The Man Without a Country and Other Tales | Page 7

else he was sure of. But it was not
that merely. He never entered in with the other young men exactly as a
companion again. He was always shy afterwards, when I knew
him,--very seldom spoke, unless he was spoken to, except to a very few
friends. He lighted up occasionally,--I remember late in his life hearing
him fairly eloquent on something which had been suggested to him by
one of Fléchier's sermons,--but generally he had the nervous, tired look
of a heart-wounded man.
When Captain Shaw was coming home,--if, as I say, it was
Shaw,--rather to the surprise of every body they made one of the
Windward Islands, and lay off and on for nearly a week. The boys said
the officers were sick of salt-junk, and meant to have turtle-soup before
they came home. But after several days the Warren came to the same
rendezvous; they exchanged signals; she sent to Phillips and these
homeward-bound men letters and papers, and told them she was
outward-bound, perhaps to the Mediterranean, and took poor Nolan and
his traps on the boat back to try his second cruise. He looked very
blank when he was told to get ready to join her. He had known enough
of the signs of the sky to know that till that moment he was going
"home." But this was a distinct evidence of something he had not
thought of, perhaps,--that there was no going home for him, even to a
prison. And this was the first of some twenty such transfers, which
brought him sooner or later into half our best vessels, but which kept
him all his life at least some hundred miles from the country he had
hoped he might never hear of again.
It may have been on that second cruise,--it was once when he was up
the Mediterranean,--that Mrs. Graff, the celebrated Southern beauty of
those days, danced with him. They had been lying a long time in the
Bay of Naples, and the officers were very intimate in the English fleet,
and there had been great festivities, and our men thought they must
give a great ball on board the ship. How they ever did it on board the
"Warren" I am sure I do not know. Perhaps it was not the "Warren," or
perhaps ladies did not take up so much room as they do now. They
wanted to use Nolan's state-room for something, and they hated to do it
without asking him to the ball; so the captain said they might ask him,

if they would be responsible that he did not talk with the wrong people,
"who would give him intelligence." So the dance went on, the finest
party that had ever been known, I dare say; for I never heard of a
man-of-war ball that was not. For ladies they had the family of the
American consul, one or two travellers who had adventured so far, and
a nice bevy of English girls and matrons, perhaps Lady Hamilton
herself.
Well, different officers relieved each other in standing and talking with
Nolan in a friendly way, so as to be sure that nobody else spoke to him.
The dancing went on with spirit, and after a while even the fellows who
took this honorary guard of Nolan ceased to fear any contretemps. Only
when some English lady--Lady Hamilton, as I said, perhaps--called for
a set of "American dances," an odd thing happened. Everybody then
danced contra-dances. The black band, nothing loath, conferred as to
what "American dances" were, and started off with a "Virginia Reel,"
which they followed with "Money-Musk," which, in its turn in those
days, should have been followed by "The Old Thirteen." But just as
Dick, the leader, tapped for his fiddles to begin, and bent forward,
about to say, in true negro state, "'The Old Thirteen, gentlemen and
ladies!" as he had said "'Virginny Reel,' if you please!" and
"'Money-Musk,' if you please!" the captain's boy tapped him on the
shoulder, whispered to him, and he did not announce the name of the
dance; he merely bowed, began on the air, and they all fell to,--the
officers teaching the English girls the figure, but not telling them why it
had no name.
But that is not the story I started to tell.--As the dancing went on, Nolan
and our fellows all got at ease, as I said,--so much so, that it seemed
quite natural for him to bow to that splendid Mrs. Graff, and say,--
"I hope you have not forgotten me, Miss Rutledge. Shall I have the
honor of dancing?"
He did it so quickly, that Fellows, who was by him, could not hinder
him. She laughed and said,--
"I am not Miss Rutledge any longer, Mr. Nolan; but I will dance all