第84章 THE END OF THE ROAD(9)

"He has looked so tired for so long.He will have rest now, the deep rest of the people of God....He has died for us all....To-day nineteen hundred years ago the Son of Man gave His life for the world....The President has followed in his Master's steps."Sumner was repeating softly to himself, like a litany, that sentence from the second Inaugural--"With malice toward none, with charity for all."But Stanton was in no mood for words.He was looking at the figure on the bed, the great chest heaving with the laboured but regular breath, and living again the years of colleagueship and conflict.He had been Loyal to him: yes, thank God he had been loyal.He had quarrelled, thwarted, criticised, but he had never failed him in a crisis.He had held up his hands as Aaron and Hur held up the hands of Moses...

The Secretary for War was not in the habit of underrating his own talents and achievements.But in that moment they seemed less than nothing.

Humility shook him like a passion.Till his dying day his one boast must be that he had served that figure on the camp-bed.It had been his high fortune to have his lot cast in the vicinity of supreme genius.With awe he realised that he was looking upon the passing of the very great....

There had never been such a man.There could never be such an one again.So patient and enduring, so wise in all great matters, so potent to inspire a multitude, so secure in his own soul....Fools would chatter about his being a son of the people and his career a triumph of the average man.

Average! Great God, he was a ruler of princes, a master, a compeller of men....He could imagine what noble nonsense Sumner would talk....He looked with disfavor at the classic face of the Bostonian.

But Sumner for once seemed to share his feelings.He, too, was looking with reverent eyes towards the bed, and as he caught Stanton's gaze he whispered words which the Secretary for War did not condemn: "The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places."The night hours crawled on with an intolerable slowness.Some of the watchers sat, but Stanton remained rigid at the bed-foot.He had not been well of late and had been ordered a long rest by his doctor, but he was not conscious of fatigue.He would not have left his post for a king's ransom, for he felt himself communing with the dying, sharing the last stage in his journey as he had shared all the rough marches.His proud spirit found a certain solace in the abasement of its humbleness.

A little before six the morning light began to pale the lamps.The window showed a square of grey cloudy sky, and outside on the porch there was a drip of rain.The faces revealed by the cold dawn were as haggard and yellow as that of the dying man.Wafts of the outer air began to freshen the stuffiness of the little room.

The city was waking up.There came the sound of far-away carts and horses, and a boy in the lane behind the house began to whistle, and then to sing.

"When I was young," he sang--"When I was young I used to wait At Magea'n table 'n' hand de plate An' pais de bottie when he was dry, An' brush away de blue-tailed fly.""It's his song," Stanton said to himself, and with the air came a rush of strange feelings.He remembered a thousand things, which before had been only a background of which he had been scarcely conscious.The constant kindliness, the gentle healing sympathy, the homely humour which he once thought had irritated but which he now knew had soothed him....This man had been twined round the roots of every heart.All night he had been in an ecstasy of admiration, but now that was forgotten in a yearning love.

The President had been part of his being, closer to him than wife or child.

The boy sang--"But I can't forget, until I die Ole Massa an' de blue-tailed fly."Stanton's eyes filled with hot tears.He had not wept since his daughter died.

The breathing from the bed was growing faint.Suddenly the Surgeon-General held up his hand.He felt the heart and shook his head."Fetch your mother," he said to Robert Lincoln.The minister had dropped on his knees by the bedside and was praying.

"The President is dead," said the Surgeon-General, and at the words it seemed that every head in the room was bowed on the breast.

Stanton took a step forward with a strange appealing motion of the arms.It was noted by more than one that his pale face was transfigured.

"Yesterday he was America's," he cried."Our very own.Now he is all the world's....Now he belongs to the ages."

EPILOGUE