"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 Cécile 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 Cécile, 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.