“And then?” asks the General, his iron-gray head in a cloud of tobacco smoke.
CHAPTER XXI--WIZARD LEWIS URGES A CHANGE IN FRONT
WIZARD LEWIS, bending his brows to the situation, now counsels an extreme step.
“Then you will make Van Buren Minister to England, and give Major Eaton the governorship of Florida. Little Peg should look well in the palace at St. Augustine.”
“By the Eternal!” cries the General, as he hurls his clay pipe into the fireplace where hundreds of its brittle predecessors have gone crashing--“by the Eternal, we'll do it! The last vestige of a Calhoun cabinet influence shall be wiped out!”
It comes to pass as Wizard Lewis programmes. Cabineteer Van Buren resigns, and Cabineteers Eaton and Barry hasten to follow his lead. The three other cabineteers sit dazed; the suddenness of the thing takes away their cabinet breaths. They sit dazed so long that the General loses patience and asks for their portfolios. One by one they hand them in, as it were at the White House door--Cabineteer Ingham being last and most reluctant of all.
There be tears and mournful wailings now among the society Red Sticks. Mrs. Ingham, Mrs. Branch, and Mrs. Berrien are shaken in their social souls, never for one moment having foreseen this movement in disastrous flank. However, there is no help for it. The deposed three wash off their social war paint, and go their divers ways lamenting; while the General and Wizard Lewis grin sourly over their fireside pipes. As for Statesman Calhoun, his schemes experience a chill; for in thus sending Cabineteers Ingham, Branch, and Berrien into political exile, the General drives a knife to the very heart of his selfish diplomacy.
Cabinet wiped out, the General constructs another, with his old-time friend and comrade Livingston as Secretary of State. Also, the agreeable Van Buren departs for the Court of St. James as the General's envoy to England, while Major Eaton and the villified yet victorious Peg wend southward among the flowers to rule over Florida.
Before he leaves Washington, the ill-used Eaton makes praiseworthy attempts to fasten a duel upon ex-Cabineteer Ingham, who hires a whole stage coach and gallops off to Baltimore--the fear of death upon him--to avoid being sacrificed. The flight of ex-Cabineteer Ingham is a shock to the General.