Before the Dawn Part 44

The Secretary at that moment was riding slowly toward the house, turning now and then to look at the battle which yet hung in doubt, in its vast canopy of smoke. He studied it with keen eyes and a keener mind, but he could yet make nothing of it, and could give no news upon his arrival at the house.

The long day waned at last, but did not bring with its shadows any decrease in the violence of the battle. Its sound was never absent for a moment from the ears of those in the house, and the women at the windows saw the great pyramid of flame from the forest fire, but their anxiety was as deep as ever. No word came to indicate the result. Night fell, close, heavy and black, save where the forest burned, and suddenly the battle ceased.

News came at length that the South had held her lines. Grant had failed to break through the iron front of Lee. A battle as b.l.o.o.d.y as Gettysburg had been fought and nothing was won; forty thousand men had been struck down in the Wilderness, and Grant was as far as ever from Richmond.

The watchers in the house said little, but they rejoiced--all save Lucia Catherwood, who sat in silence. However the day might have ended, she did not believe the campaign had ended with it, and her hope continued.

A messenger arrived in haste the next day. The house must be abandoned by all who could go. Grant had turned on his left flank and was advancing by a new road. The Southern army must also turn aside to meet him.

It was as Lucia Catherwood expected. Meade, a victor at Gettysburg, had not attacked again. Grant, failing in the Wilderness, moved forward to fight within three days another battle as great.

The story of either army was the same. The general in his tent touched the spring that set all things in motion. The soldiers rose from the hot ground on which they lay in a stupor rather than sleep. Two streams of wounded poured to the rear, one to the North and one to the South. The horses, like their masters, worn and scarred like them, too, were harnessed to cannon and wagon; the men ate as they worked; there was no time for delay. This was to be a race, grand and terrible in its nature, with great battles as incidents. The stakes were high, and the players played with deadly earnestness.

Both Generals sent orders to hurry and themselves saw that it was done.

The battle of yesterday and the day before was as a thing long past; no time to think of it now. The dead were left for the moment in the Wilderness as they had fallen. The air was filled with commands to the men, shouts to the horses, the sough of wheels in the mud, the breaking of boughs under weight, and the clank of metal. The Wilderness, torn now by sh.e.l.ls and bullets and scorched by the fires, waved over two armies gloomier and more somber than ever, deserving to the full its name.

They were still in the Wilderness, and it had lost none of its ominous aspects. Far to left and right yet burned the forest fires set by the sh.e.l.ls, flaring luridly in the intense blackness that characterized those nights. The soldiers as they hurried on saw the ribbons and coils of flame leaping from tree-top to tree-top, and sometimes the languid winds blew the ashes in their faces. Now and then they crossed parts of the forest where it had pa.s.sed, and the earth was hot to their feet.

Around them lay smouldering logs and boughs, and from these fallen embers tongues of flame arose. Overhead, the moon and stars were shut out by the clouds and smoke and vapour.

Even with a pa.s.sion for a new conflict rising in them, the soldiers as they hurried on felt the weirdness, the satanic character of the battleground. The fitful flashes of lightning often showed faces stamped with awe; wet boughs of low-growing trees held them back with a moist and sticky touch; the low rumble of thunder came from the far horizon and its tremendous echo pa.s.sed slowly through the Wilderness; and mingled again with this sound was an occasional cannon shot as the fringes of the two armies hastening on pa.s.sed the time of night.

The tread of either army was heavy, dull and irregular, and the few torches they carried added little light to the glare of the lightning and the glow of the burning forest. The two marched on in the dark, saying little, making little noise for numbers so great, but steadily converging on Spottsylvania, where they were destined to meet in a conflict rivaling in somber grandeur that of the past two days.

CHAPTER XXI

A DELICATE SITUATION

The wounded and those who watched them in the old house learned a little of the race through the darkness. The change of the field of combat, the struggle for Spottsylvania and the wheel-about of the Southern army would leave them in the path of the North, and they must retreat toward Richmond.

The start next morning was through a torn and rent Wilderness, amid smoke and vapours, with wounded in the wagons, making a solemn train that wound its way through the forest, escorted on either flank by troopers, commanded by Talbot, slightly wounded in the shoulder. The Secretary had gone again to look on at the battle.

It was thus that Lucia Catherwood found herself on the way, of her own free will, to that Richmond from which she had recently escaped with so much trouble. There was no reason, real or conventional, why she should not go, as the precious pa.s.s from the Secretary removed all danger; and there in Richmond was Miss Grayson, the nearest of her blood. Helen removed the last misgiving.

"You will go with us? We need you," she said.

"Yes," replied Lucia simply; "I shall go to Richmond. I have a relative there with whom I can stay until the end of the war."

Helen was contented with this. It was not a time to ask questions. Then they rode together. Mrs. Markham was with them, quiet and keen-eyed.

Much of the battle's spell had gone from her, and she observed everything, most of all Lucia Catherwood. She had noticed how the girl's eyes dwelled upon Prescott, the singular compound of strength and tenderness in her face, a character at once womanly and bold, and the astute Mrs. Markham began to wonder where these two had met before; but she said nothing to any one.

Prescott was in a wagon with Harley. Fate seemed to have linked for awhile these two who did not particularly care for each other. Both were conscious, and Prescott was sitting up, refreshed by the air upon his face, a heavy and noxious atmosphere though it was. So much of his strength had returned that he felt bitter regret at being unable to take part in the great movement which, he had gathered, was going on, and it was this feeling which united him and Harley for the time in a common bond of sympathy; but the latter presently spoke of something else:

"That was a beautiful girl who replaced your bandage this morning, Prescott. Upon my honour, she is one of the finest women I ever saw, and she is going with us, I hear. Do you know anything about her?"

Prescott did not altogether like Harley's tone, but he knew it was foolish to resent it and he replied:

"She is Miss Lucia Catherwood, a relative of Miss Charlotte Grayson, who lives in Richmond, and whom I presume she is going there to join. I have seen Miss Catherwood once or twice in Richmond."

Then he relapsed into silence, and Harley was unable to draw from him any more information; but Prescott, watching Lucia, saw how strong and helpful she was, doing all she could for those who were not her own. A woman with all a woman's emotions and sympathies, controlled by a mind and body stronger than those of most women, she was yet of the earth, real and substantial, ready to take what it contained of joy or sorrow.

This was one of her qualities that most strongly attracted Prescott, who did not like the shadowy or unreal. Whilst he was on the earth he wished to be of it, and he preferred the sure and strong mind to the misty and dreamy.

He wished that she would come again to the wagon in which he rode, but now she seemed to avoid him--to be impelled, as it were, by a sense of shyness or a fear that she might be thought unfeminine. Thus he found scant opportunity during the day to talk to her or even to see her, as she remained nearly all the time in the rear of the column with Helen Harley.

Harley's vagrant fancy was caught. He was impressed by Lucia's tall beauty, her silence, her self-possession, and the mystery of her presence. He wished to discover more about her, who she was, whence she came, and believing Prescott to be his proper source of information, he asked him many questions, not noticing the impatient or taciturn demeanour of his comrade until Robert at last exclaimed with a touch of anger:

"Harley, if you wish to know so much about Miss Catherwood, you had better ask her these questions, and if she wishes she will answer them."

"I knew that before," replied Harley coolly; "and I tell you again, Prescott, she's a fine girl--none finer in Richmond."

Prescott turned his back in so far as a wounded man in that narrow s.p.a.ce could turn, and Harley presently relapsed into silence.

They were yet in the Wilderness, moving among scrub pines, oaks and cedars, over ground moist with rain and dark with the shadow of the forest. It was Talbot's wish to keep in the rear of the Southern army until the way was clear and then turn toward Richmond. But this was not done with ease, as the Southern army was a s.h.i.+fting quant.i.ty, adapting its movements to those of the North; and Talbot often was compelled to send scouts abroad, lest he march with his convoy of wounded directly into the Northern ranks. Once as he rode by the side of Prescott's wagon he remarked:

"Confound such a place as this Wilderness; I don't think any region ever better deserved its name. I'll thank the Lord when I get out of it and see daylight again."

They were then in a dense forest, where the undergrowth was so thick that they broke a way through it with difficulty. The trees hung down mournful boughs dripping with recent rain; the wheels of the wagons and the feet of the horses made a drumming sound in the soft earth; the forest fire still showed, distant and dim, and a thin mist of ashes came on the wind at intervals; now and then they heard the low roll of a cannon, so far away that it seemed but an echo.

Thomas Talbot was usually a cheerful man who shut one eye to grief and opened the other to joy; but he was full of vigilance to-day and thought only of duty. Riding at the head of his column, alert for danger, he was troubled by the uncertainties of the way. It seemed to him that the two armies were revolving like spokes around a hub, and he never knew which he was going to encounter, for chance might bring him into the arc of either. He looked long at the gloomy forest, gazed at the dim fire which marked the latest battlefield, and became convinced that it was his only policy to push on and take the risk, though he listened intently for distant cannon shots and bore away from them.

They stopped about the middle of the afternoon to rest the horses and serve men and women with scanty food. Prescott felt so strong that he climbed out of the wagon and stood for a moment beside it. His head was dizzy at first, but presently it became steady, and he walked to Lucia Catherwood, who was standing alone by a great oak tree, gazing at the forest.

She did not notice him until she heard his step in the soft earth close behind her, when she started in surprise and alarm, exclaiming upon the risk he took and cautioning against exertion.

"My head is hard," he said, "and it will stand more blows than the one I received in the battle. Really I feel well enough to walk out here and I want to speak to you."

She was silent, awaiting his words. A shaft of suns.h.i.+ne pierced an opening in the foliage and fell directly upon her. Golden gleams appeared here and there in her hair and the colour in her cheeks deepened. Often Prescott had thought how strong she was; now he thought how very womanly she was.

"You are going with the wounded to Richmond?" he said.

"Yes," she replied. "I am going back to Miss Grayson's, to the house and the city from which you helped me with so much trouble and danger to escape."

"I am easier in my conscience because I did so," he said. "But Miss Catherwood, do you not fear for yourself? Are you not venturing into danger again?"

She smiled once more and replied in a slightly humourous tone:

"No; there is no danger. I went as one unwelcome before; I go as a guest now. You see, I am rising in the Confederacy. One of your powerful men, Mr. Sefton, has been very kind to me."

"What has he done for you?" asked Prescott, with a sudden jealous twinge.

"He has given me this pa.s.s, which will take me in or out of Richmond as I wish."

She showed the pa.s.s, and as Prescott looked at it he felt the colour rise in his face. Could the heart of the Secretary have followed the course of his own?