Yet all along the fateful ridge--now obscured and confused with
thin crossing smoke-drifts from file-firing, like partly rubbed-out
slate-pencil marks; or else, when cleared of those drifts, presenting
only an indistinguishable map of zigzag lines of straggling wagons and
horses, unintelligible to any eye but his--the singular magnetism of the
chief was felt everywhere: whether it was shown in the quick closing
in of resistance to some sharper onset of the enemy or the more dogged
stand of inaction under fire, his power was always dominant. A word
or two of comprehensive direction sent through an aide-de-camp, or the
sudden relief of his dark, watchful, composed face uplifted above a
line of bayonets, never failed in their magic. Like all born leaders,
he seemed in these emergencies to hold a charmed life--infecting his
followers with a like disbelief in death; men dropped to right and left
of him with serene assurance in their ghastly faces or a cry of life and
confidence in their last gasp. Stragglers fell in and closed up
under his passing glance; a hopeless, inextricable wrangle around an
overturned caisson, at a turn of the road, resolved itself into an
orderly, quiet, deliberate clearing away of the impediment before the
significant waiting of that dark, silent horseman.
Yet under this imperturbable mask he was keenly conscious of everything;
in that apparent concentration there was a sharpening of all his senses
and his impressibility: he saw the first trace of doubt or alarm in the
face of a subaltern to whom he was giving an order; the first touch of
sluggishness in a re-forming line; the more significant clumsiness of
a living evolution that he knew was clogged by the dead bodies of
comrades; the ominous silence of a breastwork; the awful inertia of some
rigidly kneeling files beyond, which still kept their form but never
would move again; the melting away of skirmish points; the sudden gaps
here and there; the sickening incurving of what a moment before had been
a straight line--all these he saw in all their fatal significance. But
even at this moment, coming upon a hasty barricade of overset commissary
wagons, he stopped to glance at a familiar figure he had seen but
an hour ago, who now seemed to be commanding a group of collected
stragglers and camp followers. Mounted on a wheel, with a revolver in
each hand and a bowie knife between his teeth--theatrical even in his
paroxysm of undoubted courage--glared Jim Hooker. And Clarence Brant,
with the whole responsibility of the field on his shoulders, even at
that desperate moment, found himself recalling a vivid picture of the
actor Hooker personating the character of “Red Dick” in “Rosalie, the
Prairie Flower,” as he had seen him in a California theatre five years
before.
It wanted still an hour of the darkness that would probably close the
fight of that day. Could he hold out, keeping his offensive position so
long? A hasty council with his officers showed him that the weakness
of their position had already infected them. They reminded him that
his line of retreat was still open--that in the course of the night the
enemy, although still pressing towards the division centre, might yet
turn and outflank him--or that their strangely delayed supports might
come up before morning. Brant's glass, however, remained fixed on the
main column, still pursuing its way along the ridge. It struck him
suddenly, however, that the steady current had stopped, spread out along
the crest on both sides, and was now at right angles with its previous
course. There had been a check! The next moment the thunder of guns
along the whole horizon, and the rising cloud of smoke, revealed a
line of battle. The division centre was engaged. The opportunity he had
longed for had come--the desperate chance to throw himself on their rear
and cut his way through to the division--but it had come too late! He
looked at his shattered ranks--scarce a regiment remained. Even as
a demonstration, the attack would fail against the enemy's superior
numbers. Nothing clearly was left to him now but to remain where he
was--within supporting distance, and await the issue of the fight
beyond. He was putting up his glass, when the dull boom of cannon in
the extreme western limit of the horizon attracted his attention. By the
still gleaming sky he could see a long gray line stealing up from
the valley from the distant rear of the headquarters to join the main
column. They were the missing supports! His heart leaped. He held the
key of the mystery now. The one imperfect detail of the enemy's plan was
before him. The supports, coming later from the west, had only seen
the second signal from the window--when Miss Faulkner had replaced
the vase--and had avoided his position. It was impossible to limit the
effect of this blunder. If the young girl who had thus saved him had
reached the division commander with his message in time, he might
be forewarned, and even profit by it. His own position would be less
precarious, as the enemy, already engaged in front, would be unable to
recover their position in the rear and correct the blunder. The bulk
of their column had already streamed past him. If defeated, there
was always the danger that it might be rolled back upon him--but he
conjectured that the division commander would attempt to prevent the
junction of the supports with the main column by breaking between them,
crowding them from the ridge, and joining him. As the last stragglers
of the rear guard swept by, Brant's bugles were already recalling the
skirmishers. He redoubled his pickets, and resolved to wait and watch.
And there was the more painful duty of looking after the wounded and the
dead. The larger rooms of the headquarters had already been used as a
hospital. Passing from cot to cot, recognizing in the faces now drawn
with agony, or staring in vacant unconsciousness, the features that he
had seen only a few hours before flushed with enthusiasm and excitement,
something of his old doubting, questioning nature returned. Was there
no way but this? How far was HE--moving among them unscathed and
uninjured--responsible?
And if not he--who then? His mind went back bitterly to the old days of
the conspiracy--to the inception of that struggle which was bearing
such ghastly fruit. He thought of his traitorous wife, until he felt
his cheeks tingle, and he was fain to avert his eyes from those of his
prostrate comrades, in a strange fear that, with the clairvoyance of
dying men, they should read his secret.
It was past midnight when, without undressing, he threw himself upon his
bed in the little convent-like cell to snatch a few moments of sleep.
Its spotless, peaceful walls and draperies affected him strangely, as if
he had brought into its immaculate serenity the sanguine stain of war.
He was awakened suddenly from a deep slumber by an indefinite sense
of alarm. His first thought was that he had been summoned to repel
an attack. He sat up and listened; everything was silent except the
measured tread of the sentry on the gravel walk below. But the door was
open. He sprang to his feet and slipped into the gallery in time to see
the tall figure of a woman glide before the last moonlit window at its
farthest end. He could not see her face--but the characteristic turbaned
head of the negro race was plainly visible.
He did not care to follow her or even to alarm the guard. If it were the
spy or one of her emissaries, she was powerless now to do any harm, and
under his late orders and the rigorous vigilance of his sentinels she
could not leave the lines--or, indeed, the house. She probably knew
this as well as he did; it was, therefore, no doubt only an accidental
intrusion of one of the servants. He re-entered the room, and stood for
a few moments by the window, looking over the moonlit ridge. The sounds
of distant cannon had long since ceased. Wide awake, and refreshed by
the keen morning air, which alone of all created things seemed to have
shaken the burden of the dreadful yesterday from its dewy wings, he
turned away and lit a candle on the table. As he was rebuckling his
sword belt he saw a piece of paper lying on the foot of the bed from
which he had just risen. Taking it to the candle, he read in a roughly
scrawled hand:
“You are asleep when you should be on the march. You have no time to
lose. Before daybreak the supports of the column you have been foolishly
resisting will be upon you.--From one who would save YOU, but hates your
cause.”
A smile of scorn passed his lips. The handwriting was unknown and
evidently disguised. The purport of the message had not alarmed him; but
suddenly a suspicion flashed upon him--that it came from Miss Faulkner!
She had failed in her attempt to pass through the enemy's lines--or she
had never tried to. She had deceived him--or had thought better of her
chivalrous impulse, and now sought to mitigate her second treachery by
this second warning. And he had let her messenger escape him!
He hurriedly descended the stairs. The sound of voices was approaching
him. He halted, and recognized the faces of the brigade surgeon and one
of his aides-de-camp.
“We were hesitating whether to disturb you, general, but it may be an
affair of some importance. Under your orders a negro woman was just
now challenged stealing out of the lines. Attempting to escape, she was
chased, there was a struggle and scramble over the wall, and she fell,
striking her head. She was brought into the guardhouse unconscious.”
“Very good. I will see her,” said Brant, with a feeling of relief.
“One moment, general. We thought you would perhaps prefer to see her
alone,” said the surgeon, “for when I endeavored to bring her to, and
was sponging her face and head to discover her injuries, her color came
off! She was a white woman--stained and disguised as a mulatto.”
For an instant Brant's heart sank. It was Miss Faulkner.
“Did you recognize her?” he said, glancing from the one to the other.
“Have you seen her here before?”
“No, sir,” replied the aide-de-camp. “But she seemed to be quite a
superior woman--a lady, I should say.”
Brant breathed more freely.
“Where is she now?” he asked.
“In the guardhouse. We thought it better not to bring her into hospital,
among the men, until we had your orders.”
“You have done well,” returned Brant gravely. “And you will keep this to
yourselves for the present; but see that she is brought here quietly and
with as little publicity as possible. Put her in my room above, which I
give up to her and any necessary attendant. But you will look carefully
after her, doctor,”--he turned to the surgeon,--“and when she recovers
consciousness let me know.”
He moved away. Although attaching little importance to the mysterious
message, whether sent by Miss Faulkner or emanating from the stranger
herself, which, he reasoned, was based only upon a knowledge of the
original plan of attack, he nevertheless quickly dispatched a small
scouting party in the direction from which the attack might come, with
orders to fall back and report at once. With a certain half irony of
recollection he had selected Jim Hooker to accompany the party as a
volunteer. This done, he returned to the gallery. The surgeon met him at
the door.
“The indications of concussion are passing away,” he said, “but she
seems to be suffering from the exhaustion following some great nervous
excitement. You may go in--she may rally from it at any moment.”
With the artificial step and mysterious hush of the ordinary visitor to
a sick bed, Brant entered the room. But some instinct greater than this
common expression of humanity held him suddenly in awe. The room seemed
no longer his--it had slipped back into that austere conventual privacy
which had first impressed him. Yet he hesitated; another strange
suggestion--it seemed almost a vague recollection--overcame him like
some lingering perfume, far off and pathetic, in its dying familiarity.
He turned his eyes almost timidly towards the bed. The coverlet was
drawn up near the throat of the figure to replace the striped cotton
gown stained with blood and dust, which had been hurriedly torn off
and thrown on a chair. The pale face, cleansed of blood and disguising
color, the long hair, still damp from the surgeon's sponge, lay rigidly
back on the pillow. Suddenly this man of steady nerve uttered a faint
cry, and, with a face as white as the upturned one before him, fell on
his knees beside the bed. For the face that lay there was his wife's!
Yes, hers! But the beautiful hair that she had gloried in--the hair that
in his youth he had thought had once fallen like a benediction on his
shoulder--was streaked with gray along the blue-veined hollows of the
temples; the orbits of those clear eyes, beneath their delicately arched
brows, were ringed with days of suffering; only the clear-cut profile,
even to the delicate imperiousness of lips and nostril, was still there
in all its beauty. The coverlet had slipped from her shoulder; its
familiar cold contour startled him. He remembered how, in their early
married days, he had felt the sanctity of that Diana-like revelation,
and the still nymph-like austerity which clung to this strange,
childless woman. He even fancied that he breathed again the subtle
characteristic perfume of the laces, embroideries, and delicate
enwrappings in her chamber at Robles. Perhaps it was the intensity of
his gaze--perhaps it was the magnetism of his presence--but her lips
parted with a half sigh, half moan. Her head, although her eyes were
still closed, turned on the pillow instinctively towards him. He rose
from his knees. Her eyes opened slowly. As the first glare of wonderment
cleared from them, they met him--in the old antagonism of spirit. Yet
her first gesture was a pathetic feminine movement with both hands to
arrange her straggling hair. It brought her white fingers, cleaned
of their disguising stains, as a sudden revelation to her of what had
happened; she instantly slipped them back under the coverlet again.
Brant did not speak, but with folded arms stood gazing upon her. And it
was her voice that first broke the silence.
“You have recognized me? Well, I suppose you know all,” she said, with a
weak half-defiance.
He bowed his head. He felt as yet he could not trust his voice, and
envied her her own.
“I may sit up, mayn't I?” She managed, by sheer force of will, to
struggle to a sitting posture. Then, as the coverlet slipped from the
bare shoulder, she said, as she drew it, with a shiver of disgust,
around her again,--
“I forgot that you strip women, you Northern soldiers! But I forgot,
too,” she added, with a sarcastic smile, “that you are also my husband,
and I am in your room.”
The contemptuous significance of her speech dispelled the last lingering
remnant of Brant's dream. In a voice as dry as her own, he said,--
“I am afraid you will now have to remember only that I am a Northern
general, and you a Southern spy.”
“So be it,” she said gravely. Then impulsively, “But I have not spied on
YOU.”
Yet, the next moment, she bit her lips as if the expression had
unwittingly escaped her; and with a reckless shrug of her shoulders she
lay back on her pillow.
“It matters not,” said Brant coldly. “You have used this house and those
within it to forward your designs. It is not your fault that you found
nothing in the dispatch-box you opened.”
She stared at him quickly; then shrugged her shoulders again.
“I might have known she was false to me,” she said bitterly, “and that
you would wheedle her soul away as you have others. Well, she betrayed
me! For what?”
A flush passed over Brant's face. But with an effort he contained
himself.
“It was the flower that betrayed you! The flower whose red dust fell in
the box when you opened it on the desk by the window in yonder room--the
flower that stood in the window as a signal--the flower I myself
removed, and so spoiled the miserable plot that your friends concocted.”
A look of mingled terror and awe came into her face.
“YOU changed the signal!” she repeated dazedly; then, in a lower
voice, “that accounts for it all!” But the next moment she turned
again fiercely upon him. “And you mean to tell me that she didn't help
you--that she didn't sell me--your wife--to you for--for what was it? A
look--a kiss!”
“I mean to say that she did not know the signal was changed, and that
she herself restored it to its place. It is no fault of hers nor yours
that I am not here a prisoner.”
She passed her thin hand dazedly across her forehead.
“I see,” she muttered. Then again bursting out passionately, she
said--“Fool! you never would have been touched! Do you think that Lee
would have gone for you, with higher game in your division commander?
No! Those supports were a feint to draw him to your assistance while our
main column broke his centre. Yes, you may stare at me, Clarence Brant.
You are a good lawyer--they say a dashing fighter, too. I never thought
you a coward, even in your irresolution; but you are fighting with men
drilled in the art of war and strategy when you were a boy outcast on
the plains.” She stopped, closed her eyes, and then added, wearily--“But
that was yesterday--to-day, who knows? All may be changed. The supports
may still attack you. That was why I stopped to write you that note an
hour ago, when I believed I should be leaving here for ever. Yes, I did
it!” she went on, with half-wearied, half-dogged determination. “You may
as well know all. I had arranged to fly. Your pickets were to be drawn
by friends of mine, who were waiting for me beyond your lines. Well, I
lingered here when I saw you arrive--lingered to write you that note.
And--I was too late!”
But Brant had been watching her varying expression, her kindling
eye, her strange masculine grasp of military knowledge, her soldierly
phraseology, all so new to her, that he scarcely heeded the feminine
ending of her speech. It seemed to him no longer the Diana of his
youthful fancy, but some Pallas Athene, who now looked up at him from
the pillow. He had never before fully believed in her unselfish devotion
to the cause until now, when it seemed to have almost unsexed her. In
his wildest comprehension of her he had never dreamed her a Joan of Arc,
and yet hers was the face which might have confronted him, exalted and
inspired, on the battlefield itself. He recalled himself with an effort.
“I thank you for your would-be warning,” he said more gently, if not
so tenderly, “and God knows I wish your flight had been successful. But
even your warning is unnecessary, for the supports had already come up;
they had followed the second signal, and diverged to engage our division
on the left, leaving me alone. And their ruse of drawing our commander
to assist me would not have been successful, as I had suspected it, and
sent a message to him that I wanted no help.”
It was the truth; it was the sole purport of the note he had sent
through Miss Faulkner. He would not have disclosed his sacrifice; but so
great was the strange domination of this woman still over him, that he
felt compelled to assert his superiority. She fixed her eyes upon him.
“And Miss Faulkner took your message?” she said slowly. “Don't deny it!
No one else could have passed through our lines; and you gave her a
safe conduct through yours. Yes, I might have known it. And this was the
creature they sent me for an ally and confidant!”
For an instant Brant felt the sting of this enforced contrast between
the two women. But he only said,--
“You forget that I did not know you were the spy, nor do I believe that
she suspected you were my wife.”
“Why should she?” she said almost fiercely. “I am known among these
people only by the name of Benham---my maiden name. Yes!--you can take
me out, and shoot me under that name, without disgracing yours. Nobody
will know that the Southern spy was the wife of the Northern general!
You see, I have thought even of that!”
“And thinking of that,” said Brant slowly, “you have put yourself--I
will not say in my power, for you are in the power of any man in this
camp who may know you, or even hear you speak. Well, let us understand
each other plainly. I do not know how great a sacrifice your devotion to
your cause demands of you; I do know what it seems to demand of me. Hear
me, then! I will do my best to protect you, and get you safely away from
here; but, failing that, I tell you plainly that I shall blow out your
brains and my own together.”
She knew that he would do it. Yet her eyes suddenly beamed with a
new and awakening light; she put back her hair again, and half raised
herself upon the pillow, to gaze at his dark, set face.
“And as I shall let no other life but ours be periled in this affair,”
he went on quietly, “and will accompany you myself in some disguise
beyond the lines, we will together take the risks--or the bullets of the
sentries that may save us both all further trouble. An hour or two more
will settle that. Until then your weak condition will excuse you from
any disturbance or intrusion here. The mulatto woman you have sometimes
personated may be still in this house; I will appoint her to attend
you. I suppose you can trust her, for you must personate her again, and
escape in her clothes, while she takes your place in this room as my
prisoner.”
“Clarence!”
Her voice had changed suddenly; it was no longer bitter and stridulous,
but low and thrilling as he had heard her call to him that night in the
patio of Robles. He turned quickly. She was leaning from the bed--her
thin, white hands stretched appealingly towards him.
“Let us go together, Clarence,” she said eagerly. “Let us leave this
horrible place--these wicked, cruel people--forever. Come with me! Come
with me to my people--to my own faith--to my own house--which shall be
yours! Come with me to defend it with your good sword, Clarence, against
those vile invaders with whom you have nothing in common, and who are
the dirt under your feet. Yes, yes! I know it!--I have done you wrong--I
have lied to you when I spoke against your skill and power. You are a
hero--a born leader of men! I know it! Have I not heard it from the men
who have fought against you, and yet admired and understood you, ay,
better than your own?--gallant men, Clarence, soldiers bred who did not
know what you were to me nor how proud I was of you even while I hated
you? Come with me! Think what we would do together--with one faith--one
cause--one ambition! Think, Clarence, there is no limit you might
not attain! We are no niggards of our rewards and honors--we have
no hireling votes to truckle to--we know our friends! Even
I--Clarence--I”--there was a strange pathos in the sudden humility that
seemed to overcome her--“I have had my reward and known my power. I
have been sent abroad, in the confidence of the highest--to the highest.
Don't turn from me. I am offering you no bribe, Clarence, only your
deserts. Come with me. Leave these curs behind, and live the hero that
you are!”
He turned his blazing eyes upon her.
“If you were a man”--he began passionately, then stopped.
“No! I am only a woman and must fight in a woman's way,” she interrupted
bitterly. “Yes! I intreat, I implore, I wheedle, I flatter, I fawn, I
lie! I creep where you stand upright, and pass through doors to which
you would not bow. You wear your blazon of honor on your shoulder;
I hide mine in a slave's gown. And yet I have worked and striven and
suffered! Listen, Clarence,” her voice again sank to its appealing
minor,--“I know what you men call 'honor,' that which makes you cling to
a merely spoken word, or an empty oath. Well, let that pass! I am weary;
I have done my share of this work, you have done yours. Let us both fly;
let us leave the fight to those who shall come after us, and let us
go together to some distant land where the sounds of these guns or the
blood of our brothers no longer cry out to us for vengeance! There are
those living here--I have met them, Clarence,” she went on hurriedly,
“who think it wrong to lift up fratricidal hands in the struggle, yet
who cannot live under the Northern yoke. They are,” her voice hesitated,
“good men and women--they are respected--they are”--
“Recreants and slaves, before whom you, spy as you are--stand a queen!”
broke in Brant, passionately. He stopped and turned towards the window.
After a pause he came back again towards the bed--paused again and then
said in a lower voice--“Four years ago, Alice, in the patio of our house
at Robles, I might have listened to this proposal, and--I tremble to
think--I might have accepted it! I loved you; I was as weak, as selfish,
as unreflecting, my life was as purposeless--but for you--as the
creatures you speak of. But give me now, at least, the credit of a
devotion to my cause equal to your own--a credit which I have never
denied you! For the night that you left me, I awoke to a sense of my own
worthlessness and degradation--perhaps I have even to thank you for that
awakening--and I realized the bitter truth. But that night I found my
true vocation--my purpose, my manhood”--
A bitter laugh came from the pillow on which she had languidly thrown
herself.
“I believe I left you with Mrs. Hooker--spare me the details.”
The blood rushed to Brant's face and then receded as suddenly.
“You left me with Captain Pinckney, who had tempted you, and whom I
killed!” he said furiously.
They were both staring savagely at each other. Suddenly he said, “Hush!”
and sprang towards the door, as the sound of hurried footsteps echoed
along the passage. But he was too late; it was thrown open to the
officer of the guard, who appeared, standing on the threshold.
“Two Confederate officers arrested hovering around our pickets. They
demand to see you.”
Before Brant could interpose, two men in riding cloaks of Confederate
gray stepped into the room with a jaunty and self-confident air.
“Not DEMAND, general,” said the foremost, a tall, distinguished-looking
man, lifting his hand with a graceful deprecating air. “In fact, too
sorry to bother you with an affair of no importance except to ourselves.
A bit of after-dinner bravado brought us in contact with your pickets,
and, of course, we had to take the consequences. Served us right, and we
were lucky not to have got a bullet through us. Gad! I'm afraid my
men would have been less discreet! I am Colonel Lagrange, of the
5th Tennessee; my young friend here is Captain Faulkner, of the 1st
Kentucky. Some excuse for a youngster like him--none for me! I”--
He stopped, for his eyes suddenly fell upon the bed and its occupant.
Both he and his companion started. But to the natural, unaffected dismay
of a gentleman who had unwittingly intruded upon a lady's bedchamber,
Brant's quick eye saw a more disastrous concern superadded. Colonel
Lagrange was quick to recover himself, as they both removed their caps.
“A thousand pardons,” he said, hurriedly stepping backwards to the door.
“But I hardly need say to a fellow-officer, general, that we had no idea
of making so gross an intrusion! We heard some cock-and-bull story of
your being occupied--cross-questioning an escaped or escaping nigger--or
we should never have forced ourselves upon you.”
Brant glanced quickly at his wife. Her face had apparently become rigid
on the entrance of the two men; her eyes were coldly fixed upon the
ceiling. He bowed formally, and, with a wave of his hand towards the
door, said,--
“I will hear your story below, gentleman.”
He followed them from the room, stopped to quietly turn the key in the
lock, and then motioned them to precede him down the staircase.