University of Virginia Library

14. CHAPTER XIV.

Mr. Mordaunt Leslie sat alone in his study.
Hitherto Norman, instead of his father, has occupied
our reader; let me now call his attention to
the latter. Perhaps the United States held no
character more peculiarly the growth of a republic,
where talent and eloquence make themselves felt.

Early in life he had entered the field of politics.
Being the son of a man who had figured brilliantly
in the Revolution, in the companionship of Washington,
Kosciusko, Hamilton, and Lafayette; and
belonging to one of the old, wealthy, and influential
(if they could not be called aristocratic) families
of the country, he commenced his career with
numerous and powerful advantages. Long and
deeply had he struggled in the game, and always
been the winner. Stronger and stronger grew his
sway—louder and louder his voice was heard;
and more and more reverently it was listened to
in every exciting emergency. At the time of our
story he stood among the highest American statesmen:
profound and grave, learned, eloquent, and
persevering, he had risen through the intermediate
grades between the obscurity of a private citizen
and his present rank in the Senate of the United
States. From that commanding summit, his dignified
but never sleeping ambition formed new
plans, beheld higher eminences. Few had climbed
so loftily with a character so unsullied. A foreign
ministry to Paris or London was talked of by his
friends. In the secret conclave of his confidential
circle, an ascent yet more audacious had fixed
their eyes; nor did their aspiring hopes pause
lower than the highest seat in the republic. Many
candidates had striven openly for the presidential
chair with fewer claims, and more slender hopes,
than might be advanced and cherished by Mordaunt
Leslie.

Late on the night to which we allude, business
of paramount importance having called him, for a
few days, from his duties at Washington to New-York,
he sat in his library, earnestly engaged in
studying a subject of deep interest about to come
under the consideration of the Senate. A rival

statesman from the South had attempted the passage
of a bill which Mr. Leslie deemed not only
striking at the foundation of the interests of the republic,
but at the same time calculated to shake,
and perhaps tumble to the dust, the whole fabric
of his own private views, which he had been so
long and so successfully building up. Should this
bill succeed, it would produce the most material
and the most unpleasant influences upon his life and
happiness. It was, indeed, one of those questions
wherein the whole strength of two mighty parties
come to be thrown, for the moment, into the hands
of two individuals, as ancient armies occasionally
confided their quarrel to the puissance of two single
combatants. Thousands anxiously waited the
result; and the exciting sensation produced through
the country had already crowded the city of Washington
with strangers, eager for the coming on of
the conflict.

On the succeeding day, MR. Leslie, with his son
and daughter, were to set out for the capital; and
it was understood that a large party from New-York
intended also to be present, to hear the eloquence,
and probably witness the triumph, of their
celebrated representative. Mr. and Mrs. Temple
were enthusiastically enlisted in the interests of the
party opposed to Mr. Leslie; they had also prepared
to proceed to Washington, and were to start
early on the morrow.

As the statesman sat in the silent seclusion of
his study, while his son was wandering alone, indulging
blissful visions of Flora Temple, he was
merged in dreams of stern and grasping ambition;
not the ambition of Cæsar, Napoleon, or Cromwell,
but that of Brutus and of Washington. At least,
this was the exalted sentiment with which he had
stepped upon the arena; this was the motive which

he had set up before his own heart; but, as he grew
nearer and yet more near to the issue of the game,
as the bright reward of his daring mind shone
almost within his reach, who can say what changes
went on in his character? Who can note the degree
in which, while his hopes strengthened, his ambition
also deepened? As he now bent over masses
of heavy documents; as he sought a passage in a
ponderous tome; now elucidating a point of history;
now illustrating a question of law; now noting
down a classical quotation; now pausing to
examine, enlarge, imbody in words, and commit to
memory a new and more fiery thought; now turning
over the leaves of Shakspeare for some wondrous
phrase, with which to link and send down
the tide of popular feeling a modern opinion;—as
he pondered over all the various arts by which a
great orator steeps and imbues himself in his
theme, hour after hour of the silent night rolled
unheededly away.

Few men find their hearts trembling with a more
eager anxiety upon the result of an event or an action,
than that of the soaring statesman as he looked
forward to this struggle on the floor of Congress.
The lover, waiting the word from the lips of his
mistress; the mother, watching the leech as he
feels the pulse of her dying child; the gambler, his
all pledged, pausing ere he uncovers the dice; the
culprit, bending to hear the verdict on his life—perhaps
none of these are stirred with thoughts much
more deep and absorbing than those which rolled
through the mind of the ambitious, haughty, eloquent,
and indignant senator. He felt in this crisis
like Leonidas at Thermopylæ; he stood within the
narrow gorge which he was to defend with his own
arm, and fearful he saw were the odds against him.
He was eloquent, and he knew it. His heart swelled

with the grandeur of conscious power; he
longed, he yearned for the moment of action. He
sat like Jove above the Titans, aware of the forces
against him, but still grasping the thunder; and,
though they might pile up mountains on mountains,
still calmly and majestically awaiting the time to
launch the immortal bolt.

He had closed a volume of Montesquieu, after
some hours of severe application; and as he laid
down his pencil, and put aside the volume, he
breathed,as one whose attention relaxes from a long
and fatiguing task; and a smile slowly, and just
perceptibly, softened and lighted his majestic face.
The effect of the light, throwing its subdued stream
upon his noble features, formed a superb subject
for the pencil. It had the warm splendour and
high character of a Titian. The imposing person
which we have admired in Norman appeared even
more dignified in the father: he was taller, and his
demeanour more uniformly and calmly commanding.
His manners were remarkable for a bland and
smooth courtliness. Intercourse with the world
had imparted to his address high-tempered polish
and elegance, which fitted him admirably for the
diplomatic station to which it was said the country
would soon call him. By Norman that fascinating
ease and self-possession were not yet fully possessed;
they flashed through him only at intervals.
At one hour they would hallow his society so, that
woman yielded to the delusive and dangerous influence;
and at the next, it would pass away as if the
flame had been withdrawn from the vase; and others
would wonder what people could find in him to
admire so boundlessly. Mr. Mordaunt Leslie would
have been instantly received with delight at the
most fastidious and polished court of Europe; but
his son might have remained a time in the shadow,

and been compelled to rise by degrees, unless some
sudden crisis brought his talent into notice. Both
were of the same rich material: the former was
perfected from the hand of the artist; the latter, yet
partly unwrought.

In Mr. Leslie only one passion coped with his
ambition: it was paternal love. He had married,
at the early age of twenty, a woman whose rare
charms and excellences neither poet nor painter
can too highly depict. She was the only one he
had ever loved. Mutually endeared by the reciprocal
influences of genius and romance, by remarkable
beauty of person and gentleness of character,
they had dwelt together contentedly—happy, nay,
blessed beyond common mortals. While she lived
his life had been a sunshiny romance—a fairy
dream—nothing but sunshine, poetry, and love. But
a rapid malady—which, even while it cut off her
life, had beautified and etherealized both her mind
and person—deprived him of this beloved being.
From the whole ardour and very romance of love,
his mind had rolled gradually into a new channel.
Never, subsequently, had women been to him more
than sisters. All the tenderness of his nature had
centred upon Julia and Norman. In the former he
found a fair copy of his wife—in the latter of himself.
For a year after his bereavement, in the loneliest
hours of the night, he had visited the turf beneath
which, cold to his anguish and his love, slept
the bosom of the beautiful and vanished object of
his early worship. And then the lover, the quiet,
shrinking, world-despising lover—the haunter of
brooks, the feeder of birds; the modest, unpresuming
youth, who had murmured the very breath of
poetry to the ear of beauty; who had pored over
the hues of a flower, or the shape of a cloud; who
had sought to master the art of music, that he

might, in a new language, tell to her how he loved
her footmarks, and how he was enraptured beneath
her gaze; he, to whom mankind had been but the
actors in a gory tragedy or a grotesque farce, from
both of which he turned, in the fulness of his bliss,
still to linger and murmur his passion to one modest
rose in the wild wood;—he reappeared among
his fellow-creatures the resolute votary of ambition
—forgetting music, woman, nature—the midnight
student, the severe satirist, the haranguer of mobs,
the candidate for office, the foremost in the jar, dust,
tumult, and sinewy struggle of brawling and smoky
cities. Thus are men's characters formed. What
now was the wife of his boyhood?—a flower he
had watched years ago, as it faded by the road-side
—a laughing brook, whose channel was dusty—a
lyre, whose strings were broken—a sylvan dell,
once fringed with foliage and scented with sweet
roses, but whose green and silent depths, where his
boyish foot had trod when the world was all new,
he could never—never visit again. He had ceased
to be a lover; he had ceased to be a husband. He
was now only the father and the statesman.

As he saw at length the and of his studies for
the night, he closed the volume; and the smile
which stole across his features announced the pleasure
of anticipated triumph.

He rose, lighted a fragrant cigar, and sat down
again, rather to muse than to study; for he had arrived
at that age when but little sleep is requisite,
and he who would gain and preserve ascendency
over his fellow-men must learn to waste but few
hours in slumber.

Thus ran the midnight musings of the statesman:—

“Oh that this battle were fought and won! But
it will be—it shall! Cunning and ambitious as he

is, I will meet him front to front, breast to breast.
He shall find me no recoiling boy. I will make
him feel and fear me. Let it come. Perhaps best
it should. I will attack him in his fortress; I will
scale his impregnable walls. Why, what but personal
ambition can lead him to such audacious designs?
And yet, he has no young eagle, as I have,
ready to launch upon the tempest; if he had, I
could fancy the ground of his ambition.”

He paused; and then continued—

“That boy is already a man. I mark his mind
mature. I mark his energies unfold—his person
develop—his character broaden and deepen. All
that I have been, he shall be—and more, much
more. He shall commence where I rest. But he
must travel—and study. Of late he has idled his
hours in indolent city pleasures:—Right—he is of
the true metal. He will sicken of them as I did.
Let him see what a heartless thing it is. Already
his better, his higher, his hereditary nature breaks
forth. He reads much. He mopes. He thinks.
Perhaps it is love—well, be it so! If he escape
that enchanted island—if some Calypso do not persuade
him to linger for ever in her perennial bowers
—then will he mount on the wind, and gaze on the
very sun unblinded, as I do.

“My sweet Julia—was ever man so blessed in
son and daughter? Who might not be proud to ask
her hand? That young Howard is well enough,
too—fire and genius in him—rich, bold, eloquent;
and then she loves him; I see it in all her looks,
words, and actions. Yes—happy, happy beings!—
they love each other. Blessings on them! blessings
on them! I would not shadow one ray of
their bright hearts—no, not even for ambition.

“My old friend Judge Howard, too, is no mean
ally; a proud, firm old man. Yes, yes, I am happy—too,

too happy, considering that she is not of
our circle. Beloved, beautiful, sanctified Julia, art
thou a spirit?—dost thou lean from the wind to gaze
on, and bless us, dearest, most adored? Dost thou
watch the heart which has been none but thine?
Dost thou still behold, still know, still love me,
sweet, sweet spirit of my gone days? Speak,
speak—give me some sign, some token—”

A shriek of such intense and piercing horror
broke in upon his meditations, that the dreamer, already
half lost in unearthly visions, started as if
some pale ghost had indeed replied. The next moment
there stood before him an image—to his disturbed
imagination strangely resembling the being
then uppermost in his fancy. It was an instant before
he recognised his daughter Julia, in a loose
night-dress of white, her face deadly pale, and a
spot of blood on her cheek.

Such are the discords which break upon the music
of hope's enchanted strain.