Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated)

by John Buchan

  He was sitting hunched up, with his chin in his hands, gazing into vacancy. Without surprise she recognised something in his face that was her own. He wore the kind of hunter’s clothes that old folk had worn in her childhood, and a long gun lay across his knees. His air was sombre and wistful, and yet with a kind of noble content in it. He had Abe’s puckered-up lips and Abe’s steady sad eyes... Into her memory came a verse of the Scriptures which had always fascinated her. “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims upon the earth “

  She saw it all in a flash of enlightenment. These seekers throughout the ages had been looking for something and had not found it. But Abe, her son, was to find it. That was why she had been shown those pictures.

  Once again she looked through the door into bright sunshine. It was a place that she knew beside the Ohio she remembered the tall poplar clump. She did not see the Jacksons’ farm which stood south of the trees, but there was the Indian graveyard, which as a little girl she had been afraid to pass. Now it seemed to be fresh made, for painted vermilion wands stood about the mounds. On one of them was a gold trinket, tied by a loop of hide, rattled in the wind. It was her ring. The seeker lay buried there with the talisman above him.

  She was awake now, oblivious of the swift sinking of her vital energy. She must have the ring, for it was the pledge of a great glory...

  A breathless little girl flung herself into the cabin. It was Sophy Hanks, one of the many nieces who squattered like ducks about the settlement.

  “Mammy!” she cried shrilly. “Mammy Linkorn!” She stammered with the excitement of the bearer of ill news. “Abe’s lost your ring in the crick. He took it for a sinker to his lines, for Indian Jake telled him a piece of gold would cotch the grit fish. And a grit fish has cotched it. Abe’s bin divn’ and divn’ and can’t find it nohow. He reckons it’s plumb Ain’t he a bad ‘un, Mammy Linkhorn?”

  It was some time before the dying woman understood. Then she began feebly to cry. For the moment her ring loomed large in her eyes: it was the earnest of the promise, and without it the promise might fail. She had not strength to speak or even to sob, and the tears trickled over her cheeks in dumb impotent misery.

  She was roused by the culprit Abe. He stood beside her with his wet hair streaked into a fringe along his brow. The skin of his neck glistened wet in the opening of his shirt. His cheeks too glistened, but not with the water of the creek. He was crying bitterly.

  He had no words of explanation or defence. His thick underlip stuck out and gave him the appeal of a penitent dog; the tears had furrowed paler channels down grimy cheeks; he was the very incarnation of uncouth misery.

  But his mother saw none of these things... On the instant he seemed to her transfigured. Something she saw in him of all the generations of pleading boys that had passed before her, something of the stern confidence of the man over whose grave the ring had fluttered. But more — far more. She was assured that the day of the seekers had passed and that the finder had come ... The young features were transformed into the lines of a man’s strength. The eyes dreamed but also commanded, the loose mouth had the gold of wisdom and the steel of resolution. The promise had not failed her... She had won everything from life, for she had given the world a master. Words seemed to speak themselves in her ear... “Bethink you of the blessedness. Every wife is like the Mother of God and has the hope of bearing a saviour of mankind.”

  She lay very still in her great joy. The boy in a fright sprang to her side, knocking over the stool with the pannikin of water. He knelt on the floor and hid his face in the bed-clothes. Her hand found his shaggy head.

  Her voice was very faint now, but he heard it.

  “Don’t cry, little Abe,” she said. “Don’t you worry about the ring, dearie. It ain’t needed no more.

  Half an hour later, when the cabin door was dim with twilight, the hand which the boy held grew cold.

  CHAPTER 14. THE END OF THE ROAD

  I

  When Edward M. Stanton was associated at Cincinnati in 1857 with Abraham Lincoln in the great McCormick Reaper patent suit, it was commonly assumed that this was the first time the two men had met. Such was Lincoln’s view, for his memory was apt to have blind patches in it. But in fact there had been a meeting fifteen years before, the recollection of which in Stanton’s mind had been so overlaid by the accumulations of a busy life that it did not awake till after the President’s death.

  In the early fall of 1842 Stanton had occasion to visit Illinois. He was then twenty-five years of age, and had already attained the position of leading lawyer in his native town of Steubenville in Ohio and acted as reporter of the Supreme Court of that State. He was a solemn reserved young man, with a square fleshy face and a strong ill-tempered jaw. His tight lips curved downwards at the corners and, combined with his bold eyes, gave him an air of peculiar shrewdness and purpose. He did not forget that he came of good professional stock — New England on one side and Virginia on the other — and that he was college-bred, unlike the common backwoods attorney. Also he was resolved on a great career, with the White House at the end of it, and was ready to compel all whom he met to admit the justice of his ambition The conscious of uncommon talent and a shining future gave him a self-possession rare in a young man, and a complacence not unlike arrogance. His dress suited his pretensions — the soft rich broadcloth which tailors called doeskin, and linen of a fineness rare outside the eastern cities. He was not popular in Ohio, but he was respected for his sharp tongue, subtle brain, and intractable honesty.

  His business finished, he had the task of filling up the evening, for he could not leave for home till the morrow. His host, Mr. George Curtin, was a little shy of his guest and longed profoundly to see the last of him. It was obvious that this alert lawyer regarded the Springfield folk as mossbacks — which might be well enough for St. Louis and Chicago, but was scarcely becoming in a man from Steubenville. Another kind of visitor he might have taken to a chicken-fight, but one glance at Stanton barred that solution. So he compromised on Speed’s store.

  “There’s one or two prominent citizens gathered there most nights,” he explained. “Like as not we’ll find Mr. Lincoln. I reckon you’ve heard of Abe Lincoln?”

  Mr. Stanton had not. He denied the imputation as if he were annoyed.

  “Well, we think a mighty lot of him round here. He’s Judge Logan’s law partner and considered one of the brightest in Illinois. He’s been returned to the State Legislature two or three times, and he’s a dandy on the stump. A hot Whig and none the worse of that, though I reckon them’s not your politics ... We’re kind of proud of him in Sangamon county. No, not a native. Rode into the town one day five years back from New Salem with all his belongings in a saddle-bag, and started business next morning in Joe Speed’s back room ... He’s good company, Abe, for you never heard a better man to tell a story. You’d die of laughing. Though I did hear he was a sad man just now along of being crossed in love, so I can’t promise you he’ll be up to his usual, if he’s at Speed’s to-night.”

  “I suppose the requirements for a western lawyer,” said Mr. Stanton acidly, “are a gift of buffoonery and a reputation for gallantry.” He was intensely bored, and had small desire to make the acquaintance of provincial celebrities.

  Mr. Curtin was offended, but could think of no suitable retort, and as they were close on Speed’s store he swallowed his wrath and led the way through alleys of piled merchandise to the big room where the stove was lighted.

  It was a chilly fall night and the fire was welcome. Half a dozen men sat smoking round it, with rummers of reeking toddy at their elbows. They were ordinary citizens of the place, and they talked of the last horse-races. As the new-comers entered they were appealing to a figure perched on a high barrel to decide some point in dispute.

  This figure climbed down from its perch, as they entered
, with a sort of awkward courtesy. It was a very tall man, thin almost to emaciation, with long arms and big hands and feet. He had a lean, powerful-looking head, marred by ugly projecting ears and made shapeless by a mass of untidy black hair. The brow was broad and fine, and the dark eyes set deep under it; the nose, too, was good, but the chin and mouth were too small for the proportions of the face. The mouth, indeed, was so curiously puckered, and the lower lip so thick and prominent, as to give something of a comic effect. The skin was yellow, but stretched so firm and hard on the cheek bones that the sallowness did not look unhealthy. The man wore an old suit of blue jeans and his pantaloons did not meet his coarse unblacked shoes by six inches. His scraggy throat was adorned with a black neckerchief like a boot-lace.

  “Abe,” said Mr. Curtin, “I would like to make you known to my friend Mr. Stanton of Ohio.”

  The queer face broke into a pleasant smile, and the long man held out his hand.

  “Glad to know you, Mr. Stanton,” he said, and then seemed to be stricken with shyness. His wandering eye caught sight of a new patent churn which had just been added to Mr. Speed’s stock. He took two steps to it and was presently deep in its mechanism. He turned it all ways, knelt beside it on the floor, took off the handle and examined it, while the rest of the company pressed Mr. Stanton to a seat by the fire.

  “I heard Abe was out at Rochester helping entertain Ex-President Van Buren,” said Mr. Curtin to the store-keeper.

  “I reckon he was,” said Speed. “He kept them roaring till morning. Judge Peck told me he allowed Mr. Van Buren would be stiff for a month with laughing at Abe’s tales. It’s curious that a man who don’t use tobacco or whisky should be such mighty good company.”

  “I wish Abe’d keep it up,” said another. “Most of the time now he goes about like a sick dog. What’s come to him, Joe?”

  Mr. Speed hushed his voice. “He’s got his own troubles... He’s a deep-feeling man, and can’t forget easily like you and me... But things is better with him, and I kind of hope to see him wed by Thanks. giving Day... Look at him with that churn. He’s that inquisitive he can’t keep his hands off no new thing.”

  But the long man had finished his inquiry and rejoined the group by the stove.

  “I thought you were a lawyer, Mr. Lincoln,” said Stanton, “but you seem to have the tastes of a mechanic.”

  The other grinned. “I’ve a fancy for any kind of instrument, for I was a surveyor in this county before I took to law.”

  “George Washington also was a surveyor.”

  “Also, but not likewise. I don’t consider I was much of a hand with the compass and chains.”

  “It is the fashion in Illinois, I gather, for the law to be the last in a series of many pursuits — the pool where the driftwood from many streams comes to rest.” Mr. Stanton spoke with the superior air of one who took his profession seriously and had been trained for it in the orthodox fashion.

  “It was so in my case. I’ve kept a post-office, and I’ve had a store, and I’ve had a tavern, and I kept them so darned bad that I’m still paying off the debts I made in them.” The long man made the confession with a comic simplicity.

  “There’s a deal to be said for the habit,” said Speed. “Having followed other trades teaches a lawyer something about human nature. I reckon Abe wouldn’t be the man he is if he had studied his books all his days.”

  “There is another side to that,” said Mr. Stanton and his precise accents and well-modulated voice seemed foreign in that homely place. “You are also a politician, Mr. Lincoln?”

  The other nodded. “Of a kind. I’m a strong Henry Clay man.”

  “Well, there I oppose you. I’m no Whig or lover of Whigs. But I’m a lover of the Constitution and the law of the country, and that Constitution and that country are approaching perilous times. There’s explosive stuff about which is going to endanger the stability of the noble heritage we have received from our fathers, and if that heritage is to be saved it can only be by those who hold fast to its eternal principles. This land can only be saved by its lawyers, sir. But they must be lawyers profoundly read in the history and philosophy of their profession, and no catchpenny advocates with a glib tongue and an elastic conscience. The true lawyer must approach his task with reverence and high preparation; for as his calling is the noblest of human activities, so it is the most exacting.”

  The Point-Device young man spoke with a touch of the schoolmaster, but his audience, who had an inborn passion for fine words, were impressed. Lincoln sat squatted on his heels on a bit of sacking, staring into the open door of the stove.

  “There’s truth in that,” he said slowly. His voice had not the mellow tones of the other’s, being inclined to shrillness, but it gave the impression of great power waiting on release somewhere in his massive chest. “But I reckon it’s only half the truth, for truth’s like a dollar-piece, it’s got two sides, and both are wanted to make it good currency. The law and the constitution are like a child’s pants. They’ve got to be made wider and longer as the child grows so as to fit him. If they’re kept too tight, he’ll burst them; and if you’re in a hurry and make them too big all at once, they’ll trip him up.”

  “Agreed,” said Stanton, “but the fashion and the fabric should be kept of the same good American pattern.”

  The long man ran a hand through his thatch of hair.

  “There’s only one fashion in pants — to make them comfortable. And some day that boy is going to grow so big you won’t be able to make the old ones do and he’ll have to get a new pair. If he’s living on a farm he’ll want the same kind of good working pants, but for all that they’ll have to be new made.”

  Stanton laughed with some irritation

  “I hate arguing in parables, for in the nature of things they can’t be exact. That’s a mistake you westerners make. The law must change in detail with changing conditions, but its principles cannot alter, and the respect for these principles is our only safeguard against relapse into savagery. Take slavery. There are fools in the east who would abolish it by act of Congress. For myself I do not love the system, but I love anarchy and injustice less, and if you abolish slavery you abolish also every-right of legal property, and that means chaos and barbarism. A free people such as ours cannot thus put the knife to their throat. If we were the serfs of a monarchy, accustomed to bow before the bidding of a king, it might be different, but a republic cannot do injustice to one section of its citizens without destroying itself.”

  Lincoln had not taken his eyes from the stove. He seemed to be seeing things in the fire, for he smiled to himself.

  “Well,” he drawled, “I reckon that some day we may have to find some sort of a king. The new pants have got to be made.”

  Mr. Stanton shrugged his shoulders, and the other, quick to detect annoyance, scrambled to his feet and stood looking down from his great height at his dapper antagonist. A kindly quizzical smile lit his homely face. “We’ll quit arguing, Mr. Stanton, for I admit I’m afraid of you. You’re some years younger than me, but I expect you would have me convinced on your side if we went on. And maybe I’d convince you too, and then we’d be like old Jim Fletcher at New Salem. You’ll have heard about Jim. He had a mighty quarrel with his neighbour about a hog, Jim alleging it was one of his lot and the neighbour claiming it for his. Well, they argued and argued, and the upshot was that Jim convinced the neighbour that the hog was Jim’s, and the neighbour convinced Jim that the hog was the neighbour’s, and neither of them would touch that hog, and they were worse friends than ever.”

  Mr. Curtin rose and apologised to his companion. He had to see a man about a buggy and must leave Mr. Stanton to find his way back alone.

  “Don’t worry, George,” said the long man. “I’m going round your way and I’ll see your friend home.” As Mr. Stanton professed himself ready for bed, the little party by the stove broke up. Lincoln fetched from a corner a dilapidated carpet-bag full of papers, and an old green umbrella, handl
e-less, tied with string about the middle, and having his name sewn inside in straggling letters cut out of white muslin. He and Stanton went out-of-doors into the raw autumn night.

  The town lay very quiet in a thin fog made luminous by a full moon. The long man walked with his feet turned a little inwards, accommodating his gait to the shorter stride of his companion. Mr. Stanton, having recovered from his momentary annoyance, was curious about this odd member of his own profession. Was it possible that in the whirligig of time a future could lie before one so uncouth and rustical? A democracy was an unaccountable thing, and these rude westerners might have to be reckoned with.

  “You are ambitious of a political career, Mr. Lincoln?” he asked.

  The other looked down with his shy crooked smile, and the Ohio lawyer suddenly realised that the man had his own attractiveness.

  “Why, no, sir. I shouldn’t like to say I was ambitious. I’ve no call to be, for the Almighty hasn’t blessed me with any special gifts. You’re different. It would be a shame to you if you didn’t look high, for you’re a young man with all the world before you. I’m getting middle-aged and I haven’t done anything to be proud of yet, and I reckon I won’t get the chance, and if I did I couldn’t take advantage of it. I’m pretty fond of the old country, and if she wants me, why, she’s only got to say so and I’ll do what she tells me. But I don’t see any clear road I want to travel... “

  He broke off suddenly, and Stanton, looking up at him, saw that his face had changed utterly. The patient humorous look had gone and it was like a tragic mask, drawn and strained with suffering. They were passing by a little town cemetery and, as if by some instinct, had halted.