by Thomas Dixon
CHAPTER VI
THE ASSASSINATION
Elsie called in the afternoon at the Camerons' lodgings, radiant withpride, accompanied by her brother.
Captain Phil Stoneman, athletic, bronzed, a veteran of two years' service,dressed in his full uniform, was the ideal soldier, and yet he had neverloved war. He was bubbling over with quiet joy that the end had come andhe could soon return to a rational life. Inheriting his mother'stemperament, he was generous, enterprising, quick, intelligent, modest,and ambitious. War had seemed to him a horrible tragedy from the first. Hehad early learned to respect a brave foe, and bitterness had long sincemelted out of his heart.
He had laughed at his father's harsh ideas of Southern life gained as apolitician, and, while loyal to him after a boy's fashion, he took nostock in his Radical programme.
The father, colossal egotist that he was, heard Phil's protests with mildamusement and quiet pride in his independence, for he loved this boy withdeep tenderness.
Phil had been touched by the story of Ben's narrow escape, and was anxiousto show his mother and sister every courtesy possible in part atonementfor the wrong he felt had been done them. He was timid with girls, and yethe wished to give Margaret a cordial greeting for Elsie's sake. He was notprepared for the shock the first appearance of the Southern girl gavehim.
When the stately figure swept through the door to greet him, her blackeyes sparkling with welcome, her voice low and tender with genuinefeeling, he caught his breath in surprise.
Elsie noted his confusion with amusement and said:
"I must go to the hospital for a little work. Now, Phil, I'll meet you atthe door at eight o'clock."
"I'll not forget," he answered abstractedly, watching Margaret intently asshe walked with Elsie to the door.
He saw that her dress was of coarse, unbleached cotton, dyed with thejuice of walnut hulls and set with wooden hand-made buttons. The storythese things told of war and want was eloquent, yet she wore them withunconscious dignity. She had not a pin or brooch or piece of jewellery.Everything about her was plain and smooth, graceful and gracious. Her facewas large--the lovely oval type--and her luxuriant hair, parted in themiddle, fell downward in two great waves. Tall, stately, handsome, herdark rare Southern beauty full of subtle languor and indolent grace, shewas to Phil a revelation.
The coarse black dress that clung closely to her figure seemed alive whenshe moved, vital with her beauty. The musical cadences of her voice werevibrant with feeling, sweet, tender, and homelike. And the odour of therose she wore pinned low on her breast he could swear was the perfume ofher breath.
Lingering in her eyes and echoing in the tones of her voice, he caught theshadowy memory of tears for the loved and lost that gave a strange pathosand haunting charm to her youth.
She had returned quickly and was talking at ease with him.
"I'm not going to tell you, Captain Stoneman, that I hope to be a sisterto you. You have already made yourself my brother in what you did forBen."
"Nothing, I assure you, Miss Cameron, that any soldier wouldn't do for abrave foe."
"Perhaps; but when the foe happens to be an only brother, my chum andplaymate, brave and generous, whom I've worshipped as my beau-idealman--why, you know I must thank you for taking him in your arms that day.May I, again?"
Phil felt the soft warm hand clasp his, while the black eyes sparkled andglowed their friendly message.
He murmured something incoherently, looked at Margaret as if in a spell,and forgot to let her hand go.
She laughed at last, and he blushed and dropped it as though it were alive coal.
"I was about to forget, Miss Cameron. I wish to take you to the theatreto-night, if you will go?"
"To the theatre?"
"Yes. It's to be an occasion, Elsie tells me. Laura Keene's lastappearance in 'Our American Cousin,' and her one-thousandth performance ofthe play. She played it in Chicago at McVicker's, when the President wasfirst nominated, to hundreds of the delegates who voted for him. He is tobe present to-night, so the _Evening Star_ has announced, and General andMrs. Grant with him. It will be the opportunity of your life to see thesefamous men--besides, I wish you to see the city illuminated on the way."
Margaret hesitated.
"I should like to go," she said with some confusion. "But you see we areold-fashioned Scotch Presbyterians down in our village in South Carolina.I never was in a theatre--and this is Good Friday----"
"That's a fact, sure," said Phil thoughtfully. "It never occurred to me.War is not exactly a spiritual stimulant, and it blurs the calendar. Ibelieve we fight on Sundays oftener than on any other day."
"But I'm crazy to see the President since Ben's pardon. Mamma will be herein a moment, and I'll ask her."
"You see, it's really an occasion," Phil went on. "The people are allgoing there to see President Lincoln in the hour of his triumph, and hisgreat General fresh from the field of victory. Grant has just arrived intown."
Mrs. Cameron entered and greeted Phil with motherly tenderness.
"Captain, you're so much like my boy! Had you noticed it, Margaret?"
"Of course, Mamma, but I was afraid I'd tire him with flattery if I triedto tell him."
"Only his hair is light and wavy, and Ben's straight and black, or you'dcall them twins. Ben's a little taller--excuse us, Captain Stoneman, butwe've fallen so in love with your little sister we feel we've known youall our lives."
"I assure you, Mrs. Cameron, your flattery is very sweet. Elsie and I donot remember our mother, and all this friendly criticism is more thanwelcome."
"Mamma, Captain Stoneman asks me to go with him and his sister to-night tosee the President at the theatre. May I go?"
"Will the President be there, Captain?" asked Mrs. Cameron.
"Yes, Madam, with General and Mrs. Grant--it's really a great publicfunction in celebration of peace and victory. To-day the flag was raisedover Fort Sumter, the anniversary of its surrender four years ago. Thecity will be illuminated."
"Then, of course, you can go. I will sit with Ben. I wish you to see thePresident."
At seven o'clock Phil called for Margaret. They walked to the Capitol hilland down Pennsylvania Avenue.
The city was in a ferment. Vast crowds thronged the streets. In front ofthe hotel where General Grant stopped the throng was so dense the streetswere completely blocked. Soldiers, soldiers, soldiers, at every turn, insquads, in companies, in regimental crowds, shouting cries of victory.
The display of lights was dazzling in its splendour. Every building inevery street, in every nook and corner of the city, was lighted from atticto cellar. The public buildings and churches vied with each other in themagnificence of their decorations and splendour of illuminations.
They turned a corner, and suddenly the Capitol on the throne of itsimperial hill loomed a grand constellation in the heavens! Another look,and it seemed a huge bonfire against the background of the dark skies.Every window in its labyrinths of marble, from the massive base to itscrowning statue of Freedom, gleamed and flashed with light--more than tenthousand jets poured their rays through its windows, besides theinnumerable lights that circled the mighty dome within and without.
Margaret stopped, and Phil felt her soft hand grip his arm with suddenemotion.
"Isn't it sublime!" she whispered.
"Glorious!" he echoed.
But he was thinking of the pressure of her hand on his arm and the subtletones of her voice. Somehow he felt that the light came from her eyes. Heforgot the Capitol and the surging crowds before the sweeter creativewonder silently growing in his soul.
"And yet," she faltered, "when I think of what all this means for ourpeople at home--their sorrow and poverty and ruin--you know it makes mefaint."
Phil's hand timidly sought the soft one resting on his arm and touched itreverently.
"Believe me, Miss Margaret, it will be all for the best in the end. TheSouth will yet rise to a nobler life than she has ever lived in the past.This
is her victory as well as ours."
"I wish I could think so," she answered.
They passed the City Hall and saw across its front, in giant letters offire thirty feet deep, the words:
"UNION, SHERMAN, AND GRANT"
On Pennsylvania Avenue the hotels and stores had hung every window,awning, cornice, and swaying tree-top with lanterns. The grand avenue wasbridged by tri-coloured balloons floating and shimmering ghostlike far upin the dark sky. Above these, in the blacker zone toward the stars, theheavens were flashing sheets of chameleon flames from bursting rockets.
Margaret had never dreamed such a spectacle. She walked in awed silence,now and then suppressing a sob for the memory of those she had loved andlost. A moment of bitterness would cloud her heart, and then with thesense of Phil's nearness, his generous nature, the beauty and goodness ofhis sister, and all they owed to her for Ben's life, the cloud wouldpass.
At every public building, and in front of every great hotel, bands wereplaying. The wild war strains, floating skyward, seemed part of thechanging scheme of light. The odour of burnt powder and smoulderingrockets filled the warm spring air.
The deep bay of the great fort guns now began to echo from every hilltopcommanding the city, while a thousand smaller guns barked and growled fromevery square and park and crossing.
Jay Cooke & Co's. banking-house had stretched across its front, inenormous blazing letters, the words:
"THE BUSY B'S--BALLS, BALLOTS, AND BONDS"
Every telegraph and newspaper office was a roaring whirlpool ofexcitement, for the same scenes were being enacted in every centre of theNorth. The whole city was now a fairy dream, its dirt and sin, shame andcrime, all wrapped in glorious light.
But above all other impressions was the contagion of the thunder shouts ofhosts of men surging through the streets--the human roar with its animaland spiritual magnetism, wild, resistless, unlike any other force in theuniverse!
Margaret's hand again and again unconsciously tightened its hold on Phil'sarm, and he felt that the whole celebration had been gotten up for hisbenefit.
They passed through a little park on their way to Ford's Theatre on 10thStreet, and the eye of the Southern girl was quick to note the buddingflowers and full-blown lilacs.
"See what an early spring!" she cried. "I know the flowers at home aregorgeous now."
"I shall hope to see you among them some day, when all the clouds havelifted," he said.
She smiled and replied with simple earnestness:
"A warm welcome will await your coming."
And Phil resolved to lose no time in testing it.
They turned into 10th Street, and in the middle of the block stood theplain three-story brick structure of Ford's Theatre, an enormous crowdsurging about its five doorways and spreading out on the sidewalk and halfacross the driveway.
"Is that the theatre?" asked Margaret.
"Yes."
"Why, it looks like a church without a steeple."
"Exactly what it really is, Miss Margaret. It was a Baptist church. Theyturned it into a playhouse, by remodelling its gallery into a dress-circleand balcony and adding another gallery above. My grandmother Stoneman is adevoted Baptist, and was an attendant at this church. My father never goesto church, but he used to go here occasionally to please her. Elsie and Ifrequently came."
Phil pushed his way rapidly through the crowd with a peculiar sense ofpleasure in making a way for Margaret and in defending her from thejostling throng.
They found Elsie at the door, stamping her foot with impatience.
"Well, I must say, Phil, this is prompt for a soldier who had positiveorders," she cried. "I've been here an hour."
"Nonsense, Sis, I'm ahead of time," he protested.
Elsie held up her watch.
"It's a quarter past eight. Every seat is filled, and they've stoppedselling standing-room. I hope you have good seats."
"The best in the house to-night, the first row in the balconydress-circle, opposite the President's box. We can see everything on thestage, in the box, and every nook and corner of the house."
"Then I'll forgive you for keeping me waiting."
They ascended the stairs, pushed through the throng standing, and at lastreached the seats.
What a crowd! The building was a mass of throbbing humanity, and, overall, the hum of the thrilling wonder of peace and victory!
The women in magnificent costumes, officers in uniforms flashing withgold, the show of wealth and power, the perfume of flowers and the musicof violin and flutes gave Margaret the impression of a dream, so sharp wasthe contrast with her own life and people in the South.
The interior of the house was a billow of red, white, and blue. ThePresident's box was wrapped in two enormous silk flags with gold-fringededges gracefully draped and hanging in festoons.
Withers, the leader of the orchestra, was in high feather. He raised hisbaton with quick, inspired movement. It was for him a personal triumph,too. He had composed the music of a song for the occasion. It wasdedicated to the President, and the programme announced that it would berendered during the evening between the acts by a famous quartet, assistedby the whole company in chorus. The National flag would be draped abouteach singer, worn as the togas of ancient Greece and Rome.
It was already known by the crowd that General and Mrs. Grant had left thecity for the North and could not be present, but every eye was fixed onthe door through which the President and Mrs. Lincoln would enter. It wasthe hour of his supreme triumph.
THE ASSASSINATION.]
What a romance his life! The thought of it thrilled the crowd as theywaited. A few years ago this tall, sad-faced man had floated down theSangamon River into a rough Illinois town, ragged, penniless, friendless,alone, begging for work. Four years before he had entered Washington asPresident of the United States--but he came under cover of the night witha handful of personal friends, amid universal contempt for his ability andthe loud expressed conviction of his failure from within and without hisparty. He faced a divided Nation and the most awful civil convulsion inhistory. Through it all he had led the Nation in safety, growing each dayin power and fame, until to-night, amid the victorious shouts of millionsof a Union fixed in eternal granite, he stood forth the idol of thepeople, the first great American, the foremost man of the world.
There was a stir at the door, and the tall figure suddenly loomed in viewof the crowd. With one impulse they leaped to their feet, and shout aftershout shook the building. The orchestra was playing "Hail to the Chief!"but nobody heard it. They saw the Chief! They were crying their ownwelcome in music that came from the rhythmic beat of human hearts.
As the President walked along the aisle with Mrs. Lincoln, accompanied bySenator Harris' daughter and Major Rathbone, cheer after cheer burst fromthe crowd. He turned, his face beaming with pleasure, and bowed as hepassed.
The answer of the crowd shook the building to its foundations, and thePresident paused. His dark face flashed with emotion as he looked over thesea of cheering humanity. It was a moment of supreme exaltation. Thepeople had grown to know and love and trust him, and it was sweet. Hisface, lit with the responsive fires of emotion, was transfigured. The soulseemed to separate itself from its dreamy, rugged dwelling-place and flashits inspiration from the spirit world.
As around this man's personality had gathered the agony and horror of war,so now about his head glowed and gleamed in imagination the splendours ofvictory.
Margaret impulsively put her hand on Phil's arm:
"Why, how Southern he looks! How tall and dark and typical his wholefigure!"
"Yes, and his traits of character even more typical," said Phil. "On thesurface, easy friendly ways and the tenderness of a woman--beneath, aniron will and lion heart. I like him. And what always amazes me is hisuniversality. A Southerner finds in him the South, the Western man theWest, even Charles Sumner, from Boston, almost loves him. You know I thinkhe is the first great all-round American who ever lived in the White
House."
The President's party had now entered the box, and as Mr. Lincoln took thearmchair nearest the audience, in full view of every eye in the house,again the cheers rent the air. In vain Withers' baton flew, and theorchestra did its best. The music was drowned as in the roar of the sea.Again he rose and bowed and smiled, his face radiant with pleasure. Thesoul beneath those deep-cut lines had long pined for the sunlight. Hislove of the theatre and the humorous story were the protest of his heartagainst pain and tragedy. He stood there bowing to the people, thegrandest, gentlest figure of the fiercest war of human history--a man whowas always doing merciful things stealthily as others do crimes. Littlesunlight had come into his life, yet to-night he felt that the sun of anew day in his history and the history of the people was already tingeingthe horizon with glory.
Back of those smiles what a story! Many a night he had paced back andforth in the telegraph office of the War Department, read its awful newsof defeat, and alone sat down and cried over the list of the dead. Many ablack hour his soul had seen when the honours of earth were forgotten andhis great heart throbbed on his sleeve. His character had grown so evenlyand silently with the burdens he had borne, working mighty deeds with suchlittle friction, he could not know, nor could the crowd to whom he bowed,how deep into the core of the people's life the love of him had grown.
As he looked again over the surging crowd his tall figure seemed tostraighten, erect and buoyant, with the new dignity of conscioustriumphant leadership. He knew that he had come unto his own at last, andhis brain was teeming with dreams of mercy and healing.
The President resumed his seat, the tumult died away, and the play beganamid a low hum of whispered comment directed at the flag-draped box. Theactors struggled in vain to hold the attention of the audience, untilfinally Hawk, the actor playing Dundreary, determined to catch their ear,paused and said:
"Now, that reminds me of a little story, as Mr. Lincoln says----"
Instantly the crowd burst into a storm of applause, the President laughed,leaned over and spoke to his wife, and the electric connection was madebetween the stage, the box, and the people.
After this the play ran its smooth course, and the audience settled intoits accustomed humour of sympathetic attention.
In spite of the novelty of this, her first view of a theatre, thePresident fascinated Margaret. She watched the changing lights and shadowsof his sensitive face with untiring interest, and the wonder of his lifegrew upon her imagination. This man who was the idol of the North and yetto her so purely Southern, who had come out of the West and yet wasgreater than the West or the North, and yet always supremely human--thisman who sprang to his feet from the chair of State and bowed to asorrowing woman with the deference of a knight, every man's friend,good-natured, sensible, masterful and clear in intellect, strong, yetmodest, kind and gentle--yes, he was more interesting than all the dramaand romance of the stage!
He held her imagination in a spell. Elsie, divining her abstraction,looked toward the President's box and saw approaching it along the balconyaisle the figure of John Wilkes Booth.
"Look," she cried, touching Margaret's arm. "There's John Wilkes Booth,the actor! Isn't he handsome? They say he's in love with my chum, asenator's daughter whose father hates Mr. Lincoln with perfect fury."
"He is handsome," Margaret answered. "But I'd be afraid of him, with thatraven hair and eyes shining like something wild."
"They say he is wild and dissipated, yet half the silly girls in town arein love with him. He's as vain as a peacock."
Booth, accustomed to free access to the theatre, paused near the entranceto the box and looked deliberately over the great crowd, his magnetic faceflushed with deep emotion, while his fiery inspiring eyes glittered withexcitement.
Dressed in a suit of black broadcloth of faultless fit, from the crown ofhis head to the soles of his feet he was physically without blemish. Afigure of perfect symmetry and proportion, his dark eyes flashing, hismarble forehead crowned with curling black hair, agility and grace stampedon every line of his being--beyond a doubt he was the handsomest man inAmerica. A flutter of feminine excitement rippled the surface of the crowdin the balcony as his well-known figure caught the wandering eyes of thewomen.
He turned and entered the door leading to the President's box, andMargaret once more gave her attention to the stage.
Hawk, as Dundreary, was speaking his lines and looking directly at thePresident instead of at the audience:
"Society, eh? Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, oldwoman, you darned old sockdologing man trap!"
Margaret winced at the coarse words, but the galleries burst into shoutsof laughter that lingered in ripples and murmurs and the shuffling offeet.
The muffled crack of a pistol in the President's box hushed the laughterfor an instant.
No one realized what had happened, and when the assassin suddenly leapedfrom the box, with a blood-marked knife flashing in his right hand, caughthis foot in the flags and fell to his knees on the stage, many thought ita part of the programme, and a boy, leaning over the gallery rail,giggled. When Booth turned his face of statuesque beauty lit by eyesflashing with insane desperation and cried, "_Sic semper tyrannis_," theywere only confirmed in this impression.
A sudden, piercing scream from Mrs. Lincoln, quivering, soul harrowing!Leaning far out of the box, from ashen cheeks and lips leaped the piteouscry of appeal, her hand pointing to the retreating figure:
"The President is shot! He has killed the President!"
Every heart stood still for one awful moment. The brain refused to recordthe message--and then the storm burst!
A wild roar of helpless fury and despair! Men hurled themselves over thefootlights in vain pursuit of the assassin. Already the clatter of hishorse's feet could be heard in the distance. A surgeon threw himselfagainst the door of the box, but it had been barred within by the cunninghand. Another leaped on the stage, and the people lifted him up in theirarms and over the fatal railing.
Women began to faint, and strong men trampled down the weak in mad rushesfrom side to side.
The stage in a moment was a seething mass of crazed men, among them theactors and actresses in costumes and painted faces, their mortal terrorshining through the rouge. They passed water up to the box, and some triedto climb up and enter it.
The two hundred soldiers of the President's guard suddenly burst in, and,amid screams and groans of the weak and injured, stormed the house withfixed bayonets, cursing, yelling, and shouting at the top of theirvoices:
"Clear out! Clear out! You sons of hell!"
One of them suddenly bore down with fixed bayonet toward Phil.
Margaret shrank in terror close to his side and tremblingly held his arm.
Elsie sprang forward, her face aflame, her eyes flashing fire, her littlefigure tense, erect, and quivering with rage:
"How dare you, idiot, brute!"
The soldier, brought to his senses, saw Phil in full captain's uniformbefore him, and suddenly drew himself up, saluting. Phil ordered him toguard Margaret and Elsie for a moment, drew his sword, leaped between thecrazed soldiers and their victims and stopped their insane rush.
Within the box the great head lay in the surgeon's arms, the blood slowlydripping down, and the tiny death bubbles forming on the kindly lips. Theycarried him tenderly out, and another group bore after him the unconsciouswife. The people tore the seats from their fastenings and heaped them inpiles to make way for the precious burdens.
As Phil pressed forward with Margaret and Elsie through the open door camethe roar of the mob without, shouting its cries:
"The President is shot!"
"Seward is murdered!"
"Where is Grant?"
"Where is Stanton?"
"To arms! To arms!"
The peal of signal guns could now be heard, the roll of drums and thehurried tramp of soldiers' feet. They marched none too soon. The mob hadattacked the stockade holding ten thousand unarmed Confederate p
risoners.
At the corner of the block in which the theatre stood they seized a manwho looked like a Southerner and hung him to the lamp-post. Two heroicpolicemen fought their way to his side and rescued him.
If the temper of the people during the war had been convulsive, now it wasinsane--with one mad impulse and one thought--vengeance! Horror, anger,terror, uncertainty, each passion fanned the one animal instinct intofury.
Through this awful night, with the lights still gleaming as if to mock thecelebration of victory, the crowds swayed in impotent rage through thestreets, while the telegraph bore on the wings of lightning theawe-inspiring news. Men caught it from the wires, and stood in silentgroups weeping, and their wrath against the fallen South began to rise asthe moaning of the sea under a coming storm.
At dawn black clouds hung threatening on the eastern horizon. As the sunrose, tingeing them for a moment with scarlet and purple glory, AbrahamLincoln breathed his last.
Even grim Stanton, the iron-hearted, stood by his bedside and throughblinding tears exclaimed:
"Now he belongs to the ages!"
The deed was done. The wheel of things had moved. Vice-President Johnsontook the oath of office, and men hailed him Chief; but the seat of Empirehad moved from the White House to a little dark house on the Capitol hill,where dwelt an old club-footed man, alone, attended by a strange brownwoman of sinister animal beauty and the restless eyes of a leopardess.
