The Purchase Price by Emerson Hough (ebook reader screen .txt) 📕

sent over by America to look into the cause of Hungary. In return, last year I had the honor of being asked to come to this country as one of the commission despatched to America in the interest of Hungary. I came over a certain time in advance, for reasons of my own. Meantime, I have had, it seems—well, call them adventures! I am not eager they should be known here. But if you like, you may call on me at my hotel—to-morrow?"

Both recognized a slight additional trace of hauteur in the deportment of the woman whom they now accosted. She herself saw a sort of hesitation on the part of Carlisle.

"I can't let you make any mistake about me," he began presently.

"How do you mean?"

"You are probably not advised about me. I'm a person of no consequence."

"An officer of his country's army can not say that of himself."

"But, I am no longer an officer of any army. I have been court-martialed—for my conduct there—you know—that fight at St. Genevieve. My abolitionist tendencies have always made me persona non grata in my own mess. There's been all sort of pressure brought on me to drop it. Now the government itself, not wishing these things to come to a focus, has ordered me to a court-martial. Very well, I've been sentenced. My parole is ended, for the law has acted on my conduct. Rather than go back many steps in rank, I have thrown up my commission. This morning I resigned. I am wearing my uniform, I don't doubt, for the last time."

"And that, although you fought in the cause of freedom! Although you have fought honorably in an earlier war! Is it not horrible!"

"I could not do otherwise," said he simply. "I have no regrets."

"But don't you see,"—she turned upon him suddenly—"it only leaves you all the more free!"

"I can not understand you."

"Will it not give you and your friend, Lieutenant Kammerer here, precisely the opportunity you've wished?"

"Still I do not follow you."

"My dear Countess," ventured the German, "I'll go anywhere under your orders. You may be sure of that."

She turned from them. "Come to my hotel, will you not, to-morrow? I may have something to say to you." Thus she passed back into the throng, and into the arms of fickle and repentant Washington, which marveled when she danced, flushed, excited, yet absorbed, with the gallant old general, himself intoxicated by the music and by all this warm talk of freedom, of equality, of democracy,—in Washington!

CHAPTER XXIV IN THE NAME OF ALTRUISM

In her apartments at the hotel the following morning Josephine St. Auban looked over the journals of the day. There were many columns of description of the only social event of the previous day thought worth extended mention. The visitors from Hungary were lauded to the skies. There did not lack many references to the similarity between the present struggles of the Hungarian people and those of our own earlier days. A vast amount of rampant Americanism was crowded into all these matters.

[Illustration: She looked over the journals of the day.]

Joined to this, there was considerable mention of the reappearance in Washington society of the beautiful Countess, Josephine St. Auban, now discovered to have been originally a member of this Hungarian commission, and recently journeying in the western states of the republic. This beautiful countess was now invested with a romantic history. She was a friend and protegee of the old General Zewlinski, a foreign noblewoman half American by birth, of rank, wealth and distinction, who had taken a leading part in the cause of Hungary in her struggle with the oppressing monarchies. Without any reference to earlier stories not unknown to them, and bolder as to Austria than those who then dwelt in the White House, the newspapers now openly and unanswerably welcomed this distinguished stranger to the heart of Washington. Unknowingly, when they gave her this publicity, they threw around her also protection, secrecy. As she read, the Countess St. Auban smiled. She knew that now there would be no second vehmgerichte. The government now would not dare!

What interested her more was the story at that time made current, of an unsuccessful attempt which had been made by a southern slave owner to reclaim his property in a northern state. The facts recounted that a planter of Maryland, with two relatives, had followed an escaped slave to the settlement of Christianville, Pennsylvania, where a little colony of fugitives had made common cause together. In this case, as was prescribed under the law, the slave owner had called to his aid a United States marshal, who in turn had summoned a large posse of his own. These had visited the home of the fugitive and called upon him to surrender himself to his owner. This the fugitive had refused to do, and he was backed in this refusal by a considerable party of men of his own race, some of them free men, and some fugitive slaves, who had assembled at his house.

"I'll have my property," asserted the slave owner, according to the report, "or I'll eat my breakfast in hell." One of the Marylanders had then fired upon the slave, and the fire was returned in general by the negroes. The old planter, a man of courage, was struck to the ground, killed by the blacks, his two relatives disabled, and several other men on both sides were wounded. The fugitive himself was not taken, and the arresting party was obliged to retire. Naturally, great exultation prevailed among the triumphant blacks; and this, so said numerous despatches, was fostered and encouraged by comment of all the northern abolitionist press.

Josephine St. Auban pondered over this barbarous recountal of an event which would seem to have been impossible in a civilized community. "It comes," said she, musing, "it comes! Ca ira! There will be war! Ah, I must hasten."

She turned to other papers, of private nature, in her desk. In a half hour more, she had gone over the last remittance reports of the agents of her estates in Europe. She smiled, nodded, as she tapped a pencil over the very handsome totals. In ten minutes more, she was ready and awaiting the call of Carlisle and Kammerer in her reception-room. In her mind was a plan already formulated.

At heart frank and impulsive, and now full of a definite zeal, she did not long keep them waiting to learn her mind.

"Are you still for the cause of freedom, and can you keep a secret, or aid in one?" she broke in suddenly, turning toward Carlisle. Looking at him at first for a time, inscrutably, as though half in amusement or in recollection, she now regarded him carefully for an instant, apparently weighing his make-up, estimating his sincerity, mentally investigating his character, looking at the flame of his hair, the fanatic fire of his deep set eye.

"I have sometimes done so," he smiled. "Is there anything in which
I can be of service?"

"Time is short," was her answer. "Let us get at once to the point. I am planning to go into the work long carried on by that weak-minded Colonization Society; but on certain lines of my own."

"Explain, Countess!"

"It is my belief that we should deport the blacks from this country. Very well, I am willing to devote certain moneys and certain energies to that purpose. Granted I found it advisable and could obtain proper support, I might perhaps not return to Hungary for a time."

"Kammerer!" broke in Carlisle suddenly, "Listen! Do you hear? It's what we've said! It is precisely what you yourself have always said."

"That iss it!—that iss it!" exclaimed the young German. "The colonization—remoof them from this country to another, where they shall be by themselves. That only iss wise, yess. Elsewise must great war come—else must this Union be lost! Ah, Madam; ah, Madam! How great your heart, your mind. I kiss your hand."

"Listen!" she interrupted. "There are about three and one-third millions of them now. Say they are worth, old and young, large and little, one thousand dollars a head—monstrous thing, to put a price upon a human head, but suppose it. It would amount to but a few billions of dollars. What would a war cost between these two sections? Perhaps a million dollars a day! How much cheaper could these slaves be purchased and deported from these shores! Their owners regard them as property. The laws protect that belief. The Constitution establishes the laws. There is no peaceful way to end the turmoil, save by the purchase of these people. That is a solution. It will prevent a war. Let them be sent away to a place where they belong, rather than here."

"My dear Countess," said Carlisle, "you are, as usual, brilliant. Your imagination vaults—your daring is splendid. But as usual you are visionary and impractical. Buy them? To do this would require the credit of a nation! It would be subversive of all peace and all industry. You do not realize the sums required. You do not realize how vast are the complications."

She stepped closer to him in her eagerness.

"All it needs is money, and management. A start, and the country will follow. Mr. Fillmore himself was about to recommend it, in his last message. Let me furnish the money, and do you attend to the complications."

Carlisle rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "It's beautiful; it may be wise, but it's impossible. It would take a king's credit."

"At least we might begin with such funds as are already at hand," smiled the Countess St. Auban. "It might be difficult? I suppose the building of the pyramids was difficult. Yet they were begun. Yet they are finished. Yet they stand, complete, to-day."

"It is hardly for me to advise in a case so grave as that," said Carlisle. "I should not undertake it. Have you really considered?"

"I have often followed over the same old course of reasoning, South against North," she said, smiling at him. "Come now, a revolutionist and two abolitionists should do much. You still can fight, though they have taken away your sword."

"Some say that the courts will settle these mooted points," Carlisle went on; "others, that Congress must do so. Yet others are unwilling that even the courts should take it up, and insist that the Constitution is clear and explicit already. These Southerners say that Congress should make an end to it, by specifically declaring that men have a right to take into any new country what they lawfully own—that is to say, these slaves; because that territory was bought in common by North and South. The South is just as honest and sincere as the North is, and to be fair about it, I don't believe it's right to claim that the South wants the Union destroyed. A few hotheads talk of that in South Carolina, in Mississippi, but that is precisely what the sober judgment of the South doesn't desire. Let us match those secessionists against the abolitionists," he grinned. "The first think they have law back of them. The latter know they have none!"

"No," she said, "only the higher law, that of human democracy.
No,—we've nothing concrete—except Lily!"

"Yes, but let me argue you out of this, Countess. Really, I can see no just reason why the proud and prosperous North should wish to destroy the proud and prosperous South. If the South remains in the Union it must be considered a part of the Union. New England did not believe in taxation without representation. Ought it to enforce that doctrine on the South?"

"You argue it very well, Sir, as well as any one can. The only
trouble is that you are not convinced, and you do not convince.
You are trying to protect me, that's all. I have no answer—except
Lily! There are some things in the analysis from which you shrink.
Isn't it true?"

"Yes, altogether true. We always come back to the bitter and brutal part of slavery. But what are we going to do for remedy? Anarchy doesn't suggest remedy.