Part 3

She must go out and appear at the receptions and teas planned by wives of officials, but with Christmas at hand now there would be a hiatus in festivities until after the New Year reception at the White House. There was that tiresome affair to plan for, then this Christmas party; it was all hard work and expensive too, and that aspect practical Mary Lincoln always considered seriously. She never saw an elaborate collation spread without secretly adding up in her mind how many bonnets, bracelets, and yards of silk could have been bought with the money.

The Christmas tree in the private sitting room upstairs had been set up and Tad put to work stringing popcorn and bits of bright metal for decorations. A corporal had brought in a sackful of scraps of brass discarded by a cartridge manufacturer and these Tad was tying to lengths of his mother’s red wool. He insisted on doing all this in his father’s office, stepped over by the endless streams of officials and callers, and Mary found him there, squatting behind Lincoln’s desk, surrounded by the litter of his festive preparations.

She entered as usual without knocking, made a brief stiff bow to Noah Brooks, the correspondent from the West Coast, and puckered her brows at the small woman with curling grayish hair and unfashionable bonnet who occupied the one comfortable chair in the room.

The President unlimbered his long legs and jumped up, as did Brooks.

“Come in, come in, my dear!” he greeted his wife. “You know Mr. Brooks—and Mary, this is Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, the little woman who wrote the book that started a big war.”

Mrs. Stowe held out a gloved hand. “I am happy to be privileged to meet Mrs. Lincoln.”

“I read your book, Ma’am.” Mary was gracious. “I cried over it, some parts—but part of it made me mad, too. My family owned slaves, Mrs. Stowe, but they never did beat them or set dogs on them—never!”

“One must emphasize the wrong sometimes, Mrs. Lincoln, to bring about what is right,” said Mrs. Stowe. “Undoubtedly your family were Christian people, and exceptional.”

“Mama!” wailed Tad. “You’re standing on my yarn!”

“I only came,” Mary was flustered, “to report to my husband that I have arranged Christmas gifts for his soldiers—as he requested,” she added.

“Sit here, Mrs. Lincoln,” Brooks offered his chair.

“No—no, you have business here. Happy to have met you, Ma’am. You must stay and have dinner with us.” Mary bowed again and hoped she had made a graceful exit as became a queen.

She wondered, as she went down the hall, why women with brains always looked a little frumpy. That dress—homemade, probably, and it didn’t fit anywhere! It was, she decided, safe to leave a woman of as few charms as Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe in the office, especially chaperoned by Noah Brooks. But Mary Lincoln knew well that if Mrs. Stowe had been young and pretty she herself would never have walked out of that office.

5

The boy who jumped out of the dark shadow of the bushes slapped his rifle hard, brought it to port sharply.

“Mr. President,” he gasped, “if I had been an assassin you’d be dead by now!”

Abraham Lincoln stopped, shifted his high hat. A few thin flakes of snow lay white against the silk.

“And what would you have been doing, Joe, while an assassin was making a corpse out of me?” he asked amiably.

“I’d have done the best I could to protect you, Mr. President, but it’s powerful dark out here,” stammered the flustered soldier.

“I knew you were here, Joe, or I wouldn’t be out here,” Lincoln said. “Cold out here. Have you got some warm gloves?”

“Can’t handle a gun with gloves, Mr. President. But I get relieved in an hour.”

Lincoln looked at the sky. “Some mean weather making up, I’m afraid. Bad for Christmas. You boys keeping warm in those tents?”

“Well, the way I figure, sir, we’re just as warm as those men of General Meade’s over across the river. And there ain’t nobody shooting at us, sir—I mean, Mr. President. The lieutenant ain’t going to like it, Mr. President, you walking out here alone. You want to walk, you need a couple of us boys along.”

“I make a good mark, don’t I, Joe? I sort of rear up on the skyline like a steeple. Good thing it’s too dark for them to spot me. I look at it this way. If the good Lord wants me to stay on this job He’ll look after me. God and Company K. You see Tad anywhere?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. President.” Joe stalked beside the tall figure, weapon alerted. “Tad’s down yonder to the corporal’s tent. He’s got his billy goat down there. Some of the boys fixed up an army cap for that goat and the corporal’s riveting a chin strap on it.” Joe trotted a little to keep up with the long stride of Lincoln.

“Better anchor it tight or the goat will eat his headgear,” remarked Lincoln. “Mrs. Lincoln sent Tad to bed so she could fix up his Christmas presents. Tad always sleeps with me but when I went to my room he wasn’t there, so I decided he’d slipped down here.”

“That goat sure means a lot to Tad, Mr. President. Tad treats him like he was folks. Nobody ever has found out what happened to the she-goat, sir. Last pass you give me I went all over that skinny town back yonder where the trash and niggers live but I never seen a sign of any goat—hide neither.”

“Tad misses his brother. Christmas will be a sad time for all of us, but we’ll try to make it happy for Tad.”

“Just about a year ago you lost your boy, wasn’t it, Mr. President?”

“Last February. Lung fever. He got wet and took a cold. Mrs. Lincoln hasn’t gotten over it at all. She idolized her sons. We lost another one, you know, in Springfield. Little Eddie. But we have company, Joe. A great sorrowful company of people who have lost their sons.”

Lincoln sighed heavily as he strode up to the lighted tent where a group of men hunkered down around Tad and his goat.

The corporal dropped his awl and leather and jumped up, eyes bulging.

“Attention!” he barked.

Every man sprang up to stand stiffly. Tad threw his arms around the goat, yelling desperately. “Help me hold him! He’ll get away.”

“At ease, boys,” Lincoln said “Grab that goat, some of you.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. President, sir,” gulped the corporal. “Get him, Bullitt. You, Joe—you’re on post!”

“Joe,” Lincoln said, “has been escorting me and protecting me from assassins, my orders. Very capably too. Tad, you’d better come along to bed. Tomorrow is Christmas and your brother will be here on an early train.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. President.” The corporal flicked a salute importantly. “Lieutenant detailed me and three of the boys to meet that train. We was just helping the boy here to pretty up his goat, sir, asking your pardon and meaning no offense.”

“No offense taken, Corporal. I appreciate your taking care of my boys.”

“Look, Papa,” shrilled Tad, “lookit Billy’s horns.” The animal’s rough pointed horns had been painted a bright scarlet and tipped with circles of brass. He shook them impatiently while Tad clung to his neck.

“Mighty pretty,” approved his father, “but you’re getting paint on your uniform jacket. Your mama will have something to say about that.”

“She’ll have a duck fit,” stated Tad disrespectfully; then his voice sank to a whimper. “Billy’s pretty but he’s not as pretty as a nanny goat, Papa. I want my nanny goat back.” He began to cry thinly, and the corporal looked anxious.

“I sure wish we could get his nanny goat back, Mr. President. That paint will dry by morning, sir. We’ll tie Billy out where he can’t rub it off on anything. You, Bullitt and Gibson, escort the President and young Mr. Lincoln back to the house, and lemme see them rifles first. Half the time,” he explained unhappily, “they ain’t got no load ready and a man might as well carry a broomstick. All right. About face, March!”

Tad clung to his father’s hand and Lincoln felt his palm sticky with undried paint. Behind them the goat blatted forlornly.

“He wants me,” mourned Tad. “I feed him biscuits and all the boys have got is hardtack.”

“Maybe we can find some biscuits,” suggested Lincoln. “Mr. Bullitt and Mr. Gibson can carry them back to him. Come along in, boys, and report back to your corporal that I’m much obliged for everything.”

He had never set foot in the White House kitchen. Now Abraham Lincoln walked timidly there as though he were an intruder who might be ordered out indignantly at any moment.

The long room, still odorous with baking bread and roasting meat, was warm, the huge ranges clinking as they cooled, water dripping from the spout of a pump. The cooks’ white aprons and caps hung from pegs on the wall and one long table was covered with trays spread over with white cloths. Lincoln lifted a corner of a covering. Beneath was a great array of small colored cakes obviously baked for the Christmas party.

“Have one, boys.” He took a pink dainty himself and bit into it. “Pretty good.”

Tad wolfed down two and the privates nervously accepted one each.

“Wonder where they keep the biscuits?” Tad began to explore.

“You ought to know,” said his father. “You snoop everywhere.”

Tad scurried about, opening ovens and cupboards, lifting lids of boxes and the great copper pots.

“Bread,” he uncovered a stack of loaves, “but no biscuits.”

“Your billy will eat bread, sir,” suggested Private Bullitt. “He eats hardtack. He’ll eat anything, Mr. President. He ate Sergeant Whipple’s box from home. Had a cake in it. Et box and all, sir.”

“Well have to see to it that Sergeant Whipple gets another cake.” Lincoln took down a long knife from a rack on the wall and whacked off the end of a loaf of fresh bread. “Good bread.” He tasted a crumb. “Go good if we had some jam to put on it.”

“There’s jampots up there, Papa.” Tad pointed to a high shelf.

“So there are.” Lincoln reached a long arm, slit the paper that covered the top of a jar, dipped in a knife. “Blackberry.” He sliced off a hunk of bread, spread it thickly with jam, handed it to Private Bullitt. “Have some, boys.” He spread another slice for Gibson and one for Tad and himself. Perched on the edge of a table he ate, wiped his beard and fingers on a handy towel, passed the towel around. “Some drizzled on your jacket, Tad. Wipe it off. Now, I reckon somebody will get blamed for this piece of larceny, so I’d better take care of that.”

The cooks’ pad and pencil lay on a shelf and Lincoln tore off a sheet and wrote rapidly: _All provisions missing from this kitchen requisitioned by order of the undersigned. A. Lincoln._

“That will fix it. You boys take this bread back to that billy goat and tell your sergeant I’ll see that he’s recompensed for his lost cake,” he said. “Now Tad, you come along to bed.”

The wreaths of greenery were in place in the hall and up the stairs, and in the East Room a tall spruce tree awaited the lighting of the candles. Festival! And out there on the cold ground boys like Robert, boys like Tad would soon grow to be, kept warm in flimsy tents with little fires, slept on straw with blankets far too thin, and there were men he knew in the field, in grim military prisons, who likely had no blankets at all.

The great bed in his room with its huge, soft bolster and tufted counterpane, its enormous headboard shutting off drafts and elaborately carved and scrolled, suddenly wore the aspect of sinful luxury. He would gladly have taken a blanket and gone out to join his men, but he knew sadly that that would not do. He had known the ground for a bed many times—in the Black Hawk War and on expeditions into the wilds—but now he was growing old and he had to uphold the dignity of high office.

He pulled off Tad’s clothes, buttoned him into a long nightshirt, and tucked him into the big bed. Almost instantly the boy was asleep. Lincoln was struggling with his own boots when the door opened and Mary came in, buttoned into a vast blue wrapper, a ruffled cap on her head.

“Forevermore!” she exclaimed. “Where have you been? I looked for you to help me with the Christmas things and couldn’t find a hair of you or Tad either. Has that child been out in this cold wind?”

“We were having a little Christmas party with some of the boys, Mary. Tad’s all right. Don’t start scolding tonight; it’s already Christmas morning now.”

“You know how delicate he is. It will be just like Willie all over again and I can’t bear any more sorrow, Abraham. I’ll lose my mind if I have another grief to live through,” she cried.

“Tad’s tough, Mama. Not frail like Willie. We were in the kitchen anyway,” he evaded. “It was warm down there.”

“You didn’t eat up my cakes?” she demanded. “I had trouble enough getting them baked. The cook says the blockade is to blame for making sugar so scarce and high. They ought to know we have to have sugar. There’s no coconut either, nor nutmegs nor cinnamon.”

“It’s war, Mary. Some good people haven’t even got bread,” he reminded her.

She began to whimper, perching on the edge of the bed.

“Maybe I won’t need any cakes for my party. I’ve had at least a dozen regrets already. An invitation from the wife of the President should be like a command from the queen,” she declared, grimly. “I’m saving all those insulting notes and I think the people who wrote them should be properly dealt with.”

Lincoln sighed as he hung up his coat and untied his lumpy satin cravat. The starched collar rasped his neck. He was glad to be rid of it. “Don’t you cry now for Christmas, Mary,” he pleaded. “We have to keep things happy for the boys. Bob will be here in the morning.”

She dried her eyes on the ruffle of her sleeve. “I can’t help remembering that I’ve lost my son.”

“You’re one of a vast company, Mary. If all the tears that will be shed by bereaved mothers tomorrow were drained into one river we could float a gunboat on it. If only I could see a way so there would be no more—no more killing, no more graves, no more sorrowing women!” he cried, desolately.

It was a cry of anguish and Mary Lincoln felt a surge of terrible compassion for this gaunt, lonely man who was her love. She put her arms around him, standing on tiptoe, her cheek pressing the buttons of his shirt.

“You didn’t make this war. You’re doing all any man could do to end it!” she cried. “We could have ignored the country—we could have stayed in Springfield where nobody hated us. Here they all hate us. The ones who come to our party tomorrow will smirk and fawn to our faces and then sneer at our backs.”

“Not all, Mary. There are plenty of good folks, loyal folks, who believe I’m doing right. Plenty of people we can call our friends. A sight of them voted for me, remember.”

“They want something!” she argued. “Every last one of them wants something. That General Grant is even being puffed up to run against you for president next year. Even the Illinois newspapers are for him.”

“Well, he might make a good president,” admitted Lincoln, “though no soldier ever has made a good president since George Washington. And if I’m beat, we can always go home to Springfield.”

“Slink home like beaten dogs!” she exclaimed, her mercurial mood shifting again. “Well, we’ll not do it. They’re not going to get us down, Abraham Lincoln! Democrats nor Black Republicans either. And they’d better show up at my party if they want any more favors from you!”

“You tear up those regrets, Mary,” he said soberly. “Tear up every single one of ’em. And forget the names of the people who wrote them. That,” he added very solemnly, “is an order from the President.”

6

Robert Todd Lincoln was a young man trying sincerely not to be a snob, not to be blasé or obviously aware that his father was President of the United States. A medium tall, erect lad, Robert’s dark hair was sleeked down over a head rounded like his mother’s, but his long arms and still growing legs and feet he had from his father.

That long-tailed coat with braided collar was too old for Bob, Abraham Lincoln was thinking. So was his manner too old, a boyish kind of gravity that obviously he strove to keep from being condescending. His mother fluttered about him adoringly as they sat at the family breakfast table. She was continually straightening his cravat, feeling his brow anxiously, smoothing his hair. Lincoln, shrewdly sensitive, could see that his older son was a trifle annoyed by his mother’s solicitous attentions.

“Bob hasn’t got a fever, Mama,” he interposed cheerfully. “He’s the healthiest human being I’ve seen in a long time. Why don’t we all go and see what Tad got for Christmas?” He pushed back his chair.

“Robert must get some sleep,” argued his mother. “He says he didn’t get a wink on that train.”

“The cars were cold and smelly and they were jammed with soldiers, all of them cold and miserable,” stated Robert. “Most of them coming South to join Pope’s army and all sulky because they had to be away from home for Christmas. One chap sat with me—couldn’t have been any older than I am and he had been home to Rhode Island to bury his wife. They all talked and they were plenty bitter against the bounty boys—those fellows who bought their way out of the draft for three hundred dollars.”

“That was a compromise and an evil one, I fear,” said his father. “Everything about war is evil. You can only contrive and pray for ways to make it a little less evil.”

Robert stood up. His face was very white. “Pa—and Mama—I told lies coming down on that train. I told them I was coming home to enlist. I’ve got to get into the Army—I’ve got to! Those men on that train, they were dirty and shabby and some hadn’t shaved or washed in a long time, and most of them were rough and some ignorant but every one of them was a better man than I was! I could feel them looking at me—with contempt at first. It was in every man’s mind that I was a bounty boy. A shirker. Hiding behind a screen of cash! I was thankful nobody knew my name.”

“You could have told them your name,” insisted his mother. “You could have made them respect you as the son of the President.”

“No, Mary—no, no!” protested Lincoln. “Bob couldn’t do that.”

“I don’t know why not? Certainly your family are entitled to respect, Abraham Lincoln!”

“You don’t understand, Mama,” said Robert unhappily. “I was thankful I’d been able to duck away from those soldiers Mr. Stanton had detailed in New York. I didn’t want to be Robert Lincoln. I wanted to be nobody. Then when I got off here in Washington, there was that escort! Troops to guard me, as though I were a crown prince or something. A coward of a prince!”

“No, no!” Mary upset her cup in her agitation. “I still say you must finish your education. You must graduate from Harvard. You’ll be much more valuable to the country as an educated man than just another private in the army. Even if your father gave you a commission—”

“I don’t want a commission. Not if it has to be given to me,” Robert cried. “I’d deserve all the contempt I saw in some of those men’s faces if I took a commission I hadn’t earned.”

Lincoln’s face relaxed in a slow smile. There were times when his older son troubled him, but now a quiet pride warmed his spirit. But his heart sank again when he saw the stony set of Mary’s mouth, the flush that always heated her face when she was angry and determined to carry her point. She would not change. Her attitude was the same as that with which she had faced down General Sickles and Senator Harris not too long ago. They had inquired, coldly, why Robert was not in the service. The boy should, declared the General, have been in uniform long since. Mary had talked them down then, firmly, just as she would talk down all Robert’s arguments now. But it was a joy to Lincoln that Robert did have pride and perhaps a mind of his own.

Mary’s eyes were already glittering behind their pale lashes. Now the shine was exasperation but in a moment, after her fashion, it would melt into tears. Robert’s chin was jutting and his hands trembled on the back of his chair. Lincoln interposed quickly trying to ease the tension, gain a postponement of a crisis.

“Let’s talk this over later,” he suggested. “Let’s not spoil Christmas morning with an argument. Did Tad eat any breakfast, Mama?”

“No, he didn’t.” Mary got her control back with a gusty breath. “He wouldn’t even take time to drink his milk. He took it with him and likely he’s upset the glass all over the carpet by this time.”

“Well, let’s go and see what he found under the Christmas tree.”

Robert followed them, silently, up the stairs to the sitting room, strewn now with paper wrappings and a confusion of toys. Tad was standing in the middle of the floor buckling on a wide military belt trimmed with metal. Hanging from it was a small sword. Tad worked awkwardly because his hands were lost in great white gauntlet gloves that reached almost to his elbows.

“From Mr. Stanton,” he grinned, patting the belt. “I thought he didn’t like me. I thought he didn’t like boys.”

“He likes being Secretary of War,” said Robert dryly. He reached for a small package. “This is for you, Mama. The man said these things were real jade from China.”

Mary took the parcel eagerly, kissed Robert, undid the wrapping, exclaimed over the necklace, pin, and earbobs.

“Oh, Bob, they’re so pretty! I can wear them with my green taffeta.”

She was a child for trinkets, Lincoln was thinking indulgently. He was glad that he had given her the big white muff. She would love carrying it to parties and on their carriage drives, nestling her two little round chins into the delicate fur. He thanked Robert for a pair of gold cuff links and there was laughter when they discovered that his gift to Robert had been an almost identical pair.

“At least,” said Robert, “I shall have the distinction of imitating the President of the United States.”

“Well, they’ll fasten your shirt sleeves anyway,” drawled Lincoln. “That’s all a man can ask of them.”

Tad strutted around the room flourishing his sword. He gulped the last of his milk hastily at his mother’s command, put on his uniform cap, and swished a shine on the toes of his boots with his cuff.

“Now I have to show these to the boys,” he announced.

“But son,” protested his mother, “aren’t you going to play with all your pretty toys? Look—this little cannon. It shoots!”

“Yeh—shoots a cork!” Tad dismissed the weapon indifferently, “A ole Rebel would sure laugh if you shot him with that. Papa, I want a real gun. One with bullets in it.”

“My Heaven, Tad, you’re too little to have a gun,” declared Mary.

“If I had a gun I could ride with Papa and perteck him,” argued Tad. “Then nobody would dare shoot holes in his hat.”

Lincoln caught the startled look on Mary’s face, got his son hastily by the elbow. “Come along, Tad. Go show off your finery. And I’ve got work to do.” He hustled the boy down the hall. “Who told you somebody shot a hole in my hat?” he demanded, when they were out of earshot.

Tad grinned. “Oh, I get information,” he said blandly, “but if I had been along with a good ole gun nobody would have dared do it.”

“Don’t mention it again in front of your mother, you hear?” Lincoln seldom spoke sharply to the boy and Tad looked scared briefly.

“No, sir—no, sir, I won’t,” he stammered, his palate tripping him again.

“Mind now! And get along with you!” His father gave him a little shove, as he entered the office door.

Even on a holiday he was not free from intrusion, of being faced with the woeful problems of the people. A lad of about seventeen, in the faded uniform of a private, was standing, twisting thin hands together, his face scared and anxious.

“Sit down, son,” ordered Lincoln, closing the door. “How did you get in here and what did you want to see me about?”

The boy dropped on the edge of a chair, twisted his legs about each other nervously.

“Nobody let me in, sir,” he stammered. “I just told the man downstairs that I had to see the President and he searched me, and I didn’t have no gun or nothing so he told me to come on up here and wait. And what I wanted to see you about, Mr. President—I want to be a captain.”