"Since the hour of her marriage she has never gone into her chamber
without locking the door; she has never come out of it unarmed."
I remarked that had I been in her place I should either have sunk into
the mire, so to speak, or thrown myself, literally, into the river.
"Yes," he responded, "but not she! Her life is still hers; she will
neither give it away nor throw it away. She wants it, and she wants
it whole."
"Did she say that to you?"
He looked at me in wide surprise. "Ah! could you think she would speak
with me on that subject? No, I have learned what I know from a man we
shall meet to-day; the brother of Major Harper; and he, he has it
from--" my companion smiled--"somebody you have known a pretty long
time, I think, eh?"
"I see; I see; you mean my mother!"
He let me ponder the fact a long time. "Lieutenant," I asked at length,
"did you know your plot against the two Olivers would cross her wishes?"
"Ah!" was his quick response, "it crossed mine, like-wise. But, you
know, this life we have to live, it is never for two people only."
"No," I replied, with my eagerness to moralize, "no two persons, and
above all no one man and one woman, can ever be sure of their duty, or
even of their happiness, till they consider at least one third
person,--"
"Hoh!" interrupted Ferry, in the manner of one to whom the fact was
somehow of the most immediate and lively practical interest, "and to
consider a thousand is better." Then, after a pause, "Yes," he said, "I
know she could not like that move, but you remember our talk of
yesterday, where we first met?"
Indeed I did. Between young men, to whom the principles of living were
still unproved weapons, there was, to my taste, just one sort of talk
better than table-talk, and that was saddle-talk; I remembered vividly.
"You mean when we were saying that on whatever road a man's journey
lies, if he will, first of all, stick to that road, and then every time
it divides take the--I see! you came to where the road divided!"
"Yes, and of course I had to take the upper fork. I am glad you said
that yesterday morning; it came as sometimes the artillery, eh?--just at
the right moment."
"I didn't say it, Lieutenant; you said it."
"No, I think you said it;--sounds like you."
"It was you who said it! and anyhow, it was you who had the strength to
do it!"
He laughed. "Oh!--a little strength, a little
vanity,--pride--self-love--we have to use them all--as a good politician
uses men."
I looked him squarely in the eyes and began to burn. At every new
unfolding of his confidence I had let my own vanity, pride, self-love be
more and more flattered, and here at length was getting ready to esteem
him less for showing such lack of reserve as to use _me_ as an
escape-valve for his pent-up thoughts, when all at once I fancied I saw
what he was trying to do. I believed he had guessed my temptations of
the night and was making use of himself to warn me how to fight them. "I
understand," said I, humbly.
But this only pleasantly mystified him. He glanced all over me with a
playful eye and said, "You must have a carbine the first time our
ordnance-wagon finds us. Drop back, now, into the ranks."
I did so; but I felt sure I should ride beside him again as soon as he
could make an opportunity; for it was plain that by a subtle unconfessed
accord he and _she_ had chosen me to be a true friend between them.
About noon, while taking a brief rest to give our horses a bite, we were
joined by an ambulance carrying Major Harper's brother and some freight
which certainly was not hospital stores. When we remounted, this vehicle
moved on with us, in the middle of the column, and I was called to ride
beside it and tell all about the arrival of Miss Harper and her nieces
at Hazlehurst, and their journey from Brookhaven to camp. Ned Ferry rode
on the side opposite me and I noticed that all the fellows nearest the
ambulance were choice men; Sergeant Jim was not there, but Kendall was
one, and a young chap on a large white-footed pacer was another. Having
finished my task I had gathered my horse to fall back to my place at the
rear, when my distinguished auditor said, "I'm acquainted with your
mother, you know."
He was not so handsome as his brother, though younger. His affability
came by gleams. I asked how that good fortune had come to my mother, and
he replied that there was hardly time now for another story; we might
be interrupted--by the Yankees. "Ask the young lady you met yesterday
evening," he added, with a knowing gleam, and smiled me away; and when
by and by the enemy did interrupt, I had forgiven him. Whoever failed to
answer my questions, in those days, incurred my forgiveness.