Charlotte did not move an eyelash. Gradually a happy confidence lighted
her face. "Freedom or prison is to me a secondary question. I came here
determined to use only the truth. No wild creature loves to be free more
than I do. I want to go back into our lines, and to go at once; but--I
am Charlotte Oliver."
"Young lady, listen to me. I know your story is nearly all true. I know
some good things about you which you have modestly left out; one of the
rebels who stopped where you did last night and rode with you this
morning was brought to me a prisoner half an hour ago. But he said your
name was Rothvelt. How's that?"
"Unfortunately, General, my name is Charlotte Oliver. Two or three times
I have had use for so much concealment as there was in the childish
prank of turning my name wrong side out." The speaker made a sign to the
chief-of-staff: "Write the two names side by side and see if they
are not one."
He was already doing so, and nodded laughingly to his superior.
Charlotte spoke on. "I tell you the truth only, gentlemen, though I tell
you no more of it than I must. I have run many a risk to get the truth,
and to get it early. If it is your suspicion that by so doing, or in any
other way, I have forfeited a lady's liberty, let me hear and answer.
If not--"
"Oh, I'll have to send you to the provost-martial at Baton Rouge and let
you settle that with him."
"Ah, no, General! By the name of the lady you love best, I beg you to
see my need and let me go. I promise you never henceforth to offend your
cause except in that mere woman's sympathy with what you call rebellion,
for which women are not so much as banished by you--or if they are, then
banish me! Treat me no better, and no worse, than a 'registered enemy'!"
The General shook his head. "Your registration has been in the open
field of military action; sometimes, I fear, between the lines. At least
it has been with your pen."
"General, I have laid down the pen."
"Indeed! to take up what?"
"The spoon!" said Charlotte, with that smile which no man ever wholly
resisted. "I leave the sword and its questions to my brother man, in the
blue and in the gray--God save it!--and have pledged myself to the gray,
to work from now on only under the yellow flag of mercy and healing."
"Yes, of course; mercy--and comfort--and every sort of unarmed aid--to
rebels."
"To the men you call so, yes. Yet I pledge you, General, to deal as
tenderly with every man in blue who comes within range of my care as I
did with Captain Jewett."
"Oh, I know you did even better than you've told me, but I'd be a fool
to send you back on the instant, so. Stay till to-morrow or next day."
The captor smiled. "Major, I think we owe the lady that much
hospitality."
The Major thought so, and that she must need a day's rest, more than she
realized. She could be made in every way comfortable--under guard at
"Mr. Gilmer's." The Gilmers were Unionists, whose fine character had
been their only protection through two years of ostracism, yet he
believed they would treat her well. "Oh! not there, please," said
Charlotte; "I hear they are to give some of your officers a dance
to-morrow evening!" and there followed a parley that called forth all
her playfullest tact. "Oh, no," she said, at one critical point, "I'm
not so narrow or sour but I could dance with a blue uniform; but
suppose--why, suppose one's friends in gray should catch one dancing
with one's enemies in blue. Such things have happened, you know."
"It sha'n't happen to-morrow night," laughed the General.
She offered to nurse the Federal sick, instead, in the command's
field-hospital, but no, the General rose to end the interview. "My dear
young lady, the saintliest thing we can let you do is to dance at that
merrymaking."
She rose. "As a prisoner under guard, General, I can nurse the sick, but
I will not dance."