“We haven’t heard anything from them for days and days,” said Mary.
“Oh, they’re all right in the infantry,” said one man, to be consoling. “The infantry don’t do much fighting. They go bellering out in a big swarm and only a few of ’em get hurt. But if they was in the cavalry — the cavalry — —”
Mary interrupted him without intention. “Are you hungry?” she asked.
The soldiers looked at each other, struck by some sudden and singular shame. They hung their heads. “No, m’m,” replied one at last.
Santo, in his stall, was tranquilly chewing and chewing. Sometimes he looked benevolently over at them. He was an old horse and there was something about his eyes and his forelock which created the impression that he wore spectacles. Mary went and patted his nose. “Well, if you are hungry, I can get you something,” she told the men. “Or you might come to the house.”
“We wouldn’t dast go to the house,” said one. “That passel of Yanks was only a scouting crowd, most like. Just an advance. More coming, likely.”
“Well, I can bring you something,” cried the girl eagerly. “Won’t you let me bring you something?”
“Well,” said a soldier with embarrassment, “we hain’t had much. If you could bring us a little snack-like — just a snack — we’d — —”
Without waiting for him to cease, the girl turned toward the door. But before she had reached it she stopped abruptly. “Listen!” she whispered. Her form was bent forward, her head turned and lowered, her hand extended toward the men in a command for silence.
They could faintly hear the thudding of many hoofs, the clank of arms, and frequent calling voices.
“By cracky, it’s the Yanks!” The soldiers scrambled to their feet and came toward the door. “I knowed that first crowd was only an advance.”
The girl and the three men peered from the shadows of the barn. The view of the road was intersected by tree trunks and a little henhouse. However, they could see many horsemen streaming down the road. The horsemen were in blue. “Oh, hide — hide — hide!” cried the girl, with a sob in her voice.
“Wait a minute,” whispered a gray soldier excitedly. “Maybe they’re going along by. No, by thunder, they hain’t! They’re halting. Scoot, boys!”
They made a noiseless dash into the dark end of the barn. The girl, standing by the door, heard them break forth an instant later in clamorous whispers. “Where’ll we hide? Where’ll we hide? There hain’t a place to hide!” The girl turned and glanced wildly about the barn. It seemed true. The stock of hay had grown low under Santo’s endless munching, and from occasional levyings by passing troopers in gray. The poles of the mow were barely covered, save in one corner where there was a little bunch.
The girl espied the great feed box. She ran to it and lifted the lid. “Here! here!” she called. “Get in here.”
They had been tearing noiselessly around the rear part of the barn. At her low call they came and plunged at the box. They did not all get in at the same moment without a good deal of a tangle. The wounded men gasped and muttered, but they at last were flopped down on the layer of feed which covered the bottom. Swiftly and softly the girl lowered the lid and then turned like a flash toward the door.
No one appeared there, so she went close to survey the situation. The troopers had dismounted and stood in silence by their horses. A gray-bearded man, whose red cheeks and nose shone vividly above the whiskers, was strolling about with two or three others. They wore double-breasted coats, and faded yellow sashes were wound under their black leather sword belts. The gray-bearded soldier was apparently giving orders, pointing here and there.
Mary tiptoed to the feed box. “They’ve all got off their horses,” she said to it. A finger projected from a knothole near the top and said to her very plainly, “Come closer.” She obeyed, and then a muffled voice could be heard: “Scoot for the house, lady, and if we don’t see you again, why, much obliged for what you done.”
“Good-bye,” she said to the feed box.
She made two attempts to walk dauntlessly from the barn, but each time she faltered and failed just before she reached the point where she could have been seen by the blue-coated troopers. At last, however, she made a sort of a rush forward and went out into the bright sunshine.
The group of men in double-breasted coats wheeled in her direction at the instant. The gray-bearded officer forgot to lower his arm which had been stretched forth in giving an order.
She felt that her feet were touching the ground in a most unnatural manner. Her bearing, she believed, was suddenly grown awkward and ungainly. Upon her face she thought that this sentence was plainly written: “There are three men hidden in the feed box.”
The gray-bearded soldier came toward her. She stopped; she seemed about to run away. But the soldier doffed his little blue cap and looked amiable. “You live here, I presume?” he said.
“Yes,” she answered.
“Well, we are obliged to camp here for the night, and as we’ve got two wounded men with us I don’t suppose you’d mind if we put them in the barn.”
“In — in the barn?”
He became aware that she was agitated. He smiled assuringly. “You needn’t be frightened. We won’t hurt anything around here. You’ll all be safe enough.”
The girl balanced on one foot and swung the other to and fro in the grass. She was looking down at it. “But — but I don’t think ma would like it if — if you took the barn.”
The old officer laughed. “Wouldn’t she?” said he. “That’s so. Maybe she wouldn’t.” He reflected for a time and then decided cheerfully: “Well, we will have to go ask her, anyhow. Where is she? In the house?”
“Yes,” replied the girl, “she’s in the house. She — she’ll be scared to death when she sees you!”
“Well, you go and ask her then,” said the soldier, always wearing a benign smile. “You go ask her and then come and tell me.”
When the girl pushed open the door and entered the kitchen, she found it empty. “Ma!” she called softly. There was no answer. The kettle still was humming its low song. The knife and the curl of potato skin lay on the floor.
She went to her mother’s room and entered timidly. The new, lonely aspect of the house shook her nerves. Upon the bed was a confusion of coverings. “Ma!” called the girl, quaking in fear that her mother was not there to reply. But there was a sudden turmoil of the quilts, and her mother’s head was thrust forth. “Mary!” she cried, in what seemed to be a supreme astonishment, “I thought — I thought — —”
“Oh, ma,” blurted the girl, “there’s over a thousand Yankees in the yard, and I’ve hidden three of our men in the feed box!”
The elder woman, however, upon the appearance of her daughter had begun to thrash hysterically about on the bed and wail.
“Ma,” the girl exclaimed, “and now they want to use the barn — and our men in the feed box! What shall I do, ma? What shall I do?”
Her mother did not seem to hear, so absorbed was she in her grievous flounderings and tears. “Ma!” appealed the girl. “Ma!”
For a moment Mary stood silently debating, her lips apart, her eyes fixed. Then she went to the kitchen window and peeked.
The old officer and the others were staring up the road. She went to another window in order to get a proper view of the road, and saw that they were gazing at a small body of horsemen approaching at a trot and raising much dust. Presently she recognised them as the squad that had passed the house earlier, for the young man with the dim yellow chevron still rode at their head. An unarmed horseman in gray was receiving their close attention.
As they came very near to the house she darted to the first window again. The gray-bearded officer was smiling a fine broad smile of satisfaction. “So you got him?” he called out. The young sergeant sprang from his horse and his brown hand moved in a salute. The girl could not hear his reply. She saw the unarmed horseman in gray stroking a very black mustache and looking
about him coolly and with an interested air. He appeared so indifferent that she did not understand he was a prisoner until she heard the graybeard call out: “Well, put him in the barn. He’ll be safe there, I guess.” A party of troopers moved with the prisoner toward the barn.
The girl made a sudden gesture of horror, remembering the three men in the feed box.
III.
The busy troopers in blue scurried about the long lines of stamping horses. Men crooked their backs and perspired in order to rub with cloths or bunches of grass these slim equine legs, upon whose splendid machinery they depended so greatly. The lips of the horses were still wet and frothy from the steel bars which had wrenched at their mouths all day. Over their backs and about their noses sped the talk of the men.
“Moind where yer plug is steppin’, Finerty! Keep ‘im aff me!”
“An ould elephant! He shtrides like a schoolhouse.”
“Bill’s little mar — she was plum beat when she come in with Crawford’s crowd.”
“Crawford’s the hardest-ridin’ cavalryman in the army. An he don’t use up a horse, neither — much. They stay fresh when the others are most a-droppin’.”
“Finerty, will yeh moind that cow a yours?”
Amid a bustle of gossip and banter, the horses retained their air of solemn rumination, twisting their lower jaws from side to side and sometimes rubbing noses dreamfully.
Over in front of the barn three troopers sat talking comfortably. Their carbines were leaned against the wall. At their side and outlined in the black of the open door stood a sentry, his weapon resting in the hollow of his arm. Four horses, saddled and accoutred, were conferring with their heads close together. The four bridle reins were flung over a post.
Upon the calm green of the land, typical in every way of peace, the hues of war brought thither by the troops shone strangely. Mary, gazing curiously, did not feel that she was contemplating a familiar scene. It was no longer the home acres. The new blue, steel, and faded yellow thoroughly dominated the old green and brown. She could hear the voices of the men, and it seemed from their tone that they had camped there for years. Everything with them was usual. They had taken possession of the landscape in such a way that even the old marks appeared strange and formidable to the girl.
Mary had intended to go and tell the commander in blue that her mother did not wish his men to use the barn at all, but she paused when she heard him speak to the sergeant. She thought she perceived then that it mattered little to him what her mother wished, and that an objection by her or by anybody would be futile. She saw the soldiers conduct the prisoner in gray into the barn, and for a long time she watched the three chatting guards and the pondering sentry. Upon her mind in desolate weight was the recollection of the three men in the feed box.
It seemed to her that in a case of this description it was her duty to be a heroine. In all the stories she had read when at boarding school in Pennsylvania, the girl characters, confronted with such difficulties, invariably did hair breadth things. True, they were usually bent upon rescuing and recovering their lovers, and neither the calm man in gray nor any of the three in the feed box was lover of hers, but then a real heroine would not pause over this minor question. Plainly a heroine would take measures to rescue the four men. If she did not at least make the attempt, she would be false to those carefully constructed ideals which were the accumulation of years of dreaming.
But the situation puzzled her. There was the barn with only one door, and with four armed troopers in front of this door, one of them with his back to the rest of the world, engaged, no doubt, in a steadfast contemplation of the calm man and, incidentally, of the feed box. She knew, too, that even if she should open the kitchen door, three heads and perhaps four would turn casually in her direction. Their ears were real ears.
Heroines, she knew, conducted these matters with infinite precision and despatch. They severed the hero’s bonds, cried a dramatic sentence, and stood between him and his enemies until he had run far enough away. She saw well, however, that even should she achieve all things up to the point where she might take glorious stand between the escaping and the pursuers, those grim troopers in blue would not pause. They would run around her, make a circuit. One by one she saw the gorgeous contrivances and expedients of fiction fall before the plain, homely difficulties of this situation. They were of no service. Sadly, ruefully, she thought of the calm man and of the contents of the feed box.
The sum of her invention was that she could sally forth to the commander of the blue cavalry, and confessing to him that there were three of her friends and his enemies secreted in the feed box, pray him to let them depart unmolested. But she was beginning to believe the old graybeard to be a bear. It was hardly probable that he would give this plan his support. It was more probable that he and some of his men would at once descend upon the feed box and confiscate her three friends. The difficulty with her idea was that she could not learn its value without trying it, and then in case of failure it would be too late for remedies and other plans. She reflected that war made men very unreasonable.
All that she could do was to stand at the window and mournfully regard the barn. She admitted this to herself with a sense of deep humiliation. She was not, then, made of that fine stuff, that mental satin, which enabled some other beings to be of such mighty service to the distressed. She was defeated by a barn with one door, by four men with eight eyes and eight ears — trivialities that would not impede the real heroine.
The vivid white light of broad day began slowly to fade. Tones of gray came upon the fields, and the shadows were of lead. In this more sombre atmosphere the fires built by the troops down in the far end of the orchard grew more brilliant, becoming spots of crimson colour in the dark grove.
The girl heard a fretting voice from her mother’s room. “Mary!” She hastily obeyed the call. She perceived that she had quite forgotten her mother’s existence in this time of excitement.
The elder woman still lay upon the bed. Her face was flushed and perspiration stood amid new wrinkles upon her forehead. Weaving wild glances from side to side, she began to whimper. “Oh, I’m just sick — I’m just sick! Have those men gone yet? Have they gone?”
The girl smoothed a pillow carefully for her mother’s head. “No, ma. They’re here yet. But they haven’t hurt anything — it doesn’t seem. Will I get you something to eat?”
Her mother gestured her away with the impatience of the ill. “No — no — just don’t bother me. My head is splitting, and you know very well that nothing can be done for me when I get one of these spells. It’s trouble — that’s what makes them. When are those men going? Look here, don’t you go ‘way. You stick close to the house now.”
“I’ll stay right here,” said the girl. She sat in the gloom and listened to her mother’s incessant moaning. When she attempted to move, her mother cried out at her. When she desired to ask if she might try to alleviate the pain, she was interrupted shortly. Somehow her sitting in passive silence within hearing of this illness seemed to contribute to her mother’s relief. She assumed a posture of submission. Sometimes her mother projected questions concerning the local condition, and although she laboured to be graphic and at the same time soothing, unalarming, her form of reply was always displeasing to the sick woman, and brought forth ejaculations of angry impatience.
Eventually the woman slept in the manner of one worn from terrible labour. The girl went slowly and softly to the kitchen. When she looked from the window, she saw the four soldiers still at the barn door. In the west, the sky was yellow. Some tree trunks intersecting it appeared black as streaks of ink. Soldiers hovered in blue clouds about the bright splendour of the fires in the orchard. There were glimmers of steel.
The girl sat in the new gloom of the kitchen and watched. The soldiers lit a lantern and hung it in the barn. Its rays made the form of the sentry seem gigantic. Horses whinnied from the orchard. There was a low hum of human voices. Sometimes small detachments of t
roopers rode past the front of the house. The girl heard the abrupt calls of sentries. She fetched some food and ate it from her hand, standing by the window. She was so afraid that something would occur that she barely left her post for an instant.
A picture of the interior of the barn hung vividly in her mind. She recalled the knot-holes in the boards at the rear, but she admitted that the prisoners could not escape through them. She remembered some inadequacies of the roof, but these also counted for nothing. When confronting the problem, she felt her ambitions, her ideals tumbling headlong like cottages of straw.
Once she felt that she had decided to reconnoitre at any rate. It was night; the lantern at the barn and the camp fires made everything without their circle into masses of heavy mystic blackness. She took two steps toward the door. But there she paused. Innumerable possibilities of danger had assailed her mind. She returned to the window and stood wavering. At last, she went swiftly to the door, opened it, and slid noiselessly into the darkness.
For a moment she regarded the shadows. Down in the orchard the camp fires of the troops appeared precisely like a great painting, all in reds upon a black cloth. The voices of the troopers still hummed. The girl started slowly off in the opposite direction. Her eyes were fixed in a stare; she studied the darkness in front for a moment, before she ventured upon a forward step. Unconsciously, her throat was arranged for a sudden shrill scream. High in the tree branches she could hear the voice of the wind, a melody of the night, low and sad, the plaint of an endless, incommunicable sorrow. Her own distress, the plight of the men in gray — these near matters as well as all she had known or imagined of grief — everything was expressed in this soft mourning of the wind in the trees. At first she felt like weeping. This sound told her of human impotency and doom. Then later the trees and the wind breathed strength to her, sang of sacrifice, of dauntless effort, of hard carven faces that did not blanch when Duty came at midnight or at noon.
She turned often to scan the shadowy figures that moved from time to time in the light at the barn door. Once she trod upon a stick, and it flopped, crackling in the intolerable manner of all sticks. At this noise, however, the guards at the barn made no sign. Finally, she was where she could see the knot-holes in the rear of the structure gleaming like pieces of metal from the effect of the light within. Scarcely breathing in her excitement she glided close and applied an eye to a knothole. She had barely achieved one glance at the interior before she sprang back shuddering.
Complete Works of Stephen Crane Page 94
