I passed on, flattered but scandalized, wasting no guesses on how she
knew me--if she really knew me at all--but taking my revenge by
moralizing on her, to myself, as a sign of the times, until brigade
headquarters were in full view, a few rods off the road; four or five
good, white wall-tents in a green bit of old field backed by a thicket
of young pines.
Midway of this space I met Scott Gholson, clerk to the Adjutant-general.
It was Gholson who had first spoken of me for this detail. He was an
East Louisianian, of Tangipahoa; aged maybe twenty-six, but in effect
older, having from birth eaten only ill-cooked food, and looking it;
profoundly unconscious of any shortcoming in his education, which he had
got from a small church-pecked college of the pelican sort that feed it
raw from their own bosoms. One of his smallest deficiencies was that he
had never seen as much art as there is in one handsome dinner-plate.
Now, here he was, riding forth to learn for himself, privately, he said,
why I did not appear. Yet he halted without turning, and seemed to wish
he had not found me.
"Did you"--he began, and stopped; "did you notice a"--he stopped again.
"What, a leather-curtained spring-wagon?"
"No-o!" he said, as if nobody but a gaping idiot would expect anybody
not a gaping idiot to notice a leather-curtained spring-wagon. "No-o!
did you notice the brown horse that man was riding who just now passed
you as you turned off the road?"
No, I barely remembered the rider had generously moved aside to let me
go by. In pure sourness at the poverty of my dress and the perfection of
his, I had avoided looking at him higher than his hundred-dollar boots.
My feet were in uncolored cowhide, except the toes.
"He noticed you," said Gholson; "he looked back at you and your bay.
Wouldn't you like to turn back and see his horse?"
"Why, hardly, if I'm behindhand now. Is it so fine as that?"
"Well, no. It's the horse he captured the time he got the Yankee who had
him prisoner."
"Who?" I cried. "What! You don't mean to say--was that Lieutenant
Ferry?"
"Yes, so called. He wa'n't a lieutenant then, he was a clerk, like you
or me."
"Oh, I wish I had noticed him!"
"We can see him yet if you--"
"Do you want to see him?" I gathered my horse.
"Me!--No, sir. But you spoke as if--"
I shook my head and we moved toward the tents. This was worse than the
dream; the rat had not seen the cockerel, but the cockerel had observed
the rat--dropping into the barrel: the cockerel, yes, and not the
cockerel alone, for I saw that Gholson was associating him with her of
the curtained wagon. By now they were side and side. I asked if Ferry
came often to headquarters. "Yes, quite as often as he's any business
to." "Ah, ha!" thought I, and presently said I had heard he was a
great favorite.
"Well,--yes,--he--he is,--with some."
"Don't you like him?"
"Who, me? Oh!--I--I admire Ned Ferry--for a number of things. He's more
foolhardy than brave; he's confessed as much to me. Women call him
handsome. He sings; beautifully, I suppose; I can't sing a note; and
wouldn't if I could. Still, if he only wouldn't sing drinking-songs
--but, Smith, I think that to sing drinking-songs--and all
the more to sing them as well as some folks think he does--is to
advocate drinking, and to advocate drinking is next door to excusing
drunkenness!"
"Then Ned Ferry doesn't drink?"
"Indeed he does! I don't like to say it, and I don't say he drinks 'too
much', as they call it; but, Smith, he drinks with men who do! Oh, _I_
admire him; only I do wish--"
"Wish what?"
"Oh, I--I wish he wouldn't play cards. Smith, I've seen him play cards
with the shells bursting over us!"
For my part I privately wished this saint wouldn't rub my uninteresting
surname into me every time he spoke. As we dismounted near the tents I
leaned against my saddle and asked further concerning the object of his
loving anxiety. Was Ned Ferry generous, pleasant, frank?
"Why, in outward manner, yes; but, Smith, he was raised to be a Catholic
priest. I could a heap-sight easier trust him if he'd sometimes show
distrust, himself. If he ever does I've never seen it. And yet--Oh,
we're the best of friends, and I'm speaking now only as a friend and
_toe_ a friend. Oh, if it wa'n't for just one thing, I could admit what
Major Harper said of him not ten minutes ago to me; that you never
finish talking to Ned Ferry without feeling a little brighter, happier
and cleaner than when you began; whereas talking with some men it's just
the reverse."
I looked carefully at my companion and asked him if the Major had said
_all_ of that. He had, and Gholson's hide had turned it without taking a
scratch. "That's fine!--as to Ferry," I said.
"Oh, yes,--it would be--if it was only _iso_. Trouble is, you keep
remembering he's such a stumbling-block to any real spiritual inquirer.
Yes, and to himself; for, you know, spiritually there's so much less
hope for the moralist than what there is for the up-and-down reprobate!
You know that,--_Smith_."
My silence implied that I knew it, though I did not feel any brighter,
happier or cleaner.
"Smith, Ned Ferry is not only a Romanist, he's a romanticist. We--you
and me--are religionists. _Our_ brightness and happiness air the
brightness and happiness of faith; our cleanness is the cleanness of
religious scruples. Worst of it with Ned is he's satisfied with the
difference, I'm afraid! That's what makes him so pleasant to fellows who
don't care a sou marquee about religion."