The answer was silence and a scowl.
"Am I right?"
"Yes and no. I hate the South because I hate the Satanic Inst.i.tution of Slavery with consuming fury. It has long ago rotted the heart out of the Southern people. Humanity cannot live in its tainted air, and its children are doomed. If my personal wrongs have ordained me for a mighty task, no matter; I am simply the chosen instrument of Justice!"
Again the mystic light clothed the rugged face, calm and patient as Destiny, as the President slowly repeated:
"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as G.o.d gives me to see the right, I shall strive to finish the work we are in, and bind up the Nation"s wounds."
"I"ve given you fair warning," cried the old Commoner, trembling with rage, as he hobbled nearer the door. "From this hour your administration is doomed."
"Stoneman," said the kindly voice, "I can"t tell you how your venomous philanthropy sickens me. You have misunderstood and abused me at every step during the past four years. I bear you no ill will. If I have said anything to-day to hurt your feelings, forgive me. The earnestness with which you pressed the war was an invaluable service to me and to the Nation. I"d rather work with you than fight you. But now that we have to fight, I"d as well tell you I"m not afraid of you. I"ll suffer my right arm to be severed from my body before I"ll sign one measure of ign.o.ble revenge on a brave, fallen foe, and I"ll keep up this fight until I win, die, or my country forsakes me."
"I have always known you had a sneaking admiration for the South," came the sullen sneer.
"I love the South! It is a part of this Union. I love every foot of its soil, every hill and valley, mountain, lake, and sea, and every man, woman, and child that breathes beneath its skies. I am an American."
As the burning words leaped from the heart of the President the broad shoulders of his tall form lifted, and his ma.s.sive head rose in unconscious heroic pose.
"I marvel that you ever made war upon your loved ones!" cried the cynic.
"We fought the South because we loved her and would not let her go. Now that she is crushed and lies bleeding at our feet--you shall not make war on the wounded, dying, and the dead!"
Again the lion gleamed in the calm gray eyes.
CHAPTER IV
THE BATTLE OF LOVE
Elsie carried Ben Cameron"s pardon to the anxious mother and sister with her mind in a tumult. The name on these fateful papers fascinated her. She read it again and again with a curious personal joy that she had saved a life!
She had entered on her work among the hospitals a bitter partisan of her father"s school, with the simple idea that all Southerners were savage brutes. Yet as she had seen the wounded boys from the South among the men in blue, more and more she had forgotten the difference between them. They were so young, these slender, dark-haired ones from Dixie--so pitifully young! Some of them were only fifteen, and hundreds not over sixteen. A lad of fourteen she had kissed one day in sheer agony of pity for his loneliness.
The part her father was playing in the drama on which Ben Cameron"s life had hung puzzled her. Was his the mysterious arm back of Stanton? Echoes of the fierce struggle with the President had floated through the half-open door.
She had implicit faith in her father"s patriotism and pride in his giant intellect. She knew that he was a king among men by divine right of inherent power. His sensitive spirit, brooding over a pitiful lameness, had hidden from the world behind a frowning brow like a wounded animal.
Yet her hand in hours of love, when no eye save G.o.d"s could see, had led his great soul out of its dark lair. She loved him with brooding tenderness, knowing that she had gotten closer to his inner life than any other human being--closer than her own mother, who had died while she was a babe. Her aunt, with whom she and Phil now lived, had told her the mother"s life was not a happy one. Their natures had not proved congenial, and her gentle Quaker spirit had died of grief in the quiet home in southern Pennsylvania.
Yet there were times when he was a stranger even to her. Some secret, dark and cold, stood between them. Once she had tenderly asked him what it meant. He merely pressed her hand, smiled wearily, and said:
"Nothing, my dear, only the Blue Devils after me again."
He had always lived in Washington in a little house with black shutters, near the Capitol, while the children had lived with his sister, near the White House, where they had grown from babyhood.
A curious fact about this place on the Capitol hill was that his housekeeper, Lydia Brown, was a mulatto, a woman of extraordinary animal beauty and the fiery temper of a leopardess. Elsie had ventured there once and got such a welcome she would never return. All sorts of gossip could be heard in Washington about this woman, her jewels, her dresses, her airs, her a.s.sumption of the dignity of the presiding genius of National legislation and her domination of the old Commoner and his life. It gradually crept into the newspapers and magazines, but he never once condescended to notice it.
Elsie begged her father to close this house and live with them.
His reply was short and emphatic:
"Impossible, my child. This club foot must live next door to the Capitol.
My house is simply an executive office at which I sleep. Half the business of the Nation is transacted there. Don"t mention this subject again."
Elsie choked back a sob at the cold menace in the tones of this command, and never repeated her request. It was the only wish he had ever denied her, and, somehow, her heart would come back to it with persistence and brood and wonder over his motive.
The nearer she drew, this morning, to the hospital door, the closer the wounded boy"s life and loved ones seemed to hers. She thought with anguish of the storm about to break between her father and the President--the one demanding the desolation of their land, wasted, harried, and unarmed!--the President firm in his policy of mercy, generosity, and healing.
Her father would not mince words. His scorpion tongue, set on fires of h.e.l.l, might start a conflagration that would light the Nation with its glare. Would not his name be a terror for every man and woman born under Southern skies? The sickening feeling stole over her that he was wrong, and his policy cruel and unjust.
She had never before admired the President. It was fashionable to speak with contempt of him in Washington. He had little following in Congress.
Nine tenths of the politicians hated or feared him, and she knew her father had been the soul of a conspiracy at the Capitol to prevent his second nomination and create a dictatorship, under which to carry out an iron policy of reconstruction in the South. And now she found herself heart and soul the champion of the President.
She was ashamed of her disloyalty, and felt a rush of impetuous anger against Ben and his people for thrusting themselves between her and her own. Yet how absurd to feel thus against the innocent victims of a great tragedy! She put the thought from her. Still she must part from them now before the brewing storm burst. It would be best for her and best for them. This pardon delivered would end their relations. She would send the papers by a messenger and not see them again. And then she thought with a throb of girlish pride of the hour to come in the future when Ben"s big brown eyes would be softened with a tear when he would learn that she had saved his life. They had concealed all from him as yet.
She was afraid to question too closely in her own heart the shadowy motive that lay back of her joy. She read again with a lingering smile the name "Ben Cameron" on the paper with its big red Seal of Life. She had laughed at boys who had made love to her, dreaming a wider, n.o.bler life of heroic service. And she felt that she was fulfilling her ideal in the generous hand she had extended to these who were friendless. Were they not the children of her soul in that larger, finer world of which she had dreamed and sung? Why should she give them up now for brutal politics? Their sorrow had been hers, their joy should be hers, too. She would take the papers herself and then say good-bye.
She found the mother and sister beside the cot. Ben was sleeping with Margaret holding one of his hands. The mother was busy sewing for the wounded Confederate boys she had found scattered through the hospital.
At the sight of Elsie holding aloft the message of life she sprang to meet her with a cry of joy.
She clasped the girl to her breast, unable to speak. At last she released her and said with a sob:
"My child, through good report and through evil report my love will enfold you!"
Elsie stammered, looked away, and tried to hide her emotion. Margaret had knelt and bowed her head on Ben"s cot. She rose at length, threw her arms around Elsie in a resistless impulse, kissed her and whispered:
"My sweet sister!"
Elsie"s heart leaped at the words, as her eyes rested on the face of the sleeping soldier.
CHAPTER VI
THE a.s.sa.s.sINATION
Elsie called in the afternoon at the Camerons" lodgings, radiant with pride, accompanied by her brother.
Captain Phil Stoneman, athletic, bronzed, a veteran of two years" service, dressed in his full uniform, was the ideal soldier, and yet he had never loved war. He was bubbling over with quiet joy that the end had come and he could soon return to a rational life. Inheriting his mother"s temperament, he was generous, enterprising, quick, intelligent, modest, and ambitious. War had seemed to him a horrible tragedy from the first. He had early learned to respect a brave foe, and bitterness had long since melted out of his heart.
He had laughed at his father"s harsh ideas of Southern life gained as a politician, and, while loyal to him after a boy"s fashion, he took no stock in his Radical programme.