The Complete Works of Stephen Crane (123 page)

“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he said again.

The girl, still with her hands behind her, began to back away.

“Is there any one else in the house?” he went on, while slowly following her. “I don’t wish to disturb you, but we had a fight with some rebel skirmishers in the woods, and I thought maybe some of them might have come in here. In fact, I was pretty sure of it. Are there any of them here?”

The girl looked at him and said, “No!” He wondered why extreme agitation made the eyes of some women so limpid and bright.

“Who is here besides yourself?”

By this time his pursuit had driven her to the end of the hall, and she remained there with her back to the wall and her hands still behind her. When she answered this question, she did not look at him but down at the floor. She cleared her voice and then said, “There is no one here.”

“No one?”

She lifted her eyes to him in that appeal that the human being must make even to falling trees, crashing bowlders, the sea in a storm, and said, “No, no, there is no one here.” He could plainly see her tremble.

Of a sudden he bethought him that she continually kept her hands behind her. As he recalled her air when first discovered, he remembered she appeared precisely as a child detected at one of the crimes of childhood. Moreover, she had always backed away from him. He thought now that she was concealing something which was an evidence of the presence of the enemy in the house.

“What are you holding behind you?” he said suddenly.

She gave a little quick moan, as if some grim hand had throttled her.

“What are you holding behind you?”

“Oh, nothing — please. I am not holding anything behind me; indeed I’m not.”

“Very well. Hold your hands out in front of you, then.”

“Oh, indeed, I’m not holding anything behind me. Indeed, I’m not.”

“Well,” he began. Then he paused, and remained for a moment dubious. Finally, he laughed. “Well, I shall have my men search the house, anyhow. I’m sorry to trouble you, but I feel sure that there is some one here whom we want.” He turned to the corporal, who with the other men was gaping quietly in at the door, and said, “Jones, go through the house.”

As for himself, he remained planted in front of the girl, for she evidently did not dare to move and allow him to see what she held so carefully behind her back. So she was his prisoner.

The men rummaged around on the ground floor of the house. Sometimes the captain called to them, “Try that closet,” “Is there any cellar?” But they found no one, and at last they went trooping toward the stairs which led to the second floor.

But at this movement on the part of the men the girl uttered a cry — a cry of such fright and appeal that the men paused. “Oh, don’t go up there! Please don’t go up there! — ple — ease! There is no one there! Indeed — indeed there is not! Oh, ple — ease!”

“Go on, Jones,” said the captain calmly.

The obedient corporal made a preliminary step, and the girl bounded toward the stairs with another cry.

As she passed him, the captain caught sight of that which she had concealed behind her back, and which she had forgotten in this supreme moment. It was a pistol.

She ran to the first step, and standing there, faced the men, one hand extended with perpendicular palm, and the other holding the pistol at her side. “Oh, please, don’t go up there! Nobody is there — indeed, there is not! P-l-e-a-s-e!” Then suddenly she sank swiftly down upon the step, and, huddling forlornly, began to weep in the agony and with the convulsive tremors of an infant. The pistol fell from her fingers and rattled down to the floor.

The astonished troopers looked at their astonished captain. There was a short silence.

Finally, the captain stooped and picked up the pistol. It was a heavy weapon of the army pattern. He ascertained that it was empty.

He leaned toward the shaking girl, and said gently, “Will you tell me what you were going to do with this pistol?”

He had to repeat the question a number of times, but at last a muffled voice said, “Nothing.”

“Nothing!” He insisted quietly upon a further answer. At the tender tones of the captain’s voice, the phlegmatic corporal turned and winked gravely at the man next to him.

“Won’t you tell me?”

The girl shook her head.

“Please tell me!”

The silent privates were moving their feet uneasily and wondering how long they were to wait.

The captain said, “Please won’t you tell me?”

Then this girl’s voice began in stricken tones half coherent, and amid violent sobbing: “It was grandpa’s. He — he — he said he was going to shoot anybody who came in here — he didn’t care if there were thousands of ‘em. And — and I know he would, and I was afraid they’d kill him. And so — and — so I stole away his pistol — and I was going to hide it when you — you — you kicked open the door.”

The men straightened up and looked at each other. The girl began to weep again.

The captain mopped his brow. He peered down at the girl. He mopped his brow again. Suddenly he said, “Ah, don’t cry like that.”

He moved restlessly and looked down at his boots. He mopped his brow again.

Then he gripped the corporal by the arm and dragged him some yards back from the others. “Jones,” he said, in an intensely earnest voice, “will you tell me what in the devil I am going to do?”

The corporal’s countenance became illuminated with satisfaction at being thus requested to advise his superior officer. He adopted an air of great thought, and finally said: “Well, of course, the feller with the gray sleeve must be upstairs, and we must get past the girl and up there somehow. Suppose I take her by the arm and lead her — —”

“What!” interrupted the captain from between his clinched teeth. As he turned away from the corporal, he said fiercely over his shoulder, “You touch that girl and I’ll split your skull!”

III.

The corporal looked after his captain with an expression of mingled amazement, grief, and philosophy. He seemed to be saying to himself that there unfortunately were times, after all, when one could not rely upon the most reliable of men. When he returned to the group he found the captain bending over the girl and saying, “Why is it that you don’t want us to search upstairs?”

The girl’s head was buried in her crossed arms. Locks of her hair had escaped from their fastenings and these fell upon her shoulder.

“Won’t you tell me?”

The corporal here winked again at the man next to him.

“Because,” the girl moaned—”because — there isn’t anybody up there.”

The captain at last said timidly, “Well, I’m afraid — I’m afraid we’ll have to — —”

The girl sprang to her feet again, and implored him with her hands. She looked deep into his eyes with her glance, which was at this time like that of the fawn when it says to the hunter, “Have mercy upon me!”

These two stood regarding each other. The captain’s foot was on the bottom step, but he seemed to be shrinking. He wore an air of being deeply wretched and ashamed. There was a silence.

Suddenly the corporal said in a quick, low tone, “Look out, captain!”

All turned their eyes swiftly toward the head of the stairs. There had appeared there a youth in a gray uniform. He stood looking coolly down at them. No word was said by the troopers. The girl gave vent to a little wail of desolation, “O Harry!”

He began slowly to descend the stairs. His right arm was in a white sling, and there were some fresh blood stains upon the cloth. His face was rigid and deathly pale, but his eyes flashed like lights. The girl was again moaning in an utterly dreary fashion, as the youth came slowly down toward the silent men in blue.

Six steps from the bottom of the flight he halted and said, “I reckon it’s me you’re looking for.”

The troopers had crowded forward a trifle and, posed in lithe, nervous attitudes, were watching him like cats. The captain remained unmoved. At the youth’s question he merely nodded his head and said, “Yes.”

The young man in gray looked down at the girl, and then, in the same even tone which now, however, seemed to vibrate with suppressed fury, he said, “And is that any reason why you should insult my sister?”

At this sentence, the girl intervened, desperately, between the young man in gray and the officer in blue. “Oh, don’t, Harry, don’t! He was good to me! He was good to me, Harry — indeed he was!”

The youth came on in his quiet, erect fashion until the girl could have touched either of the men with her hand, for the captain still remained with his foot upon the first step. She continually repeated: “O Harry! O Harry!”

The youth in gray man[oe]uvred to glare into the captain’s face, first over one shoulder of the girl and then over the other. In a voice that rang like metal, he said: “You are armed and unwounded, while I have no weapons and am wounded; but — —”

The captain had stepped back and sheathed his sabre. The eyes of these two men were gleaming fire, but otherwise the captain’s countenance was imperturbable. He said: “You are mistaken. You have no reason to — —”

“You lie!”

All save the captain and the youth in gray started in an electric movement. These two words crackled in the air like shattered glass. There was a breathless silence.

The captain cleared his throat. His look at the youth contained a quality of singular and terrible ferocity, but he said in his stolid tone, “I don’t suppose you mean what you say now.”

Upon his arm he had felt the pressure of some unconscious little fingers. The girl was leaning against the wall as if she no longer knew how to keep her balance, but those fingers — he held his arm very still. She murmured: “O Harry, don’t! He was good to me — indeed he was!”

The corporal had come forward until he in a measure confronted the youth in gray, for he saw those fingers upon the captain’s arm, and he knew that sometimes very strong men were not able to move hand nor foot under such conditions.

The youth had suddenly seemed to become weak. He breathed heavily and clung to the rail. He was glaring at the captain, and apparently summoning all his will power to combat his weakness. The corporal addressed him with profound straightforwardness, “Don’t you be a derned fool!” The youth turned toward him so fiercely that the corporal threw up a knee and an elbow like a boy who expects to be cuffed.