Archie then brought forth his tale of injuries in not being allowed to enlist. Richard good-naturedly cuffed him and reminded him that he was but a baby in years.
After supper was served, Colonel Tremaine called for champagne. A bottle was fetched by Hector, who took occasion to remark, “Dis heah is outen de las’ basket. I speck you hav’ to order sum mo’, old Marse.”
“I do not expect to order any more champagne at present,” remarked Colonel Tremaine grimly.
“And the few bottles which are left,” added Mrs. Tremaine, “must be saved for the hospitals.”
Colonel Tremaine then rose and all at the table followed his example. “Let us drink,” he said, “to the cause of the South.” A ringing cheer which the listening negroes heard burst from Archie as they all drank.
Richard had so much to tell that the family sat up unusually late listening to him, and it was near midnight before he and Lyddon went to the old study for their usual smoke and talk. Richard’s enthusiasm had by no means expended itself. “I know what you are thinking, Mr. Lyddon,” he said, standing in his familiar argumentative attitude, his back to the fireplace and his arms folded.
“Yes,” replied Lyddon, lighting his pipe. “Yesterday you performed a great act. You sounded the death knell of slavery, you have emancipated yourselves and your children forever from that curse.”
“So we may have done. The fathers of the Republic sought to emancipate us and when we can act freely and without fear of Northern coercion we shall perhaps follow the council of the patriarchs, but never under threats, by God!” The two talked animatedly for a couple of hours. Lyddon had feared that Richard, beguiled by the glamour of a soldier’s life, would choose the army as a permanent career while in truth his greater gifts lay in the domain of statecraft. But Lyddon’s mind was relieved by Richard’s saying that he felt no inclination to adopt a military life permanently.
Then as the case always was with Lyddon, their talk fell upon books. Richard took down a battered volume and was reading aloud to Lyddon what both knew by heart, the story of that Athenian night when Agatho returned with the prize of Tragedy from the Olympian games and the symposium was held at the house of Phædrus, and when the night was far spent Alcibiades coming in with the tipsy crowd of Greek boys swore that Socrates should drink two measures of wine to every other man’s one; and Socrates, accepting this challenge, drank them all under the table except Aristodemus, the old physician, and when day broke Socrates after taking a bath went and taught philosophy in the groves while the dew was still wet upon the grass.
As Lyddon and Richard Tremaine laughed over this old tale time went backward. They forgot the storm and stress of to-day, the rise and fall of empires, the fierce combat of body and soul in which the human race had struggled for almost three thousand years since that Hellenic night. Again they lived the life of those undying Greeks, and Richard, who drew cleverly, was making a pen-and-ink sketch of the beautiful tipsy Alcibiades when he suddenly laid down his pen and said after listening for a moment, “There’s Neville. I hear a boat grating against the wharf.”