An Unofficial Patriot

Silence fell between them. Griffith's hand reached out toward the paper Mr. Lincoln had let fall, but the long angular arm reached it first, and as if not noticing the movement of Mr. Davenport, he deftly slid it toward the pile of other papers, and then suddenly flung all into a confused heap as he searched for some article on the table.

"Would you like to go home that way?" They were both thinking of Shiloh, so why mention the name? "Perhaps if you did, you might find – you might take him home with you if – Have you wired his mother that you are safe, and here on your way home? That was right. That will help her to bear – "

He arose restlessly and placed both hands upon Griffith's shoulders. "Mr. Davenport, I can't thank you enough for your services. I want you to understand that I know what it all meant to you, and that I appreciate it at its full value. I hope the time will come when you will let a grateful country know what you have done and – and – " He held out his hand for the message as the door had opened for the secretary. He read and turned the other side up, and then re-read it. "Who is Beverly? Colonel, of – Oh, your son? Oh, this is for you! I did not notice the address. I wondered who loved me!" Mr. Lincoln smiled as he handed the message to his guest. "Roy is wounded, but doing well. Have sent him to Nashville to the Wests. I am unhurt. I love you. Beverly," Griffith read. Then he took out his handkerchief and blew a great blast.

"Was there ever such a boy? To telegraph that!" He smiled up at Mr. Lincoln through proud dim eyes. "That is my oldest son – the Captain." The quaver in his voice and the smile in his eyes, drowned as it was in moisture, touched the great man before him, who took the message again and re-read it as Griffith talked.

"He is a good son. He – "

"He loves you he says, and the other one is doing well. You ought to be satisfied. A good many fathers are not fixed just that way, to-day!" Mr. Lincoln shook his head sadly from side to side, and the tragic face sank into its depth of gloom again. "Too many fathers have no sons to love them today – too many, too many," he said gloomily. "When will it all end? How will it all end?" He held out the message as he suddenly turned to the table. "You will want to keep that. Do you want to go by way of Nashville, now? Or straight home?"

Griffith re-read the message. "Straight home," he said. "He is in good hands – and – and he is safe. Straight home." Then suddenly, as he folded the telegram and placed it in his in-side pocket, "Mr. Lincoln, did you know I am a deserter?"

"What?"

"Did you know I deserted? The General threatened to shoot me, and – "

"W-h-a-t!"

Griffith told the story of the threat simply, fully. The keen eyes watched him narrowly. There was a growing fire in them.

"Didn't you know he couldn't shoot you? Didn't you know you were under me? Didn't you know – "

"I didn't think of that at first, Mr. Lincoln. I thought he could, and – I thought he would, for a little while. I was – "

"If he had," said the President, rising and showing more fire than he had exhibited before, "well, if he had, all I've got to say, is that there'd a' been two of you shot!" Then, recalling himself he smiled grimly. "If he does his share as well as you've done yours, I'll be satisfied."

"Before I go, Mr. Lincoln, I wanted to speak to you about a little matter. You said something just now about a grateful country, and – but – I recall that you – I understood you to – The fact is, when I was here before, I somehow got the idea that you were willing to – to pay and to give a Colonel's commission! and – and emoluments – to one who could do this service, and – "

Mr. Lincoln dropped the hand he held, and an indescribable change passed over the tall form and the face, which made both less pleasant to see. But he smiled, as he passed his hand over his face, and turning toward the table with a tired expression, reached for a pen.

"You've sort of concluded that the job is worth pay, have you?"

"Yes, it's worth all you can afford to pay, Mr. Lincoln; it is extremely dangerous business. Is the offer still open?"

The President gave an imperceptible shrug to his loose shoulders, and drew a sheet of paper toward him.

"Certainly. Commission?" he said as he began to write.

"Yes, if you will. A Colonel's commission and pay dating all back to the beginning of my service – if that is right."

Mr. Lincoln nodded, but there was a distinctly chilly air creeping into his tone. "Y-e-s. Of course.'Nything else?"

"I don't see hardly how you can date it back either, without – "

"Oh yes, I can date it back to the beginning of your service," he said wearily, "but I don't know – "

"I guess you'll have to just put it Col. L. Patterson, for I don't know his real name, the baptismal one. Known him all my life just as Lengthy, but of course that won't – "

"What!" the President had turned to face him, but Griffith was still looking contemplatively out of the window, and did not notice the sudden change of tone and position.

"It will give him a certain standing with the men – and with the General – that he will need – and deserve, and – and – and the rest is right too, for him, if – "

Mr. Lincoln thrust his fingers back and forth through his already disheveled hair, and at last burst out: "Can't say that I exactly get your idea. I understood you to say that you had changed your mind about – about wanting the rank of Colonel, and – and the pay for – "

He was looking full at Griffith, and the preacher's eyes traveled back from the distant hills and fell upon the face before him. It struck him that the face looked tired and worn. He pulled himself up sharply, for the dull way he had been presenting the case, and his reply was in a fuller, freer voice, with a brisker air of attention to business.

"Certainly, certainly, Mr. Lincoln, that's it exactly." Then with a lowered voice: "Perhaps you don't realize, Mr. Lincoln, that every instant a man in that situation, who is known and recognized, and who holds no commission, and wears no federal uniform, has his life in his hands – is in more danger than any soldier ever is, and – "

"Realize! Didn't I tell you so? Didn't I ask you to go better protected? Didn't I – ?"

Griffith waved his hand and went on.

"I somehow couldn't bring myself to take the attitude and position of a soldier. I am a man of peace, a non-combatant, a clergyman, and – and then there was some sort of sentiment – of – Mr. Lincoln, it isn't necessary to try to explain my position. The fact is, I doubt if I could, if I tried, make you understand wholly; but I want this Government to protect Lengthy Patterson with all the power and all the devices it has. And I want him to have a commission that will place him where he will receive respect and consideration in our own ranks; and if he is captured. I want money paid to him to live on afterward, if he should be hurt – and he can never live in his old home again. I want – " He had risen and was standing near the President again. His voice had grown intense in its inflection. "Lengthy Patterson has taken my place, and I want – and – if you will just give him all that – I don't see how you can date it back either, or he will suspect that I am paying him – and he wouldn't take a cent; but if – can't you just – "

A great gleam of light seemed to break over the ragged face of the President. He arose suddenly, and threw one arm around Griffith's shoulders, and grasped his hand again.

"God bless my soul! Certainly! Of course! By the lord Harry, I didn't understand you at first, I – Why, certainly, the man who took your place shall have both the commission that will shield him and the pay he deserves, certainly, certainly!" They were moving toward the door. "Anything else, Mr. Davenport?"

"I reckon you will have to let him think that I took – that I was both commissioned and – and paid, Mr. Lincoln, or he won't take it – and – and there isn't the least reason why he should not. He must. Can I leave it all – will you see that – ?"

"Oh, yes, yes, that's all right. I'll fix that – I'm glad it's that way – " He broke off and took Griffith's hand. "Well, good-bye. Goodbye. I hope, when we meet again, it will not be – I hope this war will be over, and that I shall have no more need to test men like you. But – ah, you have a son who loves you and the other one is safe! I wish to heaven all loyal men were as well off as you are to-night. I am glad for you, and yet I sometimes think I shall never feel really glad again," and the strong homely face sank from its gently quizzical smile into the depths of a mood which had come to be its daily cast. He stretched out his hand for another message, and stood reading it as Griffith closed the door behind him. "New Orleans is ours," was all that the message said, but Mr. Lincoln sighed with relief and with pain. Victory was sweet, but carnage tortured his great and tender soul. The sadly tragic face deepened again in its lines, and yet he said softly, as he turned to his desk: "Thank God! Thank God! one more nail is driven into the coffin of the Confederacy. Let us hope that rebellion is nearly ready to lie down in it and keep still. Then perhaps we can be glad again – perhaps we can forget!"

CHAPTER XXIII

"Through the shadows of the globe we sweep into the younger day."

    Tennyson

"When the war is over and the boys all get home," Griffith was fond of saying, as he sat and talked with Katherine, "how good it will seem just to live! I've seen all the suffering and shadows of tragedy I want to see for my whole life. The boys and I will make it up to you, Katherine, and these gray hairs that have come," he touched the wavy hair with tender fingers, "these gray hairs that have come since we went away, shall be only memoranda of the past, not heralds of the future."

It was such infinite relief to have him at home and well that Katherine almost forgot for a time to feel troubled about her sons. News had come daily from the first about Roy; but now that he was so much improved the letters gradually grew a little less frequent. Sometimes Emma West wrote them, and then the letters were very minute indeed, and full of anxious hopefulness. Her praise of Roy's fortitude, her descriptions of his wonderful courage and the insistence with which she assured Katherine that no duty of all their lives – her father's and mother's – had ever been done with half so hearty a good-will as was the nursing of the young Captain, had in it all a spirit of devotion and a guarded tenderness that Katherine thought she understood. Although it is true that no girl is ever quite good enough to marry any mother's son, Katherine tried to adjust herself with reasonable fortitude to the idea of what she thought she saw in the future. Of course it would be many years in the future before the finality must be faced, and Katherine was learning to live in the present and to push aside that which threatened or even promised, as too uncertain to dwell upon. At last short notes, and then longer ones, from Roy himself began to come, and the time seemed not far off when the invalid would arrive. It was wholly unlikely, he said, that he would be fit for service again during the war, unless the war should last much longer than his original term of enlistment and he should enlist again. Of his final recovery he felt certain. The crushed side was doing well, and he would be only slightly lame, the doctor said. To get him out of the army by even so heroic a process gave his mother comfort, and she felt that she could keep him out now even should he recover before his enlistment period were over, she would, if need be, appeal to Mr. Lincoln, and she felt sure, from all Griffith had told her, that the President would give Roy an honorable discharge. Two of her brood were safe again, she argued with herself, and meantime news from Howard and Beverly was frequent and assuring. Life seemed about to drop into less tragic lines in the little household. Griffith fell to humming his favorite hymns once more, and sometimes as he sat on the porch and watched or greeted the passers-by or read his paper, he would stop to tell Katherine stories of his recent adventures, where they did not trench too closely upon the sorrowful memories of the cold faces and bitter feelings of his one-time friends. To no one else did he speak of where he had been. His townsmen knew that he had been away, of course. The Bishop and the college trustees alone knew why. To all others his few months' absence was no more significant than many another trip he had taken since he came among them. The duty he had felt forced to do had been too painful in its nature to make him willing to discuss it even after it was over. Most of those about him were bitter toward the South with a bitterness born of ignorance of conditions and of the times of excitement. To this man, who had passed through the fire before the general conflagration was kindled, there was no bitterness. He understood. His sympathy was still with those who were caught on the under side of the wheel of progress as it had revolved. His beliefs and convictions had long ago traveled with the advance line; but he left all sense of unkindness and revenge to those who were less competent to see the conflict from the side of understanding, and who judged it through the abundance of their ignorance and prejudice. To Griffith it was like watching the tide rise on the sea. It was unavoidable, and those who were caught out beyond the safety line were bound to go down. He did not blame the sea. He only deplored the inevitable loss, the sorrow, the suffering, and the mistakes which made it all possible. That his own part of it was in and of the past lightened his heart. One day as he sat listlessly on the side porch reading his Gazette, he noticed vaguely the half-witted girl, now almost grown to womanhood, circling about the gate and making aimless passes toward the end of the house. He watched her covertly over his paper for a moment and went on humming, "He leadeth me, oh, blessed thought!" The movements of the demented creature seemed to take on more definiteness. Griffith arose and stepped to the end of the porch. There sat aunt Judy, smoking her pipe, and swaying her body in time with his humming, "O words with heavenly comfort fraught! Where'er I go, whate'er I be," – Griffith's step had attracted the old woman and she opened her eyes and looked up at him. "Still 'tis His hand that leadeth me," Griffith finished, smiling at her.

"Lawd amassy, honey, I des been a settin' heah wid my po' ole eyes shet, a listenin' to dat dar song er yoahrn! Hit sholy do seem des lack ole times come back agin t' heah yoh sing dat a way! Hit sholy do! Lawsy, honey, dey want no singin' 'roun' heah whilse you wus gone all dat longtime. Dey want dat! Hit wus des dat gloomysome dat hit seem lack somebody daid all de time. Hit sholy do go good t' set heah an' listen ter yoh singin' agin! Hit sholy do, Mos' Grif." She suddenly looked toward the street. "Mos' Grif, what dat dare fool gal doin'? She des do like dat a way all de time. I hain't nebberseed her when she don't do des dat er way. I ax her wat she want, an I ax er wat ails'er, an' she don't say nothin' 'tall. She des keep on doin' dat way."

"She's afflicted, aunt Judy. She's a poor afflicted creature and – "

"Lawsy, honey, anybody kin see dat she's 'flicted; but wat I axes yoh is, what fer she do dat away at me? She ain' do dat a way at yoh, an' she ain' do dat a way at Mis' Kate – an' she ain' do dat a way at Mis' Marg 'et, needer. Des at me. She tryin' ter witch me. Dat's what!"

Griffith laughed. The point of view was so unexpected and yet so wholly characteristic that it struck him as humorous beyond the average of aunt Judy's mental processes. His laugh rang out loud and clear. His broad shoulders shook. He had grown quite portly, and his face was the picture of health and fine vigor.

"What fer yoh laugh dat a way, Mos' Grif? Dat dar fool gal would a witched me long time ago if hit hadn't a been fer dat." She took from her bosom, where it hung from a string, the rabbit foot: "Dat's so. Des as sho' as yo' bawn, honey; dey ain' no two ways 'bout dat!"

The fascination of the strange black face for this clouded intellect seemed never to lose its power. Whenever and wherever Judy had crossed her path all else faded from the half vacant brain, and such mind and attention as there was, fixed itself upon the old colored woman. Judy had tried every art she possessed to engage the girl in conversation, but with no results. She would continue to circle about and make her passes of indirection with one hand outstretched and the other hung aimlessly pen dent at her side in that helpless fashion which defies simulation. Judy had even tried threatening the girl with her cane; but no threat, no coaxing and no cajolery served to free her from this admirer who seemed transfixed as a bird is fascinated by a snake – with the fascination of perplexity and fear – in so far as the vacant soul could know such lively and definite sensations. Judy had finally – long ago – taken refuge in her rabbit foot, and made up her mind that in competition in the black art, only, was safety. She shook the foot at the girl, who responded in the usual fashion. How long the contest might have lasted it would be difficult to say, had not Griffith walked toward the gate. The instant the bulk of his body hid the old black woman from her eyes, nature did the rest. The vacant mind, no longer stimulated by the sight of the uncanny face, lost all interest and continuity of thought and wandered aimlessly on; forgetful alike of her recent object of attention and equally unguided by future intent, her steps followed each other as a succession of physical movements only, and had no object and no destination. Aimlessly, listlessly, walking; going no one knew where; thinking no one knew what – if, indeed, her poor vague mental operations might be classified as thought – living, no one knew why; following the path of least resistance, as how many of her betters have done and will do to the end of time; looking no farther than the scope of present vision; remembering nothing; learning nothing; an object of pity, of persecution, of fear or of aversion according as she crossed the path of civilized or savage, of intelligent and pitiful or of pitiless ignorance. Griffith watched her as she wove her devious way and wondered where, in the economy of Nature, such as she could find a useful place, and why, in the providence of God, she had been cast adrift to cumber the earth, to suffer, to endure and at last to die – where and why and how? He was not laughing as he returned to the house, and aunt Judy scanned his face narrowly, and then carefully replaced the rabbit foot in its resting-place in her bosom.

"Druv' er off. She know! She know a preacher o' de gospil o' de Lawd Jesus Chris' w'en she see'um! Dey ain't no two ways 'bout dat – 'flicted or no 'flicted. Dat dar gal's 'flicted o' course, but she know 'nuf ter know dat! She been tryin ter witch me, dat she is; but Lawd God A'mighty, she hain't got no sense, ter try ter witch dis house wid Mos' Grif an' dat rabbit foot bofe in hit! Dat dar gal's a plum bawn fool ter try dat kine er tricks. She is dat. She's wus dan 'flicted. She's a plum bawn ejiot ter try dat kine er tricks aroun' dese heah diggins. She is dat! Lawsy, Lawsy, she ain' got no sense worf talkin' 'bout I Mos' Grif an' dat rabbit foot bofe t' match up wid! Lawsy, Lawsy, dat dar pore 'flicted gal's a plum bawn fool!" And poor old aunt Judy, still talking to herself, hobbled into the house, satisfied with her estimate of all parties concerned and content with the world as she found it, so long as that world contained for her both a Mos' Grif and her precious rabbit foot.

White or black, bond or free, war or peace, were all one to old aunt Judy; nothing mattered in all this infinite puzzle called life, if but there remained to her these two strongholds of her faith and her dependence! And who shall say that aunt Judy was not wise in her day and generation? So wise was she that sorrow, anxiety, and care had passed her lightly by to the end that her eighty years sat upon her shoulders like a pleasant mantle, adjusted, comfortable to a summer breeze.