The Choir Invisible [83]
rode and at sunrise was far away. Pausing on a height and turning his horse's head, he sat a long time motion-less as a statue. Then he struck his feet into its flank and all that day rode back again.
The sun was striking the tree-tops as he neared the clearing. He could see her across the garden. She sat quite still, her face turned toward the horizon. Against her breast, opened but forgotten, lay a book. He could recognize it. By that story she had judged him and wished to guide him. The smile smote his eyes like the hilt of a knight's sword used as a Cross to drive away the Evil One. For he knew the evil purpose with which he had returned.
And so he sat watching her until she rose and walked slowly to the house.
XXII
IT was early autumn when the first letters from him were received over the mountains. All these had relation to Mount Vernon and his business there.
To the Transylvania Library Committee he wrote that the President had mad a liberal subscription for the buying of books and that the Vice-President and other public men would be likely to contribute.
His sonorous, pompous letter to a member of the Democratic Society was much longer and in part as follows:
"When I made know to the President who I was and where I came from, he regarded me with a look at once so stern and so benign, that I felt like one of my school-boys overtaken in some small rascality and was almost of a mind to march straight to a corner of the room and stand with my face to the wall. If he had seized me by the coat collar and trounced me well, I should somehow have felt that he had the right. From the conversations that followed I am led to believe that he knows the name of every prominent member of the Democratic Society of Lexington, and that he understands Kentucky affairs with regard to national and international complications as no other living man. While questioning me on the subject, he had the manner of one who, from conscientiousness, would further verify facts which he had already tested. But what impressed me even more than his knowledge was his justice; in illustration of which I shall never forget his saying, that the part which Kentucky had taken, or had wished to take, in the Spanish and French conspiracies had caused him greater solicitude than any other single event since the foundation of the National Government; but that nowhere else in America had the struggle for immediate self-government been so necessary and so difficult, and that nowhere else were the mistakes of patriotic and able men more natural or more to be judged with mildness.
"I think I can quote his very words when he spoke of the foolish jealousies and heartburnings, due to misrepresentations, that have influenced Kentucky against the East as a section and against the Government as favouring it: 'The West derives from the East supplies requisite to its growth and comfort; and what is perhaps of still greater consequence, it must of necessity owe the secure enjoyment of indispensable outlets for its own production to the weight, influence, and future maritime strength of the Atlantic side of the Union, directed by an indissoluble community of interest, as One Nation.'
"Memorable to me likewise was the language in which he proceeded to show that this was true:
"'The inhabitants of our Western country have lately had a useful lesson on this head. They have seen in the negotiations by the Executive, and in the unanimous ratification by the Senate of the treaty with Spain, and in the universal satisfaction of that event throughout the United States, a decisive proof how unfounded were the suspicions propagated among them of a policy in the General Government and in the Atlantic States unfriendly to their interests in regard to the Mississippi. . . . Will they not henceforth be deaf to those advisers, if such there are, who would sever them from their Brethren and connect them with Aliens?'
"I am frank to declare that, having enjoyed the high privilege of these interviews with the President and been brought to judge rightly what
The sun was striking the tree-tops as he neared the clearing. He could see her across the garden. She sat quite still, her face turned toward the horizon. Against her breast, opened but forgotten, lay a book. He could recognize it. By that story she had judged him and wished to guide him. The smile smote his eyes like the hilt of a knight's sword used as a Cross to drive away the Evil One. For he knew the evil purpose with which he had returned.
And so he sat watching her until she rose and walked slowly to the house.
XXII
IT was early autumn when the first letters from him were received over the mountains. All these had relation to Mount Vernon and his business there.
To the Transylvania Library Committee he wrote that the President had mad a liberal subscription for the buying of books and that the Vice-President and other public men would be likely to contribute.
His sonorous, pompous letter to a member of the Democratic Society was much longer and in part as follows:
"When I made know to the President who I was and where I came from, he regarded me with a look at once so stern and so benign, that I felt like one of my school-boys overtaken in some small rascality and was almost of a mind to march straight to a corner of the room and stand with my face to the wall. If he had seized me by the coat collar and trounced me well, I should somehow have felt that he had the right. From the conversations that followed I am led to believe that he knows the name of every prominent member of the Democratic Society of Lexington, and that he understands Kentucky affairs with regard to national and international complications as no other living man. While questioning me on the subject, he had the manner of one who, from conscientiousness, would further verify facts which he had already tested. But what impressed me even more than his knowledge was his justice; in illustration of which I shall never forget his saying, that the part which Kentucky had taken, or had wished to take, in the Spanish and French conspiracies had caused him greater solicitude than any other single event since the foundation of the National Government; but that nowhere else in America had the struggle for immediate self-government been so necessary and so difficult, and that nowhere else were the mistakes of patriotic and able men more natural or more to be judged with mildness.
"I think I can quote his very words when he spoke of the foolish jealousies and heartburnings, due to misrepresentations, that have influenced Kentucky against the East as a section and against the Government as favouring it: 'The West derives from the East supplies requisite to its growth and comfort; and what is perhaps of still greater consequence, it must of necessity owe the secure enjoyment of indispensable outlets for its own production to the weight, influence, and future maritime strength of the Atlantic side of the Union, directed by an indissoluble community of interest, as One Nation.'
"Memorable to me likewise was the language in which he proceeded to show that this was true:
"'The inhabitants of our Western country have lately had a useful lesson on this head. They have seen in the negotiations by the Executive, and in the unanimous ratification by the Senate of the treaty with Spain, and in the universal satisfaction of that event throughout the United States, a decisive proof how unfounded were the suspicions propagated among them of a policy in the General Government and in the Atlantic States unfriendly to their interests in regard to the Mississippi. . . . Will they not henceforth be deaf to those advisers, if such there are, who would sever them from their Brethren and connect them with Aliens?'
"I am frank to declare that, having enjoyed the high privilege of these interviews with the President and been brought to judge rightly what