The column swung in a saber-curve toward a break in a fence, and dashed into a roadway. Once a little plank bridge was encountered, and the sound of the hoofs upon it was like the long roll of many drums. An old captain in the infantry turned to his first lieutenant and made a remark which was a compound of bitter disparagement of cavalry in general and soldierly admiration of this particular troop.
Suddenly the bugle sounded, and the column halted with a jolting upheaval amid sharp, brief cries. A moment later the men had tumbled from their horses and, carbines in hand, were running in a swarm toward the grove of maples. In the road one of every four of the troopers was standing with braced legs, and pulling and hauling at the bridles of four frenzied horses.
The captain was running awkwardly in his boots. He held his saber low, so that the point often threatened to catch in the turf. His yellow hair ruffled out from under his faded cap. “Go in hard now!” he roared, in a voice of hoarse fury. His face was violently red.
The troopers threw themselves upon the grove like wolves upon a great animal. Along the whole front of woods there was the dry crackling of musketry, with bitter, swift flashes and smoke that writhed like stung phantoms. The troopers yelled shrilly and spanged bullets low into the foliage.
For a moment, when near the woods, the line almost halted. The men struggled and fought for a time like swimmers encountering a powerful current. Then with a supreme effort they went on again. They dashed madly at the grove, whose foliage, from the high light of the field, was as inscrutable as a wall.
Then suddenly each detail of the calm trees became apparent, and with a few more frantic leaps the men were in the cool gloom of the woods. There was a heavy odor as from burned paper. Wisps of gray smoke wound upward. The men halted; and, grimy, perspiring, and puffing, they searched the recesses of the woods with eager, fierce glances. Figures could be seen flitting afar off. A dozen carbines rattled at them in an angry volley.
During this pause the captain strode along the line, his face lit with a broad smile of contentment. “When he sends this crowd to do anything, I guess he’ll find we do it pretty sharp,” he said to the grinning lieutenant.
“Say, they didn’t stand that rush a minute, did they?” said the subaltern. Both officers were profoundly dusty in their uniforms, and their faces were soiled like those of two urchins.
Out in the grass behind them were three tumbled and silent forms.
Presently the line moved forward again. The men went from tree to tree like hunters stalking game. Some at the left of the line fired occasionally, and those at the right gazed curiously in that direction. The men still breathed heavily from their scramble across the field.
Of a sudden a trooper halted and said: “Hello! there’s a house!” Every one paused. The men turned to look at their leader.
The captain stretched his neck and swung his head from side to side. “By George, it is a house!” he said.
Through the wealth of leaves there vaguely loomed the form of a large white house. These troopers, brown-faced from many days of campaigning, each feature of them telling of their placid confidence and courage, were stopped abruptly by the appearance of this house. There was some subtle suggestion—some tale of an unknown thing—which watched them from they knew not what part of it.
A rail fence girded a wide lawn of tangled grass. Seven pines stood along a driveway which led from two distant posts of a vanished gate. The blue-clothed troopers moved forward until they stood at the fence, peering over it.
The captain put one hand on the top rail and seemed to be about to climb the fence, when suddenly he hesitated and said in a low voice: “Watson, what do you think of it?”
The lieutenant stared at the house. “Derned if I know!” he replied.
The captain pondered. It happened that the whole company had turned a gaze of profound awe and doubt upon this edifice which confronted them. The men were very silent.
At last the captain swore and said: “We are certainly a pack of fools. Derned old deserted house halting a company of Union cavalry, and making us gape like babies!”
“Yes, but there’s something—something—” insisted the subaltern in a half stammer.
“Well, if there’s ‘something—something’ in there, I’ll get it out,” said the captain. “Send Sharpe clean around to the other side with about twelve men, so we will sure bag your ‘something—something’ and I’ll take a few of the boys and find out what’s in the damned old thing!”
He chose the nearest eight men for his “storming party,” as the lieutenant called it. After he had waited some minutes for the others to get into position, he said “Come ahead” to his eight men, and climbed the fence.
The brighter light of the tangled lawn made him suddenly feel tremendously apparent, and he wondered if there could be some mystic thing in the house which was regarding this approach. His men trudged silently at his back. They stared at the windows and lost themselves in deep speculations as to the probability of there being, perhaps, eyes behind the blinds—malignant eyes, piercing eyes.
Suddenly a corporal in the party gave vent to a startled exclamation and half threw his carbine into position. The captain turned quickly, and the corporal said: “I saw an arm move the blinds. An arm with a gray sleeve!”
“Don’t be a fool, Jones, now!” said the captain sharply.
“I swear t’—” began the corporal, but the captain silenced him.
When they arrived at the front of the house, the troopers paused, while the captain went softly up the front steps. He stood before the large front door and studied it. Some crickets chirped in the long grass, and the nearest pine could be heard in its endless sighs. One of the privates moved uneasily, and his foot crunched the gravel. Suddenly the captain swore angrily and kicked the door with a loud crash. It flew open.
II
The bright lights of the day flashed into the old house when the captain angrily kicked open the door. He was aware of a wide hallway carpeted with matting and extending deep into the dwelling. There was also an old walnut hat rack and a little marble-topped table with a vase and two books upon it. Farther back was a great venerable fireplace containing dreary ashes.
But directly in front of the captain was a young girl. The flying open of the door had obviously been an utter astonishment to her, and she remained transfixed there in the middle of the floor, staring at the captain with wide eyes.
She was like a child caught at the time of a raid upon the cake. She wavered to and fro upon her feet, and held her hands behind her. There were two little points of terror in her eyes, as she gazed up at the young captain in dusty blue, with his reddish, bronze complexion, his yellow hair, his bright saber held threateningly.
These two remained motionless and silent, simply staring at each other for some moments.
The captain felt his rage fade out of him and leave his mind limp. He had been violently angry, because this house had made him feel hesitant, wary. He did not like to be wary. He liked to feel confident, sure. So he had kicked the door open, and had been prepared to march in like a soldier of wrath.
But now he began, for one thing, to wonder if his uniform was so dusty and old in appearance. Moreover, he had a feeling that his face was covered with a compound of dust, grime, and perspiration. He took a step forward and said, “I didn’t mean to frighten you.” But his voice was coarse from his battle-howling. It seemed to him to have hempen fibers in it.
The girl’s breath came in little, quick gasps, and she looked at him as she would have looked at a serpent.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he said again.
The girl, still with her hands behind her, began to back away.
“Is there any one else in the house?” he went on, while slowly following her. “I don’t wish to disturb you, but we had a fight with some rebel skirmishers in the woods, and I thought maybe some of them might have come in here. In fact, I was pretty sure of it. Are there any of them here?”
<
br /> The girl looked at him and said, “No!” He wondered why extreme agitation made the eyes of some women so limpid and bright.
“Who is here besides yourself?”
By this time his pursuit had driven her to the end of the hall, and she remained there with her back to the wall and her hands still behind her. When she answered this question, she did not look at him, but down at the floor. She cleared her voice and then said, “There is no one here.”
“No one?”
She lifted her eyes to him in that appeal that the human being must make even to falling trees, crashing boulders, the sea in a storm, and said, “No, no, there is no one here.” He could plainly see her tremble.
Of a sudden he bethought him that she continually kept her hands behind her. As he recalled her air when first discovered, he remembered she appeared precisely as a child detected at one of the crimes of childhood. Moreover, she had always backed away from him. He thought now that she was concealing something which was an evidence of the presence of the enemy in the house.
“What are you holding behind you?” he said suddenly.
She gave a little quick moan, as if some grim hand had throttled her.
“What are you holding behind you?”
“Oh, nothing—please. I am not holding anything behind me; indeed I’m not.”
“Very well. Hold your hands out in front of you, then.”
“Oh, indeed, I’m not holding anything behind me. Indeed I’m not.”
“Well,” he began. Then he paused, and remained for a moment dubious. Finally, he laughed. “Well, I shall have my men search the house, anyhow. I’m sorry to trouble you, but I feel sure that there is some one here whom we want.” He turned to the corporal, who, with the other men, was gaping quietly in at the door, and said: “Jones, go through the house.”
As for himself, he remained planted in front of the girl, for she evidently did not dare to move and allow him to see what she held so carefully behind her back. So she was his prisoner.
The men rummaged around on the ground floor of the house. Sometimes the captain called to them. “Try that closet,” “Is there any cellar?” But they found no one, and at last they went trooping toward the stairs which led to the second floor.
But at this movement on the part of the men the girl uttered a cry—a cry of such fright and appeal that the men paused. “Oh, don’t go up there! Please don’t go up there! —ple—ease! There is no one there! Indeed—indeed there is not! Oh, ple—ease!”
“Go on, Jones,” said the captain calmly.
The obedient corporal made a preliminary step, and the girl bounded toward the stairs with another cry.
As she passed him, the captain caught sight of that which she had concealed behind her back, and which she had forgotten in this supreme moment. It was a pistol.
She ran to the first step and, standing there, faced the men, one hand extended with perpendicular palm, and the other holding the pistol at her side. “Oh, please, don’t go up there! Nobody is there—indeed, there is not! P-1-e-a-s-e!” Then suddenly she sank swiftly down upon the step and, huddling forlornly, began to weep in the agony and with the convulsive tremors of an infant. The pistol fell from her fingers and rattled down to the floor.
The astonished troopers looked at their astonished captain. There was a short silence.
Finally, the captain stooped and picked up the pistol. It was a heavy weapon of the army pattern. He ascertained that it was empty.
He leaned toward the shaking girl and said gently, “Will you tell me what you were going to do with this pistol?”
He had to repeat the question a number of times, but at last a muffled voice said, “Nothing.”
“Nothing!” He insisted quietly upon a further answer. At the tender tones of the captain’s voice, the phlegmatic corporal turned and winked gravely at the man next to him.
“Won’t you tell me?”
The girl shook her head.
“Please tell me!”
The silent privates were moving their feet uneasily and wondering how long they were to wait.
The captain said: “Please, won’t you tell me?”
Then this girl’s voice began in stricken tones, half coherent, and amid violent sobbing: “It was grandpa’s. He—he—he said he was going to shoot anybody who came in here—he didn’t care if there were thousands of ’em. And—and I know he would, and I was afraid they’d kill him. And so—and—so I stole away his pistol—and I was going to hide it when you—you—you kicked open the door.”
The men straightened up and looked at each other. The girl began to weep again.
The captain mopped his brow. He peered down at the girl. He mopped his brow again. Suddenly he said: “Ah, don’t cry like that.”
He moved restlessly and looked down at his boots. He mopped his brow again.
Then he gripped the corporal by the arm and dragged him some yards back from the others. “Jones,” he said, in an intensely earnest voice, “will you tell me what in the devil I am going to do?”
The corporal’s countenance became illuminated with satisfaction at being thus requested to advise his superior officer. He adopted an air of great thought, and finally said: “Well, of course, the feller with the gray sleeve must be upstairs, and we must get past the girl and up there somehow. Suppose I take her by the arm and lead her—”
“What!” interrupted the captain from between his clenched teeth. As he turned away from the corporal, he said fiercely over his shoulder: “You touch that girl and I’ll split your skull!”
III
The corporal looked after his captain with an expression of mingled amazement, grief, and philosophy. He seemed to be saying to himself that there unfortunately were times, after all, when one could not rely upon the most reliable of men. When he returned to the group he found the captain bending over the girl and saying: “Why is it that you don’t want us to search upstairs?”
The girl’s head was buried in her crossed arms. Locks of her hair had escaped from their fastenings, and these fell upon her shoulder.
“Won’t you tell me?”
The corporal here winked again at the man next to him.
“Because,” the girl moaned—“because—there isn’t anybody up there.”
The captain at last said timidly: “Well, I’m afraid—I’m afraid we’ll have to—”
The girl sprang to her feet again, and implored him with her hands. She looked deep into his eyes with her glance, which was at this time like that of the fawn when it says to the hunter, “Have mercy upon me!”
These two stood regarding each other. The captain’s foot was on the bottom step, but he seemed to be shrinking. He wore an air of being deeply wretched and ashamed. There was a silence.
Suddenly the corporal said in a quick, low tone: “Look out, captain!”
All turned their eyes swiftly toward the head of the stairs. There had appeared there a youth in a gray uniform. He stood looking coolly down at them. No word was said by the troopers. The girl gave vent to a little wail of desolation, “Oh, Harry!”
He began slowly to descend the stairs. His right arm was in a white sling, and there were some fresh bloodstains upon the cloth. His face was rigid and deathly pale, but his eyes flashed like lights. The girl was again moaning in an utterly dreary fashion, as the youth came slowly down toward the silent men in blue.
Six steps from the bottom of the flight he halted and said, “I reckon it’s me you’re looking for.”
The troopers had crowded forward a trifle and, posed in lithe, nervous attitudes, were watching him like cats. The captain remained unmoved. At the youth’s question he merely nodded his head and said, “Yes.”
The young man in gray looked down at the girl, and then, in the same even tone, which now, however, seemed to vibrate with suppressed fury, he said: “And is that any reason why you should insult my sister?”
At this sentence, the girl intervened, desperately, between the young man in g
ray and the officer in blue. “Oh, don’t, Harry, don’t! He was good to me! He was good to me, Harry—indeed he was!”
The youth came on in his quiet, erect fashion until the girl could have touched either of the men with her hand, for the captain still remained with his foot upon the first step. She continually repeated: “Oh, Harry! Oh, Harry!”
The youth in gray maneuvered to glare into the captain’s face, first over one shoulder of the girl and then over the other. In a voice that rang like metal, he said: “You are armed and unwounded, while I have no weapons and am wounded; but—”
The captain had stepped back and sheathed his saber. The eyes of these two men were gleaming fire, but otherwise the captain’s countenance was imperturbable. He said: “You are mistaken. You have no reason to—”
“You lie!”
All save the captain and the youth in gray started in an electric movement. These two words crackled in the air like shattered glass. There was a breathless silence.
The captain cleared his throat. His look at the youth contained a quality of singular and terrible ferocity, but he said in his stolid tone: “I don’t suppose you mean what you say now.”
Upon his arm he had felt the pressure of some unconscious little fingers. The girl was leaning against the wall as if she no longer knew how to keep her balance, but those fingers—he held his arm very still. She murmured: “Oh, Harry, don’t! He was good to me—indeed he was!”
The corporal had come forward until he in a measure confronted the youth in gray, for he saw those fingers upon the captain’s arm, and he knew that sometimes very strong men were not able to move hand nor foot under such conditions.
The youth had suddenly seemed to become weak. He breathed heavily and clung to the rail. He was glaring at the captain, and apparently summoning all his will power to combat his weakness. The corporal addressed him with profound straightforwardness: “Don’t you be a derned fool!” The youth turned toward him so fiercely that the corporal threw up a knee and an elbow like a boy who expects to be cuffed.
The Complete Short Stories and Sketches of Stephen Crane Page 31