Chapter IX

All the way across to St Thomas, endless speculations as to the meaning of the two mysterious telegrams afforded the three passengers chiefly concerned an unusual fund of conversation and plot-interest for an entire voyage. Still, after a while the subject palled a little; and on the second evening out, in calm and beautiful summer twilight weather, they were all sitting in their own folding-chairs on the after-deck, positively free from any doubts or guesses upon the important question, and solely engaged in making the acquaintance of their fellow-passengers. By-and-by, as the shades began to close in, there was a little sound of persuasive language—as when one asks a young lady to sing—at the stern end of the swiftly moving vessel; and then, in a few minutes, somebody in the dusk took a small violin out of a wooden case and began to play a piece of Spohr’s. The ladies turned around their chairs to face the musician, and listened carelessly as he went through the preliminary scraping and twanging which seems to be inseparable from the very nature of the violin as an instrument. Presently, having tightened the pegs to his own perfect satisfaction, the player began to draw his bow rapidly and surely across the strings with the unerring confidence of a practised performer. In two minutes, the hum of conversation had ceased on deck, and all the little world of the _Severn_ was bending forward its head eagerly to catch the liquid notes that floated with such delicious clearness upon the quiet breathless evening air. Instinctively everybody recognised at once the obvious fact that the man in the stern to whom they were all listening was an accomplished and admirable violin-player.

Just at first, the thing that Marian and Nora noticed most in the stranger’s playing was his extraordinary brilliancy and certainty of execution. He was a perfect master of the _technique_ of his instrument, that was evident. But after a few minutes more, they began to perceive that he was something much more than merely that; he played not only with consummate skill, but also with infinite grace, insight, and tenderness. As they listened, they could feel the man outpouring his whole soul in the exquisite modulations of his passionate music: it was not any cold, well-drilled, mechanical accuracy of touch alone; it was the loving hand of a born musician, wholly in harmony with the master he interpreted, the work he realised, and the strings on which he gave it vocal utterance. As he finished the piece, Edward whispered in a hushed voice to Nora: ‘He plays beautifully.’ And Nora answered, with a sudden burst of womanly enthusiasm: ‘More than beautifully—exquisitely, divinely.’

‘You’ll sing us something, won’t you?’—‘Oh, do sing us something!’—‘Monsieur will not refuse us!’—‘Ah, señor, it is such a great pleasure.’ So a little babel of two or three languages urged at once upon the unknown figure silhouetted dark at the stern of the steamer against the paling sunset; and after a short pause, the unknown figure complied graciously, bowing its acknowledgments to the surrounding company, and burst out into a song in a glorious rich tenor voice, almost the finest Nora and Marian had ever listened to.

‘English!’ Nora whispered in a soft tone, as the first few words fell upon their ears distinctly, uttered without any mouthing in a plain unmistakable native tone. ‘I’m quite surprised at it! I made up my mind, from the intense sort of way he played the violin, that he must be a Spaniard or an Italian, or at least a South American. English people seldom play with all that depth and earnestness and fervour.’

‘Hush, hush!’ Marian answered under her breath. ‘Don’t talk while he’s singing, please, Nora—it’s too delicious.’

They listened till the song was quite finished, and the last echo of that magnificent voice had died away upon the surface of the still, moonlit waters; and then Nora said eagerly to Edward: ‘Oh, do find out who he is, Mr Hawthorn! Do go and get to know him! I want so to be introduced to him! What a glorious singer! and what a splendid violinist! I never in my life heard anything lovelier, even at the opera.’

Edward smiled, and dived at once into the little crowd at the end of the quarter-deck, in search of the unknown and nameless musician. Nora waited impatiently in her seat to see who the mysterious personage could be. In a few seconds, Edward came back again, bringing with him the admired performer. ‘Miss Dupuy was so very anxious to make your acquaintance,’ he said, as he drew the supposed stranger forward, ‘on the strength of your beautiful playing and singing.—You see, Miss Dupuy, it’s a fellow-passenger to whom we’ve already introduced ourselves—Dr Whitaker!’

Nora drew back almost imperceptibly at this sudden revelation. In the dusk and from a little distance, she had not recognised their acquaintance of yesterday. But it was indeed the mulatto doctor. However, now she was fairly trapped; and having thus let herself in for the young man’s society for that particular evening, she had good sense and good feeling enough not to let him see, at least too obtrusively, that she did not desire the pleasure of his further acquaintance. To be sure, she spoke as little and as coldly as she could to him, in such ordinary phrases of polite admiration as she felt were called for under these painful circumstances; but she tried to temper her enthusiasm down to the proper point of chilliness for a clever and well-taught mulatto fiddler.—He had been a ‘marvellous violinist’ in her own mind five minutes before; but as he turned out to be of brown blood, she felt now that ‘clever fiddler’ was quite good enough for the altered occasion.

Dr Whitaker, however, remained in happy unconsciousness of Nora’s sudden change of attitude. He drew over a camp-stool from near the gunwale and seated himself upon it just in front of the little group in their folding ship-chairs. ‘I’m so glad you liked my playing, Miss Dupuy,’ he said quietly, turning towards Nora. ‘Music always sounds at its best on the water in the evening. And that’s such a lovely piece—my pet piece—so much feeling and pathos and delicate melody in it. Not like most of Spohr: a very unusual work for him; he’s so often wanting, you know, in the sense of melody.’

‘You play charmingly,’ Nora answered, in a languid chilly voice. ‘Your song and your playing have given us a great treat, I’m sure, Dr Whitaker.’

‘Where have you studied?’ Marian asked hastily, feeling that Nora was not showing so deep an interest in the subject as was naturally expected of her. ‘Have you taken lessons in Germany or Italy?’

‘A few,’ the mulatto doctor replied with a little sigh, ‘though not so many as I could have wished. My great ambition would have been to study regularly at the Conservatoire. But I never could gratify my wish in that respect, and I learned most of my fiddling by myself at Edinburgh.’

‘You’re an Edinburgh University man, I suppose?’ Edward put in.

‘Yes, an Edinburgh University man. The medical course there, you know, attracts so many men who would like better, in other respects, to go to one of the English universities.—You’re Cambridge yourself, I think, Mr Hawthorn, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, Cambridge.’

The mulatto sighed again. ‘A lovely place!’ he said—‘a most delicious place, Cambridge. I spent a charming week there once myself. The calm repose of those grand old avenues behind John’s and Trinity delighted me immensely.—A place to sit in and compose symphonies, Mrs Hawthorn. Nothing that I’ve seen in England so greatly impressed me with the idea of the grand antiquity of the country—the vast historical background of civilisation, century behind century, and generation behind generation—as that beautiful mingled picture of venerable elms, and mouldering architecture, and close-cropped greensward at the backs of the colleges. The very grass had a wonderful look of antique culture. I asked the gardener in one of the courts of Trinity how they ever got such velvety carpets for their smooth quadrangles, and the answer the fellow gave me was itself redolent of the traditions of the place. “We rolls ’em and mows ’em, sir,” he said, “and we mows ’em and rolls ’em, for a thousand years.”’

‘What a pity you couldn’t have stopped there and composed symphonies, as you liked it so much,’ Nora remarked, with hardly concealed sarcasm—‘only then, of course, we shouldn’t have had the pleasure of hearing you play your violin so beautifully on the _Severn_ this evening.’

Dr Whitaker looked up at her quickly with a piercing look. ‘Yes,’ he replied; ‘it _is_ a pity, for I should have dearly loved it. I’m bound up in music, almost; it’s one of my two great passions. But I had more than one reason for feeling that I ought, if possible, to go back to Trinidad. The first is, that I think every West Indian, and especially every man of my colour’—he said it out quite naturally, simply, and unaffectedly, without pausing or hesitating—‘who has been to Europe for his education, owes it to his country to come back again, and do his best in raising its social, intellectual, and artistic level.’

‘I’m very glad to hear you say so,’ Edward replied. ‘I think so myself too, and I’m pleased to find you agree with me in the matter.—And your second reason?’

‘Well, I thought my colour might stand in my way in practice in England—very naturally, I’m not surprised at it; while in Trinidad I might be able to do a great deal of good and find a great many patients amongst my own people.’

‘But I’m afraid they won’t be able to pay you, you know,’ Nora interposed. ‘The poor black people always expect to be doctored for nothing.’

Dr Whitaker turned upon her a puzzled pair of simple, honest, open eyes, whose curious glance of mute inquiry could be easily observed even in the dim moonlight. ‘I don’t think of practising for money,’ he said simply, as if it were the most ordinary statement in the world. ‘My father has happily means enough to enable me to live without the necessity for earning a livelihood. I want to be of some use in my generation, and to help my own people, if possible, to rise a little in the scale of humanity. I shall practise gratuitously among the poorest negroes, and do what I can to raise and better their unhappy condition.’

‘UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER’ GRANT.

The 27th of April 1822 was a great day in Point Pleasant, a little pioneer settlement on the banks of the Ohio; for Jesse Grant’s wife presented him that day with a boy, and newcomers were rare in the little place. Every detail about the latest arrival was eagerly and quickly circulated; and if the men of the little town had learned in some mysterious way what Jesse Grant’s boy was afterwards to become, they could hardly have made more stir about him. But Jesse and his wife could not hit upon a name for their firstborn, and six weeks after his birth his only name was ‘Baby.’ A family council was held to settle the knotty question, and it was decided to ballot for a name! Each person present wrote the name he or she favoured on a slip of paper, and the slips were shaken up in a hat. The first drawn slip was to name the boy, and as it bore the name Ulysses, Ulysses was fixed on. But the ballot was not allowed to rule supreme, for the name of an honoured ancestor was added to the choice of the ballot; and the future President of the United States, and general of its armies, was christened as Hiram Ulysses Grant, a name that he lost by an accident in after-years.

Jesse Grant was a man of many parts, and not only conducted a tannery, but also—to quote Mr Thayer’s description of him in the interesting life of General Grant, to which we are indebted for the following incidents of his career (_From Tanyard to White House_, by W. M. Thayer. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1885)—‘In addition to tanning, he ran a slaughter-house, did something at teaming, and occasionally erected a building for other parties.’ In a house where so many irons were in the fire, it will readily be understood there were no idlers, and Ulysses had early to take his share of the work. A passionate love of horses, that time only strengthened, was the outcome of his early acquaintance with them. At school he was famed only for a wonderful gift for mathematics, and a stern obstinacy that often carried him through a task in which a cleverer boy failed. One day a schoolmate declared of Grant, when a peculiarly difficult problem was under discussion: ‘His forte is in arithmetic, and he will dig away until he has got it; but I can’t do it!’—‘_Can’t!_ can’t!’ responded Grant quizzically. ‘What does that mean?’ And away he rushed to the teacher’s desk to examine the dictionary. The boys looked on silently, awaiting to see what was afoot. ‘Can’t!’ exclaimed Ulysses; ‘there’s no such word in the dictionary,’ as he closed the volume. ‘It _can_ be done.’

There was little in this obstinate determined youngster to foreshadow his great future, and it was with no small astonishment that his neighbours heard a phrenologist’s verdict on the lad. Let Mr Thayer tell the story: ‘After the lecturer had been blindfolded, a gentleman set Ulysses in the chair. The lecturer proceeded to examine his head, and continued so long without saying a word, that a citizen inquired “Do you discover any special ability for mathematics in that boy’s head?”—“Mathematics!” retorted the lecturer, as if that kind of ability did not cover the case. “You need not be surprised if this boy is President of the United States some day!”’ How far this judgment accorded with that of the audience, we may gather from Mr Thayer’s naive comment, that ‘it did not increase the reputation of the phrenologist in Mount Pleasant.’

Young Grant’s love of horses was a great hindrance to his progress at school. Ever more ready to go afield with the teams than to take his place in class, it is little wonder that, with the many opportunities for indulging his propensities which his father’s business afforded him, he did not achieve any marked success. As a child of seven he harnessed a young colt that had never before been harnessed, though, from his diminutive stature, he had to stand on an inverted corn-measure to fix the bridle. At nine, he astonished his father by asking if he might buy a horse—to be his own. He had saved enough money to buy a colt, and was anxious to have one. ‘But there is risk in buying a horse,’ his father reminded him. ‘And I am willing to take the risk, father.’ And he did—and from that day was never without a horse. This willingness to take risks was a keynote of Grant’s character, and many of his after-successes were due to it.

Schooldays over, Ulysses served for a while in his father’s tanyard; but he took a violent aversion to the business, and an equally strong craving for ‘an education.’ It was probably this desire for education, rather than any keen thirst for military life or glory, that caused him to seek admission to West Point—the Sandhurst of the United States—where a good general education was added to the necessary military course at little or no cost to the student. Each Congressional district was entitled to one student in the college, and application for the vacant cadetship of their district was made to their member by Jesse Grant on behalf of his son. The busy man made inquiries, and then, without referring to the father’s letter, claimed the appointment for ‘Ulysses Simpson Grant;’ and in this name Ulysses entered, and thus lost by accident the name he had gained by ballot.

On entering West Point, each student was required to deposit sixty dollars to guarantee the expenses of his return home, in the event of his failing to pass the entrance examination. Ulysses broke his journey to spend a short time with some relatives in Philadelphia before proceeding to West Point. City life so charmed him that when his visit came to an end and he was due at the college, nearly all his money—including his sixty dollars—was gone. Nothing daunted, Ulysses presented himself for admission, and met the demand for his deposit with the calm reply: ‘I intend to pass the examination!’ He was allowed to sit, and passed easily, and in due course was graduated as second lieutenant in 1843.

His first appointment was at Jefferson Barracks, near St Louis. Here it was that he met his future wife, wooed and, in spite of the opposition of her parents, who thought their daughter might look higher than the poor second lieutenant, won her. The Mexican war gave Lieutenant Grant his first taste of warfare. Several times he was mentioned in the despatches for distinguished services; and for bravery he was appointed First Lieutenant. Congress proposed to confirm the temporary rank, but he declined, preferring, he said, ‘to reach the position by regular gradations of service.’

In 1848, Grant, now Captain, and an honoured hero of the Mexican war, married. Six happy years were spent with his regiment, and then, in 1854, he resigned his position, to take to farming. ‘Whoever hears of me in ten years’ time,’ he told a comrade, ‘will hear of a well-to-do old Missouri farmer.’ But in ten years’ time he was Commander-in-chief of the United States armies! The farming did not pay; a partnership in a land agency that succeeded it, did little better; and then the Captain joined his brothers in a leather business at Galena, Illinois. It was here that the news of the assault on his country’s flag by the rebels reached him.

The Confederates had attacked Fort Sumner on April 12, 1861, and from end to end of the land, the heart of the loyal States was stirred by the tidings. Grant was no politician; indeed, he disliked and shunned party strife; but he felt in this news of his country’s danger, the call of duty. ‘I left the army expecting never to return,’ he said. ‘I am no seeker for position; but the country which educated me is in sore peril, and as a man of honour, I feel bound to offer my services for whatever they are worth.’ Accordingly, he volunteered; but in the crowd of place-hunters at the State capital, the retiring, self-distrustful Captain was passed by. All the Illinois regiments were provided with commanders, and in despair of obtaining any appointment, Grant had actually left the capital to visit his father, when he received a telegram from the governor of the State: ‘You are this day appointed Colonel of the Twenty-first Illinois Volunteers, and requested to take command at once.’ The former commander of the regiment had been dismissed for incompetency, and the governor had asked one of Grant’s friends, ‘What kind of man is this Captain Grant? Though anxious to serve, he seems reluctant to take any high position. He even declined my offer to recommend him to Washington for a brigadier-generalship, saying he didn’t want office till he had earned it. What _does_ he want?’ ‘The way to deal with him,’ was the reply, ‘is to ask him no questions, but simply order him to duty. He will promptly obey.’ This man knew Grant!

Well might governor Yates exclaim, as he is reported to have done in after-years: ‘It was the most glorious day of my life when I signed Grant’s commission.’ For, as Mr Thayer well puts it, ‘Grant had found his place. From that he would go forth “from conquering to conquer.”’ Two months later, he was Brigadier-general—this time he felt he had _earned_ the post—and from this point his advance was rapid. Before the end of the war, the disused ranks of Lieutenant-general, and General, of the United States army were revived and conferred on him. Through the mazes of that long struggle we need not follow him, but incident after incident of that awful war show the grand simplicity and true nobility of his nature. As a commander, determined to the point of obstinacy, resolute of purpose, and daring in action—in private, modest, retiring almost to a fault, and living a sober, upright life, against which inveterate foes could bring no charge but the most groundless tissue of calumnies—all this was ‘Unconditional Surrender’ Grant.

The very title was characteristic of the man—‘Unconditional Surrender’ Grant! It arose from the closing scene of the attack on Fort Donelson. The Confederate General Buckner asked for terms, and Grant thus replied to the demand: ‘Yours of this date proposing armistice, and appointment of Commissioners to settle terms of capitulation, is just received. No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately on your works.’ Buckner surrendered.

This stern determination, though perhaps the ruling feature of Grant’s character, did not shut out other noble qualities. Before Vicksburg, he found that his men faltered in the spade-work under the heavy fire. The General took a seat near them amid a very hail of shot, and quickly reassured them by calmly whittling a stick through it all! At another time, when a battle was in progress, the General sent one of his staff on some errand; the officer asked Grant where he should find him on his return. The answer showed the stuff the general was made of: ‘Probably at headquarters. If you don’t, come to the front, wherever you hear the heaviest firing!’

‘When do you expect to take Vicksburg?’ a rebel woman tauntingly asked the General. ‘I can’t tell exactly,’ was the calm reply; ‘but I shall stay until I do, if it takes thirty years.’ And take it he did, as all the world knows. There is a singular likeness in this reply to the ‘unconditional surrender’ of Fort Donelson, and to the still more famous declaration before Richmond, after six consecutive days’ fighting, unparalleled in modern times: ‘I propose to fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer.’

Yet, in spite of his deep-rooted determination to crush the rebellion, Grant could show a consideration for the feelings of his vanquished foes that with a man of smaller calibre would have been impossible. ‘After the surrender of General Lee,’ Mr Thayer tells us, ‘the Union army began to salute Grant by firing cannon. He directed the firing to cease at once, saying: “It will wound the feelings of our prisoners, who have become our countrymen again.”’ It was this spirit of consideration and conciliation that, in no small degree, served to make union possible again between North and South.

Of course, Grant did not escape calumny—what great man ever did?—but he bore the unfounded charges brought against him without a murmur, silencing not a few by the contempt with which he treated them. ‘When I have done the best I can,’ he said once, ‘I leave it.’ But the calumnies brought against him were as nothing to the tide of honours that burst upon him as soon as the value of his services became apparent. Even before the war was ended, he was, or might have been, the best fêted man in the Union. But his whole nature revolted at the idea. When he was appointed Lieutenant-general, he was ordered to repair to Washington to receive his commission from the President. Mrs Lincoln proposed to give a grand military dinner in his honour. But Grant pleaded that his presence was needed on the field, and begged to be excused. ‘I do not see how we _can_ excuse you,’ Mrs Lincoln urged; ‘it would be Hamlet with the Prince left out.’ The reply shows the man in all the rugged simplicity of his grand nature: ‘I appreciate fully all the honour Mrs Lincoln would do me; but time is precious; and really, Mr President, I have had enough of the show business!’

But the ‘show business’ was only beginning; and no sooner was the war at an end, than honours fell thick and fast on the hero of the long struggle. Office, wealth, and power were all within his grasp, and at the nation’s call he took them up, and right wisely did he use them. Twice he served in the highest and proudest office an American citizen can hold; and at the expiration of his second term of office in 1876, he set out on a long-desired trip round the world. How he was received with more than kingly honour the wide-world over, is within the memory of all. His entry to a city was the signal for a burst of enthusiastic welcome, and everywhere he was fêted to the utmost of the people’s power. On every hand he was met by the call for speeches, and speech-making he thoroughly detested; yet the few clear, concise sentences, bristling with shrewd common-sense, and overflowing with genuine feeling, to which he confined his remarks, will long be remembered by those who heard them.

‘Although a soldier by education and profession,’ he told the citizens of London, ‘I have never felt any sort of fondness for war, and I have never advocated it except as a means of peace.’ And again, to Prince Bismarck he made a somewhat similar remark: ‘I never went into the army without regret, and never retired without pleasure!’

Through Europe, and home by India, Siam, China, and Japan, went the General and his party, welcomed and fêted everywhere. The long tour came to an end at San Francisco, on September 20, 1879, and the journey thence to the Eastern States was one long triumphal progress. The General took up his residence in New York, and though an abortive attempt was made to secure his return for a third time to the White House in 1880, he took little or no further share of public life. His fortune he invested in a business in which his son was partner with a man named Ward, and in the downfall of this concern, the General lost his all. With unflinching courage, he faced the situation, conscious though he was of the formation of that dread cancer in the throat that in the end proved too strong for him. Magazines were willing to pay large prices for articles from his pen, and publishers eager to issue his autobiography. So, with a brave heart, the General set himself to fight his last battle.

The news of his terrible position soon became known, and a public subscription was proposed, that would quickly have restored Grant to more than his former wealth; but he would have none of it. Congress, greatly to his delight, placed him on the retired list of the army. ‘They have brought us back our old commander,’ said Mrs Grant when she heard the news. But it was not for long. On the 23d of July 1885, the battle came to an end, and ‘Unconditional Surrender Grant’ gave in at last to the great conqueror of all.

A GOLDEN ARGOSY.

_A NOVELETTE._