On the second night after that morning of frantic mortification I was
riding at Ned Ferry's side, in Louisiana. The camp of the brigade was a
few miles behind us. Somewhere in front of us, fireless and close hid,
lay our company of scouts, ahead of whose march he had pushed the day
before to confer with the General, and we were now on our way to rejoin
them. Under our horses' feet was that old Plank-road which every
"buttermilk ranger" must remember--whether dead or not, I am tempted to
say,--who rode under either flag in the Felicianas in '63 and '64.
Late in the evening of the day on which I had conducted the Harpers to
Squire Wall's I had received a despatch ordering me to board the next
morning's train at Brookhaven with my horse. On it I should find a
number of cases of those shoes I had seen at Hazlehurst. At Tangipahoa I
was to transfer them to one or two army-wagons which would by that time
have reached there, and bring them across to Clinton, where a guard
would meet and join me to conduct the wagons to camp. And thus I had
done, bearing with me a sad vision of dear dark Miss Harper fluttering
her handkerchief above her three nieces' heads, one of whom refrained
until the opportunity had all but gone, to wave good-bye to the visibly
wretched author of "Maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes." My
lucky Cricket had gone three nights and two whole days with no harness
but his halter, and to-night, beside the Yankee's horse, that still bore
Ned Ferry, he was as good as new. My leader and I talked of Charlotte.
In the middle of this day's forenoon Gholson had come into camp
reporting at the General's tent the long ride she had made on Monday; as
good a fifty miles as Ferry's own. We called it, now, Ferry and I, a
most clever achievement for a woman. "Many women," he said, "know how to
ride, but she knows how to march."
"I think you must have taught her," I responded, and he enjoyed his
inability to deny it. So I ventured farther and said she seemed to me
actually to have reached, in the few days since I had first seen her, a
finer spiritual stature.
"She?" he asked; "ah! she is of the kind that must grow or die. Yes, you
may be right; but in that time she has kept me so occupied growing,
myself, that I did not notice she was doing the same. But also, I think,
the eyes with which we look at her have grown."
"She has outgrown this work," I insisted.
"Those letters--to the newspapers?"
"No, this other; this work which she has to do by craft and wiles and
disguises. Lieutenant, I don't believe she can go on doing that now with
her past skill, since life has become to her a nobler story than it
promised to be."
My companion lifted higher in the saddle with delight. Then soberly he
said, "We have got to lose her." I turned inquiringly and he continued:
"She has done me the honor to tell me--Miss Harper and me--that if she
succeeds in what she is now trying to do--you know?--"
"I think I do. It's to prevent Oliver from making himself useful to the
enemy, isn't it?"
"Well--like that; and she says if she comes out all right she will leave
us; yes, for the hospital service."
"Hosp'--Oh--oh! gangrene, typhoid, lock-jaw, itch, small-pox! Isn't she
deep enough in the hospital service already, with her quinine dolls?"
"Ah! but she cannot continue to play dolls that way; she must find
something else. I see you have my temptation; yes, the desire to see her
always doing something splendid. That is not 'real life,' as you call
it. And besides, was not that you said one time to me 'No splendor
shines at last so far as a hidden splendor'?"
"No, sir! I suppose it's true, but I never want to see her splendor
shining through pock-marks." The reply won from him a gesture of
approval, and this gave me a reckless tongue. "Why, if I were you,
Lieutenant, she simply shouldn't go! Good Heaven! isn't she far enough
away at the nearest? How can you tamely--no, I don't mean tamely,
but--how can you _endure_ to let this matter drift--how can you
endure it?"
At the beginning of my question he straightened exactly as I had seen
him do in the middle of the lane when our recoiled column was
staggering; but as my extravagance flamed up he quieted rebukingly, and
with a quieter smile than ever asked "Is that a soldier's question?
Smith, is there not something wrong with you to-night?"
"There always is," I replied.
"No, but to-night I think you are taking that 'lower fork' you talk
sometimes about. Of course, if you don't want to tell--"
"_May_ I tell you?"
"Ah, certainly! Is it that little Harper girl?"
I nodded, all choked up. When I could speak I had to drop the words by
ones and twos, and did not so much as say them as let them bleed from my
lips; and never while I live shall I forget the sweet, grave, perfect
sympathy with which my friend listened and led me on, and listened and
led me on. I said I had never believed in love at first sight until now
when it had come upon me to darken and embitter my life henceforth.
He replied that certainly love sometimes _germinated_ at first sight,
and I interrupted greedily that that was all I claimed--except that love
could also, at times, _grow to maturity_ with amazing speed, a speed I
never could have credited previous to these last four days. And he
admitted as much, but thought time only could prove such love; whereto I
rejoined that that was what she had answered.
He glanced at me suddenly, then smoothed his horse's mane, and said,
gently, "That means you have declared yourself to her?"
I confessed I had, and told him how, on our journey to Squire Wall's,
being stung to desperation by the infantile way in which she had drooled
out to others what my love had sacredly confided to her alone, I had
abruptly confronted her with the fact, and in the ensuing debate,
carried away by the torrent of my emotions, had offered her my love, for
life and all.
"And she--ah, yes. I see; and I see, too, that in all she ever said or
did or seemed, before, she never made herself such a treasure to be
longed for and fought and lived for as in the way in which she--"
He paused.
"Refused me! Oh, it's so; it's so! Ah! if you could have witnessed her
dignity, her wisdom, her grace, her compassionate immovableness, you'd
never think of her as the little Harper girl again. She said that if the
unpremeditated, headlong way in which I had told my passion were my only
mistake, and if it were only for my sake, she would not, if she could,
answer favorably, and that I, myself, at last, would not have a girl who
would have a man who would offer his love in that way, and that she
would not have a man who would have a girl who would have a man who
should offer his love in that way."
I call it one of the sweetest kindnesses ever done me, that Ned Ferry
heard me to the end of that speech and did not smile. Instead he asked
"Did she say that as if a'--as if--amused?"
"No, Lieutenant, she nearly cried. Oh, I wish we were on some dangerous
errand to-night, instead of just camp and bed!"
"Well, that's all right, Richard; we are."