Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  Berkley heard his name called out, and, looking up, saw Casson, astride a huge horse, signalling him eagerly from his saddle.

  “Who in hell have you got there?” he asked, pushing his horse up to the litter. “By God, it’s Colonel Arran,” he added in a modified voice. “Is he very bad, Berkley?”

  “I don’t know. Can’t you stop one of those ambulances, Jack? I want to get him to the surgeons as soon as possible — —”

  “You bet!” said Casson, wheeling his horse and displaying the new chevrons of a sergeant. “Hey, you black offspring of a yellow whippet!” he bellowed to a driver, “back out there and be damn quick about it!” And he leaned from his saddle, and seizing the leaders by the head, swung them around with a volley of profanity. Then, grinning amiably at Berkley, he motioned the stretcher bearers forward and sat on his horse, garrulously superintending the transfer of the injured man.

  “There’s an emergency hospital just beyond that clump of trees,” he said. “You’d better take him there. Golly! but he’s hard hit. I guess that bullet found its billet. There’s not much hope when it’s a belly-whopper. Too bad, ain’t it? He was a bully old boy of a colonel; we all said so in the dragoons. Only — to hell with those lances of yours, Berkley! What cursed good are they alongside a gun? And I notice your regiment has its carbineers, too — which proves that your lances are no good or you wouldn’t have twelve carbines to the troop. Eh? Oh, you bet your boots, sonny. Don’t talk lance to me! It’s all on account of those Frenchmen on Little Mac’s staff — —”

  “For God’s sake shut up!” said Berkley nervously. “I can’t stand any more just now.”

  “Oh!” said Casson, taken aback, “I didn’t know you were such cronies with your Colonel. Sorry, my dear fellow; didn’t mean to seem indifferent. Poor old gentleman. I guess he will pull through. There are nurses at the front — nice little things. God bless ‘em! Say, don’t you want to climb up with the driver?”

  Berkley hesitated. “Do you know where my regiment is? I ought to go back — if there’s anybody to look after Colonel Arran — —”

  “Is that your horse?”

  “No — some staff officer’s, I guess.”

  “Where’s yours?”

  “Dead,” said Berkley briefly. He thought a moment, then tied his horse to the tail-board and climbed up beside the driver.

  “Go on,” he said; “drive carefully”, and he nodded his thanks to

  Casson as the team swung north.

  The Provost Guard, filing along, carbines on thigh, opened to let him through; and he saw them turning in their saddles to peer curiously into the straw as the ambulance passed.

  It was slow going, for the road was blocked with artillery and infantry and other ambulances, but the driver found a lane between guns and caissons and through the dusty blue columns plodding forward toward the firing line; and at last a white hospital tent glimmered under the trees, and the slow mule team turned into a leafy lane and halted in the rear of a line of ambulances which were all busily discharging their mangled burdens. The cries of the wounded were terrible.

  Operating tables stood under the trees in the open air; assistants sponged the blood from them continually; the overworked surgeons, stripped to their undershirts, smeared with blood, worked coolly and rapidly in the shade of the oak-trees, seldom raising their voices, never impatient. Orderlies brought water in artillery buckets; ward-masters passed swiftly to and fro; a soldier stood by a pile of severed limbs passing out bandages to assistants who swarmed around, scurrying hither and thither under the quiet orders of the medical directors.

  A stretcher was brought; Colonel Arran opened his heavy lids as they placed him in it. His eyes summoned Berkley.

  “It’s all right,” he said in the ghost of a voice. “Whichever way it turns put, it’s all right. . . I’ve tried to live lawfully. . . . It is better to live mercifully. I think — she — would forgive. . . . Will you?”

  “Yes.”

  He bent and took the wounded man’s hand, in his.

  “If I knew — if I knew—” he said, and his burning eyes searched the bloodless face beneath him.

  “God?” he whispered— “if it were true — —”

  A surgeon shouldered him aside, glanced sharply at the patient, motioned the bearers forward.

  Berkley sat down by the roadside, bridle in hand, head bowed in his arms. Beside him his horse fed quietly on the weeds. In his ears rang the cries of the wounded; all around him he was conscious of people passing to and fro; and he sat there, face covered, deadly tired, already exhausted to a stolidity that verged on stupor.

  He must have slept, too, because when he sat up and opened his eyes again it was nearly sundown, and somebody had stolen his horse.

  A zouave with a badly sprained ankle, lying on a blanket near him, offered him bread and meat that stank; and Berkley ate it, striving to collect his deadened thoughts. After he had eaten he filled the zouave’s canteen at a little rivulet where hundreds of soldiers were kneeling to drink or dip up the cool, clear water.

  “What’s your reg’ment, friend?” asked the man.

  “Eighth New York Lancers.”

  “Lord A’mighty! You boys did get cut up some, didn’t you?”

  “I guess so. Are you Colonel Craig’s regiment?”

  “Yes. We got it, too. Holy Mother — we got it f’r fair!”

  “Is your Colonel all right?”

  “Yes. Steve — his son — corporal, 10th Company — was hit.”

  “What!”

  “Yes, sir. Plumb through the collar-bone. He was one of the first to get it. I was turrible sorry for his father — fine old boy! — and he looked like he’d drop dead hisself — but, by gosh, friend, when the stretcher took Steve to the rear the old man jest sot them clean-cut jaws o’ his’n, an’ kep’ his gold-wired gig-lamps to the front. An’ when the time come, he sez in his ca’m, pleasant way: ‘Boys,’ sez he, ‘we’re agoin’ in. It’s a part of the job,’ sez he, ‘that has got to be done thorough. So,’ sez he, ‘we’ll jest mosey along kind o’ quick steppin’ now, and we’ll do our part like we al’us does do it. For’rd — mar-r-rch!’”

  Berkley sat still, hands clasped over his knees, thinking of Stephen, and of Celia, and of the father out yonder somewhere amid the smoke.

  “Gawd,” said the zouave, “you got a dirty jab on your cocanut, didn’t you?”

  The bandage had slipped, displaying the black scab of the scarcely healed wound; and Berkley absently replaced it.

  “That’ll ketch the girls,” observed the zouave with conviction.

  “Damn it, I’ve only got a sprained ankle to show my girl.”

  “The war’s not over,” said Berkley indifferently. Then he got up, painfully, from the grass, exchanged adieux with the zouave, and wandered off toward the hospital to seek for news of Colonel Arran.

  It appeared that the surgeons had operated, and had sent the Colonel a mile farther to the rear, where a temporary hospital had been established in a young ladies’ seminary. And toward this Berkley set out across the fields, the sound of the battle dinning heavily in his aching cars.

  As he walked he kept a sullen eye out for his stolen horse, never expecting to see him, and it was with a savage mixture of surprise and satisfaction that he beheld him, bestridden by two dirty malingerers from a New York infantry regiment who rode on the snaffle with difficulty and objurgations and reproached each other for their mutual discomfort.

  How they had escaped the Provost he did not know; how they escaped absolute annihilation they did not comprehend; for Berkley seized the bridle, swung the horse sharply, turning them both out of the saddle; then, delivering a swift kick apiece, as they lay cursing, he mounted and rode forward amid enthusiastic approval from the drivers of passing army waggons.

  Long since the towering smoke in the west had veiled the sun; and now the sky had become gray and thick, and already a fine drizzling rain was falling, turning the red dust to grea
se.

  Slipping, floundering, his horse bore him on under darkening skies; rain fell heavily now; he bared his hot head to it; raised his face, masked with grime, and let the drops fall on the dark scar that burned under the shifting bandage.

  In the gathering gloom eastward he saw the horizon redden and darken and redden with the cannon flashes; the immense battle rumour filled his ears and brain, throbbing, throbbing.

  “Which way, friend?” demanded a patrol, carelessly throwing his horse across Berkley’s path.

  “Orderly to Colonel Arran, 8th New York Lancers, wounded. Is that the hospital, yonder?”

  “Them school buildin’s,” nodded the patrol. “Say, is your colonel very bad? I’m 20th New York, doin’ provost. We seen you fellers at White Oak. Jesus! what a wallop they did give us — —”

  He broke off grimly, turned his horse, and rode out into a soggy field where some men were dodging behind a row of shaggy hedge bushes. And far behind Berkley heard his loud, bullying voice:

  “Git! you duck-legged, egg-suckin’, skunk-backed loafers! Go on, there! Aw, don’t yer talk back to me ‘r I’ll let m’ horse bite yer pants off! Back yer go! Forrard! Hump! Hump! Scoot!”

  Through the heavily falling rain he saw the lighted school buildings looming among the trees; turned into the drive, accounted for himself, gave his horse to a negro with orders to care for it, and followed a ward-master into an open-faced shed where a kettle was boiling over a sheet-iron stove.

  The ward-master returned presently, threading his way through a mass of parked ambulances to the shed where Berkley sat on a broken cracker box.

  “Colonel Arran is very low. I guess you’d better not bother him to-night.”

  “Is he — mortally hurt?”

  “I’ve seen worse.”

  “He may get well?”

  “I’ve seen ’em get well,” said the non-committal ward-master. Then, looking Berkley over: “You’re pretty dirty, ain’t you? Are you—” he raised his eyebrows significantly.

  “I’m clean,” said Berkley with the indifference habituated to filth.

  “All right. They’ll fix you up a cot somewhere. If Colonel Arran comes out all right I’ll call you. He’s full of opium now.”

  “Did they get the bullet?”

  “Oh, yes. I ain’t a surgeon, my friend, but I hear a lot of surgeon talk. It’s the shock — in a man of his age. The wound’s clean, so far — not a thread in it, I hear. Shock — and gangrene — that’s what we look out for. . . . What’s the news down by the river?”

  “I don’t know,” said Berkley.

  “Don’t you know if you got licked?”

  “I don’t think we did. You’d hear the firing out here much plainer.”

  “You’re the 8th Cavalry, ain’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “They say you got cut up.”

  “Some.”

  “And how about the Zouaves?”

  “Oh, they’re there yet,” said Berkley listlessly. Fatigue was overpowering him; he was aware, presently, that a negro, carrying a lantern, was guiding his stumbling steps into a small building where, amid piles of boxes, an army cot stood covered by a blanket. Berkley gave him a crumpled mess of paper money, and he almost expired.

  Later the same negro rolled a wooden tub into the room, half filled it with steaming water, and stood in profound admiration of his work, grinning at Berkley.

  “Is you-all gwine bresh up, suh?” he inquired.

  Berkley straightened his shoulders with an effort, unbuckled his belt, and slowly began to take off his wet uniform.

  The negro aided him respectfully; that wet wad of dollars had done its work profoundly.

  “Yo’ is de adjetant ob dis here Gin’ral ob de Lancers, suh? De po’ ole Gin’ral! He done git shot dreffle bad, suh. . . . Jess you lay on de flo’, suh, t’will I gits yo’ boots off’n yo’ laigs! Dar! Now jess set down in de tub, suh. I gwine scrub you wif de saddle-soap — Lor’, Gord-a-mighty! Who done bang you on de haid dat-a-way?” — scrubbing vigorously with the saddle-soap all the while. “Spec’ you is lame an’ so’ all over, is you? Now I’se gwine rub you haid, suh; an’ now I’se gwine dry you haid.” He chuckled and rubbed and manipulated, yet became tender as a woman in drying the clipped hair and the scarred temple. And, before Berkley was aware of what he was about, the negro lifted him and laid him on the cot.

  “Now,” he chuckled, “I’se gwine shave you.” And he fished out a razor from the rear pocket of his striped drill overalls, rubbed the weapon of his race with a proud thumb, spread more soap over Berkley’s upturned face, and fell deftly to work, wiping off the accumulated lather on the seat of his own trousers.

  Berkley remembered seeing him do it twice; then remembered no more. A blessed sense of rest soothed every bone; in the heavenly stillness and surcease from noise he drifted gently into slumber, into a deep dreamless sleep.

  The old negro looked at him, aged face wrinkled in compassion.

  “Po’ li’l sodger boy,” he muttered. “Done gib me fo’ dollahs.

  Lor’ Gor’ a’mighty! Spec’ Mars Linkum’s men is all richer’n ole

  Miss.”

  He cast another glance at the sleeping man, then picked up the worn, muddy boots, threw the soiled jacket and breeches over his arm, and shuffled off, shaking his grizzled head.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  It was still dark when he awoke with a violent start, dreaming of loud trumpets, and found himself sitting upright on his cot, staring into obscurity.

  Outside on the veranda a multitude of heavy steps echoed and re-echoed over the creaking boards; spurs clinked, sabres dragged and clanked; a man’s harsh, nasal voice sounded irritably at intervals:

  “We’re not an army — we’re not yet an army; that’s what’s the matter. You can’t erect an army by uniforming and drilling a few hundred thousand clerks and farmers. You can’t manufacture an army by brigading regiments — by creating divisions and forming army corps. There is only one thing on God’s long-enduring earth that can transform this mob of State troops into a National army — discipline! — and that takes time; and we’ve got to take it and let experience kick us out of one battle into another. And some day we’ll wake up to find ourselves a real army, with real departments, really controlled and in actual and practical working order. Now it’s every department for itself and God help General McClellan! He has my sympathy! He has a dirty job on his hands half done, and they won’t let him finish it!”

  And again the same impatient voice broke out contemptuously:

  “War? These two years haven’t been two years of war! They’ve been two years of a noisy, gaudy, rough and tumble! Bull Run was opera bouffe! The rest of it has been one fantastic and bloody carnival! Did anybody ever before see such a grandmother’s rag bag of uniforms in an American army! What in hell do we want of zouaves in French uniforms, cavalry, armed with Austrian lances, ridiculous rocket-batteries, Polish riders, Hungarian hussars, grenadiers, mounted rifles, militia and volunteers in every garb, carrying every arm ever created by foreign armourers and military tailors! . . . But I rather guess that the fancy-dress-ball era is just about over. I’ve a notion that we’re coming down to the old-fashioned army blue again. And the sooner the better. I want no more red fezzes and breeches in my commands for the enemy to blaze at a mile away! I want no more picturesque lances. I want plain blue pants and Springfield rifles, by God! And I guess I’ll get them, if I make noise enough in North America!”

  Who this impassioned military critic was, shouting opinions to the sky, Berkley never learned; for presently there was a great jingling and clatter and trample of horses brought around, and the officers, whoever they were, mounted and departed as they had arrived, in darkness, leaving Berkley on his cot in the storehouse to stretch his limbs, and yawn and stretch again, and draw the warm folds of the blanket closer, and lie blinking at the dark, through which, now, a bird had begun to twitter a sweet, fitful salute to the coming dawn.
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  Across the foot of his couch lay folded an invalid’s red hospital wrapper; beside his bed stood the slippers. After a few moments he rose, stepped into the slippers, and, drawing on the woolen robe, belted it in about his thin waist. Then he limped out to the veranda.

  In the dusk the bird sang timidly. Berkley could just make out the outlines of the nearer buildings, and of tall trees around. Here and there lights burned behind closed windows; but, except for these, the world was black and still; stiller for the deadened stamping of horses in distant unseen stalls.

  An unmistakable taint of the hospital hung in the fresh morning air — a vague hint of anaesthetics, of cooking — the flat odour of sickness and open wounds.

  Lanterns passed in the darkness toward the stables; unseen shapes moved hither and thither, their footsteps sharply audible. He listened and peered about him for a while, then went back to the store-room, picked his way among the medical supplies, and sat down on the edge of his bed.

  A few moments later he became aware of somebody moving on the veranda, and of a light outside; heard his door open, lifted his dazzled eyes in the candle rays.

  “Are you here, Philip?” came a quiet, tired voice. “You must wake, now, and dress. Colonel Arran is conscious and wishes to see you.”

  “Ailsa! Good God!”

  She stood looking at him placidly, the burning candle steady in her hand, her; face very white and thin.

  He had risen, standing there motionless in his belted invalid’s robe with the stencilled S. C. on the shoulder. And now he would have gone to her, hands outstretched, haggard face joyously illumined; but she stepped back with a swift gesture that halted him; and in her calm, unfriendly gaze he hesitated, bewildered, doubting his senses.