"You shall _not_ go!" she repeated, and the astonished messenger-boy fled in affright, as she suddenly threw both arms about Griffith and began to sob convulsively.
Griffith held her to his breast, which heaved and choked him. It seemed to him that he could not speak. At last he whispered softly: "I must go, Katherine. It is an order from the President. I will have to go to Washington." He had not finished speaking until he felt her form begin to shrink and collapse in his grasp.
Her eyes half closed, half opened again, then closed and a ghastly pallor spread itself over her face. For the first time in her life Katherine had fainted. His first thought was that she was dead. A great wave of fear and then of self-reproach swept over him. He sat staring in the ghastly face.
"I have sacrificed her very life to my conscience," he moaned aloud. "I had no right to do that! G.o.d help me! G.o.d forgive me! What _is_ it right to do? Can we _never_ know what is right?" He was holding her in his arms, with his own face upturned and staring eyes. "G.o.d help me! G.o.d help me! What _is_ it right to do?" he moaned again.
""Fo" de good Lawd on high, Mos" Grif, what de matter wif Mis" Kate?
What de mattah wif all two, bofe of yoh?" exclaimed Aunt Judy. "I done see dat little rapscallion what brung de telegraf letter run fo" deah life, an" he yell back dat Mis" Kate done gone crazy, an"--"
Judy had hobbled to his side, and her old eyes were growing used to the changed light. She saw his tear-stained face and Katherine"s lifeless form in his arms.
"Is Mis" Kate daid, Mos" Grif?" she asked, in an awed voice.
"I have killed her," he said, like one in a dream, looking at the old woman as to one who could be relied on to understand. Katherine"s eyelids began to move. They slowly lifted and closed again. The old woman saw it first.
"Mos" Grif, wat fo" yoh tell me dat kine er talk? Mis" Kate, she ain"t daid. She"s des foolin". Toh ain"t hu"tted, is yoh, honey?" she cooed, stroking Katherine"s hair. "n.o.body ain"t hu"tted yoh, is dey, Mis" Kate?
n.o.body--"
"Get some water--quick, quick!" said Griffith, and struggled to the couch with his burden. He knelt beside her and stroked her forehead and chafed her hands. He could not speak, but he tried to control his distorted features, that she might not understand--might not remember--when she should open her eyes.
"Heah some wattah, honey. Des yoh take a big sup. Hit gwine ter do yoh good. Dar, now, I gwine ter lif yoah haid. Now, den, yoh des lay des dat away, an" Aunt Judy gwine ter run an" git dat rabbit foot t Dat gwine ter cuah yoh right off. It is dat. Dey ain"t no doctah in dis roun"
worl" kin cuah yoh like wat dat kin--let erlone one er dees heah Yankee doctahs! Hit fotch me to you alls dat time wat yoh ranned away, an" hit fetch dem roses back to yoah cheeks, too. Dat hit kin!"
She hobbled off to her loft to find her precious and Griffith softly closed and locked the door behind her. Katherine lay so still he thought she had fallen asleep. He could see her breathing. He went to his seat beside the couch and gently fanned her pale face. The color had come again in the lips. Presently he went softly across the room and took up the crumpled message from the floor, where she had dropped it.
"Report here immediately.
"A. Lincoln."
There could be no mistake about that. It was a command from the President, imperative, urgent. He sank into the chair again, and his head fell on his folded arms on the table. His lips were moving, but there was no sound. At last he was conscious of a light tapping on the window. He was surprised to find that it was dark. He crossed the room to find Rosanna outside with a tray.
"Shure, an" Oi troied both dures, an" not a sound did Oi git."Tis long phast yer tay toime, an" not a pick have ye et--nayther wan av yez. The ould nayger"s done fed the baby an" put her t" bed. Shure, an" she"s a-galavantin" "round here thryin" the dures an" windeys, flourishin" the fut ay a bunnie, be jabbers! She says "tis what yez wants fer yer health; but, sez Oi, _viddles_ is what they wants, sez Oi--an" here they be."
Griffith opened the door.
"Is it wan av the young maisthers kilt, shure?" she whispered, as she put the tray down.
Griffith shook his head.
"Well, thanks be t" Almoighty G.o.d an" all the blished saints! Oi feared me it was the young maisther--an" shure an" ye"d go fur and not foind the loikes ay _him_ agin. He looked just simply ghrand in his ossifer"s uni_forum_. Yez moight say ghrand! Shure an" n.o.body else could match up wid "im! He looked that rehspectable! An" the schape av "im!" She threw up her hands and admired the absent Beverly. "The schape av "im! Yez moight say! He shurely do become them soger close! Now, can"t yez ate the rear av thim berries? dear? They"re simply ghrand, they"re shplendid!"
Katherine seemed to be sleeping, and Griffith soon pushed the tray aside. Rosanna took it up. Then she leaned forward.
"Shure, an" that ould nayger"s awful rehspectable; ye can see that by the lukes ay her; but she"s thet foolish with her ould ded bunnie fut thet she makes me craipy in me shpine."
She glanced about her before venturing out, and then made a sudden dash for the kitchen.
CHAPTER XV.
_"The depths and shoals of honor."_ Shakespeare.
When Griffith reached Washington he sent his name directly to the President, and was told to go to the room which Mr. Lincoln called his workshop, and where his maps were. The walls and tables were covered with them. There was no one in the room when Griffith entered. He walked to a window and stood looking out. In the distance, across the river, he could see the heights. He noticed a field-gla.s.s on the table. He took it up and focused it. The powerful instrument seemed to bring the Long Bridge to his very feet. He remembered in what tense excitement he had seen and crossed that bridge last, and how he had thought and spoken of it as the dead-line. He recalled the great relief he had felt when his negroes and his own carriage had at last touched free soil--were indeed in the streets of Washington. It came over him that the country, as well as he, had traveled a very long way since that time--and over a stormy road. A blare of martial music sounded in the distance. He watched the soldiers moving about in parade. He thought of his own sons, and wondered where they were and if they were all safe to-day. A heavy sigh escaped him, and a hand fell upon his shoulder. He turned to face the tall, strange, dark man who had entered so silently. His simple and characteristically direct words were not needed to introduce him. No one could ever mistake the strong face that had been caricatured or idealized by friend or foe in every corner of the land, but which, after all, had never been reproduced with its simple force and rugged grandeur. Before Griffith could speak he felt that the keen but kindly eyes had taken his measure--he was being judged by a reader of that most difficult, varied and complicated of languages--the language of the human face.
"I am Abraham Lincoln," he said, as if he were introducing a man of but slight importance, "and you are Mr. Davenport. I was expecting you,"
He took Griffith"s hand and shook it warmly, in the hearty, western fashion, which, in Mr. Lincoln"s case, had also a personal quality of frankness and of a certain human longing for that contact of the real with the real which it is the function of civilization to wipe out.
"I would have known you any place, Mr. Lincoln," began Griffith. "Your pictures----"
"Anybody would," broke in the President, with his inimitable facial relaxation, which was not a smile, but had in it a sense of humor struggling to free it from its somber cast, "anybody would. My pictures are ugly enough, but none of"em ever did my ugliness full justice, but then they never look like anybody else. I remember once, out in Sangamon county, I said if ever I saw a man who was worse looking than I, I"d give him my jack-knife. The knife was brand new then."
He ran his hand through his stiff, black hair and gave it an additional air of disorder and stubbornness. He had placed a chair for Griffith and taken one himself. He crossed one long leg over the other and made a pause.
Griffith was waiting for the end of his story.
He concluded that there was to be no end, and he ventured a quizzical query:
"You don"t mean to tell me that you are carrying that knife yet, Mr.
President?"
Both laughed. Griffith felt strangely at home already with this wonderful man. He did not realize that it was this particular aim which had actuated Mr. Lincoln from the moment he had entered the room. This reader and leader of men had taken the plan of his legal years, and was taking time to a.n.a.lyze his guest while he threw him off his guard. In the midst of the laugh he stretched out his long leg and dived into his trousers" pocket.
"No, sir, you may not believe it, but that"s not the same knife! I carried the other one--well--I reckon it must have been as much as fifteen years--with that offer open. It lost its beauty--and I didn"t gain mine. It was along in the fifties somewhere, when one day I was talking with a client of mine on the corner of the main street in Springfield, and along came a fellow and stopped within ten feet of us.
I looked at him and he looked at me, and we both looked into a looking-gla.s.s in the store window. I"d tried to be an honorable man all my life, and hard as it was to part with an old friend, I felt it was my duty to give him that knife--and I did."
There was a most solemn expression on his host"s face. Griffith laughed heartily again. The President was gazing straight before him.
"I don"t know where that man came from, and I don"t know where he went to, but he won that knife fair and square. I was a good deal of a beauty compared to him!"
The very muscles of his face twinkled with humor. No one would have felt the homeliness of his face, lit as it now was in its splendid ruggedness, with the light and glory of a great and tender soul playing with its own freaks of fancy.
But before the laugh had died out of Griffith"s voice, the whole manner of the President had changed. He had opened the pen-knife and was drawing the point of the blade down a line on the large map which lay on the table beside him.
"Morton tells me that you used to be a circuit-rider down in these mountains here, and that you know every pa.s.s, defile and ford in the State." He looked straight at Griffith and ran his great, bony hand over his head and face, but went hastily on: "I know how that is myself. Used to be a knight of the saddlebags out in Illinois, along about the same time--only my circuit was legal and yours was clerical. I carried Blackstone in my saddlebags--after I got able to own a copy--and you had a Bible, I reckon--volumes of the law in both cases! Let me see. How long ago was that?"
"I began in twenty-nine, Mr. President, and rode circuit for ten years.
Then I was located and transferred the regular way each one or two years up to fifty-three. That--year--I--left--my--native--state."
Mr. Lincoln noticed the hesitancy in the last words, the change in the tone, the touch of sadness. He inferred at once that what Senator Morton had told him of this man"s loyalty had had something to do with his leaving the old home.
"Found it healthier for you to go West, did you? Traveled toward the setting sun. Wanted to keep in the daylight as long as you could; but I see you took the memory of the dear old home with you. Have you never been back?"
"I don"t look like much of an outlaw, do I, Mr. Lincoln?" asked Griffith, with a sad smile.