WHEN the first shock of horror at her husband's peril passed, it left a strange new light in Mrs. Cameron's eyes.
The heritage of centuries of heroic blood from the martyrs of old Scotland began to flash its inspiration from the past. Her heart beat with the unconscious life of men and women who had stood in the stocks, and walked in chains to the stake with songs on their lips.
The threat against the life of Doctor Cameron had not only stirred her martyr blood: it had roused the latent heroism of a beautiful girlhood. To her he had ever been the lover and the undimmed hero of her girlish dreams. She spent whole hours locked in her room alone. Margaret knew that she was on her knees. She always came forth with shining face and with soft words on her lips.
She struggled for two months in vain efforts to obtain a single interview with him, or to obtain a copy of the charges. Doctor Cameron had been placed in the old Capitol Prison, already crowded to the utmost. He was in delicate health, and so ill when she had left home he could not accompany her to Richmond.
Not a written or spoken word was allowed to pass those prison doors. She could communicate with him only through the officers in charge. Every message from him was the same. "I love you always. Do not worry. Go home the moment you can leave Ben. I fear the worst at Piedmont."
When he had sent this message, he would sit down and write the truth in a little diary he kept:
"Another day of anguish. How long, O Lord? Just one touch of her hand, one last pressure of her lips, and I am content. I have no desire to live—I am tired."
The officers repeated the verbal messages, but they made no impression on Mrs. Cameron. By a mental telepathy which had always linked her life with his her soul had passed those prison bars. If he had written the pitiful record with a dagger's point on her heart, she could not have felt it more keenly.
At times overwhelmed, she lay prostrate and sobbed in half-articulate cries. And then from the silence and mystery of the spirit world in which she felt the beat of the heart of Eternal Love would come again the strange peace that passeth understanding. She would rise and go forth to her task with a smile.
In July she saw Mrs. Surratt taken from this old Capitol Prison to be hung with Payne, Herold, and Atzerodt for complicity in the assassination. The military commission before whom this farce of justice was enacted, suspicious of the testimony of the perjured wretches who had sworn her life away, had filed a memorandum with their verdict asking the President for mercy.
President Johnson never saw this memorandum. It was secretly removed in the War Department, and only replaced after he had signed the death-warrant.
In vain Annie Surratt, the weeping daughter, flung herself on the steps of the White House on the fatal day, begging and praying to see the President. She could not believe they would allow her mother to be murdered in the face of a recommendation of mercy. The fatal hour struck at last, and the girl left the White House with set eyes and blanched face, muttering incoherent curses.
The Chief Magistrate sat within, unconscious of the hideous tragedy that was being enacted in his name. When he discovered the infamy by which he had been made the executioner of an innocent woman, he made his first demand that Edwin M. Stanton resign from his cabinet as Secretary of War. And, for the first time in the history of America, a cabinet officer waived the question of honour and refused to resign.
With a shudder and blush of shame, strong men saw that day the executioner gather the ropes tightly three times around the dress of an innocent American mother and bind her ankles with cords. She fainted and sank backward upon the attendants, the poor limbs yielding at last to the mortal terror of death. But they propped her up and sprung the fatal trap.
A feeling of uncertainty and horror crept over the city and the Nation, as rumours of the strange doings of the "Bureau of Military Justice," with its secret factory of testimony and powers of tampering with verdicts, began to find their way in whispered stories among the people.
Public opinion, however, had as yet no power of adjustment. It was an hour of lapse to tribal insanity. Things had gone wrong. The demand for a scapegoat, blind, savage and unreasoning, had not spent itself. The Government could do anything as yet, and the people would applaud.
Mrs. Cameron had tried in vain to gain a hearing before the President. Each time she was directed to apply to Mr. Stanton. She refused to attempt to see him, and again turned to Elsie for help. She had learned that the same witnesses who had testified against Mrs. Surratt were being used to convict Doctor Cameron, and her heart was sick with fear.
"Ask your father," she pleaded, "to write President Johnson a letter in my behalf. Whatever his politics, he can't be your father and not be good at heart."
Elsie paled for a moment. It was the one request she had dreaded. She thought of her father and Stanton with dread. How far he was supporting the Secretary of War she could only vaguely guess. He rarely spoke of politics to her, much as he loved her.
"I'll try, Mrs. Cameron," she faltered. "My father is in town to-day and takes dinner with us before he leaves for Pennsylvania to-night. I'll go at once."
With fear, and yet boldly, she went straight home to present her request. She knew he was a man who never cherished small resentments, however cruel and implacable might be his public policies. And yet she dreaded to put it to the test.
"Father, I've a very important request to make of you," she said, gravely.
"Very well, my child, you need not be so solemn. What is it?"
"I've some friends in great distress—Mrs. Cameron, of South Carolina, and her daughter Margaret."
"Friends of yours?" he asked with an incredulous smile. "Where on earth did you find them?"
"In the hospital, of course. Mrs. Cameron is not allowed to see her husband, who has been here in jail for over two months. He can not write to her, nor can he receive a letter from her. He is on trial for his life, is ill and helpless, and is not allowed to know the charges against him, while hired witnesses and detectives have broken open his house, searched his papers, and are ransacking heaven and earth to convict him of a crime of which he never dreamed. It's a shame. You don't approve of such things, I know?"
"What's the use of my expressing an opinion when you have already settled it?" he answered, good-humouredly.
"You don't approve of such injustice?"
"Certainly not, my child. Stanton's frantic efforts to hang a lot of prominent Southern men for complicity in Booth's crime is sheer insanity. Nobody who has any sense believes them guilty. As a politician I use popular clamour for my purposes, but I am not an idiot. When I go gunning, I never use a pop-gun or hunt small game."
"Then you will write the President a letter asking that they be allowed to see Doctor Cameron?"
The old man frowned.
"Think, father, if you were in jail and friendless, and I were trying to see you"
"Tut, tut, my dear, it's not that I am unwilling—I was only thinking of the unconscious humour of my making a request of the man who at present accidentally occupies the White House. Of all the men on earth, this alien from the province of Tennessee! But I'll do it for you. When did you ever know me to deny my help to a weak man or woman in distress?"
"Never, father. I was sure you would do it," she answered, warmly.
He wrote the letter at once and handed it to her.
She bent and kissed him.
"I can't tell you how glad I am to know that you have no part in such injustice."
"You should not have believed me such a fool, but I'll forgive you for the kiss. Run now with this letter to your rebel friends, you little traitor! Wait a minute"
He shuffled to his feet, placed his hand tenderly on her head, and stooped and kissed the shining hair.
"I wonder if you know how I love you? How I've dreamed of your future? I may not see you every day as I wish; I'm absorbed in great affairs. But more and more I think of you and Phil. I'll have a big surprise for you both some day."
"Your love is all I ask," she answered, simply.
Within an hour, Mrs. Cameron found herself before the new President. The letter had opened the door as by magic. She poured out her story with impetuous eloquence while Mr. Johnson listened in uneasy silence. His ruddy face, his hesitating manner and restless eyes were in striking contrast to the conscious power of the tall dark man who had listened so tenderly and sympathetically to her story of Ben but a few weeks before.
The President asked:
"Have you seen Mr. Stanton?"
"I have seen him once," she cried with sudden passion. "It is enough. If that man were God on His throne, I would swear allegiance to the Devil and fight him!"
The President lifted his eyebrows and his lips twitched with a smile:
"I shouldn't say that your spirits are exactly drooping! I'd like to be near and hear you make that remark to the distinguished Secretary of War."
"Will you grant my prayer?" she pleaded.
"I will consider the matter," he promised, evasively.
Mrs. Cameron's heart sank.
"Mr. President," she cried, bitterly, "I have felt sure that I had but to see you face to face and you could not deny me. Surely, it is but justice that he have the right to see his loved ones, to consult with counsel, to know the charges against him, and defend his life when attacked in his poverty and ruin by all the power of a mighty government? He is feeble and broken in health and suffering from wounds received carrying the flag of the Union to victory in Mexico. Whatever his errors of judgment in this war, it is a shame that a Nation for which he once bared his breast in battle should treat him as an outlaw without a trial."
"You must remember, Madam," interrupted the President, "that these are extraordinary times, and that popular clamour, however unjust, will make itself felt and must be heeded by those in power. I am sorry for you, and I trust it may be possible for me to grant your request."
"But I wish it now," she urged. "He sends me word I must go home. I can't leave without seeing him. I will die first."
She drew closer and continued in throbbing tones:
"Mr. President, you are a native Carolinian—you are of Scotch Covenanter blood. You are of my own people of the great past, whose tears and sufferings are our common glory and birthright. Come, you must hear me—I will take no denial. Give me now the order to see my husband!"
The President hesitated, struggling with deep emotion, called his secretary and gave the order.
As she hurried away with Elsie, who insisted on accompanying her to the jail door, the girl said:
"Mrs. Cameron, I fear you are without money. You must let me help you until you can return it."
"You are the dearest little heart I've met in all the world, I think sometimes," said the older woman, looking at her tenderly. "I wonder how I can ever pay you for half you've done already."
"The doing of it has been its own reward," was the soft reply. "May I help you?"
"If I need it, yes. But I trust it will not be necessary. I still have a little store of gold Doctor Cameron was wise enough to hoard during the war. I brought half of it with me when I left home, and we buried the rest. I hope to find it on my return. And if we can save the twenty bales of cotton we have hidden we shall be relieved of want."
"I'm ashamed of my country when I think of such ignoble methods as have been used against Doctor Cameron. My father is indignant too."
The last sentence Elsie spoke with eager girlish pride.
"I am very grateful to your father for his letter. I am sorry he has left the city before I could meet and thank him personally. You must tell him for me."
At the jail the order of the President was not honoured for three hours, and Mrs. Cameron paced the street in angry impatience at first and then in dull despair.
"Do you think that man Stanton would dare defy the President?" she asked, anxiously.
"No," said Elsie, "but he is delaying as long as possible as an act of petty tyranny."
At last the messenger arrived from the War Department permitting an order of the Chief Magistrate of the Nation, the Commander-in-Chief of its Army and Navy, to be executed.
The grated door swung on its heavy hinges, and the wife and mother lay sobbing in the arms of the lover of her youth.
For two hours they poured into each other's hearts the story of their sorrows and struggles during the six fateful months that had passed. When she would return from every theme back to his danger, he would laugh her fears to scorn.
"Nonsense, my dear, I'm as innocent as a babe. Mr. Davis was suffering from erysipelas, and I kept him in my house that night to relieve his pain. It will all blow over. I'm happy now that I have seen you. Ben will be up in a few days. You must return at once. You have no idea of the wild chaos at home. I left Jake in charge. I have implicit faith in him, but there's no telling what may happen. I will not spend another moment in peace until you go."
The proud old man spoke of his own danger with easy assurance. He was absolutely certain, since the day of Mrs. Surratt's execution, that he would be railroaded to the gallows by the same methods. He had long looked on the end with indifference, and had ceased to desire to live except to see his loved ones again.
In vain she warned him of danger.
"My peril is nothing, my love," he answered, quietly. "At home, the horrors of a servile reign of terror have become a reality. These prison walls do not interest me. My heart is with our stricken people. You must go home. Our neighbour, Mr. Lenoir, is slowly dying. His wife will always be a child. Little Marion is older and more self-reliant. I feel as if they are our own children. There are so many who need us. They have always looked to me for guidance and help. You can do more for them than any one else. My calling is to heal others. You have always helped me. Do now as I ask you."
At last she consented to leave for Piedmont on the following day, and he smiled.
"Kiss Ben and Margaret for me and tell them that I'll be with them soon," he said, cheerily. He meant in the spirit, not the flesh. Not the faintest hope of life even flickered in his mind.
In the last farewell embrace a faint tremor of the soul, half-sigh, half-groan, escaped his lips, and he drew her again to his breast, whispering:
"Always my sweetheart, good, beautiful, brave and true!"