Sev. Quoi?
Fab. Mariée!
Sev. . . . . . Ce coup de foudre est grand!—Polyeucte.
The world's my oyster, which I with sword will open.—Henry IV.
Put money in thy purse; follow these wars.—Othello.
Morton walked down Broadway at a rapid pace, entered his hotel, mounted to his room, seated himself, rested his forehead on his hand, and, with fixed eyes and compressed lips, remained in this position for some minutes, motionless as if carved out of oak. Then, rising, he paced the room, buried his face in his hands, and groaned with irrepressible anguish. Suddenly the door was burst open, and an Irish servant, apparently in a great hurry, bolted in, and tossed a card on the table, saying at the same time,—"Gen'lman down stairs wants to see you."
Morton broke into a rage, to hide the traces of a different passion.
"Why do you come in without knocking? Learn better manners, or I shall teach them to you."
"I beg pardon, sir," said the servant, reduced at once to the depth of obsequiousness, "there's a gentleman, sir—an officer, sir,—would like to see you, sir."
"An officer!—I don't know any officers. There's some mistake."
"He said Mr. Morton, sir. This is his card, sir."
Morton looked at the card, and read the name of his classmate Rosny.
"Very well. Ask the gentleman to come up.—No,—here,"—as the servant was retreating along the passage,—"where is he?"
"In the reading room, sir."
"Tell him I will come down in a moment."
"Yes, sir, I will, sir."
Morton adjusted his dress, strove to banish from his features all traces of the emotion which had just overwhelmed him, went down stairs, and met Rosny with an air of as much cordiality as if there were nothing in his mind but the pleasure of seeing an old friend. Rosny, his first welcome over, surveyed him from head to foot.
"A good deal changed! Thinner,—darker complexioned, decidedly older. And yet you've weathered it well. It's a thing that I could never stand,—to be boxed up in four stone walls. I would throttle the jailer first, and then knock my brains out against the stones."
"Did Shingles tell you of my being here?"
"Yes, I met him just now, with his eyes bigger than ever. When I saw him making a dive at me across the street, among the omnibuses and carriages, I knew that something extraordinary was to pay."
"You have changed your outward man, too, since I saw you last," said Morton, looking at his companion's costume, which consisted of a gray volunteer uniform.
"Yes, I'm in Uncle Sam's pay now.—Off for Mexico in a day or two;—revel in the Halls of the Montezumas, you know."
"What rank do you hold in the service, Dick?"
"You'll please to address me as Major Rosny; that is, till good luck and the Mexican bullets make a colonel of me.—I have just dropped in to shake hands with you. I have an appointment to keep in five minutes. You have nothing particular to do to-day—have you?"
"Nothing very particular," said Morton, hesitating.
"Then come and dine with me at Delmonico's at four o'clock. What!—you don't mean to say no, do you?—Is that the way you treat your friends? Come, I shall be here at four, precisely. Au revoir."
And, with his usual celerity of motion, Rosny left the hotel.
Morton slowly remounted to his room, locked the door this time, to keep out intruders, seated himself, and gave himself up to his dark and morbid reveries.
"God! of what is this world made! Villany thrives, and innocent men are racked with the pangs of hell. Poverty starving its victims,—luxury poisoning them;—the passions of tigers and the mean vices of reptiles;—treacherous hatred, faithless love;—deceitful hope, vain struggles, endless suffering,—a hell of misery and darkness. A fair sunrise, to cheat the eye;—then clouds and storms, blackness and desolation! To look back over the last five years! Then I was basking in sunshine; and out of that brightness what a doom is fallen on me! My life—my guiding star quenched in a vile morass—lost forever in the arms of this accursed villain!"
Morton rose abruptly, went to the window, and stood looking out with a fixed gaze, wholly unconscious of what was before him. In a moment he turned again, and there was a wild and deadly light in his eyes. A thought had struck him, shooting an electric life through all his veins, and kindling him into a kind of fierce ecstasy. He would go to Vinal, charge him with his perfidy, challenge him, and put him to death. He paced the room in great disorder. A resistless power seemed to have seized upon him, sweeping him forward with the force of a torrent. He clinched his teeth and breathed deeply. The thought of action and of vengeance lighted up his perturbed and gloomy mind as the baleful glare of a conflagration lights up a stormy midnight. Suddenly he stopped, seated himself again, and remained for some minutes in violent mental conflict. "I thank God," he murmured at length, apostrophizing his enemy, "that you were not just now within my reach. You have ruined me for this life; you shall not ruin me for the next. Live, and work out your own destruction."
He walked the room again, calmly enough, but in great dejection. "It may be," he thought, "that I am not his only victim. Perhaps the same art that snared me, has, by some infernal machination, entrapped her also. I believe it;—at least, I will try to believe it."
He looked from the window upon the keen and busy crowds passing below in unbroken streams, to and from their places of business; and his mind tinged them with its own moody coloring.
"You flight of human vultures! How many of you can show lives governed by any generous purpose or noble thought? Behind how many of those sharp and sallow features, furrowed with early wrinkles, lies the soul of a man? Desperate chasers after wealth, which, when you have won it, you have never been taught to use;—reckless pleasure hunters, beguiling others that your victims may beguile in turn, and both sink to perdition together. What you win with trickery, you throw away in vanity or debauch. The counting room or the broker's board by day;—brandy, billiards, and the rendezvous by night;—so you go,—a short, quick road;—driving to your doom with a high-pressure power of rapacity, vain glory, and lust. Man!—the thistledown of fortune, the shuttlecock of passion;—whirled on to destruction by the wildfire in his veins, unless by struggling and by prayer he can keep the narrow adamantine track laid down for his career!"
In such distempered reflections he passed some time. Even in the darkest passages of his imprisonment, his mind had scarcely been shaken so far from its habitual poise. Growing weary at length of solitude, he went out of the house; and, avoiding the great thoroughfares, where he might perhaps meet an acquaintance, he threaded at a rapid pace those meaner streets and lanes, where even the best balanced mind may find abundant food for gloomy meditation. From time to time, as the image of his enemy rose before him, the desire for vengeance came upon him afresh, like a fever fit. He burned to seize Vinal by the throat, and, at least, force him to unmask his iniquity to the world.
As he was passing down Water Street, he recollected, with some vexation, that Rosny had promised to call for him at four o'clock, and retraced his steps to the hotel, where, true to the minute, that punctual adventurer presently appeared.
"Come," said Rosny; "if you are ready, we will walk down street."
They repaired to Delmonico's, where, in a private room, a sumptuous repast had been made ready. Morton, over his companion's claret, was obliged to recount the circumstances of his imprisonment. Rosny, on his part, gave an outline of his own fortunes since they had last met. He had been once or twice on the point of very considerable success, but his vaulting ambition had always overleaped itself, and by too great eagerness and grasping at too much, he had repeatedly failed of his prize, only, however, to rally after every reverse with undiminished confidence and spirit. Such, at least, were the conclusions which Morton drew from his companion's somewhat inflated account of himself.
After the cloth had been removed, Rosny bit off the end of a cigar, lighted it, puffed at it two or three times, and then, holding it between his fingers, went on with an harangue which the operations of the waiter had interrupted.
"I tell you, these are great times that we live in. The world has seen nothing like them since the days of Columbus and Cortes. These are the times and this is the country for a man of merit to thrive in. Let him identify himself with the progressive movements of the age,—yes, faith, let him be a leader of them,—and there's nothing too large for him to hope for. Why, sir, the day is not far off, when the stars and stripes will be seen from Hudson's Bay to Panama. Cuba will come next; Brazil next. Lord knows where we shall stop. There's a field for a man of ability and pluck!"
Morton smiled. Rosny relighted his cigar, which, in the fervor of his declamation, he had allowed to go out, gave a vigorous whiff or two, and proceeded.
"We have just lost a splendid chance. I did flatter myself that there was going to be a row with England, on the Oregon question; but it was a flash in the pan; it all ended in smoke."
"Why do you want to fight with John Bull?" asked Morton.
"For two good reasons. In the first place, I hate him. I hate him in right of my French ancestors, and I hate him as a true American democrat. Then, over and above all that, a war with the English would be the making of me. I should rise then. I would be their Hannibal. But now we have nothing better to do than giving fits to these yellow Mexican vagabonds."
"A shabby employment," said Morton, "and yet I think I should like it."
"You would, ey?—then go with me to Mexico."
"It's a temptation," said Morton, his eyes lighted with a sudden gleam,—"I am in a mood for any thing, I do not care what."
"I knew there was something ailing you," said Rosny; "why, you have had no appetite. You've lost all your spirits. Has any thing happened? Are you ill?"
"Nothing to speak of. I am well enough in health."
"Well, come with me to Mexico. When a man is under a cloud, he always makes the better soldier for it. If you have had bad luck, why, you can fight like a Trojan."
"I could storm Hell Gates to-day," exclaimed Morton, giving a momentary vent to his long pent up emotion.
"Good! I always knew that there was stuff in you, though you are worth half a million. It isn't that, though—is it? You haven't lost property—have you?"
"Not that I know. Never mind, Dick; every man has his little vexations, sometimes, and is entitled to the privilege of swearing at them."
"Well, I am not the man to pry into your private affairs. Come with me to Mexico. I can promise you a captain's commission,—perhaps I can get you a major's. I am not a cipher in the democratic party, I'd have you know, though I am not yet what I shall be soon. I helped Polk to his election, and my word will go for something. But, pshaw!—what am I talking about? With your money, and a little management, you can get any thing you want."
"I have more than half a mind," said Morton, hesitating; "but, no,—I won't go."
"Pshaw, man! You don't know what you are saying. You don't know what chances you are throwing away. Look at it. It isn't the military fame,—the glorification in the newspapers,—seeing pictures of yourself in the shop windows, charging full tilt among the Mexicans, and all that. You can take that for what it's worth. Tastes differ in such matters. But, I tell you, the men who distinguish themselves in Mexico are going to carry all before them in the political world. The people will go for them, neck or nothing. I know what our enlightened democracy is made of."—Here a slight grin flickered for an instant about the corners of his mouth; but he grew serious again at once.—"Yes, sir, a new world is going to begin. The old incumbents—Webster, Clay, Calhoun, and the rest—will pass off the stage, before long, and make room for younger men—men who will keep up with the times. Then will be our chance! Put brass in your forehead,—you have money enough in your purse already,—get a halo of Mexican glory round your head,—and you will shoot up like a rocket. First go to the war, then dive into politics, and you and I will be the biggest frogs in the puddle."
"There's a fallacy in your conclusions," said Morton; "the officers of rank, the generals and colonels, will carry off the glory; and we shall have nothing but the blows."
"The Mexican bullets will make that all right. I tell you, they are going to fly like hail. They will dock off the heads above us, and make a clear path for us to mount by."
"Suppose that they should hit the wrong man," suggested Morton.
"Pshaw!" exclaimed Rosny, "we won't look at the matter in that light."
There was a momentary pause.
"Now's your time," urged Rosny. "Come, say the word."
Morton paced the room with knit brows and lips pressed together.
"Glory,"—exclaimed his military friend, summing up the advantages of a Mexican campaign,—"glory,—preferment,—life, of the fastest kind,—what more would you have?"
Morton had a strong native thirst for adventure, and a penchant for military exploit. In his present frame of mind, he felt violently impelled to cut loose from all his old ideas and scruples, and launch at once upon a new life, fresh, unshackled, and reckless,—to plunge headlong into the tumult of the active world; fight its battles, run its races, give and take its blows, strain after its prizes,—forget the past and all its associations in the fever of the present. Mexico rose before his thoughts—snowy volcanoes, and tropical forests; the cocoa, the palm, and the cactus; bastioned cities and intrenched heights; the rush and din of battle; war with its fierce excitements and unbounded license. To his disordered mood, the scene had fascinations almost resistless, and he burned to play his part in the fiery drama.
"And why not?"—so his thoughts ran,—"why not obey what fate and nature dictate? Calm, and peace, and happiness,—farewell to them! That stake is played and lost. I am no more fit now for domestic life than a prairie wolf. I should answer better for an Ishmaelite or a Pawnee. Deus vult. Why should I fly in the face of Providence?"
Rosny, his uniform coat half unbuttoned for the sake of ease, sat lolling back in his chair, puffing wreaths of cigar smoke from his lips, eying Morton as he paced the room, and throwing out, from time to time, a word of encouragement to stimulate his resolution. He was about to lose all patience at his companion's pertinacious silence, when the latter stopped, and turned towards him with the air of one whose mind is made up.
"Dick," said Morton, "when I was in college, I laid down my plan of life, and adopted one maxim—to which I mean to hold fast."
"Well, what was that?" demanded the impatient Rosny.
"Never to abandon an enterprise once begun; to push on till the point is gained, in spite of pain, delay, danger, disappointment,—any thing."
"Good, so far. What next?"
"Some years ago, I entered upon certain plans, which have not yet been accomplished. I have been interrupted, balked, kicked and cuffed by fortune, till I am more than half disgusted with the world. But I mean still to take up the broken thread where I left it, and carry it forward as before."
"The moral of that is, I suppose, that you won't go to Mexico."
"Precisely."
"Well, I shan't try to debate the matter with you. I know you of old. When your foot is once down, it's useless for me to try to make you lift it up again. But remember what I say,—you will repent not taking my advice."
Rosny finished his cigar, and they left the restaurant together. On their way up the street, they stopped at a recruiting office. "Captain Rumbold, my friend Mr. Morton," said Rosny, who soon after, however, entered into an earnest conversation with the officer upon some affair of business, leaving Morton at leisure to observe six or eight volunteers, who were about to be sent to Governor's Island, in charge of a sergeant.
"What do you think of our boys?" asked Rosny, casting a comical look at Morton, as they went down stairs.
"I never saw such a gang of tobacco-chewing, soap-locked rascals."
"Food for powder," said Rosny, "they'll fill a ditch as well as better. The country needs a little blood-letting. These fellows are not like Falstaff's, though. They will fight. Not a man of them but will whip his weight in wildcats."