Before the Dawn Part 17

He looked significantly at her and he saw again the nervous trembling of the lip, but her eye did not quail. This woman, with her strange mingling of timidity and courage, would certainly protect the unknown if she could.

"The cloak is mine," she repeated. "It is a question of veracity between you and me, and are you prepared to say that you alone tell the truth?"

Prescott hesitated, not fancying this oblique method of attack, but a third person relieved them both from present embarra.s.sment. A door to an inner apartment opened, and the woman in brown--but not in brown now--came into the room.

"You need not conceal my presence any longer, Charlotte," said the newcomer impressively. "I thank you, but I am sure that we need no protection from Captain Prescott."

"If you think so, Lucia," replied Miss Grayson, and Prescott distinctly heard her sigh of relief--a sigh that he could have echoed, as he had begun to feel as if he were acting not as a gentleman, but as a persecutor of a poor old maid. The girl--Lucia was her first name, he had learned that much--confronted him, and certainly there was no fear in her gaze. Prescott saw, too, at the first glance, that she was transformed. She was dressed in simple white, and a red rose, glowing by contrast against its whiteness, nestled in her throat. He remembered afterward a faint feeling of curiosity that in the dead of winter she should be wearing such a rose. Her eyes, black when she was angry, were now a deep, liquid blue, and the faint firelight drew gleams of red or gold, he knew not which, from her hair; the hair itself looked dark.

But it was her presence, her indefinable presence that pervaded the room. The thin little old maid was quite lost in it, and involuntarily Prescott found himself bowing as if to a great lady.

"I have meant no harm by coming here," he said; "the secrets of this house are safe as far as I am concerned. I merely came to inquire after your welfare. Miss--Miss----"

He stopped and looked inquiringly at her. A faint smile curved the corners of her mouth, and she replied:

"Catherwood; I am Miss Lucia Catherwood, but for the present I have nothing more to say."

"Catherwood, Lucia Catherwood," repeated Prescott. "It is a beautiful name, like----"

And then, breaking off abruptly, warned by a sudden lightning glance from her eyes, he walked to the window and pointed to the white world outside.

"I came to tell you, Miss Catherwood," he said, "that the snow lies deep on the ground--you know that already--but what I wish to make clear is the impossibility of your present escape from Richmond. Even if you pa.s.sed the defenses you would almost certainly perish in the frozen wilderness."

"It is as I told you, Lucia," said Miss Grayson; "you must not think of leaving. My house is your house, and all that is here is yours."

"I know that, Charlotte," replied Miss Catherwood, "but I cannot take the bread from your mouth nor can I bring new dangers upon you."

She spoke the last words in a low tone, but Prescott heard her nevertheless. What a situation, he thought; and he, a Confederate soldier, was a party to it! Here in the dim little room were two women of another belief, almost another land, and around them lay the hostile city. He felt a thrill of pity; once more he believed her claim that she did not take the papers; and he tapped uneasily on the window pane with a long forefinger.

"Miss Catherwood," he said hesitatingly--that he should address her and not Miss Grayson seemed entirely proper--"I scarcely know why I am here, but I wish to repeat that I did not come with any bad intent. I am a Confederate soldier, but the Confederacy is not yet so far reduced that it needs to war on women."

Yet he knew as he spoke that he had believed her a spy and his full duty demanded that he deliver her to his Government; but perhaps there was a difference between one's duty and one's full duty.

"I merely wished to know that you were safe here," he continued, "and now I shall go."

"We thank you for your forbearance, Captain Prescott," said the elder woman, but the younger said nothing, and Prescott waited a moment, hoping that she would do so. Still she did not speak, and as she moved toward the door she did not offer her hand.

"She has no thanks for me, after all that I have done," thought Prescott, and there was a little flame of anger in his heart. Why should he trouble himself about her?

"Ladies," he said, with an embarra.s.sed air, "you will pardon me if I open the door an inch or two and look out before I go. You understand why."

"Oh, certainly," replied Miss Catherwood, and again that faint smile lurked for a moment in the corners of her mouth. "We are Pariahs, and it would ill suit the fair fame of Captain Prescott to be seen coming from this house."

"You are of the North and I of the South and that is all," said Prescott, and, bowing, he left, forgetting in his annoyance to take that precautionary look before opening wide the door.

But the little street was empty and he walked thoughtfully back to his mother's house.

CHAPTER VIII

THE PALL OF WINTER

The deep snow was followed by the beginning of a thaw, interrupted by a sudden and very sharp cold spell, when the mercury went down to zero and the water from the melting snow turned to ice. Richmond was encased in a sheath of gleaming white. The cold wintry sun was reflected from roofs of ice, the streets were covered with it, icicles hung like rows of spears from the eaves, and the human breath smoked at the touch of the air.

And as the winter pressed down closer and heavier on Richmond, so did the omens of her fate. Higher and higher went the price of food, and lower and lower sank the hopes of her people. Their momentary joy under the influence of such events as the Morgan reception was like the result of a stimulant or narcotic, quickly over and leaving the body lethargic and dull. But this dullness had in it no thought of yielding.

On the second day of the great cold all the Harleys came over to take tea with Mrs. Prescott and her son, and then Helen disclosed the fact that the Government was still a.s.siduous in its search for the spy and the lost doc.u.ments.

"Mr. Sefton thinks that we have a clue," she said, identifying herself with the Government now by the use of the p.r.o.noun.

Prescott was startled a little, but he hid his surprise under a calm voice when he asked:

"What is this clue, or is it a secret?"

"No, not among us who are so loyal to the cause," she replied innocently; "and it may be that they want it known more widely because here in Richmond we are all, in a way, defenders of the faith--our faith. They say that it was a woman who stole the papers, a tall woman in a brown dress and brown cloak, who entered the building when nearly everybody was gone to the Morgan reception. Mr. Sefton has learned that much from one of the servants."

"Has he learned anything more?" asked Prescott, whose heart was beating in a way that he did not like.

"No, the traces stop at that point; but Mr. Sefton believes she will be found. He says she could not have escaped from the city."

"It takes a man like Sefton to follow the trail of a woman," interrupted Colonel Harley. "If it were not for the papers she has I'd say let her go."

Prescott had a sudden feeling of warmth for Vincent Harley, and he now believed a good heart to beat under the man's vain nature; but that was to be expected: he was Helen Harley's brother. However, it did not appeal to Helen that way.

"Shouldn't a woman who does such things suffer punishment like a man?"

she asked.

"Maybe so," replied the Colonel, "but I couldn't inflict it."

The elder Harley advanced no opinion, but he was sure whatever Mr.

Sefton did in the matter was right; and he believed, too, that the agile Secretary was more capable than any other man of dealing with the case.

In fact, he was filled that day with a devout admiration of Mr. Sefton, and he did not hesitate to proclaim it, bending covert glances at his daughter as he p.r.o.nounced these praises. Mr. Sefton, he said, might differ a little in certain characteristics from the majority of the Southern people, he might be a trifle shrewder in financial affairs, but, after all, the world must come to that view, and hard-headed men such as he would be of great value when the new Southern Republic began its permanent establishment and its dealings with foreign nations. As for himself, he recognized the fact that he was not too old to learn, and Mr. Sefton was teaching him.

Prescott listened with outward respect, but the words were so much mist to his brain, evaporating easily. Nor did Mr. Harley's obvious purpose trouble him as much as it had on previous occasions, the figure of the Secretary not looming so large in his path as it used to.

He was on his way, two hours later, to the little house in the side street, bending his face to a keen winter blast that cut like the edge of a knife. He heard the wooden buildings popping as they contracted under the cold, and near the outskirts of the town he saw the little fires burning where the sentinels stopped now and then on their posts to warm their chilled fingers. He was resolved now to protect Lucia Catherwood. The belief of others that the woman of the brown cloak was guilty aroused in him the sense of opposition. She must be innocent!

He knocked again at the door, and as before it did not yield until he had knocked several times. It was then Miss Charlotte Grayson who appeared, and to Prescott's heightened fancy she seemed thinner and more acidulous than ever. There was less of fear in her glance than when he came the first time, but reproach took its place, and was expressed so strongly that Prescott exclaimed at once:

"I do not come to annoy you, Miss Grayson, but merely to inquire after yourself and your friend, Miss Catherwood."

Then he went in, uninvited, and looked about the room. Nothing was changed except the fire, which was lower and feebler; it seemed to Prescott that the two or three lumps of coal on the hearth were hugging each other for scant comfort, and even as he looked at it the timbers of the house popped with the cold.

"Miss Catherwood is still with you, is she not?" asked Prescott. "My errand concerns her, and it is for her good that I have come."

"Why do you, a Confederate officer, trouble yourself about a woman who, you say, has acted as a spy for the North?" asked Miss Grayson, pointedly.