The Clansman (1905)/Book 1/Chapter 2
THE next morning, when Elsie reached the obscure boarding-house at which Mrs. Cameron stopped, the mother had gone to the market to buy a bunch of roses to place beside her boy's cot.
As Elsie awaited her return, the practical little Yankee maid thought with a pang of the tenderness and folly of such people. She knew this mother had scarcely enough to eat, but to her bread was of small importance, flowers necessary to life. After all, it was very sweet, this foolishness of these Southern people, and it somehow made her homesick.
"How can I tell her!" she sighed. "And yet I must."
She had only waited a moment when Mrs. Cameron suddenly entered with her daughter. She threw her flowers on the table, sprang forward to meet Elsie, seized her hands and called to Margaret.
"How good of you to come so soon! This, Margaret, is our dear little friend who has been so good to Ben and to me."
Margaret took Elsie's hand and longed to throw her arms around her neck, but something in the quiet dignity of the Northern girl's manner held her back. She only smiled tenderly through her big dark eyes, and softly said:
"We love you! Ben was my last brother. We were playmates and chums. My heart broke when he ran away to the front. How can we thank you and your brother!"
"I'm sure we've done nothing more than you would have done for us," said Elsie, as Mrs. Cameron left the room.
"Yes, I know, but we can never tell you how grateful we are to you. We feel that you have saved Ben's life and ours. The war has been one long horror to us since my first brother was killed. But now it's over, and we have Ben left, and our hearts have been crying for joy all night."
"I hoped my brother, Captain Phil Stoneman, would be here to-day to meet you and help me, but he can't reach Washington before Friday."
"He caught Ben in his arms!" cried Margaret. "I know he's brave, and you must be proud of him."
"Doctor Barnes says they are as much alike as twins—only Phil is not quite so tall and has blond hair like mine."
"You will let me see him and thank him the moment he comes?"
"Hurry, Margaret!" cheerily cried Mrs. Cameron, re-entering the parlour. "Get ready; we must go at once to the hospital."
Margaret turned and with stately grace hurried from the room. The old dress she wore as unconscious of its shabbiness as though it were a royal robe.
"And now, my dear, what must I do to get the passes?" asked the mother eagerly.
Elsie's warm amber eyes grew misty for a moment, and the fair skin with its gorgeous rose-tints of the North paled. She hesitated, tried to speak, and was silent.
The sensitive soul of the Southern woman read the message of sorrow words had not framed.
"Tell me, quickly! The doctor—has—not—concealed—his—true—condition—from—me?"
"No, he is certain to recover."
"What then?"
"Worse—he is condemned to death by court-martial."
"Condemned to death—a—wounded—prisoner—of—war!" she whispered slowly, with blanched face.
"Yes, he was accused of violating the rules of war as a guerilla raider in the invasion of Pennsylvania."
"Absurd and monstrous! He was on General Jeb Stuart's staff and could have acted only under his orders. He joined the infantry after Stuart's death, and rose to be a colonel, though but a boy. There's some terrible mistake!"
"Unless we can obtain his pardon," Elsie went on in even, restrained tones, "there is no hope. We must appeal to the President."
The mother's lips trembled, and she seemed about to faint.
"Could I see the President?" she asked, recovering herself with an effort.
"He has just reached Washington from the front, and is thronged by thousands. It will be difficult."
The mother's lips were moving in silent prayer, and her eyes were tightly closed to keep back the tears.
"Can you help me, dear?" she asked, piteously.
"Yes," was the quick response.
"You see," she went on, "I feel so helpless. I have never been to the White House or seen the President, and I don't know how to go about seeing him or how to ask him—and—I am afraid of Mr. Lincoln! I have heard so many harsh things said of him."
"I'll do my best, Mrs. Cameron. We must go at once to the White House and try to see him."
The mother lifted the girl's hand and stroked it gently.
"We will not tell Margaret. Poor child! she could not endure this. When we return, we may have better news. It can't be worse. I'll send her on an errand."
She took up the bouquet of gorgeous roses with a sigh, buried her face in the fresh perfume, as if to gain strength in their beauty and fragrance, and left the room.
In a few moments she had returned and was on her way with Elsie to the White House.
It was a beautiful spring morning, this eleventh day of April, 1865. The glorious sunshine, the shimmering green of the grass, the warm breezes, and the shouts of victory mocked the mother's anguish.
At the White House gates they passed the blue sentry pacing silently back and forth, who merely glanced at them with keen eyes and said nothing. In the steady beat of his feet the mother could hear the tramp of soldiers leading her boy to the place of death!
A great lump rose in her throat as she caught the first view of the Executive Mansion gleaming white and silent and ghostlike among the budding trees. The tall columns of the great facade, spotless as snow, the spray of the fountain, the marble walls, pure, dazzling and cold, seemed to her the gateway to some great tomb in which her own dead and the dead of all the people lay! To her the fair white palace, basking there in the sunlight and budding grass, shrub and tree, was the Judgment House of Fate. She thought of all the weary feet that had climbed its fateful steps in hope to return in despair, of its fierce dramas on which the lives of millions had hung, and her heart grew sick.
A long line of people already stretched from the entrance under the portico far out across the park, awaiting their turn to see the President.
Mrs. Cameron placed her hand falteringly on Elsie's shoulder.
"Look, my dear, what a crowd already! Must we wait in line?"
"No, I can get you past the throng with my father's name."
"Will it be very difficult to reach the President?"
"No, it's very easy. Guards and sentinels annoy him. He frets until they are removed. An assassin or maniac could kill him almost any hour of the day or night. The doors are open at all hours, very late at night. I have often walked up to the rooms of his secretaries as late as nine o'clock without being challenged by a soul."
"What must I call him? Must I say 'Your Excellency'?"
"By no means—he hates titles and forms. You should say 'Mr. President' in addressing him. But you will please him best if, in your sweet, homelike way, you will just call him by his name. You can rely on his sympathy. Read this letter of his to a widow. I brought it to show you."
She handed Mrs. Cameron a newspaper clipping on which was printed Mr. Lincoln's letter to Mrs. Bixby, of Boston, who had lost five sons in the war.
Over and over she read its sentences until they echoed as solemn music in her soul:
"And the President paused amid a thousand cares to write that letter to a broken-hearted woman?" the mother asked.
"Yes."
"Then he is good down to the last secret depths of a great heart! Only a Christian father could have written that letter. I shall not be afraid to speak to him. And they told me he was an infidel!"
Elsie led her by a private way past the crowd and into the office of Major Hay, the President's private secretary. A word from the Great Commoner's daughter admitted them at once to the President's room.
"Just take a seat on one side, Miss Elsie," said Major Hay; "watch your first opportunity and introduce your friend."
On entering the room, Mrs. Cameron could not see the President, who was seated at his desk surrounded by three men in deep consultation over a mass of official documents.
She looked about the room nervously and felt reassured by its plain aspect. It was a medium-sized, office-like place, with no signs of elegance or ceremony. Mr. Lincoln was seated in an arm-chair beside a high writing-desk and table combined. She noticed that his feet were large and that they rested on a piece of simple straw matting. Around the room were sofas and chairs covered with green worsted.
When the group about the chair parted a moment, she caught the first glimpse of the man who held her life in the hollow of his hand. She studied him with breathless interest. His back was still turned. Even while seated, she saw that he was a man of enormous stature, fully six feet four inches tall, legs and arms abnormally long, and huge broad shoulders slightly stooped. His head was powerful and crowned with a mass of heavy brown hair, tinged with silver.
He turned his head slightly and she saw his profile set in its short dark beard—the broad intellectual brow, half covered by unmanageable hair, his face marked with deep-cut lines of life and death, with great hollows in the cheeks and under the eyes. In the lines which marked the corners of his mouth she could see firmness, and his beetling brows and unusually heavy eyelids looked stern and formidable. Her heart sank. She looked again and saw goodness, tenderness, sorrow, canny shrewdness, and a strange lurking smile all haunting his mouth and eye.
Suddenly he threw himself forward in his chair, wheeled and faced one of his tormentors with a curious and comical expression. With one hand patting the other, and a funny look overspreading his face, he said:
"My friend, let me tell you something"
The man again stepped before him, and she could hear nothing. When the story was finished, the man tried to laugh. It died in a feeble effort. But the President laughed heartily, laughed all over, and laughed his visitors out of the room.
Mrs. Cameron turned toward Elsie with a mute look of appeal to give her this moment of good-humour in which to plead her cause, but before she could move a man of military bearing suddenly stepped before the President.
He began to speak, but, seeing the look of stern decision in Mr. Lincoln's face, turned abruptly and said:
"Mr. President, I see you are fully determined not to do me justice!"
Mr. Lincoln slightly compressed his lips, rose quietly, seized the intruder by the arm, and led him toward the door.
"This is the third time you have forced your presence on me, sir, asking that I reverse the just sentence of a court-martial, dismissing you from the service. I told you my decision was carefully male and was final. Now I give you fair warning never to show yourself in this room again. I can bear censure, but I will not endure insult!"
In whining tones, the man begged for his papers he had dropped.
"Begone, sir," said the President, as he thrust him through the door. "Your papers will be sent to you."
The poor mother trembled at this startling act and sank back limp in her seat.
With quick, swinging stride the President walked back to his desk, accompanied by Major Hay and a young German girl, whose simple dress told that she was from the Western plains.
He handed the Secretary an official paper.
"Give this pardon to the boy's mother when she comes this morning," he said kindly to the Secretary, his eyes suddenly full of gentleness.
"How could I consent to shoot a boy raised on a farm, in the habit of going to bed at dark, for falling asleep at his post when required to watch all night? I'll never go into eternity with the blood of such a boy on my skirts."
Again the mother's heart rose.
"You remember the young man I pardoned for a similar offense in '62, about which Stanton made such a fuss?" he went on in softly reminiscent tones. "Well, here is that pardon."
He drew from the lining of his silk hat a photograph, around which was wrapped an executive pardon. Through the lower end of it was a bullet-hole stained with blood.
"I got this in Richmond. They found him dead on the field. He fell in the front ranks with my photograph in his pocket next to his heart, this pardon wrapped around it, and on the back of it in his boy's scrawl, 'God bless Abraham Lincoln.' I love to invest in bonds like that."
The Secretary returned to his room, the girl who was waiting stepped forward, and the President rose to receive her.
The mother's quick eye noted, with surprise, the simple dignity and chivalry of manner with which he received this humble woman of the people.
With straightforward eloquence the girl poured out her story, begging for the pardon of her young brother who had been sentenced to death as a deserter. He listened in silence.
How pathetic the deep melancholy of his sad face! Yes, she was sure, the saddest face that God ever made in all the world! Her own stricken heart for a moment went out to him in sympathy.
The President took off his spectacles, wiped his forehead with the large red silk handkerchief he carried, and his eyes twinkled kindly down into the good German face.
"You seem an honest, truthful, sweet girl," he said, "and"—he smiled—"you don't wear hoop-skirts! I may be whipped for this, but I'll trust you and your brother, too. He shall be pardoned."
Elsie rose to introduce Mrs. Cameron, when a Congressman from Massachusetts suddenly stepped before her and pressed for the pardon of a slave-trader whose ship had been confiscated. He had spent five years in prison, but could not pay the heavy fine in money imposed.
The President had taken his seat again, and read the eloquent appeal for mercy. He looked up over his spectacles, fixed his eyes piercingly on the Congressman and said:
"This is a moving appeal, sir, expressed with great eloquence. I might pardon a murderer under the spell of such words, but a man who can make a business of going to Africa and robbing her of her helpless children and selling them into bondage—no, sir—he may rot in jail before he shall have liberty by any act of mine!"
Again the mother's heart sank.
Her hour had come. She must put the issue of life or death to the test, and, as Elsie rose and stepped quickly forward, she followed, nerving herself for the ordeal.
The President took Elsie's hand familiarly and smiled without rising. Evidently she was well-known to him.
"Will you hear the prayer of a broken-hearted mother of the South, who has lost four sons in General Lee's army?" she asked.
Looking quietly past the girl, he caught sight, for the first time, of the faded dress and the sorrow-shadowed face.
He was on his feet in a moment, extended his hand and led her to a chair.
"Take this seat, Madam, and then tell me in your own way what I can do for you."
In simple words, mighty with the eloquence of a mother's heart, she told her story and asked for the pardon of her boy, promising his word of honour and her own that he would never again take up arms against the Union.
"The war is over now, Mr. Lincoln," she said, "and we have lost all. Can you conceive the desolation of my heart? My four boys were noble men. They may have been wrong, but they fought for what they believed to be right. You, too, have lost a boy."
The President's eyes grew dim.
"Yes, a beautiful boy" he said, simply.
"Well, mine are all gone but this baby. One of them sleeps in an unmarked grave at Gettysburg. One died in a Northern prison. One fell at Chancellorsville, one in the Wilderness, and this, my baby, before Petersburg. Perhaps I've loved him too much, this last one—he's only a child yet"
"You shall have your boy, my dear Madam," the President said, simply, seating himself and writing a brief order to the Secretary of War.
The mother drew near his desk, softly crying. Through her tears she said:
"My heart is heavy, Mr. Lincoln, when I think of all the hard and bitter things we have heard of you."
"Well, give my love to the people of South Carolina, when you go home, and tell them that I am their President and that I have never forgotten this fact in the darkest hours of this awful war; and I am going to do everything in my power to help them."
"You will never regret this generous act," the mother cried with gratitude.
"I reckon not," he answered. "I'll tell you something, Madam, if you won't tell anybody. It's a secret of my administration. I'm only too glad of an excuse to save a life when I can. Every drop of blood shed in this war North and South has been as if it were wrung out of my heart. A strange fate decreed that the bloodiest war in human history should be fought under my direction. And I, to whom the sight of blood is a sickening horror—I have been compelled to look on in silent anguish because I could not stop it! Now that the Union is saved, not another drop of blood shall be spilled if I can prevent it."
"May God bless you!" the mother cried, as she received from him the order.
She held his hand an instant as she took her leave, laughing and sobbing in her great joy.
"I must tell you, Mr. President," she said, "how surprised and how pleased I am to find you are a Southern man."
"Why, didn't you know that my parents were Virginians, and that I was born in Kentucky?"
"Very few people in the South know it. I am ashamed to say I did not."
"Then, how did you know I am a Southerner?"
"By your looks, your manner of speech, your easy, kindly ways, your tenderness and humour, your firmness in the right as you see it, and, above all, the way you rose and bowed to a woman in an old, faded black dress, whom you knew to be an enemy."
"No, Madam, not an enemy now," he said, softly. "That word is out of date."
"If we had only known you in time"
The President accompanied her to the door with a deference of manner that showed he had been deeply touched.
"Take this letter to Mr. Stanton at once," he said. "Some folks complain of my pardons, but it rests me after a hard day's work if I can save some poor boy's life. I go to bed happy, thinking of the joy I have given to those who love him."
As the last words were spoken, a peculiar dreaminess of expression stole over his care-worn face, as if a throng of gracious memories had lifted for a moment the burden of his life.