Before the Dawn Part 26

"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 a.s.sign?"

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 n.o.body 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 a.s.sailed 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 pa.s.sed, 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 pa.s.s 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 cla.s.s of our people--a cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sionate 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 t.i.tle 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 G.o.ds 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."