"Now's your time," urged Rosny. "Come, say the word."
Morton paced the room with knit brows and lips pressed together.
"Glory,"—exclaimed his military friend, summing up the advantages of a Mexican campaign,—"glory,—preferment,—life, of the fastest kind,—what more would you have?"
Morton had a strong native thirst for adventure, and a penchant for military exploit. In his present frame of mind, he felt violently impelled to cut loose from all his old ideas and scruples, and launch at once upon a new life, fresh, unshackled, and reckless,—to plunge headlong into the tumult of the active world; fight its battles, run its races, give and take its blows, strain after its prizes,—forget the past and all its associations in the fever of the present. Mexico rose before his thoughts—snowy volcanoes, and tropical forests; the cocoa, the palm, and the cactus; bastioned cities and intrenched heights; the rush and din of battle; war with its fierce excitements and unbounded license. To his disordered mood, the scene had fascinations almost resistless, and he burned to play his part in the fiery drama.
"And why not?"—so his thoughts ran,—"why not obey what fate and nature dictate? Calm, and peace, and happiness,—farewell to them! That stake is played and lost. I am no more fit now for domestic life than a prairie wolf. I should answer better for an Ishmaelite or a Pawnee. Deus vult. Why should I fly in the face of Providence?"
Rosny, his uniform coat half unbuttoned for the sake of ease, sat lolling back in his chair, puffing wreaths of cigar smoke from his lips, eying Morton as he paced the room, and throwing out, from time to time, a word of encouragement to stimulate his resolution. He was about to lose all patience at his companion's pertinacious silence, when the latter stopped, and turned towards him with the air of one whose mind is made up.
"Dick," said Morton, "when I was in college, I laid down my plan of life, and adopted one maxim—to which I mean to hold fast."
"Well, what was that?" demanded the impatient Rosny.
"Never to abandon an enterprise once begun; to push on till the point is gained, in spite of pain, delay, danger, disappointment,—any thing."
"Good, so far. What next?"