The Cavalier
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George Washington Cable >> The Cavalier
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I stopped him. "Why, Gholson, you're burning up with fever."
"Yes, I started with a shaking chill. I'm afraid, every minute, I'll go
out of my head. Oh, Smith, Oliver's alive! He's alive, he's alive, and
I've come to save his poor wife from a fate worse than death!"
"Gholson, you are out of your head."
"Oh, yes, yes, yes! and yet I know what I'm saying, I know what I'm
saying!"
"You do not! Gholson, Oliver's been food for worms these four months. I
know he wasn't dead at Gilmer's; but he died--now, let me tell
you--he--"
"Smith, I know the whole story and you know only half!"
"No, no! I know all and you know only half; I have seen the absolute--"
"Proofs? no! you saw things taken from the body of another man in
Oliver's clothes! Oliver swapped places with him on the boat going down
to the city so's he could come back to these parts without being hung by
the Yankees; swapped with a sick soldier, one of a pair that wanted to
desert; swapped names, clothes, bandages, letters, everything. It was
that soldier that died of the congestive chill and was buried by your
mother with his face in a blanket--as, like enough, mine will be before
another day is done--Oh, Lord, Lord! my head will burst!"
"Gholson, you're mistaken yet! That soldier came to my mother--"
"No, he never! the other one went to her, in cahoots with Oliver, and
worked the thing all through so's to have the news of Oliver's death, so
called, come back here to the Yankees and us; and to his wife, so's she
_would_ marry Ned Ferry to her everlasting shame, and people would say
they was served right when he killed 'em at last! O--oh! Smith,--"
"Listen to me!" I had tried twice to interrupt and now I yelled; "was it
Oliver, and a new gang, that Quinn fought last night, and have you got
him at Union Church?"
"Quinn didn't know it, for Oliver got away, but they got the Yankee
deserter, and brought him in when everybody was asleep but me, and I
cross-examined him. Oh, my friend, God's arm is not shortened that he
cannot save! He maketh the wrath of the wicked to praise him! The man
was dying then, but thank God, I choked the whole truth out of him with
a halter over a limb, and then for three mortal hours I couldn't start
because the squad that took him out to--Who--who is that?"
The Colonel moved from under the bridge, spurred up the bank, and turned
to us with a murderous smile. "Howdy, Gholson." The smile grew. "Had to
stay with the hanging-squad to keep his mouth shut, you was going to
say, wa'n't you? But you knew Captain Ferry would be delayed waiting for
Quinn, too; yes. Does any one know this now besides us three; no! Good,
we're well met! Smith and me are going to Union Church, and you'd better
go with us; I've got a job that God A'mighty just built you two saints
and me for; come, never mind Gallatin, Ferry's not there, and when he
gets there Heaven ain't a-going to stop that wedding, and hell sha'n't."
Gholson had barely caught his breath to demur when old Dismukes, roaring
and snarling like a huge dog, whipped out his revolver, clutched the
sick man's bosom, and hanging over him and bellowing blasphemies, yelled
into his very teeth "Come!"
We galloped. A courier from the brigade-camp met us, and the Colonel
scribbled a purely false explanation of our absence, begging that no
delay be made because of it. As the man left us, who should come up from
behind us but Harry, asking what was the matter. "Matter enough for you
to come along," said the Arkansan, and we went two and two, he and
Gholson, Harry and I. We reached camp at sundown, and stopped to feed
and rest our horses and to catch an hour's sleep. Gholson's fatigue was
pitiful, but he ate like a wolf, slept, and awoke with but little fever.
The Colonel kept him under his eye, forcing on him the honors of his
own board, bed and bottle, and at nine we galloped again.
Between eleven and twelve the Colonel, Harry and I were in a dense wood,
moving noiselessly toward a clearing brilliantly lighted by the moon. I
was guide. A few rods back in the woods Gholson was holding our horses
and with cocked revolver detaining a young mulatto woman from whom the
Colonel had extorted the knowledge which had brought us to this spot.
The clearing was fenced, but was full of autumn weeds. Near the two
sides next us, tilted awry on its high basement pillars, loomed an old
cotton-gin house, its dark shadows falling toward us. A few yards beyond
towered and gleamed a white-boled sycamore, and between the two the
titanic arms of the horse-power press widened broadly downward out of
the still night sky. The tree was the one which old Lucius Oliver had
once pointed out to me at dawn.
LXIII
SOMETHING I HAVE NEVER TOLD TILL NOW
At the fence I ceased to lead, and we crept near the gin-house from
three sides, warily, though all the chances were that wherever Oliver
lay he was heavy with drink. The Colonel stole in alone. He was lost to
us for, I should say, five minutes; they seemed thirty; then there
pealed upon the stillness an uproarious laugh mingled with oaths and
curses, sounds of a plunge, a struggle, a groan, and old Dismukes
calling "Come, boys, I've got him! Take it easy, take it easy, I've got
him on the floor by the hair of his head; call Gholson!"
Gholson brought the mulatress. In the feeble rays of an old tin lantern,
on some gunny-sacking that lay about the gin-room floor, sat old
Dismukes cross-legged and smiling, with arms folded and revolver
dangling from his right hand, at full cock. On one side crouched Harry
and I, on the other side Gholson and the slave woman. Facing him, half
sat, half knelt Oliver, bound hand and foot, and gagged with his own
knotted handkerchief. The lantern hung from a low beam just above his
face; his eyes blazed across the short interval with the splendor of a
hawk's. The dread issue of the hour seemed all at once to have taken
from his outward aspect the baser signs of his habits and crimes, and I
saw large extenuation for Charlotte's great mistake. From the big
Colonel's face, too, the heaviness of drink was gone, and its smile grew
almost fine as he spoke.
"Ten minutes for prayer is a good while to allow you, my amiable friend;
we ain't heard for our much speaking, are we, Brother Gholson? Still,
we've given you that, and it's half gone. If you don't want the other
half we won't force it on you; we've got that wedding to go to, and I'm
afraid we'll be late."
The bound man sat like a statue. The slave girl went upon her knees and
began to pray for her master,--with whom she had remained after every
other servant on the place had run off to the Federals, supplicating
with a piteous fervor that drew tears down Harry's cheeks. "Humph!" said
the Arkansan, still smiling straight into Oliver's eyes, "she'd better
be thanking God for her freedom, for that's what we're going to give her
to-night; we're going to take her and your poor old crippled father to
the outposts and turn 'em loose, and if either of 'em ever shows up
inside our lines after to-night, we'll hang 'em. You fixed the date of
your death last June, and we're not going to let it be changed; that's
when you died. Ain't it, Gholson? Whoever says it ain't fixes the date
of his own funeral, eh, boys? I take pleasure in telling you we're not
going to hang your father, because I believe in my bones you'd rather
we'd hang him than not. Mr. Gholson, you're our most pious believer in
obedience to orders; well, I'm going to give you one, and if you don't
make a botch of it I sha'n't have to make a botch of you; understand?"
Gholson's lips moved inaudibly, his jaws set hard, and he blanched; but
the Colonel smiled once more: "I've heard that at one time you said, or
implied, that Captain Ferry had betrayed his office, because when he had
a fair chance to shoot this varmint he omitted, for private reasons, to
do it. And I've heard you say, myself, that this isn't your own little
private war. So,--just change seats with me."
They exchanged. The slave girl sank forward upon her face moaning and
sobbing. Harry silently wept. "Now, Gholson, you know me; draw--pistol."
Gholson drew; I grew sick. "Ready,"--Gholson came to a ready and so did
the Colonel; "aim," Gholson slowly aimed, the Colonel kept a ready, and
Oliver, for the first time took his eyes from him and gazed at Gholson.
"Fire!" Gholson fired; Oliver silently fell forward; with a stifled cry
the girl sprang to him and drew his head into her lap, and he softly
straightened out and was still. "Oh, sweet Jesus!" she cried, "Oh,
sweet Jesus!"
The amused Colonel held the lantern close down. "He's all right, Brother
Gholson," was his verdict; the ball had gone to the heart. "Still, just
to clinch the thing, we'll calcine him, gin-house and all."
Gin-house and all, we burned him up. On our horses out in the open road
to the house, we sat, the girl perched behind the Colonel, and watched
the fire mount and whirl and crackle behind the awful black arms of the
cotton-press. The Arkansan shook his head: "It's too fine; 'tain't a
dog's death, after all. Lord! why didn't I think of it in time? we'd
ought to 'a' just dropped him alive into that lint-box and turned the
press down onto him with our horses!"
When the pile was in one great flame we rode to the dwelling, and the
girl was sent in to bid old Lucius begone. The doors stood open, a soft
firelight shone from his room. We saw her form darken his chamber
threshold and halt, and then she wailed: "Oh, Lawd God A'mighty! Oh,
Lawd God A'mighty!"
"Stop that noise! Gholson, hold the horses. Come. Lieutenant, come
Smith, maybe he's killed himself, but it seems too good to be true.
Here, girl, go cram what you can get into a pillow-case, and mount
behind my saddle again; be quick, we're going to burn this hornet's
nest too." Harry and I had already run to the old man's room, and, sure
enough, there lay the aged assassin hideous in his fallen bulk, with his
own bullet in his brain.
Once more the Arkansan shook his head at the leaping flames. "Too good,
too good for either of 'em, entirely; we've let 'em settle at five cents
on the dollar. Here girl,"--he reached back and handed her a wad of
greenbacks,--"here's your dividend; you're a preferred creditor." He had
rifled the pockets of both the dead men, and this was their contents.
"Now, boys, we'll dust, or we'll be getting shot at by some fool or
other. We're leaving a fine horse hid away somewhere hereabouts, but we
can't help that; come on."
In due time the Colonel, with the slave girl, and Harry with her
pillow-case of duds, turned toward Fayette, and Gholson and I toward the
brigade, at Union Church. Then, at last, my old friend and
co-religionist let his wrath loose. He began with a flood of curses,
lifting high a loaded carbine which we had found with Oliver and which
he was ordered to turn in. As he gave his ecstasy utterance it grew; he
brandished the weapon like a Bedouin, dug the rowels into his overspent
beast and curbed him back to his haunches, fisted him about the ears,
gnashed with the pain of his own blows, and howled, and stood up in the
stirrups and cursed again. I had heard church-members curse, but they
were new church-members, camp converts, and their curses were an
infant's cooing, to this. Unwittingly he caused his horse to stumble,
and the torrent of his passion gathered force like rain after a peal of
thunder; he clubbed the gun to bring it down upon the beautiful
creature's head, and when I caught it on the rise he wrenched it from me
as if I were a girl, threw it fifty feet away, sprang to the ground and
caught it up, fired it in the air, and with one blow against a tree sent
the stock flying, threw the barrel underfoot, leapt upon it, tore his
hair and his hat, and cursed and champed and howled. I sat holding his
horse and feeling my satisfaction rise like the mercury in a warmed
thermometer. Contrasting this mood with the cold malignancy and resolve
of his temper in the soldiers' room at Sessions's, I saw, to my delight,
that our secret was forever imprisoned in his breast, gagged and chained
down by the iron of his own inextricable infamy. At dawn he awakened me
that he might persuade me to reject the evidences brought against his
character by his doings and endurings of the night, and that he might
rebuild the old house of words in which habitually he found shelter, too
abysmally self-conceited ever to see his own hypocrisy. We breakfasted
with the "attatchays"; after which he had barely secured my final
assurance that our friendship remained unmarred, when old Dismukes and
Harry mounted at the Colonel's tent, and the old brute, as they trotted
out into the Gallatin road, beckoned me to join them.
LXIV
BY TWOS. MARCH
The Arkansan was happy. "Come up, Legs," he bawled to me as soon as we
were beyond the pickets, "come up from behind there; this ain't no
dress parade."
"Are they married?" I softly asked Harry at the first opportunity, but
he could not tell me. He knew only that Ferry had been expected to
arrive about an hour before midnight; if he arrived later the wedding
would be deferred until to-day. On our whole ride we met no one from
Gallatin until near the edge of the town we passed a smiling rider who
called after us, "You-all a-hurryin' for nothin'!"
We dropped to a more dignified gait and moved gayly in among our
gathering friends, asking if we were in time. "No--o! you're too
late!--but still we've waited for you; couldn't help ourselves; she
wouldn't stir without you."
The happy hubbub was bewildering. "Where's this one?" "Where's that
one?" "See here, I'm looking for you!" "Now, you and I go together--"
"Dick Smith! where's Dick Sm'--Miss Harper wants you, Smith, up at the
bride's door." But Miss Harper only sent me in to Charlotte.
"Richard, tell me," the fair vision began to say, but there the cloud
left her brow. "No," she added, "you couldn't look so happy if there
were the least thing wrong, could you?" Her fathoming eyes filled while
her smile brightened, and meeting them squarely I replied "There's
a-many a thing wrong, but not one for which this wedding need wait
another minute."
"God bless you, Richard!" she said; "and now _you_ may go tell Edgard I
am coming."
Old Gallatin is no more. I would not mention without reverence the
perishing of a town however small, though no charm of antiquity, of art
or of nature were lost in its dissolution. Yet it suits my fancy that
old Gallatin has perished. Neither war nor famine, flood nor fever were
the death of it; the railroad and Hazlehurst sapped its life. Some years
ago, on a business trip for our company--not cavalry, insurance,--I went
several miles out of my way to see the spot. Not a timber, not a brick,
of the old county-seat remained. Where the court-house had stood on its
square, the early summer sun drew tonic odor from a field of corn. In
place of the tavern a cotton-field was ablush with blossoms. Shops and
houses had utterly vanished; a solitary "store," as transient as a
toadstool, stood at the cross-roads peddling calico and molasses, shoes
and snuff. But that was the only discord, and by turning my back on it I
easily called up the long past scene: the wedding, the feast, the fiery
punch, the General's toast to the bridal pair, and the heavy-eyed
Colonel's bumper to their posterity! It was hardly drunk when a courier
brought word that the enemy were across Big Black, and the brigade
pressing north to meet them. Charlotte glided away to her room to be
"back in a moment"; into their saddles went the General, the Colonel,
the Major and the aide-de-camp, and thundered off across the bridge in
the woods; Charlotte came back in riding-habit, and here was my horse
with her saddle on him, and the Harpers and Mrs. Wall clasping and
kissing her; and now her foot was in Ferry's hand and up she sprang to
her seat, he vaulted to his, and away they galloped side by side, he for
the uttermost front of reconnoissance and assault, she for the slow but
successful uplifting of Sergeant Jim back to health and into his place
in the train of our hero and hers. In the little leather-curtained
wagon, with the old black man and his daughter, and all her mistress's
small belongings, and with my saddle and bridle, I followed on to the
house where lay the sergeant, and where my horse would be waiting to
bear me on to Ferry's scouts.
I saw the Harpers only twice again before the war was over. Nearly all
winter our soldiering was down in the Felicianas, but by February we
were once more at Big Black when Sherman with ten thousand of his
destroyers swarmed out of Vicksburg on his great raid to Meridian. Three
or four mounted brigades were all that we could gather, and when we had
fought our fiercest we had only fought the tide with a broom; it went
back when it was ready, a month later, leaving what a wake! The Harpers
set up a pretty home in Jackson, where both Harry and Gholson were
occasional visitors, on errands more or less real to department
headquarters in that State capital; yet Harry and Cecile did not wed
until after the surrender. Gholson's passion far Charlotte really did
half destroy him, while it lasted; nevertheless, one day about a year
after her marriage, when I had the joy of visiting the Harpers, I saw
that Gholson's heart was healed of that wound and had opened in a new
place. That is why Estelle, with that danger-glow of emotion ever
impending on her beautiful cheek, never married. She was of that kind
whose love, once placed, can never remove itself, and she loved Gholson.
Both Cecile and Camille had some gift to discern character, and some
notion of their own value, and therefore are less to be excused for not
choosing better husbands than they did; but Estelle could never see
beyond the outer label of man, woman or child, and Gholson's label was
his piety. She believed in it as implicitly, as consumingly, as he
believed in it himself; and when her whole kindred spoke as one and said
no, and she sent him away, _she_ knew she was a lifelong widow from that
hour. Gholson found a wife, a rich widow ten years his senior, and so
first of all, since we have reached the page for partings, good-bye
Gholson. "Whom the gods love die young"--you must be sixty years old
now, for they say you're still alive. And good-bye, old Dismukes; the
Colonel made a fortune after the war, as a penitentiary lessee, but they
say he has--how shall we phrase it?--gone to his reward? Let us
hope not.
But what is this; are we calling the roll after we have broken ranks?
Our rocket has scaled the sky, poised, curved, burst, spread out all its
stars, and dropped its stick. All is done unless we desire to watch the
fading sparks slowly sink and melt into darkness. The General, the
Major, his brother, their sister, my mother, Quinn, Kendall, Sergeant
Jim, the Sessionses, the Walls--do not inquire too closely; some have
vanished already, and soon all will be gone; then--another rocket; it is
the only way, and why is it not a good one? Harry and Cecile--yes, they
still shine, in "dear old New Orleans." Camille kept me on the
tenter-hooks while she "turned away her eyes" for years; but one evening
when we were reading an ancient book together out dropped those same old
sweet-pea blossoms; whereupon I took her hand and--I have it yet. There,
we have counted the last spark--stop, no! two lights beam out again;
Edgard and Charlotte, our neighbors and dearest friends through all our
life; they glow with nobility and loveliness yet, as they did in those
young days when his sword led our dying fortunes, and she, in her gypsy
wagon, followed them, binding the torn wound, and bathing the aching
bruise and fevered head. Oh, Ned Ferry, my long-loved partner, as dear a
leader still as ever you were in the days of bloody death, life's
choicest gifts be yours, and be hers whose sons and daughters are yours,
and the eldest and tallest of whom is the one you and she have
named Richard.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
OTHER BOOKS BY MR. CABLE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There are few living American writers who can reproduce for us more
perfectly than MR. CABLE does, in his best moments, the speech, the
manners, the whole social atmosphere of a remote time and peculiar
people. A delicious flavor of humor permeates his stories.--_The New
York Tribune_.
STRONG HEARTS
12mo, $1.25
"Under the title "_Strong Hearts_," MR. CABLE has grouped three stories
of varying length, which we think must stand as among the most charming
things he has written. Not even in "_Old Creole Days_," is there found
more delicate work, and yet underneath it there is felt the strong grasp
of the master. There is so much delicacy, such a fine touch that one is
wholly captivated by the handiwork until it is realized how much this is
part and parcel of this picture."--_Brooklyn Eagle_.
-------------------------
_A New Edition of Mr. Cable's Romances comprising the following 5 vols.,
printed on deckle-edge paper, gilt top and bound in sateen with full
gilt design. Each 12mo, $1.50. The set, 5 volumes, in a box, $7.50_.
JOHN MARCH SOUTHERNER
12mo, $1.50
"The most careful and thorough going study of the reconstruction period
in the South which has yet been offered in the world of
fiction.--_The Outlook_.
"In many respects MR. CABLE'S finest work."--_Boston Advertiser_.
-------------------------
THE GRANDISSIMES
A STORY OF CREOLE LIFE
12mo, $1.50.
"Such a book goes far towards establishing an epoch in fiction, and it
places it beyond a doubt that we have in MR. CABLE a novelist of
positive originality, and of the very first quality."--_The
Boston Journal_.
+The Grandissimes.+ with 12 full-page illustrations and 8 head and tail
pieces by Albert Herter, all reproduced in photogravure, and with an
original cover design by the same artist. 8vo, $6.00.
A Special limited Edition of 204 numbered copies printed on Japan paper,
net, $12.00_.
-------------------------
OLD CREOLE DAYS
12mo, $1.50.
Cameo Edition with an etching by Percy Moran, $1.25
"These charming stories attract attention and commendation by their
quaint delicacy of style, their faithful delineation of Creole
character, and a marked originality."--_The New Orleans Picayune_.
+Old Creole Days.+ _With 8 full-page illustrations and 14 head and tail
pieces by Albert Herter, all reproduced in photogravure, and with an
original cover design by the same artist. 8vo, $6.00.
A Special Limited Edition of 204 numbered copies printed on Japan paper,
net $12.00_.
BONAVENTURE
A PROSE PASTORAL OF ACADIAN LOUISIANA 12mo, $1.50
"A noble, tender, beautiful tale."--MRS. L. C. MOULTON in _Boston
Herald_.
"MR. CABLE has never produced anything so delightful and so artistic as
"Bonaventure." The charm of the pastoral life of these unlearned,
unsuspicious people in rude homes far away from the stir of modern life
is as novel as it is indescribable."--_North American Review_.
DR. SEVIER 12mo, $1.50
"The story contains a most attractive blending of vivid descriptions of
local scenery, with admirable delineations of personal character."--_The
Congregationalist_.
-------------------------
STRANGE TRUE STORIES OF LOUISIANA
Illustrated. 12mo, $2.00
"What a field of romance, of color, of incident, of delicate feeling,
and unique social conditions these stories show!"--_Hartford Courant_.
"They are tales whose interest and variety seem inexhaustible.--MR.
CABLE has done lasting service to literature in giving us this
remarkable and delightful collection. In themselves they are memorably
charming."--_Boston Transcript_.
MADAME DELPHINE
16mo, 75 cents
"This is one of the gems of a collection of exquisite stories of the old
Creole days in Louisiana."--_Boston Advertiser_.
Ivory series edition, 16mo, 75c.
-------------------------
THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA
ILLUSTRATED FROM DRAWINGS BY FENNEL
Square 12mo, $2.50
"As a history of the Louisiana Creoles, it occupies a field in which it
will not find a competitor. Mr. Cable has given us an exceedingly
attractive piece of work."--_The Nation_.
-------------------------
THE SILENT SOUTH
Together with the Freedman's Case in Equity and the Convict Lease
System. _Revised and Enlarged Edition_. With portrait.
12mo, $1.00
"Whatever other literature on these themes may arise Mr. Cable's book
must be a permanent influence impossible for writers on either side to
ignore."--_The Critic_.
-------------------------
THE NEGRO QUESTION
12mo, 75c
"Mr. Cable has the Puritan conscience, the agitator's courage, and the
Anglo-Saxon's fearless adhesion to what he deems right."--_The
Churchman_.
-------------------------
THE CABLE STORY BOOK
Selections for School Reading. Edited by Mary E. Burt and Lucy L. Cable.
[_The Scribner Series of School Reading_]. Illustrated. 12mo, _net_ 60c.
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