The Cavalier
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George Washington Cable >> The Cavalier
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Many days afterward I thought myself dull not to have guessed what that
speech meant, but now I was too distressed by the change I saw coming
over him to do any surmising. He began to say things entirely to
himself. "Home!" he murmured; "sweet, sweet home!--my home! my
country!--My God, my country, my home!--Smith,--you know what that is
you're--wiping off my brow,--don't you?"
"Yes, Captain."
"I--I didn't want you to be--taken too unpleasantly by surprise--just at
the--end. You know what's--happening,--don't you?"
"Yes, Captain." As I wiped the brow again I heard the tread of two
horses down in front of the house; they were Gholson's, and Ned Ferry's
for Charlotte. "Captain, may I go and bring her--tell her what you say,
and bring her?"
"Do you think she'd come? She'd have gone to Ship Island if I had caught
her."
"I know she'll come."
"I wish she would; she could 'bear a message and a token,' as the song
says."
She came. I met her outside the door, and for a moment I feared she
would come no farther. "How can I, Richard! Oh, how can I?" she
whispered; "this is my doing!" But presently she stood at the bedside
calm and compassionate, in the dark dress and limp hat of two nights
before. The dying man's eyes were lustrous with gratitude.
"I have one or two things," he said, after a few words of greeting,
"that I'd like to send home--to my mother--and my wife; some
trifles--and a message or two; if I--if--if I--"
"Will you let me take them?" Charlotte asked. I did not see or hear what
they were; Gholson beckoned me into the hall. He did not whisper; there
are some people, you know, who can never exercise enough
self-suppression to whisper; he mumbled. He admitted the dying had some
rights, but--he feared the delay might result unfortunately; wanted me
to tell Charlotte so, and was sure I was ever so wrong to ask to have
Ned Ferry awakened for the common incident of a prisoner's death; he
would let him know the moment he awoke.
When I came back into the room the captive had asked Charlotte to pray.
"Tisn't that I'm--the least bit afraid," he was saying.
"Oh, no," she responded, wiping his brow, "why should you be? Dying
isn't nearly so fearful a thing as living. I'd rather, now, you'd pray
for me; I'm such an unbeliever--in the beliefs, I mean, the beliefs the
church people think we can't get on without. My religion is scarcely
anything but longings and strivings"--she sadly smiled--"longings and
strivings and hopes."
"Yet you wouldn't--"
"Part with it? Oh, not for the world beside!"
"Neither would I--with mine." The soldier folded his hands in
supplication. "Neither would I--though mine, O Lord--is only
the--old-fashioned sort--for whose beliefs our fathers--used to kill one
another; God have mercy--on them--and us."
There was a great stillness. Against the bedside Charlotte had sunk to
her knees, and under the broad brim of her Leghorn hat leaned her brow
upon her folded hands. Thus, presently, she spoke again.
XXXIX
CHARLOTTE SINGS
"I know, Captain," she said, "that we can't have longings, strivings, or
hopes, without beliefs; beliefs are what they live on. I believe in
being strong and sweet and true for the pure sake of being so; and yet
more for the world's sake; and as much more again for God's sake as God
is greater than his works. I believe in beauty and in joy. I believe
they are the goal of all goodness and of all God's work and wish. As to
resurrection, punishment, and reward, I can't see what my noblest choice
has to do with them; they seem to me to be God's part of the matter;
mine is to love perfect beauty and perfect joy, both in and infinitely
beyond myself, with the desiring love with which I rejoice to believe
God loves them, and to pity the lack of them with the loving pity with
which God pities it. And above all I believe that no beauty and no joy
can be perfect apart from a love that loves the whole world's joy better
than any separate joy of any separate soul."
"Thank you," was murmured from the pillow. Then, as Charlotte once more
wiped the damp brow, the captive said, with much labor, "After that--war
seems--an awful thing. I suppose it isn't half so much a crime--as it is
a--penalty--for the crimes that bring it on. But anyhow--you
know--being--" The bugle rang out the reveille.
"Being a soldier," said Charlotte, "you want to die like one?"
"Yes, oh, yes!--the best I can. I'd like to sit half up--and hold my
sword--if there's--no objection. I've loved it so! It would almost be
like holding--the hand that's far away. Of course, it isn't really
necessary, but--it would be more like--dying--for my country."
He would not have it in the scabbard, and when I laid it naked in his
hand he kissed the hilt. Charlotte sent Gholson for Ned Ferry. Glancing
from the window, I noticed that for some better convenience our scouts
had left the grove, and the prisoners had been marched in and huddled
close to the veranda-steps, under their heavy marching-guard of
Louisianians. One of the blue-coats called up to me softly:
"Dying--really?" He turned to his fellows--"Boys, Captain's dying."
Every Northern eye was lifted to the window and I turned away.
"Richard!" gently called Charlotte, and I saw the end was at hand; a new
anguish was on the brow; yet the soldier was asking for a song; "a
soldier's song, will you?"
"Why, Captain," she replied, "you know, we don't sing the same words to
our soldier-songs that you do--except in the hymns. Shall I sing 'Am I a
soldier of the cross?'"
He did not answer promptly; but when he did he said "Yes--sing that."
She sang it. As the second stanza was begun we heard a responsive swell
grow softly to fuller and fuller volume beneath the windows; the
prisoners were singing. I heard an austere voice forbid it, but it rose
straight on from strength to strength:
"Sure I must fight if I would win,
Increase my courage, Lord.
I'll bear the toil, endure the pain,
Supported by thy word."
The dying man lifted a hand and Charlotte ceased. He had not heard the
muffled chorus of his followers below; or it may be that he had, and
that the degree of liberty they seemed to be enjoying prompted him to
seek the new favor he now asked. I did not catch his words, but
Charlotte heard, and answered tenderly, yet with a thrill of pain so
keen she could not conceal it even from him.
"Oh! you wouldn't ask a rebel to sing that," she sighed, "would you?"
He made no rejoinder except that his eyes were insistent. She wiped his
temples. "I hate to refuse you."
His gaze was grateful. She spoke again: "I suppose I oughtn't to mind
it."
Miss Harper came in, and Charlotte, taking her hand without a glance,
told the Captain's hard request under her voice. Miss Harper, too, in
her turn, gave a start of pain, but when the dying eyes and smile turned
pleadingly to her she said, "Why, if you can, Charlotte, dear, but oh!
how can you?"
Charlotte addressed the wounded man: "Just a little bit of it, will that
do?" and as he eagerly assented she added, to Miss Harper, "You know,
dear, in its history it's no more theirs than ours."
"No, not so much," said Miss Harper, with a gleam of pride; and
thereupon it was my amazement to hear Charlotte begin guardedly to sing:
"O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?"
But guardedly as she began, the effect on the huddled crowd below was
instant and electrical. They heard almost the first note; looking down
anxiously, I saw the wonder and enthusiasm pass from man to man. They
heard the first two lines in awed, ecstatic silence; but at the third,
warily, first one, then three, then a dozen, then a score, bereft of
arms, standard, and leader, little counting ever again to see freedom,
flag, or home, they raised their voices, by the dawn's early light, in
their song of songs.
Our main body were out in the highway, just facing into column, and the
effect on them I could not see. The prisoners' guards, though instantly
ablaze with indignation, were so taken by surprise that for two or three
seconds, with carbines at a ready, they--and even their sergeant in
command--only darted fierce looks here and there and up at me. The
prisoners must have been used to singing in ordered chorus, for one of
them strode into their middle, and smiling sturdily at the maddened
guard and me, led the song evenly. "No, sir!" he cried, as I made an
angry sign for them to desist, "one verse through, if every damned fool
of us dies for it--let the Captain hear it boys--sing!
"'The rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air--'"
Charlotte had ceased, in consternation not for the conditions without
more than for those within. With the first strong swell of the song from
below, the dying leader strove to sit upright and to lift his blade, but
failed and would have slammed back upon the pillows had not she and Miss
Harper saved him. He lay in their arms gasping his last, yet clutching
his sabre with a quivering hand and listening on with rapt face
untroubled by the fiery tumult of cries that broke into and over
the strain.
"Club that man over the head!" cried the sergeant of the guard, and one
of his men swung a gun; but the Yankee sprang inside of its sweep,
crying, "Sing her through, boys!" grappled his opponent, and hurled him
back. In the same instant the sergeant called steadily, "Guard,
ready--aim--"
There sounded a clean slap of levelled carbines, yet from the prisoners
came the continued song in its closing couplet:
"The star-spangled banner! O, long may it wave!--"
and out of the midst of its swell the oaths and curses and defiant
laughter of a dozen men crying, with tears in their eyes, "Shoot! shoot!
why don't you shoot?"
But the command to fire did not come; suddenly there was a drumming of
hoofs, then their abrupt stoppage, and the voice of a vigilant commander
called, "Attention!"
With a few words to the sergeant, more brief than harsh, and while the
indomitable singers pressed on to the very close of the stanza without a
sign from him to desist, Ferry bade the subaltern resume his command,
and turned toward me at the window. He lifted his sword and spoke in a
lowered tone, the sullen guard stood to their arms, and every captive
looked up for my reply.
"Shall I come?" he inquired; but I shook my head.
"What!--gone?" he asked again, and I nodded. He turned and trotted
lightly after the departing column. I remember his pensive mien as he
moved down the grove, and how a soft gleam flashed from his sword, above
his head, as with the hand that held it he fingered his slender
mustache, and how another gleam followed it as he reversed the blade and
let it into its sheath. Then my eyes lost him; for Gholson had taken his
place under the window and was beckoning for my attention.
"Is she coming?" he called up, and Charlotte, at my side, spoke
downward:
"I shall be with you in a moment."
While he waited the second lieutenant of the Louisianians came, and as
guard and prisoners started away she came out upon the veranda steps.
Across her knee, as she and Gholson galloped off by a road across
fields, lay in a wrapping of corn-husks the huge sabre of the dead
northerner.
XL
HARRY LAUGHS
The first hush of the deserted camp-ground was lost in the songs of
returning birds. Captain Jewett, his majestic length blanket-bound from
brow to heel as trimly as a bale, had been laid under ground, and the
Harpers stood in prayer at the grave's head and foot with hats on for
their journey. The burial squad, turned guard of honor to the dead
captain of the Louisianians, were riding away on either side of a light
wagon that bore his mortal part. I, after all, was to be the Harpers'
guardian on their way.
Day widened into its first perfection as we moved down the highroad
toward a near fork whose right was to lead Harry and his solemn cortege
southward, while the left should be our eastward course. Camille and I
rode horseback, side by side, with no one near enough to smile at my
sentimental laudations of the morning's splendors, or at her for
repaying my eloquence with looks so full of tender worship, personal
acceptance and self-bestowal, that to tell of them here would make as
poor a show as to lift a sea-flower out of the sea; they call for
piccolo notes and I am no musician.
The familiar little leather-curtained wagon was just ahead of us,
bearing the other three Harpers, the old negro driver and--to complete
its overloading--his daughter, Charlotte's dark maid. Beside the wheels
ambled and babbled Harry Helm. At the bridge he fell back to us and
found us talking of Charlotte. Camille was telling me how well Charlotte
knew the region south of us, and how her plan was to dine at mid-day
with such a friend and to pass the night with such another; but the
moment Harry came up she began to upbraid him in her mellowest
flute-notes for not telling us that he had got his wound in saving--
"Now, you ladies--" cried the teased aide-de-camp, "I--I didn't save
Gholson's life! I didn't try to save it! I only tried to split a
Yankee's head and didn't even do that! Dick Smith, if you tell anybody
else that I saved--Well, who did, then? Good Lordy! if I'd known that to
save a man's life would make all this fuss I wouldn't 'a' done it! Why,
Quinn and I had to sit and listen to Ned Ferry a solid half-hour last
night, telling us the decent things he'd known Gholson to do, and the
allowances we'd ought to make for a man with Gholson's sort of a
conscience! And then, to cap--to clap--to clap the ki'--to cap--the
_climax_--consound that word, I never did know what it meant--to clap
the climax, Ned sends for Gholson and gets Quinn to speak to him
civilly--aw, haw, haw!--Quinn showing all the time how he hated the job,
like a cat when you make him jump over a stick! And then he led us on,
with just a word here and there, until we all agreed as smooth as glass,
that all Quinn had said was my fault, and all I had done was Gholson's
fault, and all Gholson had said or done or left undone was our fault,
and the rest was partly Ned's fault, but mostly accident."
Camille declared she did not and would not believe there had been any
fault with any one, anywhere, and especially with Mr. Gholson, and I
liked Lieutenant Helm less than ever, noticing anew the unaccountable
freedom with which Camille seemed to think herself entitled to rebuke
him. "Oh, I'm in your power," he cried to her, "and I'll call him a
spotless giraffe if you want me to! that's what he is; I've always
thought so!" The spring-wagon was taking the left fork and he cantered
ahead to begin his good-byes there and save her for the last. When he
made his adieu to her he said, "Won't you let Mr. Smith halt here with
me a few moments? I want to speak of one or two matters that--"
She resigned me almost with scorn; which privately amused me, and, I
felt sure, hoodwinked the aide-de-camp.
"Say, Dick!" he began, as she moved away, "look here, I'm going to tell
you something; Ned Ferry's in love with Charlotte Oliver!"
"You don't mean it!"
"Yes, I do, mean it! Smith, Ned's a grand fellow. I'm glad I came here
yesterday."
"Yes, you've secured a furlough."
"Oh, this thing, yes; don't you wish you had it! No, I'm glad I came,
for what I've learned. I'm glad for what Ned Ferry has taught me a man
can do, and keep from doing, when he's got the upper hold of himself.
And I'm glad for what she--you know who--by George! any man would know
who ever saw her, for she draws every man who comes within her range, as
naturally as a rose draws a bee. I'm glad for what she has taught me a
woman can _be_, and can keep from being, so long as she knows there's
one real man to live up to! just _up to_, mind you, I don't even say to
live _for_."
I stared with surprise. Was this the trivial Harry talking? Fact is, the
pair we were talking about had by some psychical magic rarified the
atmosphere for all of us until half our notes were above our
normal pitch.
"Do you mean she loves him; what sign of such a thing did she show
yesterday or last evening?"
"Not a sign of a sign! And yet I'll swear it! Do you know where she's
gone?"
"To-day? I think I do."
"Where?"
"Well, Lieutenant, if I were she, _I_ should go straight into the Yankee
lines behind Port Hudson. She's got Jewett's messages and his sword, and
the Yank's won't know her as a Confederate any better than they ever
did; for it's only these men whom we've captured who have found out
she's Charlotte Oliver, or that she had any knowing part in General
Austin's ruse."
"If Oliver doesn't tell," said Harry, lifting his bad hand in pain.
"He will not dare! If she can only get her word in first and tell them,
herself, that he's Charlotte Oliver's husband and has just led the
finest company of Federal scouts in the two States to destruction--"
"Hi! that ought to cook his dough!--with her face--and her voice!"
"Yes," I responded, "--and his breath."
"And why do you think she wants to do this?" asked Harry.
"She doesn't want to do it; but she feels she must, knowing that every
blow he strikes from now on is struck on her account. I believe she's
gone to warn the Yankees that his whole animus is personal revenge and
that he will sacrifice anything or anybody, any principle or pledge or
cause, at any moment, to wreak that private vengeance, in whole or
in part."
"Dick Smith, yes! But don't you see, besides, what she _does_ want? Why,
she wants to keep Oliver and Ferry apart until somebody else for whom
she doesn't care as she cares for Ned, say you, or I, or--or--"
"Gholson?"
"Gholson, no! she can't trust Gholson, Gholson's conscience is too
vindictive; that's why she's keeping him with her as long as she can.
No, but until some of us, I say, can give Oliver a thousand times better
than he ought ever to get--except for her sake--"
"Yes, you mean a soldier's clean death; and what you want of me is for
me to say that I, for one, will lose no honest chance to give it to him,
isn't it?"
"What I want of you, Smith, is to tell you that _I_ shall lose no such
chance."
"Well, neither shall I."
"Bully for you, Dick; bully boy with the glass eye! You see, you're one
of only half a dozen or so that know Oliver when they see him; so Ned
will soon be sending you after him. Ned's got a conscience, too, you
know, as squirmy as Gholson's. Oh, Lord! yes, you don't often _see_ it,
but it's as big and hard as a conscript's ague-cake." The Lieutenant
gathered his rein; "Smith, I want Ned and her to get one another;
that's me!"
I was tempted to say it was me, too, but I forbore and only said it was
I.
"All the same," said Harry, "I'm sorry for the little girl!"
"Little girl?"
"Oh, come, now, you know!" He leaned to me and whispered, "Miss Cecile!"
"Lieutenant," I replied, with a flush, realizing what I owed to the
family as a prospective member of it, "you're mistaking a little
patriotic ardor--"
"Pat who--oh? I tell you, my covey,--and of course, you understand, I
wouldn't breathe it any further--"
"I'd rather you would not."
"Phew-ew! I don't know why in the devil _you'd_ rather I would not,
but--Smith,--she's so dead-gone in love with Ned Ferry, that if she
doesn't get him--I George! it'll e'en a'most kill her!"
I guffawed in derision. "And she didn't even have to tell you so! She
can't even hide its deadly intensity from the casual bystander! haw!
haw! haw! And it's all the outcome of a _three-days acquaintance_! It
beats Doctor Swiftgrow's Mustache Invigor'--aw, haw! haw!" "Oh, you
think so? Pity you couldn't get a few barrels of it--aw, haw! haw!" said
Harry, and my laughter left off where his began. But, some way hurting
his hand, he, too, stopped short. I drew my horse back.
"Is that all you've noticed?" I smilingly inquired. "Isn't anybody else
mortally in love with anybody else? You can't make me believe that's all
you know!"
"Well, then, I sha'n't try. I do know one thing more; heard it
yesterday. Like to hear it?"
"Like! Why, I'm just that dead-gone with curiosity that if I don't hear
it it'll e'en a'most kill me--aw, haw! haw! haw!"
"Well, I'm tired saving people's lives, but we won't count this one; you
say you want to hear it--I can't give you all of it but it begins:
"'Turn away thine eyes, maiden passing fair!
O maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes!'--
"Haw! haw! haw! Good-bye, Smith,--aw, haw! haw! haw!--and it's all the
outcome of a three-days acquaintance!--haw! haw! haw!--Oh,
say!--Smith!"--I was leaving him--"that's right, go back and begin
over!--'Return! return!'--aw, haw! haw! haw!"
XLI
UNIMPORTANT AND CONFIDENTIAL
On the second night after that morning of frantic mortification I was
riding at Ned Ferry's side, in Louisiana. The camp of the brigade was a
few miles behind us. Somewhere in front of us, fireless and close hid,
lay our company of scouts, ahead of whose march he had pushed the day
before to confer with the General, and we were now on our way to rejoin
them. Under our horses' feet was that old Plank-road which every
"buttermilk ranger" must remember--whether dead or not, I am tempted to
say,--who rode under either flag in the Felicianas in '63 and '64.
Late in the evening of the day on which I had conducted the Harpers to
Squire Wall's I had received a despatch ordering me to board the next
morning's train at Brookhaven with my horse. On it I should find a
number of cases of those shoes I had seen at Hazlehurst. At Tangipahoa I
was to transfer them to one or two army-wagons which would by that time
have reached there, and bring them across to Clinton, where a guard
would meet and join me to conduct the wagons to camp. And thus I had
done, bearing with me a sad vision of dear dark Miss Harper fluttering
her handkerchief above her three nieces' heads, one of whom refrained
until the opportunity had all but gone, to wave good-bye to the visibly
wretched author of "Maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes." My
lucky Cricket had gone three nights and two whole days with no harness
but his halter, and to-night, beside the Yankee's horse, that still bore
Ned Ferry, he was as good as new. My leader and I talked of Charlotte.
In the middle of this day's forenoon Gholson had come into camp
reporting at the General's tent the long ride she had made on Monday; as
good a fifty miles as Ferry's own. We called it, now, Ferry and I, a
most clever achievement for a woman. "Many women," he said, "know how to
ride, but she knows how to march."
"I think you must have taught her," I responded, and he enjoyed his
inability to deny it. So I ventured farther and said she seemed to me
actually to have reached, in the few days since I had first seen her, a
finer spiritual stature.
"She?" he asked; "ah! she is of the kind that must grow or die. Yes, you
may be right; but in that time she has kept me so occupied growing,
myself, that I did not notice she was doing the same. But also, I think,
the eyes with which we look at her have grown."
"She has outgrown this work," I insisted.
"Those letters--to the newspapers?"
"No, this other; this work which she has to do by craft and wiles and
disguises. Lieutenant, I don't believe she can go on doing that now with
her past skill, since life has become to her a nobler story than it
promised to be."
My companion lifted higher in the saddle with delight. Then soberly he
said, "We have got to lose her." I turned inquiringly and he continued:
"She has done me the honor to tell me--Miss Harper and me--that if she
succeeds in what she is now trying to do--you know?--"
"I think I do. It's to prevent Oliver from making himself useful to the
enemy, isn't it?"
"Well--like that; and she says if she comes out all right she will leave
us; yes, for the hospital service."
"Hosp'--Oh--oh! gangrene, typhoid, lock-jaw, itch, small-pox! Isn't she
deep enough in the hospital service already, with her quinine dolls?"
"Ah! but she cannot continue to play dolls that way; she must find
something else. I see you have my temptation; yes, the desire to see her
always doing something splendid. That is not 'real life,' as you call
it. And besides, was not that you said one time to me 'No splendor
shines at last so far as a hidden splendor'?"
"No, sir! I suppose it's true, but I never want to see her splendor
shining through pock-marks." The reply won from him a gesture of
approval, and this gave me a reckless tongue. "Why, if I were you,
Lieutenant, she simply shouldn't go! Good Heaven! isn't she far enough
away at the nearest? How can you tamely--no, I don't mean tamely,
but--how can you _endure_ to let this matter drift--how can you
endure it?"
At the beginning of my question he straightened exactly as I had seen
him do in the middle of the lane when our recoiled column was
staggering; but as my extravagance flamed up he quieted rebukingly, and
with a quieter smile than ever asked "Is that a soldier's question?
Smith, is there not something wrong with you to-night?"
"There always is," I replied.
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