The Crisis Part 28

It was Mr. Lincoln who brought him back. The astonishing candidate for the Senate had sunk into his chair, his face relaxed into sadness save for the sparkle lurking in the eyes. So he sat, immobile, until the laughter had died down to silence. Then he turned to Stephen.

"Sonny," he said, "did you want to see me?"

Stephen was determined to be affable and kind, and (shall we say it?) he would not make Mr. Lincoln uncomfortable either by a superiority of English or the certain frigidity of manner which people in the West said he had. But he tried to imagine a Ma.s.sachusetts senator, Mr. Sumner, for instance, going through the rat story, and couldn't. Somehow, Ma.s.sachusetts senators hadn't this gift. And yet he was not quite sure that it wasn't a fetching gift. Stephen did not quite like to be called "Sonny." But he looked into two gray eyes, and at the face, and something curious happened to him. How was he to know that thousands of his countrymen were to experience the same sensation?

"Sonny," said Mr. Lincoln again, "did you want to see me?"

"Yes, sir." Stephen wondered at the "sir." It had been involuntary. He drew from his inner pocket the envelope which the Judge had given him.

Mr. Lincoln ripped it open. A doc.u.ment fell out, and a letter. He put the doc.u.ment in his tall hat, which was upside down on the floor. As he got deeper into the letter, he pursed his mouth, and the lines of his face deepened in a smile. Then he looked up, grave again.

"Judge Whipple told you to run till you found me, did he, Mr. Brice?"

"Yes, sir."

"Is the Judge the same old criss-cross, contrary, violent fool that he always was?"

Providence put an answer in Stephen's mouth.

"He's been very good to me, Mr. Lincoln."

Mr. Lincoln broke into laughter.

"Why, he's the biggest-hearted man I know. You know him, Oglesby,--Silas Whipple. But a man has to be a Daniel or a General Putnam to venture into that den of his. There's only one man in the world who can beard Silas, and he's the finest states-right Southern gentleman you ever saw.

I mean Colonel Carvel. You've heard of him, Oglesby. Don't they quarrel once in a while, Mr. Brice?"

"They do have occasional arguments," said Stephen, amused.

"Arguments!" cried Mr. Lincoln; "well, I couldn't come as near to fighting every day and stand it. If my dog and Bill's dog across the street walked around each other and growled for half a day, and then lay down together, as Carvel and Whipple do, by Jing, I'd put pepper on their noses--"

"I reckon Colonel Carvel isn't a fighting man," said some one, at random.

Strangely enough, Stephen was seized with a desire to vindicate the Colonel's courage. Both Mr. Lincoln and Judge Oglesby forestalled him.

"Not a fighting man!" exclaimed the Judge. "Why, the other day--"

"Now, Oglesby," put in Mr. Lincoln, "I wanted to tell that story."

Stephen had heard it, and so have we. But Mr. Lincoln's imitation of the Colonel's drawl brought him a pang like homesickness.

"'No, suh, I didn't intend to shoot. Not if he had gone off straight.

But he wriggled and twisted like a rattlesnake, and I just couldn't resist, suh. Then I sent m'n.i.g.g.e.r Ephum to tell him not to let me catch sight of him 'round the Planters' House. Yes, suh, that's what he was.

One of these d.a.m.ned Yankees who come South and go into n.i.g.g.e.r-deals and politics."'

Mr. Lincoln glanced at Stephen, and then again at the Judge's letter. He took up his silk hat and thrust that, too, into the worn lining, which was already filled with papers. He clapped the hat on his head, and b.u.t.toned on his collar.

"I reckon I'll go for a walk, boys," he said, "and clear my head, so as to be ready for the Little Giant to-morrow at Freeport. Mr. Brice, do you feel like walking?"

Stephen, taken aback, said that he did.

"Now, Abe, this is just durned foolishness," one of the gentlemen expostulated. "We want to know if you're going to ask Douglas that question."

"If you do, you kill yourself, Lincoln," said another, who Stephen afterwards learned was Mr. Medill, proprietor of the great 'Press and Tribune'.

"I guess I'll risk it, Joe," said Mr. Lincoln, gravely. Suddenly comes the quiver about the corners of his mouth and the gray eyes respond.

"Boys," said he, "did you ever hear the story of farmer Bell, down in Egypt? I'll tell it to you, boys, and then perhaps you'll know why I'll ask Judge Douglas that question. Farmer Bell had the prize Bartlett pear tree, and the prettiest gal in that section. And he thought about the same of each of 'em. All the boys were after Sue Bell. But there was only one who had any chance of getting her, and his name was Jim Rickets. Jim was the handsomest man in that section. He's been hung since. But Jim had a good deal out of life,--all the appet.i.tes, and some of the gratifications. He liked Sue, and he liked a luscious Bartlett.

And he intended to have both. And it just so happened that that prize pear tree had a whopper on that year, and old man Bell couldn't talk of anything else.

"Now there was an ugly galoot whose name isn't worth mentioning. He knew he wasn't in any way fit for Sue, and he liked pears about as well as Jim Rickets. Well, one night here comes Jim along the road, whistling; to court Susan, and there was the ugly galoot a-yearning on the bank under the pear tree. Jim was all fixed up, and he says to the galoot, 'Let's have a throw.' Now the galoot knew old Bell was looking over the fence So he says, 'All right,' and he gives Jim the first shot--Jim fetched down the big pear, got his teeth in it, and strolled off to the house, kind of pitiful of the galoot for a, half-witted a.s.s. When he got to the door, there was the old man. 'What are you here for?' says he. 'Why,' says Rickets, in his off-hand way, for he always had great confidence, 'to fetch Sue.'"

"The old man used to wear bra.s.s toes to keep his boots from wearing out," said Mr. Lincoln, dreamily.

"You see," continued Mr. Lincoln, "you see the galoot knew that Jim Rickets wasn't to be trusted with Susan Bell."

Some of the gentlemen appeared to see the point of this political parable, for they laughed uproariously. The others laughed, too. Then they slapped their knees, looked at Mr. Lincoln's face, which was perfectly sober, and laughed again, a little fainter. Then the Judge looked as solemn as his t.i.tle.

"It won't do, Abe," said he. "You commit suicide."

"You'd better stick to the pear, Abe," said Mr. Medill, "and fight Stephen A. Douglas here and now. This isn't any picnic. Do you know who he is?"

"Why, yes, Joe," said Mr. Lincoln, amiably. "He's a man with tens of thousands of blind followers. It's my business to make some of those blind followers see."

By this time Stephen was burning to know the question that Mr. Lincoln wished to ask the Little Giant, and why the other gentlemen were against it. But Mr. Lincoln surprised him still further in taking him by the arm. Turning to the young reporter, Mr. Hill, who had finished his writing, he said:

"Bob, a little air will do you good. I've had enough of the old boys for a while, and I'm going to talk to somebody any own age."

Stephen was halfway down the corridor when he discovered that he had forgotten his hat. As he returned he heard somebody say:

"If that ain't just like Abe. He stopped to pull a flea out of his stocking when he was going to fight that duel with Shields, and now he's walking with boys before a debate with the smartest man in this country.

And there's heaps of things he ought to discuss with us."

"Reckon we haven't got much to do with it," said another, half laughing, half rueful. "There's some things Abe won't stand."

From the stairs Stephen saw Mr. Lincoln threading his way through the crowd below, laughing at one, pausing to lay his hand on the shoulder of another, and replying to a rough sally of a third to make the place a tumult of guffaws. But none had the temerity to follow him. When Stephen caught up with him in the little country street, he was talking earnestly to Mr. Hill, the young reporter of the Press and Tribune. And what do you think was the subject? The red comet in the sky that night.

Stephen kept pace in silence with Mr. Lincoln's strides, another shock in store for him. This rail-splitter, this postmaster, this flat-boatman, whom he had not credited with a knowledge of the New Code, was talking Astronomy. And strange to say, Mr. Brice was learning.

"Bob," said Mr. Lincoln, "can you elucidate the problem of the three bodies?"

To Stephen's surprise, Mr. Hill elucidated.

The talk then fell upon novels and stories, a few of which Mr. Lincoln seemed to have read. He spoke, among others, of the "Gold Bug." "The story is grand," said he, "but it might as well have been written of Robinson Crusoe's island. What a fellow wants in a book is to know where he is. There are not many novels, or ancient works for that matter, that put you down anywhere."

"There is that genuine fragment which Cicero has preserved from a last work of Aristotle," said Mr. Hill, slyly. "'If there were beings who lived in the depths of the earth, and could emerge through the open fissures, and could suddenly behold the earth, the sea, and the--vault of heaven--'"

"But you--you impostor," cried Mr. Lincoln, interrupting, "you're giving us Humboldt's Cosmos."

Mr. Hill owned up, laughing.

It is remarkable how soon we accustom ourselves to a strange situation.