revolver, found it, opened it, made certain that the cylinder was full,
and, flinging one last glance down the pass, hastened to her prisoner.
Her prisoner opened his eyes; the dark bruise on his forehead was
growing redder and wetter.
"Stand up!" she said, cocking her weapon.
The boy, half stupefied, struggled to his knees, then managed to rise.
"Go forward along that path!"
For a full minute he stood erect, motionless, eyes fixed on her; then
shame stained him to the temples; he turned, head bent, and walked
forward, wrists tightly tied behind him.
And behind him, weapon swinging, followed the Special Messenger in her
rags, pallid, disheveled, her dark eyes dim with pity.
VIII
EVER AFTER
--And they married, and had many children, and
lived happy ever after.--Old Tales
For two days the signal flags had been talking to each other; for two
nights the fiery torches had been conversing about that beleaguered city
in the South.
Division after division, corps after corps, were moving forward; miles
of wagons, miles of cavalry in sinuous columns unending, blackened every
valley road. Later, the heavy Parrots and big Dahlgrens of the siege
train stirred in their parked lethargy, and, enormous muzzles tilted,
began to roll out through the valley in heavy majesty, shaking the
ground as they passed, guarded by masses of red artillerymen.
Day after day crossed cannon flapped on red and white guidons; day after
day the teams of powerful horses, harnessed in twenties, trampled
through the valley, headed south.
Off the sandy headland a Federal gunboat lay at anchor, steam up--a
blackened, chunky, grimy thing of timber and iron plates, streaked with
rust, smoke blowing horizontally from her funnels. And day after day she
consulted hill and headland with her kaleidoscopic strings of flags; and
headland and hill talked back with fluttering bunting by day and with
torches of fire by night.
From her window in the emergency hospital the Special Messenger could
see those flags as she sat pensively sewing. Sometimes she mended the
remnants of her silken stockings and the last relics of the fine under
linen left her; sometimes she scraped lint or sewed poultice bandages,
or fashioned havelocks for regiments southward bound.
She had grown slimmer, paler, of late; her beautiful hair had been
sheared close; her head, covered with thick, clustering curls, was like
the shapely head of a boy. Limbs and throat were still smooth and round,
but had become delicate almost to leanness.
The furlough she had applied for had not yet arrived; she seemed to
remain as hopelessly entangled in the web of war as ever, watching,
without emotion, the old spider. Death, busy all around her, tireless,
sinister, absorbed in his own occult affairs.
The routine varied but little: at dawn surgeons' call chorused by the
bugles; files of haggard, limping, clay-faced men, headed by sergeants,
all converging toward the hospital; later, in every camp, drums awaking;
distant strains of regimental bands at parade; and all day and all night
the far rumble of railroad trains, the whistle of locomotives, and, if
the wind veered, the faint, melancholy cadence of the bells swinging for
a clear track and right of way.
Sometimes, sewing by the open window, she thought of her brother, now
almost thirteen--thought, trembling, of his restless letters from his
Northern school, demanding of her that he be permitted to take his part
in war for the Union, begging to be enlisted at least as drummer in a
nine-months' regiment which was recruiting within sight of the dormitory
where he fretted over Cæsar and the happy warriors of the Tenth Legion.
Sometimes, mending the last shreds of her cambric finery, she thought of
her girlhood, of the white porches at Sandy River; and always, always,
the current of her waking dream swung imperceptibly back to that swift
crisis in her life--a flash of love--love at the first glance--a word!
and his regiment, sabres glittering, galloping pell-mell into the
thundering inferno between the hills.... And sunset; and the wounded
passing by wagon loads, piled in the blood-soaked hay; and the glimpse
of his limp gold-and-yellow sleeve--and her own white bed, and her lover
of a day lying there--dead----
At this point in the dream-tale her eyes usually became too dim to see
the stitches, and there was nothing to do except to wait until the tired
eyes were dry again.
The sentry on duty knocked, opened the door, and admitted a
weather-stained aide-de-camp, warning her respectfully:
"Orders for you, ma'am."
The Special Messenger cleared her eyes, breathing unevenly, and unsealed
the dispatch which the officer handed her.
When she read it she opened a door and called sharply to a hospital
orderly, who came running:
"Fit me with a rebel cavalry uniform--you've got that pile of
disinfected clothing in the basement. I also want one of our own cavalry
uniforms to wear over it--anything that has been cleaned. Quick,
Williams; I've only a few minutes to saddle! And bring me that bundle of
commissions taken from the rebel horsemen that were brought in
yesterday."
And to the mud-splashed aide-de-camp who stood waiting, looking out of
the window at the gunboat which was now churning in toward the wharf,
billows of inky smoke pouring from the discolored stacks:
"Please tell the general that I go aboard in half an hour. Tell him I'll
do my best." In a lower voice: "Ask him not to forget my brother--if
matters go wrong with me. He has given me his word.... And I think that
is all, thank you."
The A.-D.-C. said, standing straight, hollow-backed, spurred heels
together:
"Orders are verbally modified, madam."
"What?"
"If you do not care to go--it is not an order--merely a matter of
volunteering.... The general makes no question of your courage if you
choose to decline."
She said, looking at the officer a little wearily:
"Thank the general. It will give me much pleasure to fulfill his
request. Ask him to bear my brother in mind; that is all."
The A.-D.-C. bowed to her, cap in hand, then went out, making
considerable racket with sabre and boots.
Half an hour later a long, deep, warning blast from the gunboat's
whistle set the echoes flying through the hills.
Aboard, leading her horse, the Special Messenger, booted and spurred, in
a hybrid uniform of a subaltern of regulars, handed the bridle to a
sailor and turned to salute the quarterdeck.
* * * * *
The United States gunboat, _Kiowa_, dropped anchor at the railroad wharf
two days later, and ran out a blackened gangplank. Over it the Special
Messenger, wrapped in her rubber cloak, led her horse to shore, mounted,
and galloped toward the hill where the flag of corps headquarters was
flapping in the wet wind.
The rain ended as she rode inland; ahead of her a double rainbow glowed
and slowly faded to a rosy nimbus.
Corps headquarters was heavily impressive and paternally polite,
referring her to headquarters of the unattached cavalry division.
She remounted, setting her horse at an easy canter for the intervening
two miles, riding through acres of tents and vistas of loaded wagon
trains; and at last an exceedingly ornamental staff officer directed her
to her destination, and a few moments later she dismounted and handed
her bridle to an orderly, whose curiously fashioned forage cap seemed
strangely familiar.
As the Special Messenger entered his tent and saluted, the colonel of
the Fourth Missouri Cavalry rose from a camp chair, standing over six
feet in his boots. He was magnificently built; his closely clipped hair
was dark and curly, his skin smoothly bronzed and flushed at the cheek
bones; his allure that of a very splendid and grave and youthful god,
save for the gayly impudent uptwist of his short mustache and the
stilled humor in his steady eyes.
His uniform was entirely different from the regulation--he wore a blue
forage cap with short, heavy visor of unpolished leather shadowing the
bridge of his nose; his dark blue jacket was shell-cut; over it he wore
a slashed dolman trimmed at throat, wrists and edges with fur; his
breeches were buff; his boots finished at the top with a yellow cord
forming a heart-shaped knot in front; at his heels trailed the most
dainty and rakish of sabres, light, graceful, curved almost like a
scimiter.
All this is what the Special Messenger saw as she entered, instantly
recognizing a regimental uniform which she had never seen but once
before in her brief life. And straight through her heart struck a pain
swift as a dagger thrust, and her hand in its buckskin gauntlet fell
limply from the peak of her visor, and the color died in her cheeks.
What the colonel of the Fourth Missouri saw before him was a lad, slim,
rather pale, dark-eyed, swathed to the chin in the folds of a wet
poncho; and he said, examining her musingly and stroking the ends of his
curt mustache upward:
"I understood from General Sheridan that the Special Messenger was to
report to me. Where is she?"
The lightning pain of the shock when she recognized the uniform
interfered with breath and speech; confused, she raised her gloved hand
and laid it unconsciously over her heart; and the colonel of the Fourth
Missouri waited.
"I am the Special Messenger," she said faintly.
For a moment he scarcely understood that this slender young fellow, with
dark hair as closely clipped and as curly as his own, could be a woman.
Stern surprise hardened his narrowing gaze; he stood silent, handsome
head high, looking down at her; then slowly the latent humor flickered
along the edges of lip and lid, curbed instantly as he bowed, faultless,
handsome--only the persistently upturned mustache impairing the
perfectly detached and impersonal decorum with a warning of the _beau
sabreur_ behind it all.
"Will you be seated, madam?"
"Thank you."
She sat down; the wet poncho was hot and she shifted it, throwing one
end across her shoulder. In her uniform she appeared willowy and slim,
built like a boy, and with nothing of that graceful awkwardness which
almost inevitably betrays such masqueraders. For her limbs were straight
at the knees and faultlessly coupled, and there seemed to be the
adolescent's smooth lack of development in the scarcely accented
hips--only a straightly flowing harmony of proportion--a lad's grace
muscularly undeveloped.
Two leather straps crossed her breast, one weighted with field glasses,
the other with a pouch. From the latter she drew her credentials and
would have risen to present them, but the colonel of the Fourth Missouri
detained her with a gesture, himself rose, and took the papers from her
hand.
While he sat reading, she, hands clasped in her lap, gazed at his
well-remembered uniform, busy with her memories once more, and the
sweetness of them--and the pain.
They were three years old, these memories, now glimmering alive again
amid the whitening ashes of the past; only three years--and centuries
seemed to dim the landmarks and bar the backward path that she was
following to her girlhood!
She thought of the white-pillared house as it stood at the beginning of
the war; the severing of old ties, the averted faces of old friends and
neighbors; the mortal apprehension, endless suspense; the insurgent
flags fluttering from porch and portico along the still, tree-shaded
street; her own heart-breaking isolation in the community when Sumter
fell--she an orphan, alone there with her brother and bedridden
grandfather.
And she remembered the agony that followed the news from Bull Run, the
stupor that fell upon her; the awful heat of that battle summer; her
evening prayers, kneeling there beside her brother; the red moons that
rose, enormous, menacing, behind the trees; and the widow bird calling,
calling to the dead that never answer more.
Her dead? Why _hers_? A chance regiment passing--cavalry wearing the
uniform and number of the Fourth Missouri. Ah! she could see them again,
sun-scorched, dusty, fours crowding on fours, trampling past. She could
see a young girl in white, fastening the long-hidden flag to its
halyards as the evening light faded on the treetops!... And then--and
then--_he_ came--into her life, into her house, into her heart,
alas!--tall, lean, calm-eyed, yellow-haired, wrapped in the folds of his
long, blue mantle!... And she saw him again--a few moments before his
regiment charged into that growling thunder beyond the hills somewhere.
And a third time, and the last, she saw him, deathly still, lying on her
own bed, and a medical officer pulling the sheet up over his bony face.
* * * * *
The colonel of the Fourth Missouri was looking curiously at her; she
started, cleared the dimness from her eyes, and steadied the trembling
underlip.
After a moment's silence the colonel said: "You undertake this duty
willingly?"
She nodded, quietly touching her eyes with her handkerchief.
"There is scarcely a chance for you," he observed with affected
carelessness.
She lifted her shoulders in weary disdain of that persistent shadow
called danger, which had long since become too familiar to count very
heavily.
"I am not afraid--if that is what you mean. Do you think you can get me
through?"
The colonel said coolly: "I expect to do my part. Have you a rebel
uniform?"
She nodded.
"Where is it?"
"On me--under this."
The colonel looked at her; a slight shudder passed over him.
"These orders suggest that I start before sunset," he said. "Meanwhile
this tent is yours. My orderly will serve you. The regiment will move
out about sunset with some six hundred sabres and Gray's Rhode Island
flying battery."
He walked to the tent door; she followed.
"Is that your horse?" he asked.
"Yes, Colonel."
"Fit for the work?" turning to look at her.
"Yes, sir."
"And _you_?"
She smiled; through the open tent a misty bar of sunshine fell across
her face, turning the smooth skin golden. Outside a dismounted trooper
on guard presented his carbine as the tall, young colonel strode out. An
orderly joined him; they stood a moment consulting in whispers, then the
orderly ran for his saddled horse, mounted, and rode off through the
lanes of the cavalry camp.
From the tent door the Special Messenger looked out into the camp. Under
the base of a grassy hill hundreds of horses were being watered at a
brook now discolored by the recent rains; beyond, on a second knoll, the
guns of a flying battery stood parked. She could see the red trimmings
on the gunners' jackets as they were lounging about in the grass.
The view from the tent door was extensive; a division, at least, lay
encamped within range of the eye; two roads across the hills were full
of wagons moving south and east; along another road, stretching far into
the valley, masses of cavalry were riding--apparently an entire
brigade--but too far away for her to hear the trample of the horses.
From where she stood, however, she could make out the course of a fourth
road by the noise of an endless, moving column of horses. At times,
above the hillside, she could see their heads, and the enormous
canvas-covered muzzles of siege guns; and the racket of hoofs, the
powerful crunching and grinding of wheels, the cries of teamsters united
in a dull, steady uproar that never ceased.
From their camp, troopers of the Fourth Missouri were idly watching the
artillery passing--hundreds of sunburned cavalrymen seated along the
hillside, feet dangling, exchanging gibes and jests with the drivers of
the siege train below. But from where she stood she could see nothing
except horses' heads tossing, blue caps of mounted men, a crimson guidon
flapping, or the sun glittering on the slender, curved blade of some
officer's sabre as he signaled.
North, east, west, south--the whole land seemed to be covered with
moving men and beasts and wagons; flags fluttered on every eminence;
tents covered plowed fields, pastures, meadows; smoke hung over all,
crowning the green woods with haze, veiling hollows, rolling along the
railway in endless, yellow billows.
The rain had washed the sky clean, but again this vast, advancing host
was soiling heaven and blighting earth as it passed over the land
toward that beleaguered city in the South.
War! Everywhere the monotony of this awful panorama, covering her
country day after day, month after month, year after year--war, always
and everywhere and in every stage--hordes of horses, hordes of men,
endless columns of deadly engines! Everywhere, always, death, or the
preparation for death--every road and footpath crammed with it, every
field trampled by it, every woodland shattered by it, every stream
running thick with its pollution. The sour smell of marching men, the
stale taint of unclean fires, the stench of beasts--the acrid,
indescribable odor that hangs on the sweating flanks of armies seemed to
infect sky and earth.
A trooper, munching an apple and carrying a truss of hay, passed, cap
cocked rakishly, sabre banging at his heels; and she called to him and
he came up, easily respectful under the grin of bodily well being.
"How long have you served in this regiment?" she asked.
He swallowed the bite of apple which crowded out his freckled cheeks:
"Three years, sir."
[Illustration: "'We was there--I know that, yes, an' we had a fight.'"]
She drew involuntarily nearer the tent door.
"Then--you were at Sandy River--three years ago?"
"Yes, sir."
"Do you remember the battle there?"
The soldier looked doubtful. "We was there--I know that; yes, an' we had
a fight----"
"Yes--near a big white house."
The soldier nodded. "I guess so; I don't seem to place no big white
house----"
She asked calmly: "Your regiment had a mounted band once?"
He brightened.
"Yes, sir-ee! They played us in at Sandy River--and they got into it,
too, and was cut all to pieces!"
She motioned assent wearily; then, with an effort: "You don't know,
perhaps, where he--where their bandmaster was buried?"
"Sir?"
"The bandmaster of the Fourth Missouri? You remember him--that tall,
thin young officer who led them with his sabre--who sat his horse like a
colonel of regulars--and wore a cap of fur like--like a hussar of some
militia State guard----"
"Well, you must mean Captain Stanley, who was at that time bandmaster of
our regiment. He went in that day at Sandy River when our mounted band
was cut to pieces. Orders was to play us in, an' he done it."
There was a silence.
"Where is he--buried?" she asked calmly.
"Buried? Why, _he_ ain't dead, is he?"
"He died at Sandy River--that day," she said gently. "Don't you
remember?"
"No, sir; our bandmaster wasn't killed at Sandy River."
She looked at him amazed, almost frightened.
"What do you mean? He is dead. I--saw him die."
"It must have been some other bandmaster--not Captain Stanley."
"I saw the bandmaster of your regiment, the Fourth Missouri Cavalry,
brought into that big white house and laid on my--on a bed----" She
stared at the boy, caught him by the sleeve: "He is dead, isn't he? Do
you know what you are telling me? Do you understand what I am saying?"
"Yes, sir. Captain Stanley was our bandmaster--he wasn't captain then,
of course. He played us in at Sandy River--by God! I oughter know,
because I got some cut up m'self."
"You--you tell me that he wasn't killed?" she repeated, steadying
herself against the canvas flap.
"No, sir. I heard tell he was badly hurt--seems like I kinder
remember--oh, yes!" The man's face lighted up. "Yes, sir; Captain
Stanley, he had a close shave! It sorter comes back to me now, how the
burial detail fetched him back saying they wasn't going to bury no man
that twitched when they shut his coffin. Yes, sir--but it's three years
and a man forgets, and I've seen--things--lots of such things in three
years with Baring's dragoons. Yes, sir."
She closed her eyes; a dizziness swept over her and she swayed where she
stood.
"Is he here?"
"Who? Captain Stanley? Yes, sir. Why, he's captain of the Black Horse
troop--F, third squadron.... They're down that lane near the trees.
Shall I take you there?"
She shook her head, holding tightly to the canvas flap; and the trooper,
saluting easily, resumed his truss of hay, hitched his belt, cocked his
forage cap, and went off whistling.
All that sunny afternoon she lay on the colonel's camp bed, hands
tightly clenched on her breast, eyes closed sometimes, sometimes wide
open, gazing at the sun spots crawling on the tent wall.
To her ears came bugle calls from distant hills; drums of marching
columns. Sounds of the stirring of thousands made tremulous the dim
silence of the tent.
Dreams long dead arose and possessed her--the confused dreams of a
woman, still young, awakened from the passionless lethargy of the past.
Vaguely she felt around her the presence of an earth new born, of a new
heaven created. She realized her own awakening; she strove to comprehend
_his_ resurrection, and it frightened her; she could not understand that
what was dead through all these years was now alive, that the ideal she
had clung to, evoking it until it had become part of her, was real--an
actual and splendid living power. In this vivid resurgence she seemed to
lose her precise recollections of him now that he was alive.
While she had believed him dead, everything concerning his memory had
been painfully real--his personal appearance, the way he moved, turned,
the sound of his voice, the touch of his hand as it tightened in hers
when he lay there at sunset, while she and Death watched the color
fading from his face.
But now--now that he was living--here in this same world with her
again--strive as she would she could neither fix either his features nor
the sound of his voice upon her memory. Only the stupefying wonder of it
possessed her, dulling her senses so that even the happiness of it
seemed unreal.
* * * * *
How would they meet?--they two, who had never met but thrice? How would
they seem, each to the other, when first their eyes encountered?
In all their lives they had exchanged so little speech! Yet from the
first--from the first moment, when she had raised her gaze to him as he
entered in his long, blue cloak, her silence had held a deeper meaning
than her speech. And on that blessed night instinct broke the silence;
yet, with every formal word exchanged, consciousness of the occult bond
between them grew.
But it was not until she thought him dead that she understood that it
had been love--love unheralded, unexpected, incredible--love at the
first confronting, the first encountering glance. And to the memory of
that mystery she had been faithful from the night on which she believed
he died.
How had it been with him throughout these years? _How had it been with
him?_
The silvery trumpets of the cavalry were still sounding as she mounted
her horse before the colonel's tent and rode out into the splendour of
the setting sun.
On every side cavalrymen were setting toe to stirrup; troop after troop,
forming by fours, trotted out to the crest of the hill where the Western
light lay red across the furrowed grass.
A blaze of brilliant color filled the road where an incoming Zouave
regiment had halted, unslinging knapsacks, preparing to encamp, and the
setting sun played over them in waves of fire, striking fiercely across
their crimson fezzes and trousers.
Through their gorgeous lines the cavalry rode, colonel and staff
leading; and with them rode the Special Messenger, knee to knee with the
chief trumpeter, who made his horse dance when he passed the gorgeous
Zouave color guard, to show off the gridiron of yellow slashings across
his corded and tasseled breast.
And now another infantry regiment blocked the way--a heavy, blue column
tramping in with its field music playing and both flags flying in the
sunset radiance--the Stars and Stripes, with the number of the regiment
printed in gold across crimson; and the State flag--white, an Indian and
an uplifted sword on the snowy field: Massachusetts infantry.
On they came, fifes skirling, drums crashing; the colonel of the Fourth
Missouri gave them right of way, saluting their colors; the Special
Messenger backed her horse and turned down along the column.