2
The man in the armchair across the desk looked formidable and expensive. Abraham Lincoln looked down at his own long, dusty, and wrinkled black breeches and unconsciously gave a hitch to his sagging coat, to his crooked black satin tie that had a perverse tendency to sidle around under his ear.
The visitor’s swallow-tailed coat was pressed and elegant; his shirt was crisp with ruffles, his heavy watch chain held a jeweled seal. He rested plump white hands, covered with yellow gloves, on the gold head of a cane. His homely face was cold-eyed and stern. He had refused to state his errand to the people in the outer office and Lincoln knew how thoroughly they deplored his stubborn insistence on seeing as many who called as possible.
“Some day,” prophesied Nicolay gloomily, “you’re going to admit the man with the little derringer hid inside a boot, Mr. President.”
“With the fences down all around, Nicolay, why put a bar over the one door,” Lincoln had argued calmly. “If they want to kill me they will unless you bolt me inside an iron box. I’m the people’s hired man. They put me here. I must listen to what they want to say.”
But obviously the portly stranger in the flamboyant apparel had little to say. He remarked about the weather, the unfinished Capitol dome, and the trampled mall where army beef grazed. His chilly visage did not soften or show animation or interest. Momentarily Lincoln expected him to announce icily, as had happened before, “Mr. Lincoln, your wife owes me a large account on which no payment has been made for some time.”
If this visitor’s errand was financial he made no mention of it. He stated that he was a friend of Secretary Seward and that he had attended the Convention at which Lincoln had been nominated.
“But I did not vote for you, sir,” he added.
“Your privilege and right, sir.” Lincoln filled a little following silence by pulling out the gold watch. “A gift I had today. From the Chicago Fair. Sort of a Christmas gift, I guess you’d call it.” He felt as young as Tad under those coldly scrutinizing eyes, and as naïve and awkward.
“Very fitting and well deserved, Mr. President. Now I must tell you that I have no business here whatsoever. I merely came here to tell you that I believe you are doing all for the good of the country that it is in the power of man to do. And I want to say to you, Mr. President—go ahead, do as you darned well please and I will support you.”
Lincoln’s rare laughter whooped. He sprang up and pumped the hand of the startled stranger. John Hay put an inquiring head in at the door.
“This man,” chortled the President, “came here deliberately and on purpose to tell me that I was running this country right—and all the while I thought he’d come to tell me how to take Richmond. Sit down, sir, sit down! I have not seen enough of you.”
“My dear Mr. President,” protested the visitor, “are words of approval so rare and exciting to the President of the United States?”
“Rare?” Lincoln dropped back to his chair, his face collapsing into a sudden, melancholy mask. “John, show this man that copy of the New York Herald—the one where they call me a fiend and a disgrace to humanity because I set human beings free from slavery.”
“I destroyed it, Mr. President,” Hay said. “I was afraid that the infamous thing might be seen by some of your family.”
“Useless precaution, Johnny. I have a son in Boston, and I suspect that he keeps his mother supplied with interesting clippings. My friend, if to be the big boss of Hell is as tough as what I have to undergo here, I can feel mighty sorry for Satan. Come along and have lunch with me, if you will, sir. I reckon they’ve put the big pot in the little one by this time. John, will you see if Mrs. Lincoln is ready for lunch?”
“I believe Mrs. Lincoln went out, Mr. President. Mr. Nicolay ordered out the carriage and the black team.”
“And an escort?”
“Oh, yes, sir—the lieutenant arranged an escort.”
Mary would like that, Abraham Lincoln was thinking as they went down the chilly stairs. Fires burned in all the rooms but the ceilings were high and the walls cold and this was a bleak day with the lowering chill of late December. A few snowflakes timidly rode down the icy air, but Mary would wrap herself in rich furs, her round pink face nestled in a deep collar, a stylish bonnet perched on her smooth dark hair.
With white-gloved hands—smooth now, but once they had known a time of rough domestic toil—she would wave brief salutes to the people in the street. He hoped she wouldn’t be haughty about it. He knew her shyness and uncertainty, her feeling of insecurity in a high place for which she had had so little training, and that too often she hid this uncertainty behind a too glib, too tart attitude of arrogance. To Abraham Lincoln’s eyes, to his sensitive insight, it was like seeing a nervous little hen strut and bridle surrounded by the cold angry eyes of foxes and the sharp talons of hawks. There were, unhappily, too many people who misunderstood Mary Todd Lincoln.
Even John Hay had little sympathy for the President’s wife. There had been a scrap of paper that Lincoln had found once, part of a letter Hay had begun and discarded calling Mary a “Hellcat” and adding dryly that she was lately more “hellcatical” than usual.
Too bad Mary occasionally indulged in temper tantrums in the executive offices. Her small explosions, her husband knew, were a form of relief for the eternally seething doubts of herself that tormented her. She adored her husband and the two boys that had been spared to them, but this love was fiercely jealous and possessive and not always wise or controlled.
Christmas would be a sad time for Mary. Last year Willie had been here, the gentle, quiet brown-haired boy who spent so many hours curled up in a chair with a book. Willie had known every railroad line, every station on every line. He had learned timetables by heart and drawn up schedules of his own. It had been just such a raw, dreary day as this last February when Willie had gone riding out on his pony. He had come home soaked and chilled and the nightmare of those next days would haunt Abraham Lincoln as long as he lived—Willie, burning with fever, babbling incoherencies; Mary sobbing and moaning, pacing the floor, her hands in taut, agonized fists, her smooth hair wild over her tear-streaked cheeks; and that ghastly night of the White House ball, with the Marine Band playing, he himself having to shake hands endlessly at the door of the East Room while Willie fought for breath upstairs.
After that, the end. The blue eyes closed and sunken, fading flowers pressed by Mary into the small cold hands, senators, generals, foreign ministers, pressing the numb hand of the President of the United States, while upstairs on her bed Mary writhed and wailed in uncontrolled grief.
Now Christmas would bring it all back. He was glad that Mary could forget for a little while, shopping, buying gifts for Tad who had too much already, who was in a fair way to be badly spoiled.
Deeply, poignantly, Abraham Lincoln dreaded Christmas. All over the land, north and south, would lie a load of sorrow like a grim hand pressing the heart of America, the heart of this tall grave man in the White House. He felt that burden as he walked into the small dining room. Mary had not returned. Tad slid in late and was sent out again to wash himself. The stranger waxed garrulous.
“I understand, Mr. President, that you have a plan to widen the breach between Governor Vance of North Carolina and Jefferson Davis, president of this so-called Confederacy?”
“That,” said Lincoln, “turned out not too well. Gilmore, of the New York Tribune, wrote too much and prematurely. Those fellows across the river got riled up and a Georgia regiment started a riot in Raleigh in September and burned the Raleigh Standard. So the citizens of Raleigh who didn’t have faith in Jeff Davis rose up and burned the Confederate newspaper, the State Journal. That widened the breach and Vance has already told Jeff Davis that he would welcome reunion with the Union states and any peace compatible with honor.”
He caught John Hay’s warning look then and said no more. He would not reveal that his agents has just brought in a letter sent by the Governor of North Carolina to Jefferson Davis—a bold and open plea for negotiation with the enemy.
“If North Carolina would make the break it would be a long step toward peace,” said his guest.
“It could also mean anarchy, outrages, and destruction in that state, calling for more Union troops,” Hay reminded them. “So far we have pushed back the borders of this rebellion, opened the Mississippi, and our Navy has tightened the blockade of all the Southern ports.”
“You will not, even under pressure, revoke the Emancipation Proclamation, Mr. President?” The visitor was anxious.
“I shall never revoke that Proclamation, sir.”
When the meal ended and the guest had taken an obsequious departure, Lincoln stopped at Hay’s desk.
“What was that fellow sent here to find out, Johnny? Was he sent by Sumner, you think, to put in a word against my idea of amnesty for any Southern state that wants to come back into the Union? Sumner wants ’em all hung down there and he has some powerful newspapers behind him. Some of ’em are saying I’m having my salary raised to a hundred thousand dollars a year, that I’m drawing it in gold while the Army gets paid in greenbacks, and that I’ve cooked up a scheme to have Congress declare me perpetual president for the rest of my life.”
“Why do you let such fantastic rumors disturb you, Mr. Lincoln?” Hay protested. “That New York World editorial saying you’ve done a fine job and that your death would only prolong the war has been reprinted all over the country.”
“If my death would end this war, John, I’d give my life gladly,” Lincoln declared solemnly. “That would be a fine Christmas gift for this country.”