Before the Dawn Part 48

"That you know I am the alleged spy for whom you were so long looking in Richmond."

The Secretary hesitated for an answer. Her sudden frankness surprised him. It was so different from his own methods in dealing with others that he had not taken it into account.

"Yes, you know it," she continued, "and it may be used against me, not to inflict on me a punishment--that I do not dread--but to injure the character and reputation that a woman loves--things that are to her the breath of life. But I say that if you choose to use your power you can do so."

The Secretary glanced at her in admiration, the old wonder concerning himself returning to him.

"Miss Catherwood," he said, "I cannot speak in too high praise of your courage. I have never before seen a woman show so much. Your surmise is correct. You were the spy or alleged spy, as you prefer to say, for whom I was looking. As for the morality of your act, I do not consider that; it never entered into my calculations; but in going back to Richmond you realize that you will be wholly in the power of the Confederate Government. Whenever it wants you you will have to come, and in very truth you will have to walk in the straight and narrow path."

"I am not afraid," she said, with a proud lifting of her head. "I will take the risks, and if you, Mr. Sefton, for some reason unknown to me, force me to match my wits with yours, I shall do the best I can."

The haughty uplift of her neck and the flash of her eye showed that she thought her "best" would be no mean effort, but this att.i.tude appealed to the Secretary more than a humble submission ever would have done.

Here was one with whom it would be a pleasure to make a test of skill and force. Certainly steel would be striking sparks from steel.

"I am not making any threats, Miss Catherwood," he said. "That would be unworthy, I merely wish you to understand the situation. I am a frank man, I trust, and, like most other men, I seek my own advancement; it would further no interest of mine for me to denounce you at present, and I trust that you will not at any time make it otherwise."

"That is, I am to serve you if you call upon me."

"Let us not put it so bluntly."

"I shall not do anything that I do not wish to do," she said, with the old proud uplift of her head. "And listen! there is something which may soon shatter all your plans, Mr. Sefton."

She pointed backward, where the purplish clouds hung over the Wilderness, whence came the low, sullen mutter, almost as faint as the distant beat of waves on a coast.

The Secretary smiled deprecatingly.

"After all, you are like other women, Miss Catherwood. You suppose, of course, that I stake my whole fortune upon a single issue, but it is not so. I wish to live on after the war, whatever its result may be, and the tide of fortune in that forest may shift and change, but mine may not shift and change with it."

"You are at least frank."

"The South may lose, but if she loses the world will not end on that account. I shall still wish to play my part. Ah, here comes Captain Prescott."

Prescott liked little this long talk between Lucia and the Secretary and the deep interest each seemed to show in what the other said. He bore it with patience for a time, but it seemed to him, though the thought was not so framed in his mind, that he had a certain proprietary interest in her because he had saved her at great risk.

The Secretary received him with a pleasant smile, made some slight remark about duty elsewhere and dropped easily away. Prescott waited until he was out of hearing before he said:

"Do you like that man, Miss Catherwood?"

"I do not know. Why?"

"You were in such close and long conversation that you seemed to be old friends."

"There were reasons for what we said."

She looked at him so frankly that he was ashamed, but she, recognizing his tone and the sharpness of it, was not displeased. On the contrary, she felt a warm glow, and the woman in her urged her to go further. She spoke well of the Secretary, his penetrating foresight and his knowledge of the world and its people--men, women and children. Prescott listened in a somewhat sulky mood, and she, regarding him with covert glances, was roused to a singular lightness that she had not known for many days.

Then she changed, showing him her softer side, for she could be as feminine as any other woman, not less so than Helen Harley, and she would prove it to him. Becoming all sunshine with just enough shadow to deepen the colours, she spoke of a time when the war should have pa.s.sed--when the glory of this world with the green of spring and the pink of summer should return. Her moods were so many and so variable, but all so gay, that Prescott began to share her spirits, and although they were retreating from a lost field and the cannon still muttered behind them, he forgot the war and remembered only this girl beside him, who walked with such easy grace and saw so bright an outlook.

Thus the retreat continued. The able-bodied soldiers of the brigade were drafted away, but the women and wounded men went on. Grant never ceased his hammer strokes, and it was necessary for the Southern leaders to get rid of all superfluous baggage. Prescott, singularly enough, found himself in command of this little column that marched southward, taking the place of his friend Talbot, lost in a mysterious way to the regret of all.

Mr. Sefton left them the day after his talk with Lucia, and Prescott was not sorry to see him go, for some of his uneasiness departed with him.

Harley, vain, fretful and complaining, gave much trouble, yielding only to the influence of Mrs. Markham, with whom Prescott did not like to see him, but was helpless in the matter. Helen and Lucia were the most obedient of soldiers and gave no trouble at all. Helen, a warm partisan, seemed to think little of the great campaign that was going on behind her, and to concern herself more about something else. Yet she was not unhappy--even Prescott could see it--and the bond between her and Lucia was growing strong daily. Usually they were together, and once when Mrs.

Markham spoke slightingly of the "Northern woman," as she called Lucia, Helen replied with a sharpness very remarkable for her--a sharpness that contributed to the growing coldness between them, which had begun with the power Mrs. Markham exercised over Helen's brother.

Prescott noticed these things more or less and sometimes they pained him; but clearly they were outside his province, and in order to give them no room in his mind he applied himself more diligently than ever to his duties, his wound now permitting him to do almost a man's work.

They marched slowly and it gave promise of being a long journey. The days grew very hot; the sun burned the gra.s.s, and over them hung clouds of steamy vapour. For the sake of the badly wounded who had fever they traveled often by night and rested by day in the shade. But that cloud of war never left them.

The days pa.s.sed and distant battles still hung on their skirts. The mutter of the guns was seldom absent, and they yet saw, now and then, on the horizon, flashes like heat-lightning. One morning there was a rapid beat of hoofs, a glitter of sabers issuing from a wood, and in a moment the little convoy was surrounded by a troop of cavalry in blue.

"Only wounded men and women," said their leader, a young colonel with a fine, open face. "Bah, we have no time to waste with them!"

He bowed contritely, touching his hat to the ladies and saying that he did not mean to be ungallant. Then in a moment he and his men were gone at gallop in a cloud of dust, disappearing in a whirlwind across the plain, leaving the little convoy to proceed at its leisure.

Prescott gazed after them, shading his eyes with his hands. "There must be some great movement at hand," he said, "or they would have asked us questions, at least."

The day grew close and sultry. Columns of steamy vapour moved back and forth and enclosed them, and the sun set in a red mist. At night it rained, but early the next morning the mutter of the cannon grew to a rumble and then a storm. The hot day came and all the east was filled with flashes of fire. The crash of the cannon was incessant, and in fancy every one in that little convoy heard the tramping of brigades and the clatter of hoofs as the hors.e.m.e.n rushed on the guns.

"They have met again!" said Lucia.

"Yes," replied Prescott. "It's Grant and Lee. How many great battles is this since they met first in the Wilderness?"

n.o.body could tell; they had lost count.

The tumult lasted about an hour and then died away, to be succeeded by a stillness intense and painful. The sun shone with a white glare. No wind stirred. The leaves and the gra.s.s drooped. The fields were deserted; there was not a sign of life in them, either human or animal. The road lay before them, a dusty streak.

None came to tell of the battle, and, oppressed by anxiety, Prescott moved on. Some hors.e.m.e.n appeared on the hills the next morning, and as they approached, Prescott, with indescribable joy, recognized in the lead the figure of Talbot, whose unknown fate they had mourned. Talbot delightedly shook hands with them all, not neglecting Lucia Catherwood.

His honest face glowed with emotion.

"I am on a scout around our army now," he said, "and I thought I should find you near here somewhere. I wanted to tell you what had become of me. I was captured that night we were crossing the river--some of my blundering--but I escaped the next night. It was easy enough to do it.

There was so much fighting and so much of everything going on that I just rose up and walked out of the Yankee camp. n.o.body had time to pay any attention to me. I got back to Lee--somehow I knew I must do it, as he could never win the war without me--and here I am."

"There was a battle yesterday morning; we heard it," said Prescott.

Talbot's face clouded and the corners of his mouth drooped.

"We have won a great victory," he said, "but it doesn't pay us. The Yankees lost twelve or fifteen thousand men, but we haven't gained anything. That firing you heard was at Cold Harbour. It was a great battle, an awful one. I hope to G.o.d I shall never see its like again. I saw fifteen thousand men stretched out on the b.l.o.o.d.y ground in rows. I don't believe that so many men ever before fell in so short a time. I have heard of a whirlwind of death, but I never saw one till then.

"We had gone into intrenchments and Grant moved against us with his whole army. They came on; you could hear 'em, the tramp of regiments and brigades, scores of thousands, and the sun rising up and turning to gold over their heads. Our cannon began. What a crash! It was like twenty thunderbolts all at once. We swept that field with tons and tons of metal. Then our rifles opened and the whistling of the bullets was like the screaming of a wind on a plain. You could see the men of that army shoot up into the air before such a sheet of metal, and you heard the cracking of bones like the breaking up of ice. After awhile those that lived had to turn back; human beings could not stand more, and we were glad when it was all over."

Talbot stayed a little while with them. Then he and his men, like the Northern cavalry, whirled off in a cloud of dust, and the little convoy resumed its solemn march southward, reaching Richmond in safety.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE DESPATCH BEARER