The Shades of the Wilderness Part 25

Their coach did not contain many pa.s.sengers, several wounded officers going to Richmond on furlough, some countrymen, carrying provisions to the capital for sale, and a small, thin, elderly woman in a black dress, to whom Harry a.s.signed the part of an old maid. He noticed that her features were fine and she had the appearance of one who had suffered.

When they reached Richmond and their pa.s.ses were examined, he hastened to carry her bag for her and to help her off the train. She thanked him with a smile that made her almost handsome, and quickly disappeared in the streets of the city.

"A nice looking old maid," he said to Dalton.

"How do you know she's an old maid?"

"I don't know. I suppose it's a certain primness of manner."

"You can't judge by appearances. Like as not she's been married thirty years, and it's possible that she may have a family of at least twelve children."

"At any rate, we'll never know. But it's good, George, to be here in Richmond again. It's actually a luxury to see streets and shop windows, and people in civilian clothing, going about their business."

"Looks the same way to me, Harry, but we can't delay. We must be off to the President, with the dispatches from the Army of Northern Virginia."

But they did not hurry greatly. They were young and it had been a long time since they had been in a city of forty thousand inhabitants, where the shop windows were brilliant to them and n.o.body on the streets was shooting at anybody else. It was late July, the great heats were gone for the time at least, and they were brisk and elated. They paused a little while in Capitol Square, and looked at the Bell Tower, rising like a spire, from the crest of which alarms were rung, then at the fine structure of St. Paul's Church. They intended to go into the State House now used as the Confederate Capitol, but that must wait until they reported to President Davis.

They arrived at the modest building called the White House of the Confederacy, and, after a short wait in the anteroom, they were received by the President. They saw a tall, rather spare man, dressed in a suit of home-knit gray. He received them without either warmth or coldness.

Harry, although it was not the first time he had seen him, looked at him with intense curiosity. Davis, like Lincoln, was born in his own State, Kentucky, but like most other Kentuckians, he did not feel any enthusiasm over the President of the Confederacy. There was no magnetism. He felt the presence of intellect, but there was no inspiration in that arid presence.

A man of Oriental features was sitting near with a great bunch of papers in his hand. Mr. Davis did not introduce Harry and Dalton to him, and he remained silent while the President was asking questions of the messengers. But Harry watched him when he had a chance, interested strongly in that shrewd, able, Eastern face, the descendant of an immemorial and intellectual race, the man who while Secretary of State was trying also to help carry the tremendous burden of Confederate finance. What was he thinking, as Harry and Dalton answered the President's questions about the Army of Northern Virginia?

"You say that you left immediately after our army crossed the Potomac?"

asked the President.

"Yes, sir," replied Harry. "General Meade could have attacked, but he remained nearly two days on our front without attempting to do so."

A thin gray smile flitted over the face of the President of the Confederacy.

"General Meade was not beaten at Gettysburg, but I fancy he remembered it well enough."

Harry glanced at Benjamin, but his Oriental face was inscrutable.

The lad wondered what was lurking at the back of that strong brain.

He was shrewd enough himself to know that it was not always the generals on the battlefield who best understood the condition of a state at war, and often the man who held the purse was the one who measured it best of all. But Benjamin never said a word, nor did the expression of his face change a particle.

"The Army of Northern Virginia is safe," said the President, "and it will be able to repel all invasion of Virginia. General Lee gives especial mention of both of you in his letters, and you are not to return to him at once. You are to remain here a while on furlough, and if you will go to General Winder he will a.s.sign you to quarters."

Both Harry and Dalton were delighted, and, although thanks were really due to General Lee, they thanked the President, who smiled dryly.

Then they saluted and withdrew, the President and the Secretary of State going at once into earnest consultation over the papers Mr. Benjamin had brought.

Harry felt that he had left an atmosphere of depression and said so, when they were outside in the bright sunshine.

"If you were trying to carry as much as Mr. Davis is carrying you'd be depressed too," said Dalton.

"Maybe so, but let's forget it. We've got nothing to do for a few days but enjoy ourselves. General Winder is to give us quarters, but we're not to be under his command. What say you to a little trip through the capitol?"

"Good enough."

Congress had adjourned for the day, but they went through the building, admiring particularly the Houdon Washington, and then strolled again through the streets, which were so interesting and novel to them.

Richmond was never gayer and brighter. They were sure that the hated Yankees could never come. For more than two years the Army of Northern Virginia had been an insuperable bar to their advance, and it would continue so.

Harry suddenly lifted his cap as some one pa.s.sed swiftly, and Dalton glancing backward saw a small vanishing figure.

"Who was it?" he asked.

"The thin little old maid in black whom we saw on the train. She may have nodded to me when I bowed, but it was such a little nod that I'm not certain."

"I rather like your being polite to an insignificant old maid, Harry.

I'd expect you, as a matter of course, to be polite to a young and pretty girl, overpolite probably."

"That'll do, George Dalton. I like you best when you're preaching least.

Come, let's go into the hotel and hear what they're talking about."

After the custom of the times a large crowd was gathered in the s.p.a.cious lobby of Richmond's chief hotel. Among them were the local celebrities in other things than war, Daniel, Bagby, Pegram, Randolph, and a half-dozen more, musicians, artists, poets, orators and wits. People were quite democratic, and Harry and Dalton were free to draw their chairs near the edge of the group and listen. Pegram, the humorist, gave them a glance of approval, when he noticed their uniforms, the deep tan of their faces, their honest eyes and their compact, strong figures.

Harry soon learned that a large number of English and French newspapers had been brought by a blockade runner to Wilmington, North Carolina, and had just reached the capital, the news of which these men were discussing with eagerness.

"We learn that the sympathies of both the French and English governments are still with us," said Randolph.

"But these papers were all printed before the news of Vicksburg and Gettysburg had crossed the Atlantic," said Daniel.

"England is for us," said Pegram, "only because she likes us little and the North less. The French Imperialists, too, hate republics, and are in for anything that will damage them. When we beat off the North, until she's had enough, and set up our own free and independent republic, we'll have both England and France annoying us, and demanding favors, because they were for us in the war. Sympathy is something, but it doesn't win any battles."

"A nation has no real friend except itself," said Bagby. "Whatever the South gets she'll have to get with her own good right arm."

"I can predict the first great measure to be put through by the Southern Government after the war."

"What will it be?"

"The abolition of slavery."

"Why, that's one of the things we're fighting to maintain!"

"Exactly so. You're willing to throw away a thing of your own accord, when you're not willing to throw it away because another orders you to do so. Wars are due chiefly to our misunderstanding of human nature."

Then Pegram turned suddenly to Harry. "You're from the field?" he said.

"From the Army of Northern Virginia?"

"Yes," replied Harry. "My name is Kenton and I'm a lieutenant on the staff of General Lee. My friend is George Dalton, also of the commander- in-chief's staff."

"Are you from Kentucky?" asked Daniel curiously.

"Yes, from a little town called Pendleton."

"Then I fancy that I've met a relative of yours. I returned recently from a small town in North Georgia, the name of which I may not give, owing to military reasons, necessary at the present time, and I met while I was there a splendid tall man of middle years, Colonel George Kenton of Kentucky."

"That's my father!" said Harry eagerly. "How was he?"

"I thought he must be your father. The resemblance, you know. I should say that if all men were as healthy as he looked there would be no doctors in the world. He has a fine regiment and he'll be in the battle that's breeding down there. Grant has taken Vicksburg, as we all know, but a powerful army of ours is left in that region. It has to be dealt with before we lose the West."