"So! So!" he mused at length, when I had finished, "England has started a land party for Oregon! Can they get across next fall, think you?"
"Hardly possible, sir," said I. "They could not go so swiftly as the special fur packets. Winter would catch them this side of the Rockies.
It will be a year before they can reach Oregon."
"Time for a new president and a new policy," mused he.
"The gra.s.s is just beginning to sprout on the plains, Mr. Calhoun," I began eagerly.
"Yes," he nodded. "G.o.d! if I were only young!"
"I am young, Mr. Calhoun," said I. "Send _me!_"
"Would you go?" he asked suddenly.
"I was going in any case."
"Why, how do you mean?" he demanded.
I felt the blood come to my face. ""Tis all over between Miss Elisabeth Churchill and myself," said I, as calmly as I might.
"Tut! tut! a child"s quarrel," he went on, "a child"s quarrel! "Twill all mend in time."
"Not by act of mine, then," said I hotly.
Again abstracted, he seemed not wholly to hear me.
"First," he mused, "the more important things"--riding over my personal affairs as of little consequence.
"I will tell you, Nicholas," said he at last, wheeling swiftly upon me.
"Start next week! An army of settlers waits now for a leader along the Missouri. Organize them; lead them out! Give them enthusiasm! Tell them what Oregon is! You may serve alike our party and our nation. You can not measure the consequences of prompt action sometimes, done by a man who is resolved upon the right. A thousand things may hinge on this. A great future may hinge upon it."
It was only later that I was to know the extreme closeness of his prophecy.
Calhoun began to pace up and down. "Besides her land forces," he resumed, "England is despatching a fleet to the Columbia! I doubt not that the _Modeste_ has cleared for the Horn. There may be news waiting for you, my son, when you get across!
"While you have been busy, I have not been idle," he continued. "I have here another little paper which I have roughly drafted." He handed me the doc.u.ment as he spoke.
"A treaty--with Texas!" I exclaimed.
"The first draft, yes. We have signed the memorandum. We await only one other signature."
"Of Van Zandt!"
"Yes. Now comes Mr. Nicholas Trist, with word of a certain woman to the effect that Mr. Van Zandt is playing also with England."
"And that woman also is playing with England."
Calhoun smiled enigmatically.
"But she has gone," said I, "who knows where? She, too, may have sailed for Oregon, for all we know."
He looked at me as though with a flash of inspiration. "That may be,"
said he; "it may very well be! That would cost us our hold over Pakenham. Neither would we have any chance left with her."
"How do you mean, Mr. Calhoun?" said I. "I do not understand you."
"Nicholas," said Mr. Calhoun, "that lady was much impressed with you."
He regarded me calmly, contemplatively, appraisingly.
"I do not understand you," I reiterated.
"I am glad that you do not and did not. In that case, all would have been over at once. You would never have seen her a second time. Your constancy was our salvation, and perhaps your own!"
He smiled in a way I liked none too well, but now I began myself to engage in certain reflections. Was it then true that faith could purchase faith--and win not failure, but success?
"At least she has flown," went on Calhoun. "But why? What made her go?
"Tis all over now, unless, unless--unless--" he added to himself a third time.
"But unless what?"
"Unless that chance word may have had some weight. You say that you and she talked of _principles?_"
"Yes, we went so far into abstractions."
"So did I with her! I told her about this country; explained to her as I could the beauties of the idea of a popular government. "Twas as a revelation to her. She had never known a republican government before, student as she is. Nicholas, your long legs and my long head may have done some work after all! How did she seem to part with you?"
"As though she hated me; as though she hated herself and all the world.
Yet not quite that, either. As though she would have wept--that is the truth. I do not pretend to understand her. She is a puzzle such as I have never known."
"Nor are you apt to know another her like. Look, here she is, the paid spy, the secret agent, of England. Additionally, she is intimately concerned with the private life of Mr. Pakenham. For the love of adventure, she is engaged in intrigue also with Mexico. Not content with that, born adventuress, eager devourer of any hazardous and interesting intellectual offering, any puzzle, any study, any intrigue--she comes at midnight to talk with me, whom she knows to be the representative of yet a third power!"
"And finds you in your red nightcap!" I laughed.
"Did she speak of that?" asked Mr. Calhoun in consternation, raising a hand to his head. "It may be that I forgot--but none the less, she came!
"Yes, as I said, she came, by virtue of your long legs and your ready way, as I must admit; and you were saved from her only, as I believe--Why, G.o.d bless Elisabeth Churchill, my boy, that is all! But my faith, how nicely it all begins to work out!"
"I do not share your enthusiasm, Mr. Calhoun," said I bitterly. "On the contrary, it seems to me to work out in as bad a fashion as could possibly be contrived."
"In due time you will see many things more plainly. Meantime, be sure England will be careful. She will make no overt movement, I should say, until she has heard from Oregon; which will not be before my lady baroness shall have returned and reported to Mr. Pakenham here. All of which means more time for us."
I began to see something of the structure of bold enterprise which this man deliberately was planning; but no comment offered itself; so that presently, he went on, as though in soliloquy.
"The Hudson Bay Company have deceived England splendidly enough. Doctor McLaughlin, good man that he is, has not suited the Hudson Bay Company.
His removal means less courtesy to our settlers in Oregon. Granted a less tactful leader than himself, there will be friction with our high-strung frontiersmen in that country. No man can tell when the thing will come to an issue. For my own part, I would agree with Polk that we ought to own that country to fifty-four forty--but what we _ought_ to do and what we can do are two separate matters. Should we force the issue now and lose, we would lose for a hundred years. Should we advance firmly and hold firmly what we gain, in perhaps less than one hundred years we may win _all_ of that country, as I just said to Mr. Polk, to the River Saskatchewan--I know not where! In my own soul, I believe no man may set a limit to the growth of the idea of an honest government by the people. _And this continent is meant for that honest government!_"
"We have already a Monroe Doctrine, Mr. Calhoun," said I. "What you enunciate now is yet more startling. Shall we call it the Calhoun Doctrine?"
He made no answer, but arose and paced up and down, stroking the thin fringe of beard under his chin. Still he seemed to talk with himself.