The figure at the altar raised itself after a time, and the old woman limped slowly up a side aisle, mumbling her formulas, courtesying to the painted saints, on her way out. The very thinnest lingerings of incense hung on the air, seeming to Tom like the faint odor that might exhale from a heavy wreath of marguerites, worn in dark-brown hair. Yet, the place held nothing but peace and good-will. And he found nothing else in his own heart. The street was quiet when he emerged from that lorn vigil; the corner groups had dissolved; shouting youths no longer patrolled the sidewalks. Only one quarter showed signs of life: the little clubhouse, where the windows still shown brightly, and whence came the sound of many voices settling the destinies of the United States of America. Thither Tom bent his steps, thoughtfully, and with a quiet mind. There was a small veranda at the side of the house; here he stood unobserved to look in upon his noisy and agitated friends.
They were all there, from the old General and Mr. Bareaud, to the latter's son, Jefferson, and young Frank Chenoweth. They were gathered about a big table upon which stood a punch-bowl and Trumble, his brow as angry red as the liquor in the cup he held, was proposing a health to the President in a voice of fury.
“In spite of all the Crailey Grays and traitors this side of hell!” he finished politely.
Crailey emerged instantaneously from the general throng and mounted a chair, tossing his light hair back from his forehead, his eyes sparkling and happy. “You find your own friends already occupying the place you mentioned, do you, General?” he asked.
General Trumble stamped and shook his fist.
“You're a spawn of Aaron Burr!” he vociferated. “There's not a man here to stand by your infernal doctrines. You sneer at your own State, you sneer at your own country, you defile the sacred ground! What are you, by the Almighty, who attack your native land in this, her hour of peril!”
“Peril to my native land!” laughed Crailey. “From Santa Anna?”
“The General's right, sir,” exclaimed the elder Chenoweth indignantly, and most of the listeners appeared to agree with him. “It's a poor time to abuse the President when he's called for volunteers and our country is in danger, sir!”
“Who is in danger?” answered Crailey, lifting his hand to still the clamor of approbation that arose. “Is Polk in danger? Or Congress? But that would be too much to hope! Do you expect to see the Greasers in Washington? No, you idiots, you don't! Yet there'll be plenty of men to suffer and die; and the first should be those who thrust this war on us and poor little Mexico; but it won't be they; the men who'll do the fighting and dying will be the country boys and the like of us from the towns, while Mr. Polk sits planning at the White House how he can get elected again. I wish Tom were here, confound you! You listen to him because he always has the facts and I'm just an embroiderer, you think. What's become of the gaudy campaign cry you were all wearing your lungs out with a few months ago? 'Fifty-four-forty or fight!' Bah! Polk twisted the lion's tail with that until after election. Then he saw he had to make you forget it, or fight England and be ruined, so he forces war on Mexico, and the country does forget it. That's it: he asks three regiments of volunteers from this State to die of fevers and get shot, so that he can steal another country and make his own elect him again. And you ask me to drink the health of the politician who sits at home and sends his fellowmen to die to fix his rotten jobs for him?” Crailey had persuaded himself into such earnestness, that the depth of his own feeling almost choked him, but he finished roundly in his beautiful, strong voice: “I'll drink for the good punch's sake—but that health?—I'll see General Trumble in heaven before I'll drink it!”
There rose at once a roar of anger and disapproval, and Crailey became a mere storm centre amid the upraised hands gestulating madly at him as he stood, smiling again, upon his chair.