes!" The long hand smote again.
Doctor Ward made no comment beyond a long whistle, as he recrossed his legs. His eyes were fixed on Calhoun's frowning face. "There will be events!" said he at length, grinning.
"I have not yet accepted," said Calhoun. "If I do, it will be to bring Texas and Oregon into this Union, one slave, the other free, but both vast and of a mighty future for us. That done, I resign at once."
"Will you accept?"
Calhoun's answer was first to pick up a paper from his desk. "See, here is the despatch Mr. Pakenham brought from Lord Aberdeen of the British ministry to Mr. Upshur just two days before his death. Judge whether Aberdeen wants liberty--or territory! In effect he reasserts England's right to interfere in our affairs. We fought one war to disprove that. England has said enough on this continent. And England has meddled enough."
Calhoun and Ward looked at each other, sober in their realization of the grave problems which then beset American statesmanship and American thought. The old doctor was first to break the silence. "Then do you accept? Will you serve again, John?"
"The situation is extremely difficult," said his friend slowly. "It must be done; but how? We are as a nation not ready for war. You as a statesman are not adequate to the politics of all this. Where is your political party, John? You have none. You have outrun all parties. It will be your ruin, that you have been honest!"
Calhoun nodded, with a thin smile. "As it chances, I need a man. Ergo, and very plainly, I must use a woman!"
They looked at each other for a moment. That Calhoun planned some deep-laid stratagem was plain, but his speech for the time remained enigmatic, even to his most intimate companion.
"There are two women in our world to-day," said Calhoun. "As to Jackson, the old fool was a monogamist, and still is. Not so much so Jim Polk of Tennessee. Never does he appear in public with eyes other than for the Do?a Lucrezia of the Mexican legation! Now, one against the other--Mexico against Austria--"
Doctor Ward raised his eyebrows in perplexity.
Calhoun nodded, with the same cold, thin smile. "Yes," he said, "I mean Mr. Pakenham's reputed mistress, his assured secret agent and spy, the beautiful Baroness von Ritz!"
He mentioned a name then well known in diplomatic and social life, when intrigue in Washington, if not open, was none too well hidden.
"That was nine years ago," commented Doctor Ward.
Doctor Ward screwed his lips for a long whistle, as he contemplated John Calhoun's thin, determined face.
"I do not care at present to say more," went on my chief; "but do you not see, granted certain motives, Polk might come into power pledged to the extension of our Southwest borders--"
"Calhoun, are you mad?" cried his friend. "Would you plunge this country into war? Would you pit two peoples, like cocks on a floor? And would you use women in our diplomacy?"
Calhoun now was no longer the friend, the humanitarian. He was the relentless machine; the idea; the single purpose, which to the world at large he had been all his life in Congress, in cabinets, on this or the other side of the throne of American power. He spoke coldly as he went on:
Ward still sat and looked at him. "My God!" said he at last, softly; but Calhoun went on:
"Strange words from you, John," commented his friend, shaking his head; "not seemly for a man who stands where you stand to-day."
"Strange weapons--yes. If I could always use my old weapons of tongue and brain, I would not need these, perhaps. Now you tell me my time is short. I must fight now to win. I have never fought to lose. I can not be too nice in agents and instruments."
The old doctor rose and took a turn up and down the little room, one of Calhoun's modest m?nage at the nation's capital, which then was not the city it is to-day. Calhoun followed him with even steps.
Doctor Ward sighed, as he shook his head. "I don't pretend to know now all you mean."
Calhoun whirled on him fiercely, with a vigor which his wasted frame did not indicate as possible.
"It would be worth the fight of a few years more, Calhoun," gravely answered his old friend. "I admit I had not dreamed this of you."
"Unless what, John? What do you mean--still hearing the rustle of skirts?"
"Yes!--unless the celebrated Baroness Helena von Ritz says otherwise!" replied he grimly.
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page