Ailsa Paige Part 65

"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 Ca.s.son 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 pa.s.sed.

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; a.s.sistants 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 pa.s.sed swiftly to and fro; a soldier stood by a pile of severed limbs pa.s.sing out bandages to a.s.sistants 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.

"G.o.d?" 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 pa.s.sing 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. .h.i.t."

"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.

"d.a.m.n 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 gra.s.s, 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 pa.s.sing 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 grease.

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 s.h.a.ggy 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 ma.s.s 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?"