Part 3

"Birds! No. A soldier, unless he is spoiling with garrison idleness, won't waste his genius for killing on innocent birds and their like. Besides, the artillery fellows over yonder have scared them away from the whole neighborhood. We were target-shooting with pistols. Oh, if you knew the hot coals and icicles I had to swallow when I recognized you up there!" He looked ahead, and saw with joy that his companions had departed. "Here is Molly, and my bay is behind the rock. May I ride home with you?" He helped her to mount, and sprang into his own saddle. The lonely, lovely earth and sky were theirs together; they went slowly, slowly down to the ford. Molly was thirsty, or else perverse; for she paused, lowered her aristocratic little head, and began to drink. Presently Saladin, the bay, standing by her on the brink, did the same; and the two riders sat, perforce, conscious of their like silent sympathy and society. An impulse rushed on each to lean over towards the other also, to lay cheek to happy cheek over the shallow water, in their youth, in the sun. The Sergeant stiffened himself with an effort.

"Although it is a holiday," he said, scanning the distance, "and although there's no end of jollity afoot, greased poles, football, leap-frog, hurdle-races, and all that--and did you know that Mrs. Willoughby, escorted by the Colonel and the Adjutant, had gone for the day? There are to be charming diversions at the infantry camp, and a ball to wind up with. You were asked, too, I hear; but you missed it, straying off to your hermitage."

"I am glad I did! Please finish your sentence."

"Oh, I forgot. I was going to add that this sort of relaxation, just now, might be risky, when Old Glory and I may be ordered out before morning to waltz to fife-music!"

"A battle? Do you truly think it likely?"

"I half believe it. I don't mind telling you I have a premonition of it, involving another premonition regarding myself. But what of it? Our old friend Cicero, I think it was, used to say that we are born not for ourselves, but for the Republic." He laughed, as if he had said a jocund thing. He had not meant then to test her feeling for him; but he had allies in the hour and its emotion. Cecily rejoiced in his cheerful acceptances, and remembered her impersonal pride in the circumstances of his enlistment, of which she had heard on all sides at home. Her voice fell, unawares, into its shy inflections, its little wild spontaneous minors, as she said, seeing the horses rear their heads: "Will you please tell me, Sergeant Blanchard, how you came to join the army? All that I know is that you were abroad, and that you gave up your pleasure, and came back."

He began quietly, as they passed the stream and made for higher ground:

"It is quite a story. I was off on a tour through India and Egypt, with my college chum, my dear old Arthur Hughes. Neither of us had any notion of returning home, and we were in the middle of the best time two fellows ever had on this earth, when I had a queer sort of warning. We were both curled up on the window-sill of my room, in our hotel at Cairo, one hot night, sleepless, and enjoying a smoke. Suddenly, above the street, among the shadows and spangled points of all those near domes and pinnacles, I saw what I thought was our national flag, hanging, hardly stirring. It seemed to spring up out of nothing, in its familiar, varied colors, to startle my eye. Then, in a moment, I perceived that it was no flag, but a living spirit, a genius, a guardian angel, whatever you like to call it, which bore the oddest resemblance to one. There before me was the dreamiest figure; a tall beautiful young woman in a helmet, the moon shining on the little spike of it. A long blue veil, bluer than the atmosphere, covered her face, and was blown about her shoulders, not so heavy of texture but that the jewels in her flowing hair flashed through it with wonderful lustres; and her garment fell away in long alternate whites and reds, like the liquid bars we sometimes see flushing and paling in our own sky in the north, when the aurora borealis comes in the March evenings. There she floated many minutes before fading away; and once she raised her veil and beckoned, and her eyes dwelt on me so imploringly that they have become more real to me than anything else in my life. I tell you it shook my heart.... Miss Carter, if you will allow me, I must say that the vision was like, was very like,"--the Sergeant choked a little,--"like you. When I first saw you, I was so startled, it gave me, well, almost a swoon. That is a novel word, and ludicrous, perhaps, but I can use no other. At any rate, the resemblance has drawn me towards you, I can't say how strongly or how much. Please forgive me." For Cecily's wild-rose face was warm.

"I had forgotten all about Arthur. But when I turned to clutch him in my excitement, my first glance told me that he had not seen the phantom, and that he would deride my faith in it. So I tried to laugh off my sudden attack of second-sight; but it was of no use. I dropped into silence when it was my turn to speak, and abandoning presently the effort to seem indifferent, I parted from him, and went to bed.

"It was the only ghostly thing that had ever happened to me, and it impressed me tremendously. For my part, I could get no rest by day or night; that influence was over me like a bad star. I racked my brain to explain it by natural agencies, and it only set me thinking the more of our blessed country being in some terrible trouble. When I came to that, I jumped up and started for the bath, to cool off, and then changed my mind, and struck first for the ticket-office. Whom should I knock into on the way but old Arthur in his fez, fierce as a lion. 'Bob,' he said, dragging me into a booth, 'it's war, war! President Lincoln is calling for men, and I'm going home to spite the devil.' 'There's no choice. I am going home anyhow,' I said. 'What news is there?'

"The little which had travelled that far, I heard from him. Sumter was being fired upon, on the 11th of April, 1861, when I saw Our Lady of the Union. I call her that; but I never spoke of her to Arthur, or to any one. Before June set in we arrived in New York, and we volunteered. Arthur has distinguished himself right and left. He is in Andersonville now, dear fellow. I should hate to end there."

"A martyr is a martyr; the place matters nothing," the girl replied.

"I know," he said; "I did not mean to speak lightly; but I am one of those who cannot always avoid it when they feel much."

The Sergeant's cheeks were burning too, and he quickened his pace. Cecily did not speak, following the bounding bay. But a loneliness which she could not define came upon her; a resentment of the sacred ideal which could yet be to her friend his divinity, his beauty, his bride, in a world from which she was shut out as an irrelevance. And almost as soon, she questioned herself whether because of a tie dearer than the human, this golden-hearted Robert must lose, she in him must lose--what? For answer, the noble and foolish tears welled up from the depths, and fell into the folds across her knee. Her companion drew his own rein, and laid his hand upon Molly's.

"Oh, why do you cry? I can't bear it. What have I done?"

"Nothing."

"I did not intend to disturb you, to make you care about it, or pity me; I am much happier since that happened. Could it be--oh, could it be--" He gazed a moment upon her, absorbedly and absorbingly, and she turned away. For who can make conscious preparation for the imminent? Sudden ever is the finger of Death, to the watchers; sudden also is Love.

They were under the shade of some giant pines. The young man vaulted lightly to the ground, close to Molly's satin stirrupless flank, his hands clasped, his head thrown back, fired with adoring hope. When Cecily inclined towards him again, he saw in her (or was it his bewitched fancy?) the remote, incredible radiance of his old day-dream. The great flush rolled responsive to his own clear brow. He shook himself free, and found his voice. "Cecily," he said simply, "I love you; you must know that I love you. Such a love has no beginning and no end. You understand that and me. Of myself I have nothing to say. You have seen me only among Willoughby's recruits; but I never wished to be elsewhere. Judge of me, as we two are, now and here. Can you, do you think you could be my wife, by and by? Tell me. Tell me!" Then Cecily, simple too, in the same tremor of exaltation, put out her right hand. He caught at it with both his own, and buried his face there. His wide hat had fallen; the warm light was on his clustering hair. With a sweet instinct like motherliness, his maid, bending over, kissed it in benediction.

It was two o'clock when they crossed the ford, and the late afternoon found them still pacing on their roadless way, like the lost enchanted knight and lady of the Black Forest. They were less than a mile from Braleton, on the rocks, in sight of the tents, when they unsaddled and tethered the horses, and made the last halt. "Dearest," the Sergeant had said, lying at her feet, his elbow in the grass, "dedicate my sword." Raising himself, he made a motion as if drawing it, and held it towards her and the sunset; Cecily, in the same pretty pantomime, touched her lips to the viewless blade, priestess of a new investiture. "One thing we both love better than ourselves; is it not so?" She was not jealous now. "These United States, right or wrong!"

"Oh, no!" The soldier sheathed his sacred weapon. "Say justice, liberty, the rights of man; the things our United States ought to stand for." Then the light heart in him laughed; and Concrete and Abstract blessed each other. Happy and silent, they lingered on the brow of the pine copse; a breeze sprang up; vast and gorgeous sky-colors spread and deepened. The Sergeant's uplifted face was fixed upon his betrothed. She seemed to dissolve away before him, or before him, rather, to be vivified and set free. Slowly between her and him, transubstantiating her touching beauty, gathered a solemn, changeful, wavering cloud-splendor of ivory, rose, and sapphire, gathered out of the land of myths into recognized and unforgotten fact. For a quarter of an hour he endured that mystical glory; then his head dropped forward on her knees. A thing seen was yet upon him: once more Our Lady of the Union, but with a smile as if of one assured at last of ransom, and ineffably content. When Cecily touched him, wondering, he shuddered, and brushed an imagined film from his eyes. She sat there, innocent of any magic, unaware in what potter's hand her spirit was so much fine clay.

From the depths of the vale the croak of frogs arose, faint here and shriller there, then long-drawn and general: ever a most mournful, homesick, and foreboding sound to our armies in the South. The distant camp seemed ominously quiet; but on the outskirts of it was a dissolving shadow, a moving dark clot, there, a moment back, between them and the scarce-fluttering flag, and still there, now that the flag was hauled down, its bright hues effaced against the more vivid evening air. Presently the group of men, for such it was, scattered. Cecily's keen sight read what was written afar; the familiar figure of the one-armed brisk Lieutenant-Colonel in the saddle coming towards the hill, with others following on the gallop behind.

"You are needed," she said without preamble; "you must go to them." With emphasis and authority, slight and quick, yet irrevocable, she spoke. He turned about, and sprang to his feet from his enchantment at her side; for the divine day, the Sergeant's field-day, was over. "Is this the way of women, or only your way? You send me from you on a supposition, a scruple," he answered, plaintively.

"Go." She repeated it softly, and with closed eyes, lest she should look upon her own heart-break. "It is unnecessary, as you know," he replied; "but if you make it a point of honor, I am glad to obey." He held out his hands, and she took them, cherishing, steadfast, as in a pact. Her voice and step were strangely unsteady; they held up the mirror, as it were, to his. What was there in a commonplace incident to move them so to the depth? In a passionate presentiment, he drew her closer to him. "Are we to be given to each other only that we may be severed, and suffer the more? What if the end should be now? Cecily!"

But the young heroic mettle rose to meet his. "Beloved, you are mine and not mine. You are consecrated for the term of the war; so am I. I will always give you up to your task. Perhaps you may measure by that whether I love you." He looked down with a grateful sigh on her who so mysteriously held him to his sacrifice, and shared it, and through her and in her, on the old, old fate which he knew now was driving him to the cliff.

"If there is to be a fight, I want your flag, the flag you made!" he whispered, grasping at anything to hide this rending in him of the spirit from the flesh. "However, whenever I fall, I want to be buried in it. Is it done? May I take it for mine, before it is presented to the regiment?"

"Yes. You shall carry my colors here and in heaven. I will pray for my knight."

He kissed her once, twice, for the betrothal, and yet again for the farewell.

He took Molly, the fresher animal of the two, and spurred to the open ground below, breaking out from the wood-path, ready for any duty, on time. He looked illumined, detached, transfigured: a Saint Michael to be remembered after by his companions in the moral crises of their lives. The Lieutenant-Colonel drew rein, relieved. "I was wishing for you, of all people," he said; "I feared you were far away. There has been an alarm; we must sleep under arms. The Colonel and most of the officers have not returned. I will go back now. Take these six with you, and cross the railway tracks to Palmer's. It is a rough road, and a long journey; but report as soon as you can." The Sergeant started with his bayoneted cavalcade in a dash westward. Cecily, apprehensive of something unusual, saw the slow-rising dust, and, ahead of it, the erect leader, scaling the horizon, and vanishing into the yet glowing sky. A pang unutterable tore her; but, uttered, it would have been none other than _Amen_.

Poor Saladin was tired enough, having been out all day long; and Cecily led him carefully to the plain. Every clapping leaf, every crackling twig underfoot, struck a chill into her bosom, on the over-shadowing hill-slopes. She had played too brave a part under her mental turmoil, and in the presence of her lover, himself too easily enamoured of death. A spell greater than any he had felt was over her, breathing a blackness between her and the light. Now her ample courage was fast giving out. She saw a face in the thicket, and was barely able to nerve herself not to scream. A man, in a military dress she did not know, came forward, and raised his cap. It was Major Julian Brale, free at last to do some scouting over his ancestral acres, alone, and with hot revenges in his heart. He was sorry for her, and angry at her discovery. He apologized briefly, and helped her to mount, not without concern, but with a scornful coldness of manner which he could not help. When she had gone, he returned to the bushes, cursing the Eleventh; for he had recognized the saddle on the bay. The two forces were on the brink of battle; but he was not an expert sharp-shooter for nothing, and if he could but get sight of that thief, that coward, that hell-born villain who had taken his old father's precious Molly from him-- A moonbeam straggled in where he bent over, priming his rifle, and he moved from it into the dark.

Dinnerless, supperless, much too overwrought to go to bed, Cecily Carter sat in the Colonel's empty tent. For company, she had shaken out her great silken banner over the lounge, where the firelight, falling on it, seemed to praise its divine destroying loveliness with a poet's Pentecostal tongue. Once she murmured prayerfully: "Dear Robert, dear Robert." Something not herself had bade him go, and he was gone; there was all of herself now in these fears. The little parting from him which she was enduring became magnified and abiding, so that she looked upon him slain, and thought with a sort of joyous satisfaction how under the buttons of his old blue jacket, where nobody, not even his mother, knew of them, were rose-leaves all about the open wound next his heart; rose-leaves pressed most fervently, one by one, to her lips, and laid there. Other caress she could not give him; though she was his, he was the Republic's, for ever and ever. Again, she saw him carried on a howitzer to a green lonely place. A stone reared itself before her, and she read upon it an odd inscription: _If ye seek the summit of true honor, hasten with all speed into that heavenly country._ She started up. Was her brain indeed giving way? Who had spoken? Where had she heard those words? How piercing a beauty they had! Were they in the Church ritual? What did they mean? Why should they hound her from her rest?

The Colonel's little ormolu clock struck eleven. Almost on the stroke, the delayed revellers entered. Adela could not fail to notice her sister's nervousness, but attributed it to anxiety for herself. The Sultana of the Surgeon's christening had been prodigally feasted and flattered; she had come home with an armful of hothouse flowers, effulgent with gratification, and in a talking mood. The Colonel's boy brought in the lamps. When the Colonel himself followed, grown grim with the sudden tension and commotion about, his remark was to the point. "I'm afraid you women will have to get out of camp, quick. I smell powder. It is likely to be damned disagreeable." His handsome, worldly wife, coming, butterfly-like, in yellow, out of her dark wrappings, fixed him with her censorious eye. "James Willoughby! You have been drinking." He was wont, on such occasions, to cast a comical appealing glance at Cecily, of whom he was fond. She did not smile in return, and her pallor touched him; so that he went over to her at once. "What's the matter, child?" he asked, with affectionate anxiety. But an approaching clang and clatter, and the challenge of the sentry without, took from him what he meant to say; he left Cecily to her sister, and hurried into the air. His going added to her trouble; and yet she would have had no solace in keeping a friend near. Oh, the stress and strain of dull daily incident upon that inner universe, frangible as a bubble, where she and Robert had begun to live!--she and Robert, and the Love of Country alone, for between this and them must be union everlasting. Oh, the tyranny of all that is, laid upon him, faithful in his place; upon her, faithful in hers; the speechless dealings of lonely lovers with the Lone!

Private Cobbe, being foremost, saluted breathlessly: "Colonel, the pickets are being driven in; the enemy is advancing." The gallant fellow pressed his hand to his thigh; he was wounded, and he was soldier enough to feel that wound an ignominy which had been received obscurely, and elsewhere than on the field. Immediately, all along the tents, arose the multitudinous yet unconfused cries of "Form!" and "Fall in!" from the captains; the flapping guidons were borne hither and thither to their places, and the thousand horses, wheeling on their dancing hoofs by the gleam of lantern and torch under the watery moon, began to make huge, fantastic shadows along the old parade-ground. The Colonel, drawing on his gauntlets, and still afoot, noticed for the first time that Cobbe and McGrath held between them, each with an arm around him, an officer. For an instant, in the imperfect light, he thought him some prisoner, until he recognized, in a flash, Molly with her great liquid, excited eyes, Molly with her even mane hanging wet and limp, confronting him. Private McGrath had held in until now. He blurted: "I'm afraid he's gone, sir." The Colonel took a step forward, as if it were into eternity. The Surgeon, standing by, echoed after him: "My God!"

They lifted their friend down together, and carried him in, and laid him with extreme gentleness where by chance the new flag, a kingly winding-sheet, was above him and under. The Surgeon bent very low for a while over the lounge. The many in the tent, used to calamity less great than the loss of their best, held their breath; the Adjutant's dog, close to his master's legs, lifted his long gray throat and crooned softly and mournfully, as the band outside, far down the disparting columns, broke into a loud, thrilling strain, impatient for victory. The Sergeant was dead, with a ball in his breast. No one moved until Cecily groaned and dropped.

AN EVENT ON THE RIVER.

MORNING lay over Portsmouth and her great stretches of opaline sea. The little islands, north to the Maine shore, and east to the harbor-buoys, were ablaze with red and yellow bushes to the water-brink; the low-masted gunlows were beating out like a flock of dingy gulls; and from afar, pleasantly, musically, sounded the bugle at the Navy Yard. The Honorable Langdon Openshaw, standing among ruinous warehouses and wharves, built by the Sheafes in the hour of their commercial glory under the second George, looked down upon the clear Piscataqua at full flood, breathing between its day-long, Samson-like tugs at the yet enduring piers. It was a lonely spot; the wind had a way there, sometimes, of waking momentary, half-imagined odors, the ghosts of the cargoes of wines and spices in the prodigal past. His own solitude, the washing tide, the one towering linden yonder, the gambrel roofs and ancient gardens, the felt neighborhood of the dear wild little graveyard where his forbears slept, steeped his heart in overwhelming melancholy. He had already passed a week at the Rockingham. It was a strange date to choose, out of all his free and prosperous life, for a first visit since childhood to the fair old New England borough where he was born. A sort of morbid home-sickness had driven him back now, in his distresses, to her knee. For the Honorable Langdon Openshaw, innocent of the astounding crime with which he was charged, was out on bail.