“I laugh?” the Secretary said. “At what?”
“Good,” the President said. He thrust the dishes from him. “Then we can get down to business. Have you any documents you will need to refer to?”
The Secretary’s secretary approached. “Shall I get the other papers, sir?”
“Papers?” the Secretary said; once more his crest began to rise. “What the devil do I need with papers? What else have I thought about night and day for three weeks?”
“Good; good,” the President said. “Suppose you review the matter briefly, in case I have forgot anything else.”
“Your Excellency is indeed a fortunate man, if you have been able to forget,” the Secretary said. From the pocket of his dressing gown he took a pair of steel-bowed spectacles. But he used them merely to glare again at the President in cockatoo-crested outrage. “This man, Weddel, Vidal—whatever his name is—he and his family or clan or whatever they are—claim to own the entire part of Mississippi which lies on the west side of this river in question. Oh, the grant is in order: that French father of his from New Orleans saw to that.—Well, it so happens that facing his home or plantation is the only ford in about three hundred miles.”
“I know all this,” the President said impatiently. “Naturally I regret now that there was any way of crossing the river at all. But otherwise I don’t see …”
“Neither did they,” the Secretary said. “Until the white man came.”
“Ah,” the President said. “The man who was mur …”
The Secretary raised his hand. “Wait. He stayed about a month with them, ostensibly hunting, since he would be absent all day long, though obviously what he was doing was assuring himself that there was no other ford close by. He never brought any game in; I imagine they laughed at that a good deal, in their pleasant way.”
“Yes,” the President said. “Weddel must have found that very amusing.”
“… or Vidal—whatever his name is,” the Secretary said fretfully. “He don’t even seem to know or even to care what his own name is.”
“Get on,” the President said. “About the ford.”
“Yes. Then one day, after a month, the white man offered to buy some of Weddel’s land—Weddel, Vidal—Damn, da …”
“Call him Weddel,” the President said.
“… from Weddel. Not much; a piece about the size of this room, for which Weddel or V—— charged him about ten prices. Not out of any desire for usufruct, you understand; doubtless Weddel would have given the man the land or anyway wagered it on a game of mumble peg, it not having yet occurred to any of them apparently that the small plot which the man wanted contained the only available entrance to or exit from the ford. Doubtless the trading protracted itself over several days or perhaps weeks, as a kind of game to while away otherwise idle afternoons or evenings, with the bystanders laughing heartily and pleasantly at the happy scene. They must have laughed a great deal, especially when the man paid Weddel’s price; they must have laughed hugely indeed later when they watched the white man out in the sun, building a fence around his property, it doubtless not even then occurring to them that what the white man had done was to fence off the only entrance to the ford.”
“Yes,” the President said impatiently. “But I still don’t see …”
Again the Secretary lifted his hand, pontifical, admonitory. “Neither did they; not until the first traveler came along and crossed at the ford. The white man had built himself a toll-gate.”
“Oh,” the President said.
“Yes. And now it must have been, indeed, amusing for them to watch the white man sitting now in the shade—he had a deerskin pouch fastened to a post for the travelers to drop their coins in, and the gate itself arranged so he could operate it by a rope from the veranda of his one-room domicile without having to even leave his seat; and to begin to acquire property—among which was the horse.”
“Ah,” the President said. “Now we are getting at it.”
“Yes. They got at it swiftly from then on. It seems that the match was between the white man’s horse and this nephew’s horse, the wager the ford and tollgate against a thousand or so acres of land. The nephew’s horse lost. And that night …”
“Ah,” the President said. “I see. And that night the white man was mur …”
“Let us say, died,” the Secretary said primly, “since it is so phrased in the agent’s report. Though he did add in a private communication that the white man’s disease seemed to be a split skull. But that is neither here nor there.”
“No,” the President said. “It’s up yonder at the House.” Where they had been for three weeks now, men, women, children and Negro slaves, coming for fifteen hundred miles in slow wagons since that day in late autumn when the Chickasaw agent had appeared to inquire into the white man’s death. For fifteen hundred miles, across winter swamps and rivers, across the trackless eastern backbone of the continent, led by the bland, obese mongrel despot and patriarch in a carriage, dozing, his nephew beside him and one fat, ringed hand beneath its fall of soiled lace lying upon the nephew’s knee to hold him in charge. “Why didn’t the agent stop him?” the President said.
“Stop him?” the Secretary cried. “He finally compromised to the extent of offering to allow the nephew to be tried on the spot, by the Indians themselves, he reserving only the intention of abolishing the tollgate, since no one knew the white man anyway. But no. The nephew must come to you, to be absolved or convicted in person.”
“But couldn’t the agent stop the rest of them? Keep the rest of them from …”
“Stop them?” the Secretary cried again. “Listen. He moved in there and lived—Weddel, Vi—Damn! damn!! Where was—Yes. Weddel told him that the house was his; soon it was. Because how could he tell there were fewer faces present each morning than the night before? Could you have? Could you now?”
“I wouldn’t try,” the President said. “I would just declare a national thanksgiving. So they slipped away at night.”
“Yes. Weddel and the carriage and a few forage wagons went first; they had been gone about a month before the agent realized that each morning the number which remained had diminished somewhat. They would load the wagons and go at night, by families—grandparents, parents, children; slaves, chattels and dogs—everything. And why not? Why should they deny themselves this holiday at the expense of the Government? Why should they miss, at the mere price of a fifteen-hundred-mile journey through unknown country in the dead of winter, the privilege and pleasure of spending a few weeks or months in new beavers and broadcloth coats and underdrawers, in the home of the beneficent White Father?”
“Yes,” the President said. He said: “And you have told him that there is no charge here against this nephew?”
“Yes. And that if they will go back home, the agent himself will declare the nephew innocent publicly, in whatever ceremony they think fit. And he said—how was it he put it?” The Secretary now spoke in a pleasant, almost lilting tone, in almost exact imitation of the man whom he repeated: “All we desire is justice. If this foolish boy has murdered a white man, I think that we should know it.”
“Damn, damn, damn,” the President said. “All right. We’ll hold the investigation. Get them down here and let’s have it over with.”
“Here?” The Secretary started back. “In my house?”
“Why not? I’ve had them for three weeks; at least you can have them for an hour.” He turned to the companion. “Hurry. Tell them we are waiting here to hold his nephew’s trial.”
And now the President and the Secretary sat behind the cleared table and looked at the man who stood as though framed by the opened doors through which he had entered, holding his nephew by the hand like an uncle conducting for the first time a youthful provincial kinsman into a metropolitan museum of wax figures. Immobile, they contemplated the soft, paunchy man facing them with his soft, bland, inscrutable face—the long, monk-like nose, the slumbrous lids, the flabby, café-au-lait
-colored jowls above a froth of soiled lace of an elegance fifty years outmoded and vanished; the mouth was full, small, and very red. Yet somewhere behind the face’s expression of flaccid and weary disillusion, as behind the bland voice and the almost feminine mannerisms, there lurked something else: something willful, shrewd, unpredictable and despotic. Behind him clotted, quiet and gravely decorous, his dark retinue in beavers and broadcloth and woolen drawers, each with his neatly rolled pantaloons beneath his arm.
For a moment longer he stood, looking from face to face until he found the President. He said, in a voice of soft reproach: “This is not your house.”
“No,” the President said. “This is the house of this chief whom I have appointed myself to be the holder of justice between me and my Indian people. He will deal justice to you.”
The uncle bowed slightly. “That is all that we desire.”
“Good,” the President said. On the table before him sat inkstand, quill, and sandbox, and many papers with ribbons and golden seals much in evidence, though none could have said if the heavy gaze had remarked them or not. The President looked at the nephew. Young, lean, the nephew stood, his right wrist clasped by his uncle’s fat, lace-foamed hand, and contemplated the President quietly, with grave and alert repose. The President dipped the quill into the ink. “Is this the man who …”
“Who performed this murder?” the uncle said pleasantly. “That is what we made this long winter’s journey to discover. If he did, if this white man really did not fall from that swift horse of his perhaps and strike his head upon a sharp stone, then this nephew of mine should be punished. We do not think that it is right to slay white men like a confounded Cherokee or Creek.” Perfectly inscrutable, perfectly decorous, he looked at the two exalted personages playing behind the table their clumsy deception with dummy papers; for an instant the President himself met the slumbrous eyes and looked down. The Secretary though, upthrust, his crest roached violently upward, glared at the uncle.
“You should have held this horse-race across the ford itself,” he said. “Water wouldn’t have left that gash in the white man’s skull.”
The President, glancing quickly up, saw the heavy, secret face musing upon the Secretary with dark speculation. But almost immediately the uncle spoke. “So it would. But this white man would have doubtless required a coin of money from my nephew for passing through his gate.” Then he laughed, mirthful, pleasant, decorous. “Perhaps it would have been better for that white man if he had allowed my nephew to pass through free. But that is neither here nor there now.”
“No,” the President said, almost sharply, so that they looked at him again. He held the quill above the paper. “What is the correct name? Weddel or Vidal?”
Again the pleasant, inflectionless voice came: “Weddel or Vidal. What does it matter by what name the White Chief calls us? We are but Indians: remembered yesterday and forgotten tomorrow.”
The President wrote upon the paper. The quill scratched steadily in the silence in which there was but one other sound: a faint, steady, minor sound which seemed to emerge from the dark and motionless group behind the uncle and nephew. He sanded what he had written and folded it and rose and stood for a moment so while they watched him quietly—the soldier who had commanded men well on more occasions than this. “Your nephew is not guilty of this murder. My chief whom I have appointed to hold justice between us says for him to return home and never do this again, because next time he will be displeased.”
His voice died into a shocked silence; even for that instant the heavy lids fluttered, while from the dark throng behind him that faint, unceasing sound of quiet scratching by heat and wool engendered, like a faint, constant motion of the sea, also ceased for an instant. The uncle spoke in a tone of shocked unbelief: “My nephew is free?”
“He is free,” the President said. The uncle’s shocked gaze traveled about the room.
“This quick? And in here? In this house? I had thought.… But no matter.” They watched him; again the face was smooth, enigmatic, blank. “We are only Indians; doubtless these busy white men have but little time for our small affairs. Perhaps we have already incommoded them too much.”
“No, no,” the President said quickly. “To me, my Indian and my white people are the same.” But again the uncle’s gaze was traveling quietly about the room; standing side by side, the President and the Secretary could feel from one to another the same dawning alarm. After a while the President said: “Where had you expected this council to be held?”
The uncle looked at him. “You will be amused. In my ignorance I had thought that even our little affair would have been concluded in … But no matter.”
“In what?” the President said.
The bland, heavy face mused again upon him for a moment. “You will laugh; nevertheless, I will obey you. In the big white council house beneath the golden eagle.”
“What?” the Secretary cried, starting again. “In the …”
The uncle looked away. “I said that you would be amused. But no matter. We will have to wait, anyway.”
“Have to wait?” the President said. “For what?”
“This is really amusing,” the uncle said. He laughed again, in his tone of mirthful detachment. “More of my people are about to arrive. We can wait for them, since they will wish to see and hear also.” No one exclaimed at all now, not even the Secretary. They merely stared at him while the bland voice went on: “It seems that some of them mistook the town. They had heard the name of the White Chief’s capital spoken, but it so happens that there is also a town in our country with the same name, so that when some of the People inquired on the road, they became misdirected and went there instead, poor ignorant Indians.” He laughed, with fond and mirthful tolerance behind his enigmatic and sleepy face. “But a messenger has arrived; they will arrive themselves within the week. Then we will see about punishing this headstrong boy.” He shook the nephew’s arm lightly. Except for this the nephew did not move, watching the President with his grave and unwinking regard.
For a long moment there was no sound save the faint, steady scratching of the Indians. Then the Secretary began to speak, patiently, as though addressing a child: “Look. Your nephew is free. This paper says that he did not slay the white man and that no man shall so accuse him again, else both I and the great chief beside me will be angered. He can return home now, at once. Let all of you return home at once. For is it not well said that the graves of a man’s fathers are never quiet in his absence?”
Again there was silence. Then the President said, “Besides, the white council house beneath the golden eagle is being used now by a council of chiefs who are more powerful there than I am.”
The uncle’s hand lifted; foamed with soiled lace, his forefinger waggled in reproachful deprecation. “Do not ask even an ignorant Indian to believe that,” he said. Then he said, with no change of inflection whatever; the Secretary did not know until the President told him later, that the uncle was now addressing him: “And these chiefs will doubtless be occupying the white council hut for some time yet, I suppose.”
“Yes,” the Secretary said. “Until the last snow of winter has melted among the flowers and the green grass.”
“Good,” the uncle said. “We will wait, then. Then the rest of the People will have time to arrive.”
And so it was that up that Avenue with a high destiny the cavalcade moved in the still falling snow, led by the carriage containing the President and the uncle and nephew, the fat, ringed hand lying again upon the nephew’s knee, and followed by a second carriage containing the Secretary and his secretary, and this followed in turn by two files of soldiers between which walked the dark and decorous cloud of men, women and children on foot and in arms; so it was that behind the Speaker’s desk of that chamber which was to womb and contemplate the high dream of a destiny superior to the injustice of events and the folly of mankind, the President and the Secretary stood, while below them, ringed about by the living m
anipulators of, and interspersed by the august and watching ghosts of the dreamers of, the destiny, the uncle and nephew stood, with behind them the dark throng of kin and friends and acquaintances from among which came steadily and unabated that faint sound of wool and flesh in friction. The President leaned to the Secretary.
“Are they ready with the cannon?” he whispered. “Are you sure they can see my arm from the door? And suppose those damned guns explode: they have not been fired since Washington shot them last at Cornwallis: will they impeach me?”
“Yes,” the Secretary hissed.
Collected Stories Page 36
