第85章
ON HALF A LOAF.A LETTER TO MESSRS.BROADWAY, BATTERY AND CO., OF NEW YORK, BANKERS.
Is it all over? May we lock up the case of instruments? Have we signed our wills; settled up our affairs; pretended to talk and rattle quite cheerfully to the women at dinner, so that they should not be alarmed; sneaked away under some pretext, and looked at the children sleeping in their beds with their little unconscious thumbs in their months, and a flush on the soft-pillowed cheek; made every arrangement with Colonel MacTurk, who acts as our second, and knows the other principal a great deal too well to think he will ever give in; invented a monstrous figment about going to shoot pheasants with Mac in the morning, so as to soothe the anxious fears of the dear mistress of the house; early as the hour appointed for the--the little affair--was, have we been awake hours and hours sooner; risen before daylight, with a faint hope, perhaps, that MacTurk might have come to some arrangement with the other side; at seven o'clock (confound his punctuality!) heard his cab-wheel at the door, and let him in looking perfectly trim, fresh, jolly, and well shaved; driven off with him in the cold morning, after a very unsatisfactory breakfast of coffee and stale bread-and-butter (which choke, somehow, in the swallowing); driven off to Wormwood Scrubs in the cold, muddy, misty, moonshiny morning; stepped out of the cab, where Mac has bid the man to halt on a retired spot in the common; in one minute more, seen another cab arrive, from which descend two gentlemen, one of whom has a case like MacTurk's under his arm;--looked round and round the solitude, and seen not one single sign of a policeman--no, no more than in a row in London;--deprecated the horrible necessity which drives civilized men to the use of powder and bullet;--taken ground as firmly as may be, and looked on whilst Mac is neatly loading his weapons; and when all ready, and one looked for the decisive One, Two, Three--have we even heard Captain O'Toole (the second of the other principal) walk up, and say:
"Colonel MacTurk, I am desired by my principal to declare at this eleventh--this twelfth hour, that he is willing to own that he sees HE HAS BEEN WRONG in the dispute which has arisen between him and your friend; that he apologizes for offensive expressions which he has used in the heat of the quarrel; and regrets the course he has taken?" If something like this has happened to you, however great your courage, you have been glad not to fight;--however accurate your aim, you have been pleased not to fire.
On the sixth day of January in this year sixty-two, what hundreds of thousands--I may say, what millions of Englishmen, were in the position of the personage here sketched--Christian men, I hope, shocked at the dreadful necessity of battle: aware of the horrors which the conflict must produce, and yet feeling that the moment was come, and that there was no arbitrament left but that of steel and cannon! My reader, perhaps, has been in America.If he has, he knows what good people are to be found there; how polished, how generous, how gentle, how courteous.But it is not the voices of these you hear in the roar of hate, defiance, folly, falsehood, which comes to us across the Atlantic.You can't hear gentle voices; very many who could speak are afraid.Men must go forward, or be crushed by the maddened crowd behind them.I suppose after the perpetration of that act of--what shall we call it?--of sudden war, which Wilkes did, and Everett approved, most of us believed that battle was inevitable.Who has not read the American papers for six weeks past? Did you ever think the United States Government would give up those Commissioners? I never did, for my part.It seems to me the United States Government have done the most courageous act of the war.Before that act was done, what an excitement prevailed in London! In every Club there was a parliament sitting in permanence: in every domestic gathering this subject was sure to form a main part of the talk.Of course I have seen many people who have travelled in America, and heard them on this matter--friends of the South, friends of the North, friends of peace, and American stockholders in plenty.--"They will never give up the men, sir," that was the opinion on all sides; and, if they would not, we knew what was to happen.
For weeks past this nightmare of war has been riding us.The City was already gloomy enough.When a great domestic grief and misfortune visits the chief person of the State, the heart of the people, too, is sad and awe-stricken.It might be this sorrow and trial were but presages of greater trials and sorrow to come.What if the sorrow of war is to be added to the other calamity? Such forebodings have formed the theme of many a man's talk, and darkened many a fireside.Then came the rapid orders for ships to arm and troops to depart.How many of us have had to say farewell to friends whom duty called away with their regiments; on whom we strove to look cheerfully, as we shook their hands, it might be for the last time; and whom our thoughts depicted, treading the snows of the immense Canadian frontier, where their intrepid little band might have to face the assaults of other enemies than winter and rough weather! I went to a play one night, and protest I hardly know what was the entertainment which passed before my eyes.In the next stall was an American gentleman, who knew me."Good heavens, sir," I thought, "is it decreed that you and I are to be authorized to murder each other next week; that my people shall be bombarding your cities, destroying your navies, making a hideous desolation of your coast; that our peaceful frontier shall be subject to fire, rapine, and murder?" "They will never give up the men," said the Englishman."They will never give up the men," said the American.