Joseph A. Altsheler – The Complete Collection

Chapter 46

Mr. Sefton left them the day after his talk with Lucia, and Prescott was not sorry to see him go, for some of his uneasiness departed with him. Harley, vain, fretful and complaining, gave much trouble, yielding only to the influence of Mrs. Markham, with whom Prescott did not like to see him, but was helpless in the matter. Helen and Lucia were the most obedient of soldiers and gave no trouble at all. Helen, a warm partisan, seemed to think little of the great campaign that was going on behind her, and to concern herself more about something else. Yet she was not unhappy--even Prescott could see it--and the bond between her and Lucia was growing strong daily. Usually they were together, and once when Mrs. Markham spoke slightingly of the "Northern woman," as she called Lucia, Helen replied with a sharpness very remarkable for her--a sharpness that contributed to the growing coldness between them, which had begun with the power Mrs. Markham exercised over Helen's brother.

Prescott noticed these things more or less and sometimes they pained him; but clearly they were outside his province, and in order to give them no room in his mind he applied himself more diligently than ever to his duties, his wound now permitting him to do almost a man's work.

They marched slowly and it gave promise of being a long journey. The days grew very hot; the sun burned the grass, and over them hung clouds of steamy vapour. For the sake of the badly wounded who had fever they traveled often by night and rested by day in the shade. But that cloud of war never left them.

The days passed and distant battles still hung on their skirts. The mutter of the guns was seldom absent, and they yet saw, now and then, on the horizon, flashes like heat-lightning. One morning there was a rapid beat of hoofs, a glitter of sabers issuing from a wood, and in a moment the little convoy was surrounded by a troop of cavalry in blue.

"Only wounded men and women," said their leader, a young colonel with a fine, open face. "Bah, we have no time to waste with them!"

He bowed contritely, touching his hat to the ladies and saying that he did not mean to be ungallant. Then in a moment he and his men were gone at gallop in a cloud of dust, disappearing in a whirlwind across the plain, leaving the little convoy to proceed at its leisure.

Prescott gazed after them, shading his eyes with his hands. "There must be some great movement at hand," he said, "or they would have asked us questions, at least."

The day grew close and sultry. Columns of steamy vapour moved back and forth and enclosed them, and the sun set in a red mist. At night it rained, but early the next morning the mutter of the cannon grew to a rumble and then a storm. The hot day came and all the east was filled with flashes of fire. The crash of the cannon was incessant, and in fancy every one in that little convoy heard the tramping of brigades and the clatter of hoofs as the horsemen rushed on the guns.

"They have met again!" said Lucia.

"Yes," replied Prescott. "It's Grant and Lee. How many great battles is this since they met first in the Wilderness?"

Nobody could tell; they had lost count.

The tumult lasted about an hour and then died away, to be succeeded by a stillness intense and painful. The sun shone with a white glare. No wind stirred. The leaves and the grass drooped. The fields were deserted; there was not a sign of life in them, either human or animal. The road lay before them, a dusty streak.

None came to tell of the battle, and, oppressed by anxiety, Prescott moved on. Some horsemen appeared on the hills the next morning, and as they approached, Prescott, with indescribable joy, recognized in the lead the figure of Talbot, whose unknown fate they had mourned. Talbot delightedly shook hands with them all, not neglecting Lucia Catherwood. His honest face glowed with emotion.

"I am on a scout around our army now," he said, "and I thought I should find you near here somewhere. I wanted to tell you what had become of me. I was captured that night we were crossing the river--some of my blundering--but I escaped the next night. It was easy enough to do it. There was so much fighting and so much of everything going on that I just rose up and walked out of the Yankee camp. Nobody had time to pay any attention to me. I got back to Lee--somehow I knew I must do it, as he could never win the war without me--and here I am."

"There was a battle yesterday morning; we heard it," said Prescott.

Talbot's face clouded and the corners of his mouth drooped.

"We have won a great victory," he said, "but it doesn't pay us. The Yankees lost twelve or fifteen thousand men, but we haven't gained anything. That firing you heard was at Cold Harbour. It was a great battle, an awful one. I hope to God I shall never see its like again. I saw fifteen thousand men stretched out on the bloody ground in rows. I don't believe that so many men ever before fell in so short a time. I have heard of a whirlwind of death, but I never saw one till then.

"We had gone into intrenchments and Grant moved against us with his whole army. They came on; you could hear 'em, the tramp of regiments and brigades, scores of thousands, and the sun rising up and turning to gold over their heads. Our cannon began. What a crash! It was like twenty thunderbolts all at once. We swept that field with tons and tons of metal. Then our rifles opened and the whistling of the bullets was like the screaming of a wind on a plain. You could see the men of that army shoot up into the air before such a sheet of metal, and you heard the cracking of bones like the breaking up of ice. After awhile those that lived had to turn back; human beings could not stand more, and we were glad when it was all over."

Talbot stayed a little while with them. Then he and his men, like the Northern cavalry, whirled off in a cloud of dust, and the little convoy resumed its solemn march southward, reaching Richmond in safety.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE DESPATCH BEARER

Leaves of yellow and red and brown were falling, and the wind that came up the valley played on the boughs like a bow on the strings of a violin. The mountain ridges piled against each other cut the blue sky like a saber's edge, and the forests on the slopes rising terrace above terrace burned in vivid colours painted by the brush of autumn. The despatch bearer's eye, sweeping peaks and slopes and valleys, saw nothing living save himself and his good horse. The silver streams in the valleys, the vivid forests on the slopes and the blue peaks above told of peace, which was also in the musical note of the wind, in the shy eyes of a deer that looked at him a moment then fled away to the forest, and in the bubbles of pink and blue that floated on the silver surface of the stream at his feet.

Prescott had been into the far South on a special mission from the Confederate Government in Richmond after his return from the Wilderness and complete recovery from his wound, and now he was going back through a sea of mountains, the great range that fills up so much of North Carolina and its fifty thousand square miles, and he was not sorry to find the way long. He enjoyed the crisp air, the winds, the burning colours of the forest, the deep blue of the sky and the infinite peace. But the nights lay cold on the ridges, and Prescott, when he could find no cabin for shelter, built a fire of pine branches and, wrapping himself in his blanket, slept with his feet to the coals. The cold increased by and by, and icy wind roared among the peaks and brought a skim of snow. Then Prescott shivered and pined for the lowlands and the haunts of men.

He descended at last from the peaks and entered a tiny hamlet of the backwoods, where he found among other things a two-weeks-old Richmond newspaper. Looking eagerly through its meager columns to see what had happened while he was buried in the hills, he learned that there was no new stage in the war--no other great battle. The armies were facing each other across their entrenchments at Petersburg, and the moment a head appeared above either parapet the crack of a rifle from the other told of one more death added to the hundreds of thousands. That was all of the war save that food was growing scarcer and the blockade of the Southern ports more vigilant. It was a skilful and daring blockade runner now that could creep past the watching ships.

On an inside page he found social news. Richmond was crowded with refugees, and wherever men and women gather they must have diversion though at the very mouths of the guns. The gaiety of the capital, real or feigned, continued, and his eye was caught by the name of Lucia Catherwood. There was a new beauty in Richmond, the newspaper said, one whose graces of face and figure were equaled only by the qualities of her mind. She had relatives of strong Northern tendencies, and she had been known to express such sympathies herself; but they only lent piquancy to her conversation. She had appeared at one of the President's receptions; and further on Prescott saw the name of Mr. Sefton. There was nothing by which he could tell with certainty, but he inferred that she had gone there with the Secretary. A sudden thought assailed and tormented him. What could the Secretary be to her? Well, why not? Mr. Sefton was an able and insinuating man. Moreover, he was no bitter partisan: the fact that she believed in the cause of the North would not trouble him. She had refused himself and not many minutes later had been seen talking with the Secretary in what seemed to be the most confidential manner. Why had she come back to Richmond, from which she had escaped amid such dangers? Did it not mean that she and the Secretary had become allies more than friends? The thought would not let Prescott rest.

Prescott put the newspaper in his pocket and left the little tavern with an abruptness that astonished his host, setting out upon his ride with increased haste and turning eastward, intending to reach the railroad at the nearest point where he could take a train to Richmond.

His was not a morbid mind, but the fever in it grew. He had thought that the Secretary loved Helen Harley: but once he had fancied himself in love with Helen, too, and why might not the Secretary suffering from the same delusion be changed in the same way? He took out the newspaper and read the story again. There was much about her beauty, a description of her dress, and the distinction of her manner and appearance. The President himself, it said, was charmed with her, and departing from his usual cold reserve gave her graceful compliments.

This new reading of the newspaper only added more impetus to his speed and on the afternoon of the same day he reached the railroad station. Early the next morning he entered Richmond.

His heart, despite its recurrent troubles, was light, for he was coming home once more.

The streets were but slightly changed--perhaps a little more bareness and leanness of aspect, an older and more faded look to the clothing of the people whom he passed, but the same fine courage shone in their eyes. If Richmond, after nearly four years of fighting, heard the guns of the foe once more, she merely drew tighter the belt around her lean waist and turning her face toward the enemy smiled bravely.