It was now the spring of 1846, and I was in my second
year away from Washington. Glad enough I was
when in the first sunshine of spring I started east,
taking my chances of getting over the Plains.
At last, to make the long journey also brief, I did
reach Fort Leavenworth, by this time a five months’
loser in the transcontinental race. It was a new
annual wagon train which I now met rolling westward.
Such were times and travel not so long ago.
Little enough had come of my two years’ journey
out to Oregon. Like to the army of the French
king, I had marched up the hill and then marched down
again. As much might have been said of the United
States; and the same was yet more true of Great Britain,
whose army of occupation had not even marched wholly
up the hill. So much as this latter fact I now
could tell my own government; and I could say that
while Great Britain’s fleet held the sea entry,
the vast and splendid interior of an unknown realm
was open on the east to our marching armies of settlers.
Now I could describe that realm, even though the plot
of events advanced but slowly regarding it. It
was a plot of the stars, whose work is done in no
haste.
Oregon still was held in that oft renewed and wholly
absurd joint occupancy, so odious and so dangerous
to both nations. Two years were taken from my
life in learning that—and in learning that
this question of Oregon’s final ownership was
to be decided not on the Pacific, not on the shoulders
of the Blues or the Cascades, but in the east, there
at Washington, after all. The actual issue was
in the hands of the God of Battles, who sometimes
uses strange instruments for His ends. It was
not I, it was not Mr. Calhoun, not any of the officers
of our government, who could get Oregon for us.
It was the God of Battles, whose instrument was a
woman, Helena von Ritz. After all, this was the
chief fruit of my long journey.
As to the baroness, she had long since left Fort Leavenworth
for the East. I followed still with what speed
I could employ. I could not reach Washington
now until long after the first buds would be out and
the creepers growing green on the gallery of Mr. Calhoun’s
residence. Yes, green also on all the lattices
of Elmhurst Mansion. What had happened there
for me?
CHAPTER XXXI
THE PAYMENT
What man seeks in love
is woman; what woman seeks in man is
love.—Houssaye.
When I reached Washington it was indeed spring, warm,
sweet spring. In the wide avenues the straggling
trees were doing their best to dignify the city, and
flowers were blooming everywhere. Wonderful enough
did all this seem to me after thousands of miles of
rude scenery of bare valleys and rocky hills, wild
landscapes, seen often through cold and blinding storms
amid peaks and gorges, or on the drear, forbidding
Plains.
Used more, of late, to these wilder scenes, I felt
awkward and still half savage. I did not at once
seek out my own friends. My first wish was to
get in touch with Mr. Calhoun, for I knew that so I
would most quickly arrive at the heart of events.
