Joseph A. Altsheler – The Complete Collection

Chapter 51

"The Secretary himself is another proof why a woman of beauty should not concentrate all her devotion on one man. You have seen him to-night and his assiduous attention to another woman. Captain Prescott, all men are fickle--with a few exceptions, perhaps."

She gave him her most stimulating glance, a look tipped with flame, which said even to a dull intelligence--and Prescott's was not--that he was one of the few, the rare exceptions. As her talk became more insinuating her hand touched his arm and rested there ten seconds where it had rested but five before. Again he felt her breath lightly on his cheek and he noticed how finely arched and seductive was the curve of her long yellow lashes. He had felt embarrassed and ashamed when Lucia Catherwood saw him there in an attitude of devotion to Mrs. Markham, but that sensation was giving way to stubbornness and anger. If Lucia should turn to some one else why might not he do the same?

Yielding himself to the charms of a perfect face, a low and modulated voice and a mind that never mistook flippancy and triviality for wit, he met her everywhere on common ground, and she wondered why she had not seen the attractions of this grave, quiet young man long before! Surely such a conquest--and she was not certain yet that it was achieved--was worth a half-dozen victories of the insipid and over-easy kind.

An hour later Prescott was with Lucia for a few minutes, and although no one else was within hearing, their conversation was formal and conventional to the last degree. She spoke of the pleasure of the evening, the brave show made by the Confederacy despite the pressure of the Northern armies, and her admiration for a spirit so gallant. He paid her a few empty compliments, told her she was the shining light among lesser lights, and presently he passed out. He noticed, however, that she was, indeed, as he had said so lightly, the star of the evening. The group around her never thinned, and not only were they admiring, but were anxious to match wits with her. The men of Richmond applauded, as one by one each of them was worsted in the encounter; at least, they had company in defeat, and, after all, defeat at such hands was rather more to be desired than victory. When Prescott left she was still a centre of attraction.

Prescott, full of bitterness and having no other way of escape from his entanglement, asked to be sent at once to his regiment in the trenches before Petersburg, but the request was denied him, as it was likely, so he was told, that he would be needed again in Richmond. He said nothing to his mother of his desire to go again to the front, but she saw that he was restless and uneasy, although she asked no questions.

He had ample cause to regret the refusal of the authorities to accede to his wish, when rumour and vague innuendo concerning himself and Mrs. Markham came to his ears. He wondered that so much had been made of a mere passing incident, but he forgot that his fortunes were intimately connected with those of many others. He passed Harley once in the streets and the flamboyant soldier favoured him with a stare so insolent and persistent that his wrath rose, and he did not find it easy to refrain from a quarrel; but he remembered how many names besides his own would be dragged into such an affair, and passed on.

Helen Harley, too, showed coldness toward him, and Prescott began to have the worst of all feelings--the one of lonesomeness and abandonment--as if every man's hand was against him. It begot pride, stubbornness and defiance in him, and he was in this frame of mind when Mrs. Markham, driving her Accomack pony, which somehow had survived a long period of war's dangers, nodded cheerily to him and threw him a warm and ingratiating smile. It was like a shaft of sunshine on a wintry day, and he responded so beamingly that she stopped by the sidewalk and suggested that he get into the carriage with her. It was done with such lightness and grace that he scarcely noticed it was an invitation, the request seeming to come from himself.

It was a small vehicle with a narrow seat, and they were compelled to sit so close together that he felt the softness and warmth of her body. He was compelled, too, to confess that Mrs. Markham was as attractive by daylight as by lamplight. A fur jacket and a dark dress, both close-fitting, did not conceal the curves of her trim figure. Her cheeks were glowing red with the rapid motion and the touch of a frosty morning, and the curve of long eyelashes did not wholly hide a pair of eyes that with tempting glances could draw on the suspecting and the unsuspecting alike. Mrs. Markham never looked better, never fresher, never more seductive than on that morning, and Prescott felt, with a sudden access of pride, that this delightful woman really liked him and considered him worth while. That was a genuine tribute and it did not matter why she liked him.

"May I take the reins?" he asked.

"Oh, no," she replied, giving him one more of those dazzling smiles. "You would not rob me, would you? I fancy that I look well driving and I also get the credit for spirit. I am going shopping. It may seem strange to you that there is anything left in Richmond to buy or anything to buy it with, but the article that I am in search of is a paper of pins, and I think I have enough money to pay for it."

"I don't know about that," said Prescott. "My friend Talbot gave five hundred dollars for a paper collar. That was last year, and paper collars must be dearer now. So I imagine that your paper of pins will cost at least two thousand dollars."

"I am not so foolish as to go shopping with our Confederate money. I carry gold," she replied. With her disengaged hand she tapped a little purse she carried in her pocket and it gave forth an opulent tinkle.

She was driving rapidly, chattering incessantly, but in such a gay and light fashion that Prescott's attention never wandered from herself--the red glow of her cheeks, the changing light of her eyes and the occasional gleam of white teeth as her lips parted in a laugh. Thus he did not notice that she was taking him by a long road, and that one or two whom they passed on the street looked after them in meaning fashion.

Prescott was not in love with Mrs. Markham, but he was charmed. Hers was a soft and soothing touch after a hard blow. A healing hand was outstretched to him by a beautiful woman who would be adorable to make love to--if she did not already belong to another man, such an old curmudgeon as General Markham, too! How tightly curled the tiny ringlets on her neck! He was sitting so close that he could not help seeing them and now and then they moved lightly under his breath.

He remembered that they were a long time in reaching the shop, but he did not care and said nothing. When they arrived at last she asked him to hold the lines while she went inside. She returned in a few minutes and triumphantly held up a small package.

"See," she said, "I have made my purchase, but it was the last they had, and no one can say when Richmond will be able to import another paper of pins. Maybe we shall have to ask General Grant."

"And then he won't let us," said Prescott.

She laughed and glanced up at him from under the long, curling eyelashes. The green tints showed faintly in her eyes and were singularly seductive. She made no effort to conceal her high good humour, and Prescott now and then felt her warm breath on his cheek as she turned to speak to him in intimate fashion.

She drove back by a road not the same, but as long as before, and Prescott found it all too short. His gloom fled away before her flow of spirits, her warm and intimate manner, and the town, though under gray November skies, became vivid with light and colour.

"Do you know," she said, "that the Mosaic Club meets again to-night and perhaps for the last time? Are you not coming?"

"I am not invited."

"But I invite you. I have full authority as a member and an official of the club."

"I'm all alone," said Prescott.

"And so am I," said she. "The General, you know, is at the front, and no one has been polite enough yet to ask to take me."

Her look met his with a charming innocence like that of a young girl, but the lurking green depths were in her eyes and Prescott felt a thrill despite himself.

"Why not," was his thought. "All the others have cast me aside. She chooses me. If I am to be attacked on Mrs. Markham's account--well, I'll give them reason for it."

The defiant spirit was speaking then, and he said aloud:

"If two people are alone they should go together and then they won't be alone any more. You have invited me to the club to-night, Mrs. Markham, now double your benefaction and let me take you there."

"On one condition," she said, "that we go in my pony carriage. We need no groom. The pony will stand all night in front of Mr. Peyton's house if necessary. Come at eight o'clock."

Before she reached her home she spoke of Lucia Catherwood as one comes to a subject in the course of a random conversation, and connected her name with that of the Secretary in such a manner that Prescott felt a thrill of anger rise, not against Mrs. Markham, but against Lucia and Mr. Sefton. The remark was quite innocent in appearance, but it coincided so well with his own state of mind in regard to the two that it came to him like a truth.

"The Secretary is very much in love with the 'Beautiful Yankee,'" said Mrs. Markham. "He thought once that he was in love with Helen Harley, but his imagination deceived him. Even so keen a man as the Secretary can deceive himself in regard to the gossamer affair that we call love, but his infatuation with Lucia Catherwood is genuine."

"Will he win her?" asked Prescott. Despite himself, his heart throbbed as he waited for her answer.

"I do not know," she replied; "but any woman may be won if a man only knows the way of winning."

"A Delphic utterance, if ever there was one," he said, and laughed partly in relief. She had not said that Mr. Sefton would win her.

He left Mrs. Markham at her door and went home, informing his mother by and by that he was going to a meeting of the Mosaic Club in the evening.

"I am to take a lady," he said.

"A very natural thing for a young man to do," she replied, smiling at him. "Who is it to be, Miss Catherwood or Miss Harley?"

"Neither."

"Neither?"

"No; I am in bad grace with both. The lady whom I am to have the honour, the privilege, etc., of escorting is Mrs. Markham."

Her face fell.

"I am sorry to hear it," she said frankly.

Prescott, for the first time since his childhood, felt some anger toward his mother.

"Why not, mother?" he asked. "We are all a great family here together in Richmond. Why, if you trace it back you'll probably find that every one of us is blood kin to every other one. Mrs. Markham is a woman of wit and beauty, and the honour and privilege of which I spoke so jestingly is a real honour and privilege."