Book: The Crisis, Complete

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"I guess I'll have to own up," he answered.

"My name is Virginia Carvel," she said. "I have come all the way from St.
Louis to see you."

"Miss Carvel," said the President, looking at her intently, "I have
rarely been so flattered in my life. I--I hope I have not disappointed
you."

Virginia was justly angry.

"Oh, you haven't," she cried, her eyes flashing, "because I am what you
would call a Rebel."

The mirth in the dark corners of his eyes disturbed her more and more.
And then she saw that the President was laughing.

"And have you a better name for it, Miss Carvel?" he asked. "Because I am
searching for a better name--just now."

She was silent--sternly silent. And she tapped her foot on the carpet.
What manner of man was this? "Won't you sit down?" said the President,
kindly. "You must be tired after your journey." And he put forth a chair.

"No, thank you," said Virginia; "I think that I can say what I have come
to say better standing."

"Well," said Mr. Lincoln, "that's not strange. I'm that way, too. The
words seem to come out better. That reminds me of a story they tell about
General Buck Tanner. Ever heard of Buck, Miss Carvel? No? Well, Buck was
a character. He got his title in the Mormon war. One day the boys asked
him over to the square to make a speech. The General was a little uneasy.

"'I'm all right when I get standing up, Liza,' he said to his wife. Then
the words come right along. Only trouble is they come too cussed fast.
How'm I going to stop 'em when I want to?'

"'Well, I du declare, Buck,' said she, 'I gave you credit for some sense.
All you've got to do is to set down. That'll end it, I reckon.'

"So the General went over to the square and talked for about an hour and
a half, and then a Chicago man shouted to him to dry up. The General
looked pained.

"'Boys,' said he, 'it's jest every bit as bad for me as it is for you.
You'll have to hand up a chair, boys, because I'm never going to get shet
of this goldarned speech any anther way.'"

Mr. Lincoln had told this so comically that Virginia was forced to laugh,
and she immediately hated herself. A man who could joke at such a time
certainly could not feel the cares and responsibilities of his office. He
should have been a comedian. And yet this was the President who had
conducted the war, whose generals had conquered the Confederacy. And she
was come to ask him a favor. Virginia swallowed her pride.

"Mr. Lincoln," she began, "I have come to talk to you about my cousin,
Colonel Clarence Colfax."

"I shall be happy to talk to you about your cousin, Colonel Colfax, Miss
Carvel. Is he your third or fourth cousin?"

"He is my first cousin," she retorted.

"Is he in the city?" asked Mr. Lincoln, innocently. "Why didn't he come
with you?"

"Oh, haven't you heard?" she cried. "He is Clarence Colfax, of St. Louis,
now a Colonel in the army of the Confederate States."

"Which army?" asked Mr. Lincoln. Virginia tossed her head in
exasperation.

"In General Joseph Johnston's army," she replied, trying to be patient.
"But now," she gulped, "now he has been arrested as a spy by General
Sherman's army."

"That's too bad," answered Mr. Lincoln.

"And--and they are going to shoot him."

"That's worse," said Mr. Lincoln, gravely. "But I expect he deserves it."

"Oh, no, he doesn't," she cried. "You don't know how brave he is! He
floated down the Mississippi on a log, out of Vicksburg, and brought back
thousands and thousands of percussion caps. He rowed across the river
when the Yankee fleet was going down, and set fire to De Soto so that
they could see to shoot."

"Well," said Mr. Lincoln, "that's a good starter." Then he looked
thoughtful.

"Miss Carvel," said he, "that argument reminds me of a story about a man
I used to know in the old days in Illinois. His name was McNeil, and he
was a lawyer.

"One day he was defending a prisoner for assault and battery before Judge
Drake.

"'Judge, says McNeil, 'you oughtn't to lock this man up. It was a fair
fight, and he's the best man in the state in a fair fight. And, what's
more, he's never been licked in a fair fight in his life.'

"'And if your honor does lock me up,' the prisoner put in, 'I'll give
your honor a thunderin' big lickin' when I get out.'

"The Judge took off his coat.

"'Gentlemen,' said he, 'it's a powerful queer argument, but the Court
will admit it on its merits. The prisoner will please to step out on the
grass.'"

This time Virginia contrived merely to smile. She was striving against
something, she knew not what. Her breath was coming deeply, and she was
dangerously near to tears. Why? She could not tell. She had come into
this man's presence despising herself for having to ask him a favor. The
sight of his face she had ridiculed. Now she could not look into it
without an odd sensation. What was in it? Sorrow? Yes, that was nearest
it.

What had the man done? Told her a few funny stories--given quizzical
answers to some of her questions. Quizzical, yes; but she could not be
sure then there was not wisdom in them, and that humiliated her. She had
never conceived of such a man. And, be it added gratuitously, Virginia
deemed herself something of an adept in dealing with men.

"And now," said Mr. Lincoln, "to continue for the defence, I believe that
Colonel Colfax first distinguished himself at the time of Camp Jackson,
when of all the prisoners he refused to accept a parole."

Startled, she looked up at him swiftly, and then down again. "Yes," she
answered, "yes. But oh, Mr. Lincoln, please don't hold that against him."

If she could only have seen his face then. But her lashes were dropped.

"My dear young lady," replied the President, "I honor him for it. I was
merely elaborating the argument which you have begun. On the other hand,
it is a pity that he should have taken off that uniform which he adorned
and attempted to enter General Sherman's lines as a civilian,--as a spy."

He had spoken these last words very gently, but she was too excited to
heed his gentleness. She drew herself up, a gleam in her eyes like the
crest of a blue wave in a storm.

"A spy!" she cried; "it takes more courage to be a spy than anything else
in war. Then he will be shot. You are not content in, the North with what
you have gained. You are not content with depriving us of our rights, and
our fortunes, with forcing us back to an allegiance we despise. You are
not content with humiliating our generals and putting innocent men in
prisons. But now I suppose you will shoot us all. And all this mercy that
I have heard about means nothing--nothing--"

Why did she falter and stop?

"Miss Carvel," said the President, "I am afraid from what I have heard
just now, that it means nothing." Oh, the sadness of that voice,--the
ineffable sadness,--the sadness and the woe of a great nation! And the
sorrow in those eyes, the sorrow of a heavy cross borne meekly,--how
heavy none will ever know. The pain of a crown of thorns worn for a world
that did not understand. No wonder Virginia faltered and was silent. She
looked at Abraham Lincoln standing there, bent and sorrowful, and it was
as if a light had fallen upon him. But strangest of all in that strange
moment was that she felt his strength. It was the same strength she had
felt in Stephen Brice. This was the thought that came to her.

Slowly she walked to the window and looked out across the green grounds
where the wind was shaking the wet trees, past the unfinished monument to
the Father of her country, and across the broad Potomac to Alexandria in
the hazy distance. The rain beat upon the panes, and then she knew that
she was crying softly to herself. She had met a force that she could not
conquer, she had looked upon a sorrow that she could not fathom, albeit
she had known sorrow.

Presently she felt him near. She turned and looked through her tears at
his face that was all compassion. And now she was unashamed. He had
placed a chair behind her.

"Sit down, Virginia," he said. Even the name fell from him naturally.

She obeyed him then like a child. He remained standing.

"Tell me about your cousin," he said; "are you going to marry him?"

She hung an instant on her answer. Would that save Clarence? But in that
moment she could not have spoken anything but the truth to save her soul.

"No, Mr. Lincoln," she said; "I was--but I did not love him. I--I think
that was one reason why he was so reckless."

Mr. Lincoln smiled.

"The officer who happened to see Colonel Colfax captured is now in
Washington. When your name was given to me, I sent for him. Perhaps he is
in the anteroom now. I should like to tell you, first of all, that this
officer defended your cousin and asked me to pardon him."

"He defended him! He asked you to pardon him! Who is he?" she exclaimed.

Again Mr. Lincoln smiled. He strode to the bell-cord, and spoke a few
words to the usher who answered his ring.

The usher went out. Then the door opened, and a young officer, spare,
erect, came quickly into the room, and bowed respectfully to the
President. But Mr. Lincoln's eyes were not on him. They were on the girl.
He saw her head lifted, timidly. He saw her lips part and the color come
flooding into her face. But she did not rise.

The President sighed But the light in her eyes was reflected in his own.
It has been truly said that Abraham Lincoln knew the human heart.

The officer still stood facing the President, the girl staring at his
profile. The door closed behind him. "Major Brice," said Mr. Lincoln,
when you asked me to pardon Colonel Colfax, I believe that you told me he
was inside his own skirmish lines when he was captured."

"Yes, sir, he was."

Suddenly Stephen turned, as if impelled by the President's gaze, and so
his eyes met Virginia's. He forgot time and place,--for the while even
this man whom he revered above all men. He saw her hand tighten on the
arm of her chair. He took a step toward her, and stopped. Mr. Lincoln was
speaking again.

"He put in a plea, a lawyer's plea, wholly unworthy of him, Miss
Virginia. He asked me to let your cousin off on a technicality. What do
you think of that?"

"Oh!" said Virginia. Just the exclamation escaped her--nothing more. The
crimson that had betrayed her deepened on her cheeks. Slowly the eyes she
had yielded to Stephen came back again and rested on the President. And
now her wonder was that an ugly man could be so beautiful.

"I wish it understood, Mr. Lawyer," the President continued, "that I am
not letting off Colonel Colfax on a technicality. I am sparing his life,"
he said slowly, "because the time for which we have been waiting and
longing for four years is now at hand--the time to be merciful. Let us
all thank God for it."

Virginia had risen now. She crossed the room, her head lifted, her heart
lifted, to where this man of sorrows stood smiling down at her.

"Mr. Lincoln," she faltered, "I did not know you when I came here. I
should have known you, for I had heard him--I had heard Major Brice
praise you. Oh," she cried, "how I wish that every man and woman and
child in the South might come here and see you as I have seen you to-day.
I think--I think that some of their bitterness might be taken away."

Abraham Lincoln laid his hands upon the girl. And Stephen, watching, knew
that he was looking upon a benediction.

"Virginia," said Mr. Lincoln, "I have not suffered by the South, I have
suffered with the South Your sorrow has been my sorrow, and your pain has
been my pain. What you have lost, I have lost. And what you have gained,"
he added sublimely, "I have gained."

He led her gently to the window. The clouds were flying before the wind,
and a patch of blue sky shone above the Potomac. With his long arm he
pointed across the river to the southeast, and as if by a miracle a shaft
of sunlight fell on the white houses of Alexandria.

"In the first days of the war," he said, "a flag flew there in sight of
the place where George Washington lived and died. I used to watch that
flag, and thank God that Washington had not lived to see it. And
sometimes, sometimes I wondered if God had allowed it to be put in irony
just there." His voice seemed to catch. "That was wrong," he continued.
"I should have known that this was our punishment--that the sight of it
was my punishment. Before we could become the great nation He has
destined us to be, our sins must be wiped out in blood. You loved that
flag, Virginia. You love it still.

"I say in all sincerity, may you always love it. May the day come when
this Nation, North and South, may look back upon it with reverence.
Thousands upon thousands of brave Americans have died under it for what
they believed was right. But may the day come again when you will love
that flag you see there now--Washington's flag--better still."

He stopped, and the tears were wet upon Virginia's lashes. She could not
have spoken then.

Mr. Lincoln went over to his desk and sat down before it. Then he began
to write, slouched forward, one knee resting on the floor, his lips
moving at the same time. When he got up again he seemed taller than ever.

"There!" he said, "I guess that will fix it. I'll have that sent to
Sherman. I have already spoken to him about the matter."

They did not thank him. It was beyond them both. He turned to Stephen
with that quizzical look on his face he had so often seen him wear.

"Steve," he said, "I'll tell you a story. The other night Harlan was here
making a speech to a crowd out of the window, and my boy Tad was sitting
behind him.

"'What shall we do with the Rebels?' said Harlan to the crowd.

"'Hang 'em!' cried the people. "'No,' says Tad, 'hang on to 'em.'

"And the boy was right. That is what we intend to do,--hang on to 'em.
And, Steve," said Mr. Lincoln, putting his hand again on Virginia's
shoulder, "if you have the sense I think you have, you'll hang on, too."

For an instant he stood smiling at their blushes,--he to whom the power
was given to set apart his cares and his troubles and partake of the
happiness of others. For of such was his happiness.

Then the President drew out his watch. "Bless me!" he said, "I am ten
minutes behind my appointment at the Department. Miss Virginia, you may
care to thank the Major for the little service he has done you. You can
do so undisturbed here. Make yourselves at home."

As he opened the door he paused and looked back at them. The smile passed
from his face, and an ineffable expression of longing--longing and
tenderness--came upon it.

Then he was gone.

For a space, while his spell was upon them, they did not stir. Then
Stephen sought her eyes that had been so long denied him. They were not
denied him now. It was Virginia who first found her voice, and she called
him by his name.

"Oh, Stephen," she said, "how sad he looked!"

He was close to her, at her side. And he answered her in the earnest tone
which she knew so well.

"Virginia, if I could have had what I most wished for in the world, I
should have asked that you should know Abraham Lincoln."

Then she dropped her eyes, and her breath came quickly.

"I--I might have known," she answered, "I might have known what he was. I
had heard you talk of him. I had seen him in you, and I did not know. Do
you remember that day when we were in the summer-house together at
Glencoe, long ago? When you had come back from seeing him?"

"As yesterday," he said.

"You were changed then," she said bravely. "I saw it. Now I understand.
It was because you had seen Mr. Lincoln."

"When I saw him," said Stephen, reverently, "I knew how little and narrow
I was."

Then, overcome by the incense of her presence, he drew her to him until
her heart beat against his own. She did not resist, but lifted her face
to him, and he kissed her.

"You love me, Virginia!" he cried.

"Yes, Stephen," she answered, low, more wonderful in her surrender than
ever before. "Yes--dear." Then she hid her face against his blue coat.
"I--I cannot help it. Oh, Stephen, how I have struggled against it! How I
have tried to hate you, and couldn't. No, I couldn't. I tried to insult
you, I did insult you. And when I saw how splendidly you bore it, I used
to cry." He kissed her brown hair.

"I loved you through it all," he said.

"Virginia!"

"Yes, dearest."

"Virginia, did you dream of me?"

She raised her head quickly, and awe was in her eyes. "How did you know?"

"Because I dreamed of you," he answered. And those dreams used to linger
with me half the day as I went about my work. I used to think of them as
I sat in the saddle on the march."

"I, too, treasured them," she said. "And I hated myself for doing it."

"Virginia, will you marry me?"

"Yes."

"To-morrow?"

"Yes, dear, to-morrow." Faintly, "I have no one but you--now."

Once more he drew her to him, and she gloried in his strength.

"God help me to cherish you, dear," he said, "and guard you well."

She drew away from him, gently, and turned toward the window.

"See, Stephen," she cried, "the sun has come out at last."

For a while they were silent, looking out; the drops glistened on blade
and leaf, and the joyous new green of the earth entered into their
hearts.




CHAPTER XVI

ANNAPOLIS

IT was Virginia's wish, and was therefore sacred. As for Stephen, he
little cared whither they went. And so they found themselves on that
bright afternoon in mid-April under the great trees that arch the unpaved
streets of old Annapolis.

They stopped by direction at a gate, and behind it was a green cluster of
lilac bushes, which lined the walk to the big plum-colored house which
Lionel Carvel had built. Virginia remembered that down this walk on a
certain day in June, a hundred years agone, Richard Carvel had led
Dorothy Manners.

They climbed the steps, tottering now with age and disuse, and Virginia
playfully raised the big brass knocker, brown now, that Scipio had been
wont to polish until it shone. Stephen took from his pocket the clumsy
key that General Carvel had given him, and turned it in the rusty lock.
The door swung open, and Virginia stood in the hall of her ancestors.

It was musty and damp this day as the day when Richard had come back from
England and found it vacant and his grandfather dead. But there, at the
parting of the stairs, was the triple-arched window which he had
described. Through it the yellow afternoon light was flooding now, even
as then, checkered by the branches in their first fringe of green. But
the tall clock which Lionel Carvel used to wind was at Calvert House,
with many another treasure.

They went up the stairs, and reverently they walked over the bare floors,
their footfalls echoing through the silent house. A score of scenes in
her great-grandfather's life came to Virginia. Here was the room--the
cornet one at the back of the main building, which looked out over the
deserted garden--that had been Richard's mother's. She recalled how he
had stolen into it on that summer's day after his return, and had flung
open the shutters. They were open now, for their locks were off. The
prie-dieu was gone, and the dresser. But the high bed was there, stripped
of its poppy counterpane and white curtains; and the steps by which she
had entered it.

And next they went into the great square room that had been Lionel
Carvel's, and there, too, was the roomy bed on which the old gentleman
had lain with the gout, while Richard read to him from the Spectator. One
side of it looked out on the trees in Freshwater Lane; and the other
across the roof of the low house opposite to where the sun danced on the
blue and white waters of the Chesapeake.

"Honey," said Virginia, as they stood in the deep recess of the window,
"wouldn't it be nice if we could live here always, away from the world?
Just we two! But you would never be content to do that," she said,
smiling reproachfully. "You are the kind of man who must be in the midst
of things. In a little while you will have far more besides me to think
about."

He was quick to catch the note of sadness in her voice. And he drew her
to him.

"We all have our duty to perform in the world, dear," he answered. "It
cannot be all pleasure."

"You--you Puritan!" she cried. "To think that I should have married a
Puritan! What would my great-great-great-great-grandfather say, who was
such a stanch Royalist? Why, I think I can see him frowning at me now,
from the door, in his blue velvet goat and silverlaced waistcoat."

"He was well punished," retorted Stephen, "his own grandson was a Whig,
and seems to have married a woman of spirit."

"She had spirit," said Virginia. "I am sure that she did not allow my
great-grandfather to kiss her--unless she wanted to."

And she looked up at him, half smiling, half pouting; altogether
bewitching.

"From what I hear of him, he was something of a man," said Stephen.
"Perhaps he did it anyway."

"I am glad that Marlborough Street isn't a crowded thoroughfare," said
Virginia.

When they had seen the dining room, with its carved mantel and silver
door-knobs, and the ballroom in the wing, they came out, and Stephen
locked the door again. They walked around the house, and stood looking
down the terraces,--once stately, but crumbled now,--where Dorothy had
danced on the green on Richard's birthday. Beyond and below was the
spring-house, and there was the place where the brook dived under the
ruined wall,--where Dorothy had wound into her hair the lilies of the
valley before she sailed for London.

The remains of a wall that had once held a balustrade marked the outlines
of the formal garden. The trim hedges, for seventy years neglected, had
grown incontinent. The garden itself was full of wild green things coming
up through the brown of last season's growth. But in the grass the blue
violets nestled, and Virginia picked some of these and put them in
Stephen's coat.

"You must keep them always," she said, "because we got them here."

They spied a seat beside a hoary trunk. There on many a spring day Lionel
Carvel had sat reading his Gazette. And there they rested now. The sun
hung low over the old-world gables in the street beyond the wall, and in
the level rays was an apple tree dazzling white, like a bride. The sweet
fragrance which the day draws from the earth lingered in the air.

It was Virginia who broke the silence.

"Stephen, do you remember that fearful afternoon of the panic, when you
came over from Anne Brinsmade's to reassure me?"

"Yes, dear," he said. "But what made you think of it now?"

She did not answer him directly.

"I believed what you said, Stephen. But you were so strong, so calm, so
sure of yourself. I think that made me angry when I thought how
ridiculous I must have been."

He pressed her hand.

"You were not ridiculous, Jinny." She laughed.

"I was not as ridiculous as Mr. Cluyme with his bronze clock. But do you
know what I had under my arm--what I was saving of all the things I
owned?"

"No," he answered; "but I have often wondered." She blushed.

"This house--this place made me think of it. It was Dorothy Manners's
gown, and her necklace. I could not leave them. They were all the
remembrance I had of that night at Mr. Brinsmade's gate, when we came so
near to each other."

"Virginia," he said, "some force that we cannot understand has brought us
together, some force that we could not hinder. It is foolish for me to
say so, but on that day of the slave auction, when I first saw you, I had
a premonition about you that I have never admitted until now, even to
myself."

She started.

"Why, Stephen," she cried, "I felt the same way!"

"And then," he continued quickly, "it was strange that I should have gone
to Judge Whipple, who was an intimate of your father's--such a singular
intimate. And then came your party, and Glencoe, and that curious
incident at the Fair."

"When I was talking to the Prince, and looked up and saw you among all
those people."

He laughed.

"That was the most uncomfortable of all, for me."

"Stephen," she said, stirring the leaves at her feet, "you might have
taken me in your arms the night Judge Whipple died--if you had wanted to.
But you were strong enough to resist. I love you all the more for that."

Again she said:-- "It was through your mother, dearest, that we were most
strongly drawn together. I worshipped her from the day I saw her in the
hospital. I believe that was the beginning of my charity toward the
North."

"My mother would have chosen you above all women, Virginia," he answered.

In the morning came to them the news of Abraham Lincoln's death. And the
same thought was in both their hearts, who had known him as it was given
to few to know him. How he had lived in sorrow; how he had died a martyr
on the very day of Christ's death upon the cross. And they believed that
Abraham Lincoln gave his life for his country even as Christ gave his for
the world.

And so must we believe that God has reserved for this Nation a destiny
high upon the earth.

Many years afterward Stephen Brice read again to his wife those sublime
closing words of the second inaugural:--

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the
right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish
the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him
who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his children
--to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace
among ourselves and with all nations."

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