He crossed this room in turn, carrying his boots, pausing to replace the hand glass on the dressing table, among its companion pieces of the set which the new French Republic had presented to a predecessor, and tiptoed on and into the anteroom, where a man in a long cloak looked up and then rose, also in his stockings. They looked at one another soberly. “All clear?” the President said in a low tone.
“Yes, General.”
“Good. Did you . . .” The other produced a second long, plain cloak. “Good, good,” the President said. He swung the cloak about him before the other could move. “Now the . . .” This time the other anticipated him; the President drew the hat well down over his face. They left the room on tiptoe, carrying their boots in their hands.
The back stairway was cold; their stockinged toes curled away from the treads, their vaporized breath wisped about their heads. They descended quietly and sat on the bottom step and put on their boots.
Outside it still snowed; invisible against snow-colored sky and snow-colored earth, the flakes seemed to materialize with violent and silent abruptness against the dark orifice of the stables.
Each bush and shrub resembled a white balloon whose dark shroud lines descended, light and immobile, to the white earth. Interspersed among these in turn and with a certain regularity were a dozen vaguely tent-shaped mounds, from the ridge of each of which a small column of smoke rose into the windless snow, as if the snow itself were in a state of peaceful combustion. The President looked at these, once, grimly. “Get along,” he said.
The other, his head lowered and his cloak held closely about his face, scuttled on and ducked into the stable. Perish the day when these two words were applied to the soldier chief of a party and a nation, yet the President was so close behind him that their breaths made one cloud.
And perish the day when the word flight were so applied, yet they had hardly vanished into the stable when they emerged, mounted now and already at a canter, and so across the lawn and past the snow-hidden tents and toward the gates which gave upon that Avenue in embryo yet but which in time would be the stage upon which each four years would parade the proud panoply of the young Nation’s lusty man’s estate for the admiration and envy and astonishment of the weary world.
At the moment, though, the gates were occupied by those more immediate than splendid augurs of the future.
“Look out,” the other man said, reining back. They reined aside — the President drew the cloak about his face — and allowed the party to enter: the squat, broad, dark men dark against the snow, the beaver hats, the formal coats, the solid legs clad from thigh to ankle in woolen drawers. Among them moved three horses on whose backs were lashed the carcasses of six deer. They passed on, passing the two horsemen without a glance.
“Damn, damn, damn,” the President said; then aloud: “You found good hunting.”
One of the group glanced at him, briefly. He said courteously, pleasantly, without inflection, going on: “So so.”
The horses moved again. “I didn’t see any guns,” the other man said.
“Yes,” the President said grimly. “I must look into this, too. I gave strict orders. . . .” He said fretfully, “Damn. Damn. Do they carry their pantaloons when they go hunting too, do you know?”
The Secretary was at breakfast, though he was not eating. Surrounded by untasted dishes he sat, in his dressing gown and unshaven; his expression too was harried as he perused the paper which lay upon his empty plate. Before the fire were two men — one a horseman with unmelted snow still upon his cloak, seated on a wooden settle, the other standing, obviously the secretary to the Secretary.
The horseman rose as the President and his companion entered. “Sit down, sit down,” the President said. He approached the table, slipping off the cloak, which the secretary came forward and took. “Give us some breakfast,” the President said. “We don’t dare go home.” He sat down; the Secretary served him in person. “What is it now?” the President said.
“Do you ask?” the Secretary said. He took up the paper again and glared at it. “From Pennsylvania, this time.” He struck the paper. “Maryland, New York, and now Pennsylvania; apparently the only thing that can stop them is the temperature of the water in the Potomac River.”
He spoke in a harsh, irascible voice. “Complaint, complaint, complaint: here is a farmer near Gettysburg. His Negro slave was in the barn, milking by lantern light after dark, when — the Negro doubtless thought about two hundred, since the farmer estimated them at ten or twelve — springing suddenly out of the darkness in plug hats and carrying knives and naked from the waist down.
Result, item: One barn and loft of hay and cow destroyed when the lantern was kicked over; item: one able-bodied slave last seen departing from the scene at a high rate of speed, headed for the forest, and doubtless now dead of fear or by the agency of wild beasts. Debit the Government of the United States: for barn and hay, one hundred dollars; for cow, fifteen dollars; for Negro slave, two hundred dollars. He demands it in gold.”
“Is that so?” the President said, eating swiftly. “I suppose the Negro and the cow took them to be ghosts of Hessian soldiers.”
“I wonder if they thought the cow was a deer,” the horseman said.
“Yes,” the President said. “That’s something else I want. . . .”
“Who wouldn’t take them for anything on earth or under it?” the Secretary said. “The entire Atlantic seaboard north of the Potomac River overrun by creatures in beaver hats and frock coats and woolen drawers, frightening women and children, setting fire to barns and running off slaves, killing deer. . . .”
“Yes,” the President said. “I want to say a word about that, myself. I met a party of them returning as I came out. They had six deer. I thought I gave strict orders that they were not to be permitted guns.”
Again it was the horseman who spoke. “They don’t use guns.”
“What?” the President said. “But I saw myself . . .”
“No, sir. They use knives. They track the deer down and slip up on them and cut their throats.”
“What?” the President said.
“All right, sir. I seen one of the deer. It never had a mark on it except its throat cut up to the neckbone with one lick.”
Again the President said, “Damn. Damn. Damn.” Then the President ceased and the Soldier cursed steadily for a while. The others listened, gravely, their faces carefully averted, save the Secretary, who had taken up another paper. “If you could just persuade them to keep their pantaloons on,” the President said. “At least about the House. . . .”
The Secretary started back, his hair upcrested like an outraged, iron-gray cockatoo. “I, sir? I persuade them?”
“Why not? Aren’t they subject to your Department? I’m just the President. Confound it, it’s got to where my wife no longer dares leave her bedroom, let alone receive lady guests. How am I to explain to the French Ambassador, for instance, why his wife no longer dares call upon my wife because the corridors and the very entrance to the House are blocked by half-naked Chickasaw Indians asleep on the floor or gnawing at half-raw ribs of meat? And I, myself, having to hide away from my own table and beg breakfast, while the official representative of the Government has nothing to do but . . .”
“. . . but explain again each morning to the Treasury,” the Secretary said in shrill rage, “why another Dutch farmer in Pennsylvania or New York must have three hundred dollars in gold in payment for the destruction of his farm and livestock, and explain to the State Department that the capital is not being besieged by demons from hell itself, and explain to the War Department why twelve brand-new army tents must be ventilated at the top with butcher knives. . . .”
“I noticed that, too,” the President said mildly. “I had forgot it.”
“Ha. Your Excellency noted it,” the Secretary said fiercely. “Your Excellency saw it and then forgot it. I have neither seen it nor been permitted to forget it. And now Your Excellency wonders why I do not persuade them to wear their pantaloons.”
“It does seem like they would,” the President said fretfully. “The other garments seem to please them well enough. But there’s no accounting for taste.” He ate again. The Secretary looked at him, about to speak. Then he did not. As he watched the oblivious President a curious, secret expression came into his face; his gray and irate crest settled slowly, as if it were deflating itself. When he spoke now his tone was bland, smooth; now the other three men were watching the President with curious, covert expressions.
“Yes,” the Secretary said, “there’s no accounting for taste. Though it does seem that when one has been presented with a costume as a mark of both honor and esteem, let alone decorum, and by the chief of a well, tribe . . .”
“That’s what I thought,” the President said innocently. Then he ceased chewing and said “Eh?” sharply,
