The Cavalier
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George Washington Cable >> The Cavalier
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But the Captain answered headily; "No, sir! I've tried that twice
already; this time I'll cut them in two and be in their rear at one
dash! Bring in your company behind mine, if you choose."
Ferry drew back a few ranks but stayed with the column; Quinn had had
the toil of the chase, he should have also the glory of the fight. So
Ferry sent Gholson--whose horsemanship won a cheer from the passing
Louisianians as he cleared the roadside fence--across to Quinn, bidding
the Lieutenant slacken speed and count himself a reserve. And then into
the broad lane between grove and woods-pasture, with the charging yell,
the Louisianians thundered. Ah! but my Creole gentleman was a sight,
with his straight blade lifted in air and his face turned back on us
aglow with the joy of battle! I was huzzaing back at him and we were
passing the front gate of the grove avenue, when down through it came
from the house, with a tremor of echoes, the first shot; a shot and then
a woman's scream, and his blazing eyes said to me, "He is there! That
was Oliver!"
There was no time for speech. The shot was not a signal, yet on the
instant and in our very teeth, on our right and our left, the cross-fire
of the hidden and waiting foe flashed and pealed, and left and right, a
life for a life, our carbines answered from the saddle. For a moment the
odds against us were awful. In an instant the road was so full of fallen
horses and dismounted men that the jaded column faltered in confusion.
Our cunning enemy, seeing us charge in column, had swung the two
extremes of their line forward and inward. So, crouching and firing upon
us mounted, each half could fire toward the other with impunity, and
what bullets missed their mark buzzed and whined about our ears and
pecked the top rails of either fence like hail on a window. A wounded
horse drove mine back upon his haunches and caused him to plant a hoof
full on the breast of one of our Louisianians stretched dead on his back
as though he had lain there for an hour. Another man, pale, dazed,
unhurt, stood on the ground, unaware that he was under point-blank fire,
holding by the bits his beautiful horse, that pawed the earth
majestically and at every second or third breath blew from his flapping
nostrils a cloud of scarlet spray. They blocked up half the road. As we
swerved round them the horse of the company's first lieutenant slid
forward and downward with knees and nose in the dust, hurling his rider
into a lock of the fence, and the rider rose and rushed to the road
again barely in time to catch a glittering form that dropped rein and
sword and reeled backward from the saddle. It was his captain, shot
through the breast. An instant later our tangled column parted to right
and left, dashed into the locks of the two fences, sprang to the ground,
and began to repay the enemy in the coin of their own issue. Only a
dozen or so did otherwise, and it was my luck to be one of these.
Espying Ned Ferry at the very front, in the road, standing in his
stirrups and shouting back for followers to carry the charge on through,
we spurred toward him and he turned and led. Then what was my next
fortune but to see, astride of my stolen horse, the towering leader of
the foe, Captain Jewett.
He came into the road a few rods ahead of us through a gap his men had
earlier made opposite the big white gate. He answered our fierce halloo,
as he crossed, by a pistol-shot at Ferry, but Ferry only glanced around
at me and pointed after him with his sword. A number of blue-coats afoot
followed him to the gap but at our onset scattered backward, sturdily
returning our fire. Into the gap and into the enemy's left rear went
Ferry and his horsemen, but I turned the other way and spurred through
the woods-pasture gate after the Federal leader, he on my horse and I on
his. Down the highway, on either side, stood his brave men's horses in
the angles of the worm-fence, and two or three horse-holders took a shot
at me as I sped in after the man who was bent on reaching the right of
his divided force before Quinn should strike it, as I was bent on
foiling him. Twice I fired at his shapely back, and twice, while he kept
his speed among the tree-trunks, he looked back at me as coolly as at an
odd passer-by and sent me a ball from his revolver. A few more bounds
carried him near enough to his force to shout his commands, but half a
hundred cheers suddenly resounded in the depth of the woods-pasture, and
Quinn and his men charged upon the foe's right and rear. I joined the
shout and the shouters; in a moment the enemy were throwing down their
arms, and I turned to regain the road to the pond. For I had marked
Jewett burst through Quinn's line and with a score of shots ringing
after him make one last brave dash--for escape. Others, pursuing him,
bent northward, but my instinct was right, his last hope was for his
horse-holders, and at a sharp angle of the by-road, where it reached the
pond, exactly where Camille and I had stood not an hour before, I came
abruptly upon Cricket--riderless. I seized his rein, and as I bent and
snapped the halter of one horse on the snaffle of the other I saw the
missing horseman. Leaping from the saddle I ran to him. He was lying on
his face in the shallow water where General Austin and his staff had so
gaily halted a short while before, and as I caught sight of him he
rolled upon his back and tried to lift his bemired head.
XXXV
FALLEN HEROES
I dropped to my knee in the reddening pool and passed my arm under his
head.
"Thank you," he said, and repeated the word as I wet my handkerchief and
wiped the mire from his face; "thank you;--no, no,"--I was opening his
shirt--"that's useless; get me where you can turn me over; you've hit me
in the back, my lad."
"I?--I hit you? Oh, Captain Jewett, thank God, I didn't hit you at all!"
"What's the difference, boy; you didn't aim to miss, did you? I didn't.
It's not my only hurt; I think I broke something inside when I fell from
the sad'--ah! that's _your_ bugle, isn't it? It's my last fight--oh, the
devil! my good boy, don't begin to cry again; war's war; give me some
water.... Thank you! And now, if you don't want me to bleed to death get
me out of this slop, and--yes,--easy!--that's it--easy--oh, God! oh, let
me down, boy, let me _down, you're killing me!_ Oh!--" he fainted away.
With his unconscious head still on my arm I faced toward the hundred
after-sounds of the fray and hallooed for help. To my surprise it
promptly came. Three blundering boys we were who lifted him into the
saddle and bore him to the house reeling and moaning astride of Cricket,
the poor beast half dead with hard going. The sinking sun was as red as
October when we issued into the highroad and moved up it to the grove
gate through the bloody wreckage of the fray. The Louisianians were
camping in the woods-pasture, Ferry's scouts in the grove, and the
captive Federals were in the road between, shut in by heavy guards. At
our appearance they crowded around us, greeting their undone commander
with proud words of sympathy and love, and he thanked them as proudly
and lovingly, though he could scarcely speak, more than to ask every
moment for water. A number of our Sessions house group crowded out to
meet us at the veranda steps; Camille; Harry Helm with his right hand
bandaged; Cecile, attended by two or three Sessions children; and behind
all Miss Harper exclaiming "Ah, my boy, you're a welcome sight--Oh! is
that Captain Jewett!"
Two or three bystanders helped us bear him upstairs, where, turning from
the bedside, I pressed Camille with eager questions.
"Lieutenant Ferry? he's unhurt--and so is Mr. Gholson! Mr. Gholson's
gone to Franklin for doctors; Lieutenant Ferry sent him; he's been
sending everybody everywhere faster than anybody else could think of
anything!"
I asked where Ferry was now. Her eyes refilled--they were red from
earlier distresses--and she motioned across the hall: "The captain of
the Louisianians, you know, has sent for him!"
"Yes," I said, "the Captain's hit hard. I saw him when he was struck."
"Oh, Dick! then you were at the very front!"
"Did you think I was at the rear?"
She looked down. "I couldn't help hoping it."
"Then you were thinking of me."
"I prayed for you."
Such news seemed but ill-gotten gains, to come before I had gathered
courage to inquire after Charlotte Oliver. "Wh'--where is--where are
the others?"
"They're all about the house, tending the wounded; Mrs. Sessions is with
the Squire, of course,--dear, brave old gentleman! we thought he was
killed, but Charlotte found the ball had glanced."
I asked if it was Oliver who shot him, and she nodded. "It was down at
the front door; the Squire said he'd shoot him if he shot Charlotte, and
Charlotte declared she'd shoot him if he shot the Squire, and all at
once he shot at her and struck him."
"Who was it that screamed; was it she?"
My informant's head drooped low and she murmured, "It was I."
"Then _you_ were at the front."
"Did you think I was at the rear?"
I fear I answered evasively. I added that I must go to Lieutenant Ferry,
and started toward the door, but she touched my arm. "Oh, Dick, you
should have heard him praise you to her!--and when he said you had
chased Captain Jewett and was missing, she cried; but now I'll tell her
you're here." She started away but returned. "Oh, Dick, isn't it
wonderful how we're always victorious! why don't those poor Yankees give
up the struggle? they must see that God is on our side!"
As she left me, Ned Ferry came out with a sad face, but smiled gladly on
me and caught me fondly by the arm. On hearing my brief report he
saddened more than ever, and when I said I had promised Jewett he should
hand his sword to none but him, "Oh!"--he smiled tenderly--"I don't want
to refuse it; go in and hang it at the head of his bed as he would do in
his own tent; I'll wait here."
I pointed to the door he had softly closed behind him: "How is it in
there?"
"Ah, Richard, in there the war is all over."
"Dead?"
"So called."
XXXVI
"SAYS QUINN, S'E"
Lieutenant Helm came out as I went in, and I paused an instant to ask
him in fierce suspicion if he had bandaged his hand himself. "No," he
whispered, "Miss Camille." It was a lie, but I did not learn that until
months after. "Come downstairs as soon as you can," he added, "there's a
hot supper down there; first come first served." We parted.
I found Miss Harper fanning the wounded giant and bathing his brows,
and my smiles were ample explanation of my act as I hung the sword up.
Then I brought in my leader. "Captain Jewett," he said after a nearly
silent exchange of greetings, "I wish we had you uninjured."
"Ah, no, Lieutenant, this is bad enough. Lieutenant, there is one
matter--"
"Yes, Captain, what is that?"
"The villain who set those fires--you know who he is, I hope."
"Yes, Captain, I know."
"He didn't begin that until after he left me. I had some private reasons
for not killing him when I might have done it."
"Yes, Captain, I know that, too."
"Yet if I had caught him again I would have strung him up to the first
limb."
"I have sent some picked men to catch him if they can," said Ferry, and
the racked sufferer lifted a hand in approval. Camille came to her aunt
and whispered "Mr. Gholson with two doctors." The wounded captive
heard her.
"Lieutenant," he panted, "I hope you'll--do me the favor--to let my turn
with those gentlemen--come last,--after my boys,--will you?"
"Ah! Captain, even our boys wouldn't allow that; no, here's a doctor,
now."
I went down to the supper-table. Camille was there, dispensing its
promiscuous hospitality to men who ate like pigs. I would as leave have
found her behind a French-market coffee-stand. Harry Helm, nursing his
bandaged hand, was lolling back from the board and quizzing her with
compliments while she cut up his food. A fellow in the chair next mine
said he had seen me with Ferry when we joined the Louisianians' charge.
"Your aide-de-camp friend over yonder's a-gitt'n' lots o' sweetenin'
with his grub; well, he deserves it."
I asked how he deserved it. "Why, we wouldn't 'a' got here in time if he
hadn't 'a' met-up with us. That man Gholson, he's another good one."
The latter remark seemed to me a feeler, and I ignored it, and inquired
how Lieutenant Helm had got that furlough. (Furlough was our slang for a
light wound.) "Oh, he got it mighty fair! Did you see that Yankee
lieutenant with the big sabre-cut on his shoulder? Well, your friend
yonder gave him that--and got the Yankee's pistol-shot in his hand. But
that saved Gholson's life, for that shot was aimed to give Gholson a
furlough to kingdom-come. Are they kinfolks?"
I mumbled that they were not even friends. "Well, now, I suspicioned
that,--when I first see 'em meet at the head of our column! But the
aide-de-camp he took it so good-natured that, thinks I,--"
Another of Ferry's men, seated opposite, swallowed hurriedly, and
covertly put in--"Y' ought to hear what Quinn said to Gholson just now
as they met-up out here in the hall. Quinn thought they were alone. Says
Quinn, as cold as a fish, s's'e 'Mr. Gholson,' s'e, 'you're not a
coward, sir, and that's why I'm curious to ask you a question,' s'e. And
says Gholson, just as cold, s'e 'I'm prepared, Lieutenant Quinn, to
answer it.' And says Quinn, s'e 'Why was it, that when Harry Helm struck
that blow which saved your life, and which you knew was meant to save
it, and you seen his sword shot out of his hand and three or four
Yankees makin' a dead set to kill him, and nothin' else in any
particular danger at all, why was it, Mr. Gholson, that you never turned
a hand nor an eye to save him?'"
"Great Scott! wha'd Gholson say?"
"Gholson, s'e, 'I done as I done, sir, from my highest sense o' duty.
This ain't Lieutenant Helm's own little private war, Lieutenant Quinn,
nor mine, nor yours.'"
"Jo'! that to Quinn! wha'd Quinn answer?"
"Why, with that Quinn popped them big glass eyes o' his'n till the
whites showed clear round the blue, and s'e 'I know it better than you
do; that's just what it suited you to forget. Oh! I'd already seen
through you in one flash, you sneak. It's good for you you're not in my
command; I'd lift you to a higher sense of whose war this is, damn you,
if I had to hang you up by the thumbs.' With that he started right on
by, Gholson a-keepin' his face to him as he passed, when Ned Ferry
and--her--came out o' the parlor, and Ned turned out on the rear gallery
with Quinn while she sort o' smiled at Gholson to come to her and sent
him off on some business or other. George! I never seen her so
beautiful."
Thereupon occurred a brief exchange of comments which seemed to me to
carry by implication as fine a praise as could possibly come from two
rough fellows of the camp. Speaking the names of Ferry and Charlotte in
undertone, of course, but with the unrestraint of soldiers, they said
their say without a shadow of inuendo in word or smile. Her presence,
they agreed, always made them feel as though something out of the common
"was bound to happen pretty quick," while his, they said, assured them
that "whatever did happen would happen right." I turned with a frown as
Harry laughed irrelevantly, and saw Camille and him smiling at me with
childish playfulness. Then suddenly their smile changed and went beyond
me, two or three men softly said "Smith!" and I was out of my chair and
standing when Charlotte Oliver, in a low voice, tenderly accosted me.
"Oh, Richard Thorndyke Smith!--alive and well! Lieutenant Ferry wants
you; he has just gone to his camp-fire."
XXXVII
A HORSE! A HORSE!
Night had fully come. A few bivouac fires burned low in the grove, and
at one of them near the grove gate I found our young commander. On a
bench made of a fence-rail and two forked stakes he sat between Quinn
and the first-lieutenant of the Louisianians. The doctor whom I had seen
before sat humped on his horse, facing the three young men and making
clumsy excuses to Ferry for leaving. The other physician would stay for
some time yet, he said, and he, himself, was leaving his instruments,
such as they were, and would return in the morning. "Fact is, my son's a
surgeon, and he taken all my best instruments with _him._"
"When; where is he?" eagerly asked Quinn, seeing Ferry was not going to
ask.
"My son? Oh, he's in Virginia, with General Lee."
"Hell!" grunted Quinn, but the doctor pretended to listen to Ferry.
"Ah, but we move south at day-light; the prisoners and wounded we send
east, to Hazlehurst," said our leader, with a restraining hand on
Quinn's knee. The other lieutenant made some inquiry of him, and the
doctor was ignored, but stayed on, and as I stood waiting to be noticed
I gathered a number of facts. The lightly injured would go in a
plantation wagon; for the few gravely hurt there was the Harpers'
ambulance, which had just arrived to take the ladies back to Squire
Wall's, near Brookhaven, alas! instead of to Louisiana. For the ladies
Charlotte's spring-wagon was to be appropriated, one of them riding
beside it on horseback, and there was to be sent with them, besides
Charlotte's old black driver, "a reliable man well mounted." Whoever
that was to be it was not Harry, for he was to go south with a small
guard, bearing the body of the Louisiana captain to his home between the
hostile lines behind Port Hudson.
"Good-night, gentlemen," said the doctor at last. As he passed into the
darkness Quinn bent a mock frown upon his young superior.
"Lieutenant Ferry, the next time I have to express my disgust please to
keep your hand off my knee, will you?"
Ferry's response was to lay it back again and there ensued a puerile
tussle that put me in a precious pout, that I should be kept waiting by
such things. But presently the three parted to resume their several
cares, and the moment Ferry touched my arm to turn me back toward the
house I was once more his worshipper. "Well!" he began, "you have now
_two_ fine horses, eh?"
"Oh, by Regulations, I suppose, I ought to turn one of them over to
Major Harper. I wish it were to you, Lieutenant; I'd keep my own--he'll
be all right in a day or two--and give you Captain Jewett's."
"Well,--just for a day or two,--do that, while I lend my horse to a
friend."
I had already asked myself what was to become of Charlotte Oliver while
the Harpers were preempting her little wagon, and now I took keen alarm.
"Why, Lieutenant, I shall be glad! But why not lend Captain Jewett's
horse and keep yours? Yours is right now the finest and freshest mount
in the command."
"Yes, 'tis for that I lend him."
We went on in silence. Startled and distressed, I pondered. What was her
new purpose, that she should ask, or even accept, such a favor as this
from Ned Ferry; a favor which, within an hour, the whole command would
know he had granted? Was this a trifle, which only the Gholson-like
smallness of my soul made spectral? The first time I had ever seen Ferry
with any of his followers about him, was he not on Charlotte's gray, now,
unluckily, beyond reach, at Wiggins? Ah, yes; but Beauty lending a horse
to speed Valor was one thing; Valor unhorsing himself to speed
Beauty--oh, how different! What was the all-subordinating need?
As we entered the hall I came to a conviction which lightened my heart;
the all-subordinating need was--Oliver. I thought I could see why. The
spring of all his devilish behavior lay in those relations to her for
which I knew she counted herself chargeable through her past mistakes.
Unless I guessed wrong her motives had risen. I believed her aim was
now, at whatever self-hazard, to stop this hideous one-woman's war, and
to speed her unfinished story to the fairest possible outcome for all
God's creatures, however splendidly or miserably the "fool in it" should
win or lose. We stopped and waited for Cecile and the remaining doctor,
she with a lighted candle, to come down the stairs. From two rooms
below, where most of the wounded lay, there came women's voices softly
singing, and Charlotte's was among them. Their song was one listening to
which many a boy in blue, many a lad in gray, has died: "Rock me to
sleep, mother."
Cecile and the doctor had come from the bedside of the Union captain,
where Miss Harper remained. "I've done all I can," he said to Ferry; "we
old chill-and-fever doctors wa'n't made for war-times; he may get well
and he may not."
"Smith," said Ferry, "go up and stay with him till further orders."
XXXVIII
"BEAR A MESSAGE AND A TOKEN"
Late in the night Gholson came to the Union captain's bedside for Miss
Harper. Charlotte had sent him; the doctor had left word what to do if a
certain patient's wound should re-open, and this had happened. The three
had succeeded in stanching it, but Charlotte had prevailed upon Miss
Harper to lie down, and the weary lady had, against all her intentions,
fallen asleep. I was alone with the wounded captain. He did not really
sleep, but under the weight of his narcotics drowsed, muttered, stirred,
moaned, and now and then spoke out.
Sitting in the open window, I marked the few red points of dying
firelight grow fewer in the bivouac under the grove. Out there by the
gate Ned Ferry slept. Fireflies blinked, and beyond the hazy fields rose
the wasted moon, by the regal slowness of whose march I measured the
passage of time as I had done two nights before. My vigil was a sad one,
but, in health, in love, in the last of my teens and in the silent
company of such a moon, my straying thoughts lingered most about the
maiden who had "prayed for me." My hopes grew mightily. Yet with them
grew my sense of need to redouble a lover's diligence. I resolved never
again to leave great gaps in my line of circumvallation about the city
of my siege, as I had done in the past--two days. I should move to the
final assault, now, at the earliest favorable moment, and the next
should see the rose-red flag of surrender rise on her temples; in war it
is white, but in love it is red.
First favorable moment; ah! but when would that be? Who was to convey
the Harpers to Hazlehurst? Well, thank Heaven! not Harry. Scott Gholson?
Gholson was due at headquarters. Poor Gholson! much rest for racked
nerves had he found here; what with Ferry, and Harry, and the fight, and
Quinn, I wondered he did not lie down and die under the pure suffocation
of his "tchagrin." Even a crocodile, I believed, could suffer from
chagrin, give him as many good causes as Gholson had accumulated. But
no, the heaven of "Charlie Tolliver's" presence and commands--she seemed
to have taken entire possession of him--lifted and sustained him above
the clouds of all unkinder things.
A faint stir at the threshold caught my ear and I discerned in the hall
a young negro woman. The light of an unseen candle made her known at a
glance; she had been here since the previous evening, as I knew, though
it chanced that I had not seen her; Oliver's best wedding-gift, the
slave maid whom I had seen with Charlotte in the curtained wagon at
Gallatin. I stole out to her; she courtesied. "Miss Charlotte say ef you
want he'p you fine me a-sett'n' on de step o' de stairs hafe-ways down."
I inquired if she was leaving us. "She a-gitt'n' ready, suh; Misteh
Goshen done gone to de sta-able to git de hosses." The girl suddenly
seemed pleased with herself. "Mis' Charlotte would 'a' been done gone
when de yethehs went--dem-ah two scouts what was sent ayfteh _him_--ef I
hadn' spoke' up when I did."
"Indeed! how was that?"
"Why, I says, s' I, 'Mis' Charlotte, how we know he ain' gwine fo' to
double on his huntehs? Betteh wait a spell, and den ef no word come back
dat he a-doublin', you kin be sho' he done lit out fo' to jine de
Yankees roun' Pote Hudsom.'"
"Why did you tell her that? You want him caught; so do I; but you know
she doesn't want to catch him, and you don't want her to. Neither do I.
Nor neither do we want Lieutenant Ferry to catch him."
"No, suh, dass so. But same time, while she no notion o' gitt'n' him
cotch, she believe she dess djuty-bound to head-off his devilment. 'Tis
dess like I heah' Mr. Goshen say to Miss Hahpeh, 'Dis ain't ow own
li'l pri'--'"
I waved her away and went back into the room; the Captain had called. He
asked the time of night; I said it was well after two; he murmured, was
quiet, and after a moment spoke my name. I answered, and he whispered
"Coralie Rothvelt--she's here; I--recognized her voice--when they were
singing. Did you know I knew her?"
"Yes, Captain."
"Daring game that was you fellows let her put up on us night before
last, my boy,--and it hung by a thread. If our officers had only asked
the old man his name--it would have been--a flash of light. If I had
dreamed, when I saw--you and Ned Ferry--yesterday,--that Coralie
Rothvelt was--Charlotte Oliver,--and could have known her then--as
I've--learned to know her--to-day--from her--worst enemy,--you know,--"
"Yes, Captain."
"I should--have turned back, my boy." After a silence the hero said more
to himself than to me "Ah, if my brother were here to-night--I
might live!"
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