"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 gra.s.s, the warm breezes, and the shouts of victory mocked the mother"s anguish.
At the White House gates they pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.s, 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 a.s.sa.s.sin 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 t.i.tles 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:
"I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may a.s.suage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
"Yours very sincerely and respectfully,
"ABRAHAM LINCOLN."
"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 ma.s.s of official doc.u.ments.
She looked about the room nervously and felt rea.s.sured by its plain aspect. It was a medium-sized, officelike place, with no signs of elegance or ceremony. Mr. Lincoln was seated in an armchair 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 ma.s.s 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 made 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 offence in "62, about which Stanton made such a fuss?" he went on in softly reminiscent tones.
"Well, here is that pardon."