THE MEASURE OF A MANBy John Trotwood Moore
By John Trotwood Moore
The Hermitage of 1814 did not look like the Hermitage of to-day. Not until later did the hero of New Orleans erect the substantial home which for many years was the Mecca of those who believed in Jacksonian Democracy. At the time of this story it was a plain but comfortable log structure, differing but little from similar ones built by the pioneers of that age in their efforts to establish homes in the wilderness.
But even as it stood it was no ordinary home, sitting back from the pike near the stone spring dairy, the castle of hundreds of acres of as good lands as ever the wilderness gave to civilization.
To-night it was lighted up and ablaze with youth and gaiety. It was a farewell party for Juliette Templeton, and the youth of the land were there. Out in the yard bonfires burned, tended by negro slaves, whose dusky forms, slipping like shadows here and there, were silhouetted against the dark background, huge giants of the night. The fires lighted the lawn and the ancient trees; above, a half moon was rising, and the lighted lawn and moon-lighted woods made a typical scene of beauty and romance. Within the house hundreds of candles were stuck about in every conceivable nook and corner, on window sill, on shelf and on the huge logs themselves. Upon the lawn were clusters of horses tied to the limbs of trees, and carriages in groups around them.
Within, the long dining tables gleamed in linen and silver.
The dancing had already begun, opening with a Virginia reel, in which General Jackson led his fair guest down the line with all that courtly grace he could command when he wished. And, indeed, there was incentive for this gallantry, for never had the old soldier led so stately a beauty down the cotillion line, though in his younger and cock-fighting North Carolina days he had danced with some beautiful women—and some who were not!
He was smiling good-naturedly; evidently he was thinking of them to-night. “I have danced with some famous ones in my youth, my dear,” he said, bowing low over her hand, “but never any that could compare with you.”
She laughed, twinkling: “Tell me, General, how old must a man be before he quits giving the girls his sweet talk?”
“Ah! that depends on the girl. Now, in your case I would say about the age of Methuselah.”
They were standing at the head of the line waiting for their turn again. Some one began to talk to her partner, giving Juliette a chance to run her eyes quickly down the room full of the Hermitage neighbors and friends. Neither Bristow nor Trevellian was there. She was not surprised, for she never expected to see Trevellian again, and Bristow had not come back since that night at the supper table when he had dropped a careless remark about Trevellian and met such a subdued but pointed rebuke that it took all of Aunt Rachael’s good nature and Juliette’s tact to prevent an open rupture. Yet, since then, in every other way had Bristow shown his attention—flowers, notes and all the lover’s resources which his shrewd nature could command.
But as for Trevellian—the shockof that day had never left her. She had put him resolutely aside; and yet, often since then, in the night when alone with her thoughts, she had begun to doubt and to wonder—and then to weep.
To weep. Ah, then it was she knew she loved Trevellian! But that had only been at night. In the day, never had any one carried herself with more dignity and poise.
She was glad that he was not here.
There was a hubbub around her. It was their time again and the General was tapping her on the arm. Again they went down the line beneath the eyes of an admiring crowd, and then he gallantly led her to a seat.
“Now, Juliette,” he said, “I must leave you to a younger and handsomer beau, but while I have this chance, there is something I must tell you, because you will know of it soon enough.”
He took his favorite seat. They were alone in the corner of the room, and the rough floor was shaking with the boisterous dancing of healthy and hilarious yeomanry.
“You are going to New Orleans to-morrow and you will stop at Natchez a day or two to catch the boat there. We are sending you under the escort of an old friend and his wife—Captain Royston and wife—but the Captain will report for duty there. I do not know how the situation is at the front. It is possible that you may have to stop at Natchez for awhile, which brings me to the point I wish to impress upon you.”
She looked up at him quickly.
“The British,” he continued, “will be on us very soon.”
“Not at New Orleans?” she paled. “Everybody says at Pensacola or Mobile, if at all.”
“Everybody knows but little,” said the General, quietly. “My dear, I am going to have to whip them at New Orleans, and that before anybody dreams of.”
“Oh, General—my mother—”
“Now if I had my way,” he went on, “I would rather you stay here awhile, for the British, whom I shall have to fight, are the same that are beating Bonaparte allies in Spain, and the depredations they have committed there have been notorious. But you must, of course, go on to your mother—but for that Mrs. Jackson and I should not think of permitting you to leave us, for it will be a fight to the finish at New Orleans and—”
“I thank you so much for telling me this, General. I shall tell mother as soon as I arrive, and we shall pack up everything so as to be prepared for flight.”
The General rose quickly, his keen eyes flashing and his face purpling with rage.
“Prepare for flight? Do you think I have told you my official business to scare you? Do you think those damned ruffians will ever get to New Orleans except over the dead bodies of me and my troops? I’ll drive them into the river, what is left of them, and you shall be there to see it. By the Eternal, I swear it, and you shall see the river red with their bloating carcasses! I’ll pay off the score they have piled on us on the lakes and at Washington and on the sea. Prepare for flight!” he said, cooling down, “why, my dear, and you old Joe Templeton’s daughter!”
He sat down, blowing his nose vigorously. He looked around half shamedly. She could almost see the purple anger retiring before the mastery of a mind whose first great instinct was unmeasured calmness—a calmness which, in spite of his nature, he could command when he wished at all times. A man who could both bluff and fight.
“No,” he went on, after awhile, “prepare to stay. I hate to see you go, but aside from the fact that there will be some very extraordinary fighting, which you will have nothing to do with, and need not see, New Orleans will be as safe as the Hermitage.”
“Oh, General,” she apologized, “please forgive me, I did not understand you.”
His good nature returned, even his jollity. It was his way—a thunderbolt one moment, the next Jupiterhimself in all his calmness. He went on talking to himself more than to her.
“A thousand of my Tennesseans have started to-day. Let me see—they should be at Ditto Landing by—”
There was a volley in the yard and loud cheers.
The General sprang up and went quickly out. The dancers flocked to windows, doors and out into the yard. When Juliette went out she saw the General surrounded by a strange crowd. A glance told her it was troops on their way to the front, and Mrs. Jackson, who stood at her side, said:
“Captain Trevellian’s company going South, dear.”
The crowd had surged out into the lawn where General Jackson had gone to greet them, and Juliette found herself also in the crowd, while around her flocked the dancers to see their friends and neighbors off once more to the war.
Their commander had drawn them up in line of battle, a gaunt, sinewy, tanned and splendid sight under the flaring lights of the bonfires. It was not a very straight alignment as it surged forward on both flanks, half surrounding General Jackson and their captain, both of whom they idolized. They had given the General a volley and salute, and now surged forward to hear what he and their captain had to say.
It was a picturesque sight and one never to be forgotten. They were dressed in typical costume of their time, and yet there was a liveness and manliness about it which stirred the deeper emotions. Long hair above swarthy, sunburnt faces, heavy coon skin caps, hunting coats and buckskin trousers, ending in the top of rawhide boots. Powder horns, some of gourds, but nearly all of buffalo horns, hung over their shoulders by a thong of deer hide. In their hands they held, with butts on the ground, the tall Decherd rifle, often taller than the man behind it. In their belts was a weapon no other army since the days of Rome and Britain had ever carried into war. It was a heavy bear knife, often a foot or more long, some of them two-edged, enclosed in a holster of buckskin or calf. In the faces themselves there dwelt a strange mixture of fun and fight, of strange horse talk and stranger horse plays. And so they stood up, a grand and picturesque sight, under the glare of the lights, a more formidable and savage foe than any they had ever driven from the land.
There was another yell and volley of huzzahs as General Jackson came forward. The line was now broken and they thronged around him. It was Bill, Tom and Jim to him as he clasped the hands that shook his. They were friends of his, they loved him and that was enough. The regiment had camped for the night not far off after their first day’s march.
“We hurd you was ginnin’ a treat, Gin’ral,” shouted a long-haired, buckskin-clad fellow in the line, “and we ’lowed we’d gin you a s’prize party.”
There was a roar at this hint and another yell from the crowd, and in the midst of it a negro came up with two buckets full of whiskey, and tin dippers, which General Jackson had ordered from the smokehouse near the kitchen.
“Attention, there, men! Ground f’lock and get into line!” said their captain.
The line surged back; the butts of the rifles rested on the ground.
“Pass that whiskey down the line, there,” said General Jackson to his servants, and as the blacks started, one at each flank, there was a deep silence. They drank from the tin dippers as indifferently as if it were water. Jackson and Trevellian drank last, touching their dippers “to health and a good fight,” as the General said, at which there was a cry from the line from a swarthy sergeant:
“And a quick one—b’ar or British! Lead us ag’in’ everything!”
It was indeed the sentiment. Arms were now stacked and they broke into groups, thronging around their commanders as they talked to them, man to man and face to face.
There was nothing concealed. It was a big family of yeomanry, brave and bent on ridding their country of any foe their leaders pitted them against. And General Jackson was their father. Around him they gathered, proud, trustful, with all the confidence of big children and all the daring, strong love of big men. And their hearts were hot and vengeful—for they were children in their tenderer natures and saw things with the eyes of children.
And the things they had seen had stirred them to their fierce, quick fighting depths. Cut off from the rest of the world, wedged in between the mountains, which barred them from the east, and the savages on the south and west, their government had neglected them, left them to fight their own battles against savage foe and savage nature.
But they had fought, and now they had followed Jackson from the Tennessee to the Horse Shoe Bend—they had swept a goodly land of a savage foe, opened it for the white race, destroyed their hated enemy’s most formidable ally, and had an open and unmolested road to the sea.
This they had done and asked nothing from their country. This they had done on acorns and parched corn, in pestilence and swamp, in deadly savage-brooding woods—fighting famine and foe alike.
And now a greater fight was on. Their country, she who had counted them as naught until now, who had paid no heed to their wants and their sufferings, was now in a death struggle with her ancient and bitterest foe. And that foe had walked through the land above them with rifle, torch and tomahawk until it seemed that nothing could stand up before them. They had whipped the American army and scattered her few weak, little ships and now scoffed and derided her army to the nations of the earth.
And though their country had forgotten them, in the hearing of it all their hearts burned but for vengeance, and they forgot all their injustice when they remembered it was their country and that they, too, were Americans.
And then had come Jackson, and his call to arms and his fierce fighting spirit and the fiercer fighting love they bore him.
“B’ar or British, Indian or devil, lead us ag’in’ ’em, General!” they kept shouting, again and again.
Juliette felt someone touch her arm. It was Mrs. Jackson:
“Come, Juliette, all you girls—we are going to hand them out the cakes. I heard a hint of this—in fact, I was warned, and Aunt Hannah, I think, has baked them cakes enough.”
There was another shout from the lines when great waiters of sliced cake were brought out, and with the buckets not yet empty and the tin dippers in demand, there was a roar of jollity and laughter and jokes.
As Juliette passed in among them with a hamper of cake, a respectful silence fell. Never had they seen such a beautiful being as she. They were backwoodsmen, and she from another land. At first they stood back. Their roughness and coarseness was only skin deep—in their hearts was chivalry. At last one reached out his hand to help himself under the tactful smile and reassuring nod of invitation and the tie was broken by a loud banter at his elbow:
“Stop right thar, Bill; you can’t reach out an’ take poun’ cake from an angel an’ me not be in it!”
In the roar of this sally they all thronged round her to get some of that cake from an angel. She was passing around among them when someone seized her by the shoulder and brought her about face with:
“Come, fair waitress; forget not your humbler friends.”
And she stood facing Trevellian and General Jackson, who had thus called her. Her heart pounded, the color, despite her efforts at calmness, left her cheeks; her knees trembled and she almost dropped the waiter in his hands. She saw his agitated but reserved bearing, his hand going up nervously to his hat, and in her confusion she pushed forward her cake:
“Please have some.”
“I thank you, madam,” he replied as indifferently as if she were an unknown person to him and he reached out to take it from the tray. But two slices were uncut, and in her effort to help him her hand touched his and she felt the hot blood surge in her cheeks. Looking up she met his eyes, resigned, sad, but hotly determined in the old flash that dared all, hoped all and was afraid of nothing.
She read a thousand things in that brief look, while her own heart all but burst within her and her knees trembled in feminine weakness.
And that which she read above all else was that he had put her out of his life.
Indignant—hurt—crushed by the look, her pride stirred to madness with herself and the world, with fierce hatred of herself that she should care at all, she pushed madly into the crowd and away. Then she heard the General calling her impatiently:
“Juliette, Juliette, my dear, you have forgotten me.”
In shame and confusion she turned again, though she felt that she should die if she looked again into Trevellian’s face.
And then she almost fell when she did see. She stiffened frigidly and hot, cruel anger swept over her as her flashing eyes fell on William Trevellian.
The boy had ridden up as she turned to go away. And now, on the small, sinewy pony, which she remembered too well, he sat his horse just behind General Jackson, looking at her with eyes that spoke as much admiration as any old soldier in the group.
General Jackson himself had forgotten her as he turned in laughing enthusiasm to the boy and his pony. Grasping him by the shoulder, he cried:
“Why, little Ireland, you game little devil, how came you here? And Paddy Whack—ha—ha!”
The boy sat proud and beaming. To his saddle was strapped a kettle drum. He also was clad in buckskin and carried a smaller rifle, while the big hunting knife in his belt brought another smile from the General.
“He ran off from school, General,” she heard Trevellian saying; “came into our camp to-night just as we were leaving. He wants to go, and I haven’t the heart to send him back.”
“General, don’t say I cannot,” pleaded the boy. “I can shoot better than I can ride. Let me go.”
General Jackson glanced up into the little, excited face, the determined eye. How handsome he was, and as he turned his thoughts flashed, how like Trevellian!
“General, General,” came again, “we need a drummer, and I want to fight them, too. I am a Trevellian; didn’t you know it?”
“There is no doubt of that, boy. Yes, go if you want to.” He turned to Trevellian:
“By the Eternal, Trevellian, how can the British expect to whip a people whose very children beg to go out and fight them?” He turned to the boy: “Yes—go, boy; go fight the invaders of your country, and God bless and preserve you!”
Pale, trembling and with a bursting heart which hated itself for her weakness, Juliette slipped away and into the house. From her own room she heard the huzzahs, the rattling volley of parting salute, and Trevellian’s command of “fall in!” She heard the soft tread if moccasined feet going into the wooded night. Then there was wafted faintly the uncouth, broken notes of a tune that somehow held together till it reached her:
“The girl I left behind me.”
She ran to the bed and buried her head in the pillow. Was she the girl he had left behind him? Would she ever see him again? He hated her now; she knew it, and yet she was so weak as to love him. Why did she not hate him also? Hate him as he deserved to be for—
The rattle of a kettle-drum burst into the music. Then cheers faint and far-off, but saying: “Hurrah for the drummer boy of the First Tennessee!”
She buried deeper her head and sobbed louder.
[To be continued.]