Pea Eye, never certain about what women might do, got up at once and walked back to the bunkhouse. He resolved in future never to get drunk and fall asleep where a woman might spot him. That way there would be no tears.
'Maybe I shouldn't have talked about my dream,' he said, a little later, discussing the incident with Deets.
'Do you think it would upset a woman to hear about my dream?' Pea asked.
'Don't know. I ain't a woman and I ain't had no dream,' Deets said.
Inish Scull--General Scull now, thanks to a brilliant, some would say brutal, series of victories in the long conflict with the South--had just settled into his study, with the morning papers and a cup of Turkish coffee, when his nephew Augereau, a wispy youth with French leanings, wandered in with an annoyed look on his face.
'It's a damn nuisance, not having a butler,' Augereau said. 'Why would Entwistle enlist?' 'I suppose he didn't want to miss the great fight,' General Scull replied. 'I didn't so much mind his enlisting--the real nuisance is that the man got himself killed, and within two weeks of the armistice too. If the fool had only kept his head down for another two weeks you wouldn't be having to answer the door, would you, Augereau?' 'It is rather annoying--I ain't a butler,' Augereau said. 'I was reading Vauvenargues.' 'Well, Vauvenargues will keep, but what about the fellow at the door? I suppose it was a fellow,' Scull said.
'Yes, I believe he's a colonel,' Augereau said.
'There's no reason to expect. Either he is or he isn't,' Scull said. 'Would it discommode you too much to show him in?' 'I suppose I could show him in, since he's here,' Augereau said. 'I say, will Auntie Inez be back soon? It's a good deal more jolly when Auntie Inez is here.' 'Your aunt just inherited a great deal of money,' Scull informed him. 'She's run off to Cuba, to buy another plantation. I don't know when she'll be returning. Her tropical habits ain't exactly suited to Boston.' 'Oh what, the masturbation?' young Augereau said. 'But there was a lap robe and they were in a carriage. What's the bother?' 'Augereau, would you mind going and getting that colonel?' Scull said. 'We can discuss your dear Auntie's behaviour some other time.' Augereau went to the door, but he didn't quite exit the study. He stood for almost a minute right in the doorway, as if undecided whether to go out or stay in.
'The fact is, I don't much care for Vauvenargues,' he said. 'I do care for Auntie--hang the bloody masturbation!' Then, before Scull could speak to him again about the colonel he had misplaced somewhere in the house, Augereau turned and drifted off, leaving the door to the study ajar, a lapse that irritated Scull intensely. He liked doors, drawers, shutters, windows, and cabinets to be closed properly, and, on balance, was more annoyed with his impeccably trained butler, Entwistle, for getting himself shot at an obscure depot in Pennsylyania than he was at Inez for masturbating old Jervis Dalrymple in an open carriage injudiciously parked near Boston Common. Somehow the lap robe had slipped during the operation; to Inez's annoyance the policeman who happened to be passing was a tall Vermonter, well able to look into the carriage and witness the act, which resulted in a charge of public fornication, not to mention much fuss and bother.
'Really, you Yankeesffwas Inez remarked in annoyance. 'I was only doing off his pizzle in order to calm him down. I couldn't take him into Mr. Cabot's tea party in that state, now could I? He might have thrust himself on some innocent young miss.' 'I have no doubt your action was well intended,' Scull told his wife, 'but you might have been more careful about where you parked.' 'I'll park where I please--th is a free country, or at least it was until you filthy Yankees won the war,' Inez told him, her fury rising. 'It was no worse than milking a cow. I suppose next I'll be arrested if I decide to milk my Jersey in public.' 'Your Jersey and a Dalrymple pizzle are not quite the same thing, not in the eyes of Boston,' Scull informed her. He had recently been forced to turn all the Scull portraits face to the wall, to prevent Inez from ruining them with her wild quirtings.
Young Augereau never reappeared, but, after a bit, Scull heard a tread in the hallway, a hesitant and rather unmilitary tread. He put down his Turkish coffee and stepped out of the study just in time to stop a thin, stooped colonel in the United States Army from proceeding along the almost endless hallway.
'I'm here, Colonel--we lost our butler, you know,' Scull said.
'I'm Colonel Soult,' the man said. 'We met not long after Vicksburg, but I don't suppose you remember. That's S-o-u-l-t--x's often confused with 'salt.'' In my youth I was called 'Salty'' because of the confusion.' Scull had no memory of the man, but he did recall seeing the name 'Soult'' on a muster roll or document of some sort.
'Samuel Soult, is it?' he inquired, only to see a flush of delight come to the man's sallow features.
'Why, yes, that's me, Sam Soult,' he said, shaking Scull's hand.
'What brings you to our old Boston, Colonel Soult?' Scull asked, once the two of them were settled in his study. A sulky cook had even been persuaded to bring Colonel Soult a cup of the strong Turkish coffee General Scull now favored.
Scull wore the multilensed dark glasses he had worn throughout the war--glasses which got him the nickname 'Blinders' Scull. With a touch of his finger he could regulate the tint and thickness of the lenses to compensate for whatever intensity of light prevailed. The study, at the time, was rather a litter. Scull could see that the disorder offended the neat colonel a little; but, by the end of the war, he was in a fever of impatience to get back to the book he had just started writing when the conflict broke out: The Anatomy and Function of the Eyelid in Mammals, Reptiles, Fish, and Birds. At the moment he was plowing through the classical authors, noting every reference to the eyelids, however slight. A towering pile of papers, journals, books, letters, photographs, and drawings had had to be dumped out of the chair where Colonel Soult was by now rather cautiously sitting.
'I was sent, sir--sent by the generals,' Colonel Soult said. 'You did leave the front rather quickly, once the peace was settled.' 'True, I'm not a man to wait,' Scull said. 'The fighting was over--the details can be left to the clerks. I had a book to write, as you can see--a book on the eyelid, a neglected subject. Until I lost my own I didn't realize how neglected. I was eager to get to it--st am. I hope you've not come all this way to try and pull me away from my researches, Colonel Soult.' 'Well, I .was sent by the generals,' Colonel Soult admitted. 'They believe you're the man to take the West--I believe that's the general view.' The Colonel was almost stuttering in his anxiety.
'Take the West? Take it where?' Scull asked.
'What I meant to say was, administer it,' the Colonel said. 'General Grant and General Sherman, they're of the view that you're the man to do it.' 'What did General Sherman think about this scheme?' Scull inquired. He knew that the rough Sherman was not likely to sponsor or support his candidacy for such an important post.
'Don't know that Sherman was consulted,' the Colonel admitted. 'If you won't take the West, would you at least take Texas? The savages there require a firm hand and the border is not entirely pacified, if reports are to be believed.' 'No, the savages in Texas are broken,' Scull said firmly. 'I don't doubt that there are a few free remnants, but they won't last long. As for the border, my view is that we should never have bothered stealing it from Mexico in the first place. It's only thorn and mesquite anyway.' He let that opinion sink in and then pointed his thick blinders directly at the quaking colonel and let fly.
