"True—true. But he is a Spanish Creole, and, I fear, not too well disposed toward us. My point is, would it be too great an improbability that a certain projected expedition should chance to come in friendly touch with the authorities of northern New Spain?"
Having given me food for thought to last me many a day, the Senator dropped the subject. During all my subsequent months of waiting I could not induce him to discuss it again.
The time of this conversation was the third week of my stay in Washington. Being well supplied with funds and on agreeable terms both socially and professionally with Dr. Frederick May, I had settled down in my comfortable boarding-house, prepared, if need were, to besiege the Government throughout the Winter. Should I fail to attain my desired end, I had only to return West to find a fair practice awaiting me either at St. Louis or New Orleans. At the worst there would be ample recompense for my expenditures in the experience of a Winter in the Federal City.
Even had I been certain of the rejection of the formal application which, a few days after the dinner at the White House, I had placed on file in the War Office, I should have prolonged my stay for some time. Within the week I had taken advantage of the invitations to call tendered me by the ladies of the President's party. Within another week I found myself fairly launched in the social swim.
It is not remarkable that a man well under thirty, who has spent many of his years riding the wilderness traces, should plunge into social affairs with a zest unknown to the city dweller. To this zest there was added in my case the keen desire to meet again my haughty Señorita Alisanda. Yet devote myself as I might to attendance at balls, fêtes, dinners, routs, and calls innumerable, it was only to meet with repeated disappointments. Although, thanks to the kindness of Dr. May and my lady patronesses, there were few social gatherings, small or great, to which I was not invited, I failed to gain another meeting with the lady of my heart. She was not present even at the grand New Year's fête at the White House, when Mr. Jefferson, as was his custom, received and entertained all Washington.
That I was desperately in love with the señorita I had soon found myself compelled to admit. For nothing less than the depth and passion of my feeling could have prevented me from laughing myself out of it for the sheer absurdity of such a thing.
Reared among a people whose daughters marry at sixteen and their sons at nineteen and twenty, I had safely survived my calf-love, had even run the seductive gantlet of the creole belles of New Orleans,—only to fall victim in my mature twenties to the first glance of this haughty Spanish señorita. What could I hope from one who doubtless regarded me as our Western girls regard the red Indian? I do not mean with the like horror, but with a like contempt.
Not alone was she a Spanish Catholic, to whom marriage with a heretic would mean little less than sacrilege,—she was the daughter of a Castilian family whose name implied kinship with one of the royal houses of France. I was a man without a grandfather, and, what gave me real concern, a citizen of a Republic which, in return for the carrying trade of the world, was grovelling at the feet of England and France, submissive to their contemptuous kicks.
True, Spain also bowed beneath the iron hand of Napoleon, but it was because of the might of that hand, and not, as with us, because of a willingness to endure shame rather than part with the commerce of which our humiliation was the price. Far better war and death than such barter of principles for gold!
As I thought of my abject countrymen I did not wonder that my lady had looked upon me with hauteur; and yet I could not but reflect on the graciousness of her thanks from the carriage window and that inscrutable glance at our last parting. Hope interpreted the glance to mean that she was heart-free and to be won by him who could stir her heart. Despair said that she had gone forever beyond my reach, to the far distant home of her uncle in New Spain. One answer to this last was the wild fancy that, could I but attain the leadership of the Western expedition, I might penetrate the wilderness and seek her out in the midst of her people.