Part 21 (1/2)
”I beg your pardon, Miss Barton,” he said, with sudden swing to the polite tones of society. ”I'm annoying you with my foreign speculations--”
A sudden murmur swept the galleries and all eyes were turned on the tall slender figure of Jefferson Davis as he slowly entered the Senate Chamber.
”Who is it?” Socola asked.
”Senator Davis--you don't know him?”
”I have never seen him before. He has been quite ill I hear.”
”Yes. He's been in bed for the past week suffering agonies from neuralgia. He lost the sight of one of his eyes from chronic pain caused by exposure in the service of his country in the northwest.”
”Really--I didn't know that.”
”He was compelled to remain in a darkened room for months the past year to save the sight of his remaining eye.”
”That accounts for my not having seen him before.”
Socola followed the straight military figure with painful interest as he slowly moved toward his seat greeting with evident weakness his colleagues as he pa.s.sed. He was astonished beyond measure at the personality of the famous leader of the ”Southern Conspirators” of whom he had heard so much. He was the last man in all the crowd he would have singled out for such a role. The face was too refined, too spiritual, too purely intellectual for the man of revolution. His high forehead, straight nose, thin compressed lips and pointed chin belonged to the poet and dreamer rather than the man of action. The hollow cheek bones and deeply furrowed mouth told of suffering so acute the sympathy of every observer was instantly won.
In spite of evident suffering his carriage was erect, dignified, and graceful. The one trait which fastened the attention from the first and held it was the remarkable intensity of expression which clothed his thin muscular face.
”You like him?” Jennie ventured at last.
”I can't say, Miss Barton,” was the slowly measured answer. ”He is a remarkably interesting man. I'm surprised and puzzled--”
”Surprised and puzzled at what?”
”Well, you see I know his history. The diplomatist makes it his business to know the facts in the lives of the leaders of a nation to whose Government he is accredited. Mr. Davis spent four years at West Point.
He gave seven years of his life to the service of the army in the West.
He carried your flag to victory in Mexico and hobbled home on crutches.
He was one of your greatest Secretaries of War. He sent George B.
McClellan and Robert E. Lee to the Crimea to master European warfare, organized and developed your army, changed the model of your arms, introduced the rifled musket and the minie ball. He explored your Western Empire and surveyed the lines of the great continental railways you are going to build to the Pacific Ocean. He planned and built your system of waterworks in the city of Was.h.i.+ngton and superintends now the extension of the Capitol building which will make it the most imposing public structure in the world. He has never stooped to play the part of a demagogue. He has never sought an office higher than the role of Senator which fits his character and temperament. His mind has always been busy dreaming of the imperial future of your widening Republic. His eye has seen the vision of its extension to the Arctic on the north and the jungles of Panama on the south. Why should such a man deliberately come into this chamber to-day before this a.s.sembled crowd and commit hari-kari?”
”He's a true son of the South!” Jennie Barton proudly answered.
”Even so, how can he do the astounding thing he proposes to carry out to-day? His record shows that pa.s.sionate devotion to the Union has been the very breath of his life. I've memorized one of his outbursts as a model of your English language--”
Jennie laughed.
”I never heard of his Union speeches, I'm sure!”
”Strange that your people have forgotten them. Listen: 'From sire to son has descended the love of the Union in our hearts, as in our history are mingled the names of Concord and Camden, of Yorktown and Saratoga, of New Orleans and Bunker Hill. Together they form a monument to the common glory of our common country. Where is the Southern man who would wish that monument less by one Northern name that const.i.tutes the ma.s.s? Who, standing on the ground made sacred by the blood of Warren, could allow sectional feeling to curb his enthusiasm as he looks upon that obelisk which rises a monument to freedom's and his country's triumph, and stands a type of the time, the men and the event it commemorates; built of material that mocks the waves of time, without niche or molding for parasite or creeping thing to rest upon, pointing like a finger to the sky to raise man's thoughts to high and n.o.ble deeds!'”
Socola paused and turned his dark eyes on Jennie's upturned face.
”How can the man who made that speech in Boston do this mad deed to-day?”
”Senator Clay has given the answer,” was the girl's quick reply.