Before the Dawn: A Story of the Fall of Richmond
The Secretary paused, and his expression was one of mingled concern and sympathy. A young man whom he liked was about to fall into serious difficulties and he would save him from them if he could. Yet they understood each other perfectly. A single glance, a spark from steel like that which had passed between Prescott and the Secretary, passed now between these two. The Secretary was opening another mine in the arduous siege that he had undertaken; if he could not win by treaty he would by arms, and now he was threatening her through Prescott.
She did not flinch and therefore she won his increased admiration. Her natural colour returned and she met his glance firmly. The life of Lucia Catherwood had been hard and she was trained to repression and self-reliance.
"I do not understand why you should speak of this to me," she said.
"Merely that you might exert your influence in his favour."
She was measuring him then with a glance not less penetrating than his own. Why should she seek now to save Prescott? But she would, if she could. This was a threat that the Secretary might keep, but not at once, and she would seek time.
"Captain Prescott has done me a great service," she said, "and naturally I should be grateful to any who did as much for him."
"Perhaps some one who will do as much can be found," he said. "It may be that I shall speak to him of you later and then he will claim the reward that you promise."
It was on her lips to say that she promised nothing except gratitude, but she withheld the words. It suddenly seemed fair to a singularly honest mind to meet craft with craft. She had heard of the military phrase, "in the air"; she would leave the Secretary in the air. So she merely said:
"I am not in Captain Prescott's confidence, but I know that he will thank you."
"He should," said the Secretary dryly, and left her.
Almost at the very moment that the Secretary was going to the Grayson cottage Prescott was on his way to Winthrop's newspaper office.
There was little to be done, and a group including General Wood, who had come that afternoon from Petersburg, sat in the old fashion by the stove and talked of public affairs, especially the stage into which the war had now come. The heat of the room felt grateful, as a winter night was falling outside, and in the society of his friends Prescott found himself becoming more of an optimist than he had been for some days. Cheerfulness is riveted in such a physical base as youth and strength, and Prescott was no exception. He could even smile behind his hand when he saw General Wood draw forth the infallible bowie-knife, pull a piece of pine from a rickety box that held fuel for the stove and begin to whittle from it long, symmetrical shavings that curled beautifully. This was certain evidence that General Wood, for the evening at least, was inclined to look on the bright side of life.
Unto this placid group came two men, walking heavily up the wooden stairs and showing signs of mental wear. Their eyebrows were raised with surprise at the sight of Prescott, but they made no comment. They were Harley and Redfield.
Harley approached Winthrop with a jovial air.
"I've found you a new contributor to your paper and he's ready to bring you a most interesting piece of news."
Winthrop flipped the ash off his cigar and regarded Harley coolly.
"Colonel!" he said, "I'm always grateful for good news, but I don't take it as a favour. If it comes to the pinch I can write my newspaper all by myself."
Harley changed countenance and his tone changed too.
"It's in the interest of justice," he said, "and it will be sure to attract attention at the same time."
"I imagine that it must be in the interest of justice when you and Mr. Redfield take so much trouble to secure its publication," said Winthrop; "and I imagine that I'm not risking much when I also say that you are the brilliant author who has written the little piece."
"It's this," said Harley. "It's about a man who has been paying too ardent attentions to a married woman—no names given, of course; he is a captain, a young man who is here on leave, and she is the wife of a general who is at the front and can't look after his own honour. Gossip says, too, that the captain has been concerned in something else that will bring him up with a jerk if the Government hears of it. It's all written out here. Oh, it will make a fine stir!"
Prescott half rose from his seat, but sank back and remained quiet. Again he imitated the Secretary's example of self-repression and waited to see what Winthrop would do. General Wood trimmed off a shaving so long that it coiled all the way around his wrist. Then he took it off carefully, dropped it on the floor with the others, and at once went to work whittling a new one.
"Let's see the article," said Winthrop.
Harley handed it to him and he read it carefully.
"A fine piece of work," he said; "who wrote it—you or Redfield?"
"Oh, we did it together," replied Harley with a smile of appreciation.
Redfield uttered a denial, but it was too late.
"A fine piece of work," repeated Winthrop, "admirably adapted to the kindling of fires. Unfortunately my fire is already kindled, but it can help on the good cause."
With that he cast the paper into the stove.
Harley uttered an oath.
"What do you mean?" he cried.
"I mean that you can't use my paper to gratify your private revenge. If you want to do that sort of thing you must get a newspaper of your own."
"I think you are infernally impertinent."
"And I think, Vincent Harley, that you are a damned fool. You want a duel with the man about whom you've written this card, but for excellent reasons he will decline to meet you. Still I hate to see a man who is looking for a fight go disappointed, and just to oblige you I'll fight you myself."
"But I've no quarrel with you," said Harley sullenly.
"Oh, I can give you ample cause," said Winthrop briskly. "I can throw this water in your face, or if you prefer it I can give you a blow on the cheek, a hard one, too. Take your choice."
Prescott arose.
"I'm much obliged to you, Winthrop," he said, "for taking up my quarrel and trying to shield me. All of you know that I am meant in that card which he calls such 'a piece of good news.' I admire Colonel Harley's methods, and since he is so persistent I will fight him on the condition that the meeting and its causes be kept absolutely secret. If either of us is wounded or killed let it be said that it was in a skirmish with the enemy."
"Why these conditions?" asked Redfield.
"For the sake of others. Colonel Harley imagines that he has a grievance against me. He has none, and if he had the one that he imagines he is certainly in no position to call me to account. Since he will have it no other way, I will fight him."
"I object," said Winthrop with temper. "I have a prior claim. Colonel Harley has tried to use me, an unoffending third party, as the instrument of his private revenge, and that is a deadly offense. I have the reputation of being a hot-blooded man and I intend to live up to my reputation."
A glass of water was standing by the cooler. He lifted it and hurled the contents into Harley's face. The man started back, strangling and coughing, then wiped the water from his face with a handkerchief.
"Do you dispute the priority of my claim over Captain Prescott?" asked Winthrop.
"I do not," said Harley. "Mr. Redfield will call on you again in my behalf within an hour."
Prescott was irresolute.
"Winthrop," he said, "I can't permit this."
"Oh, yes, you can," said Winthrop, "because you can't help yourself."
Then General Wood upreared his gigantic form and ran the fingers of his left hand solemnly through his black whiskers. He put his bowie-knife in its sheath, brushed the last shaving off his trousers and said:
"But there's somebody who can help it, an' I'm the man. What's more, I mean to do it. Colonel Harley, General Lee transferred your regiment to my command yesterday and I need you at the front. I order you to report for duty at once, and I won't have any delay about it either. You report to me in Petersburg to-morrow or I'll know the reason why; I go myself at daylight, but I'll leave a request with the Government that Captain Prescott also be despatched to me. I've got work for him to do."
The man spoke with the utmost dignity and his big black eyes shot fire.
"The king commands," said Raymond softly.
Wood put his hand on Harley's arm.
"Colonel," he said, "you are one of my lieutenants, and we're thinkin' about a movement that I've got to talk over with you. You'll come with me now to the Spotswood Hotel, because there's no time to waste. I don't reckon you or I will get much sleep to-night, but if we don't sleep to-night we'll doze in the saddle to-morrow."
"The king not only commands, but knows what to command," said Raymond softly.
It was the general of the battlefield, the man of lightning force who spoke, and there was none who dared to disobey. Harley, himself a brilliant soldier though nothing else, yielded when he felt the hand of steel on his arm, and acknowledged the presence of a superior force.
"Very well, General," he said respectfully; "I am at your service."
"Good-night, gentlemen," said Wood to the others, and he added laughingly to the editors: "Don't you boys print anythin' until you know what you're printin'," and to Prescott: "I reckon you'd better say good-by to-morrow to your friends in Richmond. I don't allow that you'll have more'n a couple of days longer here," and then to Harley: "Come along, Colonel; an' I s'pose you're goin' out with us, too, Mr. Redfield."
He swept up the two with his glance and the three left together, their footsteps sounding on the rickety steps until they passed into the street.
"There goes a man, a real man," said Raymond with emphasis. "Winthrop, it takes such as he to reduce fellows like you and Harley to their proper places."
"It is unkind of him to kidnap Harley in that summary fashion," said Winthrop ruefully. "I really wanted to put a bullet through him. Not in a vital place—say through the shoulder or the fleshy part of the arm, where it would let blood flow freely. That's what he needs."
But Prescott was devoutly thankful to Wood, and especially for his promise that he, too, should speedily be sent to the front. What he wished most of all now was to escape from Richmond.
The promise was kept, the order to report to General Wood himself in Petersburg came the next day and he was to start on the following morning.
He took courage to call upon Lucia and found her at home, sitting silently in the little parlour, the glow from the fire falling across her hair and tinting it with deep gleams of reddish gold. Whether she was surprised to see him he could not judge, her face remaining calm and no movement that would betray emotion escaping her.
"Miss Catherwood," he said, "I have come to bid you farewell. I rejoin the army to-morrow and I am glad to go."
"I, too, am glad that you are going," she said, shading her eyes with her hands as if to protect them from the glow of the fire.
"There is one thing that I would ask of you," he said, "and it is that you remember me as I was last winter, and not as I have appeared to you since I returned from the South. That was real; this is false."
His voice trembled, and she did not speak, fearing that her own would do the same.
"I have made mistakes," he said. "I have yielded to rash impulses, and have put myself in a false position before the world; but I have not been criminal in anything, either in deed or intent. Even now what I remember best, the memory that I value most, is when you and I fled together from Richmond in the cold and the snow, when you trusted me and I trusted you."
She wished to speak to him then, remembering the man, stained with his own blood, whom she had carried in her strong young arms off the battlefield. With a true woman's heart she liked him better when she was acting for him than when he was acting for her; but something held her back—the shadow of a fair woman with lurking green depths in her blue eyes.
"Lucia!" exclaimed Prescott passionately, "have you nothing to say to me? Can't you forget my follies and remember at least the few good things that I have done?"
"I wish you well. I cannot forget the great service that you did me, and I hope that you will return safely from a war soon to end."
"You might wish anybody that, even those whom you have never seen," he said.
Then with a few formal words he went away, and long after he was gone she still sat there staring into the fire, the gleams of reddish gold in her hair becoming fainter and fainter.
Prescott left Richmond the next morning.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE FALL OF RICHMOND
Two long lines of earthworks faced each other across a sodden field; overhead a chilly sky let fall a chilly rain; behind the low ridges of earth two armies faced each other, and whether in rain or in sunshine, no head rose above either wall without becoming an instant mark for a rifle that never missed. Here the remorseless sharpshooters lay. Human life had become a little thing, and after a difficult shot they exchanged remarks as hunters do when they kill a bird on the wing.
If ever there was a "No Man's Land," it was the space between the two armies which had aptly been called the "Plain of Death." Any one who ventured upon it thought very little of this life, and it was well that he should, as he had little of it left to think about. The armies had lain there for weeks and weeks, facing each other in a deadlock, and a fierce winter, making the country an alternation of slush and snow, had settled down on both. The North could not go forward; the South could not thrust the North back; but the North could wait and the South could not. Lee's army, crouching behind the earthen walls, grew thinner and hungrier and colder as the weeks passed. Uniforms fell away in rags, supplies from the South became smaller and smaller, but the lean and ragged army still lay there, grim and defiant, while Grant, with the memory of Cold Harbour before him, dared not attack. He bided his time, having shown all the qualities that were hoped of him and more. Tenacious, fertile in ideas, he had been from the beginning the one to attack and his foe the one to defend. The whole character of the war had changed since he came upon the field. He and Sherman were now the two arms of a vise that held the Confederacy in its grip and would never let go.
Prescott crouched behind the low wall, reading a letter from his mother, while his comrades looked enviously at him. A letter from home had long since become an event. Mrs. Prescott said she was well, and, so far as concerned her physical comfort, was not feeling any excessive stress of war. They were hearing many reports in Richmond from the armies. Grant, it was said, would make a great flanking movement as soon as the warmer weather came, and the newspapers in the capital gave accounts of vast reinforcements in men and supplies he was receiving from the North.
"If we know our Grant, and we think we do, he will certainly move," said Prescott grimly to himself, looking across the "Plain of Death" toward the long Northern line.
Then his mother continued with personal news of his friends and acquaintances.
"The popularity of Lucia Catherwood lasts," she wrote. "She would avoid publicity, but she can scarcely do it without offending the good people who like her. She seems gay and is often brilliant, but I do not think she is happy. She receives great attention from Mr. Sefton, whose power in the Government, disguised as it is in a subordinate position, seems to increase. Whether or not she likes him I do not know. Sometimes I think she does, and sometimes I think she has the greatest aversion to him. But it is a courtship that interests all Richmond. People mostly say that the Secretary will win, but as an old woman—a mere looker-on—I have my doubts. Helen Harley still holds her place in the Secretary's office, but Mr. Sefton no longer takes great interest in her. Her selfish old father does not like it at all, and I hear that he speaks slightingly of the Secretary's low origin; but he continues to spend the money that his daughter earns.
"It is common gossip that the Secretary knows all about Lucia's life before she came to Richmond; that he has penetrated the mystery and in some way has a hold over her which he is using. I do not know how this report originated, but I think it began in some foolish talk of Vincent Harley's. As for myself, I do not believe there is any mystery at all. She is simply a girl who in these troublous times came, as was natural, to her nearest relative, Miss Grayson."
"No bad news, Bob, I hope," said Talbot, looking at his gloomy face.
"None at all," said Prescott cheerily, and with pardonable evasion.
"There go the skirmishers again."
A rapid crackle arose from a point far to their left, but the men around Talbot and Prescott paid no attention to it, merely huddling closer in the effort to keep warm. They had ceased long since to be interested in such trivialities.
"Grant's going to move right away; I feel it in my bones," repeated Talbot.
Talbot was right. That night the cold suddenly fled, the chilly clouds left the heavens and the great Northern General issued a command. A year before another command of his produced that terrific campaign through the Wilderness, where a hundred thousand men fell, and he meant this second one to be as significant.
Now the fighting, mostly the work of sharpshooters through the winter, began in regular form, and extended in a long line over the torn and trampled fields of Virginia, where all the soil was watered with blood. The numerous horsemen of Sheridan, fresh from triumphs in the Valley of Virginia, were the wings of the Northern force, and they hung on the flanks of the Southern army, incessantly harrying it, cutting off companies and regiments, giving the worn and wounded men no respite.
Along a vast, curving line that steadily bent in toward Richmond—the Southern army inside, the Northern army outside—the sound of the cannon scarcely ever ceased, night or day. Lee fought with undiminished skill, always massing his thin ranks at the point of contact and handling them with the old fire and vigour; but his opponent never ceased the terrible hammering that he had begun more than a year ago. Grant intended to break through the shell of the Southern Confederacy, and it was now cracking and threatening to shatter before his ceaseless strokes.
The defenders of a lost cause, if cause it was, scarcely ever knew what it was to draw a free breath. When they were not fighting, they were marching, often on bare feet, and of the two they did not know which they preferred. They were always hungry; they went into battles on empty stomachs, came out with the same if they came out at all, and they had no time to think of the future. They had become mere battered machines, animated, it is true, by a spirit, but by a spirit that could take no thought of softness. They had respected Grant from the first; now, despite their loss by his grim tactics, they looked in wonder and admiration at them, and sought to measure the strength of mind that could pay a heavy present price in flesh and blood in order to avoid a greater price hereafter.
Prescott and Talbot were with the last legion. The bullets, after wounding them so often, seemed now to give them the right of way. They came from every battle and skirmish unhurt, only to go into a new one the next day.
"If I get out of all this alive," said Talbot, with grim humour, "I intend to eat for a month and then sleep for a year; maybe then I'll feel rested."
Wood, too, was always there with his cavalry, now a thin band, seeking to hold back the horsemen of the North, and Vincent Harley, ever a good soldier, was his able second.
In these desperate days Prescott began to feel respect for Harley; he admired the soldier, if not the man. There was no danger too great for Harley, no service too arduous. He slept in the saddle, if he slept at all, and his spirit never flinched. There was no time for, him to renew his quarrel with Prescott, and Prescott was resolved that it should never be renewed if there were any decent way of avoiding it.
The close of a day of incessant battle and skirmish was at hand, and clouds of smoke darkened the twilight. From the east and from the west came the low mutter and thunder of the guns. The red sun was going down in a sea of ominous fire. There were strange reports of the deeds of Sheridan, but the soldiers themselves knew nothing definite. They had lost touch with other bodies of their comrades, and they could only hope to meet them again. Meanwhile they gave scarcely a glance at the lone and trampled land, but threw themselves down under the trees and fell asleep.
A messenger came for Prescott. "The General-in-Chief wishes you," he said.
Prescott walked to a small fire where Lee sat alone for the present and within the shelter of the tent. He was grave and thoughtful, but that was habitual with him. Prescott could not see that the victor of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville had changed in bearing or manner. He was as neat as ever; the gray uniform was spotless; the splendid sword, a gift from admirers, hung by his side. His face expressed nothing to the keen gaze of Prescott, who was now no novice in the art of reading the faces of men.
Prescott saluted and stood silent.
Lee looked at him thoughtfully.
"Captain Prescott," he said, "I have heard good reports of you, and I have had the pleasure also to see you bear yourself well."
Prescott's heart beat fast at this praise from the first man of the South.
"Do you know the way to Richmond?" asked the General.
"I could find it in a night as black as my hat."
"That is good. Here is a letter that I wish you to take there and deliver as soon as you can to Mr. Davis. It is important, and be sure you do not fall into the hands of any of the Northern raiders."
He held out a small sealed envelope, and Prescott took it.
"Take care of yourself," he said, "because you will have a dangerous ride."
Prescott saluted and turned away. He looked back once, and the General was still sitting alone by the fire, his face grave and thoughtful.
Prescott had a good horse, and when he rode away was full of faith that he would reach Richmond. He was glad to go because of the confidence Lee showed in him, and because he might see in the capital those for whom he cared most.
As he rode on the lights behind him died and the darkness came up and covered Lee's camp. But he had truly told the General that he could find his way to Richmond in black darkness, and to-night he had need of both knowledge and instinct. There was a shadowed moon, flurries of rain, and a wind moaning through the pine woods. From far away, like the swell of the sea on the rocks, came the low mutter of the guns. Scarcely ever did it cease, and its note rose above the wailing of the wind like a kind of solemn chorus that got upon Prescott's nerves.
"Is it a funeral song?" he asked.
On he went and the way opened before him in the darkness; no Northern horsemen crossed his path; the cry of "Halt!" never came. It seemed to Prescott that fate was making his way easy. For what purpose? He did not like it. He wished to be interrupted—to feel that he must struggle to achieve his journey. This, too, got upon his nerves. He grew lonely and afraid—not afraid of physical danger, but of the omens and presages that the night seemed to bear. He wondered again about the message that he bore. Why had not General Lee given some hint of its contents? Then he blamed himself for questioning.
He rode slowly and thus many hours passed. Mile after mile fell behind him and the night went with them. The sun sprang up, the golden day enfolded the earth, and at last from the top of a hill he saw afar the spires of Richmond. It was a city that he loved—his home, the scene of the greatest events in his life, including his manhood's love; and as he looked down upon it now his eyes grew misty. What would be its fate?
He rode on, giving the countersign as he passed the defenses. With the pure day, the omens and presages of the night seemed to have passed. Richmond breathed a Sabbath calm; the Northern armies might have been a thousand miles away for all the sign it gave. There was no fear, no apprehension on the faces he saw. Richmond still had absolute faith in Lee; whatever his lack of resources, he would meet the need.
