Part 16

So there was an uncomfortable hour of waiting, and as Achille came not Madame Bloommaert proposed to serve dinner without his presence. “For one laggard,” she said, “to keep twenty-eight people waiting is not right, Annette. At once, now, the dinner ought to be served.”

Annette agreed to this, but it was hard for her to smile, and to keep back tears. However, just as Judge Bloommaert was going to take Achille’s place the laggard entered. And he was in such a radiant mood that he passed over as insignificant his delay. “He was a little late—he had forgotten—but then it was remarkable that he should have remembered at all. Such news! Such glorious news? Oh, it had been a wonderful morning!”

In further conversation he said his friend Monsieur de Singeron had presented his business to a poor French family. “He is going home! He is beside himself with joy!” he continued. “He will be restored to his rank, and to his command in the royal guards! Ah! it is enough to have lived to see this day. It atones, it atones for all!” And Achille, who could neither eat nor drink, sat smiling at every one. He was sure all reasonable people must feel as he did.

“I suppose,” said Judge Bloommaert, “most of the French exiles will return, as soon as they can, to their native country.”

“They will make no delays,” answered Achille. “It was a good sight to watch them on the ship and the river bank. They were unhappy, uncertain, until they saw with their own eyes the frigate that had brought the glad news, and her captain understood. He permitted the crowd to tread her deck. He flew over them the lilies of France. He spoke to them in their own tongue. Ah, my friends, you will sympathise with these sad exiles; you will not wonder that they knelt down and wept tears of joy!”

Indeed, Achille was so transported with his own sympathies that he failed to perceive the atmosphere of dissent among his guests. True, the judge’s fellow feeling was evident, also that of the Verplanks, but the De Vries family and the Van Burens were in hot opposition to anything, or any one, whom the Federalists favoured. So the element of the room was not conducive to domestic rejoicing; and the dinner was virtually a failure. The men of the party were all anxious to return to their clubs or gathering-places; and the women, left to themselves, soon exhausted their admiration for the little Jonaca, and remembered their own homes and household affairs. And as the day waned, the thick trees surrounding the Semple house filled the rooms with shadows, and Annette—a little dismayed by Achille’s conduct—could not lift her flagging spirits to the proper pitch of hospitality. Then Joanna de Vries opened the way for an early retreat. She spoke of the restless streets, and of her father’s great age and loneliness, and immediately every one recollected duties equally as important. And as madame intended to remain with Annette, Mrs. Bloommaert and Sappha also took their departure.

It was a beautiful summer evening, and the streets, though neither crowded nor boisterous, were full of life. The happy French residents had illuminated their houses, and through their open windows came joyful sounds of rejoicing and song. Federalist orators were addressing small gatherings of people at the street corners, and Democratic orators contradicting all they said at the next block. Applause, laughter, derision, enthusiasm of one kind or another thrilled the warm air, and the joy and pang of life assailed the heart or imagination at every step.

On the Bowling Green there was a very respectable audience listening to Gouverneur Morris, who was speaking in such passionate accord with Achille’s sentiments that it was astonishing not to find Achille at his right hand.

“Mr. Morris is the most eloquent speaker of the age,” said Leonard; “let us listen a few minutes to his words.” And as they did so, they heard the embryo utterance of that remarkable “Bourbon speech” which he made a few days afterwards in Dr. Romeyn’s church in Cedar Street:

“The Bourbons are restored. Rejoice, France, Spain, Portugal, Europe, rejoice! Nations of Europe, ye are brethren once more! The family of nations is complete. Embrace, rejoice! And thou, too, my much wronged country! my dear, abused, self-murdered country! bleeding as thou art, rejoice! The Bourbons are restored. The long agony is over. The Bourbons are restored!”

“Let us go home, Leonard,” said Mrs. Bloommaert. “I never heard so much praise of the Bourbons before. My father did not approve of them. If Napoleon is done with, why did not the French people insist on a republic? They had Lafayette—and others.”

Leonard answered only, “Yes.” He did not wish to open the subject of the helplessness of France, nor point out how absurdly irrational it would be for the allied kings of Europe to found a republic in their midst. He felt weary of the subject, and the sense of the evening’s failure affected him. It had been a disappointing day, what was the good of prolonging it? Sappha and Leonard might have fallen into the mistake of doing so, but Mrs. Bloommaert knew better. At the doorstep she positively dismissed Leonard, who could not quite hide the fact that he was willing to obey her. But Sappha, who had hoped to charm away this feeling of tediousness and lassitude when they were alone, was vexed at losing her opportunity.

“It was not kind of you, mother, to send Leonard off as soon as we had done with him. He was weary, too,” she said.

“Weary! I should think he was,” answered Mrs. Bloommaert; “he must be worn out with women to-day. Such a crowd of us as Annette got together.”

“The women were not more disagreeable than the men, mother,” said Sappha. “And I believe Leonard has gone straight to the militia guard-rooms—there are nothing but men there, and so he can rest.”

“I hope he has not gone to any guard-room. Every one will be quarrelling with his neighbour to-night.”

Leonard had, indeed, gone to the guard-room of the Jersey Blues, but his visit was decidedly against his inclination. He was as weary as Mrs. Bloommaert had supposed him to be—weary of the Bourbons, and of the passionate fratching about them; weary of men, and of women also; weary of companionship of all kinds; weary of noise and strain of the restless city; weary of life itself. Vital and large as his nervous force was, it had become exhausted; feeling had wasted it, and disappointment been equally depleting. He resolved when he turned from the Bloommaert house to go direct to his rooms in the City Hotel and seek in solitude and sleep a renewal of strength and hope. On the steps of the hotel an old acquaintance accosted him, and Leonard rather reluctantly asked “if he had come to see him?”

“Yes,” answered the man. “I am in trouble, Mr. Murray, and I could think of no one but you to give me some advice. It is about Miss Martin. You remember pretty Sarah Martin? We were engaged, and she has broken the engagement. I am very unhappy. I do not know what to do. I think you can tell me.”

“I am going to my rooms now. Come upstairs with me, McKenzie.”

“I cannot. I must be back at the guard-room in half an hour. Will you not go with me? We can talk there well enough.”

Then Leonard went with McKenzie, and after the little formalities with the men present in the guard-room were over, Leonard and McKenzie took chairs to an open window and began their consultation. And very soon Leonard threw off his lassitude and became heartily interested in his friend’s trouble. Suddenly a voice, blatant and dictatorial, fell upon his consciousness. It was the voice of a man who had been a member of the company raised by Leonard, and who during the whole term of its service was a source of annoyance and disputing—a man of low birth and of a mean, envious nature, who had neither a good education nor good breeding, and, indeed, who affected to despise both. Leonard’s youth, beauty, fine culture, and fine manners, added to his great wealth and popularity, roused at once Horace Gilson’s envy; and envy in the close companionship of a military fort quickly grew to an almost uncontrollable hatred. And in Gilson’s nature hatred had its proper soil; he was insensible to the nobler qualities of humanity, and persuaded himself—and other of his kind—that Leonard’s gracious forbearance was not the fine courtesy of an officer to his subordinate, but the fear of a timid and effeminate spirit. Indeed, Leonard’s three months’ service had been made an hourly trial by the hardly concealed mockery and contempt of Horace Gilson. Of all men in the wide world he was the very last Leonard wished to see. He moved his chair a little nearer to McKenzie, and by so doing faced the open window only. McKenzie continued talking, unmindful of Gilson’s entrance, but Leonard heard above all he said the sneering taunt and scoffing laugh of the man he despised and disliked. Every one and everything appeared to provoke his disdain, and it was not long before he turned his attention to the two men sitting apart at the window.

“Secrets! Secrets!” he cried with effusive familiarity. “We will have no secrets in a guard-room. Out with the ladies’ names—if you are not ashamed of them.”

Leonard looked indifferently out of the window; it was McKenzie’s affair, not his. And McKenzie, laying his hand upon his pistol in an almost mechanical way, merely glanced at the bully and said: “You had better mind your own business, sir.”

“I am not speaking to you, McKenzie,” Gilson answered. “I am addressing Captain Murray, the great New York Adonis and lady killer! Come, captain, your latest victories?”

“Mr. Gilson,” answered Leonard, “my friend and I are discussing private concerns. When we desire your company, we will let you know. In the meantime, we wish to be alone.”

“Now, captain, no more airs from you. You have left the militia, you know—three months used up your patriotism,” answered Gilson scornfully.

McKenzie rose in a passion. “Damn your impertinence, Gilson! I’ll give you a—”

“Be quiet, Mac,” interrupted Leonard. “The fool is drunk—you can’t even horsewhip a drunken man.” Then he took McKenzie firmly by the arm and both rose to leave the room.

“Drunk, eh?” cried Gilson in a rage. “Drunk! It is well for you both to get out of my way, for I’ll pay you all I owe you yet, Murray—you, and your damned dollars! Go and see if you can buy a little common dog-courage with them.”

“Let me knock the ranting bully down, Murray.”

“He is not worth it.”

By this time the men present were on their feet, some urging Murray to leave the room, some trying to talk reason into Gilson, who became more and more defiant as the objects of his abuse passed out of the hearing of it.

It was a wretched ending to a disagreeable day, and Leonard sat half through the midsummer night fretting and fuming over the incident. He was not a quarrelsome man, and a quarrel with Horace Gilson was an affair too low and despicable to contemplate. Why had McKenzie come to him with his trouble? He felt the injustice of the visit. If he had been a few minutes later he would have missed the man and the annoyance that had grown out of his sympathy with him. He looked wistfully out of the window towards the Bloommaert house, and remembered Sappha, but speedily exiled her from his thoughts, because he could not keep the scene at the guard-room out of them; and it seemed a sacrilege to have both in his consciousness at the same time.

However, after an irritating vigil of some hours he fell asleep with sheer weariness, and when he awakened near noon on the following day Nature had accomplished her renovating work. The Unseen Powers had cradled his soul into peace, cleared away the rack and wreckage of an unfortunate day, and filled his exhausted spirit with the miraculous strength of Faith and Hope.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Rose of Renunciation

As Leonard dressed himself he recollected the guard-room quarrel and smiled. It seemed really so ridiculous and ineffectual; yet he resolved to avoid Gilson as much as possible. “The man was drunk,” he thought, “but sober or drunk, he has an envious nature, and a tongue ready for ill words. Perhaps he may seek me out and continue his offensive behavior. What then?” He pondered this likelihood a few moments, and then asked himself cheerfully:

“Why should I worry about the probability of such a thing? As if it mattered.” But it is hard to tell what matters, though safe enough to say that in conduct it is best not to make trifles of trifles. For there is an amazing vitality in some trifles, and we know not which may abortively pass and which may become of momentous importance.

Yet, for two days Leonard hardly thought of Gilson and his drunken abuse; or if it entered his mind it was only as an annoying and commonplace event that he was in no way responsible for. He had not one fear that it could possibly have any serious effect upon his life. And as it happened the two days following Annette’s dinner party were exceedingly happy ones to Sappha and Leonard. One of them was spent with Madame Bloommaert in Nassau Street, and another with Annette at the Semple house. Then came Saturday, and Leonard went early in the afternoon to the Bowling Green. It was a very warm day, the parlour windows in Judge Bloommaert’s house were open, and Sappha was sitting in the sunshine happily indolent. She smiled a thousand welcomes as he entered, but did not move, for her lap was full of knotted embroidery silks, and Leonard seated himself at her side, and together they began to slowly unravel and sort the tangled skeins. So happy, so merry, were they! their hands touching, their heads touching, light laughter and loving whispers feeding their hearts with a full content.

When the judge came home Sappha and Leonard rose gaily to meet him, but they were both chilled by his manner, which was constrained and unfriendly. A sense of something unpleasant swept out of cognisance the innocent mirth that had pervaded the room; and in a moment its mental atmosphere was changed. It was embarrassing, because Leonard did not like to presume there was an offence—it might be only a passing mood, and the mood might be caused by something or by some person outside of their interference. So the suddenly checked lovers sat silent, or only made whispered remarks about the condition of the silks.

One of these remarks attracted the judge’s attention, and he turned to the apparently busy young man and said: “Sappha has given you a pretty tangle to straighten out—Leonard.” He spoke Leonard’s name with a hesitation that was almost like a withdrawal of the position that had been given him, and Leonard felt the reluctance keenly, yet he answered with much cheerfulness.

“Patience will win her way, sir—she does in every tangle. One by one the knots are being untied.”

“You might cut them,” said the judge.

“That would be wasteful and foolish, sir. No one would be the gainer, and no one would be satisfied. I will unravel them—with Sappha’s help.”

“Well, Leonard,”—this time the name was spoken a little more pleasantly—“well, Leonard, I can tell you there is an ugly tangle up the street for you either to cut, or to unravel. And I must say, I am astonished, not to say displeased, at your neglecting it for three days.”

“A tangle up the street, sir,—a tangle I have neglected!”

“You certainly have not forgotten your quarrel with Horace Gilson?”

“Oh, I had no quarrel with the fellow! How could I? He was drunk.”

“Not too drunk to tell you that you had only three months’ worth of patriotism; not too drunk to bid you buy a little dog-courage with your dirty dollars. Sir, you ought to have stopped such remarks as quickly as they were made—yes, sir, they ought to have been stopped peremptorily, whether they were drunk or sober remarks.”

“But, judge, you cannot talk to a drunken man—you cannot reason with a drunken man—”

“Well, then, you can knock him down. That is an argument even a drunken man will understand.”

“Father!” cried Sappha with indignation, as she stood with flashing eyes before him. “Father, to knock a drunken man down would be as bad as to knock an insane man down. In both cases it would be brutal.”

“When men make themselves into brutes it is just to treat them like brutes.”

“I never heard such nonsense! such cruel nonsense! I think Leonard did quite right to ignore the fellow.”

“You have no business, miss, to think anything about such subjects. Go to your mother.”

“Mother went to Nassau Street long ago.”

“I want her. Tell her to come home immediately. And I do not want you. It is necessary for me to speak to Leonard alone.”

“Very well. I shall go for mother.” But ere she left the room she took Leonard’s hands in hers and kissed him. There was a whispered word also, which the judge did not hear, but the girl’s act of sympathy was irritating enough. He drew his lips wide and tight, and as soon as Sappha closed the door he said:

“Now, sir, what are you going to do? Gilson has been vapouring from Dan to Beersheba about your—cowardice, and your want of patriotism; and Mr. Ogden told me that when he instanced your frequent generous loans to the city Gilson laughed and said you had made forty per cent. on them. ‘You and your father,’ he added, ‘were both canny Scots, and knew cleverly how to rub one dollar into two.’”

“Judge, my father—”

“Wait a little. Why have you not been in any of your usual resorts since Wednesday night? It does not look right—the rascal has had a clear field for all the scurrilous lies he chose to tell.”

“Sir, if I had known that the man was lying soberly about me, I would surely have given him openly the name he merits. But I did not dream that he would dare to say out of liquor what he said in liquor; for he is a quaking coward, and as fearful as a whipped child. Others are behind him in this bluster. Alas, my money has never brought me anything but envy and ill-will—no matter how heartily I give it! What would you advise me to do, sir?”

“Make the man hold his tongue.”

“How?”

The judge was silent a moment, then with a touch of scorn he answered: “There is the law. Sue him for slander. He is said to be worth twenty thousand dollars. Lay your damages at twenty thousand. Your friend, Mr. Burr, will defend your case very feelingly, no doubt.”

And with some anger Leonard answered: “That course is out of the question, sir.”

“Well, then, write a letter to the newspapers.”

“I do not propose to lend the fellow’s words so much importance.”

“Then give him his lies back generally, and particularly—give him them back on the street, and in the guard-room, or wherever you meet him—and make a point of meeting him, here, there, and everywhere.”

“That is what I propose to do. Then, sir, egged on by those whose cue he is now following, he will probably challenge me. Shall I accept his challenge?”

“I am not your conscience keeper, Leonard.”

“Put the question then, as a matter of social expediency.”

“If the social verdict is what you want, ask Achille St. Ange. He is a good authority.”

“Once more, sir. If I lift this foolish business to the moral plane, what do you say?”

“Zounds! Leonard, I have told you already that morally judging this question I hold the Decalogue as a finality!” And with these words the judge rose to his feet. It was evident he had no more to say on the subject, and Leonard bid him “good-afternoon” and left the house. There had been throughout the interview a want of sympathy in the judge’s manner that insinuated suspicion, or at least uncertainty, and Leonard was pained and offended by it. Judge Bloommaert had known him intimately, yet he had permitted the evil tongue of a stranger to influence his own experience. Angry tears rose unconsciously to his eyes, and he asked himself what did it profit a man to be truthful and generous, if any dastardly liar could smear and cancel the noblest record? He walked up the Bowling Green with a burning heart, but Sappha had whispered her promise to be near the statue; and he soon saw the flutter of her white gown as she came to meet him. They entered the enclosure and sat down on a bench facing that heroic representation of Washington, which, made of wood, shaped and coloured to imitate the rosiest glow of life, was the best artistic effort New York was capable of one hundred years ago. But even if Sappha and Leonard had been conscious of its artistic defects, they cared little for them at that hour. Their own affairs were too urgent, too perilously near to trouble again. And though Sappha was full of sympathy and quite determined to uphold Leonard in all he had done and was going to do, yet she at once gave vent to her womanish fears in the essentially provoking query: “Oh, Leonard, why did you not show yourself in the city the last three days? You might have known people would say you were afraid of that dreadful man.”