Apart from that he had not spoken to her during the entire journey. Morose, sullen, brutal, he had nursed his anger until his countenance fairly burned from the tension within. He slammed the door with violence; he tore the epaulets from his shoulders and threw them beyond the bed; he ripped his coat and kicked it across the floor. No! He would not eat. He wanted to be alone. Alone with himself, alone with his wrath, alone with his designs for revenge.
"The cowards! And I trusted them."
He could not understand his guilt. There was no guilt, only the insatiable lust on the part of his enemies for vengeance. The execution came first, then the trial. There was no accusation; he had been condemned from the start. The public, at whose hands he had long suffered, who reviled and oppressed him with equal vehemence, who had elevated him to the topmost niche of glory, and as promptly crumbled the column beneath his feet and allowed him to crash to the ground, now gloated over their ruined and heartbroken victim with outrageous jubilation. They were on destruction bent, and he the victim of their stupid spite.
If he could not understand his culpability, neither could he apprehend fully and vividly the meaning of his sentence. To be reprimanded by the Commander-in-chief! Better to be found guilty by the court and inflicted with the usual military discipline. His great sense of pride could not, would not suffer him to be thus humiliated at the hands of him from whom he had previously been rewarded with so many favors, and in whom he had lodged his most complete esteem and veneration. He could not endure it, that was all; and what was more he would not.
He decided to leave the city forever. Then the howl of contumely could not pursue him; it would grow faint with the distance. He was no longer Military Governor, and never would he reassume that thankless burden. He would retire to private life far removed from the savage envy of these aspiring charlatans. Unhappy memories and wretched degradation would close his unhappy days and shroud his name with an unmerited and unjust obloquy.
His wife had been correct in her prognostications. The court, like the public mind, which it only feebly reflected, had been prejudiced against him from the start. The disgust which he entertained of the French Alliance was only intensified the more by the recent proceedings of Congress, and perhaps he might listen more attentively now to her persuasions to go over to the British side. He would be indemnified, of course; but it was revenge he was seeking, on which account he would not become an ordinary deserter. He had been accustomed to playing heroic rôles, and he would not become a mere villain now at this important juncture. This blundering Congress would be overwhelmed by the part he would play in his new career, and he would carry back in triumph his country to its old allegiance.
Gradually his anger resolved itself into vindictive machination, which grew in intensity as it occupied him the more. He might obtain the command of the right wing of the American army, and at one stroke accomplish what George Monk had achieved for Charles the Second. It was not so heinous a crime to change sides in a civil war, and history has been known to reward the memory of those who performed such daring and desperate exploits. His country will have benefited by his signal effort, and his enemies routed at the same time in the shame of their own confusion. He would open negotiations with Sir Henry Clinton over an assumed name to test the value of his proposals.
"They'll pay me before I am through. I shall endure in history, with the Dukes of Albemarle and Marlborough."
As he mused over the condition of affairs and the possibilities of the situation, he wandered into the great room, where he saw two letters lying on the center table. Picking them up, he saw that one was addressed to Mrs. Arnold, the other to himself. He tore open his letter and read the signature. It bore the name of John Anderson.