The Crisis Part 49

"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. G.o.d 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 G.o.d!" 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. n.o.body's got much use for the grays. And don't let yourself be fooled with Const.i.tutional 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 Const.i.tution, 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 princ.i.p.al 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 grat.i.tude. 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 quick speech and action which go with this. Red tape made by the reel to bind him, he broke. Courts-martial had no terrors for him. He proved the ablest of lieutenants to the strong civilian who was the Leader. Both were the men of the occasion. If G.o.d had willed that the South should win, there would have been no occasion.

Even as Judge Whipple had said, the time was come for all men to decide.

Out of the way, all hopes of compromises that benumbed Washington. No Const.i.tutional Unionists, no Douglas Democrats, no Republicans now.

All must work to save the ship. The speech-making was not done with yet.

Partisanship must be overcome, and patriotism instilled in its place.

One day Stephen Brice saw the Leader go into Judge Whipple's room, and presently he was sent for. After that he was heard of in various out-of-the-way neighborhoods, exhorting all men to forget their quarrels and uphold the flag.

The Leader himself knew not night from day in his toil,--in organizing, conciliating, compelling when necessary. Letters pa.s.sed between him and Springfield. And, after that solemn inauguration, between him and Washington. It was an open secret that the Governor of Missouri held out his arms to Jefferson Davis, just elected President of the new Southern Confederacy. It soon became plain to the feeblest brain what the Leader and his friends had perceived long before, that the Governor intended to use the militia (purged of Yankee sympathizers) to save the state for the South.

The Government a.r.s.enal, with its stores of arms and ammunition, was the prize. This building and its grounds lay to the south of the City, overlooking the river. It was in command of a doubting major of ordnance; the corps of officers of Jefferson Barracks hard by was mottled with secession. Trade was still. The Mississippi below was practically closed. In all the South, Pickens and Sumter alone stood stanch to the flag. A general, wearing the uniform of the army of the United States, surrendered the whole state of Texas.

The St. Louis a.r.s.enal was next in succession, and the little band of regulars at the Barracks was powerless to save it. What could the Leader and Captain Lyon do without troops? That was the question that rang in Stephen's head, and in the heads of many others. For, if President Lincoln sent troops to St. Louis, that would precipitate the trouble.

And the President had other uses for the handful in the army.

There came a rain-sodden night when a mysterious message arrived at the little house in Olive Street. Both anxiety and pride were in Mrs.

Brice's eyes as they followed her son out of the door. At Twelfth Street two men were lounging on the corners, each of whom glanced at him listessly as he pa.s.sed. He went up a dark and narrow stair into a lighted hall with shrouded windows. Men with sober faces were forming line on the sawdust of the floors. The Leader was there giving military orders in a low voice. That marked the beginning of the aggressive Union movement.

Stephen, standing apart at the entrance, remarked that many of the men were Germans. Indeed, he spied his friend Tiefel there, and presently Richter came from the ranks to greet him.

"My friend," he said, "you are made second lieutenant of our company, the Black Jaegers."

"But I have never drilled in my life," said Stephen.

"Never mind. Come and see the Leader."

The Leader, smiling a little, put a vigorous stop to his protestations, and told him to buy a tactics. The next man Stephen saw was big Tom Catherwood, who blushed to the line of his hair as he returned Stephen's grip.

"Tom, what does this mean?" He asked.

"Well," said Tom, embarra.s.sed, "a fellow has got to do what he think's right."

"And your family?" asked Stephen.

A spasm crossed Tom's face.

"I reckon they'll disown me, Stephen, when they find it out."

Richter walked home as far as Stephen's house. He was to take the Fifth Street car for South St. Louis. And they talked of Tom's courage, and of the broad and secret military organization the Leader had planned that night. But Stephen did not sleep till the dawn. Was he doing right?

Could he afford to risk his life in the war that was coming, and leave his mother dependent upon charity?