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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."

He drew the map toward him and indicated a spot by holding the point of his knife on it.

"There's a strip along here," he began, and Griffith arose and bent over the map, "that I can't make out. That seems to be an opening in the mountains; but – "

"No – no," said Griffith, taking up a pencil from the table. "No; the real opening – the road pass – Let me see; what's the scale of miles here? M-m-m! Four? No – Why, the road pass is at least five miles farther on." He drew a line. "You see, it's like this. There." He stopped and shook his head. "M-m-m! No, n-o-o; that map's all wrong. It ought to run along there – so. This way. The road – the wagon road – trends along here – so. Then you go across the ridge at an angle here – so. There ought to be a stream here.

"O pshaw! this map's – Where did you get this map? It's no account, at all. Why, according to this, there's at least seven miles left out right here, between – Why, right here, where they've got those little, insignificant-looking foothills, is one of the most rugged and impassable places in this world! Here, now!" He drew several lines and turned the map. "O pshaw! there's no place left now for the – Here, right a-b-o-u-t h-e-r-e – no, there, right there – is the Bedolph estate – fine old stone house, corn-fields, wheat, orchards – a splendid place. Then, as you go up this way, you pass into a sort of pocket – a little strip pretty well hedged in. You couldn't go with a carriage without making a circuit around here – this way – but a horseman can cut all that off and go – so. See? There is a mill – fine old mill stream – right here – runs this way."

Mr. Lincoln had followed every line eagerly, making little vocal sounds of understanding, or putting in a single word to lead Griffith on. Suddenly he said:

"You're a good Union man Morton tells me."

"I am, indeed, Mr. Lincoln. Nobody in the world could be more sorry than I over the present situation. I – "

"How sorry are you?"

"What do you mean?" asked Griffith, straightening up. Mr. Lincoln arose at the same time.

"How much of a Union man are you? – 'nough to help save it? How sorry are you? – sorry enough to act?"

Griffith had almost forgotten why he was here. It all came back to him. He began to breathe hard.

"I have acted, I have helped," he said, moving toward the window. "When you came in the room I was looking through those fine glasses of yours at that bridge, across which I came in fifty-three, self-exiled, hastening to escape from the bondage of ownership, and, at the last, from the legal penalty of leaving behind me two freed, runaway negroes." He had lifted the glasses to his eyes again. "I thought then that I had done my full duty —all of it. But since then I have given my three sons to you – to my country. They – "

Mr. Lincoln's muscular hand rested on Griffith's shoulder.

"Look at that bridge again. Do you see any dead men on it? Do you see young sons like your own dragging bleeding limbs across it? Do you see terror-stricken horses struggling with and trampling down those wounded boys? Do you see – "

Griffith turned to look at him, in surprise.

"No," he said, "nothing of the kind. There are a few soldiers moving about down this side, but there's nothing of that kind."

He offered the glasses to the President, who waved them away.

"I don't need them!" and an inexpressibly sad expression crossed his face. "I don't need them. I have seen it. I saw it all one day. I saw it all that night as it trailed past here. I heard the groans. The blood was under that window. I have seen it! I have seen nothing else since. If you have never seen a panic of wounded men, pray to your God that you never may!" The sorrowful voice was attuned now to the sorrowful, the tragic face. "Do you see that lounge over there?" He pointed to the other side of the room. "Men think it is a great thing to be a President of a great nation – and so it is, so it is; yet for three nights while you slept peacefully in your bed I lay there, when I wasn't reading telegrams or receiving messages, not knowing what would come next – waiting to be ready for whatever it might be."

He had not finished presenting the case in a light in which he felt sure it would touch the character of the man before him.

"Are your small personal needs paramount to those of your country? Have you no patriotism? Have you no mercy upon our soldiers? Must more hundreds of them suffer defeat and death for the lack of what you can give them? Are you willing to receive the benefits of a free country which you are not willing to help in her hour of greatest need? Can you – do you – want to leave your young sons and the sons of your neighbors on the far side of the dead line marked by that bridge?" The allusion was a chance one, but it struck home.

Griffith put out his hand.

"What do you want me to do?" he gasped, hoarsely.

The President grasped his hand and held it in a vice-like grip. "What – do – I – want – you – to – do?" he asked, with a deliberation strangely at variance with the passion of his words a moment ago. He looked down searchingly, kindly, pityingly into the troubled eyes before him. "What do I want you to do? I – want – you – to – follow – your – conscience – for – the – benefit – of – your – country – instead – of – for – your – own – personal – comfort, – until – that – conscience – tells – you – your – country – needs – you – no – longer; that you have, in deed and in truth, done your share fully! I want you to go with an advance guard down through that very country" – his long finger pointed to the disfigured map on the table – "and show our commander the real topography of that land. I want you to make him as familiar with it as you are yourself. I want you to show him where the passes and fords are, where supplies can be carried across, where water is plenty, and where both advance and retreat are possible without useless and horrible slaughter. I want you – " He was still holding Griffith's right hand. He placed his left on his shoulder, again. "No man has done his duty in a crisis like this until he has done all that he can to hasten the dawn of peace;" he lowered his voice, "and he that is not with us is against us," he said solemnly, the scriptural language falling from his lips as if their professions were reversed.

"How far do you want me to go?" asked Griffith, looking up with an appeal in every tense muscle of his miserable face. "It is my native State! They are my people! I love every foot of ground – I love those – " He was breathing so hard he stopped for a moment. "That we do not think alike – that they are what you call rebels to our common country – does not change my love. I – Mr. Lincoln – "

The President seemed to tower up to a greater height than even his former gigantic altitude. He threw both arms out in a sudden passion: "Forget your love! Forget your native State! Forget yourself! Forget everything except that this Union must and shall be saved, and that you can hasten the end of this awful carnage!" The storm had swept over. He lowered his voice again, and with both hands on the preacher's shoulders: "I will agree to this. When you have gone so far that you can come back here to me and say, 'I know now that I have done enough. My conscience is clear. My whole duty is done.' When you can come back here and say that to me – when you can say (if you and I had changed places) that you could ask no more of me – then I will agree to ask no more of you." Then, suddenly, "When will you start? To-night?"

"Yes," said Griffith, almost inaudibly, and sank into a chair.

Mr. Lincoln strode to the table and pushed aside the disfigured map. "I will write your instructions and make necessary plans," he said. "There is not much to do. The General and the engineer corps are ready. I hoped and believed you would go." His pen flew over the paper. Then he paused and looked at his visitor. "We must fix your rank. Will you volunteer, or shall I – ?"

"Is that necessary, Mr. Lincoln? I am a preacher, you know. I – Can't I go just as I am – just – as – ?"

The President had turned again to the table, and was writing. Griffith stepped to his side.

"Do you realize, Mr. Lincoln, that every man, woman and child in that whole country will recognize me – and – ?"

"Yes, yes, I know, I know. We must do everything we can to protect you from all danger – against assassination or – "

"It is not that," said Griffith, hoarsely. "Do you care nothing for the good-will – for the confidence – of your old neighbors hack in Illinois?"

The stroke went directly home.

"Do I care for it?" There was a long pause. The sunken eyes were drawn to a mere line. "I'd rather lose anything else in this world. It is meat and drink to me. I – "

"Look here, Mr. Davenport; don't make the mistake of thinking that I don't realize what I'm asking you to do – that I don't see the sacrifice. I do. I do, fully, and I want to do everything I can to – to make it up to you. I know you used to be greatly trusted and beloved down there. Morton has told me. He told me all about the pathos of that old negro following you, too, and how you made out to keep her. I know, I know it all, and I wouldn't ask you if I knew how to avoid it. I tell you that I'd rather give up everything else in this world than the good-will of those old friends of mine back there in Illinois; but if I had to give up the respect and confidence and love of every one of them, or forfeit that of Abraham Lincoln, who has sworn' to sustain this Union, I'd have to stick to old Abe! It would go hard with me – harder than anything I know of – but it would have to be done. We have got to sustain this Union! We'll save her with slavery at the South and with friends to ourselves, if we can; but, by the Eternal I we'll save her anyhow!"

He struck over and over the same chord – the Union must be saved. Every road led back to that one point. Every argument hinged upon it. Every protest was met by it. He hammered down all other questions.

"If we are Union men, this is the time and the place to show it. All other objects, motives, methods, private interests, tastes, loves or preferences must yield to the supreme test – What are we willing to do to save the Union?" Once he said:

"You don't suppose my position is particularly agreeable,'do you? Do you fancy it is easy, or to my liking?"

"No, no, Mr. President, of course not. I understand that; but you are holding a public office, and – "

"So are you," came like a shot. "In times like this all men who are or who have been trusted by their fellow men, are now, in a sense, leaders – are in a public position. Their influence is for or against this Union. There is no neutral ground. I've already been driven a good deal farther than I ever expected to have to go, and it looks as if I'd have to jump several more fences yet; but you'll see me jump'em when the time comes, or I'll break my neck trying it!" He wheeled back to the table. "Here, why not let me put you down as a chaplain? Carry you on the rolls that way? It – "

"No, Mr. Lincoln, that won't do. I won't agree to that. If I go it is not as chaplain. We know that, and there must be no pretense. I will not use my ministerial standing as a cloak. I – "

"You are right, too. I wouldn't, myself. Then you won't be with any one division long at a time. You'll have to transfer as the need comes. Let me see – m-m-m – "

"If I do this thing I will do it outright. I'll ask one thing of you – I don't want it known; for, of course, none of my friends can understand the way you look at it and the way you have made me see it. But when I go, I'll want a good horse, and I'll ride in the lead. I'll not stay back as a chaplain, nor sutler, nor as anything but as what I shall be, God help me! a guide!"

"Well, suppose we just call you that – Government Guide. But since it is to be such extraordinary service – so vital to our cause – we'll make your pay extraordinary, too. How does a colonel's pay strike you?"

Griffith was on his feet in a flash. He stood looking straight at the President, who had not turned as he asked the question. The hands of the preacher were grasping the back of his chair.

"On the pay-roll," began Mr. Lincoln, "you will appear as – "

"Pay-roll! Pay-roll!" burst from Griffith, and the President turned. The expression of the preacher's face was a complete surprise, but the astute man understood it instantly. Griffith was moving toward the door. "Mr. Lincoln, you do not understand me. You have mistaken your man! You – I – "

The President had followed him hastily and his own hand reached the door first.

"Stop!" he said kindly. "It is you who do not understand me. I – "

"I understood you twice to say – to offer to pay me to lead a hostile army – to take troops into – to the homes of – "

"No, no, don't look at it that way. It is right you should have some – some – rank – and – " He was going to utter again the word pay, but did not. Suddenly he thought of a way out of the dilemma.

"You see, it is like this. You've got to have grub – rations. Now, we can't issue rations to men who don't exist – ain't doing some sort of service, don't y' see? Then suppose you should be captured. I don't want to suppose anything of the kind, and of course we've got to take every possible precaution against such a disaster – but suppose you were captured, unless you are recognized as – unless you have some status – we can't require the rebels to treat you as a prisoner of war and exchange you for some officer. We've got to arrange so you will be treated as a regular, and an important prisoner of war – don't you see?" The dangerous shoals were being skilfully crossed. The sagacious lawyer and reader of men was retrieving his blunder. He passed his hand through Griffith's arm, and turned him from the door. "That was what I meant! We'll have to carry you, somehow, on the rolls – for rations and things. You'll mess with the General, of course, and we'll see that you have the very best horse in the army – you see, I know the circuit rider's weakness. The fact is – " He was leading Griffith back to the table where the great disfigured map lay – where he deftly slipped the paper containing the half-written instructions, upon which the subject of pay had been begun, under its edge, took another sheet in its stead, and began anew with the rank and the pay left out.