The Cavalier

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The Major thought so, and that she must need a day's rest, more than she
realized. She could be made in every way comfortable--under guard at
"Mr. Gilmer's." The Gilmers were Unionists, whose fine character had
been their only protection through two years of ostracism, yet he
believed they would treat her well. "Oh! not there, please," said
Charlotte; "I hear they are to give some of your officers a dance
to-morrow evening!" and there followed a parley that called forth all
her playfullest tact. "Oh, no," she said, at one critical point, "I'm
not so narrow or sour but I could dance with a blue uniform; but
suppose--why, suppose one's friends in gray should catch one dancing
with one's enemies in blue. Such things have happened, you know."

"It sha'n't happen to-morrow night," laughed the General.

She offered to nurse the Federal sick, instead, in the command's
field-hospital, but no, the General rose to end the interview. "My dear
young lady, the saintliest thing we can let you do is to dance at that
merrymaking."

She rose. "As a prisoner under guard, General, I can nurse the sick, but
I will not dance."

The General smiled. "I'll take your parole."

"Oh! exact a parole from a woman?"

"Good gracious, why shouldn't I! As for you,--ha!--I'd as soon turn a
commissioned rebel officer loose in my camp unparoled as you."

"Then take my parole! I give it! you have it! I'll take the chances."

"And the dances?" asked the Major.

"Very good," said the General, "you are now on parole. See the lady
conducted to Squire Gilmer's, Major. And now, Miss--eh,--day after
to-morrow morning I shall either pass you beyond my lines or else send
you to Baton Rouge. Good-day." When Charlotte found herself alone in a
room of the Gilmer house she lay down upon the bed staring and sighing
with dismay; she was bound by a parole! If within its limit of time
Oliver should appear, "It will mean Baton Rouge for me!" she cried under
her breath, starting up and falling back again; "Baton Rouge, New
Orleans, Ship Island!" She was in as feminine a fright as though she had
never braved a danger. Suddenly a new distress overwhelmed her:
if--if--someone to deliver her should come--"Oh Heaven! I am
paroled!--bound hand and foot by my insane parole!"

Softly she sprang from the bed, paced the floor, went to the window,
seemed to look out upon the landscape; but in truth she was looking in
upon herself. There she saw a most unaccountable tendency for her
judgment--after some long overstrain--momentarily, but all at once, to
swoon, collapse, turn upside down like a boy's kite and dart to earth;
an impulse--while fancying she was playing the supremely courageous or
generous or clever part--suddenly to surrender the key of the situation,
the vital point in whatever she might be striving for. "Ah me, ah me!
why did I give my parole?"

At the close of the next day--"Walter," said the General as the
chief-of-staff entered his tent glittering in blue and gold,--"oh, thud
devil!--you going to that dance?"

XLVI

THE DANCE AT GILMER'S

All the while that I recount these scenes there come to me soft
orchestrations of the old tunes that belonged with them. I am thinking
of one just now; a mere potsherd of plantation-fiddler's folk-music
which I heard first--and last--in the dance at Gilmer's. Indeed no other
so widely recalls to me those whole years of disaster and chaos; the
daily shock of their news, crashing in upon the brain like a shell into
a roof; wail and huzza, camp-fire, litter and grave; battlefield stench;
fiddle and flame; and ever in the midst these impromptu merrymakings to
keep us from going stark mad, one and all,--as so many literally did.

The Gilmer daughters were fair, but they were only three, and the
Gilmers were the sole Unionists in their neighborhood. "Still, a few
girls will come," said Charlotte, sparkling first blue and then black at
a sparkling captain who said that, after all, the chief-of-staff had
decided he couldn't attend. I know she sparkled first blue and then
black, for she always did so when she told of it in later days.

"They say," responded the captain, "that in this handy little world
there are always a few to whom policy is the best honesty; is that the
few who will come?"

"You are cynical," said Charlotte, "this is only their unarmed way of
saving house and home for the brothers to come back to when you are
purged out of the land."

When the time came there were partners for eight gallants, and the
gallants numbered sixteen. They counted off by twos; the evens waited
while the odds danced the half of each set, and then the odds waited and
cooled, tried to cool, out on the veranda. But when a reel was called
the whole twenty-four danced together, while the fiddler (from the
contraband camp) improvised exultant words to his electrifying tunes.

"O _ladies_ ramble in,
Whilst de _beaux_ ramble out,
For to guile[1] dat golden _cha--ain._
My _Lawdy!_ it's a sin
Fo' a _fiddleh_ not to shout!
Miss _Charlotte's_ a-comin' down de _la--ane_!"

[Footnote 1: Coil.]

Now the dance is off, but now it is on again, and again. The fiddler
toils to finer and finer heights of enthusiasm; slippers twinkle,
top-boots flash, the evens come in (to the waltz) and the odds, out on
the veranda, tell one another confidentially how damp they are. Was ever
an evening so smotheringly hot! Through the house-grove, where the
darkness grows blacker and blacker and the tepid air more and more
breathless, they peer toward the hitching-rail crowded with their
horses. Shall they take their saddles in, or shall they let them get wet
for fear the rebels may come with the shower, as toads do? [Laughter.]
One or two, who grope out to the animals, report only a lovely picture:
the glowing windows; the waltzers circling by them; in the dining-room,
and across the yard in the kitchen, the house-servants darting to and
fro as busy as cannoneers; on their elbows at every windowsill, and on
their haunches at every door, the squalid field-hands making grotesque
silhouettes against the yellow glow that streamed out into the trees.

Now the lightning seems nearer. Hark, that was thunder; soft, but real.
At last the air moves; there is a breeze, and the girls come out on the
gallants' arms to drink it in. As they lift their brows and sigh their
comfort the lightning grows brighter, the thunder comes more promptly
and louder, and the maidens flinch and half scream, yet linger for one
more draft of the blessed coolness. Suddenly an inverted tree of
blinding light branches down the sky, and the thunder crashes in one's
very ears; the couples recoil into a group at the door, the lightning
again fills heaven and earth, it shows the bending trees far afield, and
the thunders peal at each other as if here were all Vicksburg and Port
Hudson, with Porter and Farragut going by. So for a space; then the wind
drops to a zephyr, and though the sky still blazes and crashes, and
flames and roars, the house purrs with content under the sweet strokings
of the rain.

Let it pour! the dining-room is the centre of all things; the ladies sip
the custards and nibble the cake the gallants cram the cake and gulp the
punch. The fiddler-improvisator disappears, reappears, and with crumbs
on his breast and pan-gravy and punch on his breath remounts his seat;
and the couples are again on the floor. The departing thunders grumble
as they go, the rain falls more and more sparingly, and now it is a
waltz, and now a quadrille, and now it's a reel again, with Miss Sallie
or Louise or Laura or Lucille or Miss Flora "a-comin' down de lane!"

So come the stars again, one by one. In a pause between dances Charlotte
and the staff captain go to the veranda's far end and stand against the
rail. The night is still very dark, the air motionless. Charlotte is
remarking how far they can hear the dripping of the grove, when she
gives a start and the captain an amused grunt; a soft, heart-broken,
ear-searching quaver comes from just over yonder by the horses. "One of
those pesky little screech-owls," he says. "Don't know as I ever heard
one before under just these condi'--humph! there's another, around on
this side."

"I think I will go in," says Charlotte, with a pretence of languor. As
they do so the same note sounds a third time; her pace quickens, and in
passing a bright window, with a woman's protecting impulse she changes
from his left arm to his right so as to be on the side next the owls. A
moment later she is alone in the middle of her room, a lighted candle in
one hand, a regally dressed doll in the other, and in her heart the cry,
"Oh, Edgard, Edgard, my parole, my parole!"

Once more she is downstairs, in the lane which the dancers are making
for their last reel. Two of the gallants have gone out to see the
horses, and something keeps them, but there is no need to wait. The
fiddle rings a chord! the merry double line straightens down the hall
from front door to rear, bang! says the fiddler's foot--"hands
round!"--and hands round it is! In the first of the evening they had
been obliged to tell the fiddler the names of the dancers, but now he
knows them all and throws off his flattering personalities and his
overworked rhymes with an impartial rotation and unflagging ardor. Once
in a while some one privately gives him a new nickname for the next man
"a-comin' down de lane," and as he yawps it out the whole dance gathers
new mirth and speed.

Now the third couple clasp hands, arch arms, and let the whole
countermarching train sweep through; and a beautiful arch they make, for
they are the aforesaid captain and Charlotte Oliver. "Hands
round!"--hurrah for the whirling ellipse; and now it's "right and left"
and two ellipses glide opposite ways, "to quile dat golden chain." In
the midst of the whirl, when every hand is in some other and men and
girls are tossing their heads to get their locks out of their eyes, at
the windows come unnoticed changes and two men loiter in by the front
hall door, close to the fiddler. One has his sword on, and each his
pistols, and their boots and mud-splashed uniforms of dubious blue are
wet and steamy. The one without the sword gives the fiddler a fresh name
to sing out when the spinning ring shall straighten into its two gay
ranks again, and bids him--commandingly--to yell it; and with never a
suspicion of what it stands for, the stamping and scraping fiddler
shouts the name of a man who "loves a good story with a
positive passion."

"Come _a-left_, come a-right,
Come yo' _lily_-white hand,
Fo' to _quile_ dat _golden cha--ain_.
O _ladies_ caper light--
Sweetest _ladies_ in de land--
NED FERRY's a-comin' down de la--ane!"

[Illustration: Musical Notation]

XLVII

HE'S DEAD.--IS SHE ALIVE?

Cries of masculine anger and feminine affright filled the hall, but one
ringing order for silence hushed all, and the dance stood still with Ned
Ferry in its centre. In his right hand, shoulder high, he held not his
sword, but Charlotte's fingers lightly poised for the turn in the
arrested dance. "Stand, gentlemen, every man is covered by two; look at
the doors; look at the windows." The staff captain daringly sprang for
the front door, but Ferry's quick boot caught his instep and he struck
the floor full length. Like lightning Ferry's sword was out, but he only
gave it a deferential sweep. "Sir! better luck next time!--Lieutenant
Quinn, put the Captain in your front rank."

Quinn hustled the captives "down a lane," as the fiddler might have
said, of Ferry's scouts, mounted them on their own horses at the door,
and hurried them away. Charlotte had vanished but was back again in hat
and riding-skirt. Ferry caught her hand and they ran to the front
veranda steps just as the prisoners and guard rode swiftly from them.
Kendall and I had the stirrup ready for her; the saddle was a man's, but
she made a horn of its pommel, and in a flash the four of us were
mounted. Nevertheless before we could move the grove resounded with
shots, and Ferry, bidding us ride on after the fleeing guard, wheeled
and galloped to where half our troop were holding back their assailants
in the dark. But then, to our distraction, Charlotte would not fly.
"Richard, I'm paroled!"--"Charlotte Oliver, you're my prisoner!" I
reached for her bridle, but she avoided me and with a cry of
recollection wheeled and was on her way back. "I forgot something! I can
get it, I left the room lighted!"

I remember vividly yet the high purpose and girlish propitiation that
rang together in her voice. Kendall dashed after her while I went
against a wet bough that all but threw me; but before he could reach her
she flew up the steps, crying "Hold my horse!"

"Mine, too!" I cried, springing up after her. How queerly the inner
house stood alight and silent, its guests and inmates hidden, while
outside pistols and carbines flashed and cracked. I came upon Charlotte,
just recrossing her chamber to leave it, with her doll in her arms.
"Come!" I cried, "our line is falling back behind the house!" Her head
flinched aside, a bit of her hat flew from it, and a pistol-ball buried
itself in the ceiling straight over my head. We ran downstairs together,
pulling, pushing and imploring each other in the name of honor, duty and
heaven to let him--let her--go out first through the bright hall door.
Kendall was not in sight, but in a dim half-light a few yards off we saw
Oliver. He was afoot, bending low, and gliding toward us with his
revolver in his left hand. He fired as I did; her clutch spoiled my aim;
with eager eyes she straightened to her finest height, cried "Richard!
tell Lieutenant Ferry he--" and with a long sigh sank into my arms. A
rush of hoofs sounded behind Oliver, he glanced up, and Ferry's blade
fell across his brow and launched him face upward to the ground. I saw
a bunch of horses, with mine, at the foot of the steps, and a bunch of
men at the top; Ferry snatched Charlotte's limp form from me and said
over his shoulder as he went down the steps, "Go get him and bring him
along, dead or alive!"

I called a man to my aid and was unlucky in not getting the cool-headed
Kendall, for my own wits were gone. The next moment all had left us and
I was down on the ground toiling frantically, with no help but one hand
of my mounted companion, to heave the stalwart frame of Oliver up to
my saddle.

"Why, he's dead!" cried the lad, letting him slide half-way down when we
had all but got him up; "don't you see he's dead? His head's laid wide
open! He's as dead as a mackerel! I'll _swear_ we ain't got any right to
get captured trying to save a dead Yankee."

I was in despair; our horses had caught our frenzy and were plunging to
be after their fellows, and a fresh body of the enemy were hurtling into
the grove. Dropping my burden I vaulted up, and we scurried away, saved
only by the enemy's healthy fear of an ambush. The first man we came up
with was Quinn, with the rear-guard. "Is he dead?" he growled.

"Dead as Adam!" said I, and my comrade put in "Head laid wide open!"

"Drop back into the ranks," said Quinn to him. "Smith, ride on to
Lieutenant Ferry. Corporal,"--to a man near him--"you know the way so
well, go with him."

The two of us sprang forward. How long or what way we went I have now
no clear idea, but at length we neared again the grapevine ferry. The
stream was swollen, we swam our horses, and on the farther side we found
Kendall waiting. To the corporal's inquiry he replied that Ferry had
just passed on. "You know Roy's; two miles off the Plank Road by the
first right? He expects to stop there."

"Is she alive, Kendall?" I interrupted. "Is she alive?"

"No," said he, to some further question of the corporal; "I'm to wait
here for the command."

"Is she alive, Kendall?" I asked again.

"Hello, Smith." He scanned my dripping horse. "Your saddle's slipped,
Smith. Yes, she's alive."

XLVIII

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS RIGHT ARM

"There they are!" said the corporal and I at the same moment, when we
had been but a few minutes on the Plank-road. Two men were ahead of us
riding abreast, and a few rods in front of them was a third horseman,
apparently alone. Two others had pushed on, one to the house, the other
for surgical aid. The two in the rear knew us and let us come up
unchallenged; the corporal stayed with them, and I rode on to my
leader's side.

Charlotte lay in his double clasp balanced so lightly on the horse's
crest as hardly to feel the jar of his motion, though her head lay as
nearly level with it as Ferry's bending shoulders and the hollow of his
lowered right arm would allow; from under his other arm her relaxed
figure, in its long riding-skirt, trailed down over his knee and
stirrup; her broad limp hat, as if it had been so placed in sport, hung
at his back with its tie-ribbons round his throat, while the black
masses of her hair spread in ravishing desolation over and under his
supporting arm. Her face was fearfully pale, the brows glistened with
the damp of nervous shock, and every few moments she feebly brought a
handkerchief to her lips to wipe away the blood that rose to them with
every sigh. Steadfastly, except when her eyes closed now and then in
deathly exhaustion, her gaze melted into his like a suffering babe's
into its mother's. From time to time a brief word passed between them,
and with joy I noticed that it was always in French; I hoped with my
whole heart and soul that they had already said things, and were saying
things yet, which no one else ought to hear. I waited some time for his
notice, and when he gave it it was only by saying to her in a full voice
and in English "Dick Smith is here, alongside of us."

Her response was a question, which he repeated: "Is he hurt? no, Richard
never gets hurt. Shall he tell us whatever he knows?"

He bent low for the faint reply, and when it came he sparkled with
pride. "'It matters little,' she says, 'to either of us, now.' Give your
report; but _I_ tell you"--there came a tiger look in his eyes--"there
is now no turning back; we shall go on." I answered with soft elation:
"My news needn't turn you back: Oliver is dead."

He drew a long breath, murmured "My God!" and then suddenly asked "You
found him so, or--?"

"We found him so; had to leave him so; head laid wide open; we were
about to be captured--thought the news would be better than nothing--"

"Certainly, yes, certainly. Now I want you to ride to the brigade camp
and telegraph Miss Harper this: 'She needs you. Come instantly.
Durand.'"--I repeated it to him.--"Right," he said. "Send that first;
and after that--here is a military secret for you to tell to General
Austin; I think you like that kind, eh? Tell him I would not send it
verbally if I had my hands free. You know that regiment at whose
headquarters we saw them singing; well, tell him they are to make a move
to-day, a bad mistake, and I think if he will stay right there where he
is till they make it, we can catch the whole lot of them. As soon as
they move I shall report to him."

Two gasping words from Charlotte brought his ear down, and with a
worshipping light in his eyes he said to her "Yes,--yes!" and then to
me, "Yes, I shall report to him _in person_. Now, Smith, the top of
your speed!"

Reveille was sounding as I entered the camp. In the middle of my story
to the General--"Saddle my horse," he said to an attendant, "and send
Mr. Gholson to me. Yes, Smith, well, what then?"--I resumed, but in a
minute--"Mr. Gholson, good-morning. My compliments to Major Harper, Mr.
Gholson, and ask him if he wouldn't like to take a ride with me; and
let me have about four couriers; and send word to Colonel Dismukes that
I shall call at his headquarters to see him a moment, on my way out of
camp. Now, Smith, you've given me the gist of the matter, haven't you?
Oh, I think you have; good-morning."

Gholson had helped me get the despatch off to Miss Harper, whose coming
no one could be more eager to hasten. Before leaving camp I saw him
again. He was strangely reticent; my news seemed to benumb and sicken
him. But as I remounted he began without connection--"You see, she'll be
absolutely alone until Miss Harper gets there; not a friend within call!
_He_ won't be there, she won't let him stay; she dislikes him too much;
I _know_ that, Smith. Why, Smith, she wouldn't ever 'a' let him carry
her off the field if she'd been conscious; she'd sooner 'a' gone to Ship
Island, or to death!" He looked as though he would rather she had. His
tongue, now it had started, could not stop. "Ned Ferry can't stay by
her; he mustn't! he hadn't ought to use around anywheres near her."

I gave a sort of assent--attended with nausea--and turned to my saddle,
but he clung. "Why, how can he hang around that way, Smith, and he a
suitor who's just killed her husband? Of course, now, he'd ought to know
he can't ever be one henceforth. I'm sorry for him, but--"

"Good-morning," I interrupted, quite in the General's manner, and made a
spirited exit, but it proved a false one; one thing had to be said, and
I returned. "Gholson, if she should be worse hurt than--" "Ah! you're
thinking of the chaplain; I've already sent him. Yonder he goes, now;
you can show him the way."

"Understand," I said as I wheeled, "I fully expect her to recover."

"Yes, oh, yes!" replied my co-religionist, with feverish zest; "we must
have faith--for her sake! But o--oh! Smith, what a chastening judgment
this is against dancing!"

I moved away, looking back at him, and seeing by his starved look how he
was racking his jaded brain for some excuse to go with me, I honestly
believe I was sorry for him. The chaplain was a thick-set, clean-shaven,
politic little fellow whose "Good-mawning, brothah?" had the heavy
sweetness of perfumed lard. We conversed fluently on spiritual matters
and also on Ned Ferry. He asked me if the Lieutenant was "a believer."

"Why," said I, "as to that, Lieutenant Ferry believes there's something
right about everything that's beautiful, and something wrong about
everything that isn't. Now, of course that's a very dangerous idea, and
yet--" So I went on; ah me! the nightmare of it hangs over me yet,
"religionist" though I am, after a fashion, unto this day. In Ferry's
defence I maintained that only so much of any man's religion as fitted
him, and fitted him not as his saddle or his clothes, but as his nervous
system fitted him, was really his, or was really religion. I said I knew
a man whose ready-made religion, small as it was, bagged all over him
and made him as grotesque as a child in his father's trousers. The
chaplain tittered so approvingly that I straightened to spout again, but
just then we saw three distant figures that I knew at a glance.

"There he is, now!--Excuse me, sir--" I clapped in the spurs, but the
chaplain clattered stoutly after me. The two horsemen moving from us
were the General and Major Harper, and the one meeting them was Ned
Ferry. Between the three and us rose out of a hollow the squad of
couriers. And yonder came the sun.

XLIX

A CRUEL BOOK AND A FOOL OR TWO

I could see by Ferry's face that there was no worse news. He met me
aside, and privately bade me go to Roy's (where Charlotte was). "Kendall
is there," he said; "I leave you and him in charge. That will rest your
horses. Kendall has your Yankee horse, his own is sick. You and Kendall
get all the sleep you can, you may get none to-night."

"Lieutenant," I began eagerly as he was drawing away, "is--?"

"Yes! oh, yes, yes!" His eyes danced, and a soft laugh came, as happy as
a child's. "The surgeon is yonder, he will tell you."

This person Kendall and I had the luck to meet at the Roy's
breakfast-table. "Yes, left lung," he said. "No, hardly 'perforated,'
but the top deeply grazed." The ball, he said, had passed on and out,
and he went into particulars with me, while I wondered if Kendall knew,
as I did, what parts of the body the pleura, the thorax, the clavicle
and the pyemia were.

We lay down to sleep on some fodder in the Widow Roy's stable, while
around three sides of the place, in a deep wooded hollow, Quinn and the
company, well guarded by hidden videttes, drowsed in secret bivouac. I
dreamed. I had feared I should, and it would have been a sort of bitter
heart's-ease to tell Kendall of my own particular haunting trouble. For
now, peril and darkness, storm, hard riding, the uproar and rage of
man-killing, all past and gone, my special private wretchedness came
back to me bigger than ever, like a neglected wound stiffened and
swollen as it has grown cold. But Kendall would not talk, and when I
dreamed, my dream was not of Camille. It seemed to me there was a hot
fight on at the front, and that I, in a sweat of terror, was at the
rear, hiding among the wagons and telling Gholson pale-faced lies as to
why I was there. All at once Gholson became Oliver, alive,
bloody-handed, glaring on me spectrally, cursing, threatening, and
demanding his wife. His head seemed not "laid wide open," but to have
only a streak of the skull bared by Ferry's glancing left-cut and a
strip of the scalp turned inside out. Cecile drew his head down and
showed it to me, in a transport of reproaches, as though my false report
had wronged no one else so ruinously as her.

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