When she was rested she said: "Did you ever think how swiftly thought travels? We sit here together and our bodies do not move, yet we go to the river and the mill; we go to the woodland and the bluff. I have thought about it and I believe that souls can travel as quickly and as easily as mind—for souls have lain aside the weight of the earthly body, you know. Do you think souls can travel this way?"
"I don't know, Ann."
"I believe it," she said firmly. "Our souls can travel. And so my soul will always go wherever you are. If you are in Vandalia, or Springfield, my soul will be there. If you should get as far away as Chicago, even there my soul will be with you, and though you cannot see my face or hear my voice, you will know.
"Sometime there will come to your heart joylike the wild, glad, singing joy of my life when I could run and shout. It will be then that the singing, shouting soul of Ann Rutledge is quite near, helping you rejoice. Sometimes when you are tired and weak and the way is dark, you will feel new strength bearing you up. It will be the soul of Ann Rutledge, strong and free trying to help you out of the gloom. And when you feel the force of that strange power that makes you different from all other men—that makes you tenderer and stronger—when you feel something pushing you on to greater things as the wild phlox is pushed through the sod into the sun-shine, it knows not how, the soul of Ann Rutledge will be as close as your own breath to whisper her unshaken faith in your effort. Then there will be quiet times, perhaps lonely times, when apart from all the world you will feel a gentle tugging at your heart. It will be the soul of Ann Rutledge saying 'I do not want to be forgotten.' ... And when you get old, dear, dear Abraham, when your eyes are too dim to see other faces than those of the long-gone past, you will hear her voice who has been sleeping under the grass for fifty years—the voice of Ann Rutledge calling you on—the unforgetting loveof Ann Rutledge as strong and fresh as when she shouted on the heights and gave herself to you."
She had been speaking slowly, softly, yet with deep feeling as if half to herself. She was not looking at the man beside her, whose bronzed face had undergone a transformation.
"Ann—Ann," he cried, "for God's sake what are you talkin' about?" and he bent and looked into her face.
"Dear, dear Abraham," she said soothingly, and she held her lips in a close pressure against his forehead, his cheeks, his eyes.
"I did not want to tell you we are going to part. It seemed I could not. And yet—yet—Oh, Abraham!—I am so tired—so tired, and the heart of me beats weaker every day."
He put her back on the pillow and threw himself down beside her. She put her arms about his neck, drew his head against her breast, wiped the tears which were streaming down his brown cheeks and tried to comfort him as a mother comforts a child.
A few moments he sobbed. Then he arose and straightened himself to his full height.
"Ann," he said, "it's all a mistake. I believe there is a God. If there is and He has any heart in Him, He will spare me this. I have had nothin' but you—I ask nothin' but you. I have never loved any woman but you, and I never shall, for none can take your place. If you should be taken away I will never live long enough to get over the loss. God knows this. He is not cruel. He will not let it be so—He will not, Ann!"
He sat down on the edge of the bed and put his arm around her.
"Help me up again," she whispered, and she rested her head on his shoulder. She had been dry-eyed and had spoken with a steady voice. Now there was a sob in her voice and her eyes were blurred with tears as she said: "Put your arms around me—your big, long, strong arms—and hold me tight—tight. Oh, Abraham! if you could only hold me tight enough to keep me here with you! I do not want to be bad, but I do not want to go and leave you—no, not even to be with God! Oh, Abraham! will you pray that I may stay with you—will you?"
"Pray? Pray?" he groaned in pain. "I will pray every minute. I will pray while I walk with my rod and chains, crossin' the fields,skirtin' the woods, walkin' the streets, everywhere I will pray."
Ann coughed and Lincoln put her down. He smoothed the coverlet and brushed back her red-gold hair. Then again he straightened up to his full stature.
"Ann, we've both been frightened. Your cough is better—it is looser. I am sure of it. Isn't it, Ann?"
There was an appeal in his tone and face.
Ann smiled—a bright, sweet smile. To Lincoln it was full of hope. "Nothing hurts me," she answered.
Her smile was reassuring. Something of the anxiety went out of his face. "Yes, you are better. If I were not sure of it I would not leave this house. When I come again you will be still better. God is not going to have it otherwise. I have never done Him any harm."
"Dear, dear Abraham—how I love you. How I shall always love you—here or over there. For though my body is weak, that part of me which loves is strong and well—very strong, and it loves you, my Abraham. It will be yours, and will be with you longer than the mind of man can measure—for I know now that love is stronger than death."
CHAPTER XXXII
THE UNFINISHED SONG
Duringthe month of August, 1835, an epidemic, called by different names, one of which was black ague, visited the country about New Salem.
Dr. Allen was busy riding night and day, and Abe Lincoln, who himself had suffered one chill and was taking peruvian bark to prevent a second one, went with him whenever he could get the time, to nurse the sick and sometimes help make a coffin and bury the dead.
Through Dr. Allen, Abe heard from Ann, the good doctor's information always being that Ann was about the same, and believing her better her big lover went to others who seemed to need him.
Then Davy was stricken down and Abe Lincoln made his plans to go out to the Rutledge farm and stay as long as needed to nurse him. His visit was hastened by news that Ann had had a chill, and he knew, though Dr. Allen's words were few, that he was alarmed. "She must not have another," the good doctor said. "She is too frail to stand it."
With a heart almost stopped by fear Lincoln reached the farm. His greeting by Mrs. Rutledge and her smiling face reassured him.
"Ann is better, Abe," she said gladly. "She had a terrible chill last night and for a time we were frightened half to death, but she will not have another. She really is better. She is going to mend now. Her fever is dropping off and she does not cough so much. She feels like herself and has been singing. She wants you, Abe," and good Mrs. Rutledge laughed.
As he entered the room Abe Lincoln found Ann propped up in pillows and singing. He almost expected to see her active young form come bounding to meet him. Instead, she held out her hand and with a face wreathed in smiles said: "Dear Abraham, God has answered your prayers, I am going to get well."
"Thank God! Thank God!" he exclaimed fervently. Then he stopped, stood back and looked at her a moment. "Oh, Ann, you look just like an angel!"
"What do you know about angels? Anyway, I'm not going to be an angel. I'm going to stay here to bake your bread and darn your socks and make you eat!"
Dr. Allen had come in shortly after Abe Lincoln and was in the other room standing with Mrs. Rutledge by Davy's bedside. When Mrs. Rutledge heard the happy laughter coming from Abe and Ann she looked at Dr. Allen and said with tears of joy in her eyes, "How good it is to hear Ann laughing again."
Dr. Allen glanced at her questioningly. He said nothing.
Ann was talking again of the beautiful days that were past on which her mind seemed continually to dwell.
"Do you know, Abraham, I cannot tell you how I know it, but I believe I have loved you from the first time I ever saw you, and when you asked me at the mill if you might love me I was almost sorry you did not ask me then if I loved you—only I knew you would not think it right until we sent that letter which was never answered.
"But the night that stands out best of all is the night we covered the coals, for that is when I first felt your good, strong arms about me and your kisses on my lips—and all over my face. And the very best day of all the days was when you put the ring on my finger. Abraham, let'slive it over again, that night and that day. I cannot stand with you before the fire now, nor have I been to the table for several weeks. But we can play it, can't we?"
"Yes, indeed—make a Shakespeare play with two scenes. One scene will be by the open fire—one will be the Thanksgivin'."
"And we will be lovers."
"I never intend to be anything else."
"All right, begin. Say it over—just what you did the night by the fire."
Very tenderly and with all the meaning of his soul he said the words her heart was hungry to hear again, and he kissed her.
With a radiant face she reached under the pillow and took out the little gold ring.
"Here's the ring. It won't stay on now. But put it on just as you did, and say the same words. I was so proud and so happy I thought my heart would burst, and my thanksgiving to God was very real."
His face was sober now. He took the ring and the thin, white hand, and, repeating the words that had made her so happy, he slipped the ring over her finger as he kissed her again and again. Then he lifted her hand and kissed it.
"You are getting to be a better lover all the time," she said. "Hold out your hand." She put the tips of her fingers in the palm of his hand and the ring dropped from her thin finger. "Keep it for me a little while. Don't let anyone get it and don't lose it. Now shall I sing for you?"
"Yes, Ann—no music this side of heaven will ever be so sweet to me as your singin'."
"Dear old goose," she laughed. "Then hand me my hymn-book."
She turned the pages slowly. "I have sung all the old ones and found some nice new ones. Here is a new song—a happy song:
What a mercy is this!What a heaven of bliss!How unspeakably happy am I,Gathered into the fold—"
The song was interrupted by a slight cough which ended in a choking spell. She rested a moment.
"Do you like it, Abraham?"
"Yes, but that's not my song."
"You want the pilgrim song?"
"Yes, my little pilgrim, that is mine. Can you sing it?"
"Yes, indeed, and I want to":
I'm a pilgrim and I'm a stranger;I can tarry, I can tarry but a night!
Her voice was clear and steady. There was the same triumphant ring, the same quaver and lengthening of certain syllables. But the strong buoyancy had given place to something suggestive of an echo song, and it seemed to the listening lever that the message came from some more distant heights than the bluff.
"That's the sample," she announced. "If it sounds all right I'll begin again and sing through from the first—sing it all. But Abraham, put the big shawl, that's on the foot of the bed, up here handy."
"Are you cold, Ann?"
"No, not yet—but I feel—feel strange."
He put the shawl beside her.
"It's handy now. I'll sing."
Again she sang the lines "I'm a pilgrim—I'm a stranger——" She was singing slower now. When she came to the words "I can tarry," she stopped a moment. "The shawl, Abraham, wrap it about me tightly."
"Let me call your mother," he said as he wrapped the shawl about her.
"Not just yet—not until I finish my song. I will hurry. 'I can tarry—I can tarry——'"
Again the song was interrupted by a struggle for breath, and she seemed to be swallowing something.
"Put your arms around me—I want to finish." Her voice wavered. She shivered. Then came the words quite clearly, but sounding very far away, "'Do—not—detain—me——'"
Again there was a slight struggle for breath, and her head fell against his breast.
"Ann! Ann! What's the matter, Ann?"
She did not answer.
He put his hand under her chin and turned her face toward him. A film was forming over the half-closed violet eyes.
"Ann! My God! Ann!" The words were wrung from him now in fear and agony.
Warm and close she lay in his arms like a little child—but she was silent.
He placed her on the pillow and called to her again. He wrapped his fingers about her wrist. He put his ear against her breast, half groaning, half calling: "Ann! Ann!"
It was still in the room. He arose from the bedside and slightly raising his face, which was drawn and ashy gray, he called: "Ann! Ann!"
Again the silence.
Then with such a groan as voices the agony ofthe human soul, he whispered hoarsely: "My God—why hast Thou forsaken me!"
A moment later, Mrs. Rutledge and Dr. Allen who were standing beside Davy's bedside heard someone step into the doorway.
They looked around. There in the open way that made a rude frame they saw a picture of unutterable sorrow. Deep as the still foundations of the finest soul, the hurt had struck. Like some monarch of a timber-line twisted by titanic force, so he seemed to have been ruthlessly stormbeaten out of semblance to his former self. The little lines that had traced their way on a young man's face seemed suddenly to have grown deep as by long erosion, and he was as pallid as a dead child.
He seemed to be making an effort to speak. The muscles of his face twitched. No sound came from his lips, but they framed the word: "Ann!"
"Abraham, what is it?" Mrs. Rutledge cried in alarm.
Dr. Allen ran to Ann's bedside, Mrs. Rutledge following. The man in the doorway waited until he heard a mother crying: "No—no, she is notdead!"
Then he was gone.
CHAPTER XXXIII
"WHERE IS ABE LINCOLN?"
Newsof the death of Ann Rutledge spread quickly, even Snoutful Kelly taking the news to Muddy Point, and though there was much sickness in the vicinity a large number gathered around the open grave where her young body was to be put away. Even Clary Grove, with a constitutional dislike for funerals, was well represented, and Ole Bar, who had made his boast that he had never been to a "berrying" in his life, stood back behind the trees, holding tight a flower which he had picked to put on the grave.
Most of those present came from a genuine love of Abe and Ann. Some came to see how the strongest man and greatest lover in Sangamon County would take his bitter loss.
These were disappointed. Standing as he did, head and shoulders above any other man in the community, it would have been unnecessary to look for the chief mourner. And yet every eye around the grave searched for Abe Lincoln.
While the preacher was trying to give words of hope and consolation to the bereaved ones it was quiet in the place of graves except for subdued sobs. But when the singers began the old, plaint hymn.
Asleep in Jesus, blessed sleep,From which none ever wakes to weep,
sobs broke out everywhere, for the melody carried to the saddened hearts about the open grave more than the words of the preacher had done, the pain-filled consciousness that the voice of the gladdest, sweetest singer of them all was hushed forever.
After the simple burial rites were over, Nance Cameron, Miss Rogers and others brought armfuls of early goldenrod and asters which they had gathered, to cover the low mound of the best-loved girl in New Salem.
It was not until the company had gone that Ole Bar came out of the woods, and, kneeling by the grave, put his lone flower over the place where under the earth her hands were folded.
From the dead, interest turned to the living, and the one question asked by his friends was: "Where is Abe Lincoln?" Dr. Allen asked Mrs. Rutledge. She did not know and asked John Rutledge. He did not know. William Green was asked and Mentor Graham. Nobody knew anything about Lincoln.
Early the morning after the day of the funeral, Katy Kelly looked out and saw a man coming.
"Ma," she called, "there's an old man comin' to our place."
Visitors being almost unheard of out there, Mrs. Kelly looked out. For a moment she seemed puzzled. The man was somewhat stooped and walking slowly. It was none other than Abraham Lincoln.
"Howdy, Mrs. Kelly," he said wearily. "I was passing by and thought I'd stop a minute."
Mrs. Kelly hastened into her one room and cleared off the only chair in the house.
"Ma," whispered Katy, not knowing she had ever seen him before, "What's ailin' of that old man?"
"Shut up," her mother whispered. "His gal's dead, and he's not got over it yet." Then to Lincoln she said: "You look nigh starved, Mr. Linking. We hain't much, but if you was to refuse I'd feel powerful hurt."
"But I'm not hungry at all—I couldn't eat. I've been over about Concord and just stopped to get a drink of water."
"We've got a cow since Kelly got broke upfrom dram drinkin'. You'll take a cup of milk, I'm sure."
He drank the milk, thanked her and went on. She watched him until he disappeared behind the trees. "He's a awful-sized man to take it to heart so. Don't he know there's as good fish in the sea as has ever been caught?"
The second night that Abe Lincoln was missing a few of his close friends held a council at Dr. Allen's house. William Green was there and Mentor Graham. Dr. Allen had been telling them that Lincoln himself had not been well for several weeks. The suggestion that he might have, in a moment of despair, ended his life was not reasonable to those who knew him. Neither was Dr. Allen of the opinion that the shock would impair his reason.
"Lincoln is large in all ways. He has a great mind and a great heart. He has been a great lover—the greatest lover that ever lived in these parts. Just now he is numbed by the shock of his loss as one is numbed by a great blow. He is somewhere alone in his grief—no telling where. But unless he has food and medical attention, he too may follow Ann shortly. We must find him."
While they were discussing his whereabouts,Lincoln was, as Dr. Allen had supposed, alone with his grief.
After a night by the grave of his dead, Abe Lincoln set out at twilight of the second day to visit the places where she who seemed yet living had lived.
Turning his face toward New Salem he made his way slowly along the well-known roadway to the place where he had dropped his bundle and listened on a never-to-be-forgotten night to a sweet voice singing on the heights. Then he had been a friendly stranger in New Salem. How fast the years had gone. What long and patient waiting and what fulness of joy had been their measure. But now the cup was bitter to the brim with the stupefying potion of dead hope and the gall of human loss.
In the shadow of the bluff he paused. He moved nearer the bluff, raised his face and, with a feverish expectancy, listened. As he stood the drowsy stillness was broken by the far, faint tinkle of a cow-bell. For a moment the mirage of hope set his heart beating with spasmodic joy. It was all a fearful dream—all a heart crushing unreality. She was yet up on the heights, alive, glad, singing and shouting. He listened, evenstraining his ear for the first notes of her glad, free song.
As if she were not yet beyond sound of his voice he called: "Ann! Ann!" Again he listened intently.
The gray of twilight deepened. The dim music of the far-away bell dissolved itself in a pervading hush, and all was still.
In a voice suggesting the pain of a fresh blow, the man in the shadow whispered with upturned face, "Ann! Ann!" The whisper, too, was gathered into the all-enveloping gloom and silence.
He went a little farther on, the soft music of water running over stones came to his ear. It was the stream in the schoolroom where ferns had been books and God had been the teacher.
Mechanically he turned toward it. The swollen stream across which he had carried Ann on a night not so long ago was smaller now. He stepped across.
The gray of the open road deepened in the fern-dell into gloom. But no light was needed to bring to the vision of the man the picture of one he yet sought in the land of the living. Again he saw her with the sun-shine falling over the red-gold tresses of her wreath-bound hair as she sat on the ledge of rock. Again he heard her voice but he was too numb now to remember its message.
Groping his way to the stone, he knelt beside it and spread his hands over the place where she had sat. His fingers came in contact with dead leaves. Feeling along the way they lay he found the wreath, yet there, that had been a crown on May day. Lifting it gently he cried: "Oh, Ann! Ann! It cannot be. You have not gone away forever! You will come back to me! We will have our little home! Oh, Ann! Ann!" His pleading voice ended in a groan. He dropped his face against the faded leaves.
How long he remained by the rock and the wreath he did not know. After a time, like a crushed and wounded animal, he crept from the place and proceeded on his way toward the village.
He walked slowly a few minutes, then, as if drawn by some pleasant fancy, he quickened his pace. The rear of the mill-dam had caught his ear. He was going to the mill. Here was a place that she had said seemed sacred to her, and he was glad when the dark outlines of the mill stoodout against the growing shadows. The double doors stood open, just as they had before. He went into the building and out on the platform over the river, just as he had before. The foam of the falling water shone white in the pale light, just as it had before. The trees cast their shadows and the stars their bright reflections, just as before. He leaned against the doorway as he had done once before when in great gloom, then he waited for the one to come who had brought the light.
Several times he turned toward the door as if expecting to see the fair-faced girl emerging from the dusky gray and coming toward him. In a sort of numb expectancy he waited. Once he reached out his long arm as if to encircle some near object, but there were only shadows in the dark.
After a time he took the little ring from his pocket. He moved near the edge of the platform. He lifted the frail, little token of eternal love to his lips and held it there a moment. Then he reached his long arm out over the foaming water and with a groan let the ring fall into the depths of the smoothly flowing Sangamon.
As if loath to leave the place he turned backfrom the doorway and, leaning against the wall, looked out into the darkness. Shortly after he had done so, someone touched him gently on the arm. With a great start he cried: "Ann! Ann!"
A small figure drew back slightly and a voice said: "I've been lookin' fer you, Abry Linkhorn. You're worse than a bee to run down."
The man hesitated a second, then he held out his hand and said, "Howdy, partner. What did you want with me?"
"I've been numerous in bar hunts as you've heard tell, but I haven't never gone to no berryin', so help me God, but the berryin' of your Ann. And I wouldn't have gone for no one else's 'ceptin' it was you."
"I wish it had been," the man said.
"Maybe so, but since I was thar and you wasn't thar and I heard something that made me pestiferous glad I went, I thought you would like to hear about it."
"You are kind to think of me. What could have made you feel glad?"
"It made me feel glad to learn that God's not—not a damn fool."
"How did you learn this?"
"From the berryin' itself. The parson read out of a book that when this here meat body changes into the other kind like Ann Rutledge has, then death is swallered up in victory. Don't this sound like God's got horse-sense?"
"I don't know anything about God." And there was bitterness in the answer.
"Yeh, you do. You know nothin' but God could make a gal like your Ann Rutledge. And if God's not a blame fool he made her for something more than the little time she's spent in this here New Salem. I'm not promiscuous enough to tell it like the parson, but I'm tellin' you, Abry Linkhorn, that when I set by that grave and put my flower over the place where her hands was berried and said what I didn't never have words to say when she was here about thankin' her for remembering poor Ole Bar, Iknowshe heard it. She didn't say nothin', but I seen her smile and I know—I know—curse it, I can't tell what I know. But Ann Rutledge ain't blowed out like no candle. I know this. And I am glad. And I'm glad, too, Abry Linkhorn, that she wasn't none of my gal. If you'd seen John Rutledge standin' beside that grave you'd been glad she wasn't no flesh and blood of yourn.I never knew before that grizzle-tops like him, that's men, and not chipper-perkers, liked gals so well. He didn't make no noise like her mother did, but it's still water that runs deep and he'll have the heart-bleeds for many a changin' moon."
"Poor Rutledge," Lincoln said brokenly. "I must go to see him."
"Yep, and there's others you ought to go to see, and you can't get started none too quick. The whole kit and posse of 'em's' about to start searchin' fer you; Clary Grove to boot. Any reason why you should make your friends beat the bushes when walking's good and you ain't no cripple?"
It was this appeal that turned the steps of Lincoln to the home of Dr. Allen as he and William Green yet sat discussing him.
As Ole Bar and Abe Lincoln passed Rutledge Inn, the latter looked across the street. A light burned in the window of the room where Ann's little sewing-table had been.
The tall man hesitated and moved on.
CHAPTER XXXIV
FOR THE THINGS THAT ARE TO BE
WhileDr. Allen and William Green were yet discussing the strange disappearance of Abe Lincoln, the door opened and he stood before them.
They turned toward him and beheld what seemed a wreckage, wrought by hunger and longing, unrest and the sorrow of a loss which could never be made good. In his face were lines already too deeply cut for Time's erasure.
No word was spoken. The two men seemed awed by the majesty of his silence and strangely moved by his dumb sorrow, and, strong men though they were, tears wet their cheeks.
"Doc," Lincoln said, "how long will this last—for I cannot, cannot bear to think of—of——"
His voice grew unsteady. He did not finish the sentence; instead he said, "Is there any honorable way I can finish it all?"
"You do not want to finish it. You want to live your life."
"I have lived my life."
The voice seemed far away as if from someancestral tomb. "I have lived my life. I found it here in New Salem—and I will leave it here."
"No, no. You will feel differently after awhile. You will want to live for the things that are to be."
"For the things that are to be? What can a man do when that which alone could make life worth living is taken from it forever?"
"There are other incentives to life than love. There is ambition with its measure of fame, and service with the pleasure of duty," Dr. Allen said.
"Ambition—fame," Lincoln repeated wearily. "What is fame but a bauble—a passin' bauble."
"But think what you may live to do for humanity in some way or another. You have made a good beginning—you have put in the foundation, Lincoln. You might be Governor of Illinois some day. Think then what you might accomplish for liberty—for freedom and justice."
"My interest in these things is dead. Everything is dead."
"No, not dead, only numb. Great pain brings numbness, but Time heals the deepest cuts. The edges stay tender, the old wounds bleed andthe scars remain. But in spite of all, the numbness and the pain give way in time to the healing forces of nature."
Lincoln dropped his head wearily on the table. He was ill, tired, hungry, suffering from loss of sleep—all this with the other.
Dr. Allen looked helplessly at Green and wiped his eyes again.
"Abe"—it was Green speaking. "Can't you pull yourself together for a little while—at least until you get Jim Henry's note paid? Tom Dickson from up near Springfield says they're having hard luck. He was over their way and found Jim's wife and baby sick and him about to lose his place. Just a little along now and then will save the day. He was talking about your note, said you would pay every cent of it. On the strength of this they were given more time. This here's a plain duty and a man's job, Abe."
Lincoln raised himself and looked at Green. "Jim Henry's dependin' on me and they've given him more time because my note is good?"
"That's it. And when his wife was down a few months ago and went to see Ann Rutledge, Ann told her you would pay every cent of it if it was the last act of your life."
"I suppose this is one of the things that are to be," he said, addressing Dr. Allen.
"No doubt. And with the days that follow new duties and new opportunities will unfold. 'God moves in a mysterious way,' the hymn book tells us, 'His wonders to perform.' We don't know how or why, but back of it all He moves, and He needs strong men, men not afraid, men who cannot be bought or sold to stand for the interests of the people and the rights of those helpless ones who are always the prey of the powerful and unscrupulous."
"Perhaps you are right," he answered. "I'll not neglect a duty."
Thus it was that the man who did not care to stay in the world to be a governor chose life with all its losses in order to pay an honest debt.
Then William Green delivered a message from "Baby Green" which was a pressing invitation to Abe Lincoln to visit her for the very unselfish reason that the door had mashed her toe and she needed a great, tall horse to ride her.
So Abe Lincoln went home with William Green, where he was fed and looked after by the motherly Aunt Sally Green and where he was in turn expected to look after "Baby Green." Herechildren came to romp with him, books and papers were sent, and occasionally several of the old friends from New Salem came out to tell him the political gossip.
Aunt Sally found something for him to do every night, for she did not want him wandering away to Ann's grave. He made no effort to do so, however, and after a few weeks' rest he returned to New Salem to take up his life as best he could, and day by day live on for the things that were to be.
CHAPTER XXXV
THE POEM
The Clary Grovegang were going to have an important meeting. It had been rumored that Windy Batts, who went as a missionary to the Indians, had lost his head. The general satisfaction with which this news had been received by the Clary Grove gang, singly, indicated that it would prove a pleasant topic for discussion, and nobody was likely to disagree with Ole Bar when he said: "Them pizen shooting injuns has riz to a tall and mighty pre-eminence in my mind if they cut off that fire and brimstone croaker's rattle box."
Kit Parsons was expected to divulge a plan for giving the angels another job. He had been desperately sick during the summer, and while lying at death's door a local religious enemy had said the gates of hell would soon shut Kit in where he had ought to have been before he was born. Kit said he had pulled through to fan the face off of this profane wretch with brick-bats. The details of the plans expected to prove interesting.
A great horse-swapping horse-story was alsoexpected, provided Buck Thompson reached New Salem that night. He had been up the Ohio River and it was told by a man that passed through Sangamon County that Buck had traded a Yankee out of a horse and got fairly good boot; that he took the horse, fed it some filler, painted its ears, trimmed its tail and dyed it, put a few dapples on its hide and traded it back to the same Yankee for yet more boot.
The group was about the fire when Buck came. He had been away some weeks, and before the story-telling started he wanted to hear something of town affairs.
"Lots of sickness," Kit Parsons said.
"Yeh?" Buck questioned.
"Yes—Grandpa Johnson's dead and Clem Herndon's boy and Ann Rutledge."
Buck was interested now.
"Ann Rutledge dead? No!"
"Yeh—she's dead."
"Abe's gal."
"Dead and buried out near Concord."
"Poor old Abe. Take it hard, did he?"
"Nobody knows. He ain't saying nothin'."
"They say he went crazy for a time," Kit Parsons remarked.
"They lie," said Ole Bar. "Abry Linkhorn hain't never gone nowhere near crazy at no time."
"Maybe he didn't go clear crazy, but Doc Allen said he was hit hard and wasn't likely to git over it no time soon."
"I bet a bottle against a bottle he's over it now," said Buck Thompson. "Who'll take it up? Will you, Jack Armstrong?"
"If it was somebody like you are I would. You get petticoat-fever every change of the moon, take it like spring pimples that's always goin' and comin'. But some take it like the smallpox and don't never get over the scars. Abe Lincoln's the kind that will wear the scars."
"Bars is the same," Ole Bar ventured. "Most bars is done with their women folks after matin' season. Once in a lifetime you find a pair of bars stickin' together. Nobody but their maker knows what they do it fur. It's the same with men, and Abry Linkhorn, he picked him out one worth stickin' to.
"Yeh—nobody blames him for gettin' sweet on Ann Rutledge. But poke up the fire and let's get jolly or this dead talk will stir up the spooks."
While they were piling up the fire and stacking up the bottles, someone looked down the road and saw a tall, slightly bent figure approaching in the darkness.
"Boys, he's comin'," Kit Parsons announced.
"Who—who's coming?"
"Abe Lincoln—or his ghost."
"Thunder—I hope he's not crazy. I kin manage Yankees and niggers—but crazy ones—ugh!" and Thompson shrugged his shoulders.
"Pull in your sorgum-sucker," Ole Bar said shortly, "and don't none of you get nothin' started about his gal."
"That's it," said Jack Armstrong. "If he hain't forgot about her let's help him do it. Let's give him a howlin' good time."
Then they grew silent, for he was approaching and they wondered. They had not seen him since Ann's death.
The fresh flames were throwing fitful lights up into the overhanging brown branches and over the faces of the group, when Lincoln came into the circle of light and, extending his hand here and there, said: "Howdy, boys, howdy."
Something like a sigh of relief passed around the group. He didn't seem crazy.
He dropped himself in the circle of light. Then for the time they saw his face the effect of which was to bring a respectful silence over the noisy group.
The wind rustled slightly and a couple of brown leaves floated down to the fireside. The gray face looked up a moment. Another leaf was falling. They all watched it.
"Boys," said Lincoln in a voice they did not know, "the leaves are fallin' early."
"Yeh—droppin' early this year."
Again there was a pause. Then he said, "I haven't been with you in a long time."
"Not in a coon's age—and we're glad to have you, Abe."
"I'm glad to be here. I felt as if it would do me good to see you all. And I've brought a poem I want to read if you don't care."
"Is it jolly?"
"Yeh—something damn jolly is what we want."
"No," said Lincoln slowly, "it is not jolly. It's the other kind. But this is my favorite of all poems. May I read it to you?"
"Go to it, Abry Linkhorn," Ole Bar said.
Abe Lincoln took a book from his pocket, opened it and laid it on his knee.
He read as if asking them the question:
O why should the spirit of mortal be proud?Like a swift, fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud;A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,Man passes from life to his rest in the grave.
There was a slight pause. Every man's eye was on the gray face bending over the book in the flickering light.
When he began reading the next verse he lifted his eyes from the pages and looked away, farther away than the circle of brown-branched trees. There was, to the men, a suggestion in his tone of an approach to something strange, perhaps forbidding.
The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,Be scattered abroad and together be laid.
He paused a moment. Involuntarily several glances were cast toward the leaves lying by the legs at their feet.
He went on:
And the young and the old, the low and the high,Shall moulder to dust and together shall lie.
It was very quiet.
The peasant whose lot is to sow and to reap,The herdsman who climbs with his goats up the steep,The beggar who wandered in search of his bread,Have faded away like the grass that we tread.
There was much more than the words in the reading.
The group about the fire saw the peasant, saw the herdsman. They saw the saint who enjoyed the communion of heaven and the sinner who dared to remain unforgiven. There in the quiet of the night beside the ashes and the flames, he was making all these live—and go their short way.
So the multitude goes—like the flowers or the weeds
So the multitude comes, even these we behold,To repeat every tale that has ever been told
Kit Parsons punched the fire. Buck Thompson reached for a bottle and drew his hand back empty.
We are the same that our fathers have been,
We drink the same stream and view the same sunAnd run the same course that our fathers have run.
Pausing again, as if a line of thought ran in between the verses, he looked away from the book. The next verse was about the mother and child—each, all are away to their dwelling of rest.
He seemed now hesitating whether or not to proceed. The men watched him without comment. His gray face was marked with a freshbaptism of pain which he seemed to be struggling to put away.
With unsteady voice he read.
The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye,Show beauty and pleasure—
Here there was a long pause. Ole Bar got up and went out. Kit Parsons poked the fire. Buck Thompson took to spitting. But no man spoke as the voice by the fire pronounced the words "her triumphs—are by," and even the fire seemed to burn softly.
For a moment he glanced about the group—a helpless glance of appeal to those strong men. Buck Thompson was drawing his sleeves across his eye, evidently to remove some foreign matter. Jack Armstrong was pinching his red bandanna down under his leg. Another chunk was pitched into the fire.
It was a relief when he went on again to the "Hand of the king that the scepter hath borne," and the "brow of the priest that the miter hath worn." They seemed to see the king and the priest and they felt the force of the words as he read:
From the death we are shrinking, our fathers would shrink.To the lives we are clinging our fathers would cling.But it speeds from us all—like—a—bird—on—the—wing.
He measured the words off slowly. He was not looking at the book. Perhaps he saw fleet birds winging their way beyond his vision. His listeners divined something of the kind.
He had reached another hard place. He picked up the book and looked at it and replaced it on his knee. Again he was speaking nearer or farther than those just about him.
They loved—but the story we cannot unfold....They joyed, but the tongue of their gladness is dumb.
"Jo," he said, handing the book to Kelsy, "you know the poem. Finish it for the boys."
Kelsy finished it. But they did not hear him. The poem to them mattered little. The man who had read it meant much.
"What's the name of that there poem?" Buck Thompson asked.
"Immortality."
"Immortality—that means that this here vale of tears is not all that's comin' to us?"
"That's it. We are only here a little while at best. Any good thing therefore that we can do, let's do it. We won't come back this way, you know."
Here Ole Bar returned. They all looked at him inquiringly.
"What you lookin' at?" he growled. "Nothin' the matter with that poem. But my fool nose she runs like the devil at first frost fall and leaves ain't much good fur shuttin' her off when'a poem's goin' on."
His explanation was accepted.
Lincoln was speaking again. "You've been good friends to have, and I want to say, because I won't always be about these parts, that if any of you ever get in need of a friend and Abe Lincoln can help him out, call on him. And I want to say to you that I've lived the best time of my life right here in New Salem—the happiest—and—well, I'll see you again—good-bye, boys." And the tall man slightly bent, and moving as if aged, left the group around the fire.
There was silence about the fire for a full minute.
"Poor Old Abe," said Buck.
"I'd a give my right arm to have kept this here thing from happenin'," said Armstrong.
"Do you fellows recollect," Kit Parsons said, "the man that was through here preaching two years ago—the feller that preached one night about the 'Man of Sorrows?' Recollect how the women bawled? Looked like they couldn't suppress themselves nor get hold of enough dry-goods to sop up their flowin' tears. It's just now soakin' into my head the reason of it all."
"Well, what was it?"
"That feller made 'emseethe man."
Here was thought for reflection.
A moment later Buck Thompson took up a bottle, threw back his head and raised it to his lips, saying as he did so, "I'm glad he didn't say nothin' about Ann Rutledge."
"Ann Rutledge!" exclaimed Ole Bar. "Idiot! Fool! He didn't mentionnothin' else."
CHAPTER XXXVI
ON THE WAY
It wasan October afternoon.
The first frosts had fallen, and where, a few short days before, the goldenrod had shed its autumn glory, it now stood sere and earth-bent. The late asters had lost their color and the wind-blown tendrils of summer vines were but stiff spirals, clinging to the sumacs like skeletons of their former graceful selves.
In the Concord burying-plot all was gray and brown and restful. From the forest of oak and hickory on the one side the leaves had fallen, and lay cradled about the grave and strewn over the grassy slope that led to the little stream where willows held out their slender arms, nude, save for here and there a pale and trembling leaf.
A haze hung over the distant fields which seemed to permeate the near-by woods, giving a tint of filmy softness even to the shadows gathering between the somber tree trunks.
There seemed no living thing about when a man, himself tall and somber as the trees through which he walked, came to the place of graves,and going to one of them fell beside it crying: "Ann! Ann!"
A moment he knelt, speaking the name before he threw himself full-length with his face upon the sod. Whether he were praying there or weeping or struggling for the grace of resignation, none might know, for no sound came from his lips.
It was not until the sun had dropped behind the tree-top that he arose. Yet a little time he tarried. Then he went into the edge of the wood and stood with his sad, gray eyes turned to the little mound of earth. As the shadows lengthened, reaching out from the forest toward the grave as if to gather it in, they seemed to bind him in also with the elemental things about him, things rugged, resigned, patient and eternal.
A passing breeze stirred the dead leaves into music like the plaint murmur of some long-forgotten sea, and back in the dusk a lone bird piped, sending onto the stillness a message from the vague and shoreless bounds of some eternal place.
"Out of the depths fresh strength; out of the dark, new light; and even in the gloom we are on the way."
The somber man in the gathering shadows lifted his eyes from the low mound to a cloud-bank rimmed with silver. The mask of sorrow seemed suddenly to have softened. A faint smile lit his face as he said reverently, "Soul of Ann Rutledge—yes, Ibelieve."
A bird darted out of the shadows and disappeared in the gray and fading sky.
The man turned and started on his way, like the lone bird, he knew not whither.