Night had fully come. A few bivouac fires burned low in the grove, and
at one of them near the grove gate I found our young commander. On a
bench made of a fence-rail and two forked stakes he sat between Quinn
and the first-lieutenant of the Louisianians. The doctor whom I had seen
before sat humped on his horse, facing the three young men and making
clumsy excuses to Ferry for leaving. The other physician would stay for
some time yet, he said, and he, himself, was leaving his instruments,
such as they were, and would return in the morning. "Fact is, my son's a
surgeon, and he taken all my best instruments with _him._"
"When; where is he?" eagerly asked Quinn, seeing Ferry was not going to
ask.
"My son? Oh, he's in Virginia, with General Lee."
"Hell!" grunted Quinn, but the doctor pretended to listen to Ferry.
"Ah, but we move south at day-light; the prisoners and wounded we send
east, to Hazlehurst," said our leader, with a restraining hand on
Quinn's knee. The other lieutenant made some inquiry of him, and the
doctor was ignored, but stayed on, and as I stood waiting to be noticed
I gathered a number of facts. The lightly injured would go in a
plantation wagon; for the few gravely hurt there was the Harpers'
ambulance, which had just arrived to take the ladies back to Squire
Wall's, near Brookhaven, alas! instead of to Louisiana. For the ladies
Charlotte's spring-wagon was to be appropriated, one of them riding
beside it on horseback, and there was to be sent with them, besides
Charlotte's old black driver, "a reliable man well mounted." Whoever
that was to be it was not Harry, for he was to go south with a small
guard, bearing the body of the Louisiana captain to his home between the
hostile lines behind Port Hudson.
"Good-night, gentlemen," said the doctor at last. As he passed into the
darkness Quinn bent a mock frown upon his young superior.
"Lieutenant Ferry, the next time I have to express my disgust please to
keep your hand off my knee, will you?"
Ferry's response was to lay it back again and there ensued a puerile
tussle that put me in a precious pout, that I should be kept waiting by
such things. But presently the three parted to resume their several
cares, and the moment Ferry touched my arm to turn me back toward the
house I was once more his worshipper. "Well!" he began, "you have now
_two_ fine horses, eh?"
"Oh, by Regulations, I suppose, I ought to turn one of them over to
Major Harper. I wish it were to you, Lieutenant; I'd keep my own--he'll
be all right in a day or two--and give you Captain Jewett's."
"Well,--just for a day or two,--do that, while I lend my horse to a
friend."
I had already asked myself what was to become of Charlotte Oliver while
the Harpers were preempting her little wagon, and now I took keen alarm.
"Why, Lieutenant, I shall be glad! But why not lend Captain Jewett's
horse and keep yours? Yours is right now the finest and freshest mount
in the command."
"Yes, 'tis for that I lend him."
We went on in silence. Startled and distressed, I pondered. What was her
new purpose, that she should ask, or even accept, such a favor as this
from Ned Ferry; a favor which, within an hour, the whole command would
know he had granted? Was this a trifle, which only the Gholson-like
smallness of my soul made spectral? The first time I had ever seen Ferry
with any of his followers about him, was he not on Charlotte's gray, now,
unluckily, beyond reach, at Wiggins? Ah, yes; but Beauty lending a horse
to speed Valor was one thing; Valor unhorsing himself to speed
Beauty--oh, how different! What was the all-subordinating need?
As we entered the hall I came to a conviction which lightened my heart;
the all-subordinating need was--Oliver. I thought I could see why. The
spring of all his devilish behavior lay in those relations to her for
which I knew she counted herself chargeable through her past mistakes.
Unless I guessed wrong her motives had risen. I believed her aim was
now, at whatever self-hazard, to stop this hideous one-woman's war, and
to speed her unfinished story to the fairest possible outcome for all
God's creatures, however splendidly or miserably the "fool in it" should
win or lose. We stopped and waited for Cécile and the remaining doctor,
she with a lighted candle, to come down the stairs. From two rooms
below, where most of the wounded lay, there came women's voices softly
singing, and Charlotte's was among them. Their song was one listening to
which many a boy in blue, many a lad in gray, has died: "Rock me to
sleep, mother."
Cécile and the doctor had come from the bedside of the Union captain,
where Miss Harper remained. "I've done all I can," he said to Ferry; "we
old chill-and-fever doctors wa'n't made for war-times; he may get well
and he may not."
"Smith," said Ferry, "go up and stay with him till further orders."