章节正文
She knew that he had a furlough, of course; but it puzzled her
to hear him constantly repeating the words. So the day passed and then,
Darby's delirium still continuing, she made out to get to a neighbor's
to ask help. The neighbor had to go to Mrs. Douwill's as the only place
where there was a chance of getting any medicine, and it happened
that on the way back she fell in with a couple of soldiers, on horseback,
who asked her a few questions. They were members of
a home and conscript guard just formed, and when she left them
they had learned her errand.
Fortunately, Darby's illness took a better turn next day,
and by sunset he was free from delirium.
Things had not fared well over at Cove Mills's during these days
any more than at Mrs. Stanley's. Vashti was in a state of mind
which made her mother wonder if she were not going crazy.
She set it down to the storm she had been out in that evening,
for Vashti had not mentioned Darby's name. She kept his presence to herself,
thinking that -- thinking so many things that she could not speak or eat.
Her heart was like lead within her; but she could not rid herself
of the thought of Darby. She could have torn it out for hate of herself;
and to all her mother's questioning glances she turned the face of a sphinx.
For two days she neither ate nor spoke. She watched the opposite hill
through the rain which still kept up -- something was going on over there,
but what it was she could not tell. At last, on the evening of the third day,
she could stand it no longer, and she set out from home to learn something;
she could not have gone to Mrs. Stanley's, even if she had wished to do so;
for the bottom was still a sea extending from side to side,
and it was over her head in the current. She set off, therefore,
up the stream on her own side, thinking to learn something up that way.
She met the woman who had taken the medicine to Darby that evening,
and she told her all she knew, mentioning among other things
the men of the conscript guard she had seen. Vashti's heart
gave a sudden bound up into her throat. As she was so near she went on up
to the Cross-roads; but just as she stepped out into the road
before she reached there, she came on a small squad of horsemen
riding slowly along. She stood aside to let them pass;
but they drew in and began to question her as to the roads about them.
They were in long cloaks and overcoats, and she thought they were
the conscript guard, especially as there was a negro with them
who seemed to know the roads and to be showing them the way.
Her one thought was of Darby; he would be arrested and shot.
When they questioned her, therefore, she told them of the roads
leading to the big river around the fork and quite away from the district.
Whilst they were still talking, more riders came around the curve,
and the next instant Vashti was in the midst of a column of cavalry,
and she knew that they were the Federals. She had one moment
of terror for herself as the restive horses trampled around her,
and the calls and noises of a body of cavalry moving dinned in her ears;
but the next moment, when the others gave way and a man whom she knew to be
the commander pressed forward and began to question her, she forgot her
own terror in fear for her cause. She had all her wits about her instantly;
and under a pretence of repeating what she had already told the first men,
she gave them such a mixture of descriptions that the negro was called up
to unravel it. She made out that they were trying to reach the big river
by a certain road, and marched in the night as well as in the day.
She admitted that she had never been on that road but once.
And when she was taken along with them a mile or two to the place
where they went into bivouac until the moon should rise,
she soon gave such an impression of her denseness and ignorance that,
after a little more questioning, she was told that she might go home
if she could find her way, and was sent by the commander out of the camp.
She was no sooner out of hearing of her captors than she began to run
with all her speed. Her chief thought was of Darby. Deserter as he was,
and dead to her, he was a man, and could advise her, help her.
She tore through the woods the nearest way, unheeding the branches
which caught and tore her clothes; the stream, even where she struck it,
was out of its banks; but she did not heed it -- she waded through,
it reaching about to her waist, and struck out again at the top of her speed.
It must have been a little before midnight when she emerged from the pines
in front of the Stanley cabin. The latch-string was out,
and she knocked and pushed open the door almost simultaneously.
All she could make out to say was, "Darby." The old woman was on her feet,
and the young man was sitting up in the bed, by the time she entered.
Darby was the first to speak.
"What do you want here?" he asked, sternly.
"Darby -- the Yankees -- all around," she gasped -- "out on the road yonder."
"What!"
A minute later the young man, white as a ghost, was getting on his jacket
while she told her story, beginning with what the woman she had met
had told her of the two men she had seen. The presence of a soldier
had given her confidence, and having delivered her message both women
left everything else to him. His experience or his soldier's instinct
told him what they were doing and also how to act. They were a raid which
had gotten around the body of the army and were striking for the capital;
and from their position, unless they could be delayed they might surprise it.
In the face of the emergency a sudden genius seemed to illuminate
the young man's mind. By the time he was dressed he was ready with his plan
-- Did Vashti know where any of the conscript guard stayed?
Yes, down the road at a certain place. Good; it was on the way.
Then he gave her his orders. She was to go to this place and rouse any one
she might find there and tell them to send a messenger to the city
with all speed to warn them, and were to be themselves if possible
at a certain point on the road by which the raiders were travelling,
where a little stream crossed it in a low place in a heavy piece
of swampy woods. They would find a barricade there and a small force might
possibly keep them back. Then she was to go on down and have the bridge,
ten or twelve miles below on the road between the forks burned,
and if necessary was to burn it herself; and it must be done by sunrise.
But they were on the other road, outside of the forks, the girl explained,
to which Darby only said, he knew that, but they would come back
and try the bridge road.
"And you burn the bridge if you have to do it with your own hand, you hear --
and now go," he said.
"Yes -- I'll do it," said the girl obediently and turned to the door.
The next instant she turned back to him: he had his gun
and was getting his axe.
"And, Darby ----?" she began falteringly, her heart in her eyes.
"Go," said the young soldier, pointing to the door, and she went
just as he took up his old rifle and stepped over to where his mother sat
white and dumb. As she turned at the edge of the clearing and looked back
up the path over the pine-bushes she saw him step out of the door
with his gun in one hand and his axe in the other.
An hour later Darby, with the fever still hot on him,
was cutting down trees in the darkness on the bank of a marshy little stream,
and throwing them into the water on top of one another across the road,
in a way to block it beyond a dozen axemen's work for several hours,
and Vashti was trudging through the darkness miles away to give the warning.
Every now and then the axeman stopped cutting and listened,
and then went on again. He had cut down a half-dozen trees and formed
a barricade which it would take hours to clear away before cavalry could pass,
when, stopping to listen, he heard a sound that caused him
to put down his axe: the sound of horses splashing along through the mud.
His practised ear told him that there were only three or four of them,
and he took up his gun and climbed up on the barricade and waited.
Presently the little squad of horsemen came in sight,
a mere black group in the road. They saw the dark mass lying across the road
and reined in; then after a colloquy came on down slowly.
Darby waited until they were within fifty yards of his barricade,
and then fired at the nearest one. A horse wheeled, plunged,
and then galloped away in the darkness, and several rounds from pistols
were fired toward him, whilst something went on on the ground.
Before he could finish reloading, however, the men had turned around
and were out of sight. In a minute Darby climbed over the barricade
and strode up the road after them. He paused where the man he had shot
had fallen. The place in the mud was plain; but his comrades had taken him up
and carried him off. Darby hurried along after them. Day was just breaking,
and the body of cavalry were preparing to leave their bivouac
when a man emerged from the darkness on the opposite side of the camp
from that where Little Darby had been felling trees,
and walked up to the picket. He was halted and brought up
where the fire-light could shine on him, and was roughly questioned --
a tall young countryman, very pale and thin, with an old ragged slouched hat
pulled over his eyes, and an old patched uniform on his gaunt frame.
He did not seem at all disturbed by the pistols displayed around him,
but seated himself at the fire and looked about in a dull kind of way.
"What do you want?" they asked him, seeing how cool he was.
"Don't you want a guide?" he asked, drawlingly.
"Who are you?" inquired the corporal in charge. He paused.
"Some calls me a d'serter," he said, slowly.
The men all looked at him curiously.
"Well, what do you want?"
"I thought maybe as you wanted a guide," he said, quietly.
"We don't want you. We've got all the guide we want," answered the corporal,
roughly, "and we don't want any spies around here either, you understand?"
"Does he know the way? All the creeks is up now, an' it's sort o' hard
to git erlong through down yonder way if you don't know the way
toller'ble well?"
"Yes, he knows the way too -- every foot of it -- and a good deal more
than you'll see of it if you don't look out."
"Oh! That road down that way is sort o' stopped up," said the man,
as if he were carrying on a connected narrative and had not heard him.
"They's soldiers on it too a little fur'er down, and they's done got word
you're a-comin' that a-way."
"What's that?" they asked, sharply.
"Leastways it's stopped up, and I knows a way down this a-way in and about
as nigh as that," went on the speaker, in the same level voice.
"Where do you live?" they asked him.
"I lives back in the pines here a piece."
"How long have you lived here?"
"About twenty-three years, I b'leeves; 'ats what my mother says."
"You know all the country about here?"
"Ought to."
"Been in the army?"
"Ahn--hahn."
"What did you desert for?"
Darby looked at him leisurely.
"'D you ever know a man as 'lowed he'd deserted? I never did."
A faint smile flickered on his pale face.
He was taken to the camp before the commander, a dark,
self-contained looking man with a piercing eye and a close mouth,
and there closely questioned as to the roads, and he gave the same account
he had already given. The negro guide was brought up and his information
tallied with the new comer's as far as he knew it, though he knew well
only the road which they were on and which Darby said was stopped up.
He knew, too, that a road such as Darby offered to take them by
ran somewhere down that way and joined the road they were on
a good distance below; but he thought it was a good deal longer way
and they had to cross a fork of the river.
There was a short consultation between the commander and one or two
other officers, and then the commander turned to Darby, and said:
"What you say about the road's being obstructed this way is partly true;
do you guarantee that the other road is clear?"
Darby paused and reflected.
"I'll guide you," he said, slowly.
"Do you guarantee that the bridge on the river is standing
and that we can get across?"
"Hit's standing now, fur as I know."
"Do you understand that you are taking your life in your hand?"
Darby looked at him coolly.
"And that if you take us that way and for any cause --
for any cause whatsoever we fail to get through safe,
we will hang you to the nearest tree?"
to hear him constantly repeating the words. So the day passed and then,
Darby's delirium still continuing, she made out to get to a neighbor's
to ask help. The neighbor had to go to Mrs. Douwill's as the only place
where there was a chance of getting any medicine, and it happened
that on the way back she fell in with a couple of soldiers, on horseback,
who asked her a few questions. They were members of
a home and conscript guard just formed, and when she left them
they had learned her errand.
Fortunately, Darby's illness took a better turn next day,
and by sunset he was free from delirium.
Things had not fared well over at Cove Mills's during these days
any more than at Mrs. Stanley's. Vashti was in a state of mind
which made her mother wonder if she were not going crazy.
She set it down to the storm she had been out in that evening,
for Vashti had not mentioned Darby's name. She kept his presence to herself,
thinking that -- thinking so many things that she could not speak or eat.
Her heart was like lead within her; but she could not rid herself
of the thought of Darby. She could have torn it out for hate of herself;
and to all her mother's questioning glances she turned the face of a sphinx.
For two days she neither ate nor spoke. She watched the opposite hill
through the rain which still kept up -- something was going on over there,
but what it was she could not tell. At last, on the evening of the third day,
she could stand it no longer, and she set out from home to learn something;
she could not have gone to Mrs. Stanley's, even if she had wished to do so;
for the bottom was still a sea extending from side to side,
and it was over her head in the current. She set off, therefore,
up the stream on her own side, thinking to learn something up that way.
She met the woman who had taken the medicine to Darby that evening,
and she told her all she knew, mentioning among other things
the men of the conscript guard she had seen. Vashti's heart
gave a sudden bound up into her throat. As she was so near she went on up
to the Cross-roads; but just as she stepped out into the road
before she reached there, she came on a small squad of horsemen
riding slowly along. She stood aside to let them pass;
but they drew in and began to question her as to the roads about them.
They were in long cloaks and overcoats, and she thought they were
the conscript guard, especially as there was a negro with them
who seemed to know the roads and to be showing them the way.
Her one thought was of Darby; he would be arrested and shot.
When they questioned her, therefore, she told them of the roads
leading to the big river around the fork and quite away from the district.
Whilst they were still talking, more riders came around the curve,
and the next instant Vashti was in the midst of a column of cavalry,
and she knew that they were the Federals. She had one moment
of terror for herself as the restive horses trampled around her,
and the calls and noises of a body of cavalry moving dinned in her ears;
but the next moment, when the others gave way and a man whom she knew to be
the commander pressed forward and began to question her, she forgot her
own terror in fear for her cause. She had all her wits about her instantly;
and under a pretence of repeating what she had already told the first men,
she gave them such a mixture of descriptions that the negro was called up
to unravel it. She made out that they were trying to reach the big river
by a certain road, and marched in the night as well as in the day.
She admitted that she had never been on that road but once.
And when she was taken along with them a mile or two to the place
where they went into bivouac until the moon should rise,
she soon gave such an impression of her denseness and ignorance that,
after a little more questioning, she was told that she might go home
if she could find her way, and was sent by the commander out of the camp.
She was no sooner out of hearing of her captors than she began to run
with all her speed. Her chief thought was of Darby. Deserter as he was,
and dead to her, he was a man, and could advise her, help her.
She tore through the woods the nearest way, unheeding the branches
which caught and tore her clothes; the stream, even where she struck it,
was out of its banks; but she did not heed it -- she waded through,
it reaching about to her waist, and struck out again at the top of her speed.
It must have been a little before midnight when she emerged from the pines
in front of the Stanley cabin. The latch-string was out,
and she knocked and pushed open the door almost simultaneously.
All she could make out to say was, "Darby." The old woman was on her feet,
and the young man was sitting up in the bed, by the time she entered.
Darby was the first to speak.
"What do you want here?" he asked, sternly.
"Darby -- the Yankees -- all around," she gasped -- "out on the road yonder."
"What!"
A minute later the young man, white as a ghost, was getting on his jacket
while she told her story, beginning with what the woman she had met
had told her of the two men she had seen. The presence of a soldier
had given her confidence, and having delivered her message both women
left everything else to him. His experience or his soldier's instinct
told him what they were doing and also how to act. They were a raid which
had gotten around the body of the army and were striking for the capital;
and from their position, unless they could be delayed they might surprise it.
In the face of the emergency a sudden genius seemed to illuminate
the young man's mind. By the time he was dressed he was ready with his plan
-- Did Vashti know where any of the conscript guard stayed?
Yes, down the road at a certain place. Good; it was on the way.
Then he gave her his orders. She was to go to this place and rouse any one
she might find there and tell them to send a messenger to the city
with all speed to warn them, and were to be themselves if possible
at a certain point on the road by which the raiders were travelling,
where a little stream crossed it in a low place in a heavy piece
of swampy woods. They would find a barricade there and a small force might
possibly keep them back. Then she was to go on down and have the bridge,
ten or twelve miles below on the road between the forks burned,
and if necessary was to burn it herself; and it must be done by sunrise.
But they were on the other road, outside of the forks, the girl explained,
to which Darby only said, he knew that, but they would come back
and try the bridge road.
"And you burn the bridge if you have to do it with your own hand, you hear --
and now go," he said.
"Yes -- I'll do it," said the girl obediently and turned to the door.
The next instant she turned back to him: he had his gun
and was getting his axe.
"And, Darby ----?" she began falteringly, her heart in her eyes.
"Go," said the young soldier, pointing to the door, and she went
just as he took up his old rifle and stepped over to where his mother sat
white and dumb. As she turned at the edge of the clearing and looked back
up the path over the pine-bushes she saw him step out of the door
with his gun in one hand and his axe in the other.
An hour later Darby, with the fever still hot on him,
was cutting down trees in the darkness on the bank of a marshy little stream,
and throwing them into the water on top of one another across the road,
in a way to block it beyond a dozen axemen's work for several hours,
and Vashti was trudging through the darkness miles away to give the warning.
Every now and then the axeman stopped cutting and listened,
and then went on again. He had cut down a half-dozen trees and formed
a barricade which it would take hours to clear away before cavalry could pass,
when, stopping to listen, he heard a sound that caused him
to put down his axe: the sound of horses splashing along through the mud.
His practised ear told him that there were only three or four of them,
and he took up his gun and climbed up on the barricade and waited.
Presently the little squad of horsemen came in sight,
a mere black group in the road. They saw the dark mass lying across the road
and reined in; then after a colloquy came on down slowly.
Darby waited until they were within fifty yards of his barricade,
and then fired at the nearest one. A horse wheeled, plunged,
and then galloped away in the darkness, and several rounds from pistols
were fired toward him, whilst something went on on the ground.
Before he could finish reloading, however, the men had turned around
and were out of sight. In a minute Darby climbed over the barricade
and strode up the road after them. He paused where the man he had shot
had fallen. The place in the mud was plain; but his comrades had taken him up
and carried him off. Darby hurried along after them. Day was just breaking,
and the body of cavalry were preparing to leave their bivouac
when a man emerged from the darkness on the opposite side of the camp
from that where Little Darby had been felling trees,
and walked up to the picket. He was halted and brought up
where the fire-light could shine on him, and was roughly questioned --
a tall young countryman, very pale and thin, with an old ragged slouched hat
pulled over his eyes, and an old patched uniform on his gaunt frame.
He did not seem at all disturbed by the pistols displayed around him,
but seated himself at the fire and looked about in a dull kind of way.
"What do you want?" they asked him, seeing how cool he was.
"Don't you want a guide?" he asked, drawlingly.
"Who are you?" inquired the corporal in charge. He paused.
"Some calls me a d'serter," he said, slowly.
The men all looked at him curiously.
"Well, what do you want?"
"I thought maybe as you wanted a guide," he said, quietly.
"We don't want you. We've got all the guide we want," answered the corporal,
roughly, "and we don't want any spies around here either, you understand?"
"Does he know the way? All the creeks is up now, an' it's sort o' hard
to git erlong through down yonder way if you don't know the way
toller'ble well?"
"Yes, he knows the way too -- every foot of it -- and a good deal more
than you'll see of it if you don't look out."
"Oh! That road down that way is sort o' stopped up," said the man,
as if he were carrying on a connected narrative and had not heard him.
"They's soldiers on it too a little fur'er down, and they's done got word
you're a-comin' that a-way."
"What's that?" they asked, sharply.
"Leastways it's stopped up, and I knows a way down this a-way in and about
as nigh as that," went on the speaker, in the same level voice.
"Where do you live?" they asked him.
"I lives back in the pines here a piece."
"How long have you lived here?"
"About twenty-three years, I b'leeves; 'ats what my mother says."
"You know all the country about here?"
"Ought to."
"Been in the army?"
"Ahn--hahn."
"What did you desert for?"
Darby looked at him leisurely.
"'D you ever know a man as 'lowed he'd deserted? I never did."
A faint smile flickered on his pale face.
He was taken to the camp before the commander, a dark,
self-contained looking man with a piercing eye and a close mouth,
and there closely questioned as to the roads, and he gave the same account
he had already given. The negro guide was brought up and his information
tallied with the new comer's as far as he knew it, though he knew well
only the road which they were on and which Darby said was stopped up.
He knew, too, that a road such as Darby offered to take them by
ran somewhere down that way and joined the road they were on
a good distance below; but he thought it was a good deal longer way
and they had to cross a fork of the river.
There was a short consultation between the commander and one or two
other officers, and then the commander turned to Darby, and said:
"What you say about the road's being obstructed this way is partly true;
do you guarantee that the other road is clear?"
Darby paused and reflected.
"I'll guide you," he said, slowly.
"Do you guarantee that the bridge on the river is standing
and that we can get across?"
"Hit's standing now, fur as I know."
"Do you understand that you are taking your life in your hand?"
Darby looked at him coolly.
"And that if you take us that way and for any cause --
for any cause whatsoever we fail to get through safe,
we will hang you to the nearest tree?"
- constantly [´kɔnstəntli]
ad.经常地；不断地 (初中英语单词) - illness [´ilnis] n.生病，不健康，疾病 (初中英语单词)
- sunset [´sʌnset] n.日落；晚霞 (初中英语单词)
- stream [stri:m] n.河 vi.流出；飘扬 (初中英语单词)
- throat [θrəut] n.咽喉；嗓子；出入口 (初中英语单词)
- therefore [´ðeəfɔ:] ad.&conj.因此；所以 (初中英语单词)
- instant [´instənt] a.立即的 n.紧迫；瞬间 (初中英语单词)
- column [´kɔləm] n.柱；柱状物；纵队 (初中英语单词)
- terror [´terə] n.恐怖；惊骇 (初中英语单词)
- commander [kə´mɑ:ndə] n.指挥员，司令员 (初中英语单词)
- mixture [´mikstʃə] n.混合；混合比；混合物 (初中英语单词)
- impression [im´preʃən] n.印刷；印象；效果 (初中英语单词)
- ignorance [´ignərəns] n.无知，愚昧 (初中英语单词)
- advise [əd´vaiz] vt.忠告；建议；通知 (初中英语单词)
- midnight [´midnait] n.午夜；漆黑 (初中英语单词)
- beginning [bi´giniŋ] n.开始，开端；起源 (初中英语单词)
- striking [´straikiŋ] a.显著的，明显的 (初中英语单词)
- genius [´dʒi:niəs] n.天才(人物)；天赋 (初中英语单词)
- messenger [´mesindʒə] n.使者；送信人 (初中英语单词)
- charge [tʃɑ:dʒ] v.收费；冲锋 n.费用 (初中英语单词)
- speaker [´spi:kə] n.演讲人；代言人 (初中英语单词)
- partly [´pɑ:tli] ad.部分地；不完全地 (初中英语单词)
- standing [´stændiŋ] n.持续 a.直立的 (初中英语单词)
- learned [´lə:nid] a.有学问的，博学的 (高中英语单词)
- cavalry [´kævəlri] n.骑兵(部队) (高中英语单词)
- pretence [pri´tens] n.假装；托词；无理要求 (高中英语单词)
- hearing [´hiəriŋ] n.听力；听证会；审讯 (高中英语单词)
- emergency [i´mə:dʒənsi] n.事变；紧急关头 (高中英语单词)
- whilst [wailst] conj.当...时候；虽然 (高中英语单词)
- strode [strəud] stride的过去式 (高中英语单词)
- hurried [´hʌrid] a.仓促的，慌忙的 (高中英语单词)
- roughly [´rʌfli] ad.粗糙地；毛糙地 (高中英语单词)
- countryman [´kʌntrimən] n.同胞(乡)，乡下人 (高中英语单词)
- ragged [´rægid] a.衣服破烂的 (高中英语单词)
- seeing [si:iŋ] see的现在分词 n.视觉 (高中英语单词)
- narrative [´nærətiv] a.叙述的 n.记事 (高中英语单词)
- guarantee [,gærən´ti:] n.保证；担保 vt.允诺 (高中英语单词)
- trying [´traiiŋ] a.难堪的；费劲的 (英语四级单词)
- gotten [´gɔtn] get的过去分词 (英语四级单词)
- bridge [bridʒ] n.桥(梁)；鼻梁；桥牌 (英语四级单词)
- clearing [´kliəriŋ] n.(森林中的)空旷地 (英语四级单词)
- corporal [´kɔ:pərəl] a.肉体的，身体的 (英语四级单词)
- consultation [,kɔnsəl´teiʃən] n.商量；会诊；查阅 (英语四级单词)
- whatsoever [,wɔtsəu´evə] (强势语)=whatever (英语四级单词)
- picket [´pikit] n.(尖)桩 v.设置；监视 (英语六级单词)
- piercing [´piəsiŋ] a.刺(贯)穿的；尖刻的 (英语六级单词)
- taking [´teikiŋ] a.迷人的 n.捕获物 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
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