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Before the Dawn: A Story of the Fall of Richmond, a novel by Joseph A. Altsheler |
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Chapter 11. Mr. Sefton Makes A Confidence |
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_ CHAPTER XI. MR. SEFTON MAKES A CONFIDENCE Prescott now resolved, whatever happened, to make another attempt at the escape of Lucia Catherwood. Threats of danger, unspoken, perhaps, but to his mind not the less formidable, were multiplying, and he did not intend that they should culminate in disaster. The figure of that woman, so helpless and apparently the sole target at this moment of a powerful Government, made an irresistible appeal to him. But there were moments of doubt, when he asked himself if he were not tricked by the fancy, or rather by a clever and elusive woman--as cunning as she was elusive--who led him, and who looked to the end and not to the means. He saw something repellent in the act of being a spy, above all when it was a woman who took the part. His open nature rejected such a trade, even if it were confined to the deed of a moment done under impulse. She had assured him that she was innocent, and there was a look of truth in her face when she said it; but to say it and to look it was in the business of being a spy, and why should she differ from others? But these moments were brief; they would come to his mind and yet his mind in turn would cast them out. He remembered her eyes, the swell of her figure, her noble curves. She was not of the material that would turn to so low a trade, he said to himself over and over again. He was still thinking of a plan to save her and trying to find a way when a message arrived directing him to report at once to the Secretary of War. He surmised that he would receive instructions to rejoin General Lee as soon as possible, and he felt a keen regret that he should not have time to do the thing he wished most to do; but he lost no time in obeying the order. The Secretary of War was in his office, sitting in a chair near the window, and farther away slightly in the shadow was another figure, more slender but stronger. Prescott recognized again, with that sudden and involuntary feeling of fear, the power of the man. It was Mr. Sefton, his face hidden in the shadows, and therefore wholly unread. But as usual the inflexibility of purpose, the hardening of resolve followed Prescott's emotion, and his figure stiffened as he stood at attention to receive the commands of the mighty--that is, the Secretary of War of the Confederate States of America. But the Secretary of War was not harsh or fierce; instead, he politely invited the young Captain to a chair and spoke to him in complimentary terms, referring to his gallant services on many battlefields, and declaring them not unknown to those who held the strings of power. Mr. Sefton, from the security of the shadows, merely nodded to their guest, and Prescott returned the welcome in like fashion, every nerve attuned for what he expected to prove an ordeal. "Many officers are brave," began the Secretary of War, "and it is not the highest compliment when we call you such, Captain Prescott. Indeed, we mean to speak much better of you when we say that you have bravery, allied with coolness and intelligence. When we find these in one person we have the ideal officer." Prescott could not do less than bow to this flattery, but he wondered what such a curious prelude foreshadowed. "It means no good to me," he thought, "or he would not begin with such praise." But he said aloud: "I am sure I have some zealous friend to thank for commendation so much beyond my desert." "It is not beyond your desert, but you have a friend to thank nevertheless," replied the Secretary of War. "A friend, too, whom no man need despise. I allude to Mr. Sefton here, one of the ablest members of the Government, one who surpasses most of us in insight and pertinacity. It is he who, because of his friendship for you and faith in you, wishes to have you chosen for an important and delicate service which may lead to promotion." Prescott stared at this man whose words rang so hollow in his ear, but he could see no sign of guile or satire on the face of the Secretary of War. On the contrary, it bore every appearance of earnestness, and he became convinced that the appearance was just. Then he cast one swift glance at the inscrutable Mr. Sefton, who still sat in the shadow and did not move. "I thank you for your kind words," he said to the Secretary of War, "and I shall appreciate very much the honour, of which you give me an intimation." The great man smiled. It is pleasant to us all to confer benefits and still pleasanter to know that they are appreciated. "It is a bit of work in the nature of secret service, Captain Prescott," he continued, "and it demands a wary eye and a discerning mind." Prescott shuddered with repulsion. Instinctively he foresaw what was coming, and there was no task which he would not have preferred in its place. And he was expected, too, at such a moment, to look grateful. "You will recall the episode of the spy and the abstraction of the papers from the President's office," continued the Secretary of War in orotund and complaisant tones. "It may seem to the public that we have dropped this matter, which is just what we wish the public to think, as it may lull the suspicions of the suspected. But we are more resolved than ever to secure the guilty!" Prescott glanced again at Mr. Sefton, but he still sat in the shadow, and Prescott believed that he had not yet moved either hand or foot in the whole interview. "To be brief, Captain Prescott," resumed the Secretary of War, "we wish you to take charge of this service which, I repeat, we consider delicate and important." "Now?" asked Prescott. "No, not immediately--in two or three days, perhaps; we shall notify you. We are convinced the guilty are yet in Richmond and cannot escape. It is important that we capture them, as we may unearth a nest of conspirators. I trust that you see the necessity of our action." Prescott bowed, though he was raging inwardly, and it was in his mind to decline abruptly such a service, but second thought told him a refusal might make a bad matter worse. He would have given much, too, to see the face of Mr. Sefton--his fancy painted there a smile of irony. As the Secretary of War seemed to have said all that he intended, Prescott turned to go, but he added a word of thanks to Mr. Sefton, whose voice he wished to hear. Mr. Sefton merely nodded, and the young Captain, as he went out, hesitated on the doorstep as if he expected to hear sardonic laughter behind him. He heard nothing. The fierce touch of the winter outside cooled his blood, and as he walked toward his home he tried to think of a way out of the difficulty. He kept repeating to himself the words of the Secretary of War: "In two or three days we shall send for you," and from this constant repetition an idea was born in his head. "Much may be done in two or three days," he said to himself, "and if a man can do it I will!" and he said it with a sense of defiance. His brain grew hot with the thought, and he walked about the city, not wishing yet to return to his home. He had been walking, he knew not how long, when a hand fell lightly upon his arm and, turning, he beheld the bland face of Mr. Sefton. "May I walk a little with you, Captain Prescott?" he said. "Two heads are sometimes better than one." Prescott was hot alike with his idea and with wrath over his recent ordeal; moreover, he hated secret and underhand parts, and spoke impulsively: "Mr. Secretary, I have you to thank for this task, and I do not thank you at all!" "Why not? Most young officers wish a chance for promotion." "But you set me spying to catch a spy! There are few things in the world that I would rather not do." "You say 'you set me spying'! My dear sir, it was the Secretary of War, not I." "Mr. Sefton," exclaimed Prescott angrily, "why should we fence with words any longer? It is you and you alone who are at the bottom of this!" "Since that is your theory, my dear Captain, what motive would you assign?" Prescott was slow to wrath, but when moved at last he had little fear of consequences, and it was so with him now. He faced the Secretary and gazed at him steadily, even inquiringly. But, as usual, he read nothing in the bland, unspeaking countenance before him. "There is a motive, an ulterior motive," he replied. "For days now you have been persecuting me and I am convinced that it is for a purpose." "And if so ready to read an unspoken purpose in my mind, then why not read the cause of it?" Prescott hesitated. This calm, expressionless man with the impression of power troubled him. The Secretary again put his hand lightly upon his arm. "We are near the outskirts of the city, Captain," said Mr. Sefton, "and I suggest that we walk on toward the fortifications in order that none may overhear what we have to say. It may be that you and I shall arrive at such an understanding that we can remain friends." There was suggestion in the Secretary's words for the first time, likewise a command, and Prescott willingly adopted his plan. Together the two strolled on through the fields. "I have a tale to tell," began the Secretary, "and there are preliminaries and exordiums, but first of all there is a question. Frankly, Captain Prescott, what kind of a man do you think I am?" Prescott hesitated. "I see you do not wish to speak," continued the Secretary, "because the portrait you would paint is unflattering, but I will paint it for you--at least, the one that you have in your mind's eye. You think me sly and intriguing, eaten up by ambition, and caring for nobody in the world but myself. A true portrait, perhaps, so far as the external phases go, and the light in which I often wish to appear to the world, but not true in reality." Prescott waited in silence to hear what the other might have to say, and whatever it was he was sure that it would be of interest. "That I am ambitious is true," continued the Secretary; "there are few men not old who are not so, and I think it better to have ambition than to be without it. But if I have ambition I also have other qualities. I like my friends--I like you and would continue to like you, Captain Prescott, if you would let me. It is said here that I am not a true Southerner, whatever may be my birth, as my coldness, craft and foresight are not Southern characteristics. That may be true, but at least I am Southern in another character--I have strong, even violent emotions, and I love a woman. I am willing to sacrifice much for her." The Secretary's hand was still resting lightly on Prescott's arm, and the young Captain, feeling it tremble, knew that his companion told the truth. "Yes," resumed Mr. Sefton, "I love a woman, and with all the greater fire because I am naturally undemonstrative and self-centred. The stream comes with an increased rush when it has to break through the ice. I love a woman, I say, and I am determined to have her. You know well who it is!" "Helen Harley," said Prescott. "I love Helen Harley," continued the Secretary, "and there are two men of whom I am jealous, but I shall speak first of one--the one whom I have feared the longer and the more. He is a soldier, a young man commended often by his superiors for gallantry and skill--deservedly so, too--I do not seek to deny it. He is here in Richmond now, and he has known Helen Harley all his life. They were boy and girl together. But he has become mixed in an intrigue here. There is another woman----" "Mr. Sefton! You proposed that we understand each other, and that is just what I wish, too. You have been watching me all this time." "Watching you! Yes, I have, and to purpose!" exclaimed the Secretary. "You have done few things in Richmond that have not come to my knowledge. Again I ask you what kind of a man do you think I am? When I saw you standing in my path I resolved that no act of yours should escape me. You know of this spy, Lucia Catherwood, and you know where she is. You see, I have even her name. Once I intended to arrest her and expose you to disgrace, but she had gone. I am glad now that we did not find her. I have a better use for her uncaught, though it annoys me that I cannot yet discover where she was when we searched that house." The cold chill which he had felt before in the presence of this man assailed Prescott again. He was wholly within his power, and metaphorically, he could be broken on the wheel if the adroit and ruthless Secretary wished it. He bit his dry lip, but said nothing, still waiting for the other. "I repeat that I have a better use for Miss Catherwood," continued Mr. Sefton. "Do you think I should have gone to all this trouble and touched upon so many springs merely to capture one misguided girl? What harm can she do us? Do you think the result of a great war and the fate of a continent are to be decided by a pair of dark eyes?" They were walking now along a half-made street that led into the fields. Behind them lay the city, and before them the hills and the forest, all in a robe of white. Thin columns of smoke rose from the earthworks, where the defenders hovered over the fires, but no one was near enough to hear what the two men said. "Then why have you held your hand?" asked Prescott. "Why?" and the Secretary actually laughed, a smooth, noiseless laugh, but a laugh nevertheless, though so full of a snaky cunning that Prescott started as if he had been bitten. "Why, because I wished you, Robert Prescott, whom I feared, to become so entangled that you would be helpless in my hands, and that you have done. If I wish I can have you dismissed from the army in disgrace--shot, perhaps, as a traitor. In any event, your future lies in the hollow of my hand. You are wholly at my mercy. I speak a word and you are ruined." "Why not speak it?" Prescott asked calmly. His first impulse had passed, and though his tongue was dry in his mouth the old hardening resolve to fight to the last came again. "Why not speak it? Because I do not wish to do so--at least, not yet. Why should I ruin you? I do not dislike you; on the contrary, I like you, as I have told you. So, I shall wait." "What then?" "Then I shall demand a price. I am not in this world merely to pass through it mechanically, like a clock wound up for a certain time. No; I want things and I intend to have them. I plan for them and I make sacrifices to get them. My one desire most of all is Helen Harley, but you are in the way. Stand out of it--withdraw--and no word of mine shall ever tell what I know. So far as I am concerned there shall be no Lucia Catherwood. I will do more: I will smooth her way from Richmond for her. Now, like a wise man, pay this price, Captain Prescott. It should not be hard for you." He spoke the last words in a tone half insinuating, half ironical. Prescott flushed a deep red. He did love Helen Harley; he had always loved her. He had not been away from her so much recently because of any decrease in that love; it was his misfortune--the pressure of ugly affairs that compelled him. Was the love he bore her to be thrown aside for a price? A price like that was too high to pay for anything. "Mr. Secretary," he replied icily, "they say that you are not of the South in some of your characteristics, and I think you are not. Do you suppose that I would accept such a proposition? I could not dream of it. I should despise myself forever if I were to do such a thing." He stopped and faced the Secretary angrily, but he saw no reflection of his own wrath in the other's face; on the contrary, he had never before seen him look so despondent. There was plenty of expression now on his countenance as he moodily kicked a lump of snow out of his way. Then Mr. Sefton said: "Do you know in my heart I expected you to make that answer. You would never have put such an alternative to a rival, but I--I am different. Am I responsible? No; you and I are the product of different soils and we look at things in a different way. You do not know my history. Few do here in Richmond--perhaps none; but you shall know, and then you will understand." Prescott saw that this man, who a moment ago was threatening him, was deeply moved, and he waited in wonder. "You have never known what it is," resumed the Secretary, speaking in short, choppy tones so unlike his usual manner that the voice might have belonged to another man, "to belong to the lowest class of our people--a class so low that even the negro slaves sneered at and despised it; to be born to a dirt floor, and a rotten board roof and four log walls! A goodly heritage, is it not? Was not Providence kind to me? And is it not a just and kind Providence?" He laughed with concentrated bitterness, and a feeling of pity for this man whom he had been dreading so much stole over Prescott. "We talk of freedom and equality here in the South," continued the Secretary, "and we say we are fighting for it; but not in England itself is class feeling stronger, and that is what we are fighting to perpetuate. I say that you have no such childhood as mine to look back to--the squalour, the ignorance, the sin, the misery, and above all the knowledge that you have a brain in your head and the equal knowledge that you are forbidden to use it--that places and honours are not for you!" Again he fiercely kicked a clump of snow from his path and gazed absently across the fields toward the wintry horizon, his face full of passionate protestation. Prescott was still silent, his own position forgotten now in the interest aroused by this sudden outburst. "If you are born a clod it is best to be a clod," continued the Secretary, "but that I was not. As I said, I have a brain in my head, and eyes to see. From the first I despised the squalour and the misery around me, and resolved to rise above it despite all the barriers of a slave-holding aristocracy, the most exclusive aristocracy in the world. I thought of nothing else. You do not know my struggles; you cannot guess them--the years and the years and all the bitter nights. They say that any oppressed and despised race learns and practises craft and cunning. So does a man; he must--he has no other choice. "I learned craft and cunning and practised them, too, because I had to do so. I did things that you have never done because you were not driven to them, and at last I saw the seed that I had planted begin to grow. Then I felt a joy that you can never feel because you have never worked for an object, and never will work for it, as I have done. I have triumphed. The best in the South obey me because they must. It is not the title or the name, for there are those higher than mine, but it is the power, the feeling that I have the reins in my hand and can guide." "If you have won your heart's desire why do you rail at fate?" asked Prescott. "Because I have not won my wish--not all of it. They say there is a weak spot in every man's armour; there is always an Achilles' heel. I am no exception. Well, the gods ordained that I, James Sefton, a man who thought himself made wholly of steel, should fall in love with a piece of pink-and-white girlhood. What a ridiculous bit of nonsense! I suppose it was done to teach me I am a fool just like other men. I had begun to believe that I was exceptional, but I know better now." "Then you call this a weakness and regret it?" "Yes, because it interferes with all my plans. The time that I should be devoting to ambition I must sacrifice for a weakness of the heart." The low throb of a distant drum came from a rampart, and the Secretary raised his head, as if the sound gave a new turn to his thoughts. "Even the plans of ambition may crumble," he said. "Since I am speaking frankly of one thing, Captain Prescott, I may speak likewise of another. Have you ever thought how unstable may prove this Southern Confederacy for which we are spending so much blood?" "I have," replied Prescott with involuntary emphasis. "So have I; again I speak to you with perfect frankness, because it will not be to your profit to repeat what I say. Do you realize that we are fighting against the tide, or, to put it differently, against the weight of all the ages? When one is championing a cause opposed to the tendency of human affairs his victories are worse than his defeats because they merely postpone the certain catastrophe. It is impossible for a slave-holding aristocracy under any circumstances to exist much longer in the world. When the apple is ripe it drops off the tree, and we cannot stay human progress. The French Revolution was bound to triumph because the institutions that it destroyed were worn out; the American Colonies were bound to win in their struggle with Britain because nature had decreed the time for parting; and even if we should succeed in this contest we should free the slaves ourselves inside of twenty years, because slavery is now opposed to common sense as well as to morality." "Then why do you espouse such a cause?" asked Prescott. "Why do you?" replied the Secretary very quickly. It was a question that Prescott never yet had been able to answer to his own complete satisfaction, and now he preferred silence. But no reply seemed to be expected, as the Secretary continued to talk of the Southern Confederacy, the plan upon which it was formed, and its abnormal position in the world, expressing himself, as he had said he would, with the most perfect frankness, displaying all the qualities of a keen analytical and searching mind. He showed how the South was one-sided, how it had cultivated only one or two forms of intellectual endeavour, and therefore, so he said, was not fitted in its present mood to form a calm judgment of great affairs. "The South is not sufficiently arithmetical," he said; "statistics are dry, but they are very useful on the eve of a great war. The South, however, has always scorned mathematics; she doesn't know even now the vast resources of the North, her tremendous industrial machinery which also supports the machinery of war, and above all she does not know that the North is only now beginning to be aroused. Even to this day the South is narrow, and, on the whole, ignorant of the world." Prescott, who knew these things already, did not like, nevertheless, to hear them said by another, and he was in arms at once to defend his native section. "It may be as you say, Mr. Secretary," he replied, "and I have no doubt it is true that the North is just gathering her full strength for the war, but you will see no shirking of the struggle on the part of the Southern people. They are rooted deep in the soil, and will make a better fight because of the faults to which you point." The Secretary did not reply. They were now close to the fortifications and could see the sentinels, as they walked the earthworks, blowing on their fingers to keep them warm. On one side they caught a slight glimpse of the river, a sheet of ice in its bed, and on the other the hills, with the trees glittering in icy sheaths like coats of mail. "It is time to turn back," said Mr. Sefton, "and I wish to say again that I like you, but I also warn you once more that I shall not spare you because of it; my weakness does not go so far. I wish you out of my way, and I have offered you an alternative which you decline. Many men in my position would have crushed you at once; so I take credit to myself. You adhere to your refusal?" "Certainly I do," replied Prescott with emphasis. "And you take the risk?" "I take the risk." "Very well, there is no need to say more. I warn you to look out for yourself." "I shall do so," replied Prescott, and he laughed lightly and with a little irony. They walked slowly back to the city, saying no more on the subject which lay nearest to their hearts, but talking of the war and its chances. A company of soldiers shivering in their scanty gray uniforms passed them. "From Mississippi," said the Secretary; "they arrived only yesterday, and this, though the south to us, is a cruel north to them. But there will not be many like these to come." They parted in the city, and the Secretary did not repeat his threats; but Prescott knew none the less that he meant them. _ |
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