It stood, a small, two-story brick building, in an unpretentious street. Seven windows opened on the front with black solid-panelled shutters2. The front parlour was scantily3 furnished. A huge mirror covered one wall, and on the other hung a life-size oil portrait of Stoneman, and between the windows were a portrait of Washington Irving and a picture of a nun4. Among his many charities he had always given liberally to an orphanage5 conducted by a Roman Catholic sisterhood.
The back parlour, whose single window looked out on a small garden, he had fitted up as a library, with leather-upholstered furniture, a large desk and table, and scattered6 on the mantel and about its walls were the photographs of his personal friends and a few costly7 prints. This room he used as his executive office, and no person was allowed to enter it without first stating his business or 91 presenting a petition to the tawny8 brown woman with restless eyes who sat in state in the front parlour and received his visitors. The books in their cases gave evidence of little use for many years, although their character indicated the tastes of a man of culture. His Pliny, C?sar, Cicero, Tacitus, Sophocles, and Homer had evidently been read by a man who knew their beauties and loved them for their own sake.
This house was now the Mecca of the party in power and the storm-centre of the forces destined9 to shape the Nation’s life. Senators, representatives, politicians of low and high degree, artists, correspondents, foreign ministers, and cabinet officers hurried to acknowledge their fealty10 to the uncrowned king, and hail the strange brown woman who held the keys of his house as the first lady of the land.
When Charles Sumner called, a curious thing happened. By a code agreed on between them, Lydia Brown touched an electric signal which informed the old Commoner of his appearance. Stoneman hobbled to the folding-doors and watched through the slight opening the manner in which the icy senator greeted the negress whom he was compelled to meet thus as his social equal, though she was always particular to pose as the superior of all who bowed the knee to the old man whose house she kept.
Sumner at this time was supposed to be the most powerful man in Congress. It was a harmless fiction which pleased him, and at which Stoneman loved to laugh.
The senator from Massachusetts had just made a speech in Boston expounding11 the “Equality of Man,” yet 92 he could not endure personal contact with a negro. He would go secretly miles out of the way to avoid it.
Stoneman watched him slowly and daintily approach this negress and touch her jewelled hand gingerly with the tips of his classic fingers as if she were a toad12. Convulsed, he scrambled13 back to his desk and hugged himself while he listened to the flow of Lydia’s condescending14 patronage15 in the next room.
“This world’s too good a thing to lose!” he chuckled16. “I think I’ll live always.”
When Sumner left, the hour for dinner had arrived, and by special invitation two men dined with him.
On his right sat an army officer who had been dismissed from the service, a victim of the mania17 for gambling18. His ruddy face, iron-gray hair, and jovial19 mien20 indicated that he enjoyed life in spite of troubles.
There were no clubs in Washington at this time except the regular gambling-houses, of which there were more than one hundred in full blast.
Stoneman was himself a gambler, and spent a part of almost every night at Hall & Pemberton’s Faro Palace on Pennsylvania Avenue, a place noted21 for its famous restaurant. It was here that he met Colonel Howle and learned to like him. He was a man of talent, cool and audacious, and a liar22 of such singular fluency23 that he quite captivated the old Commoner’s imagination.
“Upon my soul, Howle,” he declared soon after they met, “you made the mistake of your life going into the army. You’re a born politician. You’re what I call a natural liar, just as a horse is a pacer, a dog a setter. You 93 lie without effort, with an ease and grace that excels all art. Had you gone into politics, you could easily have been Secretary of State, to say nothing of the vice-presidency. I would say President but for the fact that men of the highest genius never attain24 it.”
From that moment Colonel Howle had become his charmed henchman. Stoneman owned this man body and soul, not merely because he had befriended him when he was in trouble and friendless, but because the colonel recognized the power of the leader’s daring spirit and revolutionary genius.
On his left sat a negro of perhaps forty years, a man of charming features for a mulatto, who had evidently inherited the full physical characteristics of the Aryan race, while his dark yellowish eyes beneath his heavy brows glowed with the brightness of the African jungle. It was impossible to look at his superb face, with its large, finely chiselled25 lips and massive nose, his big neck and broad shoulders, and watch his eyes gleam beneath the projecting forehead, without seeing pictures of the primeval forest. “The head of a C?sar and the eyes of the jungle” was the phrase coined by an artist who painted his portrait.
His hair was black and glossy26 and stood in dishevelled profusion27 on his head between a kink and a curl. He was an orator28 of great power, and stirred a negro audience as by magic.
Lydia Brown had called Stoneman’s attention to this man, Silas Lynch, and induced the statesman to send him to college. He had graduated with credit and had entered 94 the Methodist ministry29. In his preaching to the freedmen he had already become a marked man. No house could hold his audiences.
As he stepped briskly into the dining-room and passed the brown woman, a close observer might have seen him suddenly press her hand and caught her sly answering smile, but the old man waiting at the head of the table saw nothing.
The woman took her seat opposite Stoneman and presided over this curious group with the easy assurance of conscious power. Whatever her real position, she knew how to play the role she had chosen to assume.
No more curious or sinister30 figure ever cast a shadow across the history of a great nation than did this mulatto woman in the most corrupt31 hour of American life. The grim old man who looked into her sleek32 tawny face and followed her catlike eyes was steadily33 gripping the Nation by the throat. Did he aim to make this woman the arbiter34 of its social life, and her ethics35 the limit of its moral laws?
Even the white satellite who sat opposite Lynch flushed for a moment as the thought flashed through his brain.
The old cynic, who alone knew his real purpose, was in his most genial36 mood to-night, and the grim lines of his powerful face relaxed into something like a smile as they ate and chatted and told good stories.
Lynch watched him with keen interest. He knew his history and character, and had built on his genius a brilliant scheme of life.
This man who meant to become the dictator of the 95 Republic had come from the humblest early conditions. His father was a worthless character, from whom he had learned the trade of a shoemaker, but his mother, a woman of vigorous intellect and indomitable will, had succeeded in giving her lame37 boy a college education. He had early sworn to be a man of wealth, and to this purpose he had throttled38 the dreams and ideals of a wayward imagination.
His hope of great wealth had not been realized. His iron mills in Pennsylvania had been destroyed by Lee’s army. He had developed the habit of gambling, which brought its train of extravagant39 habits, tastes, and inevitable40 debts. In his vigorous manhood, in spite of his lameness41, he had kept a pack of hounds and a stable of fine horses. He had used his skill in shoemaking to construct a set of stirrups to fit his lame feet, and had become an expert hunter to hounds.
One thing he never neglected—to be in his seat in the House of Representatives and wear its royal crown of leadership, sick or well, day or night. The love of power was the breath of his nostrils42, and his ambitions had at one time been boundless43. His enormous power to-day was due to the fact that he had given up all hope of office beyond the robes of the king of his party. He had been offered a cabinet position by the elder Harrison and for some reason it had been withdrawn44. He had been promised a place in Lincoln’s cabinet, but some mysterious power had snatched it away. He was the one great man who had now no ambition for which to trim and fawn45 and lie, and for the very reason that he had abolished 96 himself he was the most powerful leader who ever walked the halls of Congress.
His contempt for public opinion was boundless. Bold, original, scornful of advice, of all the men who ever lived in our history he was the one man born to rule in the chaos46 which followed the assassination47 of the chief magistrate48.
Audacity49 was stamped in every line of his magnificent head. His choicest curses were for the cowards of his own party before whose blanched50 faces he shouted out the hidden things until they sank back in helpless silence and dismay. His speech was curt51, his humour sardonic52, his wit biting, cruel, and coarse.
The incarnate53 soul of revolution, he despised convention and ridiculed54 respectability.
There was but one weak spot in his armour—and the world never suspected it: the consuming passion with which he loved his two children. This was the side of his nature he had hidden from the eyes of man. A refined egotism, this passion, perhaps—for he meant to live his own life over in them—yet it was the one utterly55 human and lovable thing about him. And if his public policy was one of stupendous avarice56, this dream of millions of confiscated57 wealth he meant to seize, it was not for himself but for his children.
As he looked at Howle and Lynch seated in his library after dinner, with his great plans seething58 in his brain, his eyes were flashing, intense, and fiery59, yet without colour—simply two centres of cold light.
“Gentlemen,” he said at length. “I am going to ask 97 you to undertake for the Government, the Nation, and yourselves a dangerous and important mission. I say yourselves, because, in spite of all our beautiful lies, self is the centre of all human action. Mr. Lincoln has fortunately gone to his reward—fortunately for him and for his country. His death was necessary to save his life. He was a useful man living, more useful dead. Our party has lost its first President, but gained a god—why mourn?”
“We will recover from our grief,” said Howle.
The old man went on, ignoring the interruption:
“Things have somehow come my way. I am almost persuaded late in life that the gods love me. The insane fury of the North against the South for a crime which they were the last people on earth to dream of committing is, of course, a power to be used—but with caution. The first execution of a Southern leader on such an idiotic60 charge would produce a revolution of sentiment. The people are an aggregation61 of hysterical62 fools.”
“I thought you favoured the execution of the leaders of the rebellion?” said Lynch with surprise.
“I did, but it is too late. Had they been tried by drum-head court-martial and shot dead red-handed as they stood on the field in their uniforms, all would have been well. Now sentiment is too strong. Grant showed his teeth to Stanton and he backed down from Lee’s arrest. Sherman refused to shake hands with Stanton on the grandstand the day his army passed in review, and it’s a wonder he didn’t knock him down. Sherman was denounced as a renegade and traitor63 for giving Joseph E. 98 Johnston the terms Lincoln ordered him to give. Lincoln dead, his terms are treason! Yet had he lived, we should have been called upon to applaud his mercy and patriotism64. How can a man live in this world and keep his face straight?”
“I believe God permitted Mr. Lincoln’s death to give the great Commoner, the Leader of Leaders, the right of way,” cried Lynch with enthusiasm.
The old man smiled. With all his fierce spirit he was as susceptible65 to flattery as a woman—far more so than the sleek brown woman who carried the keys of his house.
“The man at the other end of the avenue, who pretends to be President, in reality an alien of the conquered province of Tennessee, is pressing Lincoln’s plan of ‘restoring’ the union. He has organized State governments in the South, and their senators and representatives will appear at the Capitol in December for admission to Congress. He thinks they will enter——”
The old man broke into a low laugh and rubbed his hands.
“My full plans are not for discussion at this juncture66. Suffice it to say, I mean to secure the future of our party and the safety of this nation. The one thing on which the success of my plan absolutely depends is the confiscation67 of the millions of acres of land owned by the white people of the South and its division among the negroes and those who fought and suffered in this war——”
The old Commoner paused, pursed his lips, and fumbled68 his hands a moment, the nostrils of his eagle-beaked 99 nose breathing rapacity69, sensuality throbbing70 in his massive jaws71, and despotism frowning from his heavy brows.
“Stanton will probably add to the hilarity72 of nations, and amuse himself by hanging a few rebels,” he went on, “but we will address ourselves to serious work. All men have their price, including the present company, with due apologies to the speaker——”
Howle’s eyes danced, and he licked his lips.
“If I haven’t suffered in this war, who has?”
“Your reward will not be in accordance with your sufferings. It will be based on the efficiency with which you obey my orders. Read that——”
He handed to him a piece of paper on which he had scrawled73 his secret instructions.
Another he gave to Lynch.
“Hand them back to me when you read them, and I will burn them. These instructions are not to pass the lips of any man until the time is ripe—four bare walls are not to hear them whispered.”
Both men handed to the leader the slips of paper simultaneously74.
“Are we agreed, gentlemen?”
“Perfectly,” answered Howle.
“Your word is law to me, sir,” said Lynch.
“Then you will draw on me personally for your expenses, and leave for the South within forty-eight hours. I wish your reports delivered to me two weeks before the meeting of Congress.”
As Lynch passed through the hall on his way to the 100 door, the brown woman bade him good-night and pressed into his hand a letter.
As his yellow fingers closed on the missive, his eyes flashed for a moment with catlike humour.
The woman’s face wore the mask of a sphinx.
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1
mansion
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| n.大厦，大楼；宅第 | |
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shutters
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| 百叶窗( shutter的名词复数 )； （照相机的）快门 | |
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3
scantily
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| adv.缺乏地；不充足地；吝啬地；狭窄地 | |
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nun
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| n.修女，尼姑 | |
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orphanage
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| n.孤儿院 | |
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scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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7
costly
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| adj.昂贵的，价值高的，豪华的 | |
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tawny
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| adj.茶色的，黄褐色的；n.黄褐色 | |
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destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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fealty
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| n.忠贞，忠节 | |
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expounding
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| 论述，详细讲解( expound的现在分词 ) | |
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toad
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| n.蟾蜍，癞蛤蟆 | |
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13
scrambled
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| v.快速爬行( scramble的过去式和过去分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞 | |
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14
condescending
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| adj.谦逊的,故意屈尊的 | |
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patronage
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| n.赞助，支援，援助；光顾，捧场 | |
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16
chuckled
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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mania
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| n.疯狂；躁狂症，狂热，癖好 | |
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18
gambling
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| n.赌博；投机 | |
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jovial
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| adj.快乐的，好交际的 | |
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20
mien
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| n.风采；态度 | |
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noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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liar
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| n.说谎的人 | |
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23
fluency
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| n.流畅，雄辩，善辩 | |
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24
attain
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| vt.达到，获得，完成 | |
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25
chiselled
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| adj.凿过的，凿光的； （文章等）精心雕琢的v.凿，雕，镌( chisel的过去式 ) | |
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26
glossy
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| adj.平滑的；有光泽的 | |
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profusion
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| n.挥霍；丰富 | |
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28
orator
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| n.演说者，演讲者，雄辩家 | |
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29
ministry
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| n.(政府的)部；牧师 | |
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30
sinister
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| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
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31
corrupt
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| v.贿赂，收买；adj.腐败的，贪污的 | |
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32
sleek
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| adj.光滑的，井然有序的；v.使光滑，梳拢 | |
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33
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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34
arbiter
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| n.仲裁人，公断人 | |
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35
ethics
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| n.伦理学；伦理观，道德标准 | |
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36
genial
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| adj.亲切的，和蔼的，愉快的，脾气好的 | |
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37
lame
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| adj.跛的，(辩解、论据等)无说服力的 | |
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38
throttled
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| v.扼杀( throttle的过去式和过去分词 )；勒死；使窒息；压制 | |
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39
extravagant
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| adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的 | |
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40
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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41
lameness
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| n. 跛, 瘸, 残废 | |
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42
nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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43
boundless
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| adj.无限的；无边无际的；巨大的 | |
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44
withdrawn
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| vt.收回；使退出；vi.撤退，退出 | |
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45
fawn
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| n.未满周岁的小鹿；v.巴结，奉承 | |
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46
chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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47
assassination
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| n.暗杀；暗杀事件 | |
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48
magistrate
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| n.地方行政官，地方法官，治安官 | |
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49
audacity
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| n.大胆，卤莽，无礼 | |
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50
blanched
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| v.使变白( blanch的过去式 )；使（植物）不见阳光而变白；酸洗（金属）使有光泽；用沸水烫（杏仁等）以便去皮 | |
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51
curt
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| adj.简短的，草率的 | |
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52
sardonic
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| adj.嘲笑的，冷笑的，讥讽的 | |
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53
incarnate
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| adj.化身的，人体化的，肉色的 | |
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54
ridiculed
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| v.嘲笑，嘲弄，奚落( ridicule的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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55
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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56
avarice
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| n.贪婪；贪心 | |
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57
confiscated
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| 没收，充公( confiscate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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58
seething
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| 沸腾的，火热的 | |
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59
fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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60
idiotic
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| adj.白痴的 | |
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61
aggregation
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| n.聚合，组合；凝聚 | |
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62
hysterical
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| adj.情绪异常激动的，歇斯底里般的 | |
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63
traitor
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| n.叛徒，卖国贼 | |
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64
patriotism
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| n.爱国精神，爱国心，爱国主义 | |
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65
susceptible
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| adj.过敏的，敏感的；易动感情的，易受感动的 | |
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66
juncture
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| n.时刻，关键时刻，紧要关头 | |
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67
confiscation
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| n. 没收, 充公, 征收 | |
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68
fumbled
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| （笨拙地）摸索或处理（某事物）( fumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 乱摸，笨拙地弄； 使落下 | |
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69
rapacity
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| n.贪婪，贪心，劫掠的欲望 | |
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70
throbbing
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| a. 跳动的,悸动的 | |
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71
jaws
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| n.口部；嘴 | |
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72
hilarity
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| n.欢乐；热闹 | |
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73
scrawled
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| 乱涂，潦草地写( scrawl的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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74
simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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