The Way of a Man
Page 11
CHAPTER XI
THE MORNING AFTER
Events had somewhat hurried me in the two days since my arrival atJefferson Barracks, but on the morning following the awkward ending ofmy match with Orme I had both opportunity and occasion to take stock ofmyself and of my plans. The mails brought me two letters, posted atWallingford soon after my departure; one from Grace Sheraton and onefrom my mother. The first one was--what shall I say? Better perhaps thatI should say nothing, save that it was like Grace Sheraton herself,formal, correct and cold. It was the first written word I had everreceived from my fiancee, and I had expected--I do not know what. Atleast I had thought to be warmed, comforted, consoled in these times ofmy adversity. It seemed to my judgment, perhaps warped by suddenmisfortune, that possibly my fiancee regretted her hasty promise, ruedan engagement to one whose affairs had suddenly taken an attitude of solittle promise. I was a poor man now, and worse than poor, becauselately I had been rich, as things went in my surroundings. In thisletter, I say, I had expected--I do not know what. But certainly I hadnot expected to see sitting on the page written in my fiancee's hand,the face of another woman. I hated myself for it.
The second letter was from my mother, and it left me still moredisconcerted and sad. "Jack," it said, "I grieve unspeakably. I am sadbeyond all imaginings of sadness. I need thee. Come back the first daythee can to thy mother."
There was indeed need for me at home. Yet here was I with my errand notyet well begun; for Captain Stevenson told me this morning that the PostAdjutant had received word from Colonel Meriwether saying that he wouldbe gone for some days or weeks on the upper frontier. Rumor passed aboutthat a new man, Sherman, was possibly to come on to assume charge ofJefferson, a man reported to be a martinet fit to stamp out anydemonstration in a locality where secession sentiment was waxing strong.Meriwether, a Virginian, and hence suspected of Southern sympathy, waslike many other Army officers at the time, shifted to points where hisinfluence would be less felt, President Buchanan to the contrarynotwithstanding. The sum of all which was that if I wished to meetColonel Meriwether and lay before him my own personal request, I wouldbe obliged to seek for him far to the West, in all likelihood at FortLeavenworth, if not at the lower settlements around the old town ofIndependence. Therefore I wrote at once both to my fiancee and to mymother that it would be impossible for me to return at the time, nor atany positive future time then determinable. I bade a hasty good-by to myhost and hostess, and before noon was off for the city. That night Itook passage on the _River Belle_, a boat bound up the Missouri.
Thus, somewhat against my will, I found myself a part of that motleythrong of keen-faced, fearless American life then pushing out over thefrontiers. About me were men bound for Oregon, for California, for thePlains, and not a few whose purpose I took to be partisanship in theborder fighting between slavery and free soil. It was in the West, andon the new soils, that the question of slavery was really to be debatedand settled finally.
The intenseness, the eagerness, the compelling confidence of all thiswest-bound population did not fail to make the utmost impression upon myown heart, hitherto limited by the horizon of our Virginia hills. I saythat I had entered upon this journey against my will. Our churningwheels had hardly reached the turbid flood of the Missouri before thespell of the frontier had caught me. In spite of sadness, trouble,doubt, I would now only with reluctance have resigned my advance intothat country which offered to all men, young and old, a zest of deedsbold enough to banish sadness, doubt and grief.