Book: 54 40 or Fight

E >> Emerson Hough >> 54 40 or Fight




"So small a shoe could not have held an extended epistle, Madam," I
said, ignoring her question.

"No, but the little roll of paper caused me anguish. After I had danced
I was on the point of fainting. I hastened to the cover of the nearest
curtain, where I might not be noticed. Senor Yturrio of Mexico was
somewhat vigilant. He wished to know what Texas planned with England. He
has long made love to me--by threats, and jewels. As I stood behind the
curtain I saw his face, I fled; but one shoe--the empty one--was not
well fastened, and it fell. I could not walk. I reached down, removed
the other shoe with its note, hid it in my handkerchief--thank
Providence for the fashion of so much lace--and so, not in wine,
Monsieur, as you may believe, and somewhat anxious, as you may also
believe, expecting to hear at once of an encounter between Van Zandt and
the Mexican minister, Senor Almonte, or his attache Yturrio, or between
one of them and some one else, I made my adieux--I will warrant the only
woman in her stocking feet who bowed for Mr. Tyler at the ball that
night!"

"Yes, so far as I know, Madam, you are the only lady who ever left the
East Room precisely so clad. And so you got into your own
carriage--alone--after a while? And so, when you were there you put on
the shoe which was left? And so Yturrio of Mexico got the other one--and
found nothing in it! And so, he wanted this one!"

"You come on," she said. "You have something more than a trace of
brain."

"And that other shoe, which _I_ got that night?"

Without a word she smoothed out a bit of paper which she removed from a
near-by desk, and handed it to me. "_This_ was in yours! As I said, in
my confusion I supposed you had it. You said I should go in a sack. I
suppose I did! I suppose I lost my head, somewhere! But certainly I
thought you had found the note and given it to Mr. Calhoun; else I
should have driven harder terms with him! I would drive harder terms
with you, now, were I not in such haste to learn the answer to my
question! Tell me, _were_ you married?"

"Is that answer worth more than Van Zandt?" I smiled.

"Yes," she answered, also smiling.

I spread the page upon the cloth before me; my eyes raced down the
lines. I did not make further reply to her.

"Madam," went on the communication, "say to your august friend Sir
Richard that we have reached the end of our endurance of these late
delays. The promises of the United States mean nothing. We can trust
neither Whig nor Democrat any longer. There is no one party in power,
nor will there be. There are two sections in America and there is no
nation, and Texas knows not where to go. We have offered to Mr. Tyler to
join the Union if the Union will allow us to join. We intend to reserve
our own lands and reserve the right to organize later into four or more
states, if our people shall so desire. But as a great state we will join
the Union if the Union will accept us. That must be seen.

"England now beseeches us not to enter the Union, but to stand apart,
either for independence or for alliance with Mexico and England. The
proposition has been made to us to divide into two governments, one free
and one slave. England has proposed to us to advance us moneys to pay
all our debts if we will agree to this. Settled by bold men from our
mother country, the republic, Texas has been averse to this. But now our
own mother repudiates us, not once but many times. We get no decision.
This then, dear Madam, is from Texas to England by your hand, and we
know you will carry it safe and secret. We shall accept this proposal of
England, and avail ourselves of the richness of her generosity.

"If within thirty days action is not taken in Washington for the
annexation of Texas, Texas will never in the history of the world be one
of the United States. Moreover, if the United States shall lose Texas,
also they lose Oregon, and all of Oregon. Carry this news--I am
persuaded that it will be welcome--to that gentleman whose ear I know
you have; and believe me always, my dear Madam, with respect and
admiration, yours, for the State of Texas, Van Zandt."

I drew a deep breath as I saw this proof of double play on the part of
this representative of the republic of the Southwest. "They are
traitors!" I exclaimed. "But there must be action--something must be
done at once. I must not wait; I must go! I must take this, at least, to
Mr. Calhoun."

She laughed now, joyously clapping her white hands together. "Good!" she
said. "You are a man, after all. You may yet grow brain."

"Have I been fair with you thus far?" she asked at length.

"More than fair. I could not have asked this of you. In an hour I have
learned the news of years. But will you not also tell me what is the
news from Chateau Ramezay? Then, indeed, I could go home feeling I had
done very much for my chief."

"Monsieur, I can not do so. You will not tell me that other news."

"Of what?"

"Of your nuptials!"

"Madam, I can not do so. But for you, much as I owe you, I would like to
wring your neck. I would like to take your arms in my hands and crush
them, until--"

"Until what?" Her face was strange. I saw a hand raised to her throat.

"Until you told me about Oregon!" said I.

I saw her arms move--just one instant--her body incline. She gazed at me
steadily, somberly. Then her hands fell.

"Ah, God! how I hate you both!" she said; "you and her. You _were_
married, after all! Yes, it can be, it can be! A woman may love one
man--even though he could give her only a bed of husks! And a man may
love a woman, too--one woman! I had not known."

I could only gaze at her, now more in perplexity than ever. Alike her
character and her moods were beyond me. What she was or had been I could
not guess; only, whatever she was, she was not ordinary, that was sure,
and was to be classified under no ordinary rule. Woman or secret agent
she was, and in one or other identity she could be my friend or my
powerful enemy, could aid my country powerfully if she had the whim; or
damage it irreparably if she had the desire. But--yes--as I studied her
that keen, tense, vital moment, she was woman!

A deep fire burned in her eyes, that was true; but on her face
was--what? It was not rage, it was not passion, it was not chagrin. No,
in truth and justice I swear that what I then saw on her face was that
same look I had noted once before, an expression of almost childish
pathos, of longing, of appeal for something missed or gone, though much
desired. No vanity could contemplate with pleasure a look like that on
the face of a woman such as Helena von Ritz.

I fancied her unstrung by excitement, by the strain of her trying labor,
by the loneliness of her life, uncertain, misunderstood, perhaps, as it
was. I wondered if she could be more unhappy than I myself, if life
could offer her less than it did to me. But I dared not prolong our
masking, lest all should be unmasked.

"It is nothing!" she said at last, and laughed gaily as ever.

"Yes, Madam, it is nothing. I admit my defeat. I shall ask no more
favors, expect no further information from you, for I have not earned
it, and I can not pay. I will make no promise that I could not keep."

"Then we part even!"

"As enemies or friends?"

"I do not yet know. I can not think--for a long time. But I, too, am
defeated."

"I do not understand how Madam can be defeated in anything."

"Ah, I am defeated only because I have won. I have your secret; you do
not have mine. But I laid also another wager, with myself. I have lost
it. Ceremony or not--and what does the ceremony value?--you _are_
married. I had not known marriage to be possible. I had not known
you--you savages. No--so much--I had not known."

"Monsieur, adieu!" she added swiftly.

I bent and kissed her hand. "Madam, _au revoir!_"

"No, _adieu!_ Go!"




CHAPTER XVII

A HUNTER OF BUTTERFLIES

I love men, not because they are men, but because they are not
women.--_Queen Christina_.


There was at that time in Montreal a sort of news room and public
exchange, which made a place of general meeting. It was supplied with
newspapers and the like, and kept up by subscriptions of the town
merchants--a spacious room made out of the old Methodist chapel on St.
Joseph Street. I knew this for a place of town gossip, and hoped I might
hit upon something to aid me in my errand, which was no more than begun,
it seemed. Entering the place shortly before noon, I made pretense of
reading, all the while with an eye and an ear out for anything that
might happen.

As I stared in pretense at the page before me, I fumbled idly in a
pocket, with unthinking hand, and brought out to place before me on the
table, an object of which at first I was unconscious--the little Indian
blanket clasp. As it lay before me I felt seized of a sudden hatred for
it, and let fall on it a heavy hand. As I did so, I heard a voice at my
ear.

"_Mein Gott_, man, do not! You break it, surely."

I started at this. I had not heard any one approach. I discovered now
that the speaker had taken a seat near me at the table, and could not
fail to see this object which lay before me.

"I beg pardon," he said, in a broken speech which showed his foreign
birth; "but it iss so beautiful; to break it iss wrong."

Something in his appearance and speech fixed my attention. He was a
tall, bent man, perhaps sixty years of age, of gray hair and beard, with
the glasses and the unmistakable air of the student. His stooped
shoulders, his weakened eye, his thin, blue-veined hand, the iron-gray
hair standing like a ruff above his forehead, marked him not as one
acquainted with a wild life, but better fitted for other days and
scenes.

I pushed the trinket along the table towards him.

"'Tis of little value," I said, "and is always in the way when I would
find anything in my pocket."

"But once some one hass made it; once it hass had value. Tell me where
you get it?"

"North of the Platte, in our western territories," I said. "I once
traded in that country."

"You are American?"

"Yes."

"So," he said thoughtfully. "So. A great country, a very great country.
Me, I also live in it."

"Indeed?" I said. "In what part?"

"It iss five years since I cross the Rockies."

"You have crossed the Rockies? I envy you."

"You meesunderstand me. I live west of them for five years. I am now
come east."

"All the more, then, I envy you! You have perhaps seen the Oregon
country? That has always been my dream."

My eye must have kindled at that, for he smiled at me.

"You are like all Americans. They leave their own homes and make new
governments, yess? Those men in Oregon haf made a new government for
themselfs, and they tax those English traders to pay for a government
which iss American!"

I studied him now closely. If he had indeed lived so long in the Oregon
settlements, he knew far more about certain things than I did.

"News travels slowly over so great a distance," said I. "Of course I
know nothing of these matters except that last year and the year before
the missionaries have come east to ask us for more settlers to come out
to Oregon. I presume they want their churches filled."

"But most their _farms!_" said the old man.

"You have been at Fort Vancouver?"

He nodded. "Also to Fort Colville, far north; also to what they call
California, far south; and again to what they may yet call Fort
Victoria. I haf seen many posts of the Hudson Bay Company."

I was afraid my eyes showed my interest; but he went on.

"I haf been, in the Columbia country, and in the Willamette country,
where most of your Americans are settled. I know somewhat of California.
Mr. Howard, of the Hudson Bay Company, knows also of this country of
California. He said to those English gentlemans at our meeting last
night that England should haf someting to offset California on the west
coast; because, though Mexico claims California, the Yankees really rule
there, and will rule there yet more. He iss right; but they laughed at
him."

"Oh, I think little will come of all this talk," I said carelessly. "It
is very far, out to Oregon." Yet all the time my heart was leaping. So
he had been there, at that very meeting of which I could learn nothing!

"You know not what you say. A thousand men came into Oregon last year.
It iss like one of the great migrations of the peoples of Asia, of
Europe. I say to you, it iss a great epoch. There iss a folk-movement
such as we haf not seen since the days of the Huns, the Goths, the
Vandals, since the Cimri movement. It iss an epoch, my friend! It iss
fate that iss in it."

"So, then, it is a great country?" I asked.

"It iss so great, these traders do not wish it known. They wish only
that it may be savage; also that their posts and their harems may be
undisturbed. That iss what they wish. These Scots go wild again, in the
wilderness. They trade and they travel, but it iss not homes they build.
Sir George Simpson wants steel traps and not ploughs west of the
Rockies. That iss all!"

"They do not speak so of Doctor McLaughlin," I began tentatively.

"My friend, a great man, McLaughlin, believe me! But he iss not McKay;
he iss not Simpson; he iss not Behrens; he iss not Colville; he iss not
Douglas. And I say to you, as I learned last night--you see, they asked
me also to tell what I knew of Oregon--I say to you that last night
McLaughlin was deposed. He iss in charge no more--so soon as they can
get word to him, he loses his place at Vancouver."

"After a lifetime in the service!" I commented.

"Yess, after a lifetime; and McLaughlin had brain and heart, too. If
England would listen to him, she would learn sometings. He plants, he
plows, he bass gardens and mills and houses and herds. Yess, if they let
McLaughlin alone, they would haf a civilization on the Columbia, and not
a fur-trading post. Then they could oppose your civilization there.
That iss what he preaches. Simpson preaches otherwise. Simpson loses
Oregon to England, it may be."

"You know much about affairs out in Oregon," I ventured again. "Now, I
did not happen to be present at the little meeting last night."

"I heard it all," he remarked carelessly, "until I went to sleep. I wass
bored. I care not to hear of the splendor of England!"

"Then you think there is a chance of trouble between our country and
England, out there?"

He smiled. "It iss not a chance, but a certainty," he said. "Those
settlers will not gif up. And England is planning to push them out!"

"We had not heard that!" I ventured.

"It wass only agreed last night. England will march this summer seven
hundred men up the Peace River. In the fall they will be across the
Rockies. So! They can take boats easily down the streams to Oregon. You
ask if there will be troubles. I tell you, yess."

"And which wins, my friend?" I feared he would hear my heart thumping at
this news.

"If you stop where you are, England wins. If you keep on going over the
mountains England shall lose."

"What time can England make with her brigades, west-bound, my friend?" I
asked him casually. He answered with gratifying scientific precision.

"From Edmonton to Fort Colville, west of the Rockies, it hass been done
in six weeks and five days, by Sir George himself. From Fort Colville
down it iss easy by boats. It takes the _voyageur_ three months to
cross, or four months. It would take troops twice that long, or more.
For you in the States, you can go faster. And, ah! my friend, it iss
worth the race, that Oregon. Believe me, it iss full of bugs--of new
bugs; twelve new species I haf discovered and named. It iss sometings of
honor, iss it not?"

"What you say interests me very much, sir," I said. "I am only an
American trader, knocking around to see the world a little bit. You seem
to have been engaged in some scientific pursuit in that country."

"Yess," he said. "Mein own government and mein own university, they send
me to this country to do what hass not been done. I am insectologer.
Shall I show you my bugs of Oregon? You shall see them, yess? Come with
me to my hotel. You shall see many bugs, such as science hass not yet
known."

I was willing enough to go with him; and true to his word he did show me
such quantities of carefully prepared and classified insects as I had
not dreamed our own country offered.

"Twelve new species!" he said, with pride. "Mein own country will gif
me honor for this. Five years I spend. Now I go back home.

"I shall not tell you what nickname they gif me in Oregon," he added,
smiling; "but my real name iss Wolfram von Rittenhofen. Berlin, it wass
last my home. Tell me, you go soon to Oregon?"

"That is very possible," I answered; and this time at least I spoke the
truth. "We are bound in opposite directions, but if you are sailing for
Europe this spring, you would save time and gain comfort by starting
from New York. It would give us great pleasure if we could welcome so
distinguished a scientist in Washington."

"No, I am not yet distinguished. Only shall I be distinguished when I
have shown my twelve new species to mein own university."

"But it would give me pleasure also to show you Washington. You should
see also the government of those backwoodsmen who are crowding out to
Oregon. Would you not like to travel with me in America so far as that?"

He shook his head doubtfully. "Perhaps I make mistake to come by the St.
Lawrence? It would be shorter to go by New York? Well, I haf no hurry. I
think it over, yess."

"But tell me, where did you get that leetle thing?" he asked me again
presently, taking up in his hand the Indian clasp.

"I traded for it among the Crow Indians."

"You know what it iss, eh?"

"No, except that it is Indian made."

He scanned the round disks carefully. "Wait!" he exclaimed. "I show you
sometings."

He reached for my pencil, drew toward him a piece of paper, taking from
his pocket meantime a bit of string. Using the latter for a radius, he
drew a circle on the piece of paper.

"Now look what I do!" he said, as I bent over curiously. "See, I draw a
straight line through the circle. I divide it in half, so. I divide it
in half once more, and make a point. Now I shorten my string, one-half.
On each side of my long line I make me a half circle--only half way
round on the opposite sides. So, now, what I got, eh? You understand
him?"

I shook my head. He pointed in turn to the rude ornamentation in the
shell clasp. I declare that then I could see a resemblance between the
two designs!

"It is curious," I said.

"_Mein Gott_! it iss more than curious. It iss vonderful! I haf two
_Amazonias_ collected by my own bands, and twelve species of my own
discovery, yess, in butterflies alone. That iss much? Listen. It iss
notings! _Here_ iss the _discovery!_"

He took a pace or two excitedly, and came back to thump with his
forefinger on the little desk.

"What you see before you iss the sign of the Great Monad! It iss known
in China, in Burmah, in all Asia, in all Japan. It iss sign of the great
One, of the great Two. In your hand iss the Tah Gook--the Oriental
symbol for life, for sex. Myself, I haf seen that in Sitka on Chinese
brasses; I haf seen it on Japanese signs, in one land and in another
land. But here you show it to me made by the hand of some ignorant
aborigine of _this_ continent! On _this_ continent, where it did not
originate and does not belong! It iss a discovery! Science shall hear of
it. It iss the link of Asia to America. It brings me fame!"

He put his hand into a pocket, and drew it out half filled with gold
pieces and with raw gold in the form of nuggets, as though he would
offer exchange. I waved him back. "No," said I; "you are welcome to one
of these disks, if you please. If you wish, I will take one little bit
of these. But tell me, where did you find these pieces of raw gold?"

"Those? They are notings. I recollect me I found these one day up on the
Rogue River, not far from my cabin. I am pursuing a most beautiful moth,
such as I haf not in all my collection. So, I fall on a log; I skin me
my leg. In the moss I find some bits of rock. I recollect me not where,
but believe it wass somewhere there. But what I find now, here, by a
stranger--it iss worth more than gold! My friend, I thank you, I embrace
you! I am favored by fate to meet you. Go with you to Washington? Yess,
yess, I go!"




CHAPTER XVIII

THE MISSING SLIPPER

There will always remain something to be said of woman as long as
there is one on earth.--_Bauflers_.


My new friend, I was glad to note, seemed not anxious to terminate our
acquaintance, although in his amiable and childlike fashion he babbled
of matters which to me seemed unimportant. He was eager to propound his
views on the connection of the American tribes with the peoples of the
Orient, whereas I was all for talking of the connection of England and
the United States with Oregon. Thus we passed the luncheon hour at the
hostelry of my friend Jacques Bertillon; after which I suggested a
stroll about the town for a time, there being that upon my mind which
left me ill disposed to remain idle. He agreed to my suggestion, a fact
for which I soon was to feel thankful for more reasons than one.

Before we started upon our stroll, I asked him to step to my own room,
where I had left my pipe. As we paused here for a moment, he noticed on
the little commode a pair of pistols of American make, and, with a word
of apology, took them up to examine them.

"You also are acquainted with these?" he asked politely.

"It is said that I am," I answered.

"Sometimes you need to be?" he said, smiling. There smote upon me, even
as he spoke, the feeling that his remark was strangely true. My eye fell
on the commode's top, casually. I saw that it now was bare. I recalled
the strange warning of the baroness the evening previous. I was watched!
My apartment had been entered in my absence. Property of mine had been
taken.

My perturbation must have been discoverable in my face. "What iss it?"
asked the old man. "You forget someting?"

"No," said I, stammering. "It is nothing."

He looked at me dubiously. "Well, then," I admitted; "I miss something
from my commode here. Some one has taken it."

"It iss of value, perhaps?" he inquired politely.

"Well, no; not of intrinsic value. 'Twas only a slipper--of white satin,
made by Braun, of Paris."

"_One_ slipper? Of what use?--"

"It belonged to a lady--I was about to return it," I said; but I fear my
face showed me none too calm. He broke out in a gentle laugh.

"So, then, we had here the stage setting," said he; "the pistols, the
cause for pistols, sometimes, eh?"

"It is nothing--I could easily explain--"

"There iss not need, my young friend. Wass I not also young once? Yess,
once wass I young." He laid down the pistols, and I placed them with my
already considerable personal armament, which seemed to give him no
concern.

"Each man studies for himself his own specialty," mused the old man.
"You haf perhaps studied the species of woman. Once, also I."

I laughed, and shook my head.

"Many species are there," he went on; "many with wings of gold and blue
and green, of unknown colors; creatures of air and sky. Haf I not seen
them? But always that one species which we pursue, we do not find. Once
in my life, in Oregon, I follow through the forest a smell of sweet
fields of flowers coming to me. At last I find it--a wide field of
flowers. It wass in summer time. Over the flowers were many, many
butterflies. Some of them I knew; some of them I had. One great new one,
such as I haf not seen, it wass there. It rested. 'I shall now make it
mine,' I said. It iss fame to gif name first to this so noble a species.
I would inclose it with mein little net. Like this, you see, I creep up
to it. As I am about to put it gently in my net--not to harm it, or
break it, or brush away the color of its wings--lo! like a puff of
down, it rises and goes above my head. I reach for it; I miss. It rises
still more; it flies; it disappears! So! I see it no more. It iss gone.
_Stella Terrae_ I name it--my Star of the Earth, that which I crave but
do not always haf, eh? Believe me, my friend, yess, the study of the
species hass interest. Once I wass young. Should I see that little shoe
I think myself of the time when I wass young, and made studies--_Ach,
Mein Gott!_--also of the species of woman! I, too, saw it fly from me,
my _Stella Terrae!_"

We walked, my friend still musing and babbling, myself still anxious and
uneasy. We turned out of narrow Notre Dame Street, and into St. Lawrence
Main Street. As we strolled I noted without much interest the motley
life about me, picturesque now with the activities of the advancing
spring. Presently, however, my idle gaze was drawn to two young
Englishmen whose bearing in some way gave me the impression that they
belonged in official or military life, although they were in civilian
garb.

Presently the two halted, and separated. The taller kept on to the east,
to the old French town. At length I saw him joined, as though by
appointment, by another gentleman, one whose appearance at once gave me
reason for a second look. The severe air of the Canadian spring seemed
not pleasing to him, and he wore his coat hunched up about his neck, as
though he were better used to milder climes. He accosted my young
Englishman, and without hesitation the two started off together. As they
did so I gave an involuntary exclamation. The taller man I had seen once
before, the shorter, very many times--in Washington!

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