The Bride of Fort Edward | Page 4

lives that little world which the sense builds round us, takes such space, forsaking the tangible good of their merry firesides, for rags and wretchedness,--poverty that the thought of the citizen beggar cannot reach,--the supperless night on the frozen field; with the news perchance of a home in ashes, or a murdered household, and, last of all, on some dismal day, the edge of the sword or the sharp bullet ending all;--and all in defence of--what?--an idea--an abstraction,--a thought:--I say this was wonderful enough, even in the glow of the first excitement. But now that the Jersey winter is fresh in men's memories, and Lexington and Bunker Hill are forgotten, and all have found leisure and learning to count the cost; it were expecting miracles indeed, to believe that this army could hold together with a policy like this. Every step of this retreat, I say again, treads out some lingering spark of enthusiasm. Own it yourself. Is not this army dropping off by hundreds, and desertion too, increasing every hour, thinning your own ranks and swelling your foes?--and that, too, at a crisis--Colonel Leslie, retreat a little further, some fifty miles further; let Burgoyne once set foot in Albany, and the business is done,--we may roll up our pretty declaration as fast as we please, and go home in peace.
Leslie. General Arnold, I have heard you to the end, though you have spoken insultingly of councils in which I have had my share. Will you look at this little clause in this paper, Sir. The excitement you speak of will come ere long, and that at a rate less ruinous than this whole army's loss. There's a line--there's a line, Sir, that will make null and void, very soon, if not on the instant, all the evil of these golden promises. There'll be excitement enough ere long; but better blood than that shed in battle fields must flow to waken it.
Arnold. I hardly understand you, Sir. Is it this threat you point at?
Leslie. Can't you see?--They have let loose these hell-hounds upon us, and butchery must be sent into our soft and innocent homes;--beings that we have sheltered from the air of heaven, brows that have grown pale at the breath of an ungentle word, must meet the red knife of the Indian now. Oh God, this is war!
Arnold. I understand you, Colonel Leslie. There was a crisis like this in New Jersey last winter, I know, when our people were flocking to the royal standard, as they are now, and a few fiendish outrages on the part of the foe changed the whole current in our favor. It may be so now, but meanwhile--
Leslie. Meanwhile, this army is the hope of the nation, and must be preserved. We are wronged, Sir. Have we not done all that men could do? What were twenty pitched battles to such an enemy, with a force like ours, compared with the harm we have done them? Have we not kept them loitering here among these hills, wasting the strength that was meant to tell in the quivering fibres of men, on senseless trees and stones, paralyzing them with famine, wearying them with unexciting, inglorious toil, until, divided and dispirited, at last we can measure our power with theirs, and fight, not in vain? Why, even now the division is planning there, which will bring them to our feet. And what to us, Sir, were the hazards of one bloody encounter, to the pitiful details of this unhonored warfare?--We are wronged--we are wronged, Sir.
Arnold. There is some policy in the plan you speak of,--certainly, there is excellent policy in it if one had the patience to follow it out; but then you can't make Congress see it, or the people either; and so, after all, your General is superseded. Well, well, at all events he must abandon this policy now,--it's the only chance left for him.
Leslie. Why; howso?
Arnold. Or else, don't you see?--just at the point where the glory appears, this eastern hero steps in, and receives it all; and the laurels which he has been rearing so long, blow just in time to drop on the brow of his rival.
Leslie. General Arnold,--excuse me, Sir--you do not understand the man of whom you speak. There is a substance in the glory he aims at, to which, all that you call by the name is as the mere shell and outermost rind. Good Heavens! Do you think that, for the sake of his own individual fame, the man would risk the fate of this great enterprize?--What a mere fool's bauble, what an empty shell of honor, would that be. If I thought he would--
Arnold. It might be well for you to lower your voice a little, Sir; the gentleman of whom you are speaking