fingers on both knees, looking down at them reflectively.
"It is different now," she said; "sentiment dies under the scalpel. In
the filth and squalor of reality neither the belief in romance nor the
capacity for desiring it endure long.... Even pity becomes atrophied--or
at least a reflex habit; sympathy, sorrow, remain as mechanical
reactions, not spontaneous emotions.... You can understand that, dear?"
"Partly," said the Special Messenger, raising her dark eyes to her old
schoolmate.
"In the beginning," said the Nurse, dreamily, "the men in their
uniforms, the drums and horses and glitter, and the flags passing, and
youth--_youth_--not that you and I are yet old in years; do you know
what I mean?"
"I know," said the Special Messenger, smoothing out her riding gloves.
"Do you remember the cadets at Oxley? You loved one of them."
"Yes; you know how it was in the cities; and even afterward in
Washington--I mean the hospitals after Bull Run. Young bravery--the
Zouaves--the multicolored guard regiments--and a romance in every
death!" She laid one stained hand over the other, fingers still wide.
"But here in this blackened horror they call the 'seat of war'--this
festering bullpen, choked with dreary regiments, all alike, all in
filthy blue--here individuals vanish, men vanish. The schoolgirl dream
of man dies here forever. Only unwashed, naked duty remains; and its
inspiration, man--bloody, dirty, vermin-covered, terrible--sometimes;
and sometimes whimpering, terrified, flinching, base, bereft of all his
sex's glamour, all his mystery, shorn of authority, devoid of pride,
pitiable, screaming under the knife.--It is different now," said the
pretty Volunteer Nurse.--"The war kills more than human life."
The Special Messenger drew her buckskin gloves carefully through her
belt and buttoned the holster of her revolver.
"I have seen war, too," she said; "and the men who dealt death and the
men who received it. Their mystery remains--the glamour of a man remains
for me--because he is a man."
"I have heard them crying like children in the stretchers."
"So have I. That solves nothing."
But the Nurse went on:
"And in the wards they are sometimes something betwixt devils and
children. All the weakness and failings they attribute to women come out
in them--fear, timidity, inconsequence, greed, malice, gossip! And, as
for courage--I tell you, women bear pain better."
"Yes, I have learned that.... It is not difficult to beguile them
either; to lead them, to read them. That is part of my work. I do it. I
know they _are_ afraid in battle--the intelligent ones. Yet they fight.
I know they are really children--impulsive, passionate, selfish, often
cruel--but, after all, they are here fighting this war--here encamped
all around us throughout these hills and forests.... They have lost none
of their glamour for me. Their mystery remains."
The Volunteer Nurse looked up with a tired smile:
"You always were emotional, dear."
"I am still."
"You don't have to drain wounds and dry out sores and do the thousand
unspeakable offices that we do."
"Why do you do them?"
"I have to."
"You didn't have to enlist. Why did you?"
"Why do the men enlist?" asked the Nurse. "That's why you and I
did--whatever the motive may have been, God knows.... And it's killed
part of me.... _You_ don't cleanse ulcers."
"No; I am not fitted. I tried; and lost none of the romance in me. Only
it happens that I can do--what I am doing--better."
The Nurse looked at her a trifle awed.
"To think, dear, that you should turn out to be the celebrated Special
Messenger. You were timid in school."
"I am now.... You don't know how afraid a woman can be. Suppose in
school--suppose that for one moment we could have foreseen our
destiny--here together, you and I, as we are now."
The Nurse looked into the stained hollow of her right hand.
"I had the lines read once," she said drearily, "but nobody ever said
I'd be here, or that there'd be any war." And she continued to examine
her palm with a hurt expression in her blue eyes.
The Special Messenger laughed, and her lovely, pale face lighted up with
color.
"Don't you really think you are ever going to be capable of caring for a
man again?"
"No, I don't. I know now how they're fashioned, how they think--how--how
revolting they can be.... No, no! It's all gone--all the ideals, all the
dreams.... Good Heavens, how romantic--how senseless we were in school!"
"I am still," said the Special Messenger thoughtfully. "I like men....
A man--the right one--could easily make me love him. And I am afraid
there are more than one 'right one.' I have often been on the
sentimental border.... But they died, or went away--or I did.... The
trouble with me is, as you say, that I am emotional, and very, very
tender-hearted.... It is sometimes difficult to be loyal--to care for
duty--to care for the Union more than for a man. Not that there is any
danger of my proving untrue----"
"No," murmured the Nurse, "loyalty is your inheritance."
"Yes, we--" she named her family under her breath--"are traditionally
trustworthy. It is part of us--our race was always, will always
be.... But--to see a man near death--and to care for him a little--even
a rebel--and to know that one word might save him--only one little
disloyal word!"
"No man would save _you_ at that expense," said the Nurse disdainfully.
"I know men."
"Do you? I don't--in that way. There was once an officer--a
noncombatant. I could have loved him.... Once there was a Confederate
cavalryman. I struck him senseless with my revolver-butt--and I might
have--cared for him. He was very young.... I never can forget him. It is
hard, dear, the business I am engaged in.... But it has never spoiled my
interest in men--or my capacity for loving one of them. I am afraid I am
easily moved."
She rose and stood erect, to adjust her soft riding hat, her youthfully
slender figure in charming relief against the window.
"Won't you let me brew a little tea for you?" asked the Nurse. "Don't
leave me so soon."
"When do you go on duty?"
"In about ten minutes. It will be easier to-morrow, when we send our
sick North. Will you come in to-morrow?"
The Special Messenger shook her head dreamily.
"I don't know--I don't know.... Good-by."
"Are _you_ going on duty?"
"Yes."
"When?"
"Now."
The Nurse rose and put both arms around her.
"I am so afraid for you," she said; "and it has been so good to see
you.... I don't know whether we'll ever meet again----"
Her voice was obliterated in the noisy outburst of bugles sounding the
noon sick-call.
They went out together, where the Messenger's horse was tied under the
trees. Beyond, through the pines, glimmered the tents of an emergency
hospital. And now, in the open air not very far away, they could hear
picket firing.
"Do be careful," said the blue-eyed Nurse. "They say you do such
audacious things; and every day somebody says you have been taken, or
hanged, or shot. Dear, you are so young and so pretty----"
"So are you. Don't catch fever or smallpox or die from a scratch from a
poisoned knife.... Good-by once more."
They kissed each other. A hospital orderly, passing hurriedly, stopped
to hold her stirrup; she mounted, thanked the orderly, waved a smiling
adieu to her old schoolmate, and, swinging her powerful horse westward,
trotted off through the woods, passing the camp sentinels with a nod and
a low-spoken word.
Farther out in the woods she encountered the first line of pickets;
showed her credentials, then urged her horse forward at a gallop.
"Not that way!" shouted an officer, starting to run after her; "the
Johnnies are out there!"
She turned in her saddle and nodded reassuringly, then spurred on again,
expecting to jump the Union advance-guard every moment.
There seemed to be no firing anywhere in the vicinity; nothing to be
seen but dusky pine woods; and after she had advanced almost to the edge
of a little clearing, and not encountering the outer line of Union
pickets, she drew bridle and sat stock still in her saddle, searching in
every direction with alert eyes.
Nothing moved; the heated scent of the Southern pines hung heavy in the
forest; in the long, dry swale-grass of the clearing, yellow butterflies
were flying lazily; on a dead branch above her a huge woodpecker, with
pointed, silky cap, uttered a querulous cry from moment to moment.
She strained her dainty, close-set ears; no sound of man stirred in this
wilderness--only the lonely bird-cry from above; only the ceaseless
monotone of the pine crests stirred by some high breeze unfelt below.
A forest path, apparently leading west, attracted her attention; into
this she steered her horse and continued, even after her compass had
warned her that the path was now running directly south.
The tree-growth was younger here; thickets of laurel and holly grew in
the undergrowth, and, attempting a short cut out, she became entangled.
For a few minutes her horse, stung by the holly, thrashed and floundered
about in the maze of tough stems; and when at last she got him free, she
was on the edge of another clearing--a burned one, lying like a path of
black velvet in the sun. A cabin stood at the farther edge.
Three forest bridle paths ran west, east, and south from this blackened
clearing. She unbuttoned her waist, drew out a map, and, flattening it
on her pommel, bent above it in eager silence. And, as she sat studying
her map, she became aware of a tremor in the solid earth under her horse's
feet. It grew to a dull jarring vibration--nearer--nearer--nearer--and
she hastily backed her horse into the depths of the laurel, sprang to
the ground, and placed both gauntleted hands over her horse's nostrils.
A moment later the Confederate cavalry swept through the clearing at a
trot--a jaunty, gray column, riding two abreast, then falling into
single file as they entered the bridle path at a canter.
She watched them as they flashed by among the pines, sitting their
horses beautifully, the wind lifting the broad brims of their soft hats,
the sun a bar of gold across each sunburned face.
There were only a hundred of them--probably some of Ashby's old riders,
for they seemed strangely familiar--but it was not long before they had
passed on their gay course, and the last tremor in the forest soil--the
last distant rattle of sabre and carbine--died away in the forest
silence.
What were they doing here? She did not know. There seemed no logical
reason for the presence of Stuart's troopers.
For a while, awaiting their possible collision with the Union outposts,
she listened, expecting the far rattle of rifles. No sound came. They
must have sheered off east. So, very calmly she addressed herself to the
task in hand.
This must be the burned clearing; her map and the cabin corroborated
her belief. Then it was here that she was to meet this unknown man in
Confederate uniform and Union pay--a spy like herself--and give him
certain information and receive certain information in return.
Her instructions had been unusually rigid; she was to take every
precaution; use native disguise whether or not it might appear
necessary, carry no papers, and let any man she might encounter make the
advances until she was absolutely certain of him. For there was an ugly
rumor afloat that the man she expected had been caught and hanged, and
that a Confederate might attempt to impersonate him. So she looked very
carefully at her map, then out of the thicket at the burned clearing.
There was the wretched cabin named as rendezvous, the little garden
patch with standing corn and beans, and here and there a yellowing
squash.
_Why had the passing rebel cavalry left all that good food undisturbed?_
Fear, which within her was always latent, always too ready to influence
her by masquerading as caution, stirred now. For almost an hour she
stood, balancing her field glasses across her saddle, eyes focused on
the open cabin door. Nothing stirred there.
At last, with a slight shiver, she opened her saddle bags and drew out
the dress she meant to wear--a dingy, earth-colored thing of gingham.
Deep in the thicket she undressed, folded her fine linen and silken
stockings, laid them away in the saddle bags together with waist and
skirt, field glasses, gauntlets, and whip, and the map and papers, which
latter, while affording no information to the enemy, would certainly
serve to convict her.
Dressed now in the scanty, colorless clothing of a "poor white" of the
pine woods, limbs and body tanned with walnut, her slender feet rubbed
in dust and then thrust stockingless into shapeless shoes, she let down
the dark, lustrous mass of her hair, braided it, tied it with faded
ribbon, rubbed her hands in wood mold and crushed green leaves over them
till they seemed all stained and marred with toil. Then she gathered an
armful of splinter wood.
Now ready, she tethered her horse, leaving him bitted and saddled;
spread out his sack of feed, turned and looked once more at the cabin,
then walked noiselessly to the clearing's edge, carrying her aromatic
splinters.
Underfoot, as she crossed it, the charred grass crumbled to powder;
three wild doves flickered up into flight, making a soft clatter and
displaying the four white feathers. A quail called from the bean patch.
The heat was intense in the sun; perspiration streaked her features; her
tender feet burned; the cabin seemed a long way off, a wavering blot
through the dancing heat devils playing above the fire-scorched open.
Head bent, she moved on in the shiftless, hopeless fashion of the sort
of humanity she was representing, furtively taking her bearings and
making such sidelong observations as she dared. To know the shortest way
back to her horse might mean life to her. She understood that. Also she
fully realized that she might at that very instant be under hostile
observation. In her easily excited imagination, all around her the
forest seemed to conceal a hundred malevolent eyes. She shivered
slightly, wiped the perspiration from her brow with one small bare fist,
and plodded on, clutching her lightwood to her rounded breast.
And now at last she was nearing the open cabin door; and she must not
hesitate, must show no suspicion. So she went in, dragging her
clumsily-shod feet.
A very young man in the uniform of a Confederate cavalry officer was
seated inside before the empty fireplace of baked clay. He had a bad
scar on his temple. She looked at him, simulating dull surprise; he rose
and greeted her gracefully.
"Howdy," she murmured in response, still staring.
"Is this your house?" he asked.
"Suh?" blankly.
"Is this your house?"
"I reckon," she nodded. "How come you-all in my house?"
He replied with another question:
"What were you doing in the woods?"
"Lightwood," she answered briefly, stacking the fragrant splinters on
the table.
"Do you live here all alone?"
"Reckon I'm alone when I live heah," sullenly.
"What is your name?" He had a trick of coloring easily.
"What may be _yoh_ name, suh?" she retorted with a little flash of
Southern spirit, never entirely quenched even in such as she seemed to
be.
Genuine surprise brought the red back into his face and made it, worn as
it was, seem almost handsome. The curious idea came to her that she had
seen him before somewhere. At the same moment speech seemed to tremble
on his lips; he hesitated, looked at her with a new and sudden keenness,
and stood looking.
"I expected to meet somebody here," he said at length.
She did not seem to comprehend.
"I expected to meet a woman here."
"Who? Me?" incredulously.
He looked her over carefully; looked at her dusty bare ankles, at her
walnut-smeared face and throat. She seemed so small, so
round-shouldered--so different from what he had expected. They had said
that the woman he must find was pretty.
"Was yuh-all fixin' to meet up with _me_?" she repeated with a bold
laugh.
"I--don't know," he said. "By the Eternal, I don't know, ma'am. But I'm
going to find out in right smart time. Did you ever hear anybody speak
Latin?"
"Suh?" blankly; and the audacity faded.
"Latin," he repeated, a trifle discomfited. "For instance, '_sic itur_.'
Do you know what '_sic itur_' means?"
"Sick--what, suh?"
"'_Sic itur!_' Oh, Lord, she _is_ what she looks like!" he exclaimed in
frank despair. He walked to the door, wheeled suddenly, came back and
confronted her.
"Either, ma'am, you are the most consummate actress in this war drama,
or you don't know what I'm saying, and you think me crazy.... And now
I'll ask you once for all: _Is this the road_?"
The Special Messenger looked him full in the eyes; then, as by magic,
the loveliest of smiles transfigured the dull, blank features; her round
shoulders, pendulous arms, slouching pose, melted into superb symmetry,
quickening with grace and youth as she straightened up and faced him,
erect, supple, laughing, adorable.
"_Sic itur--ad Astra_," she said demurely, and offered him her hand.
"Continue," she added.
He neither stirred nor spoke; a deep flush mounted to the roots of his
short, curly hair. She smiled encouragement, thinking him young and
embarrassed, and a trifle chagrined.
"Continue the Latin formula," she nodded, laughing; "what follows, if
you please----"
"Good God!" he broke out hoarsely.
And suddenly she knew there was nothing to follow except death--his or
hers--realized she made an awful mistake--divined in one dreadful
instant the unsuspected counter-mine beneath her very feet--cried out as
she struck him full in the face with clenched fist, sprang back,
whipping the revolver from her ragged bodice, dark eyes ablaze.
"Now," she panted, "hands high--and turn your back! Quickly!"
He stood still, very pale, one sunburned hand covering the cheek which
she had struck. There was blood on it. He heard her breathless voice,
warning him to obey, but he only took his hand from his face, looked at
the blood on palm and finger, then turned his hopeless eyes on her.
"Too late," he said heavily. "But--I'd rather be you than I.... Look out
of that window, Messenger!"
"Put up your hands!"
"No."
"Will you hold up your hands!"
"No, Messenger.... And I--didn't--know it was _you_ when I came here.
It's--it's a dirty business--for an officer." He sank down on the wooden
chair, resting his head between both hands. A single drop of blood fell
brightly from his cut cheek.
The Special Messenger stole a swift, sidelong glance toward the window,
hesitated, and, always watching him, slid along the wall toward the
door, menacing him at every step with leveled revolver. Then, at the
door, she cast one rapid glance at the open field behind her and around.
A thrill of horror stiffened her. The entire circle of the burned
clearing was ringed with the gray pickets of rebel cavalry.
The distant men sat motionless on their horses, carbine on thigh. Here
and there a distant horse tossed his beautiful head, or perhaps some
hat-brim fluttered. There was no other movement, not one sound.
Crouching to pass the windows beneath the sills she crept, heedless of
her prisoner, to the rear door. That avenue to the near clustering woods
was closed, too; she saw the glitter of carbines above the laurel.
"Special Messenger?" She turned toward him, pale as a ghost. "I reckon
we've got you."
"Yes," she said.
There was another chair by the table--the only other one. She seated
herself, shaking all over, laid her revolver on the table, stared at the
weapon, pushed it from her with a nervous shudder, and, ashy of lip and
cheek, looked at the man she had struck.
"Will they--hang me?"
"I reckon, ma'am. They hung the other one--the man you took me for."
"Will there be a--trial?"
"Drumhead.... They've been after you a long, long while."
"Then--what are you waiting for?"
He was silent.
She found it hard to control the nervous tremor of her limbs and lips.
The dryness in her throat made speech difficult.
"Then--if there is no chance----"
He bent forward swiftly and snatched her revolver from the table as her
small hand fell heavily upon the spot where the weapon had rested.
"Would you do _that_?" he said in a low voice.
The desperate young eyes answered him. And, after a throbbing silence:
"Won't you let me?" she asked. "It is indecent to h-hang
a--woman--before--men----"
He did not answer.
"Please--please--" she whispered, "give it back to me--if you are
a--soldier.... You can go to the door and call them.... Nobody will
know.... You can turn your back.... It will only take a second!"
A big blue-bottle fly came blundering into the room and filled the
silence with its noise. Years ago the big blue flies sometimes came into
the quiet schoolroom; and how everybody giggled when the taller Miss
Poucher, bristling from her prunella shoes to her stiff side-curls,
charged indignantly upon the buzzing intruder.
Dry--eyed, dry--lipped, the Messenger straightened up, quivering, and
drew a quick, sharp breath; then her head fell forward, and, resting
inert upon the table, she buried her face in her arms. The most
dangerous spy in the Union service--the secret agent who had worked more
evil to the Confederacy than any single Union army corps--the coolest,
most resourceful, most trusted messenger on either side as long as the
struggle lasted--caught at last.
The man, young, Southern, and a gentleman's son, sat staring at her. He
had driven his finger-nails deep into his palms, bitten his underlip
till it was raw.
"Messenger!"
She made no response.
"Are you afraid?"
Her head, prone in her arms, motioned dull negation. It was a lie and he
knew it. He looked at the slender column of the neck--stained to a
delicate amber--at the nape; and he thought of the rope and the knot
under the left ear.
"Messenger," he said once more. "I did not know it was _you_ I was to
meet. Look at me, in God's name!"
She opened her eyes on him, then raised her head.
"Do you know me now?" he asked.
"No."
"Look!"
He touched the scar on his forehead; but there was no recognition in her
eyes.
"Look, I tell you!" he repeated, almost fiercely.
She said wearily: "I have seen so many men--so many men.... I can't
remember you."
"And I have seen many women, Messenger; but I have never forgotten
you--or what you did--or what you did----"
"I?"
"You.... And from that night I have lived only to find you again.
And--oh, God! To find you here! My Messenger! My little Messenger!"
"Who are you?" she whispered, leaning forward on the table, dark eyes
dilating with hope.
He sat heavily for a while, head bowed as though stunned to silence;
then slowly the white misery returned to his face and he looked up.
"So--after all--_you_ have forgotten. And my romance is dead."
She did not answer, intent now on every word, every shade of his
expression. And, as she looked, through the numbness of her desperation,
hope stirred again, stealthily.
"Are you a friend?" Her voice scarcely sounded at all.
"Friends die for each other," he said. "Do you expect that of me?"
The silence between them became terrible; and at last he broke it with a
bitter laugh:
"You once turned a boy's life to romance--riding through it--out of
it--leaving scars on his brow and heart--and on his lips the touch of
your own. And on his face your tears. Look at me once more!"
Her breath came quicker; far within her somewhere memory awoke, groping
blindly for light.
"Three days we followed you," he said. "On the Pennsylvania line we
cornered you; but you changed garb and shape and speech, almost under
our eyes--as a chameleon changes color, matching the leaf it hides
on.... I halted at that squatter's house--sure of you at last--and the
pretty squatter's daughter cooked for us while we hunted you in the
hills--and when I returned she gave me her bed to sleep on----"
Her hand caught at her throat and she half rose, staring at him.
"Her own bed to sleep on," he repeated. "And I had been three days
in the saddle; and I ate what she set before me, and slept on her
bed--fell asleep--only a tired boy, not a soldier any longer....
And awoke to meet your startled eyes--to meet the blow from your
revolver butt that made this scar--to fall back bewildered for a
moment--half-stunned--Messenger! Do you know me now?"
"Yes," she said.