Complete weird tales of.., p.448
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 448
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.
CHAPTER 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.”
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 — —”
