Part 3 (2/2)

Lee!

(_All the officers rise at once and lift their gla.s.ses. Then look around for LEE._)

WILc.o.x--Why he isn't here. What can be the matter.

MAGRUDER--I'll go and fetch him.

SCOTT--You might know Lee would be first in the battle and last at a banquet.

TWIGGS--I thought all of the crowd were here.

SCOTT--They are all here but Lee. Evidently we were all too much interested in our food to notice anything else. Let's sing a song to welcome him. (_They sing two stanzas of ”Yankee Doodle.”_)

TWIGGS--Here comes Magruder alone. (_MAGRUDER enters._) Why, what's the matter? Couldn't you find him?

MAGRUDER--Oh, I found him all right, but that was all the good it did me.

SCOTT--Is he ill?

MAGRUDER--If he is, I wish I had the same thing the matter with me. He's suffering from a sense of duty.

TWIGGS--You don't have to worry then.

WILc.o.x--Tell us all about it.

MAGRUDER--You might as well sit down first because he isn't coming.

(_They all sit down but MAGRUDER._) You see I found him in a little room in a corner of the palace hard at work on a map. I asked him why he wasn't at the banquet and he said he was too busy. I told him it was just drudgery and to let some one else do it, but he looked up at me with that mild, calm gaze we all know so well and said, ”No, I'm just doing my duty.”

ACT II

SCENE I

_General Scott's office, Was.h.i.+ngton, April 18, 1861._

Characters

Colonel Lee General Scott

SCOTT--The nation is in a terrible condition.

LEE--As far as I can judge from the papers we are between a state of anarchy and civil war. May G.o.d avert from us both!

I see that four States have declared themselves out of the Union. Four more apparently will follow their example. Then if the border States are dragged into the gulf of revolution, one half of the country will be arrayed against the other.

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