The Southerner: A Romance of the Real Lincoln Part 83

Half the block was in flames before the firemen could break through and reach the burning buildings.

Down the Avenue, the maddened mob swept with resistless impulse, jelling, cursing, shouting its defiance.

"Down with the Abolitionists!"

"Hang Horace Greeley on a sour apple tree!"

"To the _Tribune_ Office!"

Howard, a reporter of the _Tribune_, was recognized:

"Kill him!"

"Hang him!"

The mob seized the reporter, dragged him to a lamp post and were about to put the rope around his neck when a blow from a cobblestone felled him to the sidewalk, the blood trickling down his neck.

A man bending over his body, shouted to the crowd:

"He's dead--we'll take the body away!"

A friend helped and they carried him into a store and saved his life.

For three days and nights this mob burned and killed at will and fought every officer of the law until the streets ran red with blood. They burned the Negro Orphan Asylum, beat, killed or hanged every negro who showed his face, sacked the home of Mayor Opd.y.k.e, at 79 Fifth Avenue, and attempted to burn it. They smashed in the _Tribune_ building, gutted part of it and would have reduced it to ashes but for the brave defense put up by some of its men.

On the third day the announcement was made that the draft was suspended.

Five thousand troops reached the city and partly succeeded in restoring order.

More than a thousand men had been killed and three thousand wounded--among them many women.

The Democratic papers now boldly demanded that the draft should be officially suspended until its const.i.tutionality could be tested by the courts. The State and Munic.i.p.al authorities of New York appealed to the President to suspend the draft.

He answered:

"If I suspend the draft there can be no army to continue the war and the days of the Republic are numbered. The life of the Nation is at stake."

They begged for time, and he hesitated for a day. The victories of Gettysburg and Vicksburg were forgotten in the grim shadow of a possible repet.i.tion of the French Revolution on a vast scale throughout the North. The mob had already sacked the office of the _Times_ in Troy, broken out in Boston, and threatened Cincinnati.

The President gave the Governor of New York his final answer by sending an army of ten thousand veterans into the city. He planted his artillery to sweep the streets with grape and cannister, and ordered the draft to be immediately enforced.

The new wheel was set up, and turned with bayonets. The mobs were overawed and the ranks of the army were refilled.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

BETWEEN THE LINES

Betty Winter found to her sorrow that the memory of a dead love could be a troublesome thing. Ned Vaughan's tender and compelling pa.s.sion had been resistless in the moonlight beneath a fragrant apple tree with the old mill wheel splas.h.i.+ng its music at their feet. She had returned to her cot in the hospital that night in a glow of quiet, peaceful joy.

Life's problem had been solved at last in the sweet peace of a tender and beautiful spiritual love--the only love that could be real.

All this was plain, while the glow of Ned's words were in her heart and the memory of his nearness alive in the fingers and lips he had kissed.

And then to her terror came stealing back the torturing vision of his brother. Why, why, why could she never shut out the memory of this man!

Over and over again she repeated the angry final word:

"He isn't worth a moment's thought!"

And yet she kept on thinking, thinking, always in the same blind circle.

At last came the new resolution,

"Worthy or unworthy, I've given my word to a better man and that settles it."

The fight had become in her inflamed imagination the struggle between good and evil. The younger man with his chivalrous boyish ideals was G.o.d, Love, Light. The older with his iron will, his fierce ungovernable pa.s.sion, was the Devil, l.u.s.t and Darkness. She trembled with new terror at the discovery that there was something elemental deep within her own life that answered the challenge of this older voice with a strange joyous daring.

She had just risen from her knees where she had prayed for strength to fight and win this battle when the maid knocked on her door. She had left the hospital and returned home for a week's rest, tottering on the verge of a nervous collapse since her return from the meeting with Ned.

"A letter, Miss Betty," the maid said with a smile.

She tore the envelope with nervous dread. It bore no postmark and was addressed in a strange hand.

Inside was another envelope in Ned's handwriting, and around it a sheet of paper on which was scrawled,

"DEAR MISS WINTER: The bearer of this letter is a trusted spy of both Governments. I have friends in Was.h.i.+ngton and in Richmond. In Richmond I am supposed to betray the Was.h.i.+ngton Government. In Was.h.i.+ngton it is known that I am at heart loyal to the Union, and all my correspondence from Richmond to the Confederate agents in Canada and the North I deliver to the President and Stanton. This one is an exception. I happened to have met Mr. Ned. Vaughan and like him. I deliver this letter to you unopened by any hand. I've a sweetheart myself."

With a cry of joy, Betty broke the seal and read Ned's message. It was written just after the battle of Gettysburg.

"DEAREST: I am writing to you to-night because I must--though this may never reach you. The whole look of war has changed for me since that wonderful hour we spent in the moonlight beside the river and you promised me your life. It's all a pitiful tragedy now, and love, love, love seems the only thing in all G.o.d's universe worth while! I don't wish to kill any more. It hurts the big something inside that's divine. I'm surprised at myself that I can't see the issues of National life as I saw them at first. Somehow they have become dwarfed beside the new wonder and glory that fills my heart.

And now like a poor traitor, I am praying for peace, peace at any price. Oh, dearest, you have brought me to this. I love you so utterly with every breath I breathe, every thought of mind and every impulse of soul and body, how can I see aught else in the world?

"In every scene of these three days of horror through which we've just pa.s.sed, my thought was of you. The signal gun that called the men to die boomed your name for me. I heard it in the din and roar and crash of armies. The louder came the call of death, the sweeter life seemed because life meant you. Life has taken on a new and wonderful meaning. I love it as I never loved it before and I've grown to hate death and I whisper it to you, my love, my own--to hate war! I want to live now, and I'm praying, praying, praying for peace. My mind is yet clear in its conviction of right or I could not stay here a moment longer. But I'm longing and hoping and wondering whether G.o.d will not show us the way out of your tragic dilemma.

"During the battle I found a handsome young Federal officer who had fallen inside out lines. With his last strength he was trying to write a message to his bride who was waiting for him behind the Union lines. I couldn't pa.s.s by. I stopped and got his name, gave him water and made him as comfortable as possible. I got permission from my General while the battle raged and sent his message with a flag of truce to his wife. She came flying to his side at the risk of her life, got to the rear and saved him.

Perhaps I wasn't an ideal soldier in that pause in my fight. But I had to do it, dearest. It was your sweet spirit that stopped me and sent the white flag of love and mercy.

"And the strangest of all the things of the war happened that night. I spent six hours among the wounded, helping the poor boys all I could--both blue and grey--and I suddenly ran into John at the same pitiful work. It's curious how all the bitterness is gone out of my heart.

"I grabbed him and hugged him, and we both cried like two fools. We sat down between the lines in the brilliant moonlight and talked for an hour. I told him of you, dearest, and he wished me all the happiness life could give, but with a queer hitch in his voice, and after a long silence, which made me wonder if he, too, had not been loving you in secret. I shouldn't wonder if every man who sees you loves you. The wonder to me is they don't.

"Our band is playing an old-fas.h.i.+oned Southern song that sets my heart to beating with joyous madness again. I'm dreaming through that song of the home I'm going to build for you somewhere in the land of suns.h.i.+ne. Don't worry about me. I'm not going to die. I know I'm immortal now. I had faith once. Now I know--because I love you and time is too short to tell and all too short to live my love.

"NED."

She read it over twice through eyes that grew dim with each foolish, sweet extravagance. And then she went back and read for the third time the line about John, threw herself across her bed and burst into tears.