An Unofficial Patriot

"'Well,' said he, transferring his quid of tobacco to his other cheek, 'Cap, it's this arway. I can't seem t' jest stand right up an' shoot a feller I ain't had no words with. I want to pick out my man when I kill him, an' I want t' kinder have a quah'l with him fust. I can't seem t' jest stand right up an' kill a man I ain't had no words with, I can't do it, somehow er 'nother, Cap.'

"I don't know how I'm going to manage to get Bill into a 'quah'l' with some special Reb before the next fight, and then make sure he'll get a chance to pop at that particular one in action! We'll have to get up some scheme, I suppose. Bill is too good a soldier to be ham-pered and to have his usefulness impaired by a simple want of a feeling of personal revenge! I reckon if the truth were told, though, we all fight a good deal better if we have that stimulant. Another ludicrous thing happened the other day. I was sent out, just with an orderly, to see if I could learn anything of the movements of the enemy. We had on citizens' clothes, and we jogged along until we were within field-glass distance of Harris's camp. He is an old West Pointer and a tactician. I've heard that they call him 'Old Logistics and Strategy' – and I must say if his advice in the Senate had been followed last winter we'd have had a mighty poor show here now. But when we got where we thought we could see something, quite a shower came up and our glass was no use. Under the cover of the rain I ventured a good deal closer; and, if you'll believe me, his command were sitting on their horses, drawn up in line, with umbrellas raised! The absurdity of the thing nearly knocked my pins from under me. I only wished I could get near enough to see the effect on Old Logistics when he should emerge from his tent – and he a West Pointer! But you don't need to make any mistakes about their fighting – these natives. We've found that they will fight to the death, but they've got their own ideas on the subject of soldiering in the meantime. Most of 'em carry their powder in a pouch, and it needs to be kept dry! It was the very funniest thing I ever saw, though. The rain came down in such torrents I couldn't get an idea how many there were, but, from the way they fought us next day, I made up my mind there must be pretty close to a million – and they didn't use umbrellas to protect themselves, either! They took our storm of shot cooler than they did the rain in camp, and they fought like demons. Of course, their equipments don't compare with ours. Most of them have their old home guns – no two alike. But a good lot of our boys are carrying around some of their ammunition inside of them just now, all the same. One of the prisoners we took – a straggler – told us that none of his command are regularly enlisted. They are afraid to enlist; say that Old Logistics is a 'reg'lar,' and, if they enlist and then don't do just his way, he'll court-martial them. They argue that, if they don't regularly enlist, he can't do anything to them. They are ready and eager to fight, but they don't propose to be subject to 'regular' discipline in the intervals. This fellow says half of the command go home nights – to their farms and stores – and return at dawn the next morning. I think he is lying about the numbers who do, but I don't doubt that some do. He vows he is telling the cold fact. Fancy the humor of commanding an army under umbrellas, who go home nights to milk the cows! But undertake to fight 'em, and there is no laugh left. That is not their comic side. We have orders to move in the morning and are all ready. I will let you hear again the moment we stop."

Before this letter of Beverly's reached home the telegraphic news of the battle of Wilson's Creek filled the papers. Beverly's name appeared among the wounded: "Seriously, not fatally – Captain Beverly Davenport; shot in three places while covering retreat after General Lyon fell. Young Captain Davenport's men did good service. His command lost heavily." No further news came. Griffith telegraphed, but could get no reply.

"You must go and bring him home," said Katherine. "I cannot bear this suspense any longer."

She had grown pale and hollow-eyed in these few days of anxiety. Griffith went. He found Beverly doing well, but a ball had gone through his sword-arm and two others were imbedded in his flesh. His horse had fallen beneath him and he had had to walk on the wounded leg, and had lost much blood. He looked weak and thin. His orderly had written home for him, but the letter had never come. Griffith urged him to go home and recuperate, but he would not listen to the proposition. Griffith wrote home to Katherine and then waited. The command was ordered to move, and still Beverly was not able to go with it. The commander ordered him to go home until able to report for duty.

He was a sensation in the village. He was the first handsome young wounded officer to return. Alas! they were plenty enough later on; but now his limp and his arm suspended in a sling made him a hero, indeed. Many were the demonstrations in his honor. The Governor came to see him, and strove again to convince Griffith that he, too, was needed at the front. "I have told President Lincoln about you," he said. "You can see for yourself what the army in Virginia is doing ever since Bull Run – nothing at all. Those two defeats – Bull Run and Ball's Bluff – stopped them off entirely. Action that will be effective is simply impossible without knowing the lay of the land. Northern men don't know it, and we can't trust Southern men to tell the truth, of course, about it. The rebels know that perfectly well, and they bank on it. They keep their best and strongest generals, and men who know the State like a book, right there between Washington and Richmond. It won't do to let it be generally known, for that would put panic into our troops when they are tried next; but there is not a soul the President can trust who knows those passes and defiles and fords. Captain, I hope you know them. I don't believe you will refuse to go any place you are needed. As a recruit – an enlisted man – you can't refuse."

"Go," said Beverly; "go! why of course I would if I knew the country as father does, but I don't. You see father used to be a circuit-rider. He knows every foot of it as if it were his front yard, but I would know only a few miles near where we lived. I was only a boy then. It is a hard country to learn. Passes are many and blind. Fords change – it takes a native and an expert to feel safe with them. If I – " He turned suddenly to his father in his enthusiasm. "Why don't you go, father? If the President wants you – if your country needs you, why – " He saw the look that crept into his father's face, and he understood. The young fellow limped to his father's side and laid his left hand on his shoulder.

"Father has done enough," he said, looking at the Governor. "Do not ask him to do this. He fought his battle before the North came to it. He has borne and suffered enough, Governor. Father is a Virginian, blood, bone, and ancestry. He loves his people and his old home. We boys don't remember it as he does, but to him – to him, it will always be home. They will always be his people."

"Unless it is desperate and I am ordered, I shall not go," said Griffith, looking up almost defiantly. "You need not ask me again, Governor. I have done my share. I have done more for my country and my conscience than many men will be called upon to do – I have done my share."

The Governor gave it up, but he did not forget one phrase, "unless it is desperate – unless I am ordered." That night he started for Washington, and a week later Beverly returned to his command and to duty in the field.

CHAPTER XIV. – A SILENT HERO

One evening Griffith sat by the library table reading, and Katherine was moving about the room restlessly. For several days no news had come from the front – no home news, no letters from the absent sons. The door leading to the porch was open and suddenly there stood before them a messenger with a telegram. Katherine grew weak and sick. Griffith tore the envelope open and read. She watched his face. Every vestige of blood had left it, and his head sank on his arms crossed on the table before him. The telegram was crushed in one hand. A groan escaped him, and then a sob shook his frame.

"Which one is it? Which one of my boys is killed? Which – which one?" cried Katherine. She tried to loosen the hand that clasped the message, but he held it crashed, and when he lifted his head tears were streaming down his cheeks. He tried to reassure her. "It is not that," he said hoarsely. "They – the boys are all right, but they have ordered me – ." He relaxed his grasp, and his head sank again on his arms.

She took the message and read:

"Washington, D. C.

"Report here immediately.

"A. Lincoln."

For a moment Katherine seemed stunned. She did not comprehend. Then she seemed to rise far above her normal stature.

"You shall not go!" she said. Her eyes blazed. Her hands hung by her sides, but they were clenched until the nails sank into the flesh. The tigress in her was at last aroused. "You shall not go! How dare he? With three of my boys in the army now! With us reduced to this!" She had never complained of the change in her style of living, but she flung out the contemptuous fire within her as she stretched out her arms to indicate the simplicity of her surroundings. "With this in exchange for what we had! With every tie broken! With every luxury and comfort gone! Separated from even the negroes that loved us and begged to come with us! How dare they ask for further sacrifice from us! How dare he!"

Griffith's head lifted slowly. He looked at her in dismay. Was this the patient, compliant wife who had willingly given up her fortune and her home to satisfy his conscience? Was this the silent, demure, self-controlled Katherine – this very tall, angry woman? She looked like a fury unchained. She took a step nearer to him.

"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! God help me! God 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. "God help me! God 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. "Nobody ain't hu'tted yoh, is dey, Mis' Kate? Nobody – "

"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 God 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 uniforum. Yez moight say ghrand! Shure an' nobody 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-glass 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 analyze 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-glass 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 pass, 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.

"Can't say I would take you for one, no." The President turned a full, long, searching look upon him.

"Well, I have never been back – home – I – I left two freed slaves in the State when I came away, and, you know – "

Mr. Lincoln laughed for the first time aloud. "Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! You remind me of a case we had out in Illinois. There was an old fellow laying to stock a pond he had with fish. Well, that pond was so close to town and so handy, that the boys – some of 'em about as old as you and me – caught 'em out as fast as he put 'em in. By and by his son got into the Legislature, and one day when there wasn't a great deal of other law to make or to spoil, he got the other members to vote for a bill to punish anybody for taking anything out of that pond. His bill said, 'for fishing anything out of that pond.' Well, one day a little son of his fell in and got so far from shore before they saw him that they had to literally fish him out with a pole. Some of the fishermen around there wanted him arrested for violation of the law he had passed to hit them. – Fact! He and you are about the same sort of criminals." He turned to the map again. "Of course I understand what you mean. Yes, yes, I know. These very passes and fords are dear to you. Some people have that sort of attachments. I have. Why, I'd feel like getting down off o' my horse at many a place out on my old circuit and just making love to the very earth beneath my feet! O, I know how you feel! These old fords are old friends. As you rode along at another place, certain thoughts came to you, and kept you company for miles. They would come back to you right there again. Right over there was a sorrowful memory. You knew the birds that nested in this defile, and you stopped and put the little fellows back in the nest when they had fallen out – and they were not afraid of you. I know how that is. They never were afraid of me – none but the yellow-legged chickens." He smiled in his quizzical way. He was still testing and studying his guest, while keeping him off his guard, and making him forget the President in his relations with the man.

Griffith had begun to wonder how he could know about those birds and woodland friends of long ago, but the yellow-legged chicken joke was so familiar to the preacher that he smiled absently, as in duty bound.

"I'm really glad to know that there are other circuit-riders than we of the cloth who strike terror to the inmates of the barnyard, but I never before heard any one else accused of it."

"I remember, once," began Mr. Lincoln, recrossing his long legs and taking up the penknife again – "I remember, once, when a lot of us were riding over to a neighboring town from Springfield. I had the wrong end of a case, I know, and was feeling pretty chilly along the spine whenever I thought of it. The judge was with the party, and the only way I ever did win that suit was by pretending not to see the chickens hide under the corn-shocks the minute he got off his horse. He'd eat a whole pullet every meal, and he got around so often they all knew him – some by sight and some by hearsay."