CHAPTER XXXIV

THE MAN AT WASHINGTON

Dad sat in the late September sunlight at the door of the hospital tent where for ten days he had lain. Slowly, but very surely, the old, wiry strength was beginning to creep back to the lean body.

No longer did the slightest sudden motion or an effort to concentrate his thoughts set his head to aching blindly, and no longer did his knees buckle under him when he tried to cross the tent from bed to door.

Dad was well out of danger, the surgeons said. Nothing but a few more days of rest was needed to bring him back to health.

An injury to the head is always dangerous, but it has this redeeming quality--it does not long keep its victim in suspense. It kills, crazes, or gets entirely well in an unbelievably short time. The issue is settled, one way or another, in far less time than in the case of an equally severe wound in any other part of the anatomy.

The campaign was over.

The Confederate army, back in its lair, was licking the grievous wounds sustained in the Antietam fight. The Army of the Potomac, nearly thirteen thousand of its soldiers dead from that same fight, was resting on its doubtful laurels.

Here and there skirmish parties or small detachments of the rival forces were in motion, but between the main bodies of both armies brooded the truce of exhaustion.

The Federals that summer and early fall had invaded Virginia, and after a series of fearful defeats had been driven out. Lee in September had invaded the North, and had met with like fate.

The season was too far advanced for any more extensive operations, and a lull came.

Almost directly after Antietam’s battle President Lincoln had electrified the world by issuing the so-called “Provisional Proclamation,” declaring in effect that slavery within the limits of the United States was forever dead, and that every negro in America was henceforth a human being, not a piece of transferable property.

Three months later the more formal “Emancipation Proclamation” was to follow. But its forerunner, the provisional proclamation, quite as effectively struck the slavery shackles from a million wrists.

Lincoln had kept his solemn vow--the vow to free the slaves should the tide of invasion be turned.

All these bits of news as they reached camp were faithfully transmitted to Dad by that most zealous of nurses and entertainers, Battle Jimmie.

The old man listened in wondering gratitude as he realized the boundless fruitage of the finding of “Order 191.”

To Dad the whole thing was a miracle, and most miraculous of all to him was the praise showered on his embarrassed self by his fellow officers.

“I feel like a blackleg, Jimmie,” he confided to his grandson on this his first day of removal from the tent’s interior to the sunshine outside its doorway. “I feel like the original man who stole the original other fellow’s thunder. Here folks keep coming to the tent and shaking hands with me and telling me what a big thing I did in getting that paper to Little Mac and what it’s meant to the country and all.

“And I don’t know which way to look. Anybody’d think I’d ridden up to General Hill and grabbed him by the throat and held him helpless in the presence of all his overawed men while I went through his pockets for the order, instead of our just happening by a miracle of chance to find it lying on the ground. Why, _anyone_ might have happened to pick it up. It’s no credit.”

“That’s right,” bravely agreed Jimmie, scratching Emp’s rough head as the multi-breed dog trotted back from a round of the cook-tents and lay down with a little grunt of repletion at his master’s feet. “That’s right. Anyone _might_ have found it, but ‘anyone’ didn’t. And if most folks had they wouldn’t ’a’ caught the point of it or known what to do with it. And it’s dead sure they wouldn’t ’a’ thought to send it in a rush to Little Mac at the minute a man’s fingers were trying for their throat.

“Oh, I guess there’s one or two worse impostors than you, Dad.”

The old man’s tired eyes suddenly grew bright with happy expectancy. Jimmie without turning to look divined the cause.

“I can see fine out of the back of my head,” announced the boy. “For instance, I can see the mail-courier coming down this row right now with the hospital post-bag under his arm.”

He twisted his head as he spoke, and pointed in triumph at the approaching post-bag bearer.

“See!” he exclaimed. “What did I tell you? Sometimes it just fairly scares me to think how clever I’m getting to be. Lay back and rest. I’ll jump over to the office tent, and I’ll bring you her letter the second it tumbles out of the bag.”

He was off at a dead run.

Dad looked after him with the feeble impatience of the convalescent. Mrs. Sessions’ letters had been the event of each day to him. Not until Dad had recovered consciousness had Jimmie written to the little lady that his grandfather was wounded.

A line from a staff surgeon, written at Jimmie’s plea, accompanied the letter, vouching for Dad’s recovery.

The little lady, unable to leave her post at Washington, had done her best to atone for her absence by long daily letters--letters as spicily, sweetly old-fashioned as a garden of cinnamon roses and lavender--letters containing learned exhortation as to the care the patient must take of his precious self; throbbing with egregious pride at the wounded man’s valor; seeking to entertain him by lively accounts of the daily happenings in Washington.

Small wonder that helpless old Dad looked forward to these daily epistles as a parched throat to cool drink.

Presently--or, as it seemed to Dad, after about two and a half centuries--Jimmie came back at the double.

“I’m sorry,” began the boy ruefully, “but--”

The change in his grandfather’s face made him cry out in hot contrition:

“Aw, I was fooling, Dad! I just wanted to have a joke with you like we used to. I’m a chump! Here it is--a dandy fat letter, too.”

Dad seized the letter, laughing perfunctorily to show Jimmie he appreciated the jest that had constricted his heartstrings and throat. The boy tactfully withdrew to a little distance and proceeded to engage Emp in a thrilling game of “wrassle the bear,” Emp reluctantly enacting the ursine rôle.

Dad opened the envelope with the luxurious slowness of one who seeks to drag out a pleasure to its utmost bounds. He smoothed wide the crinkly sheets with their fine, quaint handwriting, and began to read.

This letter began neither with admonitions to carefulness nor with eager queries as to his health. In fact, it could scarce be said to “begin” at all. It started off in the very middle of the writer’s burst of excitement.

Dad read:

Something _wonderful’s_ happened. It’s got me so stirred up I don’t know which end of it to begin to tell first, and my hand’s all jumpy. Listen, Jim:

This morning, as I was coming on duty at the hospital, I could tell the minute I got into the big outer hall something was up. Everybody was hurrying around, all flustered and het up, but all looking pleased as Punch. And the orderly at the door told me President Lincoln was making an inspection of the wards.

I was crazy to see him; and I’d heard how he goes from bed to bed, talking to the sick soldiers just like they were his babies. So I started at a trot for the nearest ward, hoping I’d get one glimpse of him.

And as I was starting to scuttle up the main stairway, what should I do but run into a party of folks that was coming down from the wards. Some of the doctors and officers were with them.

And I pretty near collided, bang slap, with the gentleman who was coming down the stairs a step or two in front of the rest.

I stopped and said: “Excuse me, sir. I wasn’t looking.” And then I _did_ look.

I looked up to where I thought his face would just naturally be. And I’m blest if it wasn’t only his chest instead. I kept looking up--up--up--till my neck near got a crick in it.

And at last I saw his face.

He looked about nine feet, thirteen inches high, and as thin as a rail. And his black clothes and his high pot-hat made him look a lot higher and thinner. But it wasn’t his figure I found I was gawping at. It was his face.

Oh, Jim, such a face! Ugly, I suppose, and whiskered, and full of gullies and ridges.

But it’s the strongest, wisest, kindest, wonderfulest face the Lord ever made. And the great big gray eyes looked as if they were holding the work and the bothers and the sorrows--and the fun, too--of the whole eternal universe.

Yes, you’ve guessed who it was. Mr. Lincoln. No less.

I just stood there, all flabbergasted; staring and courtsying. And he kept looking down at me with the sweetest, friendliest smile you ever saw.

“Excuse me, sir,” I says again.

“That’s all right, little woman,” he answers, in that deep, gentle voice of his. “The nurse deserves the right of way nowadays; even over the President. She earns it.”

Just then, as I was moving aside (and longing, too, to thank him for being such a wonderful man) the superintendent steps up to him and says:

“Mr. President, this is Nurse Sessions you were asking about. Would you care to speak to her now? My office is here to the right. You won’t be disturbed there.”

Well, Jim, I could have gone through the floor, right then and there. I couldn’t believe my ears were telling me the truth. What could Mr. Lincoln have to say to me? And how could I have been away when he asked for me?

I just stood trembling and looking foolish.

And then Mr. Lincoln was smiling and holding out his hand--I wanted to kiss it!--and saying:

“Mrs. Sessions, one of the reasons I came here this morning was for a little chat with you. Shall we step in here?”

And I followed him into the superintendent’s office and he set a chair for me, just like I was a queen, and as if he was working for our folks.

We sat down. And here’s what he said, as close as I can remember. And I guess I’m not liable to have forgotten the words:

“Mrs. Sessions,” he began, “there is a very talkative little boy up in the Army of the Potomac. And it seems that after Antietam General Hooker sent for that little boy to ask him some questions about a wounded officer that General Hooker takes considerable interest in. And the boy, under Hooker’s questions, blabbed about that officer’s being engaged to marry a very lovely and dear little woman. General Hooker wrote to me about it. So I wanted a word or two with that little woman--about _him_.”

Think of that, Jim! Just _think_ of it. I made up my mind, that minute, I’d go to the hospital ear specialist right off and get him to find out why I’d taken to hearing things that couldn’t possibly have been said to me.

But Mr. Lincoln went on, more serious:

“Mrs. Sessions, I know Major Dadd’s story. All of it. He’s the kind of man I think I’d like to be friends with. Do you think he’d feel like meeting me?”

“Oh, Mr. President!” I sputtered.

I couldn’t say another word.

“Because,” he goes on, his mouth-corners twisting up in a smile. “I’d like to have him come to see me. We owe him a good deal. And I want we should pay some of that debt. If he hangs back, and doesn’t think it’s worth while to come, just you tell him I’ve a couple of little presents for him.

“One is from Congress. One is from me.”

Yes, I was sure I’d have to go to that ear specialist, Jim!

“The present from Congress, ma’am,” says Mr. Lincoln, “is a gold Distinguished Service Medal. It was voted him yesterday for his share in the Antietam campaign. But it wasn’t voted to James Dadd. I’ve put an end to ‘James Dadd’s’ existence with six strokes of the pen.”

“I--I don’t understand, Mr. President,” I blurted out; and neither I did.

“James Dadd,” he says, with another of those smiles that makes a body’s heart go all warm, “James Dadd was a mistake. I’ve rectified it. He is James Brinton, henceforward and always. Tell him never to forget that. For it’s the way his name has been altered on the army lists.”

He kind of paused for a second, then he said:

“And, Mrs. Sessions, James Brinton is the name on a document I signed last night. I’ve about decided that Brinton isn’t really worthy to be a brevet-major any more after the way he behaved in the Antietam campaign. So, to punish him, I’ve just signed a commission making him a brigadier-general instead.”

I don’t know, Jim, if it was then, or a while earlier, that I began crying. I guess it was then. I sat sopping my eyes and trying to say grand, eloquent things. But I could hear myself just saying: “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” all kind of sobby, over and over again, like a numb wit.

But he seemed to understand. I guess he always understands. That’s what makes him different. He got up and took my hand again, and he said:

“Tell him next time you write. And tell him, if he’s well enough, I want him to come to the White House next Tuesday afternoon. I want you to come, too, ma’am. And--don’t forget to tell him to bring Battle Jimmie along. I want to thank him, too.

“And he and my boy, Tad, can get into mischief together while we old folks are gabbling.”

He took his hat off of the table and he started for the door. When he got to the threshold he turned around and he said:

“A man who has never stumbled is to be envied, Mrs. Sessions. But a man who has stumbled and then fought his way back again, strong and firm, to his feet, is the sort whose hands _real_ men like to shake. Tell him that, too, ma’am, when you write. I guess he’ll know what I’m driving at.”

Oh, _Jim_!

The old B. & O. station at Washington was crowded with hurrying soldiers and civilians one early October afternoon in 1862. From an incoming train alighted three figures who caught the interested gaze of more than one passer-by.

The trio were a tall man in late middle-age, whose face was still thin and white as from sharp illness; a small and red-headed boy whose alert eyes gloated on the noisy bustle and confusion around him, and a small yellow dog, whose nondescript coat had been painstakingly washed and combed for the occasion until it shone (and reeked with the scent of castile soap), and around whose short neck a wide red-white-and-blue ribbon was tied into a tremendous bow.

As the three comrades won their way clear of the station crowds and to the street outside a man in uniform stepped up to them.

“Major Brinton?” he asked cordially.

“Yes, sir,” replied Dad, thrilling at sound of the old name.

“I am President Lincoln’s military aid,” said the officer. “I was sent here to meet you and take you to the White House. There is the carriage at the curb. I am very glad indeed to see you, sir. Your services have been great.

“By the way,” he added, glancing at Dad’s belt, “this is not to be a formal reception. It isn’t necessary to wear your sword, if it incommodes you at all.”

“This sword, sir,” answered Dad, laying a reverent hand on its hilt, “was given me by a lady who’s waiting for me at the White House. I promised her I’d never draw it without cause, or sheathe it without honor. I’m going to wear it to the White House and tell her I’ve kept my promise.”

“As you wish,” said the aid pleasantly. “The carriage is--”

“Will you mind, sir,” interposed Dad, “if we march instead? Once I left the army--on foot. I would like to go on foot to a reward I don’t deserve. A silly fancy, maybe. But I’ve looked forward to it a long, long time. Especially since I was sick. March, Jimmie!”

Word had passed around as to the trio’s identity. A little crowd had gathered. From the onlookers, as Dad and Battle Jimmie fell into step, went up a cheer.

The two saluted, squared their shoulders, and set forth on their march of triumph, Emp trotting proudly ahead of them in all the glory of his patriotic ribbon and scoured coat.

And so did Dad Brinton come to his own.

THE END