Joseph A. Altsheler

“ She did not speak, nor did he, and there was an awkward silence while Miss Grayson stood looking on. Prescott waited for the thanks, the hint of gratitude that he wished to hear, but it was not given; and while he waited he looked at Miss Catherwood with increasing interest, beholding her now in a new phase.
Hitherto she had always seemed to him bold and strong, a woman of more than feminine courage, one with whom it would require all the strength and resource of a man to deal even on the man's own ground. Now she was of the essence feminine. ”

“ We seem doomed to be rivals always, Captain Prescott; at least we can give each other the credit of good taste. At first it was Helen Harley who took our fancy—a fancy it was and nothing more—but now I think a deeper passion has been stirred in us by the same object, Miss Catherwood. You see, I am still frank. I know very well that you care nothing for Mrs. Markham. It is but a momentary folly, the result of jealousy or something akin to it—and here I am, resolved to triumph over you, not because I would enjoy your defeat, but because my own victories are sweet to me. ”

“ She, who was usually calm and grave, seemed to have forgotten the war. She laughed and jested and saw good humour in everything.
Prescott could not avoid catching the infection from the woman whom he most admired. The atmosphere—the very air—took on an unusual brilliancy. The brick walls and the shingled roofs glittered in the crisp, wintry sunshine; the schoolboys, caps over their ears and mittens on their fingers, played and shouted in the streets just as if peace reigned and the cannon were not rumbling onward over there beyond the trees.
"Isn't this world beautiful at times?" said Helen. ”

“ James Sefton realized that Lucia Catherwood was not merely a woman to be admired, but one to be loved and desired. She had appealed to him as one with whom to make a great career; now she appealed to him as a woman with whom to live. He remembered the story of her carrying the wounded Prescott off the battlefield in her arms and in the dark, alone and undaunted, amid all the dead of the Wilderness. ”

“ 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?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ There was no noise save the soft crush of the horses' feet in the snow and the crunch of the wagon wheels. The silvery glow of the moon still fell across the hills, and the trees stood motionless like white but kindly sentinels.
Prescott by and by took his flask from his pocket.
"Drink some of this," he said; "you must. The cold is insidious and you should fend it off."
So urged she drank a little, and then Prescott, stopping the horses, climbed back in the wagon-bed.
"It would be strange," he said, "if our good farmer prepared for a twenty-mile drive without taking along something to eat." ”

“ The face of Lucia Catherwood altered. It expressed a singular tenderness as she looked at Miss Grayson, so soft, so small and so gray.
"Charlotte," she said, "I wish that I were as good as you. You are never excited, passionate or angry. You always know what you ought to do and you always do it." [Pg 332]
Miss Grayson looked up again and her eyes suddenly sparkled.
"You make a mistake, a great mistake, Lucia," she said. "It is only the people who do wrong now and then who are really good. Those of us who do right all the time merely keep in that road because we cannot get out of it. ”

“ Wisdom and love should go together. Truly, all things were moving well with him, he repeated in his thought. Prescott was following the very course he would have chosen for him, kneeling at Mrs. Markham's feet as if she were a new Calypso. The man whom he knew to be his rival was about to embroil himself with everybody.
If he wanted more evidence of his last inference, Harley of the inflamed face and threatening brow was quick to furnish it. When Prescott came in Harley took another long draught and said to the crowd:
"I have a pretty bit of gossip for you, gentlemen." ”

“ Never did the Wilderness more deserve its name; gloomy at any time, it had new attributes of solemn majesty. Everything seemed to be in unison with those who lay there—the pitchy blackness, the low muttering of distant thunder, the fitful glimmer of the lightning, the stems of trees twisted and contorted by the gleam of the uncertain flashes, the white faces of the slain upturned to the sky seen dimly by the same light, the banks of smoke and vapour yet floating [Pg 231] through the forest, the strange, repellent odours, and the heavy, melancholy silence. ”

“ A messenger came for Prescott. "The General-in-Chief wishes you," he said.
Prescott walked to a small fire where Lee sat alone for the present and within the shelter of the tent. He was grave and thoughtful, but that was habitual with him. Prescott could not see that the victor of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville had changed in bearing or manner. He was as neat as ever; the gray uniform was spotless; the splendid sword, a gift from admirers, hung by his side. His face expressed nothing to the keen gaze of Prescott, who was now no novice in the art of reading the faces of men. ”

“ The low thunder of a cannon came faintly from the north, but there were few who heard it.
The enthusiasm of the crowd for Morgan spread to everybody, and mighty cheers were given in turn for all the Generals and the Mayor. The rebound was complete. The whole people, for the time being, looked forward to triumph, thorough and magnificent. The nearer the Yankees came to Richmond the greater would be their defeat and rout. High spirits were contagious and ran through the crowd like a fire in dry grass.
"Hurrah!" cried Talbot, clapping his hand heavily upon Prescott's shoulder. ”

“ Markham could tell.
The night was thick and hot, rank with vapours and mists and odours that oppressed throat and nostrils. The wind seemed to have died, but the fine dust of ashes still fell and the banks of nauseous smoke floated about aimlessly.
New fear assailed the two women for the first time—not so much fear of the shells and the bullets, but of the night and its mysteries and the weird combat that was still going on there where the light was so pallid and uncertain. Once again those who fought had become for them unreal—not human beings, but imps in an inferno of their own creation. ”

“ Why should he be influenced by the idle words of some idle man in the street? He was not Lucia Catherwood's guardian; if there were any question of guardianship, she was much better fitted to be the guardian of him.
Had he obeyed this rush of feeling he would have swept away all constraint by words abrupt, disjointed perhaps, but alive with sincerity, and Miss Grayson gave him ample opportunity by slipping with excuses into the next room. The pride and stubbornness in Prescott's nature were tenacious and refused to die. ”

“ As for himself, he was thinking at that moment of an unknown woman in a brown, wooden cottage. With the city snowed-in she might find the vigilance of the sentinels relaxed, but a flight through the frozen wilderness would be impossible for her. He was angry at himself again for feeling concern when he should be relieved that she could not escape; but, after, all she was a woman.
"Why so grave, Prescott?" asked Raymond. "A heavy snow like this is all in our favour, since we stand on the defensive; it makes it more difficult for the Yankee army to move." ”

“ Lucia felt singularly happy and she knew why, for so engrossed was she in Prescott that she scarcely heard the second cannon shot, replying to the first. There came others, all faint and far, but each with its omen. The second day's battle had begun.
The supreme commanders of either side were now ready. Human minds had never been more busy than theirs had been. Grant was still preparing to attack; no thought of failure entered his resolute soul. If he did not succeed to-day, then he would succeed on the next day or next week or next month; he would attack and never cease attacking. ”

“ Colonel Stormont accompanied him as he went down the rickety stairs.
"Colonel," asked Prescott, as they reached the street, "who, in reality, is Mr. Sefton?"
"That is more than any of us can tell," replied the Colonel; "nominally he is at the head of a department in the Treasury, but he has acquired a great influence in the Cabinet—he is so deft at the despatch of business—and he is at the White House as much as he is anywhere. He is not a man whom we can ignore." ”

“ As before, he took Prescott's unresisting arm and pointed up at the bright stars in their sea of blue.
"They are laughing at our passions, Mr. Prescott, perhaps smiling is the word," he said. "Such a peace as that appeals to me. I am not fond of war and I know that you are not. I feel it particularly to-night. There is poetry in the heavens so calm and so cold." ”

“ I wish I had your temper and impulses, Lucia, that I might flash into anger now and then and do something rash—something that I should be sorry for later on, but which in my secret heart I should be glad I had done. Oh, I get so tired of being just a plain, goody-goody little woman who will always do the right thing in the most uninteresting way; a woman about whom there is no delightful uncertainty; a woman on whom you can always reckon just as you would on the figure 4 or 6 or any other number in mathematics. ”

“ It seemed to Prescott, who sat near the General's tent, as if two huge picnic parties had camped near each other with the probability that they would join and become one in a short time—an illusion arising from the fact that he had gone into the war without any deep feeling over its real or alleged causes.
"Why do you study the Yankees so hard?" asked Talbot, who lay in the shade of a tree. "They are not troubling us, and I learned when I cut my eye teeth not to bother with a man who isn't bothering me—a rule that works well." ”

“ He saw ladies, both young and old, bearing in their cheeks a faint, delicate bloom, the mark of the South, and he heard them as they spoke to each other in their soft, drawling voices, which reminded him of the waters of a little brook falling over a precipice six inches high.
It is said that soldiers, after spending a year or two in the serious business of slaying each other, look upon [Pg 6] a woman as one would regard a divinity—a being to be approached with awe and respect; and such emotions sprang into the heart of Prescott when he glanced into feminine faces, especially youthful ones. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Regarding him again with that covert glance, she saw anxiety trembling on his lips and she replied deliberately:
"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. ”

“ The Wilderness has changed but little in the generation since Grant and Lee met there. The sullen soil is sullen and unyielding still. As of old it crops up here in stone and there turns a thin red tint to the sun. The sassafras bushes and the scrub oaks moan sadly in the wind, and few human beings wander over the desolate hills and valleys.
At Gettysburg there is a city, and the battlefield is covered with monuments in scores and scores, and all the world goes to see them. ”

“ 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. ”