On they came, fifes skirling, drums crashing; the colonel of the Fourth Missouri gave them right of way, saluting their colors; the Special Messenger backed her horse and turned down along the column.
Under the shadow of her visor her dark eyes widened with excitement as she skirted the halted cavalry, searching the intervals where the troop captains sat their horses, naked sabres curving up over their shoulder straps.
“Not this one! Not this one,” her little heart beat hurriedly; and then, without warning, panic came, and she spurred up to the major of the first squadron.
“Where is Captain Stanley?” Her voice almost broke.
“With his troop, I suppose— ‘F,’” replied that officer calmly; and her heart leaped and the color flooded her face as she saluted, wheeled, and rode on in heavenly certainty.
A New York regiment, fresh from the North, was passing now, its magnificent band playing “Twinkling Stars”; and the horses of the cavalry began to dance and paw and toss their heads.
One splendid black animal reared suddenly and shook its mane out; and at the same moment she saw him — knew him — drew bridle, her heart in her mouth, her body all a-tremble.
He was mastering the black horse that had reared, sitting his saddle easily, almost carelessly, his long, yellow-striped legs loosely graceful, his straight, slim figure perfect in poise and balance.
And now the trumpets were sounding; captain after captain turned in his saddle, swung his sabre forward, repeating the order: “Forward — march! Forward — march!”
The Special Messenger whirled her horse and sped to the head of the column.
“I was just beginning to wonder—” began the colonel, when she broke in, breathless:
“May I ride with Captain Stanley of F, sir?”
“Certainly,” he replied, surprised and a trifle amused. She hesitated, nervously picking at her bridle, then said: “When you once get me through their lines — I mean, after I am safely through and you are ready to turn around and leave me — I — I would like — to — to — —”
“Yes?” inquired the colonel, gently, divining some “last message” to deliver. For they were desperate chances that she was taking, and those in the beleaguered city would show her no mercy if they ever caught her within its battered bastions.
But the Special Messenger only said: “Before your regiment goes back, may I tell Captain Stanley who I am?”
The colonel’s face fell.
“Nobody is supposed to have any idea who you are — —”
“I know it. But is there any harm if I only tell it to — to just this one, single man?” she asked, earnestly, not aware that her eyes as well as her voice were pleading — that her whole body, bent forward in the saddle, had become eloquent with a confession as winning as it was innocent.
The colonel looked curiously into the eager, flushed face, framed in its setting of dark, curly hair, then he lifted a gauntleted hand from his bridle and slowly stroked his crisp mustache upward to hide the smile he could not control.
“I did not know,” he said gravely, “that Captain Stanley was the — ah— ‘one’ and ‘only’ man.”
She blushed furiously, the vivid color ran from throat to temple, burning her ears till they looked like rose petals caught in her dark hair.
“You may tell Captain Stanley — if you must,” observed the colonel of the Fourth Missouri. He was gazing absently straight between his horse’s ears when he spoke. After a few moments he looked at the sky where, overhead, the afterglow pulsated in bands of fire.
“I always thought,” he murmured to himself, “that old Stanley was in love with that Southern girl he saw at Sandy River.... I had no idea he knew the Special Messenger. It appears that I am slightly in error.” And, very thoughtfully, he continued to twist his mustache skyward as he rode on.
When he ventured to glance around again the Special Messenger had disappeared.
“Fancy!” he muttered; “fancy old Stanley knowing the mystery of the three armies! And, by gad, gentlemen!” addressing, sotto voce, the entire regiment, as he turned in his stirrups and looked back at the darkening column behind him— “by gad! gentlemen of the Fourth Dragoons, no prettier woman ever sat a saddle than is riding this moment with the captain of Troop F!”
What Captain Stanley saw riding up to him through the dull afterglow was a slightly built youth in the uniform of the regular cavalry, yellow trimming on collar, yellow welts about the seams of the jacket, yellow stripes on the breeches; and, as the youth drew bridle, saluted, and turned to ride forward beside him, he caught sight of a lieutenant’s shoulder straps on the sergeant’s shell jacket.
“Well, youngster,” he said, smiling, “don’t they clothe you in the regulars? You’re as eccentric as our butternut friends yonder.”
“I couldn’t buy a full uniform,” she said truthfully. She did not add that she had left at a minute’s notice for the most dangerous undertaking ever asked of her, borrowing discarded makeshifts anywhere at hazard.
“Are you a West Pointer?”
“No.”
“Oh! You’ve their seat — and their shapely leanness. Are you going with us?”
“Where are you going?”
Stanley laughed. “I’m sure I don’t know. It looks to me as though we were riding straight into rebeldom.”
“Don’t you know why?” she asked, looking at him from under the shadow of her visor.
“No. Do you?”
“Yes.”
After a pause: “Well,” he said, laughing, “are you going to tell me?”
“Yes — later.”
Neck and neck, knee and knee they rode forward at the head of the Black Horse troop, along a road which became dusky beyond the first patch of woods.
After the inner camp lines had been passed the regiment halted while a troop was detailed as flankers and an advanced guard galloped off ahead. Along the road behind, the guns of the Rhode Island Battery came thudding and bumping up, halting with a dull clash of chains.
Stanley said: “This is one of Baring’s pet raids; we’ve done it dozens of times. Once our entire division rode around Beauregard; but I didn’t see the old, blue star division flag this time, so I guess we’re going it alone. Hello! There’s infantry! We must be close to the extreme outposts.”
In the dusk they were passing a pasture where, guarded by sentinels, lay piled, in endless, straight rows, knapsacks, blankets, shelter tents, and long lines of stacked Springfield rifles. Soldiers with the white strings of canteens crossing their breasts were journeying to and from a stream that ran, darkling, out of the tangled woodland on their right.
On the opposite side of the road were the lines of the Seventieth Indiana, their colors, furled in oilcloth, lying horizontally across the forks of two stacks of rifles. Under them lay the color guard; the scabbarded swords of the colonel and his staff were stuck upright in the ground, and the blanket-swathed figures of the officers in poncho and havelock reposed close by.
The other regiment was the Eleventh Maine. Their colonel, strapped with his silver eagles, was watching the disposal of the colors by a sergeant wearing the broad stripe, blue diamond and triple underscoring on each sleeve. With the sergeant marched eight corporals, long-limbed, rugged giants of the color company, decorated with the narrow stripe and double chevron.
A few minutes later the cavalry moved out past the pickets, then swung due south.
Night had fallen — a clear, starlit, blossom-scented dimness freshening the air.
The Special Messenger, head bent, was still riding with Captain Stanley, evidently preferring his company so openly, so persistently, that the other officers, a little amused, looked sideways at the youngster from time to time.
After a while Stanley said pleasantly: “We haven’t exchanged names yet, and you haven’t told me why a regular is riding with us to-night.”
“On special service,” she said in a low voice.
“And your name and regiment?”
She did not appear to hear him; he glanced at her askance.
“You seem to be very young,” he said.
“The colonel of the Ninetieth Rhode Island fell at twenty-two.”
He nodded gravely. “It is a war of young men. I think Baring himself is only twenty-five. He’s breveted brigadier, too.”
“And you?” she asked timidly.
He laughed. “Thirty; and a thousand in experience.”
“I, too,” she said softly.
“You? Thirty?”
“No, only twenty-four; but your peer in experience.”
“Your voice sounds Southern,” he said in his pleasant voice, inviting confidence.
“Yes; my home was at Sandy River.”
Out of the corners of her eyes she saw him start and look around at her — felt his stern gaze questioning her; and rode straight on before her without response or apparent consciousness.
“Sandy River?” he repeated in a strained voice. “Did you say you lived there?”
“Yes,” indifferently.
The captain rode for a while in silence, then, carelessly: “There was, I believe, a family living there before the war — the Westcotes.”
“Yes.” She could scarcely utter a word for the suffocating throb of her heart.
“You knew them?”
“Yes.”
“Do — do they still live at Sandy River?”
“The house still stands. Major Westcote is dead.”
“Her — I mean their grandfather?”
She nodded, incapable of speech.
“And” — he hesitated— “and the boy? He used to ride a pony — the most fascinating little fellow — —”
“He is at school in the North.”
There was a silence, then the captain turned in his saddle and looked straight at her.
“Does Miss Westcote live there still?”
“Do you mean Celia Westcote?” asked the Messenger calmly.
“Yes — Celia—” His voice fell softly, making of her name a caressing cadence. The Special Messenger bent her head lower over her bridle.
“Why do you ask? Did you know her?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
The captain lifted his grave eyes, but the Messenger was not looking at him.
“I knew her — in a way — better than I ever knew any woman, and I saw her only three times in all my life. That is your answer — and my excuse for asking. Does she still live at Sandy River?”
“No.”
“Do you know where she has gone?”
“She is somewhere in the South.”
“Is she — married?” he asked under his breath.
The Special Messenger looked up at him, smiling in the darkness.
“No,” she said. “I heard that she lost her — heart — to a bandmaster of some cavalry regiment who was killed in action at Sandy River — three years ago.”
The captain straightened in his saddle as though he had been shot; in the dim light his lean face turned darkly scarlet.
“I see her occasionally,” continued the Messenger faintly; “have you any message — perhaps — —”
The captain turned slowly toward her. “Do you know where she is?”
“I expect that she will be within riding distance of me — very soon.”
“Is your mission a secret one?”
“Yes.”
“And you may see her — before very long?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell her,” said the captain, “that the bandmaster of the Fourth Missouri—” He strove to continue; his voice died in his throat.
“Yes — yes — say it,” whispered the Special Messenger. “I will tell her; she will understand — truly she will — whatever you say.”
“Tell her — that the bandmaster has — has never forgotten — —”
“Yes — yes — —”
“Never forgotten her!”
“Yes — oh, yes!”
“That he — he — —”
“Yes! Oh, please — please say it — don’t be afraid to say — what you wish!”
The captain’s voice was not under perfect control.
“Say that he — thinks of her.... Say that — that he — he thought of her when he was falling — there, in the charge at Sandy River — —”
“But he once told her that himself!” she cried. “Has he no more to tell her?”
And Captain Stanley, aghast, fairly leaped in his stirrups.
“Who are you?” he gasped. “What do you know of — —”
His voice was smothered in the sudden out-crash of rifles, through which startled trumpets sounded, followed by the running explosions of cavalry carbines.
“Attention! Draw sabres!” rang out a far voice in the increasing uproar.
The night air thrilled with the rushing swish of steel drawn swiftly across steel.
“Forward!” and “Forward! Forward!” echoed the officers, one after another.
“Steady — right dress!” — taken up by the troop officers: “Steady — right dress! By fours — right wheel — march!”
Pell-mell the flanking parties came crashing back out of the dusky undergrowth, and:
“Steady — trot! Steady — right dress — gallop!” came the orders.
“Gallop!” repeated her captain, blandly; and, under his breath: “We are going to charge. Quick, tell me who you are!”
“Steady — steady — charge!” came the clear shout from the front.
“Charge! Charge! Charge!” echoed the ringing orders from troop to troop.
In the darkness of the thickets she rode knee to knee with her captain. The grand stride of her horse thundering along beside his through obscurity filled her with wild exultation; she loosened curb and snaffle and spurred forward amid hundreds of plunging horses, now goaded frantic by the battle clangor of the trumpets.
Everywhere, right and left, the red flash of Confederate rifles ran along their flanks; here and there a stricken horse reared or stumbled, rolling over and over; or some bullet-struck rider swayed wide from the saddle and went down to annihilation.
Fringed with darting flames the cavalry drove on headlong into the unseen; behind clanked the flying battery, mounted gunners sabering the dark forms that leaped out of the underbrush; on — on — rushed horses and guns, riders and cannoneers — a furious, irresistible, chaotic torrent, thundering through the night.
Far behind them now danced and flickered the rifle flames; fainter, fainter grew the shots; and at last, galloping steadily and, by degrees, reforming as they rode, the column swung out toward the bushy hills in the west, slowed to a canter, to a trot, to a walk.
“We are through!” said the Special Messenger, brokenly, breathing fast as she pulled in her mount and turned in the starlight toward the man she rode beside.
At the same moment the column halted; and he drew bridle and looked steadily at her.
All around them was the confusion and turmoil of stamping, panting horses, the clank of metal, the heavy breathing of men.
“Look at me!” she whispered, baring her head in the starlight. “Quick! Look at me! Do you know me now? Look at me — if you — love me!”
A low cry broke from him; she held out both arms to him in the dim light, forcing her horse up against his stirrup.
“If you love me,” she breathed, “say so now!”
Leaning free from his saddle he caught her in his arms, held her, looked into her eyes.
“You?”
“Yes,” she gasped, “the Special Messenger — noncombatant!”
“The Special Messenger? You? Good God!”
A dull tattoo of hoofs along the halted column, nearer, nearer, clattering toward them from the front, and:
“Good-by!” she sobbed; “they’re coming for me! Oh — do you love me? Do you? Life was so dark and dreadful without you! I — I never forgot — never, never! I — —”
Her gloved hands cr
ept higher around the neck of the man who held her crushed in his arms.
“If I return,” she sighed, “will you love me? Don’t — don’t look at me that way. I will return — I promise. I love you so! I love you!”
Their lips clung for a second in the darkness, then she swung her horse, tearing herself free of his arms; and, bared head lifted to the skies, she turned south, riding all alone out into the starlit waste.
THE END
THE DANGER MARK
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. THE SEAGRAVES
CHAPTER II. IN TRUST
CHAPTER III. THE THRESHOLD
CHAPTER IV. THE YEAR OF DISCRETION
CHAPTER V. ROYA-NEH
CHAPTER VI. ADRIFT
CHAPTER VII. TOGETHER
CHAPTER VIII. AN AFTERGLOW
CHAPTER IX. CONFESSION
CHAPTER X. DUSK
CHAPTER XI. FÊTE GALANTE
CHAPTER XII. THE LOVE OF THE GODS
CHAPTER XIII. AMBITIONS AND LETTERS
CHAPTER XIV. THE PROPHETS
CHAPTER XV. DYSART
CHAPTER XVI. THROUGH THE WOODS
CHAPTER XVII. THE DANGER MARK
CHAPTER XVIII. BON CHIEN
CHAPTER XIX. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
CHAPTER XX. IN SEARCH OF HERSELF
CHAPTER XXI. THE GOLDEN HOURS
CHAPTER XXII. CLOUDY MOUNTAIN
CHAPTER XXIII. SINE DIE
CHAPTER XXIV. THE PROLOGUE ENDS
TO
MY FRIEND
JOHN CARRINGTON YATES
“‘Please do tell me somebody is scandalised.’”
CHAPTER I. THE SEAGRAVES
All day Sunday they had raised the devil from attic to cellar; Mrs. Farren was in tears, Howker desperate. Not one out of the fifteen servants considered necessary to embellish the Seagrave establishment could do anything with them after Kathleen Severn’s sudden departure the week before.
When the telegram announcing her mother’s sudden illness summoned young Mrs. Severn to Staten Island, every servant in the household understood that serious trouble was impending for them.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 421