2 A Modest Arrival

It was far toward morning and a light wind was dying. The night was quiet, and I saw no one near me. Alone in the darkness the news that I had heard of Lincoln’s flight became a greater weight upon my spirits, and I wondered at the laxity of the North in remaining unready for the issue.

Although official winter was scarcely gone the night was mild and full of spring promise. A tremulous haze of warmth, a gift from the far south, hung over the city.

I could find no joy in the touch of spring: the distant glimpses of the river, running like melted silver in the moonlight, and the softened outlines of stone buildings near by, with the rim of hills beyond, floating up, like a mist. The approaching splendour of Nature was obscured by a sense of the disaster and wreck that would come with it, and the parting of old ties, never to be replaced by the new. My vision was coloured by my thoughts, and the haze in the air took a tinge of ominous red, tinting river and hills, and hanging like a threat over the city and its people. I wondered whose capital it would be a year from then.

I trust that I am not excitable, nor possessed of an excessive sensibility, but various causes made me keenly alive to impressions that night, especially to those of a gloomy character. There are things more serious to a young man than the imminence of a great war—in truth, the odour of coming battles is sometimes attractive—but Elinor’s changed manner toward me, slight though it was, and the presence and power of Varian coloured all else.

Having the constitutional objection of the early twenties to melancholy, I turned my back upon the Capitol, and walked more rapidly down Pennsylvania Avenue, approaching the region of light and movement. The sounds of life increased, and I passed many people. The city, usually so sober and in bed at ten, was now awake late every night, like a debauchee, and lights burned in some rooms until day. There was talk of spies and traitors, of tyranny and death—heated, perhaps; it was said that plottings and treason were going on, and of the former there was no doubt. Yet many of us, of different faith, could and would remain friends, and were able to talk calmly of the coming trial.

I heard the click of metal, and paused to look at a company of soldiers gathered around a fire that smouldered on a grass plot, sending up alternate tongues of flame and smoke. Most of the men were half asleep, sitting there in apathetic silence, the dim light of the unsteady flames falling now and then across their lean faces and revealing their strong features. They were of the North, and I was impressed more deeply than ever before by the lack of difference between them and the Southerners: merely a little more sun in the cheeks of the Southern men, merely a little more briskness in the speech of the Northern, and that was all.

The fire blazed up a little and flickered over the steel of bayonet and rifle barrel. The men remained silent and motionless in dusky rows in front of the coals, but the sentinels walked their beats with regular step. I had seen companies of militia, more or less for play and display, but these men came for another purpose. Their own serious faces, the lack of sport and jest, and the sombre silence told that the soldiers were there to carry on their real trade—fighting; not to protect the city from invasion, but Americans in arms against Americans—for the first time.

They began to change the guard, and some one said: “All’s well.” This struck me as the grimmest joke of my time. The two halves of a nation that had intended to enlighten mankind and make it better were going to cut each other’s throats, and all the world would sit by and laugh at the sight. And we would not be able to deny that the spectators were entitled to their laugh.

I looked at my watch, and finding daybreak nearly due concluded that it was not worth while to seek my bed. So I continued my walk, choosing to meditate, which we can do best when in motion.

A few whiffs of rain were blown into my face by the irregular puffs of wind, and the air became raw and cold with the edge of winter. But I was wrapped in a heavy coat, and, with hands deep in the pockets and the collar high around my throat, I thought nothing of bodily suffering; instead I rather liked the rain upon me, as it imparted a pleasant coolness to the blood.

The hum of the plotting city died; the men with the thin, eager faces were gone at last from the streets, given up now to the lone watchman and a few such as I who were not in search of sleep. But, occupied with plans, important to myself at least, I did not feel lonely, walking to and fro until the misty light in the east betokened the sunrise.

I watched idly as the sun showed the edge of his great red disk above the hills and looked upon the city, but when he swung clear of the earth and began to creep up the eastern skies I walked back toward the avenue.

The light was yet misty in the streets between the houses, and when I heard a faint but steady heat and looked for its cause I saw only a formless bulk approaching. I stopped, my curiosity aroused, not so much by the figure as by this jar upon the hours of silence and loneliness which came upon me like an awakening. Out of the formless bulk four points of light shone, and as the beat grew louder the eyes of two horses appeared, and a carriage slowly rose behind them in the dusk. The horses blew the rime of frost from their noses and came on with regular tread. The driver sat upon his seat, holding the lines with mechanical hand, his face red with cold, and the silver incrusting his mustache. He glanced once my way, but wasted no further time upon me, and my lack of importance did not hurt my feelings.

I looked at the carriage—a heavy, ordinary, closed affair, spattered with mud—and my eyes, passing, would have left it, forgotten forever, but they were caught by a face at the glass door—the worn, anxious, and apprehensive face of a man—and I looked again. I wondered what could take abroad so distinguished a member of Congress as this in a closed carriage at such an early hour in the morning.

I had recognised him at once, and I knew, moreover, that he was one of the boldest, strongest, and most resourceful of the Republican leaders. No ordinary errand could draw him just when the daylight was coming, and, burning with curiosity—a curiosity that I felt to be pardonable in the troubled times—I turned back and followed the carriage, which had now passed me.

It went on at a steady walk, apparently by the modesty of its gait and appearance desiring to avoid the attention of the awakening capital; its course did not lead it toward the residence of the man who occupied it or of any other conspicuous personage, and the circumstance confirmed me in the belief that I was witnessing a phase in some one of the schemes and plots of which the city was now so full. Determined more than ever to see its development, if consistent with honour and not too difficult, I followed at even pace, keeping twenty yards or so between myself and the chase, the pursuit not wholly devoid of humour. The light of the rising sun fell sometimes in fiery shafts across the red face of the stolid driver, but was not able to add much to the vividness of its tints.

The carriage proceeded at its sober gait, as if it had all the world and eternity before it, no noise disturbing the dawning morning but the roll of its wheels and the beat of the horses’ feet. Presently it entered the railroad station for the Northern trains and stopped there, the driver remaining stolidly in his seat. The statesman opened the door and looked up the railroad track, his eyes following the shining rails with intense anxiety; evidently the gaze ended at nothing but the horizon, for a look of disappointment came into the eager eyes, and then he closed the door and shut himself in, as if wishing to escape observation even in the moments of waiting. There were no others about the station save a few employees and two or three people who seemed to expect friends on an early train.

My eyes had followed the statesman’s up the railroad track into the north, and they too had seen only the horizon and the rising splendour of the morning.

But I believed now that I knew the cause of the evasive, almost secret, journey of this carriage, and again I thanked fortune because I was there to see. My watch marked half past six, and a few moments later I saw a faint brown spot appear against the silvery edge of the horizon; it expanded, then deepened in colour, throwing off shreds and patches of white, and the rails began to hum with the coming train.

The statesman stepped out of the carriage and entered the station. I followed him, and, affecting an air of unconcern as if I expected a friend, met the train too. A very tall man came out of a car and, descending the step, looked around as if he knew some one would be there to meet him. It seemed to me that he was fully six and a half feet in height, somewhat bent in the shoulders, and with one of those long, meagre, bony, brown, and seamed faces so characteristic of the West, where winters and summers are extreme and life has been hard. I looked once into the stranger’s eyes, and thought them the saddest that I had ever seen, so full were they of melancholy, and yet with a certain pleading. As the member of Congress ran forward to meet him he climbed awkwardly down the step. His gait was so shambling, his black clothes hung so ungracefully about him, his whole appearance was so different from the men of easy manners and distinguished bearing whom the South chose for high place, that my first emotion was one of keen disappointment. He looked the rail splitter that he had been; an awkward Western borderer, with nothing in his appearance to inspire the respect—fear, even—that was needed at so critical a time, when the strongest of the nation were at each other’s throats. I thought of a missionary with a prayer book trying to control a cageful of tigers, when the man wanted was a Hercules with a red-hot bar of iron. The stranger’s melancholy eyes met my own again, and at this second meeting I was powerfully attracted; I thought that I saw there so much pity, so much human affection; then his gaze wandered on to the member of Congress, whose eyes were alight with gladness, showing an obvious feeling of great relief.

The statesman helped the tall stranger into the carriage, then entering too, closed the door hastily, but spoke first to the stolid driver, who drove away much faster than he had come.

I did not follow, but I watched the carriage as it passed out of sight. I understood the full importance of the event that I had just witnessed. Lincoln, the President elect, was in Washington, when all but the few who helped to bring him believed that he had turned back and was at Philadelphia, afraid to enter the capital and take the seat to which he had been chosen, dreading the extreme anger of the South. The first great step was taken, and taken safely. I knew well that the news of his coming, and in such a manner, would set the South on fire, being looked upon there as a hostile movement, while the North would celebrate it as a victory.

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