Complete weird tales of.., p.1248
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 1248
Breathless, spellbound, she moved on tiptoe to the porch, one hand pressed trembling across her lips. The field of oats shimmered a moment before her eyes, then a blue mass swung into it and it melted away, sheered to the earth in glimmering swathes as gilded grain falls at the sickle’s sparkle. And the men in blue covered the earth, the world, her world, which stretched from the orchard to Benson’s Hill.
There was something on Benson’s Hill that she had never before seen. It looked like a brook in the sunshine; it was a column of infantry, rifles slanting in the sun.
Somebody had been speaking to her for a minute or two, somebody below her on the porch steps, and now she looked down and saw a boy, slim, sunburnt, wearing gauntlets and spurs. His dusty uniform glittered with gilt and yellow braid; he touched the vizor of his cap and fingered his sword hilt. She looked at him listlessly, her hand still pressed to her lips.
“Is there a well near the house?” he asked. After a moment he repeated the question.
Men with red crosses on their sleeves came across the grass, trailing poles and rolls of dirty canvas. She saw horses too, dusty and patient, tied to the front gate. A soldier, with a yellow ornament on his sleeve, stood at their heads, holding a red flag in one hand.
Something tugged gently at her apron, and, “show me the well, please,” repeated the boy beside her.
She turned mechanically into the house; he followed, caking the rag-carpet with his boots’ dry mud. In the woodshed she started and turned trembling to him but he gravely motioned her on, and she went, passing more swiftly under the trees of the orchard to the vine-covered well-curb.
He thanked her; she pointed at the dipper and rope; but already blue-clad, red-faced soldiers were lowering the bucket and the orchard hummed with the buzz of the wheel.
She went back to the porch, not through the house but around it. Across the little lawn lay crushed stalks and dying flowers; the potato patch was a slough of muddy green.
Soldiers passed in the sunshine. She began to remember that her brother, too, was a soldier, somewhere out in the world; he had been a soldier for nearly a week, ever since Jim Bemis had taken him to Willow Corners to enlist. She remembered she had cried and gone into the pantry to make bread and cry again. She remembered that first night, how she had been afraid to sleep in the house, how at dusk she had gone into the parlour to be near her mother. Her mother was dead, but her picture hung in the parlour.
Soldiers were passing, clutching their rifle butts with dirty hands, turning toward her countless sun-dazzled eyes. The shimmer of gun-barrels, the dancing light on turning bayonets, the flicker and sparkle on belt and button dazed and wearied her.
Somebody said, “We’re the boys for the purty girls! Have ye no eyes for us, lass?”
Another said, “Shut up, Mike, she’s not from the Bowery;” and, “G’wan ye dead rabbit!” retorted the first.
A flag passed, and on it she read “New York,” and another flag passed, dipped to her in grim salute, while the folds shook out a faded “Maine.” She began to watch the flags; she saw a regiment plunge into the trampled corn, but she knew it was not her brother’s because the trousers of the men were scarlet and the caps hung to the shoulders, tasselled and crimson.
“Maryland, Maryland, Maryland, 60th Maryland,” she repeated, but she did not know she spoke aloud until somebody said: “It’s yonder,” and a blue sleeve swept towards the west.
“Yonder,” she repeated, looking at the ridge, cool in the beechwoods’ shadow.
“Is it the 60th Maryland you want, Miss?” asked another.
“Silence,” said an officer, wheeling a sweating horse past the porch.
She shrank back, but turned her head toward the beechwoods. As she looked a belt of flame encircled the forest, once, twice, again and yet again, and through the outrushing smoke, the crash! crash! crash! of rifles echoed and re-echoed across the valley.
All around her thousands of men burst into cheers; a deeper harmony grew on the idle breeze — the solemn tolling of cannon. The flags, the bright flags spread rainbow wings to the rising breeze; they were breasting the hills everywhere. The din of the rifles, the shouting, the sudden swift human wave, sweeping by on every side, thrilled her little heart until it beat out the long roll with the rolling drums.
In the orchard the rattle of the bucket, the creak and whirr of the well-wheel, never ceased. A very young officer sat on his horse, eating an unripe apple and watching the men around the well. The horse stretched a glossy neck toward the currant bushes, mumbling twigs and sun-curled leaves. A hen wandered near, peering fearlessly at the soldiers.
The girl went into the kitchen, reached up for her sun-bonnet, dangling on a peg, tied it under her chin, and walked gravely into the orchard. The men about the well looked up as she passed. They admired respectfully. So did the very young officer, pausing, apple half-eaten; so perhaps did the horse, turning his large, gentle eyes as she came up.
The officer wheeled in his saddle and leaned toward her deferentially, anticipating perhaps complaint or insult.
In Maryland “Dixie” was sung as often as “The Red, White, and Blue.”
Before she spoke she saw that it was the same officer who had asked her about the well; she had not noticed he was so young.
“I am sorry,” he said, — and, as he spoke, he removed his cap—” I am very sorry that we have trampled your garden. If you are loyal, the Government will indemnify you—”
The sudden crash of a cannon somewhere among the trees drowned his voice. Stunned, she saw him, undisturbed, gather his bridle with a deprecatory gesture. His voice came back to her through the ringing in her ears: “We do not mean to be careless, but we could not turn aside, and your farm is in the line of advance.”
Her ears still rang, and she spoke, scarcely hearing her own voice: “It is not that — I am loyal — it is only I wish to ask you where my brother’s regiment — where the 60th Maryland is.”
“The 60th Maryland — oh — why it’s in King’s Brigade, Wolcott’s Division; I think it’s yonder.” He pointed toward the beechwoods.
“Yonder? Where they are firing?”
Again the cannon thundered and the ground shook under her. She saw him nod, smiling faintly. Other mounted officers rode up; some looked at her curiously, others glanced carelessly; the attitudes of all were respectful. She heard them arguing about the water in the well and the length of the road to Willow Corners. They spoke of a turning movement, of driving somebody to Whitehall Station. The musketry on the hill had ceased; the cannon, too, were silent. Across the trampled corn a regiment moved listlessly to the tap, tap of a drum. On the road that circled Benson’s Hill, mounted soldiers were riding fast in the dust; several little flags bobbed among them; metal on shoulder and stirrup flashed through the dust, burnished by the mid-day sun.
She heard an officer say that there would be no fighting, and she wondered, because the musketry began again, little spattering shots among the beeches on the ridge, and behind the house drums rolled and a sudden flurry of bugle music filled the air. Other officers rode up, some escorted by troopers who bounced in their saddles and grasped long-staffed flags, the butts resting in their stirrups.
She reached up and bent down an apple bough, studded with clustered green fruit. Through the leaves she looked at the officers.
The sunshine fell in brilliant spots, dappling flag and cap and the broad backs of horses; there was a jingle of spurs everywhere. The hum of voices and the movement were grateful to her, for her loneliness was not of her own seeking. In the pleasant summer air the distant gunshots grew softer and softer; the twitter of a robin came from the ash-tree by the gate.
Out on the road by Benson’s Hill, the cavalry were still passing, the little flags sped along, rising and falling with the column, and the short clear note of a trumpet echoed the robin’s call.
But around the house the last of the troops had passed; she could see them, not yet far away, moving up among the fields toward the ridges where the sun burned on the bronzing scrub-oak thickets. The officers, too, were leaving the orchard, spurring on, singly or in groups, after the disappearing columns. From the main road came a loud thudding and pounding and clanking; a battery of artillery, the long guns slanted, the drivers swinging their thongs — passed at a trot. After it rode soldiers in blue and yellow, then waggons passed, ponderous grey wains covered with canvas, and on either side clattered more mounted troopers, their drawn sabres glittering through the heated haze.
She stood a moment, holding the apple bough, watching the yellow dust hanging motionless in the rear of the disappearing column. When the last wain had creaked out of sight and the last trooper had loped after it, she turned and looked at the silent garden, trodden, withered, desolate. She drew a long breath, the apple bough flew back, the little green apples dancing. A bee buzzed over a trampled geranium, a robin ran through the longer grass and stopped short, head raised. Beyond Benson’s Hill a bugle blew faintly; distant rifle shots sounded along the ridge; then silence crept through the sunlit meadows, across the levelled corn, across dead stalks and stems, a silence that spread like a shadow, nearer, nearer, over the lawn, through the orchard to the house, and then from corner to corner, dulling the ticking of the clock, stifling the wasp on the window, driving her before it from room to room.
On the musty hair-cloth sofa in the parlour she lay, flung face down, hands pressed to her ears. But silence entered with her, stifling the sob in her throat.
When she raised her head it was dusk. She heard the murmur of wind in the trees and the chirr of crickets from the fields. She sat up, peering fearfully into the darkness, and she heard the clock ticking in the kitchen and rustle of vines on the porch. After a moment she rose, treading softly, and felt along the wall until her hands rested on her mother’s picture. Then, no longer afraid, she slipped silently across the room, and through the hallway to the pantry.
It was nearly moonrise before she had cooked supper; when she sat down alone at the long table, the moon, yellow, enormous, stared at her through the window.
She sipped her tea, turned the lamp-wick a trifle lower, and ate slowly. The little grey dusk moths came humming in the open window and circled around her. The porch dripped with dew; there was a scent of night in the air.
When she had sat silent a little while dreaming over the sins of a blameless life, there came to her, peace, so sudden so perfect, that she could not understand. How should she know peace? What thought of the past might bring comfort? She could just remember her mother, — that was all. She loved her picture in the parlour. As for her father, he had died as he had lived, a snarling drunkard. And her brother? A lank, blue-eyed boy, dissipated, unwholesome, already cursed with his father’s sin — what comfort could he be to her? He had gone away to enlist; he was drunk when he did it.
She thought of all these things, her finger tips resting on the edge of the table. She thought too — of the soldiers passing, of the rippling crash of rifles, the drums, the cheering, the sunlight flecking the backs of the horses in the orchard.
There was a creak at the gate, a click of a latch, and the fall of a foot on the moonlit porch. She half rose; she was not frightened. How she knew who it was, God alone knows, but she looked up, timidly, understanding who was coming, knowing who would knock, who would enter, who would speak. And yet she had never seen him but once in her life.
All this she knew, — this child made wise in the space of time marked by the tick of the kitchen clock; but she did not know that the memory of his smile had given her the peace she could not understand, she did not know this until he entered, dusty, slim, sunburnt, his yellow gauntlets folded in his belt, his cap and sabre in his hand. Then she knew it. When she understood this she stood up, pale, uncertain. He bowed silently and stepped forward, fumbling with his sabre hilt. She motioned toward a chair.
He said he had a message for the master of the house, and glanced about vaguely, noting the single place at table and the single plate. She said he might give the message to her.
“It is only that — if I do not inconvenience you too much—” he smiled faintly,—” if you would allow me, — well, the truth is I am billeted here for the night.”
She did not know what that meant and he explained.
“The master of the house is absent,” she said, thinking of her brother.
“Will he return to-night?” he asked.
She shook her head; she was thinking that she did not want him to go away. Suddenly the thought of being alone laid hold of her with fresh horror.
“You may stay,” she said faintly. He bowed again. She asked him if he cared for supper, with a gesture toward the table, and when he thanked her she took courage and told him where to hang his cap and sabre.
There was a small room between the parlour and the dining-room. She offered it to him, and he accepted gratefully. While she was in the kitchen, toasting more bread, she heard him go to the front door and call. There came a clatter of hoofs, a quick word or two, and, as she re-entered the dining-room, he met her. “My orderly,” he explained,—” he may sleep in the stable, may he not?”
“My own bed-room is all I have here,” she said.
“Not — not the one you gave me!” he asked.
She nodded. “You may have it, — I often sleep in the parlour, — I did when my brother was home.”
“If I had had any idea—” he burst out. She stopped him with a gesture; but he insisted and at last he had his own way. “If I may sleep in the parlour, I will stay,” he said, and she nodded and seated herself at the table.
He ate a great deal; she wondered a little, but nodded again at his excuses, and insisted that he must have more tea. She watched him; the lamplight fell softly on his boyish head, on his faint moustache, and bronzed hands. He ate much bread and butter and many eggs; he spoke about his orderly and the horses, and presently asked for a lantern. She brought him one; he lighted it.
When he had gone away with his lantern, she rested her white face in her hands and looked at his empty chair. She thought of her brother, she thought of the village people who leered askance when she was obliged to go to the store at Willow Corners. The mention of her father’s name, of her brother’s name in the village aroused sneers or laughter. As long as she could remember the one great longing of her life had been to be respected. She had seen her father fall at night in the village street, drunk as a hog; she had seen her brother reel across the fields at noonday. She knew that all the world knew — her world — that she was merely one of a drunkard’s family. She never spoke to a neighbour, nor did she answer when spoken to. She carried her curse, — and her longing, — supposing that she was a thing apart. In the orchard at midday a man, a young boy, a soldier, had spoken to her and looked at her in a way she had never known. All at once she realised, dreaming there in the lamplight, that she was a woman to him, like other women; a woman to be spoken to with deference, a woman to be approached with courtesy. She had read it in his eyes, she had heard it in his voice. It was this that brought to her a peace as gracious, as sweet, as the eyes that had met her own in the orchard.
He was coming back from the stable now, — she heard his spurs click across the grass by the orchard. And now he had entered, now he was there, sitting opposite, smiling vaguely across the table. A rush of tears blinded her and she looked out into the night where the yellow moon stared and stared.
She found herself in the parlour after a while, silent, listening to his voice; and all about her was peace, born of the peace within her breast.
He told her of the war. She had never before cared, but now she cared. He spoke of long marches, of hunger and of thirst, with a boyish laugh, and she laughed too, not knowing how else to show her pity. He spoke of the Land, and now, for the first time, she loved it; she knew it was also her Land. He spoke of the flag and what it meant. In her home she had no symbol of her country, and she told him so. He drew a penknife from his pocket, cut a button from his collar, and handed it to her. On the button was an eagle and stars, and she pinned it over her heart, looking at him with innocent eyes.
She told him of her mother, — she could not tell much but she told him all she remembered. Then, involuntarily, she told him more, — about her life, her hopes long dead, her brother bearing his father’s name and curse. She had not meant to do this at first; but as she spoke she had a dim idea that he ought to know who it was that he treated with gentleness and deference. She knew it would not change anything in him, that he would be the same. Perhaps it was a vague hope that he might advise her, — perhaps be sorry, she could not analyse it, but she felt the necessity of speaking.
There is a time for all things except confession. But, to the lonely soul, long stifled, time is chosen for confession when God sends the opportunity.
She spoke of honour as she understood it; she spoke of dishonour as she had known it.
When she was silent, he began to speak, and she listened breathlessly. Ah, but she was right! The God of Battles had sent to her a messenger of peace. Out of the smoke and flame he had come to find her and pity her. Through him she knew she was worthy of respect, through him she learned her womanhood, from his lips she heard the truths of youth, which are truer than the truths of age.
He sat there in the lamplight, his gilt straps gleaming, his glittering spurs ringing true with every movement, his bronzed young face bent to hers. She knew he knew everything that man could know; she drank in what he said, humbly. When he ceased speaking, she still looked into his eyes. Their brilliancy dazzled her; the lamp spun a halo behind his head. Wondering at his knowledge, she wondered what those things might be that he knew and had not told. He was smiling now. She felt the power and mystery of his eyes.
