CHAPTER XXI

ONLY WASTING TIME

After Abe Lincoln went to Rutledges' to board, time seemed to go faster and more pleasantly than ever in his life for him. John Rutledge was not only an agreeable gentleman, but he was an unusually well-informed man for a pioneer, and he and the little coterie of friends passed many winter evenings discussing topics of local and national interest.

Abe Lincoln spent very little time, however, at the Rutledge home. There were many debates and public meetings during the Winter, all of which he attended. His treasured Blackstone was being read and digested with the same thoroughness he had given Washington and the Constitution and the Bible. In addition to this he had secured, at no small outlay of time and expense, a grammar, said to be the only one in the county, which he was eagerly learning. He was also making the acquaintance of Shakespeare, with which he was immoderately delighted, and which he had announced he would learn by heart, as he had much of the text in the few books he possessed.

Besides his newly acquired Blackstone and Shakespeare, Lincoln was making trips to Springfield to borrow from Major Stuart what seemed to the country youth an inexhaustible wealth of books.

So it happened that, nights when there was no meeting of any kind, Abe Lincoln studied alone in the store or sometimes at the cooper shop, where warmth and light were given him.

The winter of the busy year came early to New Salem, and the hamlet was wrapped in a sheet of white which covered the roadways and fields, and draped the bluffs, and bent the boughs of the forest trees. The streams were muffled and, save where dark spots showed water moving sluggishly, were hidden under the white blanket. Cattle huddled by the haystacks and in barns, and in the log houses great fires blazed on the hearths and the store of candles was drawn on heavily to make light for the long evenings when the housewives used the time to spin and knit.

It was a bitter, cold night that Abe Lincoln after supper sat a few minutes by the fire. John Rutledge had gone to Springfield and would not return until next day. There was no meeting, and Mrs. Rutledge and Ann thought perhaps their boarder would spend the evening with them.

The wind blew low and seemed to hug close to the earth and move silently and stealthily as if trying to envelop some victim unaware. The snow crunched at the slightest tread. The hearth-fire had never seemed so good.

Abe Lincoln and Ann were alone in the room. He sat before the fire looking at the coals; she was getting her spinning ready.

Rising suddenly he took his hat and gray muffler from the peg on the wall.

"You're not going out, Abraham?" Ann inquired.

"Yes--I'm going over to Muddy Point."

"To Muddy Point?" Ann exclaimed setting her wheel down.

"Yes. I have it as straight as the crow lies that Snoutful Kelly's wife and children are actually sufferin' for food. Do you suppose your mother will fix up a basket?"

"Of course--but, Abraham--this is the coldest night of the winter! Mother!" Ann called rather excitedly, "come here!"

Mrs. Rutledge entered with a yellow bowl in which she was beating buckwheat batter to put by the fire to rise for breakfast cakes.

"Mother!" exclaimed Ann. "Abraham says he is going to Muddy Point."

Mrs. Rutledge turned and stared at Abe Lincoln a moment as if to make sure he were there. Then she said, "Are you joking, Abraham?"

"No, indeed--I'm goin'. Old Kelly's wife is sick and the children are hungry. I got it straight, and I can't sit by this warm fire so comfortable and think of them sufferin', I've got to go."

"But, Abraham Lincoln, there is not another person in New Salem, not a living soul of them, that would do it such a night as this."

Abe Lincoln laughed. Then he said, "That's all the more reason I must go. Will you send a basket?"

"To be sure--but it's an awful cold night and you haven't any long-coat."

"I'll walk fast enough to keep warm," he assured her. "If folks waited until all signs were right for doin' these little things, they'd never get done. We only pass this way but once, you know. Any good thing we can do we must do as we go--we don't come back."

Mrs. Rutledge stood looking at the tall, ungainly youth. For a moment his face seemed to be beautiful as the firelight fell on its strong lines. Then without a word she returned to the kitchen. In a moment she called Ann to come and help her. Abe went out, too, and together they fixed a basket and covered it well so that it would not be frozen when delivered.

Abe Lincoln was not warmly clad for cold weather. Ann thought of this as he stood before the fire holding his big square muffler.

"This will keep me warm," he said, wrapping it about his throat.

"You haven't any gun," Ann said. "Wolves killed three of William Green's pigs yesterday, and last week there was a great big catamount at Honey Grove."

"Do you remember what I did to Armstrong? I did a catamount that same way once. I always carry my weapons. God fastened them to me so tight I can't leave them."

Ann and her mother laughed. Abe Lincoln went out into the cold; and they heard the sharp crunching of the snow under his quick footsteps.

"I'm going to spin to-night, Mother," Ann said. "You don't care if I put the kettle on and make Abraham something hot to drink when he comes home, do you?"

"A very good idea," Mrs. Rutledge said. After she had done some mending she put the water pail by the fire, hung a roll of pork sausage on the wall, and, after having taken other precautions to insure a good warm breakfast when everything would be frozen up the next morning, she went to bed, and Ann was left to spin and to think.

Never was Ann Rutledge long alone that she was not singing. So now, as her wheel turned in the firelight, she began to sing a glad song full of life and hope and joy crowded into the words and melody of the old tune, "O, how I love Jesus!"

As the fire, eating its way through the back log, told the passage of time she stopped and listened. The kettle was steaming and on the kitchen table was a plate of food waiting to be brought in.

At last the crunching of the snow under heavy footfalls told her he was coming. But she only turned her wheel a little faster and sung a little heartier as he entered, lest he should know she had been watching.

"O, how I love Jesus!" Abe Lincoln hummed as he came by the fire and rubbed his hands; "go on with your song and your work. While I get warm I will tell you a story."

"Once there was a great camp-meetin'," he began, settling himself in John Rutledge's big splint-bottom chair. "There was an exhorter named Barcus who helped stir things up to the boilin'-over point. Among those who got shoutin' happy was a fair and fond sister. Brother Barcus and the sister both danced and shouted toward each other. When they met, he said, his benign countenance shinin' with joy, 'Sister, do you love Jesus?' 'Oh, yes,' she whispered rapturously; 'yes--yes--yes.'

"'Then kiss brother Barcus,' was this shepherd's advice to his beloved sheep."

Abe Lincoln settled back. Ann laughed. Then she said, "Abraham, we are bad; you for telling such a story and I for listening."

"No, we are good," he corrected, "you for not askin' the woman's name and I for not tellin' whether she kissed Brother Barcus."

Again Ann laughed. Then she glanced at Abe Lincoln and from him to the peg where his hat hung.

"Where is your muffler?" she asked. "You didn't lose it, did you?"

The tall man looked into the fire a moment before saying, "No--I gave it away."

"Gave it away?"--and there was a tone of disappointment in her voice.

"Yes. I'll tell you about it. When I got out to Kelly's I found the poor woman in bed, and a new-born baby. The little thing didn't have any clothes or any warm blanket to wrap around it. I looked at that fine, thick, warm, wool muffler all made by your hands, and I hated to give it up. But that baby, Ann--it was such a little helpless thing and so pitiful, and its mother's eyes looked in such a hungry way at that gray muffler, I couldn't help it. So I wrapped it up myself. And I felt that if you had been there you would have done the wrappin'. In fact, I could see you foldin' the warm cover around that poor little thing. You would have done it--wouldn't you, Ann?"

"Yes, Abraham."

"I was sure of it. Perhaps you'll make me another some time. Now go on with your spinnin' and your song. It is the best music a tired man could ever hear."

Ann turned the wheel a few times, but she did not sing. "When a woman gets loving Jesus," he observed, "it's a sign she's lovin' somebody else. Who do you love, Ann?"

This unexpected question took Ann quite by surprise.

"You know as well as I do that I am engaged to marry John McNeil. And don't you think he is one of the best young men in town?" There was a suggestion of appeal in the question.

"I am sure he is--one of the very best in the county. But tell me, Ann, what it is to love. You know the spellin' book definition. It's in the Bible, too, that love is stronger than death. But they both came out of somebody's mind first, somebody who loved. Tell me about it."

"Why should I know?"

He mused a moment, then he said as if to the fire instead of Ann: "It won't be until I _know_, that I promise to marry a woman."

Ann glanced at Lincoln. He seemed for the moment unconscious of her existence. She called him from his reflections by speaking his name.

"Abraham," she said as the wheel spun slowly, "I have a secret to tell you, a confession to make."

He was all attention in a minute. She dropped her hands in her lap and moved a little way from behind the wheel.

"Do you remember the camp-meeting, and Brother Cartwright saying you were a deluded sinner, and saying you were worth praying for?"

"Did he? I believe he did."

"Well, since that night, every day I have been remembering you at the throne of grace, but I have made up my mind it is only wasting time. I still don't understand how anybody can be saved and not believe in hell, and you do some things that are not right, like the day at the quilting-bee, which was not fair to John McNeil. My Bible says, 'by their fruits shall men be known,' and, Abraham, your life bears fruit, much better fruit and more of it than do some of those who call you a sinner. So I've decided it's just wasting my time and God's to pray for you any more."

In the moment of silence that followed this speech, Ann turned back to the wheel.

"Don't spin," he said; "there's something I want to say."

She folded her hands in her lap and waited. There was no sound in the room save the sputter of the fire. A bit of charred wood fell into the ashes. Lincoln took the tongs and threw it back, then he sat looking at it.

Presently he turned to Ann. "And you have been rememberin' me at the throne of Grace? I don't know anything about thrones and mighty little about grace, for the grace of life has not been my portion. But this is what I want to say. If a man can get to God through the intercession of a true and noble and pure-hearted man, as all Christians say they do, I don't see why a man can't get to God through the pleadin's of a true and noble and pure-hearted woman."

Ann looked at him questioningly.

"I don't know what you mean, Abraham," she said.

"I mean just this--if ever I reach the throne of grace where just men get nearer glimpses of God, it will be through--Ann Rutledge. Do you understand this?"

Ann's eyes had not for an instant left the figure of the man who was speaking. The homely, bronzed face in the frame of black hair, the slightly stooping shoulders, the big hands stretched at full length on the arms of the chair, made a firelight picture fascinating to the girl. He had asked a question--she had not answered it, yet she leaned forward, and after studying his face a moment she said, "Abraham, you look as if you were starving. I must get you something to eat"; and she hurried to the kitchen.

Lincoln leaned forward and buried his face in his hands. "It wouldn't be fair to John McNeil," he seemed to hear her saying again, and with a deep sigh he said in his heart: "Separated by the rules of the game of honor."

* * * * *

"Ann," said Mrs. Rutledge the next morning, "what did you and Abe Lincoln find to talk about so long last night?"

"Camp-meetings and mufflers and Kelly's new baby," Ann answered.

"You must be careful, Ann," her mother said. "Your word is out to John McNeil and he has a good start in life. Abe is a fine boy and honest as the day is long, but he hasn't got anything to take care of a woman on. Besides, he does all sorts of queer things. For all we know he may yet take to writing poetry. You must not give him any encouragement. Since that quilting-bee I've had some thoughts. He wasn't there to learn to quilt. He'd be fearful hard to get shut of if he got in love good and hard."

"He has no idea of love at all," Ann hastened to assure her mother. "He doesn't even know what it means. He told me so."

"That's the worst kind to get stirred up. The kind that just naturally knows how are always having attacks of love the same as they do attacks of measles. But the kind that has to be waked up and taught by some woman have terrible bad cases. Don't you get Abe Lincoln stirred up."

"He doesn't care for girls, anyway--no particular ones. He likes books and is not the kind to fall in love."

"Love can pipe through any kind of a reed," was Mrs. Rutledge's answer. "Don't stir Abe Lincoln up."