At a farm-house well hidden in the woods of a creek we got a brave
supper for the asking and had our uniforms wonderfully cleaned and
pressed, and at ten that evening we dismounted before the three brightly
illumined tents of General Austin, Major Harper and that amiable cipher
our Adjutant-general. On the front of the last the shadow of a deeply
absorbed writer showed through the canvas, and Ferry murmured to me "The
ever toiling." It was Scott Gholson. I had heard the same name for him
the evening before, from her whose own lovely shadow fell so visibly and
so often upon the bright curtain of Ned Ferry's thought.
My leader went in while I held our horses. Then he and Gholson came out
and entered the General's tent; from which Gholson soon emerged again
and sent an orderly away into the gloom of the sleeping camp, and I
heard a small body of men mount and set off northward. Presently Ferry
came out and sent me in, and to my delight I found, on standing before
the General, that I did not need to tell what Charlotte Oliver wanted
kept back.
"No, never mind that," he said, "Miss Rothvelt was here and saw me this
afternoon, herself." Up to the point of my arrival at the bridge I had
merely to fumble my cap and answer his crisp questions. But there he
lighted a fresh cigar and said "Now, go on."
Gholson dropped in with something to be signed, and the General waved
him to wait and hear. For Gholson, despite the sappy fetor of his mental
temperament, had abilities that made him almost a private secretary to
the General. Who, nevertheless, knew him thoroughly. When I had
described Oliver's escape and would have hurried on to later details,
General Austin raised a hand.
"Hold on; you say nearly everybody fired at Oliver; who did not?" "I
did not, General."
"Did Lieutenant Ferry fire?"
I said he did not. The General turned his strong eyes to Gholson's and
kept them there while he took three luxurious puffs at his cigar. Then
he took the waiting paper, and as he wrote his name on it he said,
smiling, "I wish you had been in Lieutenant Ferry's place, Mr. Gholson;
you would have done your duty."
The flattered Gholson received the signed paper and passed out, and the
General smiled again, at his back. I hope no one has ever smiled the
same way at mine.
Ferry and I slept side by side that night, and he told me two companies
of our Louisianians were gone to cut off Jewett and his band. "Still, I
think they will be much too late," he said, and when I rather violently
turned the conversation aside to the subject of Scott Gholson, saying,
to begin with, that Gholson had wonderful working powers, he replied,
"'Tis true. Yet he says the brigade surgeon told him to-day he is on the
verge of a nervous break-down." But on my inquiring as to the cause of
our friend's condition, my bedmate pretended to be asleep.
We rose at dawn and rode eastward, he and I alone, some fourteen miles,
to the Sessions's, where the dance had been two nights earlier. On
entering the stable to put up our horses we suddenly looked at each
other very straight, while Ferry's countenance confessed more pleasure
than surprise, though a touch of care showed with it. "I did not know
this," he said, "and I did not expect it."
What we saw was the leather-curtained spring-wagon and its little
striped-legged mules. The old negro in charge of them bowed gravely to
me and smiled affectionately upon Ferry. About an hour later Gholson
appeared. He took such hurried pains to explain his coming that any fool
could have seen the real reason. The brigade surgeon had warned him--Oh!
had I heard?--Oh! from Ned Ferry, yes. The cause of his threatened
breakdown, he said, was the perpetual and fearful grind of work into
which of late he had--fallen.
"Did the doctor say 'fallen'?" I shrewdly asked.
"No, the doctor said 'plunged,' but--did Ned Fer'--who put that into
your head?"
"Nobody; some fall, you know, some plunge." I did not ask the cause of
the plunge; the two little mules told me that. He would never have come,
Gholson hurried on to say, had not Major Harper kindly suggested that a
Sabbath spent with certain four ladies would be a timely preventive.
"What!" I cried, "are they here t'--too? Why,--where's their carryall?
'Tisn't in the stable; I've looked!"
"No, it was here, but yesterday, when the fighting threatened to be
heavy, it was sent to the front. Smith, I didn't know Charlie Tolliver
was here!"
I believed him. But I saw he was not in search of a preventive. Ah, no!
he was ill of that old, old malady which more than any other abhors a
preventive. Waking in the summer dawn and finding Ned Ferry risen and
vanished hitherward, a rival's instinct had moved him to follow, as the
seeker for wild honey follows the bee. He had come not for the cure of
his honey-sickness, but for more--more--more--all he could find--of the
honey. "Smith," he said, with a painful screw of his features, "I'm
mightily troubled about Ned Ferry!"
"Yes," I dishonestly responded, "his polished irreligion--"
"Oh, no! No," he groaned, "it isn't that so much just now, though I know
that to a true religionist like you the society of such a mere
romanticist--"
We were interrupted.