Chambers Robert William
Special Messenger
“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 crept 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
OTHER BOOKS
BY ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
Mr. Chambers is unquestionably the most popular of American novelists to-day. He is the author of some thirty books of extraordinary variety in fiction. He was born in New York, and studied in the studios of Paris to become an artist. While working at painting he took up writing as a pastime, and had such immediate success that he soon gave up art and turned to literature as his life work. Always, as a part of this interest, he has studied and worked in the field of natural history, so that to-day he is something of an authority on birds and butterflies, a confirmed fisherman, and a good shot. All these qualities—the study of art, the experience with nature, both in the line of sport and as an entomologist—have put their stamp upon his work, as will be seen by a glance at his books, for only a few of which there is space here available.
THE FIRING LINE
The most recent of his works is the third in a group of studies in American society life. It is full of the swing of good romance, behind which lies the bright philosophy that the saving quality in our American families is to come with the injection of fresh blood into each new generation. The story itself deals with the adopted daughter of a multimillionaire, who does not even know her own parentage—a girl from nowhere, with all the charm and beauty which a bringing up in the midst of wealth can give her. The hero is a young American of good family who first meets her at Palm Beach, Florida. Here is a background that Mr. Chambers loves—the outdoor life of exotic Florida, the everglades, the hunting, the shooting, and the sea—all in the midst of that other exotic life which goes with a winter resort and a large group of the idle rich. The story—already in its 150th thousand—is, perhaps, the author’s favorite piece of work.
THE YOUNGER SET
is also of the social comédie humaine of America, with its scenes laid in New York and on Long Island. Here again, behind a romance of love and of society complications, Mr. Chambers conceals his philosophic suggestions that may be gathered from the title. The younger set comes into our society fresh and unspoiled with each generation, and in its way contributes something of freshness, something of vigor to keep the social world from going down hill on a grade of decadence. The story deals with a man who, although still young, feels that his life is practically over because his marriage, through no fault of his own, has proved a failure and ended in divorce. He meets a young girl just introduced into society, whose wholesome youth charms him and leads him back to optimism and life. The character of Eileen is perhaps one of Mr. Chambers’s most real and most successful creations. The fact that this novel, after one year, is in its 200th thousand is sufficient proof of its popularity. In
THE FIGHTING CHANCE
the author still deals with American society, but here his background is the consideration of the evil influences of inheritance in old families. The scene is still New York and Long Island, full of the charm of outdoor life and hunting episodes. The principal male character Siward is cursed with the inheritance of drink. Siward’s struggles to conquer his Enemy, and the fighting chance he sees at last in the affection of a girl, carry on the story to a hopeful finish. The novel has been published two years and a few months and more than 250,000 copies have been sold, so that its claims to success are undeniable.
THE RECKONING
The varied interests of the author which have been suggested above are sustained in this novel. It is a story of a side light of the American Revolution, and it makes the fourth novel in a series of books telling in fiction of the scenes and invoking the characters in the Mohawk Valley during the war for American Independence. The first novel of the series was “Cardigan”; the second, “The Maid-at-Arms”; the third is still to be written, when the distinguished author can find time; while “The Reckoning” is the last.
IOLE
Another splendid example of the author’s versatility is this farcical, humorous satire on the art nouveau of to-day. Mr. Chambers, with all his knowledge of the artistic jargon, has in this little novel created a pious fraud of a father, who brings up his eight lovely daughters in the Adirondacks, where they wear pink pajamas and eat nuts and fruit, and listen to him while he lectures them and everybody else on art. It is easy to imagine what happens when several rich and practical young New Yorkers stumble upon this group. Everybody is happy in the end.
THE TRACER OF LOST PERSONS
Here again is a totally different vein of half humor and half seriousness. Mr. Chambers selects a firm of detectives (based, by the way, on fact) who guarantee to find lost persons, missing heirs, etc. In this case the author’s fancy and humor suggest to a young bachelor, who has always had an ideal girl in mind, that he go and describe her as a real person to Mr. Keen, the Tracer of Lost Persons. He gives his description, and, as may be supposed, Mr. Keen finds the girl, but after such a series of episodes, escapes, discoveries and dénouements that it takes a full-grown novel to accomplish the task.
THE TREE OF HEAVEN
Half in fancy, half in fact, the thread of an occult idea runs through this weird theme. You cannot, even at the end, be quite sure whether the author has been making fun of you or not. Perhaps, if the truth were told, he could not quite tell you himself. The tale all hangs about one of a group of friends who lives for years in the Far East and gathers some of the occult knowledge of that far-off land. Into the woof of an Eastern rug is woven the soul of a woman. Into the glisten of a scarab is polished the prophecy of a life. Into the whole charming romance of the book is woven the thread of an intangible, “creepy,” mysterious force. What is it? Is it a joke? Who knows?
SOME LADIES IN HASTE
This novel is as widely different from all the others as if another hand had written it and another mind conceived it. This time, too, it is impossible to say whether the author is quizzing our new thought transference and telepathic friends, or whether he is half inclined to suggest that “there may be something in it.” Here is a character who suddenly discovers that by concentrating his mind on certain ideas he can inject or project them into others. And forthwith he sets half a dozen couples making love to each other in most grotesque surroundings. They climb trees and become engaged. They put on strange Panlike costumes and prance about the woods—always charming, always well bred, always with a touch of romance that makes the reader read on to the end and finally lay the book down with a smile of pleasure and a little sigh that it is over so soon.
One might run on for twenty books more, but there is not space enough even to mention Mr. Chambers’s delightful nature books for children, telling how Geraldine and Peter go wandering through “Outdoor-land,” “Mountain-Land,” “Orchard-Land,” “River-Land,” “Forest-Land,” and “Garden-Land.” They, in turn, are as different from his novels in fancy and conception as each of his novels from the other. No living writer has given to the public so varied a list of books with such extraordinary popularity in all of them as Mr. Robert W. Chambers.
