"I shall do no more than I have already done. I cannot permit myself to be entangled. There is too much at stake."
He was playing a dangerous game, inspirited by no genuine love for country but by feelings of wounded pride. He was urged on, not through any fears of personal safety but through misguided intimidations of a foreign alliance; not because of any genuine desire to aid or abet the cause of the enemy but to cast suspicion upon a certain unit within his own ranks. To be deprived of active duty in the field was to his warm and impulsive nature an ignominious calamity. To learn subsequently of the appointment of Gates to the second in command, the one general whom he despised and hated, was more than his irritable temperament could stand. The American cause now appeared hopeless to him, nevertheless he entertained no thought of deserting it. He had performed his duty in its behalf, as his wounded limb often reminded him, and it was only fitting that he, who alone had destroyed a whole army of the enemy, should be rewarded with due consideration. Congress had ever been unfriendly to him and he had resented their action, or their failure to take proper action, most bitterly. Throughout it all his personal feelings had guided to a large extent his faculty of judgment, and for that reason he viewed with mistrust and suspicion every intent and purpose, however noble or exalted.
He had been violently opposed to the alliance with France from the start. It was notorious that he abhorred Catholics and all things Catholic. To take sides with a Catholic and despotic power which had been a deadly foe to the colonists ten or twenty years before, during the days of the French and Indian wars, was to his mind a measure at once unpatriotic and indiscreet. In this also, he had been actuated by his personal feelings more than by the study of the times. For he loathed Popery and the thousand and one machinations and atrocities which he was accustomed to link with the name.
The idea of forming a regiment of Catholic soldiers interested him not in the numerical strength which might be afforded the enemy but in the defection which would be caused to the American side. His scheme lay in the hope that the Catholic members of Congress would be tempted to resign. In that event he would obtain evident satisfaction not alone in the weakness to which the governing body would be exposed but also in the ill repute to which American Catholics and their protestations of loyalty would fall.
Arnold deep down in his own heart knew that his motives were not unmixed. He could not accuse himself of being outrageously mercenary, yet he was ashamed to be forced to acknowledge even to himself that the desire of gain was present to his mind. His debts were enormous. He entertained in a manner and after a style far in excess of his modest allowance. His dinners were the most sumptuous in the town; his stable the finest; his dress the richest. And no wonder that his play, his table, his balls, his concerts, his banquets had soon exhausted his fortune. Congress owed him money, his speculations proved unfortunate, his privateering ventures met with disaster. With debts accumulating and creditors giving him no peace he turned to the gap which he saw opening before him. This was an opportunity not to be despised.
"About that little matter—how soon might I be favored?" the Governor asked, rising from his chair and limping with his cane across the room.
"You refer to the matter of reimbursements?" Anderson asked nonchalantly.
"I do."
He gazed from the window with his back turned to his visitor.
"I shall draw an order for you at once."