Before the Dawn Part 33

The Secretary asked more questions, but again they were of a general nature and did not come to the point, as he made no mention of Miss Grayson or her cottage.

Wood said nothing, but he was growing more impatient than ever, and the imaginary shavings whittled by his imaginary knife were increasing in length.

"Gentlemen," he exclaimed, "it still 'pears to me that we are wastin'

time. I know Prescott an' he's all right. I don't care two cents whether or not he helped a woman to escape. S'pose she was young and pretty."

All smiled saved Sefton and Prescott.

"General, would you let gallantry override patriotism?" asked the President.

"There ain't no woman in the world that can batter down the Confederacy," replied the other stoutly. "If that is ever done, it'll take armies to do it, and I move that we adjourn."

The President looked at his watch.

"Yes," he said, "we must go. Mr. Sefton, you may continue the examination as you will and report to me. Captain Prescott, I bid you good-day, and express my wish that you may come clear from this ordeal."

Prescott bowed his thanks, but to Wood, whose active intervention in his behalf had carried much weight, he felt deeper grat.i.tude, though he said nothing, and still stood in silence as the others went out, leaving him alone with the Secretary.

Mr. Sefton, too, was silent for a time, still interlacing his fingers thoughtfully and glancing now and then through the window. Then he looked at Prescott and his face changed. The cruelty which had lurked in his eyes disappeared and in its place came a trace of admiration, even liking.

"Captain Prescott," he said, "you have borne yourself very well for a man who knew he was wholly in the power of another, made by circ.u.mstances his enemy for the time being."

"I am not wholly in the power of anybody," replied Prescott proudly. "I repeat that I have done nothing at any time of which I am ashamed or for which my conscience reproaches me."

"That is irrelevant. It is not any question of shame or conscience, which are abstract things. It is merely one of fact--that is, whether you did or did not help Miss Catherwood, the spy, to escape. I am convinced that you helped her--not that I condemn you for it or that I am sorry you did so. Perhaps it is for my interest that you have acted thus. You were absent from your usual haunts yesterday and the night before, and it was within that time that the spy disappeared from Miss Grayson's. I have no doubt that you were with her. You see, I did not press the question when the others were here. I halted at the critical point. I had that much consideration for you."

He stopped again and the glances of these two strong men met once more; Prescott's open and defiant, Sefton's cunning and indirect.

"I hear that she is young and very beautiful," said the Secretary thoughtfully.

Prescott flushed.

"Yes, young and very beautiful," continued the Secretary. "One might even think that she was more beautiful than Helen Harley."

Prescott said nothing, but the deep flush remained on his face.

"Therefore," continued the Secretary, "I should imagine that your stay with her was not unpleasant."

"Mr. Sefton," exclaimed Prescott, taking an angry step forward, "your intimation is an insult and one that I do not propose to endure."

"You mistake my meaning," said the Secretary calmly. "I intended no such intimation as you thought, but I wonder what Helen Harley would think of the long period that you have spent with one as young and beautiful as herself."

He smiled a little, showing his white teeth, and Prescott, thrown off his guard, replied:

"She would think it a just deed."

"Then you admit that it is true?"

"I admit nothing," replied Prescott firmly. "I merely stated what I thought would be the opinion of Helen Harley concerning an act of mercy."

The Secretary smiled.

"Captain Prescott," he said, "I am not sorry that this has happened, but be a.s.sured that I am not disposed to make war upon you now. Shall we let it be an armed peace for the present?"

He showed a sudden warmth of manner and an easy agreeableness that Prescott found hard to resist. Rising from the chair, he placed his hand lightly upon Robert's arm, saying:

"I shall go with you to the street, Captain, if you will let me."

Together they left the room, the Secretary indicating the way, which was not that by which Prescott had come. They pa.s.sed through a large office and here Prescott saw many clerks at work at little desks, four women among them. Helen Harley was one of the four. She was copying papers, her head bent down, her brown hair low on her forehead, unconscious of her observers.

In her simple gray dress she looked not less beautiful than on that day when, in lilac and rose, drawing every eye, she received General Morgan.

She did not see them as they entered, for her head remained low and the wintry sunshine from the window gleamed across her brown hair.

The Secretary glanced at her casually, as it were, but Prescott saw a pa.s.sing look on his face that he could translate into nothing but triumphant proprietorship. Mr. Sefton was feeling more confident since the examination in the room above.

"She works well," he said laconically.

"I expected as much," said Prescott.

"It is not true that people of families used to an easy life cannot become efficient when hardship arrives," continued the Secretary. "Often they bring great zeal to their new duties."

Evidently he was a man who demanded rigid service, as the clerks who saw him bent lower to their task, but Helen did not notice the two until they were about to pa.s.s through a far door. Her cheeks reddened as they went out, for it hurt her pride that Prescott should see her there--a mere clerk, honest and enn.o.bling though she knew work to be.

The press of Richmond was not without enterprise even in those days of war and want, and it was seldom lacking in interest. If not news, then the pungent comment and criticism of Raymond and Winthrop were sure to find attentive readers, and on the day following Prescott's interview with the Secretary they furnished to their readers an uncommonly attractive story.

It had been discovered that the spy who stole the papers was a beautiful woman--a young Amazon of wonderful charms. She had been concealed in Richmond all the while--perhaps she might be in the city yet--and it was reported that a young Confederate officer, yielding to her fascinations, had hidden and helped her at the risk of his own ruin.

Here, indeed, was a story full of mystery and attraction; the city throbbed with it, and all voices were by no means condemnatory. It is a singular fact that in war people develop an extremely sentimental side, as if to atone for the harsher impulses that carry them into battle.

Throughout the Civil War the Southerners wrote much so-called poetry and their newspapers were filled with it. This story of the man and the maid appealed to them. If the man had fallen--well, he had fallen in a good cause. He was not the first who had been led astray by the tender, and therefore pardonable, emotion. What did it matter if she was a Northern girl and a spy? These were merely added elements to variety and charm.

If he had made a sacrifice of himself, either voluntarily or involuntarily, it was for a woman, and women understood and forgave.

They wondered what this young officer's name might be--made deft surmises, and by piecing circ.u.mstance to circ.u.mstance proved beyond a doubt that sixteen men were certainly he. It was somewhat tantalizing that at least half of these men, when accused of the crime, openly avowed their guilt and said they would do it again. Prescott, who was left out of all these calculations, owing to the gravity and soberness of his nature, read the accounts with mingled amus.e.m.e.nt and vexation.

There was nothing in any of them by which he could be identified, and he decided not to inquire how the story reached the newspapers, being satisfied in his own mind that he knew already. The first to speak to him of the matter was his friend Talbot.

"Bob," he said, "I wonder if this is true. I tried to get Raymond to tell me where he got the story, but he wouldn't, and as all the newspapers have it in the same way, I suppose they got it from the same source. But if there is such a girl, and if she has been here, I hope she has escaped and that she'll stay escaped."

It was pleasant for Prescott to hear Talbot talk thus, and this opinion was shared by many others as he soon learned, and his conscience remained at ease, although he was troubled about Miss Grayson. But he met her casually on the street about a week afterward and she said:

"I have had a message from some one. She is safe and well and she is grateful." She would add no more, and Prescott did not dare visit her house, watched now with a vigilance that he knew he could not escape; but he wondered often if Lucia Catherwood and he in the heave and drift of the mighty war should ever meet again.

The gossip of Richmond was not allowed to dwell long on the story of the spy, with all its alluring mystery of the man and the maid. Greater events were at hand. A soft wind blew from the South one day. The ice broke up, the snow melted, the wind continued to blow, the earth dried--winter was gone and spring in its green robe was coming. The time of play was over. The armies rose from their sleep in the snows and began to brush the rust from the cannon. Horses stretched themselves and generals studied their maps anew. Three years of tremendous war was gone, but they were prepared for a struggle yet more gigantic.

To those in Richmond able to bear arms was sent an order--"Come at once to the front"--and among them was Prescott, nothing loath. His mother kissed him a tearless good-by, hiding her grief and fear under her Puritan face.

"I feel that this is the end, one way or the other," she said.

"I hope so, mother."

"But it may be long delayed," she added.