It was a beautiful summer evening, and the streets, though neither crowded nor boisterous, were full of life. The happy French residents had illuminated their houses, and through their open windows came joyful sounds of rejoicing and song. Federalist orators were addressing small gatherings of people at the street corners, and Democratic orators contradicting all they said at the next block. Applause, laughter, derision, enthusiasm of one kind or another thrilled the warm air, and the joy and pang of life assailed the heart or imagination at every step.
On the Bowling Green there was a very respectable audience listening to Gouverneur Morris, who was speaking in such passionate accord with Achille’s sentiments that it was astonishing not to find Achille at his right hand.
“Mr. Morris is the most eloquent speaker of the age,” said Leonard; “let us listen a few minutes to his words.” And as they did so, they heard the embryo utterance of that remarkable “Bourbon speech” which he made a few days afterwards in Dr. Romeyn’s church in Cedar Street:
“The Bourbons are restored. Rejoice, France, Spain, Portugal, Europe, rejoice! Nations of Europe, ye are brethren once more! The family of nations is complete. Embrace, rejoice! And thou, too, my much wronged country! my dear, abused, self-murdered country! bleeding as thou art, rejoice! The Bourbons are restored. The long agony is over. The Bourbons are restored!”
“Let us go home, Leonard,” said Mrs. Bloommaert. “I never heard so much praise of the Bourbons before. My father did not approve of them. If Napoleon is done with, why did not the French people insist on a republic? They had Lafayette--and others.”
Leonard answered only, “Yes.” He did not wish to open the subject of the helplessness of France, nor point out how absurdly irrational it would be for the allied kings of Europe to found a republic in their midst. He felt weary of the subject, and the sense of the evening’s failure affected him. It had been a disappointing day, what was the good of prolonging it? Sappha and Leonard might have fallen into the mistake of doing so, but Mrs. Bloommaert knew better. At the doorstep she positively dismissed Leonard, who could not quite hide the fact that he was willing to obey her. But Sappha, who had hoped to charm away this feeling of tediousness and lassitude when they were alone, was vexed at losing her opportunity.
“It was not kind of you, mother, to send Leonard off as soon as we had done with him. He was weary, too,” she said.
“Weary! I should think he was,” answered Mrs. Bloommaert; “he must be worn out with women to-day. Such a crowd of us as Annette got together.”
“The women were not more disagreeable than the men, mother,” said Sappha. “And I believe Leonard has gone straight to the militia guard-rooms--there are nothing but men there, and so he can rest.”
“I hope he has not gone to any guard-room. Every one will be quarrelling with his neighbour to-night.”
Leonard had, indeed, gone to the guard-room of the Jersey Blues, but his visit was decidedly against his inclination. He was as weary as Mrs. Bloommaert had supposed him to be--weary of the Bourbons, and of the passionate fratching about them; weary of men, and of women also; weary of companionship of all kinds; weary of noise and strain of the restless city; weary of life itself. Vital and large as his nervous force was, it had become exhausted; feeling had wasted it, and disappointment been equally depleting. He resolved when he turned from the Bloommaert house to go direct to his rooms in the City Hotel and seek in solitude and sleep a renewal of strength and hope. On the steps of the hotel an old acquaintance accosted him, and Leonard rather reluctantly asked “if he had come to see him?”
“Yes,” answered the man. “I am in trouble, Mr. Murray, and I could think of no one but you to give me some advice. It is about Miss Martin. You remember pretty Sarah Martin? We were engaged, and she has broken the engagement. I am very unhappy. I do not know what to do. I think you can tell me.”
“I am going to my rooms now. Come upstairs with me, McKenzie.”
“I cannot. I must be back at the guard-room in half an hour. Will you not go with me? We can talk there well enough.”
Then Leonard went with McKenzie, and after the little formalities with the men present in the guard-room were over, Leonard and McKenzie took chairs to an open window and began their consultation. And very soon Leonard threw off his lassitude and became heartily interested in his friend’s trouble. Suddenly a voice, blatant and dictatorial, fell upon his consciousness. It was the voice of a man who had been a member of the company raised by Leonard, and who during the whole term of its service was a source of annoyance and disputing--a man of low birth and of a mean, envious nature, who had neither a good education nor good breeding, and, indeed, who affected to despise both. Leonard’s youth, beauty, fine culture, and fine manners, added to his great wealth and popularity, roused at once Horace Gilson’s envy; and envy in the close companionship of a military fort quickly grew to an almost uncontrollable hatred. And in Gilson’s nature hatred had its proper soil; he was insensible to the nobler qualities of humanity, and persuaded himself--and other of his kind--that Leonard’s gracious forbearance was not the fine courtesy of an officer to his subordinate, but the fear of a timid and effeminate spirit. Indeed, Leonard’s three months’ service had been made an hourly trial by the hardly concealed mockery and contempt of Horace Gilson. Of all men in the wide world he was the very last Leonard wished to see. He moved his chair a little nearer to McKenzie, and by so doing faced the open window only. McKenzie continued talking, unmindful of Gilson’s entrance, but Leonard heard above all he said the sneering taunt and scoffing laugh of the man he despised and disliked. Every one and everything appeared to provoke his disdain, and it was not long before he turned his attention to the two men sitting apart at the window.
“Secrets! Secrets!” he cried with effusive familiarity. “We will have no secrets in a guard-room. Out with the ladies’ names--if you are not ashamed of them.”
Leonard looked indifferently out of the window; it was McKenzie’s affair, not his. And McKenzie, laying his hand upon his pistol in an almost mechanical way, merely glanced at the bully and said: “You had better mind your own business, sir.”
“I am not speaking to you, McKenzie,” Gilson answered. “I am addressing Captain Murray, the great New York Adonis and lady killer! Come, captain, your latest victories?”
“Mr. Gilson,” answered Leonard, “my friend and I are discussing private concerns. When we desire your company, we will let you know. In the meantime, we wish to be alone.”
“Now, captain, no more airs from you. You have left the militia, you know--three months used up your patriotism,” answered Gilson scornfully.
McKenzie rose in a passion. “Damn your impertinence, Gilson! I’ll give you a----”
“Be quiet, Mac,” interrupted Leonard. “The fool is drunk--you can’t even horsewhip a drunken man.” Then he took McKenzie firmly by the arm and both rose to leave the room.
“Drunk, eh?” cried Gilson in a rage. “Drunk! It is well for you both to get out of my way, for I’ll pay you all I owe you yet, Murray--you, and your damned dollars! Go and see if you can buy a little common dog-courage with them.”
“Let me knock the ranting bully down, Murray.”
“He is not worth it.”
By this time the men present were on their feet, some urging Murray to leave the room, some trying to talk reason into Gilson, who became more and more defiant as the objects of his abuse passed out of the hearing of it.
It was a wretched ending to a disagreeable day, and Leonard sat half through the midsummer night fretting and fuming over the incident. He was not a quarrelsome man, and a quarrel with Horace Gilson was an affair too low and despicable to contemplate. Why had McKenzie come to him with his trouble? He felt the injustice of the visit. If he had been a few minutes later he would have missed the man and the annoyance that had grown out of his sympathy with him. He looked wistfully out of the window towards the Bloommaert house, and remembered Sappha, but speedily exiled her from his thoughts, because he could not keep the scene at the guard-room out of them; and it seemed a sacrilege to have both in his consciousness at the same time.
However, after an irritating vigil of some hours he fell asleep with sheer weariness, and when he awakened near noon on the following day Nature had accomplished her renovating work. The Unseen Powers had cradled his soul into peace, cleared away the rack and wreckage of an unfortunate day, and filled his exhausted spirit with the miraculous strength of Faith and Hope.
CHAPTER EIGHT
_The Rose of Renunciation_
As Leonard dressed himself he recollected the guard-room quarrel and smiled. It seemed really so ridiculous and ineffectual; yet he resolved to avoid Gilson as much as possible. “The man was drunk,” he thought, “but sober or drunk, he has an envious nature, and a tongue ready for ill words. Perhaps he may seek me out and continue his offensive behavior. What then?” He pondered this likelihood a few moments, and then asked himself cheerfully: