University of Virginia Library

50. CHAPTER L.

— Polyeucte.

— Henry IV.

— 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.”