The Essential Winston Churchill Collection. Winston Churchill
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said, gently:
"Not in passion, Silas, but in sorrow."
The Judge tightened his lips. But the effort was beyond him, and the flood within him broke loose.
"Colonel Carvel," he cried, "South Carolina is mad--She is departing in sin, in order that a fiendish practice may be perpetuated. If her people stopped to think they would know that slavery cannot exist except by means of this Union. But let this milksop of a President do his worst. We have chosen a man who has the strength to say, 'You shall not go!'"
It was an awful moment. The saving grace of it was that respect and love for her father filled Virginia's heart. In his just anger Colonel Carvel remembered that he was the host, and strove to think only of his affection for his old friend.
"To invade a sovereign state, sir, is a crime against the sacred spirit of this government," he said.
"There is no such thing as a sovereign state, sir," exclaimed the Judge, hotly. "I am an American, and not a Missourian."
"When the time comes, sir," said the Colonel, with dignity, "Missouri will join with her sister sovereign states against oppression."
"Missouri will not secede, sir."
"Why not, sir!" demanded the Colonel.
"Because, sir, when the worst comes, the Soothing Syrup men will rally for the Union. And there are enough loyal people here to keep her straight."
"Dutchmen, sir! Hessians? Foreign Republican hirelings, sir," exclaimed the Colonel, standing up. "We shall drive them like sheep if they oppose us. You are drilling them now that they may murder your own blood when you think the time is ripe."
The Colonel did not hear Virginia leave the room, so softly had she gone, He made a grand figure of a man as he stood up, straight and tall, those gray eyes a-kindle at last. But the fire died as quickly as it had flared. Pity had come and quenched it,--pity that an unselfish life of suffering and loneliness should be crowned with these. The Colonel longed then to clasp his friend in his arms. Quarrels they had had by the hundred, never yet a misunderstanding. God had given to Silas Whipple a nature stern and harsh that repelled all save the charitable few whose gift it was to see below the surface, and Colonel Carvel had been the chief of them. But now the Judge's vision was clouded.
Steadying himself by his chair, he had risen glaring, the loose skin twitching on his sallow face. He began firmly but his voice shook ere he had finished.
"Colonel Carvel," said he, "I expect that the day has come when you go your way and I go mine. It will be better if--we do not meet again, sir."
And so he turned from the man whose friendship had stayed him for the score of years he had battled with his enemies, from that house which had been for so long his only home. For the last time Jackson came forward to help him with his coat. The Judge did not see him, nor did he see the tearful face of a young girl leaning over the banisters above. Ice was on the stones. And Mr. Whipple, blinded by a moisture strange to his eyes, clung to the iron railing as he felt his way down the steps. Before he reached the bottom a stronger arm had seize his own, and was helping him.
The Judge brushed his eyes with his sleeve, and turned a defiant face upon Captain Elijah Brent--then his voice broke. His anger was suddenly gone, and his thought had flown back to the Colonel's thousand charities.
"Lige," he said, "Lige, it has come."
In answer the Captain pressed the Judge's hand, nodding vigorously to hide his rising emotion. There was a pause.
"And you, Lige?" said Mr. Whipple, presently.
"My God!" cried the Captain, "I wish I knew."
"Lige," said the Judge, gravely, "you're too good a man to be for Soothing Syrup."
The Captain choked.
"You're too smart to be fooled, Lige," he said, with a note near to pleading. "The time has come when you Bell people and the Douglas people have got to decide. Never in my life did I know it to do good to dodge a question. We've got to be white or black, Lige. Nobody's got much use for the grays. And don't let yourself be fooled with Constitutional Union Meetings, and compromises. The time is almost here, Lige, when it will take a rascal to steer a middle course."
Captain Lige listened, and he shifted from one foot to the other, and rubbed his hands, which were red. Some odd trick of the mind had put into his head two people--Eliphalet Hopper and Jacob Cluyme. Was he like them?
"Lige, you've got to decide. Do you love your country, sir? Can you look on while our own states defy us, and not lift a hand? Can you sit still while the Governor and all the secessionists in this state are plotting to take Missouri, too, out of the Union? The militia is riddled with rebels, and the rest are forming companies of minute men."
"And you Black Republicans," the Captain cried "have organized your Dutch Wideawakes, and are arming them to resist Americans born."
"They are Americans by our Constitution, sir, which the South pretends to revere," cried the Judge. "And they are showing themselves better Americans than many who have been on the soil for generations."
"My sympathies are with the South," said the Captain, doggedly, "and my love is for the South."
"And your conscience?" said the Judge.
There was no answer. Both men raised their eyes to the house of him whose loving hospitality had been a light in the lives of both. When at last the Captain spoke, his voice was rent with feeling.
"Judge," he began, "when I was a poor young man on the old 'Vicksburg', second officer under old Stetson, Colonel Carvel used to take me up to his house on Fourth Street to dinner. And he gave me the clothes on my back, so that I might not be ashamed before the fashion which came there. He treated me like a son, sir. One day the sheriff sold the Vicksburg. You remember it. That left me high and dry in the mud. Who bought her, sir? Colonel Carvel. And he says to me, 'Lige, you're captain now, the youngest captain on the river. And she's your boat. You can pay me principal and interest when you get ready.'
"Judge Whipple, I never had any other home than right in, this house. I never had any other pleasure than bringing Jinny presents, and tryin' to show 'em gratitude. He took me into his house and cared for me at a time when I wanted to go to the devil along with the stevedores when I was a wanderer he kept me out of the streets, and out of temptation. Judge, I'd a heap rather go down and jump off the stern of my boat than step in here and tell him I'd fight for the North."
The Judge steadied himself on his hickory stick and walked off without a word. For a while Captain Lige stood staring after him. Then he slowly climbed the steps and disappeared.
CHAPTER, XV. MUTTERINGS
Early in the next year, 1861,--that red year in the Calendar of our history,--several gentlemen met secretly in the dingy counting-room of a prominent citizen to consider how the state of Missouri might be saved to the Union. One of these gentlemen was Judge Whipple, another, Mr. Brinsmade; and another a masterly and fearless lawyer who afterward became a general, and who shall be mentioned in these pages as the Leader. By his dash and boldness and statesmanlike grasp of a black situation St. Louis was snatched from the very bosom of secession.
Alas, that chronicles may not stretch so as to embrace all great men of a time. There is Captain Nathaniel Lyon,--name with the fateful ring. Nathaniel Lyon, with the wild red hair and blue eye, born and bred a soldier, ordered to St. Louis, and become subordinate to a wavering officer of ordnance. Lyon was one who brooked no trifling. He had the face of a man who knows his mind and intention; the