at West Point, I think, by the government, to whom you have taken the oath of allegiance?”
“Yes.”
“Very good, sir,” said the stranger, turning away.
“You have forgotten one other fact, sir,” said Pinckney, with a slightly supercilious air.
“Indeed! What is it?”
“I am, first of all, a native of the State of South Carolina!”
A murmur of applause and approval ran round the balcony. Captain Pinckney smiled and exchanged glances with Mrs. Brant, but the stranger quietly returned to the central table beside Colonel Starbottle. “I am not only an unexpected delegate to this august assembly, gentlemen,” he began gravely, “but I am the bearer of perhaps equally unexpected news. By my position in the Southern district I am in possession of dispatches received only this morning by pony express. Fort Sumter has been besieged. The United States flag, carrying relief to the beleaguered garrison, has been fired upon by the State of South Carolina.”
A burst of almost hysteric applause and enthusiasm broke from the assembly, and made the dim, vault-like passages and corridors of the casa ring. Cheer after cheer went up to the veiled gallery and the misty sky beyond. Men mounted on the tables and waved their hands frantically, and in the midst of this bewildering turbulence of sound and motion Clarence saw his wife mounted on a chair, with burning cheeks and flashing eyes, waving her handkerchief like an inspired priestess. Only the stranger, still standing beside Colonel Starbottle, remained unmoved and impassive. Then, with an imperative gesture, he demanded a sudden silence.
“Convincing and unanimous as this demonstration is, gentlemen,” he began quietly, “it is my duty, nevertheless, to ask you if you have seriously considered the meaning of the news I have brought. It is my duty to tell you that it means civil war. It means the clash of arms between two sections of a mighty country; it means the disruption of friends, the breaking of family ties, the separation of fathers and sons, of brothers and sisters—even, perhaps, to the disseverment of husband and wife!”
“It means the sovereignty of the South—and the breaking of a covenant with lowborn traders and abolitionists,” said Captain Pinckney.
“If there are any gentlemen present,” continued the stranger, without heeding the interruption, “who have pledged this State to the support of the South in this emergency, or to the establishment of a Pacific republic in aid and sympathy with it, whose names are on this paper”—he lifted a sheet of paper lying before Colonel Starbottle—“but who now feel that the gravity of the news demands a more serious consideration of the purpose, they are at liberty to withdraw from the meeting, giving their honor, as Southern gentlemen, to keep the secret intact.”
“Not if I know it,” interrupted a stalwart Kentuckian, as he rose to his feet and strode down the steps to the patio. “For,” he added, placing his back against the gateway, “I'll shoot the first coward that backs out now.”
A roar of laughter and approval followed, but was silenced again by the quiet, unimpassioned voice of the stranger. “If, on the other hand,” he went on calmly, “you all feel that this news is the fitting culmination and consecration of the hopes, wishes, and plans of this meeting, you will assert it again, over your own signatures, to Colonel Starbottle at this table.”
When the Kentuckian had risen, Clarence had started from his concealment; when he now saw the eager figures pressing forward to the table he hesitated no longer. Slipping along the passage, he reached the staircase which led to the corridor in the rear of the balcony. Descending this rapidly, he not only came upon the backs of the excited crowd around the table, but even elbowed one of the conspirators aside without being noticed. His wife, who had risen from her chair at the end of the balcony, was already moving towards the table. With a quick movement he seized her wrist, and threw her back in the chair again. A cry broke from her lips as she recognized him, but still holding her wrist, he stepped quickly between her and the astonished crowd. There was a moment of silence, then the cry of “Spy!” and “Seize him!” rose quickly, but above all the voice and figure of the Missourian was heard commanding them to stand back. Turning to Clarence, he said quietly—
“I should know your face, sir. Who are you?”
“The husband of this woman and the master of this house,” said Clarence as quietly, but in a voice he hardly recognized as his own.
“Stand aside from her, then—unless you are hoping that her danger may protect YOU!” said the Kentuckian, significantly drawing his revolver.
But Mrs. Brant sprang suddenly to her feet beside Clarence.
“We are neither of us cowards, Mr. Brooks—though he speaks the truth—and—more shame to me”—she added, with a look of savage scorn at Clarence—“IS MY HUSBAND!”
“What is your purpose in coming here?” continued Judge Beeswinger, with his eyes fixed on Clarence.
“I have given you all the information,” said Clarence quietly, “that is necessary to make you, as a gentleman, leave this house at once—and that is my purpose. It is all the information you will get from me as long as you and your friends insult my roof with your uninvited presence. What I may have to say to you and each of you hereafter—what I may choose to demand of you, according to your own code of honor,”—he fixed his eyes on Captain Pinckney's—“is another question, and one not usually discussed before a lady.”
“Pardon me. A moment—a single moment.”
It was the voice of Colonel Starbottle; it was the frilled shirt front, the lightly buttoned blue coat with its expanding lapels, like bursting petals, and the smiling mask of that gentleman rising above the table and bowing to Clarence Brant and his wife with infinite courtesy. “The—er—humiliating situation in which we find ourselves, gentlemen—the reluctant witnesses of—er—what we trust is only a temporary disagreement between our charming hostess and the—er—gentleman whom she recognized under the highest title to our consideration—is distressing to us all, and would seem to amply justify that gentleman's claims to a personal satisfaction, which I know we would all delight to give. But that situation rests upon the supposition that our gathering here was of a purely social or festive nature! It may be,” continued the colonel with a blandly reflective air, “that the spectacle of these decanters and glasses, and the nectar furnished us by our Hebe-like hostess” (he lifted a glass of whiskey and water to his lips while he bowed to Mrs. Brant gracefully), “has led the gentleman to such a deduction. But when I suggest to him that our meeting was of a business, or private nature, it strikes me that the question of intrusion may be fairly divided between him and ourselves. We may be even justified, in view of that privacy, in asking him if his—er—entrance to this house was—er—coincident with his appearance among us.”
“With my front door in possession of strangers,” said Clarence, more in reply to a sudden contemptuous glance from his wife than Starbottle's insinuation, “I entered the house through the window.”
“Of my boudoir, where another intruder once broke his neck,” interrupted his wife with a mocking laugh.
“Where I once helped this lady to regain possession of her house when it was held by another party of illegal trespassers, who, however, were content to call themselves 'jumpers,' and did not claim the privacy of gentlemen.”
“Do you mean to imply, sir,” began Colonel Starbottle haughtily, “that”—
“I
