The Essential Winston Churchill Collection. Winston Churchill
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"By Gosh!" he cried, "he baffles Steve. I didn't think Abe had it in him."
The Honorable Stephen A. Douglas, however, seemed anything but baffled as he rose to reply. As he waited for the cheers which greeted him to die out, his attitude was easy and indifferent, as a public man's should be. The question seemed not to trouble him in the least. But for Stephen Brice the Judge stood there stripped of the glamour that made him, even as Abraham Lincoln had stripped his doctrine of its paint and colors, and left it punily naked.
Standing up, the very person of the Little Giant was contradictory, as was the man himself. His height was insignificant. But he had the head and shoulders of a lion, and even the lion's roar. What at contrast the ring of his deep bass to the tentative falsetto of Mr. Lincoln's opening words. If Stephen expected the Judge to tremble, he was greatly disappointed. Mr. Douglas was far from dismay. As if to show the people how lightly he held his opponent's warnings, he made them gape by putting things down Mr. Lincoln's shirt-front and taking them out of his mouth: But it appeared to Stephen, listening with all his might, that the Judge was a trifle more on the defensive than his attitude might lead one to expect. Was he not among his own Northern Democrats at Freeport? And yet it seemed to give him a keen pleasure to call his hearers "Black Republicans." "Not black," came from the crowd again and again, and once a man: shouted, "Couldn't you modify it and call it brown?" "Not a whit!" cried the Judge, and dubbed them "Yankees," although himself a Vermonter by birth. He implied that most of these Black Republicans desired negro wives.
But quick,--to the Question, How was the Little Giant, artful in debate as he was, to get over that without offence to the great South? Very skillfully the judge disposed of the first of the interrogations. And then, save for the gusts of wind rustling the trees, the grove might have been empty of its thousands, such was the silence that fell. But tighter and tighter they pressed against the stand, until it trembled.
Oh, Judge, the time of all artful men will come at length. How were you to foresee a certain day under the White Dome of the Capitol? Had your sight been long, you would have paused before your answer. Had your sight been long, you would have seen this ugly Lincoln bareheaded before the Nation, and you are holding his hat. Judge Douglas, this act alone has redeemed your faults. It has given you a nobility of which we did not suspect you. At the end God gave you strength to be humble, and so you left the name of a patriot.
Judge, you thought there was a passage between Scylla and Charybdis which your craftiness might overcome.
"It matters not," you cried when you answered the Question, "it matters not which way the Supreme Court may hereafter decide as to the abstract question whether slavery may or may not go into a territory under the Constitution. The people have the lawful means to introduce or to exclude it as they please, for the reason that slavery cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere unless it is supported by local police regulations."
Judge Douglas, uneasy will you lie to-night, for you have uttered the Freeport Heresy.
It only remains to be told how Stephen Brice, coming to the Brewster House after the debate, found Mr. Lincoln. On his knee, in transports of delight, was a small boy, and Mr. Lincoln was serenely playing on the child's Jew's-harp. Standing beside him was a proud father who had dragged his son across two counties in a farm wagon, and who was to return on the morrow to enter this event in the family Bible. In a corner of the room were several impatient gentlemen of influence who wished to talk about the Question.
But when he saw Stephen, Mr. Lincoln looked up with a smile of welcome that is still, and ever will be, remembered and cherished.
"Tell Judge Whipple that I have attended to that little matter, Steve," he said.
"Why, Mr. Lincoln," he exclaimed, "you have had no time."
"I have taken the time," Mr. Lincoln replied, "and I think that I am well repaid. Steve," said he, "unless I'm mightily mistaken, you know a little more than you did yesterday."
"Yes, sir! I do," said Stephen.
"Come, Steve," said Mr. Lincoln, "be honest. Didn't you feel sorry for me last night?"
Stephen flushed scarlet.
"I never shall again, sir," he said.
The wonderful smile, so ready to come and go, flickered and went out. In its stead on the strange face was ineffable sadness,--the sadness of the world's tragedies, of Stephen stoned, of Christ crucified.
"Pray God that you may feel sorry for me again," he said.
Awed, the child on his lap was still. The politician had left the room. Mr. Lincoln had kept Stephen's hand in his own.
"I have hopes of you, Stephen," he said. "Do not forget me."
Stephen Brice never has. Why was it that he walked to the station with a heavy heart? It was a sense of the man he had left, who had been and was to be. This Lincoln of the black loam, who built his neighbor's cabin and hoed his neighbor's corn, who had been storekeeper and postmaster and flat-boatman. Who had followed a rough judge dealing a rough justice around a rough circuit; who had rolled a local bully in the dirt; rescued women from insult; tended the bedside of many a sick coward who feared the Judgment; told coarse stories on barrels by candlelight (but these are pure beside the vice of great cities); who addressed political mobs in the raw, swooping down from the stump and flinging embroilers east and west. This physician who was one day to tend the sickbed of the Nation in her agony; whose large hand was to be on her feeble pulse, and whose knowledge almost divine was to perform the miracle of her healing. So was it that, the Physician Himself performed His cures, and when work was done, died a martyr.
Abraham Lincoln died in His name
CHAPTER VI. GLENCOE
It was nearly noon when Stephen walked into the office the next day, dusty and travel-worn and perspiring. He had come straight from the ferry, without going home. And he had visions of a quiet dinner with Richter under the trees at the beer-garden, where he could talk about Abraham Lincoln. Had Richter ever heard of Lincoln?
But the young German met him at the top of the stair--and his face was more serious than usual, although he showed his magnificent teeth in a smile of welcome.
"You are a little behind your time, my friend," said he, "What has happened you?"
"Didn't the Judge get Mr. Lincoln's message?" asked Stephen, with anxiety.
The German shrugged his shoulders.
"Ah, I know not," he answered, "He has gone is Glencoe. The Judge is ill, Stephen. Doctor Polk says that he has worked all his life too hard. The Doctor and Colonel Carvel tried to get him to go to Glencoe. But he would not budge until Miss Carvel herself comes all the way from the country yesterday, and orders him. Ach!" exclaimed Richter, impulsively, "what wonderful women you have in America! I could lose my head when I think of Miss Carvel."
"Miss Carvel was here, you say?" Stephen repeated, in a tone of inquiry.
"Donner!" said Richter, disgusted, "you don't care."
Stephen laughed, in spite of himself.
"Why should I?" he answered. And becoming grave again, added: "Except on Judge Whipple's account. Have you heard from him to-day, Carl?"
"This morning one of Colonel Carvel's servants came for his letters. He must be feeling better. I--I pray that he is better," said Richter, his voice breaking. "He has been very good to me."
Stephen said nothing. But he had been conscious all at once of an affection for the Judge of which he had not suspected