Before the Dawn Part 37

The open air, the woods, the cannon at rest clothed the scene with a solemnity that no cathedral could have imparted. The same peace enfolded the Northern army, and it required but little fancy to think that the soldiers there were listening, too. It seemed at the moment an easy and natural thing for them both to lay down their arms and go home.

The minister talked, too, of home, a place that few of those who heard him had seen in two years or more, but he spoke of it not to enfeeble them, rather to call another influence to their aid in this struggle of valour and endurance. Prescott saw tears rise more than once in the eyes of hardened soldiers, and he became conscious again of the power of oratory over the Southern people. The North loved to read and the South to hear speeches; that seemed to him to typify the difference in the sections.

The minister grew more fiery and more impa.s.sioned. His penetrating voice reached far through the woods and around him was a ring of many thousands. Few have ever spoken to audiences so large and so singular; of women there were not twenty, just men, and men mostly young, mere boys the majority, but with faces brown and scarred and clothing tattered and worn, men hardened to wounds and reckless of death, men who had seen life in its wildest and most savage phases. But all the brown and scarred faces were upturned to the preacher, and the eyes of the soldiers as they listened gleamed with emotional fire. The wind moaned now and then, but none heard it. Around them the smoky camp-fires flared and cast a distorting light over those who heard.

Prescott's mind, as he listened to the impa.s.sioned voice of the preacher and looked at the brown, wild faces of those who listened, inevitably went back to the Crusades. There was now no question of right or wrong, but he beheld in it the spirit of men stirred by their emotions and gathering a sort of superhuman fire for the last and greatest conflict, for Armageddon. Here was the great drama played against the background of earth and sky, and all the mult.i.tude were actors.

The spirit of the preacher, too, was that of the crusading priest. The battlefields before them were but part of the battle of life; it was their duty to meet the foe there as bravely as they met the temptation of evil, and then he preached of the reward afterward, the Heaven to come. His listeners began to see a way into a better life through such a death, and many shook with emotion.

The spell was complete. The wind still moaned afar, and the fires still flared, casting their pallid light, but all followed the preacher. They saw only his deepset, burning eyes, the long pale face, and the long black hair that fell around it. They followed only his promises of death and life. He besought them to cast their sins at the feet of the Master--to confess and prepare for the great day to come.

Prescott was a sober man, one who controlled his emotions, but he could not help being shaken by the scene, the like of which the world has not witnessed since the Crusades--the vast forest, the solemn sky overhead, the smoky fires below, and the fifty thousand in the shadow of immediate death who hung on the words of one man.

The preacher talked of olden days, of the men who, girding themselves for the fight, fell in the glory of the Lord. Theirs was a beautiful death, he said, and forgiveness was for all who should do as they and cast away their sins. Groans began to arise from the more emotional of the soldiers; some wept, many now came forward and, confessing their sins, asked that prayers be said for their souls. Others followed and then they went forward by thousands. Over them still thundered the voice of the preacher, denouncing the sin of this world and announcing the glory of the world to come. Clouds swept up the heavens and the fires burned lower, but no one noticed. Before them flashed the livid face and burning eyes of the preacher, and he moved them with his words as the helmsman moves the ship.

Denser and denser grew the throng that knelt at his feet and begged for his prayers, and there was the sound of weeping. Then he ceased suddenly and, closing his eyes and bending his head, began to pray. Involuntarily the fifty thousand, too, closed their eyes and bent their heads.

He called them brands s.n.a.t.c.hed from the burning; he devoted their souls to G.o.d. There on their knees they had confessed their sins and he promised them the life everlasting. New emotions began to stir the souls of those who mourned. Death? What was that? Nothing. A mere dividing place between mortality and immortality, a mark, soon pa.s.sed, and nothing more. They began to feel a divine fire. They welcomed wounds and death, the immortal pa.s.sage, and they longed for the battlefield and the privilege of dying for their country. They thought of those among their comrades who had been so fortunate as to go on before, and expected joyfully soon to see them again.

Prescott looked up once, and the scene was more powerful and weird than any he had ever seen before. The great throng of people stood there with heads bowed listening to the single voice pouring out its invocation and holding them all within its sweep and spell.

The preacher asked the blessing of G.o.d on every one and finished his prayer. Then he began to sing:

"I've found a friend in Jesus, He is everything to me, He's the fairest of ten thousand to my soul; The Lily of the Valley in Him alone I see-- All I need to cleanse and make me fully whole.

"He's my comfort in trouble, In sorrow He's my stay; He tells me every care on Him to roll.

He's the Lily of the Valley, the Bright and Morning Star He's the fairest of ten thousand to my soul."

He sang one verse alone, and then the soldiers began to join, at first by tens, then by hundreds and then by thousands, until the grand chorus, rolling and majestic, of fifty thousand voices swelled through all the forest:

"He's the Lily of the Valley, the Bright and Morning Star, He's the fairest of ten thousand to my soul."

The faces of the soldiers were no longer sad. They were transfigured now. Joy had come after sorrow and then forgiveness. They heard the promise.

"The best of all ways to prepare soldiers for battle," said a cynical voice at Prescott's elbow.

It was Mr. Sefton.

"But it is not so intended," rejoined Prescott.

"Perhaps not, but it will suffice."

"His is what I call constructive oratory," presently continued the Secretary in a low voice. "You will notice that what he says is always calculated to strengthen the mind, although the soldiers themselves do not observe it."

"But no man could be more sincere," said Helen.

"I do not doubt it," replied the Secretary.

"It is impossible for me to think that the men singing here may fall in battle in a few days," said Helen.

The singing ended and in a few minutes the soldiers were engaged in many avocations, going about the business of the day. Prescott and Mr. Sefton took Helen back to the house and then each turned to his own task.

Several officers were gathered before a camp-fire on the following morning mending their clothes. They were in good humour because Talbot was with them and gloom rarely endured long in his presence.

"After all, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?" said Talbot.

"Will it profit me more to be killed in a decent uniform than in a ragged one?"

"Don't you want to make a respectable casualty?" asked Prescott.

"Yes; but I don't like to work so much for it," replied Talbot. "It's harder to dress well now than it is to win a battle. You can get mighty little money and it's worth mighty little after you get it. The 'I promise to pay' of the Confederate States of America has sunk terribly low, boys."

He held up a Confederate bill and regarded it with disgust.

"It would take a wheelbarrow full of those to buy a decent suit of clothes," he said. "Do you know the luck I had yesterday when I tried to improve my toilet?"

All showed interest.

"More than six months' pay was due me," said Talbot, "and thinking I'd buy something to wear, I went around to old Seymour, the paymaster, for an installment. 'See here, Seymour,' I said, 'can't you let me have a month's pay. It's been so long since I have had any money that I've forgotten how it looks. I want to refresh my memory.'

"You ought to have seen the look old Seymour put on. You'd have thought I'd asked him for the moon. 'Talbot' he said, 'you're the cheekiest youngster I've met in a long time.'

"'But the army owes me six months' pay,' I said. 'What's that got to do with it?' he asked. 'I'd like to know what use a soldier has for money?'

Then he looked me up and down as if it wouldn't work a footrule hard to measure me. But I begged like a good fellow--said I wanted to buy some new clothes, and I'd be satisfied if he'd let me have only a month's pay. At last he gave me the month's pay--five hundred dollars--in nice new Confederate bills, and I went to a sutler to buy the best he had in the way of raiment.

"I particularly wanted a nice new shirt and found one just to suit me.

'The price?' I said to the sutler. 'Eight hundred dollars,' he answered, as if he didn't care whether I took it or not. That settled me so far as the shirt question was concerned--I'd have to wait for that until I was richer; but I looked through his stock and at last I bought a handkerchief for two hundred dollars, two paper collars for one hundred dollars each, and I've got this hundred dollars left. Oh, I'm a bargainer!"

And he waved the Confederate bill aloft in triumph.

"I'd give this hundred dollars for a good cigar," he added, "but there isn't one in the army."

One of the men sang:

"I am busted, mother, busted.

Gone the last unhappy check; And the infernal sutler's prices Make every pocket-book a wreck."

Prescott sat reading a newspaper. It was the issue of the _Richmond Whig_ of April 30, 1864, and his eyes were on these paragraphs:

"That the great struggle is about to take place for the possession of Richmond is conceded on all sides. The enemy is marshaling his cohorts on the Rapahannock and the Peninsula, and that a last desperate effort will be made to overrun Virginia and occupy her ancient capital is admitted by the enemy himself. What, then, becomes the duty of the people of Richmond in view of the mighty conflict at hand? It is evidently the same as that of the commander of a man-of-war who sails out of port to engage the foes of his flag in mortal combat. The decks are cleared for action; non-combatants are ordered below or ash.o.r.e; the supply of ammunition and food is looked to, and a short prayer uttered that Heaven will favour the right and protect the land and the loved ones for whom the battle is waged.

"We sincerely hope and pray that the red waves of battle may not, as in 1862, roll and break and hiss against the walls of the capital, and the ears of our suffering but resolute people may never again be saluted by the reports of hostile guns. But our hopes may be disappointed; the enemy may come again as he has come before, and, for aught we know, the battle may be fought on these hills and in these streets. It is with a view of this possible contingency that we would urge upon our people to make all needful preparation for whatever fate betides them, and especially to give our brave and unconquerable defenders a clear deck and open field. And above all, let the living oracles of our holy religion, and pious men and women of every persuasion, remember that G.o.d alone giveth the victory, and that His ear is ever open to the prayer of the righteous."

Prescott's thoughts the next morning were of Lucia Catherwood, who had floated away from him in a sort of haze. It seemed a long time since they parted that night in the snow, and he found himself trying to reproduce her face and the sounds of her voice. Where was she now? With that army which hung like a thunder cloud on their front? He had no doubt of it. Her work would be there. He felt that they were going to meet again, and it would not be long.

That day the Southern breeze blew stronger and sweeter than ever. It came up from the Gulf, laden with a million odours, and the little wild flowers in delicate tints of pink and purple and blue peeped up amid the shades of the forest.

That night Grant, with one hundred and thirty thousand men and four hundred guns, crossed the Rapidan and advanced on the Army of Northern Virginia.