After drinking his terrible toast, Jack dropped into his chair and relapsed into silence; whereat I had a chance to look about me, and to gather myself for the question which, more than the mere drinking of a birthday bottle with Pettus, had brought me to the point of asking Colonel Baylor’s leave to ride and row from our camp at Salem to Nyack on this raw December day.
“Jack,” I began, when the silence had sufficed, “are you sober enough to thread a needle for me in that matter of Captain Seytoun’s?”
“Try me and see, Dick,” he said promptly, sitting up and pushing the bottle aside.
“Word came to me yesterday, through Martin, the orderly who rode with despatches from the commander-in-chief to Colonel Baylor, that Seytoun had been talking again,” I went on, trying to keep the rage tremor out of my voice. “Martin had it that he had been revamping that old lie about the Pages and the ship-load of loose-wives sent over to Virginia in Charles II’s time. Is this true?”
Pettus shook his head, not in denial, I made sure, but in deprecation.
“This is no time to be stirring up past and gone private quarrels, Dick,” he said. “The good cause needs every sword it has; Bully Seytoun’s, as well as yours.”
“You’re not answering my question, Jack,” I retorted, fixing him with hot eyes. “I heard this of Captain Seytoun, and more: it was said that he cursed me openly, and that he dragged in the name of Mistress Beatrix Leigh, swearing that he would take her from me if I were thrice wedded to her.”
“A mere pot-house tongue-loosing when he was in liquor, Dick,” said my friend placably. “It was here, in this very den of Van Ditteraick’s.”
“Then you heard him?”
Pettus nodded. “And can testify to his befuddling.”