Before the Dawn Part 16

"It's battle smoke, not a bridal veil, that Richmond must look for now,"

said Wood, "an' it's a pity."

There was a touch of sentiment in his voice, and Prescott looked at him with approval. As for himself, he was thinking at that moment of an unknown woman in a brown, wooden cottage. With the city snowed-in she might find the vigilance of the sentinels relaxed, but a flight through the frozen wilderness would be impossible for her. He was angry at himself again for feeling concern when he should be relieved that she could not escape; but, after, all she was a woman.

"Why so grave, Prescott?" asked Raymond. "A heavy snow like this is all in our favour, since we stand on the defensive; it makes it more difficult for the Yankee army to move."

"I was thinking of something else," replied Prescott truthfully. "I am going home now," he added. "Good-night."

As he pa.s.sed out into the street the snow was still falling, soon covering his cap and military cloak, and clothing him, like the city, in a robe of white.

Raymond had said truthfully that a deep snow was to the advantage of the South, but as for himself, he resolved that on the next day he would investigate the ident.i.ty of Miss Charlotte Grayson.

Prescott knew to whom it was best to turn for information in regard to the mysterious Charlotte Grayson, and in the doing so it was not necessary for him to leave his own home. His mother was likely to know everybody at all conspicuous in Richmond, as under her peaceful exterior she concealed a shrewd and inquiring mind.

"Mother," he said to her the next day as they sat before the fire, "did you ever hear of any lady named Miss Charlotte Grayson?"

She was knitting for the soldiers at the front, but she let the needles drop with a faint click into her lap.

"Grayson, Charlotte Grayson?" she said. "Is that the name of a new sweetheart of yours, Robert?"

"No, mother," replied he with a laugh; "it is the name of somebody whom I have never seen so far as I know, and of whom I never heard until a day or two ago."

"I recall the woman of whom you speak," she said, "an old maid without any relatives or any friends in particular. She was a seamstress here before the war. It was said that she went North at its outbreak, and as she was a Northern sympathizer it would seem likely; but she was a good seamstress; she made me a mantle once and I never saw a better in Richmond."

She waited for her son to offer an explanation of his interest in the whilom seamstress, but as he did not do so she asked no questions, though regarding him covertly.

He rose and, going to the window, looked out at the deep and all but untrodden snow.

"Richmond is in white, mother," he said, "and it will postpone the campaign which all Southern women dread."

"I know," she replied; "but the battle must come sooner or later, and a snow in Richmond means more coal and wood to buy. Do you ever think, Robert, what such questions as these, so simple in peace, mean now to Richmond?"

"I did not for the moment, mother," he replied, his face clouding, "but I should have thought of it. You mean that coal and wood are scarce and money still scarcer?"

She bowed her head, for it was a very solemn truth she had spoken. The coil of steel with which the North had belted in the South was beginning to press tighter and tighter during that memorable winter. At every Southern port the Northern fleets were on guard, and the blockade runners slipped past at longer and longer intervals. It was the same on land; everywhere the armies of the North closed in, and besides fire and sword, starvation now threatened the Confederacy.

There was not much news from the field to dispel the gloom in the South.

The great battle of Chickamauga had been won not long before, but it was a barren victory. There were no more Fredericksburgs nor Chancellorsvilles to rejoice over. Gettysburg had come; the genius of Lee himself had failed; Jackson was dead and no one had arisen to take his place.

There were hardships now more to be feared than mere battles. The men might look forward to death in action, and not know what would become of the women and children. The price of bread was steadily rising, and the value of Confederate money was going down with equal steadiness.

The soldiers in the field often walked barefoot through the snow, and in summer they ate the green corn in the fields, glad to get even so little; but they were not sure that those left behind would have as much. They were conscious, too, that the North, the sluggish North, which had been so long in putting forth its full strength, was now preparing for an effort far greater than any that had gone before. The incompetent generals, the tricksters and the sluggards were gone, and battle-tried armies led by real generals were coming in numbers that would not be denied.

At such a time as this, when the cloud had no fragment of a silver lining, the spirit of the South glowed with its brightest fire--a spectacle sometimes to be seen even though a cause be wrong.

"Mother," said Prescott, and there was a touch of defiance in his tone, "do you not know that the threat of cold and hunger, the fear that those whom we love are about to suffer as much as ourselves, will only nerve us to greater efforts?"

"I know," she replied, but he did not hear her sigh.

He felt that his stay in Richmond was now shortening fast, but there was yet one affair on his mind to which he must attend, and he went forth for a beginning. His further inquiries, made with caution in the vicinity, disclosed the fact that Miss Charlotte Grayson, the occupant of the wooden cottage, and the Miss Charlotte Grayson whom his mother had in mind, were the same. But he could discover little else concerning her or her manner of life, save an almost positive a.s.surance that she had not left Richmond either at the beginning of the war nor since. She had been seen in the streets, rarely speaking to any one, and at the markets making a few scanty purchases and preserving the same silence, ascribed, it was said, to the probable belief on her part that she would be persecuted because of her known Northern sympathies. Had any one been seen with her? No; she lived all alone in the little house.

Such were the limits of the knowledge achieved by Prescott, and for lack of another course he chose the direct way and knocked at the door of the little house, being compelled to repeat his summons twice before it was answered. Then the door was opened slightly; but with a soldier's boldness he pushed in and confronted a thin, elderly woman, who did not invite him to be seated.

Prescott took in the room and its occupant with a single glance, and the two seemed to him to be of a piece. The former--and he knew instinctively that it was Miss Grayson--was meager of visage and figure, with high cheek bones, thin curls flat down on her temples, and a black dress worn and old. The room exhibited the same age and scantiness, the same aspect of cold poverty, with its patched carpet and the slender fire smouldering on the hearth.

She stood before him, confronting him with a manner in which boldness and timidity seemed to be struggling with about equal success. There was a flush of anger on her cheeks, but her lips were trembling.

"I am speaking to Miss Grayson?" said Prescott.

"You are, sir," she replied, "but I do not know you, and I do not know why you have pushed yourself into my house."

"My name is Prescott, Robert Prescott, and I am a captain in the Confederate Army, as you may see by my uniform."

He noticed that the trembling of her lip increased and she looked fearfully at him; but the red flush of anger on her cheek deepened, too.

The chief impression that she made on Prescott was pathetic, standing there in her poverty of dress and room, and he hastened to add:

"But I am here on my own private business; I have not come to annoy you.

I merely want to inquire of a woman, a lodger of yours."

"I have no lodgers," she replied; "I am alone."

"I don't think I can be mistaken," said Prescott; "she told me that she was staying in this house."

"And may I ask the name of this lady who knows more about my own house than I do?" asked Miss Grayson with unconcealed sarcasm.

Prescott saw that her courage was now getting the better of her timidity. He hesitated and felt his cheeks redden.

"I do not know," he was forced to reply.

Miss Grayson's gaze became steady and triumphant.

"Does it not then occur to you, Captain Prescott, that you are proceeding upon a very slender basis when you doubt my word?"

"It is hardly that, Miss Grayson," he replied. "I thought--perhaps--that it might be an evasion, pardonable when it is made for a friend whom one thinks in danger."

His eye roamed around the room again and it caught sight of something disclosed to him for the first time by the sudden increase of the flickering blaze on the hearth. A flash of triumph appeared in his eye and his boldness and certainty returned to him.

"Miss Grayson," he said, "it is true that I do not know the name of the lady of whom I speak, but I have some proof of her presence here."

Miss Grayson started and her lips began to tremble again.

"I do not know what you mean," she said.

"I ask for the wearer of this," said Prescott, taking a long brown cloak from the chair on which it lay and holding it up before Miss Grayson's eyes.

"Then you ask for me," she replied bravely; "the cloak is mine."

"I have seen it several times before," said Prescott, "and it was always worn by some one else."