Epilogue

The Path of the King

by John Buchan

Mr. Francis Hamilton, an honorary attache of the British Embassy,
stood on the steps of the Capitol watching the procession which bore
the President's body from the White House to lie in state in the
great Rotunda. He was a young man of some thirty summers, who after a
distinguished Oxford career was preparing himself with a certain
solemnity for the House of Commons. He sought to be an authority on
Foreign affairs, and with this aim was making a tour among the
legations. Two years before he had come to Washington, intending to
remain for six months, and somewhat to his own surprise had stayed
on, declining to follow his kinsman Lord Lyons to Constantinople.
Himself a staunch follower of Mr. Disraeli, and an abhorrer of
Whiggery in all its forms, he yet found in America's struggle that
which appealed both to his brain and his heart. He was a believer, he
told himself, in the Great State and an opponent of parochialism; so,
unlike most of his friends at home, his sympathies were engaged for
the Union. Moreover he seemed to detect in the protagonists a Roman
simplicity pleasing to a good classic.

Mr. Hamilton was sombrely but fashionably dressed and wore a
gold eyeglass on a black ribbon, because he fancied that a monocle
adroitly used was a formidable weapon in debate. He had neat small
sidewhiskers, and a pleasant observant eye. With him were young Major
Endicott from Boston and the eminent Mr. Russell Lowell, who, as
Longfellow's successor in the Smith Professorship and one of the
editors of The North American Review, was a great figure in
cultivated circles. Both were acquaintances made by Mr. Hamilton on a
recent visit to Harvard. He found it agreeable to have a few friends
with whom he could have scholarly talk.

The three watched the procession winding through the mourning
streets. Every house was draped in funeral black, the passing bell
tolled from every church, and the minute-guns boomed at the City Hall
and on Capitol Hill. Mr. Hamilton regarded the cortege at first with
a critical eye. The events of the past week had wrought in him a
great expectation, which he feared would be disappointed. It needed a
long tradition to do fitting honour to the man who had gone. Had
America such a tradition? he asked himself. . . . The coloured troops
marching at the head of the line pleased him. That was a happy
thought. He liked, too, the business-like cavalry and infantry, and
the battered field-pieces. . . . He saw his Chief among the foreign
Ministers, bearing a face of portentous solemnity. . . . But he
liked best the Illinois and Kentucky delegates; he thought the dead
President would have liked them too.

Major Endicott was pointing out the chief figures. There's Grant
. . . and Stanton, looking more cantankerous than ever. They say he's
brokenhearted." But Mr. Hamilton had no eye for celebrities. He was
thinking rather of those plain mourners from the west, and of the
poorest house in Washington decked with black. This is a true
national sorrow, he thought. He had been brought up as a boy from
Eton to see Wellington's funeral, and the sight had not impressed him
like this. For the recent months had awakened odd emotions in his
orderly and somewhat cynical soul. He had discovered a hero.

The three bared their heads as the long line filed by. Mr.
Lowell said nothing. Now and then he pulled at his moustaches as if
to hide some emotion which clamoured for expression. The mourners
passed into the Capitol, while the bells still tolled and the guns
boomed. The cavalry escort formed up on guard; from below came the
sound of sharp commands.

Mr. Hamilton was shaken out of the admirable detachment which he
had cultivated. He wanted to sit down and sob like a child. Some
brightness had died in the air, some great thing had gone for ever
from the world and left it empty. He found himself regarding the
brilliant career which he had planned for himself with a sudden
disfavour. It was only second-rate after all, that glittering old
world of courts and legislatures and embassies. For a moment he had
had a glimpse of the firstrate, and it had shivered his pretty
palaces. He wanted now something which he did not think he would find
again.

The three turned to leave, and at last Mr. Lowell spoke.

"There goes," he said, "the first American!"

Mr. Hamilton heard the words as he was brushing delicately with
his sleeve a slight berufflement of his silk hat.

"I dare say you are right, Professor," he said. "But I think it
is also the last of the Kings."