“Are you properly fixed? What do you carry — a revolver?”
She nodded in silence.
“All right. Your troopers will be waiting outside.... Get him, in one way or another; do you understand?”
“Yes.”
A few moments later the staff galloped off and the escort clattered behind, minus two troopers, who sat on the edge of the veranda in their blue-and-yellow shell jackets, carbines slung, poking at the grass with the edges of their battered steel scabbards.
The Special Messenger came out presently, and the two troopers rose to salute. All around her thundered the guns; sky and earth were trembling as she led the way through an orchard heavy with green fruit. A volunteer nurse was gathering the hard little apples for cooking; she turned, her apron full, as the Special Messenger passed, and the two women, both young, looked at one another through the sunshine — looked, and turned away, each to her appointed destiny.
Smoke, drifting back from the batteries, became thicker beyond the orchard. Not very far away the ruddy sparkle of exploding Confederate shells lighted the obscurity. Farther beyond the flames of the Union guns danced red through the cannon gloom.
Higher on the hill, however, the air became clearer; a man outlined in the void was swinging signal flags against the sky.
“Wait here,” said the Special Messenger to Troopers Burke and Campbell, and they unslung carbines, and leaned quietly against their feeding horses, watching her climb the crest.
The crest was bathed in early sunlight, an aërial island jutting up above a smoky sea. From the terrible, veiled maelstrom roaring below, battle thunder reverberated and the lightning of the guns flared incessantly.
For a moment, poised, she looked down into the inferno, striving to penetrate the hollow, then glanced out beyond, over fields and woods where sunlight patched the world beyond the edges of the dark pall.
Behind her Captain West, field glasses leveled, seemed to be intent upon his own business.
She sat down on the grassy acclivity. Below her, far below, Confederate shells were constantly striking the base of the hill. A mile away black squares checkered a slope; beyond the squares a wood was suddenly belted with smoke, and behind her she heard the swinging signal flags begin to whistle and snap in the hill wind. She had sat there a long while before Captain West spoke to her, standing tall and thin beside her; some half-serious, half-humorous pleasantry — nothing for her to answer. But she looked up into his face, and he became silent, and after a while he moved away.
A little while later the artillery duel subsided and finally died out abruptly, leaving a comparative calm, broken only by slow and very deliberate picket firing.
The signal men laid aside their soiled flags and began munching hardtack; Captain West came over, bringing his own rations to offer her, but she refused with a gesture, sitting there, chin propped in her palms, elbows indenting her knees.
“Are you not hungry or thirsty?” he asked.
“No.”
He had carelessly seated himself on the natural rocky parapet, spurred boots dangling over space. For one wild instant she hoped he might slip and fall headlong — and his blood be upon the hands of his Maker.
Sitting near one another they remained silent, restless-eyed, brooding above the battle-scarred world. As he rose to go he spoke once or twice to her with that haunting softness of voice which had begun to torture her; but her replies were very brief; and he said nothing more.
At intervals during the afternoon orderlies came to the hill; one or two general officers and their staffs arrived for brief consultations, and departed at a sharp gallop down hill.
About three o’clock there came an unexpected roar of artillery from the Union left; minute by minute the racket swelled as battery after battery joined in the din.
Behind her the signal flags were fluttering wildly once more; a priest, standing near her, turned nodding:
“Our boys will be going in before sundown,” he said quietly.
“Are you Father Corby, chaplain of the Excelsiors?”
“Yes, madam.”
He lifted his hat and went away knee-deep through the windy hill-grasses; white butterflies whirled around him as he strode, head on his breast; the swift hill swallows soared and skimmed along the edges of the smoke as though inviting him. From her rocky height she saw the priest enter the drifting clouds.
A man going to his consecrated duty. And she? Where lay her duty? And why was she not about it?
“Captain West!” she called in a clear, hard voice.
Seated on his perch above the abyss, the officer lowered his field glasses and turned his face. Then he rose and moved over to where she was sitting. She stood up at once.
“Will you walk as far as those trees with me?” she asked. There was a strained ring to her voice.
He wheeled, spoke briefly to a sergeant, then, with that subtle and pleasant deference which characterized him, he turned and fell into step beside her.
“Is there anything I can do?” he asked softly.
“No.... God help us both.”
He halted. At a nod from her, two troopers standing beside their quietly browsing horses, cocked carbines. The sharp, steel click of the locks was perfectly audible through the din of the cannon.
The signal officer looked at her; and her face was whiter than his.
“You are Warren Moray — I think,” she said.
His eyes glimmered like a bayonet in sunlight; then the old half-gay, half-defiant smile flickered over his face.
“Special Messenger,” he said, “you come as a dark envoy for me. Now I understand your beauty — Angel of Death.”
“Are you Major Moray?” She could scarcely speak.
He smiled, glanced at the two troopers, and shrugged his shoulders. Then, like a flash his hand fell to his holster, and it was empty; and his pistol glimmered in her hand.
“For God’s sake don’t touch your sabre-hilt!” she said.... “Unclasp your belt! Let it fall!”
“Can’t you give me a chance with those cavalrymen?”
“I can’t. You know it.”
“Yes; I know.”
There was a silence; the loosened belt fell to the grass, the sabre clashing. He looked coolly at the troopers, at her, and then out across the smoke.
“This way?” he said, as though to himself. “I never thought it.” His voice was quiet and pleasant, with a slight touch of curiosity in it.
“How did you know?” he asked simply, turning to her again.
She stood leaning back against a tree, trying to keep her eyes fixed on him through the swimming weakness invading mind and body.
“I suppose this ends it all,” he added absently; and touched the sabre lying in the grass with the tip of his spurred boot.
“Did you look for any other ending, Mr. Moray?”
“Yes — I did.”
“How could you, coming into our ranks with a dead man’s commission and forged papers? How long did you think it could last? Were you mad?”
He looked at her wistfully, smiled, and shook his head.
“Not mad, unless you are. Your risks are greater than were mine.”
She straightened up, stepped toward him, very pale.
“Will you come?” she asked. “I am sorry.”
“I am sorry — for us both,” he said gently. “Yes, I will come. Send those troopers away.”
“I cannot.”
“Yes, you can. I give my word of honor.”
She hesitated; a bright flush stained his face.
“I take your word,” she murmured.
A moment later the troopers mounted and cantered off down the hill, veering wide to skirt the head of a column of infantry marching in; and when the Special Messenger started to return she found masses of men threatening to separate her from her prisoner — sunburnt, sweating, dirty-faced men, clutching their rifle-butts with red hands.
Their officers rode ahead, thrashing through the moist grass; a f
orest of bayonets swayed in the sun; flag after flag passed, slanting above the masses of blue.
She and her prisoner looked on; the flag of the 63d New York swept by; the flags of the 69th and 88th followed. A moment later the columns halted.
“Your Excelsiors,” said Moray calmly.
“They’re under fire already. Shall we move on?”
A soldier in the ranks, standing with ordered arms, fell straight backward, heavily; a corporal near them doubled up with a grunt.
The Special Messenger heard bullets smacking on rocks; heard their dull impact as they struck living bodies; saw them knock men flat. Meanwhile the flags drooped above the halted ranks, their folds stirred lazily, fell, and scarcely moved; the platoon fire rolled on unbroken somewhere out in the smoke yonder.
“God send me a bullet,” said Moray.... “Why do you stay here?”
“To — give you — that chance.”
“You run it, too.”
“I hope so. I am very — tired.”
“I am sorry,” he said, reddening.
She said fiercely: “I wish it were over.... Life is cruel.... I suppose we must move on. Will you come, please?”
“Yes — my dark messenger,” he said under his breath, and smiled.
A priest passed them in the smoke; her prisoner raised his hand to the visor of his cap.
“Father Corby, their chaplain,” she murmured.
“Attention! Attention!” a far voice cried, and the warning ran from rank to rank, taken up in turn by officer after officer. Father Corby was climbing to the summit of a mound close by; an order rang out, bugles repeated it, and the blue ranks faced their chaplain.
Then the priest from his rocky pulpit raised his ringing voice in explanation. He told the three regiments of the Irish Brigade — now scarcely more than three battalions of two companies each — that every soldier there could receive the benefit of absolution by making a sincere act of contrition and resolving, on first opportunity, to confess.
He told them that they were going to be sent into battle; he urged them to do their duty; reminded them of the high and sacred nature of their trust as soldiers of the Republic, and ended by warning them that the Catholic Church refuses Christian burial to him who deserts his flag.
In the deep, battle-filled silence the priest raised up his hands; three regiments sank to their knees as a single man, and the Special Messenger and her prisoner knelt with them.
“Dominus noster Jesus Christus vos absolvat, et ego, auctoritate ipius, vos absolvo ab omvir vinculo — —”
The thunder of the guns drowned the priest’s voice for a moment, then it sounded again, firm and clear:
“Absolve vos a peccatis — —”
The roar of battle blotted out the words; then again they rang out:
“In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti!... Amen.”
The officers had remounted now, their horses plunging in the smoke; the flags were moving forward; rivers of bayonets flowed out into the maelstrom where the red lightning played incessantly. Then from their front crashed out the first volley of the Irish Brigade.
“Forward! Forward!” shouted their officers. Men were falling everywhere; a dying horse kicked a whole file into confusion. Suddenly a shell fell in their midst, another, another, tearing fiery right of way.
The Special Messenger, on her knees in the smoke, looked up and around as a priest bent above her.
“Child,” he said, “what are you doing here?” And then his worn gaze fell on the dead man who lay in the grass staring skyward through his broken eyeglasses with pleasant, sightless eyes.
The Special Messenger, white to the lips, looked up: “We were on our knees together, Father Corby. You had said the amen, and the bullet struck him — here!... He had no chance for confession.... But you said — —”
Her voice failed.
The priest looked at her; she took the dead man’s right hand in hers.
“He was a brave man, Father.... And you said — you said — about those who fell fighting for — their own land — absolution — Christian burial — —”
She choked, set her teeth in her under lip and looked down at the dead. The priest knelt, too.
“Is — is all well with him?” she whispered.
“Surely, child — —”
“But — his was the — other flag.”
There was a silence.
“Father?”
“I know — I know.... The banner of Christ is broader.... You say he was kneeling here beside you?”
“Here — so close that I touched him.... And then you said.... Christian burial — absolution — —”
“He was a spy?”
“What am I, Father?”
“Absolved, child — like this poor boy, here at your feet.... What is that locket in your hand?”
“His picture.... I found it in his house when the cavalry were setting fire to it.... Oh, I am tired of it all — deathly, deathly sick!... Look at him lying here! Father, Father, is there no end to death?”
The priest rose wearily; through the back-drifting smoke the long battle line of the Excelsiors wavered like phantoms in the mist. Six flags flapped ghostlike above them, behind them men writhed in the trampled, bloody grass; before them the sheeted volleys rushed outward into darkness, where the dull battle lightning played.
A maimed, scorched, blackened thing in the grass near by was calling on Christ; the priest went to him, turning once on his way to look back where the Special Messenger knelt beside a dead man who lay smiling at nothing through his shattered eyeglasses.
CHAPTER IV. ROMANCE
The Volunteer Nurse sighed and spread out her slender, iodine-stained fingers on both knees, looking down at them reflectively.
“It is different now,” she said; “sentiment dies under the scalpel. In the filth and squalor of reality neither the belief in romance nor the capacity for desiring it endure long.... Even pity becomes atrophied — or at least a reflex habit; sympathy, sorrow, remain as mechanical reactions, not spontaneous emotions.... You can understand that, dear?”
“Partly,” said the Special Messenger, raising her dark eyes to her old schoolmate.
“In the beginning,” said the Nurse, dreamily, “the men in their uniforms, the drums and horses and glitter, and the flags passing, and youth — youth — not that you and I are yet old in years; do you know what I mean?”
“I know,” said the Special Messenger, smoothing out her riding gloves. “Do you remember the cadets at Oxley? You loved one of them.”
“Yes; you know how it was in the cities; and even afterward in Washington — I mean the hospitals after Bull Run. Young bravery — the Zouaves — the multicolored guard regiments — and a romance in every death!” She laid one stained hand over the other, fingers still wide. “But here in this blackened horror they call the ‘seat of war’ — this festering bullpen, choked with dreary regiments, all alike, all in filthy blue — here individuals vanish, men vanish. The schoolgirl dream of man dies here forever. Only unwashed, naked duty remains; and its inspiration, man — bloody, dirty, vermin-covered, terrible — sometimes; and sometimes whimpering, terrified, flinching, base, bereft of all his sex’s glamour, all his mystery, shorn of authority, devoid of pride, pitiable, screaming under the knife. — It is different now,” said the pretty Volunteer Nurse.— “The war kills more than human life.”
The Special Messenger drew her buckskin gloves carefully through her belt and buttoned the holster of her revolver.
“I have seen war, too,” she said; “and the men who dealt death and the men who received it. Their mystery remains — the glamour of a man remains for me — because he is a man.”
“I have heard them crying like children in the stretchers.”
“So have I. That solves nothing.”
But the Nurse went on:
“And in the wards they are sometimes something betwixt devils and children. All the weakness and failings they attribute to wo
men come out in them — fear, timidity, inconsequence, greed, malice, gossip! And, as for courage — I tell you, women bear pain better.”
“Yes, I have learned that.... It is not difficult to beguile them either; to lead them, to read them. That is part of my work. I do it. I know they are afraid in battle — the intelligent ones. Yet they fight. I know they are really children — impulsive, passionate, selfish, often cruel — but, after all, they are here fighting this war — here encamped all around us throughout these hills and forests.... They have lost none of their glamour for me. Their mystery remains.”
The Volunteer Nurse looked up with a tired smile:
“You always were emotional, dear.”
“I am still.”
“You don’t have to drain wounds and dry out sores and do the thousand unspeakable offices that we do.”
“Why do you do them?”
“I have to.”
“You didn’t have to enlist. Why did you?”
“Why do the men enlist?” asked the Nurse. “That’s why you and I did — whatever the motive may have been, God knows.... And it’s killed part of me.... You don’t cleanse ulcers.”
“No; I am not fitted. I tried; and lost none of the romance in me. Only it happens that I can do — what I am doing — better.”
The Nurse looked at her a trifle awed.
“To think, dear, that you should turn out to be the celebrated Special Messenger. You were timid in school.”
“I am now.... You don’t know how afraid a woman can be. Suppose in school — suppose that for one moment we could have foreseen our destiny — here together, you and I, as we are now.”
The Nurse looked into the stained hollow of her right hand.
“I had the lines read once,” she said drearily, “but nobody ever said I’d be here, or that there’d be any war.” And she continued to examine her palm with a hurt expression in her blue eyes.
The Special Messenger laughed, and her lovely, pale face lighted up with color.
“Don’t you really think you are ever going to be capable of caring for a man again?”
“No, I don’t. I know now how they’re fashioned, how they think — how — how revolting they can be.... No, no! It’s all gone — all the ideals, all the dreams.... Good Heavens, how romantic — how senseless we were in school!”
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 412