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His throat burned as if he had swallowed a mouthful of flame, but there was a quality in the strong rum that accorded with his present mood: it was fiery like his released sense of life. Kaperton poured himself a drink, elevated it with a friendly word and joined Elim. "I'm going home," the former proceeded. "You see, I live in Maryland, and the situation there is getting pretty warm.
He was conscious now of a drumming in his ears like distant martial music, a confused echo like the beat of countless feet. He tilted his glass and was surprised to find it empty. "It's all gone," Kaperton said dully. He was as limp as an empty doll, Elim thought contemptuously. He, Elim, felt like hickory, like iron; his mind was clear, vindicative.
Harry Kaperton looked at him in foolish surprise. "Had no idea you indulged!" he ejaculated. "Always took you to be a severe Puritan duck." "Scotch," Elim corrected him, "Presbyterian." He tilted the glass and the spirits sank smoothly from sight.
Elim's face, expressing little of the tumult within, harsh and dark and dogged, was entirely appropriate to his somber greenish-black dress. Kaperton gestured toward the bottle, and they took a second drink, then a third. Kaperton's face flushed, he grew increasingly voluble, but Elim Meikeljohn was silent; the liquor made no apparent impression upon him.
We want to get our women out of Baltimore, and our affairs conveniently shaped, before any possible trouble. I had a message this evening to come at once." The two men presented the greatest possible contrast Harry Kaperton had elegantly flowing whiskers, a round young face that expressed facile excitement at a possible disturbance, and sporting garb of tremendous emphasis.
In reality Harry Kaperton was three years older than Elim; and Kaperton had been pleasantly at college, racing horses, for seven years; many others were Elim's age, but the maturity of the latter's responsibility separated them. In his room he took off his formal coat and nankeen waistcoat and hung them on a pegged board.
Elim Meikeljohn left Kaperton and went out into the hall. An ascending man met him. "War!" he cried. "The damned rebels have assaulted and taken Sumter! Lincoln has called for fifty thousand volunteers!" He hurried past and left Elim grasping the handrail of the stair. War!
Here the operator had been in luck he would sell at least thirty photographs at perhaps fifty cents each. Harry Kaperton, a great swell, was in his window with his setter, Spot; his legs, clad in bags with tremendous checks and glossy boots, hung outward. On the veranda were Hinkle and Ben Willing, the latter in a stovepipe hat; others wore stovepipes set at a rakish angle on one ear.
It was neither a celebration nor a protest, but instinctive, like the indiscriminate gulping of a man who has been swimming under the water. "Why," Kaperton gasped, "you've got a head like a cannon ball." He rose and wandered unsteadily about, but Elim sat motionless, silent, drinking.
Kaperton was unsuccessful in hiding his surprise at the other's unexpected appearance and direct question. "Why why, nothing when I left;" then more cordially: "Come in, find a chair. Bottle on the table oh, I didn't think." He offered an implied apology to Elim's scruples. But Elim advanced to the table, where, selecting a decanter at random, he poured out a considerable drink of pale spirits.
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