Joseph A. Altsheler – The Complete Collection

Chapter 53

"I think you are wrong," said the Secretary smoothly, as one who discusses ethics and not personalities. "This man had his duty to do, and however small that duty may have been, he should have done it."

"You generalize, and since you are laying down a rule, you are right," said Raymond. "But this is a particular case and an exception. We owe some duties to the feminine gender as well as to patriotism. The greater shouldn't always be swallowed up in the lesser."

There was a laugh, and Winthrop suggested that, as they were talking of the ladies, they return to them. On the way Prescott casually joined the Secretary.

"Can I see you in the office to-morrow, Mr. Sefton?" he asked.

"Certainly," replied the Secretary. "Will three in the afternoon do? Alone, I suppose?"

"Thank you," said Prescott. "Three in the afternoon and alone will do."

Both spoke quietly, but the swift look of understanding passed once more. Then they rejoined the ladies.

Prescott had not spoken to Lucia Catherwood in the whole course of the evening, but now he sought her. Some of the charm which Mrs. Markham so lately had for him was passing; in the presence of Lucia she seemed less fair, less winning, less true. His own conduct appeared to him in another light, and he would turn aside from his vagrant fancy to the one to whom his heart was yet loyal. But he found no chance to speak to her alone. The club by spontaneous agreement had chosen to make her its heroine that night, and Prescott was permitted to be one of the circle, nothing more. As such she spoke to him occasionally as she would to others--chance remarks without colour or emphasis, apparently directed toward him because he happened to be sitting at that particular point, and not because of his personality.

Prescott chafed and sought to better his position, wishing to have an individuality of his own in her regard; but he could not change the colourless rôle which she assigned him. So he became silent, speaking only when some remark was obviously intended for him, and watched her face and expression. He had always told himself that her dominant characteristic was strength, power of will, endurance; but now as he looked he saw once or twice a sudden droop, faint but discernible, as if for a flitting moment she grew too weak for her burden. Prescott felt a great access of pity and tenderness. She was in a position into which no woman should be forced, and she was assailed on all sides by danger. Her very name was at the mercy of the Secretary, and now Harley with his foolish talk might at any time bring an avalanche down upon her. He himself had treated her badly, and would help her if he could. He turned to find Mrs. Markham at his elbow.

"We are going in to supper," she said, "and you will have to take me."

Thus they passed in before Lucia Catherwood's eyes, but she looked over them and came presently with Raymond.

That was a lean supper--the kitchens of Richmond in the last year of the war provided little; but Prescott was unhappy for another reason. He was there with Mrs. Markham, and she seemed to claim him as her own before all those, save his mother, for whom he cared most. General Wood and Helen Harley were across the table, her pure eyes looking up with manifest pleasure into the dark ones of the leader, which could shine so fiercely on the battlefield but were now so soft. Once Prescott caught the General's glance and it was full of wonder; intrigue and the cross play of feminine purposes were unknown worlds to the simple mountaineer.

Prescott passed from silence to a feverish and uncertain gaiety, talking more than any one at the table, an honour that he seldom coveted. Some of his jests and epigrams were good and more were bad; but all passed current at such a time, and Mrs. Markham, who was never at a loss for something to say, seconded him in able fashion. The Secretary, listening and looking, smiled quietly. "Gone to his head; foolish fellow," was what his manner clearly expressed. Prescott himself saw it at last and experienced a sudden check, remembering his resolve to fight this man with his own weapons, while here he was only an hour later behaving like a wild boy on his first escapade. He passed at once from garrulity to silence, and the contrast was so marked that the glances exchanged by the others increased.

Prescott was still taciturn when at a late hour he helped Mrs. Markham into the phaeton and they started to her home. He fully expected that Harley would overtake him when he turned away from her house and seek a quarrel, but the fear of physical harm scarcely entered into his mind. It was the gossip and the linking of names in the gossip that troubled him.

Mrs. Markham sat as close to him as ever--the little phaeton had grown no wider--but though he felt again her warm breath on his cheek, no pulse stirred.

"Why are you so silent, Captain Prescott?" she asked. "Are you thinking of Lucia Catherwood?"

"Yes," he replied frankly, "I was."

She glanced up at him, but his face was hidden in the darkness.

"She was looking very beautiful to-night," she said, "and she was supreme; all the men--and must I say it, all of us women, too--acknowledged her rule. But I do not wonder that she attracts the masculine mind--her beauty, her bearing, her mysterious past, constitute the threefold charm to which all of you men yield, Captain Prescott. I wish I knew her history."

"It could be to her credit only," said Prescott.

She glanced up at him again, and now the moonlight falling on his face enabled her to see it set and firm, and Mrs. Markham felt that there had been a change. He was not the same man who had come with her to the meeting of the club, but she was not a woman to relinquish easily a conquest or a half-conquest, and she called to her aid all the art of a strong and cultivated mind. She was bold and original in her methods, and did not leave the subject of Lucia Catherwood, but praised her, though now and then with slight reservations, letting fall the inference that she was her good friend and would be a better one if she could. Such use did she make of her gentle and unobtrusive sympathy that Prescott felt his heart warming once more to this handsome and accomplished woman.

"You will come to see me again?" she said at the door, letting a little hand linger a few moments in his.

"I fear that I may be sent at once to the front."

"But if you are not you will come?" she persisted.

"Yes," said Prescott, and bade her good-night.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE SECRETARY AND THE LADY

The chief visitor to the little house in the cross street two days later was James Sefton, the agile Secretary, who was in a fine humour with himself and did not take the trouble to conceal it. Much that conduced to his satisfaction had occurred, and the affairs that concerned him most were going well. The telegrams sent by him from the Wilderness to a trusty agent at an American seaport and forwarded thence by mail to London and Paris had been answered, and the replies were of a nature most encouraging. Moreover, the people here in Richmond in whose fortunes he was interested were conducting themselves in a manner that he wished. Therefore the Secretary was pleasant.

He was received by Lucia Catherwood in the little parlour where Prescott had often sat. She was grave and pale, as if she suffered, and there was no touch of warmth in the greeting that she gave the Secretary. But he did not appear to notice it, although he inquired after the health of herself and Miss Grayson, all in the manner of strict formality. She sat down and waited there, grave and quiet, watching him with calm, bright eyes.

The Secretary, too, was silent for a few moments, surveying the woman who sat opposite him, so cool and so composed. He felt once more the thrill of involuntary admiration that she always aroused in him.

"It is a delicate business on which I come to you, Miss Catherwood," he said. "I wish to speak of Miss Harley and my suit there; it is not prospering, as you know. Pardon me for speaking to you of such intimate feelings. I know that it is not customary, but I have thought that you might aid me."

"Was it for such a reason that you gave me a pass to Richmond and helped me to come here?"

"Well, in part, at least; but I can say in my own defense, Miss Catherwood, that I bore you no ill will. Perhaps, if the first phase of the affair had never existed, I should have helped you anyhow to come to Richmond had I known that you wished to do so."

"And how can I help you now?"

The Secretary shrugged his shoulders. He did not wish to say all that was in his mind. Moreover, he sought to bring her will into subjection to his. The personal sense that he was coming into contact with a mind as strong as his own did not wholly please him, yet by a curious contrariety this very feeling increased his admiration of her.

"I was willing that you should come to Richmond," he said, "for a reason that I will not mention and which perhaps has passed away. I have had in my mind--well, to put it plainly, a sort of bargain, a bargain in which I did not consult you. I thought that you might help me with Helen Harley, that--well, to speak plainly again, that your attractions might remove from my path one whom I considered a rival."

A deep flush overspread her face, and then, retreating, left it paler than ever. Her fingers were pressed tightly into the palms of her hands, but she said nothing.

"I am frank," continued the Secretary, "but it is best between us. Finesse would be wasted upon one with your penetrating mind, and I pay you the highest compliment I know when I discard any attempt to use it. I find that I have made a great mistake in more respects than one. The man who I thought stood in my way thought so himself at one time, but he knows better. Helen Harley is very beautiful and all that is good, but still there is something lacking. I knew it long ago, but only in the last few weeks has it had its effect upon me. This man I thought my rival has turned aside into a new path, and I--well, it seems that fate intends that he shall be my rival even in his changes--have followed him."

"What do you mean?" she asked, a sudden fire leaping to her eyes and a cold dread clutching her heart.

"I mean," he said, "that however beautiful Helen Harley may be, there are others as beautiful and one perhaps who has something that she lacks. What is that something? The power to feel passion, to love with a love that cares for nothing else, and if need be to hate with a hate that cares for nothing else. She must be a woman with fire in her veins and lightning in her heart, one who would appear to the man she loves not only a woman, but as a goddess as well."

"And have you found such a woman?"

She spoke in cold, level tones.

The Secretary looked at her sitting there, her head thrown slightly back, her eyes closed and the curve of her chin defiant to the uttermost degree. The wonder that he had not always loved this woman instead of Helen Harley returned to him. She was a girl and yet she was not; there was nothing about her immature or imperfect; she was girl and woman, too. She had spoken to him in the coldest of tones, yet he believed in the fire beneath the ice. He wished to see what kind of torch would set the flame. His feeling for her before had been intellectual, now it was sentimental and passionate.