The Cavalier

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I waited on. So absorbed was I that I did not hear the coming of a
horseman in the fields beyond the grove, nor the click of a field gate;
but when the strange quietude of Ferry and the dogs had begun to
reassure me I became aware of this new-comer approaching the dooryard.
There he reined in and hallooed. I knew the voice. An answer came from
an upper window. "Is this Squire Wall's?" asked the traveller. "Well,
Squire, I'm from General Austin's headquarters, with orders to
Captain Ferry."

"Captain Ferry ain't stopping with us now, sir, he's 'way up at
Hazlehurst."

"Yes, sir. I didn't know but he might 'a' come down to spend to-morrow
with you, it being the Sabbath. My name's Gholson, sir; I've got letters
for the Miss Harpers; yes, sir; and one for Private Smith, from his
mother, in New Orleans."

"My sakes! yo' pow'ful welcome, Mr. Wholesome; just wait till I call off
my dogs, sir, and I'll let you in."

When the dogs came at the Squire's call I breathed relief. Ferry
appeared behind me and beckoned me deeper into the grove. He sank upon a
stump, whispering "That was worse than ten fights."

"Who was it?" I asked. "Where is he?"

He pointed to the field gate through which Gholson had come. In the
field a small man was re-closing it cautiously, and now he mounted and
rode away; it was Isidore Goldschmidt, of the Plank-road swamp. I was
wondering why he had behaved in this skulking way, when Ferry, as if
reading my thought, said, "Isidore can't afford to be found seventy-five
miles inside our lines with no papers except a letter from a Yankee
officer--and not knowing, himself, what's in it."

"Oh! why should he risk his life to bring such a thing to her?"

"Because three months ago she risked her life to save the life of his
father, and now, since only last week, that Yankee has saved the life of
his mother." I asked who this Yankee might be. "Well, that is yet more
strange; he is the brother of Captain Jewett."

We were moving to the house; at the steps we halted; the place was all
alight and the ladies were arriving in the parlor. A beam of light
touching Ferry's face made his smile haggard. I asked if this Jewett was
another leader of scouts.

"No, he is a high-rank surgeon. Yet I think he must have heard all about
her; he wouldn't send that letter, that way, just for gratitude."

"Yes," I responded, pondering, "he may easily have learned about her,"
and I called to mind that chief-of-staff of whom Charlotte had told us.
Then, remembering her emotional shadow-play on the window-shade, I
added, "He knew at least what would be important news to her--Captain,
I have it!"

He made a motion of pain--"Don't say it!" and we read in each other's
eyes the one conviction that from a surgeon's personal knowledge this
man had written to warn Charlotte that Oliver was alive.

LX

TIDINGS

All the glad difference between hope stark drowned and hope sighing back
into life lightened Ferry's heart; he gripped my shoulder--the sound
one, by good luck,--and drew me into the dining-room, where the whole
company were gathered to see Gholson eat. Our entry was a fresh
surprise. As we drank the flatteries of seven lovely welcomes, from
behind Gholson I reconnoitred Charlotte, and the fullest confirmation of
our guess was in the peaceful resolve of her eyes. I noted the Harpers,
all, and dear Mrs. Wall's sweet freckled face, take new gladness of the
happy change, while unable to define its cause.

But now came raptures and rhapsodies over the opened letters. Ferry's
orders had not been expected to reach him to-night, Gholson said, and so
we insisted they and my letter should remain in the saddle-pockets while
Gholson ate, and while the good news, public and personal, of the
Harpers' letters went round.

"But I thought the' was fi-ive letters," said the Squire as we were
about to leave the board; at which Mrs. Wall mumbled to him to "hush
up;" for the fifth was to Cecile.

"Yes," guilefully said Charlotte, "Richard's letter!" and we all
followed Gholson to where his saddle lay on the gallery. There he handed
out Ferry's document and went on rummaging for mine.

"The two were right here together," he said, "and Mr. Smith's was marked
'valuable' and had something hard in one corner of it." Camille brought a
candle, Estelle another; Gholson rose from his knee: "Smith, it's gone!
I've lost it! And yet"--he slapped his breast-pockets--"no, it's
somewhere in the grove; it's between here and that cornfield gate! I
counted all the papers just this side of that gate, and I must 'a'
dropped yours then!" Cecile brought a third light and we sallied forth
into the motionless air, Estelle with a candle and Gholson, Camille
with a candle and me, Cecile with a candle and Mrs. Wall, Miss Harper
and the Squire, and Charlotte and Ferry. In the heart of the grove
Estelle gave a soft cry, sprang, stooped, straightened, and handed me
the letter.

"Yes," exclaimed Camille as the three candle-bearers gathered close,
"that's your mother's writing," and as we fell into marching order
again, with the lights still in the front files, I opened it. It was
thick and soft with sheet after sheet of thinnest paper. With these was
a sealed letter, unaddressed, containing in one corner what seemed to be
a ring. Around all was a sheet of writing of later date than any other.
Wonderful, my mother's lines declared, was the Providence that had
brought her wounded boy among such priceless friends; and wonderful that
same Providence that now gave her the chance to send three weeks' daily
letters in one, and to send them by a hand so sure that she ventured to
add this other note, a matter so secret that it must be delivered only
by my own hands, or hands which I could trust as my own, to Charlotte
Oliver. We glanced back in search of Charlotte. She and Ferry were well
in the rear of the procession, moving with laggard steps, she lighting
his page with a borrowed candle, and he evidently reading not his
orders, but the Federal surgeon's letter. "Oh, don't speak yet,"
murmured Camille, "let them alone!"

At the garden gate the most of the company passed on into the house,
Gholson among them. His face, as for an instant he turned aside to me,
betrayed a frozen rage; for Ferry and Charlotte tarried just at our
backs, she seated on the "horse-block" and he leaning against it. A stir
of air brought by the rising moon had blown out their light. Gholson
left me, and Camille waited at my side while I tried to read by the
flare of her guttering candle. "Come, my dear," said Miss Harper from
half-way up the walk, but Charlotte called Miss Harper.

"You'd better go in, Camille," insisted the aunt as she passed us, but
Charlotte had just asked for our candle to relight her own, and she said
to Miss Harper, "Let them stay, won't you?" and then to Ferry, "They
might as well, mightn't they? Oh, now,"--as Camille handed her my
mother's letter--"they must!" She toyed with the envelope's thinner edge
without noticing the ring in the corner. "My dears," she said, looking
frail and distressed, yet resolute, "I have positive intelligence--not
through Captain, nor Richard, nor Mr. Gholson,--I'll tell you how some
day--positive intelligence that--the dead--is not dead; the blow,
Richard, glanced. I was foolish never to think of that possibility, it
occurs so often. He was profoundly stunned, so that he didn't come-to
until he was brought to a surgeon. It's from that surgeon I have the
news; here's his letter."

"Charlotte, my dear," interrupted Miss Harper, "tell us the remainder
to-morrow, but now--"

"No, sweetest friend, there will never be another chance like this;
Captain Ferry's orders carry him to Jackson at daylight to-morrow,
and--and we may not meet again for years; let me go on. When the gash
was sewed up, the hand was really the worse hurt of the two, and after
a few days he was sent down on a steamer to New Orleans with a great lot
of other sick and wounded, and with the commanding general's warning not
to come back on peril of his life. 'Tisn't easy to tell this, but you
four have a particular right to know it from me and at once. So let me
say"--she handed Ferry my mother's letter as if it were a burdensome
distraction--"I'm not sorry for the mistake, Richard, which we all so
innocently made; and you mustn't be sorry for me and be saying to
yourselves that my captivity is on me again; for I'm happier tonight
than I've been since the night the mistake was made."

She dropped a hand to Ferry's to receive again the neglected letter, and
chanced to take it by the corner that held the ring. With that she
stared at us, fingered it, rended the envelope, gave one glance to her
own name engraved inside a plain gold ring of the sort New Orleans girls
bestow upon those to whom they are betrothed, and springing to the
ground between our two candles, bent over the open page and cried
through a flood of tears, "Oh, God, have mercy on him, he is gone! He is
gone, Edgard! Oh, Edgard, he is gone at last; gone beyond all doubt, and
our hands--our hands and our hearts are clean!"

Ferry tossed away his candle and turned upon her, but she retreated into
Miss Harper's arms laughing through her tears. "Oh, no, no! we've never
hurried yet, never yet, my master in patience, and we'll not hurry now!
Go and come again. Go, wait, hide your eyes till I cry 'whoop,' and
come again and find me, and, I pledge you before these dear witnesses,
I'll be 'it' for the rest of my life!"

With the letter again held open, and bidding Miss Harper and Camille
read with her, she swept a fleet glance along the close lines that told
how Oliver, half cured of his wounds, had died in a congestive chill, of
swamp-fever, the day he landed in New Orleans. "See, see, Richard, here
your mother has copied the hospital's certificate."

She read on aloud how two private Federal soldiers, hospital
convalescents, had come to my mother telling her of his death, and how
he had named my mother over and over in his delirium, desiring that she
should be given charge of the small effects on his person and that she
would return them to his father in the Confederacy. My mother wrote how
she had been obliged secretly to buy back from the hospital steward a
carte-de-visite photograph of Charlotte, and this ring; how, Oliver not
being a Federal soldier, she had been allowed to assume the expense and
task of his burial; how she had found the body already wrapped and
bound, in the military way, when she first saw it, but heard the two
convalescents praising to each other the strong, hard-used beauty of the
hidden face, and was shown the suit of brown plantation jeans we all
knew so well; and how, lastly, when her overbearing conscience compelled
her to tell them she might find it easier to send the relics to the wife
rather than the father, they had furtively advised her to do as
she pleased.

[Illustration: Springing to the ground between our two candles, she
bent over the open page]

"Charlotte," said Miss Harper, "the thing is an absolute certainty!
Even without your likeness or--"

"Ah, no, no, not without this! the ring, the ring! But with it, yes!
This is the crowning proof! my ring to him! Oh, see my name inside it,
Camille; this little signet is Heaven's own testimony and acquittal!
Look, Richard, look at it now, for no living soul, no light of day,
shall ever see it again--"

"Sweet heart," replied Miss Harper, "very good! very good! but now say
no more of that sort. God bless you, dear, just let yourself be happy.
Good-night--no, no, sit still; stay where you are, love, while Camille
and I go in and Richard steps around to the stable and puts our team
into the road-wagon; for, Captain Ferry, neither you nor he is fit to
walk into Brookhaven; we can bring the rig back when we come from church
to-morrow."

"No, Richard," said Charlotte, "get my wagon and the little Mexicans."
Then to Miss Harper and Camille, "Good-night, dears; I'll wait here that
long, if Captain Ferry will allow me." She turned to him with the
moonlight in her eyes, that danced riotously as she said in her softest,
deepest note, "You're afraid!" and I thanked Heaven that Coralie
Rothvelt was still a pulsing reality in the bosom of Charlotte
Oliver.

LXI

WHILE DESTINY MOVED ON

Ned Ferry and I never saw Squire Wall's again. When our hand-car the
next morning landed us in Hazlehurst the news of Gettysburg and
Vicksburg was on every tongue, in every face, and a telegram awaited
Ferry which changed his destination to Meridian, a hundred miles farther
to the east. He kept me with him at Hazlehurst for two days, to help him
and the post-quartermaster get everything ready to be moved and saved if
our cavalry should be driven east of the Jackson Railroad. But it was
not, and by and by we were sundered and I went and became at length in
practical and continuous reality one of Ferry's scouts--minus Ferry. Oh,
the long hot toils and pains of those July and August days! the
scorching suns, the stumbling night-marches, the aching knees, the
groaning beasts, the scant, foul rations, the dust and sweat, the blood
and the burials. To be sure, I speak of these hardships far more from
sympathy than from experience, so much above the common lot of the long
dust-choked column was that of our small band of scouts. After July our
brigade operated mainly in the region of the Big Black, endeavoring,
with others, to make the enemy confine his overflow meetings to the
Vicksburg side of that unlovely stream. How busy our small troop was
kept; and what fame we won! On a certain day we came out of a dried
swamp in column and ambled half across a field to see if a brigade
going by us at right angles in the shade of a wood at the field's edge
might be ours. It was not, though they were Confederates; but one of its
captains was sent out toward us with a squadron to see who we might be,
in our puzzling uniform, and when, midway, he made us out and called
back to his commander, "Ferry's scouts!" the whole column cheered us. I
feel the thrill of it to this hour.

How busy we were kept, and how much oftener I wrote to Ferry, and to
Camille, than to my mother. And how much closer I watched the trend of
things that belonged only to this small story than I did that great
theatre of a whole world's fortunes, whose arches spread and resounded
from the city of Washington to the city of Mexico. In mid-August one of
Camille's heartlessly infrequent letters brought me a mint of blithe
news. Harry and Cecile were really engaged; Major Harper, aunt Martha,
General Austin, Captain Ferry and Charlotte had all written the distant
father in his behalf, and the distant father had capitulated.
Furthermore, Captain Ferry's latest letter to Charlotte had brought word
that in spite of all backsets he was promised by his physician that in
ten days more he could safely take the field again. But, best of all,
Major Harper, having spent a week with his family--not on leave, but on
some mysterious business that somehow included a great train of pontoon
bridges--had been so completely won over to Charlotte by her own sweet
ways that, on his own suggestion to his sister, and their joint
proposition, by correspondence, to Ferry, another group of letters,
from Miss Harper, the Major and the General, had been sent to the
Durands in New Orleans--father, mother, and grandmother--telling them
all about Charlotte; her story, her beauty, her charms of manner, mind,
and heart. And so, wrote my correspondent, the Wall household were
living in confident hope and yet in unbearable suspense; for these
things were now full two weeks old, and would have been told me sooner
only that she, Camille, had promised never to tell them to any one
whomsoever.

A week later came another of these heartlessly infrequent letters. Mr.
Gregory, it said,--oh, _hang_ Mr. Gregory!--had called the previous
evening. Then followed the information that poor Mr. Gholson--oh, dear!
the poor we have always with us!--had arrived again from camp so wasted
with ague as to be a sight for tears. He had come consigned to "our
hospital," an establishment which the Harpers, Charlotte and the Walls
had set up in the old "summer-hotel" at Panacea Springs, and had
contrived to get the medical authorities to adopt, officer and--in a
manner--equip. They were giving dances there, to keep the soldiers
cheerful, said the letter, in which its writer took her usual patriotic
part, and Mr. Gregory--oh, save us alive! And now I was to prepare
myself: the Durands had got the bunch of letters and had written a
lovely reply to Captain Ferry, who had sent it to Charlotte, claiming
her hand, and Charlotte had answered yes. If I thought I had ever seen
her beautiful or blithe, or sweet, or happy, I ought to see her now;
while as for the writer herself, nothing in all her life had ever so
filled her with bliss, or ever could again.

Ferry did not arrive, but day by day, night by night, we stalked the
enemy, longing for our Captain to return to us. Quinn was fearless,
daring, indefatigable; but Quinn was not Ferry. Often we talked it over
by twos or fours; the swiftness of Ferry's divinations, the brilliant
celerity with which he followed them out, the kindness of his care;
Quinn's care of us was paternal, Ferry's was brotherly and motherly. We
loved Quinn for the hate and scorn that overflowed from his very gaze
upon everything false or base. But we loved Ferry for loving each and
every one of us beyond his desert, and for a love which went farther
yet, we fancied, when it lived and kept its health in every insalubrious
atmosphere, from the sulphurous breath of old Dismukes to the
carbonic-acid gas of Gholson's cant. We made great parade of recognizing
his defects; it had all the fine show of a motion to reconsider. For
example, we said, his serene obstinacy in small matters was equally
exasperating and ridiculous; or, for another instance,--so and so; but
in summing up we always lumped such failings as "the faults of his
virtues," and neglected to catalogue them. Thinking it all over a
thousand times since, I have concluded that the main source of his
charm, what won our approval for whatever he did, however he did it, was
that he seemed never to regard any one as the mere means to an
end--except himself.

If this history were more of war than of love--and really at times I
fear it is--we might fill pages telling of the brigade's September and
early October operations in that long tongue of devastated country which
narrowed from northeast to southwest between Big Black on our front and
the Tallahala and Bayou Pierre behind us. At Baker's Creek it had a
bloody all-day fight, in which we took part after having been driven in
upon the brigade. It was there that at dusk, to the uproarious delight
of half the big camp, and with our Captain once more at our head, for he
had rejoined us that very morning, we came last off the field, singing
"Ned Ferry's a-comin' down de lane."

On a day late in October our company were in bivouac after some hard
night-riding. Some twenty-five miles west of us the brigade had been
resting for several days on the old camp-ground at Gallatin, but now
they were gone to Union Springs. Ferry, with a few men, was scouting
eastward. Quinn awaited only his return in order to take half a dozen or
so of picked fellows down southward and westward about Fayette. Between
ten and eleven that night a corporal of the guard woke me, and as I
flirted on my boots and jacket and saddled up, said Ferry was back and
Quinn gone. I reported to Ferry, who handed me a despatch: "Give that to
General Austin; he has gone back to Gallatin--without the brigade--to
wait--with the others"--his smile broadened.

"Captain,"--I swallowed a lump--"what others?"

"Well,--all the others; Major Harper, Colonel Dismukes, Harry Helm,
Squire Wall, Mrs. Wall, the four Harper ladies, and--eh,--let me see, is
that all?--ah, no, the old black man and his daughter, and--eh,--the
two little mule'! that's all--stop! I was forgetting! What is that
fellow's name we used to know? ah, yes; Charlie Toliver!" In a moment he
sobered: "Yes, all will be yonder, and I wait only for Quinn to get back
in the morning, to come myself." In the fulness of his joy he had to
give my horse a parting slap. "Good-night! good-bye--till to-morrow!"

I galloped away filled with an absurd foreboding that he was too sure,
which may have come wholly from my bad temper at being started too late
to see our ladies before morning. However, at two that night, my saddle
laid under my head, and haversack under the saddle, I fell asleep with
all Gallatin for my bedchamber, the courthouse square for my bed, the
sky for my tester, the pole-star for my taper, hogs for mosquitoes and a
club for a fan.

LXII

A TARRYING BRIDEGROOM

Joyous was the dawn. With their places in the hospital filled for the
brief time by Brookhaven friends, here were all our fairs, not to speak
of the General, the Colonel, the Major, idlers of the town and region,
and hospital bummers who had followed up unbidden and glaringly without
wedding-garments. Cecile, Harry, Camille "and others" prepared the
church. The General kept his tent, the Major rode to Hazlehurst, and the
Colonel, bruised and stiffened by a late fall from his horse, lounged
amiably just beyond talking range of the ladies and grumbled jokes to
Chaplain Roly-poly, whose giggling enjoyment of them made us hope they
were tempered to that clean-shaven lamb.

However, there came a change. By mid-forenoon our gaiety ran on only by
its momentum. The wedding was to be at eleven. At ten the Colonel,
aside, told me, with a ferocious scowl, that my Captain ought to have
arrived. At half-past he told me again, but Major Harper, returning from
Hazlehurst, said, "Oh, any of a hundred trifles might have delayed him a
short time; he would be along." The wedding-hour passed, the
wedding-feast filled the air with good smells. Horsemen ambled a few
miles up the road and came back without tidings. Then a courier, one of
Ferry's scouts, galloped up to the General's tent, and presently the
Major walked from it to the tavern and up to Charlotte's room, to say
that Ferry was only detained by Quinn's non-arrival. "It's all right,"
said everyone.

Another hour wore on, another followed. The General and old Dismukes
played cards and the latter began to smell of his drams, Harry and
Cecile walked and talked apart, Camille kept me in leash with three
other men, and about two o'clock came another courier with another bit
of Ferry's writing; Quinn had returned. He had had a brush with
jayhawkers in the night, had captured all but their leader, and had sent
his prisoners in to brigade headquarters at Union Church, while he
returned to Ferry's camp bringing with him, mortally wounded--"O--oh!
Oh--oh!" exclaimed Charlotte, gazing at the missive,--"Sergeant
Jim Langley!"

"Does Ned say when he will start?" asked the Colonel, and Charlotte,
reading again, said the sergeant, at the time of the writing, was not
expected to live an hour. Whereupon the word went through town that
Ferry was on his way to us.

"Smith," said the Colonel, just not too full to keep up a majestic
frown, "want to saddle my horse and yours?" and very soon we were off to
meet the tardy bridegroom. The October sunshine was fiery, but the road
led us through our old camp-ground for two or three shady miles before
it forked to the right to cross the Natchez Trace, and to the left on
its way to Union Springs, and at the fork we halted. "Smith, I reckon
we'd best go back." I mentioned his bruises and the torrid sun-glare
before us, but he cursed both with equal contempt; "No, but I must go
back; I--I've left a--oh, I must go back to wet my whistle!"

We had retraced our way but a few steps, when, looking behind me as a
scout's habit is, I saw a horseman coming swiftly on the Union Church
road. "Colonel," I said, "here comes Scott Gholson."

Without pausing or turning an eye my hearer poured out a slow flood of
curses. "If that whelp has come here of his own accord he's come for no
good! Has he seen us?"

Gholson had not seen us; we had been in deep shade when he came into
sight, and happened at that moment to turn an angle that took us out of
his line of view. In a minute or so we were again at the small bridge
over the embowered creek which ran through the camping-ground. The water
was low and clear, and the Colonel turned from the bridge as if to cross
beneath it and let his beast drink, yet motioned back for me to go upon
it. As I reached its middle he came under it in the stream and halted.
Guessing his wish I turned my horse across the bridge and waited.
Gholson was almost within hail before he knew me. He was a heaving lump
of dust, sweat and pain.

"Has Ned Ferry come?" was his first call. I shook my head. "Oh, thank
God!" he cried with a wild gesture and sank low in the saddle; but
instantly he roused again: "Oh, don't stop me, Smith; if I once stop I'm
afraid I'll never get to her!"

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