Before the Dawn Part 8

Maybe you'd like to read this; its Rhett's paper."

He tossed them a newspaper and went on with his writing. The three found seats on cane-bottomed chairs or boxes and joined the group around the stove.

Prescott glanced a moment at the newspaper which Winthrop had thrown to them. It was a copy of the Charleston _Mercury_, conducted by the famous secessionist Rhett, then a member of the Confederate Senate, and edited meanwhile by his son. It breathed much fire and brimstone, and called insistently for a quick defeat of the insolent North. He pa.s.sed it on to his friends and then looked with more interest at the office and the men about him. Everything was shabby to the last degree. Old newspapers and sc.r.a.ps of ma.n.u.script littered the floor, c.o.c.kroaches crawled over the desks, on the walls were double-page ill.u.s.trations from _Harper's Weekly_ and _Leslie's Weekly_, depicting battle scenes in which the frightened Southern soldiers were fleeing like sheep before the valiant sons of the North.

"It's all the same, Prescott," said Talbot. "We haven't any ill.u.s.trated papers, but if we had they'd show the whole Yankee army running fit to break its neck from a single Southern regiment."

General Wood, too, looked about with keen eyes, as if uncertain what to do, but his hesitation did not last long. A piece of pine wood lay near him, and picking it up he drew from under his belt a great keen-bladed bowie-knife, with which he began to whittle long slender shavings that curled beautifully; then a seraphic smile of content spread over his face.

Those who were not reading drifted into a discussion on politics and the war. The rumble of a press just starting to work came from the next room. Winthrop and Raymond wrote on undisturbed. The General, still whittling his pine stick, began to stare curiously at them. At last he said:

"Wa'al, if this ain't a harder trade than fightin', I'll be darned!"

Several smiled, but none replied to the General's comment. Raymond presently finished his article, threw it to an ink-blackened galley-boy and came over to the stove.

"You probably wonder what I am doing here in the enemy's camp," he said.

"The office of every newspaper but my own is the camp of an enemy, but Winthrop asked me to help him out to-night with some pretty severe criticism of the Government. As he's responsible and I'm not, I've pitched into the President, Cabinet and Congress of the Confederate States of America at a great rate. I don't know what will happen to him, because while we are fighting for freedom here we are not fighting for the freedom of the press. We Southerners like to put in some heavy licks for freedom and then get something else. Maybe we're kin to the old Puritans."

They heard a light step on the stair, and the two editors looked up expecting to see some one of the ordinary chance visitors to a newspaper office. Instead it was the Secretary, Mr. Sefton, a conciliatory smile on his face and a hand outstretched ready for the customary shake.

"You are surprised to see me, Mr. Winthrop," he said, "but I trust that I am none the less welcome. I am glad, too, to find so many good men whom I know and some of whom I have met before on this very evening.

Good-evening to you all, gentlemen."

He bowed to every one. Winthrop looked doubtfully at him as if trying to guess his business.

"Anything private, Mr. Sefton?" he said "If so we can step into the next room."

"Not at all! Not at all!" replied the Secretary, spreading out his fingers in negative style. "There is nothing that your friends need not hear, not even our great cavalry leader, General Wood. I was pa.s.sing after a late errand, and seeing your light it occurred to me that I might come up to you and speak of some strange gossip that I have been hearing in Richmond."

All now listened with the keenest interest. They saw that the wily Secretary had not come on any vague errand at that hour of the morning.

"And may I ask what is the gossip?" said Winthrop with a trace of defiance in his tone.

"It was only a trifle," replied the Secretary blandly; "but a friend may serve a friend even in the matter of a trifle."

He paused and looked smilingly around the expectant circle. Winthrop made an impatient movement. He was by nature one of the most humane and generous of men, but fiery and touchy to the last degree.

"It was merely this," continued the Secretary, "and I really apologize for speaking of it at all, as it is scarcely any business of mine, but they say that you are going to print a fierce attack on the Government."

"What then?" asked Winthrop, with increasing defiance.

"I would suggest to you, if you will pardon the liberty, that you refrain. The Government, of which I am but a humble official, is sensitive, and it is, too, a critical time. Just now the Government needs all the support and confidence that it can possibly get. If you impair the public faith in us how can we accomplish anything?"

"But the newspapers of the North have entire freedom of criticism,"

burst out Winthrop. "We say that the North is not a free country and the South is. Are we to belie those words?"

"I think you miss the point," replied the Secretary, still speaking suavely. "The Government does not wish to repress the freedom of the press nor of any individual, nor in fact have I had any such matter in mind in giving you this intimation. I think that if you do as I hear you purpose to do, some rather extreme men will be disposed to make you trouble. Now there's Redfield."

"The trouble with Redfield," broke in Raymond, "is that he wants all the twenty-four hours of every day for his own talking."

"True! true in a sense," said the Secretary, "but he is a member of the House Committee on Military Affairs and is an influential man."

"I thank you, Mr. Secretary," said Winthrop, "but the article is already written."

A shade crossed the face of Mr. Sefton.

"And as you heard," continued Winthrop, "it attacks the Government with as much vigour as I am capable of putting into it. Here is the paper now; you can read for yourself what I have written."

The galley-boy had come in with a half-dozen papers still wet from the press. Winthrop handed one to the Secretary, indicated the editorial and waited while Sefton read it.

The Secretary, after the perusal, put down the paper and spoke gently as if he were chiding a child: "I am sorry this is published, Mr.

Winthrop," he said. "It can only stir up trouble. Will you permit me to say that I think it indiscreet?"

"Oh, certainly," replied Winthrop. "You are ent.i.tled to your opinion, and by the same token so am I."

"I don't think our Government will like this," said Mr. Sefton. He tapped the newspaper as he spoke.

"I should think it would not," replied Winthrop with an ironical laugh.

"At least, it was not intended that way. But does our Government expect to make itself an oligarchy or despotism? If that is so, I should like to know what we are fighting for?"

Mr. Sefton left these questions unanswered, but continued to express sorrow over the incident. He did not mean to interfere, he said; he had come with the best purpose in the world. He thought that at this stage of the war all influences ought to combine for the public good, and also he did not wish his young friends to suffer any personal inconvenience. Then bowing, he went out, but he took with him a copy of the paper.

"That visit, Winthrop, was meant for a threat, and nothing else," said Raymond, when he was sure the Secretary was safely in the street.

"No doubt of it," said Winthrop, "but I don't take back a word."

They speculated on the result, until General Wood, putting up his knife and throwing down his pine stick, drew an old pack of cards from an inside pocket of his coat.

"Let's play poker a little while," he said. "It'll make us think of somethin' else and steady our nerves. Besides, it's mighty good trainin'

for a soldier. Poker's just like war--half the cards you've got, an'

half bluff. Lee and Jackson are such mighty good gen'rals 'cause they always make the other fellow think they've got twice as many soldiers as they really have."

Raymond, an inveterate gambler, at once acceded to the proposition; Winthrop and one of the soldiers did likewise, and they sat down to play. The others looked on.

"Shall we make the limit ten cents in coin or ten dollars Confederate money?" asked Winthrop.

"Better make it ten dollars Confederate; we don't want to risk too much," replied Raymond.

Soon they were deep in the mysteries and fascinations of the game. Wood proved himself a consummate player, a master of "raise" and "bluff," but for awhile the luck ran against him, and he made this brief comment:

"Things always run in streaks; don't matter whether it's politics, love, farmin' or war. They don't travel alone. At Antietam nearly half the Yankee soldiers we killed were red-headed. Fact, sure; but at Chancellorsville I never saw a single dead Yankee with a red head."

The luck turned by and by toward the General, but Prescott thought it was time for him to be seeking home and he bade good-night. 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."

Prescott was of that opinion, too, and when he got into his bed, not long before the break of day, he was still thinking of the bland Secretary.