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.
From lofty church spires bells began to ring. The air was pervaded with a holy calm, and Prescott, with the same feeling upon him, rode on. He longed to turn aside to see his mother and to call at the Grayson cottage, but "as soon as possible," the General had said, and he must deliver his message. He knocked at the door of the White House of the Confederacy. "Gone to church," the servant said when he asked for Mr. Davis.
Prescott took his way to Doctor Hoge's church, well knowing where the President of the Confederacy habitually sat, and stiff with his night's riding, walked and led his mount. At the church door he gave the horse to a little negro boy to hold and went quietly inside.
The President and his family were in their pew and the minister was speaking. Prescott paused a few moments at the entrance to the aisle. No one paid any attention to him; soldiers were too common a sight to be noticed. He felt in the inside pocket of his waistcoat and drew forth the sealed envelope. Then he slipped softly down the aisle, leaned over the President's pew and handed him the note with the whispered words, "A message from General Lee."
Prescott, receiving no orders, quietly withdrew to a neighbouring vacant pew and watched Mr. Davis as he opened the envelope and read the letter. He saw a sudden gray pallor sweep over his face, a quick twitching of the lips and then a return of the wonted calm.
The President of the Confederacy refolded the note and put it in his pocket. Presently he rose and left the church and Prescott followed him. An hour later Richmond was stricken into a momentary dumbness, soon followed by the chattering of many voices. The city, the capital, was to be given up. General Lee had written that the Southern army could no longer defend it, and advised the immediate departure of the Government, which was now packing up, ready to take flight by the Danville railroad.
Richmond, so long the inviolate, was to be abandoned. No one questioned the wisdom of Lee, but they were struck down by the necessity. Panic ran like fire in dry grass. The Yankees were coming at once, and they would burn and slay! Their cavalry had already been seen on the outskirts of the city. There was no time to lose if they were to escape to the farther South.
The streets were filled with the confused crowd. The rumours grew; they said everything, but of one thing the people were sure. The Government was packing its papers and treasures in all haste, and the train was waiting to take it southward. That they beheld with their own eyes. Great numbers of the inhabitants, too, made ready for flight as best they could, but they yet preserved most of their courage. They said they would come back. General Lee, when he gathered new forces, would return to the rescue of the city and they would come with him. The women and the children often wept, but the men, though with gloomy faces, bade them be of good cheer.
Prescott, still with no orders and knowing that none would come, walked slowly through the crowd, his heart full of grief and pity. This was his world about him that was falling to pieces. He knew why the night had been so full of omens; why the distant cannon had escorted him like funeral guns.
His first thought was now of his mother, and his second was of Lucia Catherwood, knowing well that in such a moment the passions of all the wild and lawless would rise. He hurried to his home, and on his way he met the Secretary, calm, composed, a quiet, cynical smile on his face.
"Well, Mr. Sefton," said Prescott, "it has come."
"Yes," replied the Secretary, "and not sooner than I have expected."
"You are leaving?" said Prescott.
"Yes," replied Mr. Sefton, "I go with the Government. I am part of it, you know, but I travel light. I have little baggage. I tell you, too, since you wish to know it, that I asked Miss Catherwood to go with us as my wife—we could be married in an hour—or, if not that, as a refugee under the escort of Miss Grayson."
"Well?" said Prescott. His heart beat violently.
"She declined both propositions," replied the Secretary quietly. "She will stay here and await the coming of the conquerors. After all, why shouldn't she? She is a Northern sympathizer herself, and a great change in her position and ours has occurred suddenly."
Their eyes met and Prescott saw his fall a little and for the first time. The sudden change in positions was, indeed, great and in many respects.
The Secretary held out his hand.
"Good-by, Captain Prescott," he said. "We have been rivals, but not altogether enemies. I have always wished you well where your success was not at the cost of mine. Let us part in friendship, as we may not meet again."
Prescott took the extended hand.
"I am sorry that chance or fate ever made us rivals," the Secretary went on. "Maybe we shall not be so any longer, and since I retire from the scene I tell you I have known all the while that Miss Catherwood was not a spy. She was there in the President's office that day, and she might have been one had she yielded to her impulse, but she put the temptation aside. She has told you this and she told you the full truth. The one who really took the papers was discovered and punished by me long ago."
"Then why–" began Prescott.
The Secretary made a gesture.
"You ask why I kept this secret?" he said. "It was because it gave me power over both you and her; over her through you. I knew your part in it, too. Then I helped Miss Grayson and her when she came back to Richmond; she could not turn me away. I played upon your foolish jealousy—I fancy I did that cleverly. I brought her back here to draw you away from Helen Harley and she drew me, too. She did not intend it, nor did she wish it; but perhaps she felt her power ever since that meeting in the Wilderness and knew that she was safe from any disclosures of mine. But she loved you from the first, Captain Prescott, and never anybody else. You see, I am frank with myself as I have tried always to be in all respects. I have lost the field and I retire in favour of the winner, yourself!"
The Secretary, bowing, walked away. Prescott watched him a minute or two, but he could see no signs of haste or excitement in the compact, erect figure. Then he hastened to his mother.
He found her in her parlour, prepared as if for the coming of some one. There was fervent feeling in her look, but her manner was calm as she embraced her son. Prescott knew her thoughts, and as he had never yet found fault with them he could not now at such a time.
"I know everything, Robert," she said. "The Government is about to flee from Richmond."
"Yes, mother," he replied, "and I brought the order for it to go. Is it not singular that such a message should have been delivered by your son? Your side wins, mother."
"I never doubted that it would, not even after that terrible day at Bull Run and the greater defeats that came later. A cause is lost from the beginning when it is against the progress of the human race."
There was mingled joy and sadness in her manner—joy that the cause which she thought right had won; sadness that her friends, none the less dear because for so many months they had taken another view, should suffer misfortune.
"Mother," Prescott said presently, "I do not wish to leave you, but I must go to the cottage of Miss Grayson and Miss Catherwood. There are likely to be wild scenes in Richmond before the day is over, and they should not be left alone."
The look that she bent upon her son then was singularly soft and tender—smiling, too, as if something pleased her.
"They will be here, Robert," she said. "I expect them any minute."
"Here! in this house!" he exclaimed, starting.
"Yes, here in this house," she said triumphantly "It will not be the first time that Lucia Catherwood has been sheltered behind these walls. Do you not remember when they wished to arrest her, and Lieutenant Talbot searched the cottage for her? She was at that very moment here, in this house, hidden in your own room, though she did not know that it was yours. I saved her then. Oh, I have known her longer than you think."
Stirred by a sudden emotion Prescott stooped down and kissed his mother.
"I have always known that you were a wonderful woman," he said, "but I gave you credit for less courage and daring than you really have."