University of Virginia Library

17. CHAPTER XVII.

In one of the apartments of the “Red Heifer,” two
persons were sitting about this time. One of these was
the orator, whose successes that day had been the theme
of every tongue. The other was a man well stricken in
years, of commanding form, and venerable and intellectual
aspect. His hair was long and white; while his
cheeks were yet smooth and even rosy, as if they spoke
for a well-satisfied conscience and gentle heart in their
proprietor. The eyes of the old man were settled upon
the young one. There was a paternal exultation in their
glance, which sufficiently declared the interest which he
felt in the fortunes and triumphs of his companion. The
eyes of the youth were fixed with something of inquiry
upon the note of Beauchampe which he still turned with
his fingers. There was something of doubt and misgiving
in the expression of his face; which his companion noted
to ask,—

“Is there nothing in that note, William, besides what
you have read? It seems to disturb you.”

“Nothing, sir; nor can I say that it disturbs me exactly.
Perhaps every young beginner feels the same disquieting
sort of excitement when he is about to meet his
antagonist for the first time. You are aware, sir, that
this gentleman, Colonel Sharpe, is the Coryphæus of the
opposition. He is the right-hand man of Desha, and has
the reputation of being one of the ablest lawyers and
most popular orators in the state.”

“You need not fear him, my son,” said the elder; “I
am now sure of your strength. You will not fail—you
cannot. You have your mind at the control of your
will; and it needs only that you should go and be sure
of opposition. Had that power but been mine—but it is
useless now! I enjoy my own hoped for triumphs in
the certainties of yours.”

“So far, sir, as the will enables us to prove what we
are and have in us, so far I think I may rely upon myself.
But the mere will to perform is not always—perhaps not
often—the power. This man, Sharpe, brings into the
field more than ordinary talents. Hitherto, with the exception
of this young man, Beauchampe, all my opponents
have been very feeble men,—mere dealers in rhodomontade
of a very commonplace sort. Beauchampe, who is
said to have been a pupil of Colonel Sharpe, was merely
put forward to-day to speak against time. This fact
alone shows the moderate estimate which they put upon
his abilities; and yet what a surprising effect his speech
produced—what excitement, what enthusiasm! Besides,
it was evidently unpremeditated; for it was throughout
an answer to mine.”

“But it was no answer: it was mere declamation.”

“So it was, sir; but it was declamation that sounded
very much like argument, and had the effect of argument.
It is no small proof of a speaker's ability, when
he can enter without premeditation upon a subject—a
subject too which is decidedly against him,—and so discuss
it—so suppress the unfavourable, and so emphasize
the favourable parts of his cause,—as to produce such an
impression. Now, if this be the pupil of Colonel Sharpe,
and so little esteemed as to be used simply to gain time,

what have we to expect—what to fear, from the presence
of the master?”

“Fear nothing, William! nay, whatever you may say
here, in cool deliberative moments, you cannot fear when
you are there! That I know. When you stand before
the people, and every voice is hushed in expectation, a
different spirit takes possession of your bosom. Nothing
then can daunt you. I have seen the proofs too often of
what I say; and I now tell you that it is in your power to
handle this Col. Sharpe with quite as much ease and success
as you have handled all the rest. Do not brood upon
it with such a mind, my son—do not encourage these
doubts. To be an orator you must no more be liable to
fear than a soldier going into battle.”

“Somehow, sir, there are certain names which disturb
me—I have met with men whose looks had the same effect.
They seem to exercise the power of a spell upon
my mind and frame.”

“But you burst from it?”

“Yes, but with great effort.”

“It matters nothing. The difficulty is easily accounted
for, as well as the spell by which you were bound. That
spell was in your own ardency of imagination. Persons
of your temperament, for ever on the leap, are for ever
liable to recoil. Have you never advanced impetuously
to grasp the hand of one who has been named to you, and
then almost shrunk away from his grasp, as soon as you
have beheld his face? He was a phlegmatic, perhaps;
and your warm nature recoiled with a feeling of natural
antipathy from the repelling coldness of his. The man
who pours forth his feelings under enthusiastic impulses
is particularly liable to this frigid influence. A deliberate
matter of fact question, at such a moment—the simplification
into baldness of the subject of his own inquiry, by
the lips of a cynic—will quench his ardour, and make him
shrink within his shell, as a spirit of good may be supposed
to recoil from the approach of a spirit of evil. Now,
you have just enough of this enthusiasm to be sensible
ordinarily to this influence. You acknowledge it only on
ordinary occasions, however. At first, I feared its general
effect upon you. I dreaded lest it should enfeeble you;
but I soon discovered that you had a will, which, in the
moment of necessity, could overcome it quite. As I said

before, when you are once before the crowd, and they
wait in silence for your utterance, you are wholly a man!
I have no fears for you, William—I believe in no spells—
none, at least, which need to trouble you. I know that
you have no reason to fear, and I know that you will not
fear when the time comes. Let me predict for you a more
complete triumph to-morrow than any which has happened
yet.”

“You overrate me, sir. All I shall endeavour to do
will be to keep what ground I may have already won. I
must not hope to make any new conquests in the teeth of
so able a foe.”

“That is enough. To maintain your conquests is the
next thing to making them; and is usually a conquest by
itself. But you will do more—you cannot help it. You
have the argument with you, and that is half the battle.
Nay, it is all the battle to a mind so enthusiastic as yours
in the cause of truth. The truth confers a strange power
upon its advocate. Nay, I believe it is from the truth
alone that we gather the last powers of eloquence. I believe
in the realness of no eloquence unless it comes from
the sincerity of the orator. To make me believe, the
speaker must himself believe.”

“Or seem to do so.”

“I think I should detect the seeming. Nay, after a
little while, the people themselves detect it, and the orator
sinks accordingly. This is the fate of many of our men
who begin popularly. With politics, for a profession, no
man can be honest or consistent long. He must soon
trade on borrowed capital. He soon deals in assignats
and false papers. He endorses the paper of other men,
sooner than not issue; and in doing business at all hazards,
he soon incurs the last—bankruptcy! Political bankruptcy
is of all sorts the worst. There is some chance of regaining
caste, where it is lost by dishonesty—but never
where it follows from a blunder. The knave is certainly
one thing, but the blunderer may be both. The fool and
knave united are incorrigible. Such a combination is too
monstrous for popular patience. And how many do we
see of this description. I do not think there is in any
profession under the sun such numerous examples of this
combination. Every day shows us persons who toil for
power and place with principles sufficiently flexible to suit

any condition of things; and yet they fail, and expose
themselves. This is the wonder—that, unfettered as they
make themselves at the beginning, they should still become
bondsmen, and so, convict. They seem to lack
only one faculty of the knave—and that the most necessary—art.”

“Their very rejection of law enslaves them. That is
the reason. They set out in a chain, which increases with
every movement—which seems momently to multiply its
own links and hourly increase its weight. Falsehood is
such a chain. You cannot convict a true man, for the
simple reason that his feet are unimpeded from the first.
A step in error is a step backward, which requires two
forward before you can regain what is lost. How few
have the courage for this. It is so much easier to keep
on—so difficult to turn! This chain—the heavy weight
which error is for ever doomed to carry—produces a stiffness
of the limbs—a monstrous awkwardness—an inflexibility,
which exposes its burdens whenever it is checked,
compelled to leap aside, or attempt any sudden change of
movement. This was the great difficulty of this young
man, Beauchampe, in the discussion to-day: he scarcely
knew it himself, because, to a young man of ingenuity,
the difficulties of the argument on the wrong side, are
themselves provocatives to error. By exercising ingenuity,
they appeal flatteringly to one's sense of talent; and, in
proportion as he may succeed in plausibly relieving himself
from these difficulties of the subject, in the same proportion
will he gradually identify himself with the side he
now espouses. His mind will gradually adopt the point
of view to which its own subtleties conduct it; and, in
this way, will it become fettered, possibly to the latest moment
of existence. There is nothing more important to
the popular orator than to have truth for his ally when he
first takes the field. Success, under such auspices, will
commend her to his love, and the bias, once established,
his faith is perpetual.”

“True, William, but you would make this alliance accidental.
It must be the result of choice to be worth any
thing. We must love truth, and seek her, or she does not
become our ally.”

“I wish it were possible to convince our young beginners
every where, not only that truth is the best ally, but

the only one that, in the long run, can possibly conduct us
to permanent success.”

“This is not so much the point, I think, as to enable
them to detect the true from the false. Very few young
men are able to do this before thirty. Hence the error of
forcing them into public life before that period. You will
seldom meet with a very young person who will deliberately
choose the false in preference to the true, from a
selfish motive. They are beguiled into error by those
who are older. It is precisely in politics as in morals.
The unsuspecting youth, through the management of some
cold, cunning debauchee, into whose hands he falls, finds
himself in the embrace of a harlot, at the very moment
when he most dreams of beatific love. The inner nature,
not yet practised to defend itself, becomes the prey of the
outer; and strong indeed must be the native energies
which can finally recover the lost ground, and expel the
invader from his place of vantage.”

“The case is shown in that of this young man, Beauchampe.
It is evidently a matter of no moment to him on
which side he enlists himself just now. There is no
truth involved in it, to his eyes. It is a game of skill carried
on between two parties; and his choice is determined
simply by that with which he has been familiar. He is
used by Sharpe, who is an older man, and possessed of
more experience, to promote an end. He little dreams
that, in doing so, he is incurring a moral obligation to
maintain the same conflict through his whole career.”

Here the conversation was interrupted by the entrance
of a little deformed man, the landlord of the “Red Heifer,”
who announced Col. Sharpe and his friend, Mr. Barnabas;
and, at the same time, a crowd, consisting of some ten or
twenty of the substantial yeomen of the neighbourhood,
who had been apprised of the meditated visit, and who
longed to be present at a meeting which they fancied
would result in a keen encounter of wit between the rival
orators, followed the visiters. The two gentlemen rose to
receive the guests of the younger. William Calvert felt a
rising emotion at his heart, the sure sign of intense ambition,
coupled with those natural doubts of its own strength
and securities, which, it will have been seen in the previous
dialogue, it was the labour of the elder gentleman to
discourage. The huge beefy-looking landlord of the opposition

house bustled forward, having the arm of Col.
Sharpe within his. The little deformed master of the
Red Heifer stationing himself beside Calvert, confronted
him, with an air which signified much more of defiance
than satisfaction. Mr. Barnabas advanced towards the
elder Calvert; and the crowd followed and bustled round
to witness the encounter of the intellectual giants. The
parties approached. Col. Sharpe, detaching himself from
the arm of the landlord, extended his hand to his opponent,
and at the same moment, declared his name. Already the
hand of William Calvert was extended, when the light fell
upon the face of his visiter. He recoiled, drew himself
up to his fullest height, and exclaimed, with a voice of
equal surprise and scorn—

“You, sir—you, Col. Sharpe—you!”

Sharpe started back—the audience was confounded.

“I am Col. Sharpe!” exclaimed that gentleman.—
“What mean you, sir—do I not see Mr. Calvert?”

“I cannot know you, sir,” was the stern reply of Calvert
expressed in hoarse and choking accents, his whole
heart swelling with indignation, and his cheek flushed
with almost insuppressible rage.

“What do you mean, my son?” said old Calvert in a
whisper, drawing close to the young man. “What is
this? Who is he?”

Sharpe himself, with his friend, now came forward, and,
with rising accents, demanded an explanation.

“Why, sir, do you say that you cannot know my
friend?” said Barnabas.

“Because I know him too well already!”

“Ha!” exclaimed Sharpe—“know me!”

“Yes! as a villain!—a base, dishonest villain!”

Sharpe sprang upon him, but with a single grasp Calvert
flung him aside with a degree of strength which amply
showed that he might well scorn such an assailant.
Sharpe staggered among the crowd, but did not fall, and,
recovering himself, he was about to renew the assault
when Barnabas interposed.

“Stay, Sharpe, this is not the way.”

“It is not—you are right. See to it!”

“Mr. Calvert, we must have an apology. The offence
was public—the atonement must be so also.”

“Apology! you mistake me, sir—perhaps, too, you

somewhat mistake your friend. He will scarcely need
one I imagine, when he knows me.”

“Who are you then, sir?”

“Let Col. Sharpe, if that be his name—”

“That is his name, sir—what should it be?”

“I know him by another. Look at me, Alfred Stevens
—for such I must still call you—look at me, and behold
one who is ready to avenge the dishonour of Margaret
Cooper. Ha! villain! do you start?—do you shrink?—
do you remember now the young preacher of Charlemont?
the swindling, smooth-spoken rogue, who sought out the
home of innocence to rob it of peace and innocence at a
blow? Once, before this, we stood opposed in deadly
strife. Do you think that I am less ready now. Then,
your foul crime had not been consummated; would to
God I had slain you then! But it is not too late for vengeance!—apology,
indeed!—will you fight, Alfred Stevens?
say—are you as ready now as when the cloth of
the preacher might have been a protection for cowardice.
If you are, say to your friend here, that apology between
us is a word of scorn and no meaning. Atonement—blood
only—nothing less will suffice!”

Sharpe, staggered at the first address of the speaker, had
now recovered himself. His countenance was deadly pale.
His eyes wandered. He had been stunned by the suddenness
of Calvert's revelations. But the eyes of the crowd
were upon him. Murmurs of suspicion reached his ears.
It was necessary that he should take decided ground.
Your politician must not want audacity. Nay, in proportion
to his diminished honesty, must be his increase of
brass. To brazen it out was his policy; and by a strong
effort, regaining his composure, he quietly exclaimed,
looking round him as he spoke—

“The man is certainly mad. I know not what he
means.”

“Liar! this will not serve you. You shall not escape
me. You do not deceive me. You shall not deceive
these people. Your words may deny the truth of what I
say, but your pallid cheeks confess it. Your hoarse,
choking accents, your down-looking eyes confess it. The
lie that is spoken by your tongue is contradicted by all
your other faculties. There is no man present who does
not see that you tremble in your secret soul—that I have

spoken nothing but the truth,—that you are the base
villain,—the destroyer of beauty and innocence,—that I
have pronounced you.”

“This is strange, very strange!” said Mr. Barnabas.

“The man is certainly mad,” continued Sharpe, “or
this is a political charge intended to destroy me. A poor,
base trick, this of yours, Mr. Calvert. It will have no
effect upon the people. They understand that sort of
thing too well.”

“They shall understand it better,” said Calvert. “They
shall have the whole history of your baseness. Political
trick, indeed! We leave that business to you whose
very life has been a lie. My friends—”

“Stay, sir,” said Barnabas. “There is a shorter way
to settle this. My friend has wronged you, you say; he
shall give you redress. There need be no more words
between us.”

“Ay, but there must. The redress of course;—but
the words shall be a matter of course, also. You shall
hear my charge against this man renewed. I pronounce
him a villain, who, under the name of Alfred Stevens, five
years ago made his appearance in the village of Charlemont,
and pretending to be a student of divinity obtained
the confidence of the people; won the affections of a young
lady of the place, dishonoured and deserted her. This is
the charge I make against him, which will be sustained
by this venerable man, and for the truth of which I invoke
the all-witnessing Heaven. Alfred Stevens I defy you to
deny this charge.”

“It is all false as hell!”—was the husky answer of the
criminal.

“It is true as Heaven!”—said Calvert, and his ass everation
was now confirmed by that of the aged man by
whom he was accompanied. Nor were the spectators
unimpressed by the firm, unbending superiority of manner,
possessed by Calvert, over that of Sharpe, who was
wanting in his usual confidence, and who, possibly from
the suddenness of the charge, and possibly from a guilty
conscience, failed in that promptness and freedom of
utterance, which in the case of his accuser was greatly
increased by the feeling of scorn and indignation which
was so suddenly reawakened in his bosom. The little
landlord of the “Red Heifer,” about this time made himself

particularly busy in whispering around that it was
precisely five years ago that Col. Sharpe had taken a trip
to the south, with his uncle, and was absent two-thirds of
the year. How much more the “Red Heifer” might have
said—for he had his own wrongs to stimulate his hostility
and memory—can only be conjectured; for he was suddenly
silenced by the landlord of the opposition house,
who threatened to wring his neck if he again thrust it
forward in the business. But the hint of the little man
had not fallen upon unheeding ears. There were some
two or three persons who recalled the period of Sharpe's
absence in the south, and found it to agree with Calvert's
statements. The buzz became general among the crowd,
but was silenced by the coolness of Barnabas.

“Mr. Calvert,” said he, “you are evidently mistaken in
your man. My friend denies your story as it concerns
himself. We do not deny that some person looking like
my friend may have practised upon your people; but that
he is not the man he insists. There is yet time to withdraw
from the awkward situation into which you have
placed yourself. There is no shame in acknowledging an
error. You are clearly in error—you cannot persevere
in it without injustice. Let me beg you, sir, for your
own sake, to admit as much, and shake hands upon it.”

“Shake hands, and with him! No, no, sir! This
cannot be. I am in no error. I do not mistake my man.
He is the very villain I have declared him. He must
please himself as he may with the epithet.”

“I am sorry you persist in this unhappy business, Mr.
Calvert. My friend will withdraw for the present. May
I see you privately within the hour.”

“At any moment.”

“I am very much obliged to you. I like promptness
in such matters. But,—once more, sir,—it is not too
late. These gentlemen will readily understand how you
have confounded two persons who look something alike.
But there is a shade of difference as you see in the chin,
the forehead, perhaps, the colour of the eyes. Look closely,
I pray you, for truly I should be sorry, for your own
sake, to have you persist in your error.”

Mr. Barnabas, in order to afford Calvert the desired
opportunity of discerning the difference between the
charged and the guilty party, took the light from the
mantel and held it close to the face of Sharpe.

“Pshaw!” said the latter, somewhat impatiently—“the
fellow is a madman or a fool—why do you trouble yourself
further. Let him have what he wishes.”

The voice of Calvert, at the same moment, disclaimed
every doubt on the score of the criminal's identity.

“He is the man! I should know him by day and by
night, among ten thousand!”

“You won't confess yourself mistaken, then?” said
Barnabas—“a mere confession of error—an inaccuracy
of vision! The smallest form of admission.”

Calvert turned from him scornfully.

“Very well, sir—if it must be so!—good people,—my
friends, you bear us witness we have tried every effort to
obtain peace. We are very pacific. But there is a point
beyond which there is no forbearance. Integrity can
keep no terms with slander. Not one among you but
would fight if you were called Alfred Stevens. It is the
name, as you hear, of a swindler; a seducer; a fellow
destined for the high sessions of Judge Lynch. We shall
hear of him under some other alias. We have assured the
young gentleman here, that we are not Alfred Stevens,
and prefer not to be called by a nickname; but he persists,
and you know what is to follow. You can all
retire to bed, therefore, with the gratifying conviction,
that both gentlemen, being bound for it, and good Kentuckians,
will be sure to do their duty when the time
comes. Good night, gentlemen,—and may you sleep to
waken in the morning to hear some famous arguments.
I sincerely trust that nothing will happen to prevent any
of the speakers from attending; but life is the breath in
our nostrils, and may go out with a sneeze. Of one thing
I can assure you, that it will be no fault of mine if you
do not hear the eloquence, at least, of Mr. Barnabas.”

“Hurra for Barnabas! Hurra!” was the cry.

“Hurra for Barnabas!” the echo.

“Calvert for ever!” roared the trombone in the corner;
and the several instruments followed for Sharpe, Calvert,
and Barnabas, according to the sort of pipes and stops
with which Providence had kindly blessed them.