The Fortunes of Oliver Horn Part 32

His voice was so sustained, and his manner so temperate, that a certain calming rea.s.surance was felt.

"Suppose they DO come! They'll burn the town, I tell you," shouted the infuriated man, suddenly remembering his hat and handing it to Malachi.

"That's what they're coming for. We want no troops in our streets, and the Government ought to know it. It's an outrage to send armed men here at this time!"

"You're all wrong, Clayton," answered Richard, without raising his voice. "You have always been wrong about this matter. There are two sides to this question. Virginia troops occupied Harper's Ferry yesterday. If the authorities consider that more troops are needed to protect Washington, that's their affair, not yours nor mine."

"We'll MAKE it our affair. What right has this d.a.m.nable Government to march their troops through a free and sovereign State without its permission! Whom do they think this town belongs to, I want to know, that this Northern sc.u.m should foul it. Not a man shall set foot here if I can help it. I would rather--"

Richard turned to stay the torrent of invectives in which such words as "renegades," "traitors," "mud-sills," were heard, but the Colonel, completely unmanned by the rage he was in, and seemingly unconscious of the presence of the ladies, waved him aside with his hand, and faced the row of frightened, expectant faces.

"Gentlemen, when you are through with this tom-foolery, I shall be glad if you will come to the club; any of you who have got guns had better look them up; they'll be wanted before this is over. We'll meet these dirty skinflints with cold lead and plenty of it."

Oliver's face flushed at the Colonel's words, and he was about to speak, when his mother laid her hand on his arm. Visions of the kindly face of Professor c.u.mmings, and the strong well-knit figure of Fred Stone, John Grant, Hank, Jonathan Gordon, and the others whom he loved came before his eyes.

Richard raised his hand in protest:

"You are mad, Clayton; you don't know what you are doing. Stop these troops and our streets will run blood. I beg and beseech you to keep cool. Because South Carolina has lost her head, that is no reason why we should. This is not our fight! If my State called me to defend her against foreign invasion, old as I am I would be ready, and so should you. But the Government is part of ourselves, and should not be looked upon as an enemy. You are wrong, I tell you, Clayton."

"Wrong or right, they'll have to walk over my dead body if they attempt to cross the streets of this town. That's my right as a citizen, and that I shall maintain. Gentlemen, I have called a meeting at the club at ten o'clock to-night. All of you able to carry a gun will do me the kindness to be present. I'd rather die right here in my tracks than let a lot of low-lived mud-sills who never entered a gentleman's house in their lives come down here at the beck and call of this rail-splitter they've put in the White House and walk over us rough-shod! And you, Horn, a Virginian, defend it! By G.o.d, sir, it's enough to make a man's blood boil!"

The inventor's eyes flashed. They blazed now as brightly as those of Clayton. Not even a life-long friend had the right to use such language in his presence, or in that of his guests. Richard's figure grew tense with indignation. Confronting the now reckless man, he raised his hand and was about to order him out of the house when Oliver stepped quickly in front of his father.

"You are unjust, Colonel Clayton." The words came slowly between the boy's partly closed teeth. "You know nothing of these people. I have lived among them long enough not only to know but to love them. There are as many gentlemen North as South. If you would go among them as I have done, you would be man enough to admit it."

The Colonel turned upon him with a snarl:

"And so you have become a dirty renegade, have you, and gone back on your blood and your State? That's what comes of sending boys like you away from home!"

The guests stood amazed. The spectacle of the most courteous man of his time acting like a blackguard was more astounding than the news he had brought. Even Malachi, at the open door, trembled with fear.

As the words fell from his lips Mrs. Horn's firm, clear voice, crying "Shame! Shame!" rang through the room. She had risen from her seat and was walking rapidly to where the Colonel was standing.

"Shame, I say, John Clayton! How dare you speak so? What has our young son ever done to you, that you should insult him in his father's house!

What madness has come over you?"

The horrified guests looked from one to the other. Every eye was fixed on the Colonel, shaking with rage.

For a brief instant he faced his hostess, started to speak, checked himself as if some better judgment prevailed, and with upraised hands flung himself from the room, shouting, as he went:

"Ten o'clock, gentlemen! Chesapeake Club! Every man with a gun!"

Richard, astounded at Clayton's action and now thoroughly convinced of the danger of the situation and determined to do what he could to thwart the efforts of such men as the Colonel and his following, laid his violin in its case, turned to his frightened guests and with a few calming words and a promise to send each one of them word if any immediate danger existed, called Oliver and Nathan to him, and taking his cloak and hat from Malachi's outstretched trembling hands started for the club. Once outside it was easy to see that a feeling of intense and ominous excitement was in the air. Even on the sidewalk and on the street corners, men stood silent, huddled together, their eyes on the ground, the situation being too grave for spoken words.

On arriving they found its halls already filled with angry and excited men discussing the threatened invasion, many of whom met the young man with scowling looks, the Colonel having evidently informed them of Oliver's protest.

A few of the members had brought their sporting guns. These had been handed to the gouty old porter, who, half-frightened out of his wits, had stacked them in a row against the wall of the outer hall. Billy Talbot arrived a few moments later carrying a heavy fowling-piece loaded for swan. He had been dining out when summoned and had hurriedly left the table, excusing himself on the ground that he had been "called to arms." He had taken time, however, to stop at his own house, slip out of his English dress-suit and into a brown ducking outfit.

"We'll shoot 'em on the run, d.a.m.n 'em--like rabbits, sir," he said to Cobb as he entered, the Vermonter being the only man likely to communicate with the invaders and so make known the warlike intentions of at least one citizen, and the utter hopelessness of any prolonged resistance. Waggles, who had followed close on his master's heels, was too excited to sit down, but stood on three legs, his eye turned toward Talbot, as if wanting to pick up any game which Billy's trusty fowling-piece might bring down.

A quiet, repressed smile pa.s.sed, over Oliver's face as he watched Waggles and his master; but he spoke no word to the Nimrod. He could not help thinking how Hank Pollard would handle the fashion-plate if he ever closed his great bony hands upon him.

Judge Bowman now joined the group, bowing to Richard rather coldly and planting himself squarely in front of Oliver.

"There's only one side to this question, young man, for you," he said.

"Don't be fooled by those fellow up in New York. I know them--known them for years. Look up there"--and he pointed to the portrait of Oliver's ancestor above the mantel. "What do you think he would do if he were alive to-day! Stick to your own, my boy--stick to your own!"

General Mactavish now hurried in, drawing off his white gloves as he entered the room, followed by Tom Gunning, Carter Thorn, and Mowbray, an up-country man. The four had been dining together and had also left the table on receipt of the Colonel's message. They evidently appreciated the gravity of the situation, for they stood just outside the excited group that filled the centre of the large room, listening eagerly to Richard's clear tones pleading for moderation--"in a crisis which," he urged, "required the greatest public restraint and self-control," and which would surely "plunge the State into the most horrible of wars" if those about him listened to the counsels of such men as Clayton and Judge Bowman.

During the whole discussion Amos Cobb stood silent, leaning against the mantel-piece, his cold gray eyes fixed on the excited throng, his thin lips curling now and then. When the Defence Committee, in spite of Richard's protest, had at last been formed, and its members formally instructed to meet the enemy outside the city and protest, first by voice and then, if necessary, by arms, against the unwarrantable invasion of the soil of their State, the Vermonter b.u.t.toned up his coat slowly, one b.u.t.ton after another, fastened each one with a determined gesture, drew on his gloves, set his lips tight, singled out Oliver and Richard, shook their hands with the greatest warmth, and walked straight out of the club-house. Some time during the night he drove in a hack to Mr. Stiger's house; roused the old cashier from his sleep; took him and the big walled-town-key down to the bank; unlocked the vault and dragged from it two wooden boxes filled with gold coin, his own property, and which the month before he had deposited there for safe-keeping. These, with Stiger's a.s.sistance, he carried to the hack.

Within the hour, the two boxes with their contents were locked up in bureau-drawer in his own house awaiting their immediate shipment to New York.

The next morning Malachi's wizened face was thrust inside Oliver's bedroom door. He was shaking with terror, his eyes almost starting from his head.

"Ma.r.s.e Ollie, Ma.r.s.e Ollie, git up quick as you kin! De Yankees is come; de town is black wid 'em!"

Oliver sprang from his bed and stood half-dazed looking into Malachi's eyes.

"How do you know? Who told you?"

"I done seen 'em. Been up since daylight. Dey got guns wid 'em. Fo'

Gawd dis is tur-ble!" The old man's voice trembled--he could hardly articulate.

Oliver hurried into his clothes; stepped noiselessly downstairs so as not to wake his father and mother, and, closing the front door softly behind him, stood for a moment on the top step. Should he forget the insults of the night before and go straight to Colonel Clayton, and try to dissuade him from his purpose, or should he find the regiment and warn them of their danger?

A vague sense of personal responsibility for whatever the day might bring forth took possession of him--as though the turning-point in his life had come, without his altogether realizing it. These men from the North were coming to his own town, where he had been born and brought up, and where they should be hospitably received. If Clayton had his way they would be met with clenched hands and perhaps with blows. That these invaders were armed, and that each man carried forty rounds of ammunition and was perfectly able to take care of himself, did not impress him. He only remembered that they were of the same blood as the men who had befriended him, and that they were in great personal danger.

The angry shouts of a crowd of men and boys approaching the Square from a side street, now attracted his attention. They rushed past Oliver without noticing him, and, hurrying on through the gate, crossed the park, in the direction of the railroad station and the docks. One of the mob, lacking a club, stopped long enough to wrench a paling from the rickety fence enclosing the Square, trampling the pretty crocuses and the yellow tulips under foot. Each new arrival, seeing the gap, followed the first man's example, throwing the branches and tendrils to the ground as they worked, until the whole panel was wrecked and the vines were torn from their roots. As they swept by the Clayton house, half a dozen men, led by the Colonel, ran down the steps, and joined the throng.

Oliver, seeing now that all his efforts for peace would be hopeless, ran through the Square close behind the shouting mob, dashed down a side street parallel to that through which the cars carrying the troops were to pa.s.s on their way to Washington, turned into an alley, and found himself on the waterfront, opposite one of the dock slips.

These slips were crowded with vessels, their bowsprits, like huge bayonets, thrust out over the car-tracks, as if to protect the cellars of the opposite warehouses, used by the ship-chandlers for the storage of coa.r.s.e merchandise, and always left open during the day. The narrow strip of dock-front, between the car-tracks and the water-line--an unpaved strip of foot-trodden earth and rotting planks, on which lay enormous ship-anchors, anchor-chains in coils, piles of squared timber, and other maritime properties, stored here for years--was now a seething ma.s.s of people completely hiding the things on which they stood.

Oliver mounted a pile of barrels in front of one of these ship-chandler cellars, and, holding to an awning-post, looked off over the heads of the surging crowd and in the direction of the railroad station at the end of the long street. From his position on the top barrel he could see the white steam of the locomotives rising above the buildings and the line of cars. He could see, too, a yard engine backing and puffing, as if making up a train.

Suddenly, without apparent cause, there rose above the murmurs of the street an ominous sound, like that of a fierce wind soughing through a forest of pines. All eyes were directed down the long street upon a line of cars that had been shunted on the street-track; about these moved a group of men in blue uniforms, the sun flashing on their bayonets and the bra.s.s shields of their belts.

Oliver, stirred by the sound, climbed to the top of the awning-post for a better view and clung to the cross-piece. Every man who could gain an inch of vantage, roused to an extra effort by the distinct roar, took equal advantage of his fellows. Sailors sprang farther into the rigging or crawled out to the end of the bowsprits; the windows of the warehouses were thrown up, the clerks and employees standing on the sills, balancing themselves by the shutters; even the skylights were burst open, men and boys crawling out edging their way along the ridge-poles of the roofs or holding to the chimneys. Every inch of standing-room was black with spectators.

The distant roar died away in fitful gusts as suddenly as it had arisen, and a silence even more terrifying fell upon the throng as a body of police poured out of a side street and marched in a compact body toward the cars.

Then came long strings of horses, eight or ten in tandem. These were backed down and hooked to the cars.

The flash of bayonets was now cut off as the troops crowded into the cars; the body of police wheeled and took their places ahead of the horses; the tandems straightened out and the leaders lunged forward under the lash. The advance through the town had begun.

All this time the mob about Oliver stood with hands clenched, jaws tight shut, great lumps in their throats. Their eyes were the eyes of hungry beasts watching an approaching prey.

As the distant rumbling of the cars, drawn by teams of straining horses, sounded the nearer, a bare-headed man, with white hair and mustache and black garments that distinguished him from the mob about him, and whom Oliver instantly recognized as Colonel Clayton, mounted a ma.s.s of squared timber lining the track, ran the length of the pile, climbed to the topmost stick, and shouted, in a voice which reverberated throughout the street: