The Cavalier
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George Washington Cable >> The Cavalier
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"You tell me I risked my life to save yours; I risked more than life,
and I risked it for more than to save yours. Yet I did not save your
life; you saved it, yourself, and--" here her low tone thrilled like a
harp-string--"you risked it--frightfully--at that bridge--merely to save
the promise you made me that you need not have made at all--oh, you
needn't shake your head; I _know_."
"Ah, how you gild my base metal!"
"No, no, I have the story exactly, and from one who has no mind to
praise you."
"From Gholson?"
"Gholson! no! I have it from Lucius Oliver, who had it from his son. He
told me carefully, quietly and entirely, in pure spleen, so that I might
know that they know--think they know, that is,--why you and--he in front
of us yonder--would not shoot his son when--"
"When as soldiers it was our simple du'--"
"Yes; and also that I may understand that he--the son--has sworn by that
right hand you mutilated that the 'pair of you' shall die before
he does."
"I ought not to have shown him that envelope addressed to you."
"Ah, but if it saved your life!"
"And this is what you don't want me to tell? Ah, I see; for me to know
it is enough; I can put it to him as a theory. I can say Oliver is not a
man to be put upon the defensive, and that he is more than likely to be
hunting 'the pair of us'--" All at once I thought of something.
"What made you give that sudden start?" she asked as we faced about in
the driveway to make our walk a moment longer; "that's a bad habit
you've got; why do you do it?"
I fancied the thrilling freshness of the question I was about to put
would be explanation enough. "Do you believe Jewett has gone back into
his own lines?"
"I don't know; hasn't he?"
"Oh, I don't _know_, either, but--well, I don't believe there's a braver
man in Grant's army than that one a-straddle of my horse to-day! Why,
just the way he got him, night before last,--you've heard that, have
you not?"
"Yes, I've heard it; he is a very daring man; what of it?"
"Why, I can't help thinking he's out here to make a new record for
himself, at whatever cost!"
A note of distress hung on my hearer's stifled voice; her head went
lower and she laid her fingers pensively to her lips. "It would be like
him," I heard her murmur, and when I asked if she meant Jewett she
shook her head.
"No," I said, "you mean it would be like Oliver to join him," and with
that the sudden start was hers. "He wouldn't have to touch Ned Ferry or
me," I went on, heartlessly, "nor to come near us, to make us rue the
hour we let ourselves forget this wasn't our private war."
She whispered something to herself in horrified dismay; but then she
looked at me with her eyes very blue and said "You'll see him about it,
won't you? You must help unravel this tangle, Richard; and if you do
I'll--I'll dance at your wedding; yours and--somebody's we know!" Her
eyes began forewith.
A light footfall sounded behind us, and Camille gave both her hands to
my companion. "I was in the hall," she said, "telling Cecile she was
like a white star that had come out by day, when I saw you here looking
like a great red one; and you're still more like a red, red rose, and
I've come to get some of your fragrance."
"I'd exchange for yours any day, and thank you, dear," responded
Charlotte; "you're a bunch of sweet-peas. Isn't she, Mr. Smith?"
The bunch beamed an ecstatic bliss. What was the explanation; had her
father arrived, or--or somebody else? The question went through me like
an arrow. Was the cause of this heavenly radiance somebody else?--that
was the barb; or was it I?--that was the soothing feather.
In gratitude for Charlotte's word she sank backward in a long obeisance.
"May it please your ladyship, dinner is served. Oh, Mr. Smith, I've been
listening to Mr. Gholson talking with aunt Martha and Estelle; I don't
wonder you and he are friends; I think his ideas of religion are
perfectly beautiful!"
At our two-o'clock dinner I found that our company had been reinforced.
On one side of Camille sat I; but on the other side sat "Harry."
XXXII
A MARTYR'S WRATH
Great news the aide-de-camp brought us; from Lee, from Longstreet, Bragg
and Johnston. Johnston was about to fall upon Grant's rear. Across the
Mississippi Dick Taylor was expected this very day to deal the same
adversary a crippling blow, and it was partly to mask this movement that
we had made our feint upon the Federals near Natchez. Now these had
fallen back, and our force had cunningly slipped away southward. Only
General Austin and his staff had not gone when Lieutenant Helm left the
front, and they were about to go.
Toward the end of the meal Mrs. Sessions, in her amiable plantation
drawl, said she hoped the bearer of so much good tidings had not come to
take away Lieutenant Ferry; and when Harry, flushing, asked what had
given her such a thought, the simple soul replied that Mr. Gholson had
told her he "suspicioned as much."
At once there arose the prettiest clamor all round the board, in which
Charlotte and Cecile joined for the obvious purpose of making confusion.
Gholson turned yellow and spoke things nobody heard, and Ferry tried to
drown Harry's loud declarations that the word he had brought to Ferry
was for him to stay, and that he had found him saddling up to go in
search of his company. "Isn't that so, Ned?--Now,--now,--isn't that so?"
We left the table all laughing but Gholson. He tried to say something to
Harry, which the latter waved away with mock gaiety until on the side
veranda we got beyond view of the ladies, when the aide-de-camp reddened
angrily and turned his back. As the two lieutenants were lighting
cigarettes together, Harry, thinking Gholson had left us, blurted out,
"Oh, that's all very well for you to say, Ned, but, damn him, he's not
the sort of man that has the right to 'suspicion' me of anything;
slang-whanging, backbiting sneak, I know what _he's_ here for."
On that the blood surged to Ferry's brow, but he set his mouth firmly,
locked arms with the speaker and led him down the veranda. Gholson took
on an uglier pallor than before and went back into the house. I followed
him. He moved slowly up the two flights of hall stairs and into a room
close under the roof, called the "soldiers' room". It had three double
beds, one of them ours. Without a fault in the dreary rhythm of his
motions he went to the bedpost where hung his revolver, and turning to
me buckled the weapon at his waist with hands that kept the same
unbroken measure though they trembled and were as pallid as his face. In
the same slow beat he shook his head.
"Smith, I rejoice! O--oh! I rejoice and am glad when I'm reviled and
persecuted by the hounds of hell, and spoken evil against falsely for my
religion's sake."
"Now, Gholson, that's nonsense!"
"O--oh! that's what it's for! that's what he meant by 'slang-whanging.'
That's what it's for from first to last, no matter what it's for in
between; and I know what it's for in between, too, and Ned Ferry knows.
Did you see Ned Ferry take him under his protection? O--oh! they're two
of one hell-scorched kind!" My companion stood gripping the bedpost and
fumbling at his holster. I sank to the bed, facing him, expecting his
rage to burn itself out in words, but when he began again his teeth
were clenched. "You heard him tell Ned Ferry he knows why I'm here. It's
true! he does know! he knows I'm here to protect a certain person from
him and--"
"From whom? from Harry Helm? Oh, Gholson, that's too fantastical!"
"From him and the likes of him! Not that he loves her; that's the
difference between them two cotton-mouth moccasins; Ned Ferry, hell
grind him! does--or thinks he does; that other whelp _don't,_ and knows
he don't; he's only enam'--"
"HUSH!" He ceased. "I swear, Scott Gholson, you must choose your words
better when you allude--Lieutenant Helm is the last man in the brigade
to be under _my_ protection, but--oh, you're crazy, man, and blind
besides. Harry Helm is not in love, but he thinks he is, though with
quite another person!"
"O--oh! whether he loves or not, or whoever he loves, I know who he
hates; he hates me and my religion; our religion, Smith, mine and yours;
because it's put me between him and her. What was that the preacher said
this morning? 'The carnal mind, being enmity against God, is enmity
against them that serve God.' O--oh, I accept his enmity! it proves my
religion isn't vain! I'm glad to get it!"
All this from his oscillating head, through his set teeth, in one malign
monotone. As he quoted the preacher he mechanically drew his revolver.
There was no bravado in this; he might lie, but he did not know how to
sham; did not know, now, that his face was drawn with pain. Holding the
weapon in one hand, under his absent gaze he turned it from side to side
on the palm of the other. I put out my hand for it, but he dropped it
into the holster and tried to return my smile.
"Do you propose to call him out?" I asked. "You can't call out an
officer; you'll be sent to the water-batteries at Mobile."
"I've thought of all that," he droned.
"Then why do you put that thing on?"
"Why do I put it on? Why, I--you know what I told you about that
Yankee--"
"Gholson," I exclaimed, for I saw that murder, even double murder, was
hatching in his heart, with Charlotte Oliver for its cause, and looked
hard into his evil eyes until they overmatched mine; whereupon I made as
if suddenly convinced. "You're right!" I turned, whipped on my own belt
with its two "persuaders," and blandly smoothing my ribs, added "Now!
here are two ready, Yankees or no Yankees."
I never saw a face so unconsciously marked with misery as Gholson's was
when we started downstairs. I stopped him on a landing. "Understand, you
and I are friends,--hmm? I think Lieutenant Helm owes you an apology,
and if you'll keep away from him I'll try to bring it to you."
The reply began with a vindictive gleam. "You needn't; I ain't got any
more use for it than for him. I never apologized to a man in my life,
Smith, nor I never accepted an apology from one; that's not my way."
Near the bottom of the second flight we met Charlotte, who, to make bad
worse, would have passed with no more than a smile, but the look of
Gholson startled her and she noticed our arms. With an arresting eye I
offered a sprightly comment on the heat of the day, and while she was
replying with the same gaiety I whispered "Take him with you."
How nimbly her mind moved! "Oh Mr. Gholson!" she said, and laughed to
gain an instant for invention.
"Mr. Gholson, can _you_ tell me the first line of the last hymn we sang
this morning?" Her beam was irresistible, and they went to the large
parlor. I turned into the smaller one, opposite, where Squire Sessions
started from a stolen doze and, having heard of my feeling for books,
thrust into my hands, and left me with, the "Bible Defense of Slavery."
As I moved to a window which let out upon the side veranda the two
lieutenants came around from the front and stood almost against it,
outside; and as I intended to begin upon Harry as soon as Squire
Sessions was safely upstairs, this suited me well enough. But the moment
they came to the spot I heard Ned Ferry doing precisely what I had
planned to do. At the same time, from across the hall came the sound of
the piano and of Charlotte's voice, now a few bars, then an interval of
lively speech, again a few bars, then more speech, and then a sustained
melody as she lent herself to the kind flattery of Gholson's
songless soul.
"But he is!" I overheard the aide-de-camp say; "he is a backbiting
sneak, and I tell you again he's backbitten nobody more than he
has you!"
"And I tell you again, Harry, that is my business."
"If he wants to fight me he can; I'll waive my rank."
"No, you will not, you have no right; our poor little rank, it doesn't
belong to us, Harry, 'tis we belong to it. 'If he wants to fight!'--Do
you take him for a rabbit? He is a brave man, you know that, old fellow.
Of course he wants to fight. But he cannot! For the court-martial he
would not care so much; I would not, you would not; 'tis his religion
forbids him."
"O--oh!" groaned Harry in Gholson's exact tone, "'Hark from the tombs'!"
"Ah!" said Ferry, "he does not live up to it? Well, of course! who
does? But we will pass that; the main question is, Will you express the
regret, and so forth, as I have suggested, and do yourself credit,
Harry, as an officer and a gentleman, or--will you fight?"
"But you say his religion, so called, won't let him fight!"
"That's what I think; but if it forbids him, and if consequently he will
not, well,--Harry,--I will."
"You will what!"
"I will have to fight you in his place."
"Why, Ned!--Ned!--you--you astound me! Wha'--what do you mean?"
"That is what I mean, Harry. You know--many times you have heard me
say--I don't believe in that kind of thing; I find that worse than the
religion of Gholson; yet still,--what shall I say?--we are but soldiers
anyhow--this time I make an exception in your favor. And of course this
is confidential, on both sides; but you must make peace with Gholson, or
you must fight with me."
"Oh, good Lord!--Ned!--Good Lord A'mighty! but this is too absurd. Why,
Ned, don't you see that the bottom cause of this trouble isn't--"
"I know what is the bottom cause of this trouble very well, Harry; you
can hear her in yonder, now, singing. Wherever Gholson is he hears her,
too, like-wise. Perchance 'tis to him she is singing. If she can sing to
him, are you too good to apologise?"
"Oh, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, Ned, damned if I don't!
George! I'll apologize! Rather than lose your friendship I'd apologize
to the devil!"
Ferry's thanks came eagerly. "Well, anyhow, old boy," he added, "in such
a case to back down is braver than to fight; but to apologize to the
devil--that is not hard; on the contrary, to keep _from_ apologizing to
the devil--ah! I wish I could always do that!--I wonder where is
Dick Smith."
I stealthily laid down the "Bible Defense of Slavery" and was going
upstairs three steps at a stride, when I came upon Camille and Estelle.
My aim was to get Harry's revolver to him before he should have the
exasperating surprise of finding Gholson armed, and to contrive a
pretext for so doing; and happily a word from the two sisters gave me my
cue. With the fire-arms of both officers I came downstairs and out upon
the veranda loud-footed, humming--
"'To the lairds o' Convention 'twas Claverhouse spoke,
Ere the sun shall go down there are heads to be--'
"Gentlemen, I hope I'm not too officious; they say we're all going for a
walk in the lily-pond woods, and I reckon you'd rather not leave these
things behind."
Both thanked me and buckled on their belongings, but Ferry's look was
peculiarly intelligent; "I was in the small parlor, looking for you," he
said; "I thought you would be near the music." And so he had seen
Gholson with his revolver on him, and must have understood it!
"Smith," said Harry, "will you be so kind as to say to Gholson--oh,
Lord! Ned, this is heavy drags on a sandy road! I--"
"That's all right, Harry, I withdraw the request."
"Well, you needn't; I was in the wrong. Smith, will you say to
Gholson--" His voice dropped to a strictly private rumble.
"Yes, Lieutenant, I'll do so with pleasure, and I'm sure what you say
will have the proper--here are the ladies."
XXXIII
TORCH AND SWORD
"Now give me your hand, Miss Camille; now jump!" So twice and once again
the rivulet was passed which ran from the lily-pond, she and I leading
all the others on the return from the woodland afternoon walk. We turned
and faced away from the declining sun and across the clear pool to where
its upper end, dotted with lily-pads, lay in a deep recess of the woods.
There were green and purple garlands of wild passion-flower around her
hat and about the white and blue fabrics at her waist. At the head of
the pond, with Ferry beside her, stood black-haired Cecile canopied by
overhanging boughs, her hat bedecked with the red spikes of the
Indian-shot and wound with orange masses of love-vine. Nearer to us
around the shore was Estelle of the red-brown hair and red-brown eyes
and brows and lashes, whose cheek seemed always to glow with ever rising
but never confessed emotion; and with her walked Gholson. Near the
waterside also, but farthest up the path, came Miss Harper and
Charlotte Oliver.
Harry was not with us. The settlement of his trouble with Gholson
awaited his return out of the region north of us, whither Ferry had
suggested his riding on an easy reconnaissance. Camille and I were just
turning again, when there came abruptly into our scene the last gallant
show of martial finery any of us ever saw until the war was over and
there was nothing for our side to make itself fine for. On the road from
the house we heard a sound of galloping, and the next moment General
Austin and his entire staff (less only Harry) reined up at the edge of
the pond, ablaze with all the good clothes they could muster and
betraying just enough hard usage to give a stirring show of the war's
heroic reality. The General, on a beautiful cream-colored horse, wore
long yellow gauntlets and a yellow sash; from throat to waist the
sunlight glistened upon the over-abundant gold lace of his new uniform,
his legs were knee-deep in shining boots, and his soft gray hat was
looped up on one side and plumed according to Regulations with one
drooping ostrich feather. Behind halted in pleasing confusion captains
and captains, flashing with braids, bars, buckles, buttons, bands,
sword-knots, swords and brave eyes, and gaily lifting hats and caps,
twice, and twice again, and once more, to the ladies--God bless them!
Major Harper, the oldest, most refined and most soldierly of them all,
was also the handsomest. Old Dismukes was with them; burly, bushy,
dingy, on a huge roan charger. Camille asked me who he was, and I was
about to reply that he was a bloodthirsty brute without a redeeming
trait, when he lifted his shaggy brows at me and smiled, and as I smiled
back I told her he was our senior colonel, rough at times, but the
bravest of the brave. Meantime the General rode forward over a stretch
of shallow water, Ned Ferry ran back along the margin to meet him, and
at the saddlebow they spoke a moment together privately, while at more
distance but openly to us all Major Harper informed his sister that with
one night's camp and another day's dust the brigade would be down in
Louisiana. Camille turned upon me and hurrahed, the Arkansas colonel
smiled upon her approvingly, the ladies all waved, the General lifted
his plumed hat, faced about, passed through his turning cavalcade and
drew it after him at a gallop.
Our promenaders hurried into close order and with quick step and eager
converse we moved toward the house. In raptures scintillant with their
own beauty the three Harper girls inflated each item of the day's news
and the morrow's outlook, and it was almost as pretty to see Miss
Harper's keen black eyes and loving-tolerant smile go back and forth
from Camille to Estelle, from Estelle to Cecile, and round again, as
each maiden added some new extravagance to the glad vaunting of the
last, and looked, for confirmation, to the gallant who toiled to keep
her under her parasol. Suddenly the three girls broke into song with an
adaptation of "Oh, carry me back" which substituted "Louisiana" for
"Virginia," but whose absurd quaverings I will not betray in words to a
generation that never knew the frantic times to which they belonged. I
felt a shamefacedness for them even then, yet when I glanced behind,
Miss Harper was singing with us in the most exalted earnest. We had
nearly reached the field-gate, the big white one on the highway, and
were noting that the dust of the General and his retinue had barely
vanished from the southern stretch of the road, when one feminine voice
said "What's that?" another exclaimed "See yonder!" and Miss Harper
cried "Why, gentlemen, somebody's house is burning!"
Beyond the grove and the fields north of it, and beyond their farther
bound of trees, in the northwest, was rising and unfolding into the
peaceful Sabbath heavens a massive black column of the peculiar heavy
smoke made by the burning of baled and stored cotton. We ran, two and
two, into the road and up toward the grove-gate. "Don't stumble," I
warned Camille as she looked back to see if any one besides me was
holding his partner's hand. Inside the gate we paused, we two, still
hand in hand. Her brown hair had shaken low upon her temples in two
voluptuous masses between which she lifted her eyes to mine, my hand
tightened on hers, and hers gave a little spasm of its own.
"Oh, Dick!" she whispered; but before I could rally from the blissful
shock of it to reply, her face changed distressfully, and pointing
beyond me, she drank a great breath, and cried, "Look!"
Sure enough, out there on the sky-line, in the north-east this time,
another column of smoke was lifting its first billow over the tree-tops.
"Oh, Dick!" she exclaimed, in beautiful alarm, "what does it mean?"
"It means the Yankees,--love," I said, and when she gasped her dismay
without letting on to have heard the last word, I felt that fires were
cheap at any price.
"There are others there besides Yankees," said Gholson to the general
company as they joined us; "Yankees have got more sense than to start
fires ahead of their march." On the same instant with Ned Ferry I sprang
half-way to the top of the grove fence and peered out across road and
fields upon the farthest point in line with the second fire. There we
saw two horsemen reconnoitring, one a very commanding figure, the other
mean enough. Ferry used his glass, but no glass was needed to tell
either of us that Gholson's reckoning was true; those two were
not Federals.
The ladies flew to the house and the rest of us to the stable. In its
door Ferry stopped to look back upon the road while Gholson and I darted
in, but now he, too, sprang to his horse's side. "How many, Lieutenant?"
I cried, as the three of us saddled up.
"About a hundred; same we saw yesterday; captain at the rear; that means
our fellows are close behind them."
For a moment more I could hear the thunder of their speeding column;
then the grove seemed to swallow it up, and the stillness was grim.
"Come on!" cried Ferry, swinging up, and after him we sprang. "They've
dismounted on the far edge of the grove," said Gholson to me as we rode
abreast, with Ferry a length ahead; "they'll form line on each side the
road at right angles to it!" and again he was right. Ferry led
northeastward, but hardly had we made half a dozen leaps when he waved
me to a near corner of the flower-garden palings and I saw Miss Harper
beckoning and Charlotte holding up my carbine and his sword. Miss Harper
was drawn up as straight as a dart, her black eyes flashing and her lips
charged with practical information that began to flow the moment I was
near enough to hear her guarded voice. "They've all put their horses in
the locks of the road fence, just beyond the big white gate--"
"We know," I interrupted, leaning and snatching the weapons from
Charlotte's hands. She kissed them good-bye.
"Ah, yes, yes!" she said, "they know all we can tell them and all we
can't!"
The only response I could give was the shower of loose earth thrown upon
both women by my horse's heels as I whirled and sped after my leader. He
and Gholson were half a broad field ahead of me, but I followed only at
their speed, designing to hand over the sword so nearly at the moment of
going into action that I might stay by its owner's side unrebuked; and
my plan was not in vain. Up the highway our Louisianians burst into view
in column at full speed; I knew them by their captain, a man noted
throughout the brigade for the showiness of his dress; and the next
instant, away across the fields beyond the highroad, Quinn and his
scouts broke out of the woods, heading for the gap in the woods-pasture
fence. As each friendly column caught sight of the other, long cheers
rang across the narrowing interval between them. Through that other gap
which I had noted in my walk with Ferry he and Gholson reached the road,
sped forward on it to a rise that overlooked the fields, and halted.
Ferry rose on tiptoe in the stirrups, lifted his cap in air, pointed
triumphantly backward to the grove, and was recognized by both columns
at once. Again they cheered; at a full run I reached his side and threw
his sword into his hand. Both columns saw him belt it on and flash it
out, their cheers swelled again, the Louisianians hurtled down upon us,
and we turned and were at the front of the onset.
XXXIV
THE CHARGE IN THE LANE
The instant Ferry wheeled at the flaming captain's side you could see he
was unwelcome. I heard him tell what we knew of the foe and the ground;
I saw him glance back at the blown condition of the speeding column and
then say "You've got them anyhow, Captain; you'll get every man of them
without a scratch, only if you will take your time."
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