Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “Our cavalry advance did not behave very well in Oxley,” he said.

  “They took a few chickens en passant,” she said, smiling; “but had they asked for them we would have been glad to give. We are loyal, you know.”

  “Those gay jayhawkers were well disciplined for that business when Stannard took them over,” said the bandmaster grimly. “Had they behaved themselves, we should have had ten friends here where we have one now.”

  The boy listened earnestly. “Would you please tell me,” he asked, “whether you have decided to have a battle pretty soon?”

  “I don’t decide such matters,” said the bandmaster, laughing.

  “Why, I thought a general could always have a battle when he wanted to!” insisted the boy, surprised.

  “But I’m not a general, Billy,” replied the young fellow, coloring. “Did you think I was?”

  “My brother’s ideas are very vague,” said his sister quickly; “any officer who fights is a general to him.”

  “I’m sorry,” said the bandmaster, looking at the child, “but do you know, I am not even a fighting officer? I am only the regimental bandmaster, Billy — a noncombatant.”

  For an instant the boy’s astonished disappointment crushed out his inbred courtesy as host. His sister, mortified but self-possessed, broke the strained silence with a quiet question or two concerning the newly arrived troops; and the bandmaster replied, looking at the boy.

  Billy, silent, immersed in reflection, sat with curly head bent and hands folded on his knees. His sister glanced at him, looked furtively at the bandmaster, and their eyes met. He smiled, and she returned the smile; and he looked at Billy and smiled again.

  “Billy,” he said, “I’ve been sailing under false colors, it seems — but you hoisted them. I think I ought to go.”

  The boy looked up at him, startled.

  “Good night,” said the bandmaster gravely, rising to his lean height from the chair beside the table. The boy flushed to his hair.

  “Don’t go,” he said; “I like you even if you don’t fight!”

  Then the bandmaster began to laugh, and the boy’s sister bit her lip and looked at her brother.

  “Billy! Billy!” she said, catching his hands in hers, “do you think the only brave men are those who gallop into battle?”

  Hands imprisoned in his sister’s, he looked up at the bandmaster.

  “If you were ordered to fight, you’d fight, wouldn’t you?” he asked.

  “Under those improbable circumstances I think I might,” admitted the young fellow, solemnly reseating himself.

  “Celia! Do you hear what he says?” cried the boy.

  “I hear,” said his sister gently. “Now sit very still while Moses serves the Madeira; only half a glass for Mr. William, Moses — no, not one drop more!”

  Moses served the wine with pomp and circumstance; the lean young bandmaster looked straight at the boy’s sister and rose, bowing with a grace that instantly entranced the aged servant.

  “Celia,” said the boy, “we must drink to the flag, you know;” and the young girl rose from her chair, and, looking at the bandmaster, touched her lips to the glass.

  “I wish they could see us,” said the boy, “ — the Colvins and the Malletts. I’ve heard their ‘Bonnie Blue Flag’ and their stirrup toasts until I’m sick — —”

  “Billy!” said his sister quietly. And reseating herself and turning to the bandmaster, “Our neighbors differ with us,” she said, “and my brother cannot understand it. I have to remind him that if they were not brave men our army would have been victorious, and there would have been no more war after Bull Run.”

  The bandmaster assented thoughtfully. Once or twice his worn eyes swept the room — a room that made him homesick for his own. It had been a long time since he had sat in a chair in a room like this — a long time since he had talked with women and children. Perhaps the boy’s sister divined something of his thoughts — he was not much older than she — for, as he rose, hooking up his sabre, and stepped forward to take his leave, she stood up, too, offering her hand.

  “Our house is always open to Union soldiers,” she said simply. “Will you come again?”

  “Thank you,” he said. “You don’t know, I think, how much you have already done for me.”

  They stood a moment looking at one another; then he bowed and turned to the boy, who caught his hand impulsively.

  “I knew my sister would like you!” he exclaimed.

  “Everybody is very kind,” said the young bandmaster, looking steadily at the boy.

  Again he bowed to the boy’s sister, not raising his eyes this time; and, holding the child’s hand tightly in his, he walked out to the porch.

  Moses was there to assist him with his long blue mantle; the boy clung to his gloved hand a moment, then stepped back into the doorway, where the old servant shuffled about, muttering half aloud: “Yaas, suh. Done tole you so. He bow lak de quality, he drink lak de Garnetts — what I tole yo’? Mars Will’m, ef dat ossifer ain’ er gin’ral, he gwine be mighty quick!”

  “I don’t care,” said the boy, “I just love him.”

  The negro shuffled out across the moonlit veranda, peered around through the fragrant gloom, wrinkled hands linked behind his back. Then he descended the steps stiffly, and teetered about through the shrubbery with the instinct of a watchdog worn out in service.

  “Nuff’n to scare nobody, scusin’ de hoot owls,” he muttered. “Spec’ hit’s time Miss Celia bolt de do’, ‘long o’ de sodgers an’ all de gwines-on. Shoo! Hear dat fool chickum crow!” He shook his head, bent rheumatically, and seated himself on the veranda step, full in the moonlight. “All de fightin’s an’ de gwines-on ‘long o’ dis here wah!” he soliloquized, joining his shriveled thumbs reflectively. “Whar de use? Spound dat! Whar all de fool niggers dat done skedaddle ‘long o’ de Linkum troopers? Splain dat!” He chuckled; a whip-poor-will answered breathlessly.

  “Dar dat scan’lous widder bird a-hollerin’!” exclaimed the old man, listening. “‘Pears lak we’s gwine have moh wah, moh daid men, moh widders. Dar de ha’nt! Dar de sign an’ de warnin’. G’way, widder bird.” He crossed his withered fingers and began rocking to and fro, crooning softly to himself:

  “Butterfly a-flyin’ in de Chinaberry tree (Butterfly, flutter by!), Kitty gull a-cryin’ on the sunset sea (Fly, li’l gull, fly high!), Bully bat a-follerin’ de moon in de sky, Widder bird a-hollerin’, ‘Hi, dar! Hi!’ Tree toad a-trillin’ (Sleep, li’l honey! De moon cost a shillin’ But we ain’t got money!), Sleep, li’l honey, While de firefly fly, An’ Chuck-Will’s Widder holler, ‘Hi, dar! Hi!’”

  Before dawn the intense stillness was broken by the rushing music of the birds — a careless, cheery torrent of song poured forth from bramble and woodland. Distant and nearer cockcrows rang out above the melodious tumult, through which a low, confused undertone, scarcely apparent at first, was growing louder — the dull sound of the stirring of many men.

  Men? The valley was suddenly alive with them, choking the roads in heavy silent lines; they were in the lanes, they plodded through the orchards, they swarmed across the hills, column on column, until the entire country seemed flowing forward in steady streams. Sandy River awoke, restlessly listening; lights glimmered behind darkened windows; a heavier, vaguer rumor grew, hanging along the hills. It increased to a shaking, throbbing monotone, like the far dissonance of summer thunder!

  And now artillery was coming, bumping down the dim street with clatter of chain and harness jingling.

  Up at the great house on the hill they heard it — the boy in his white nightdress leaning from the open window, and his sleepy sister kneeling beside him, pushing back her thick hair to peer out into the morning mist. On came the battery, thudding and clanking, horses on a long swinging trot, gun, caisson, forge, mounted artillerymen succeeding each other, faster, faster under the windows. A guidon danced by; more guns, more caissons, then a trampling, plunging gallop, a ra
ttle of sabres — and the battery had passed.

  “What is that heavy sound behind the hills?” whispered the boy.

  “The river rushing over the shallows — perhaps a train on the trestle at Oxley Court House—” She listened, resting her rounded chin on her hands. “It is thunder, I think. Go to bed now for a while — —”

  “Hark!” said the boy, laying his small hand on hers.

  “It is thunder,” she said again. “How white the dawn is growing. Listen to the birds — is it not sweet?”

  “Celia,” whispered the boy, “that is not thunder. It is too hushed, too steady — it hums and hums and hums. Where was that battery galloping? I am going to dress.”

  She looked at him, turned to the east and stared at the coming day. The air of dawn was full of sounds, ominous, sustained vibrations.

  She rose, went back to her room, and lighted a dip. Then, shading the pallid smoky flame with her hand, she opened a door and peered into the next bedroom. “Grandfather!” she whispered, smiling, seeing that he was already awake. And as she leaned over him, searching the dim and wrinkled eyes, she read something in their unwonted luster that struck her silent. It was only when she heard her brother’s step on the stairs that she roused herself, bent, and kissed the aged head lying there inert among the pillows.

  “It is cannon,” she breathed softly— “you know that sound, don’t you, grandfather? Does it make you happy? Why are you smiling? Look at me — I understand; you want something. Shall I open the curtains? And raise the window? Ah, you wish to hear. Hark! Horsemen are passing at a gallop. What is it you wish — to see them? But they are gone, dear. If any of our soldiers come, you shall see them. That makes you happy? — that is what you desire? — to see one of our own soldiers? If they pass, I shall go out and bring one here to you — truly, I will.” She paused, marveling at the strange light that glimmered across the ravaged visage. Then she blew out the dip and stole into the hall.

  “Billy!” she called, hearing him fumbling at the front door.

  “Oh, Celia! The cavalry trumpets! Do you hear? I’m going out. Perhaps he may pass the house.”

  “Wait for me,” she said; “I am not dressed. Run to the cabin and wake Moses, dear!”

  She heard him open the door; the deadened thunder of the cannonade filled the house for an instant, shut out by the closing door, only to swell again to an immense unbroken volume of solemn harmony. The bird-music had ceased; distant hilltops grew brighter.

  Down in the village lights faded from window and cabin; a cavalryman, signaling from the church tower, whirled his flaming torch aside and picked up a signal flag. Suddenly the crash of a rifled cannon saluted the rising sun; a shell soared skyward through the misty glory, towered, curved, and fell, exploding among the cavalrymen, completely ruining the breakfasts of chief-trumpeter O’Halloran and kettle-drummer Pillsbury.

  For a moment a geyser of ashes, coffee, and bacon rained among the men.

  “Hell!” said Pillsbury, furiously wiping his face with his dripping sleeve and spitting out ashes.

  “Young kettle-drums, he don’t love his vittles,” observed a trooper, picking up the cap that had been jerked from his head by a whirring fragment.

  “Rich feedin’ is the sp’ilin’ o’ this here hoss band,” added the farrier, stanching the flow of blood from his scalp; “quit quar’lin’ with your rations, kettle-drums!”

  “Y’orter swaller them cinders,” insisted another; “they don’t cost nothin’!”

  The band, accustomed to chaffing, prepared to retire to the ambulance, where heretofore their fate had always left them among luggage, surgeons, and scared camp niggers during an engagement.

  The Rhode Island battery, placed just north of the church, had opened; the cavalry in the meadow could see them — see the whirl of smoke, the cannoneers moving with quick precision amidst obscurity — the flash, the recoil as gun after gun jumped back, buried in smoke.

  It lasted only a few minutes; no more shells came whistling down among the cavalry; and presently the battery grew silent, and the steaming hill, belted with vapor, cleared slowly in the breezy sunshine.

  The cavalry had mounted and leisurely filed off to the shelter of a grassy hollow; the band, dismounted, were drawn up to be told off in squads as stretcher-bearers; the bandmaster was sauntering past, buried in meditation, his sabre trailing a furrow through the dust, when a clatter of hoofs broke out along the village street, and a general officer, followed by a plunging knot of horsemen, tore up and drew bridle.

  The colonel of the cavalry regiment, followed by the chief trumpeter, trotted out to meet them, saluting sharply; there was a quick exchange of words; the general officer waved his hand toward the south, wheeled his horse, hesitated, and pointed at the band.

  “How many sabres?” he asked.

  “Twenty-seven,” replied the colonel— “no carbines.”

  “Better have them play you in — if you go,” said the officer.

  The colonel saluted and backed his horse as the cavalcade swept past him; then he beckoned to the bandmaster.

  “Here’s your chance,” he said. “Orders are to charge anything that appears on that road. You’ll play us in this time. Mount your men.”

  Ten minutes later the regiment, band ahead, marched out of Sandy River and climbed the hill, halting in the road that passed the great white mansion. As the outposts moved forward they encountered a small boy on a pony, who swung his cap at them gayly as he rode. Squads, dismounted, engaged in tearing away the rail fences bordering the highway, looked around, shouting a cheery answer to his excited greeting; the colonel on a ridge to the east lowered his field glasses to watch him; the bandmaster saw him coming and smiled as the boy drew bridle beside him, saluting.

  “If you’re not going to fight, why are you here?” asked the boy breathlessly.

  “It really looks,” said the bandmaster, “as though we might fight, after all.”

  “You, too?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Then — could you come into the house — just a moment? My sister asked me to find you.”

  A bright blush crept over the bandmaster’s sun-tanned cheeks.

  “With pleasure,” he said, dismounting, and leading his horse through the gateway and across the shrubbery to the trees.

  “Celia! Celia!” called the boy, running up the veranda steps. “He is here! Please hurry, because he’s going to have a battle!”

  She came slowly, pale and lovely in her black gown, and held out her hand.

  “There is a battle going on all around us, isn’t there?” she asked. “That is what all this dreadful uproar means?”

  “Yes,” he said; “there is trouble on the other side of those hills.”

  “Do you think there will be fighting here?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  She motioned him to a veranda chair, then seated herself. “What shall we do?” she asked calmly. “I am not alarmed — but my grandfather is bedridden, and my brother is a child. Is it safe to stay?”

  The bandmaster looked at her helplessly.

  “I don’t know,” he repeated— “I don’t know what to say. Nobody seems to understand what is happening; we in the regiment are never told anything; we know nothing except what passes under our eyes.” He broke off suddenly; the situation, her loneliness, the impending danger, appalled him.

  “May I ask a little favor?” she said, rising. “Would you mind coming in a moment to see my grandfather?”

  He stood up obediently, sheathed sabre in his left hand; she led the way across the hall and up the stairs, opened the door, and motioned toward the bed. At first he saw nothing save the pillows and snowy spread.

  “Will you speak to him?” she whispered.

  He approached the bed, cap in hand.

  “He is very old,” she said; “he was a soldier of Washington. He desires to see a soldier of the Union.”

  And now the bandmaster perceived the occupant of t
he bed, a palsied, bloodless phantom of the past — an inert, bedridden, bony thing that looked dead until its deep eyes opened and fixed themselves on him.

  “This is a Union soldier, grandfather,” she said, kneeling on the floor beside him. And to the bandmaster she said in a low voice: “Would you mind taking his hand? He cannot move.”

  The bandmaster bent stiffly above the bed and took the old man’s hand in his.

  The sunlit room trembled in the cannonade.

  “That is all,” said the girl simply. She took the fleshless hand, kissed it, and laid it on the bedspread. “A soldier of Washington,” she said dreamily. “I am glad he has seen you — I think he understands: but he is very, very old.”

  She lingered a moment to touch the white hair with her hand; the bandmaster stepped back to let her pass, then put on his cap, hooked his sabre, turned squarely toward the bed and saluted.

  The phantom watched him as a dying eagle watches; then the slim hand of the granddaughter fell on the bandmaster’s arm, and he turned and clanked out into the open air.

  The boy stood waiting for them, and as they appeared, he caught their hands in each of his, talking all the while and walking with them to the gateway, where pony and charger stood, nose to nose under the trees.

  “If you need anybody to dash about carrying dispatches,” the boy ran on, “why, I’ll do it for you. My father was a soldier, and I’m going to be one, and I — —”

  “Billy,” said the bandmaster abruptly, “when we charge, go up on that hill and watch us. If we don’t come back, you must be ready to act a man’s part. Your sister counts on you.”

  They stood a moment there together, saying nothing. Presently some mounted officers on the hill wheeled their horses and came spurring toward the column drawn up along the road. A trumpet spoke briskly; the bandmaster turned to the boy’s sister, looked straight into her eyes, and took her hand.

  “I think we’re going,” he said; “I am trying to thank you — I don’t know how. Good-by.”

  “Is it a charge?” cried the boy.

  “Good-by,” said the bandmaster, smiling, holding the boy’s hand tightly. Then he mounted, touched his cap, wheeled, and trotted off, freeing his sabre with his right hand.