"There they are!" said the corporal and I at the same moment, when we
had been but a few minutes on the Plank-road. Two men were ahead of us
riding abreast, and a few rods in front of them was a third horseman,
apparently alone. Two others had pushed on, one to the house, the other
for surgical aid. The two in the rear knew us and let us come up
unchallenged; the corporal stayed with them, and I rode on to my
leader's side.
Charlotte lay in his double clasp balanced so lightly on the horse's
crest as hardly to feel the jar of his motion, though her head lay as
nearly level with it as Ferry's bending shoulders and the hollow of his
lowered right arm would allow; from under his other arm her relaxed
figure, in its long riding-skirt, trailed down over his knee and
stirrup; her broad limp hat, as if it had been so placed in sport, hung
at his back with its tie-ribbons round his throat, while the black
masses of her hair spread in ravishing desolation over and under his
supporting arm. Her face was fearfully pale, the brows glistened with
the damp of nervous shock, and every few moments she feebly brought a
handkerchief to her lips to wipe away the blood that rose to them with
every sigh. Steadfastly, except when her eyes closed now and then in
deathly exhaustion, her gaze melted into his like a suffering babe's
into its mother's. From time to time a brief word passed between them,
and with joy I noticed that it was always in French; I hoped with my
whole heart and soul that they had already said things, and were saying
things yet, which no one else ought to hear. I waited some time for his
notice, and when he gave it it was only by saying to her in a full voice
and in English "Dick Smith is here, alongside of us."
Her response was a question, which he repeated: "Is he hurt? no, Richard
never gets hurt. Shall he tell us whatever he knows?"
He bent low for the faint reply, and when it came he sparkled with
pride. "'It matters little,' she says, 'to either of us, now.' Give your
report; but _I_ tell you"--there came a tiger look in his eyes--"there
is now no turning back; we shall go on." I answered with soft elation:
"My news needn't turn you back: Oliver is dead."
He drew a long breath, murmured "My God!" and then suddenly asked "You
found him so, or--?"
"We found him so; had to leave him so; head laid wide open; we were
about to be captured--thought the news would be better than nothing--"
"Certainly, yes, certainly. Now I want you to ride to the brigade camp
and telegraph Miss Harper this: 'She needs you. Come instantly.
Durand.'"--I repeated it to him.--"Right," he said. "Send that first;
and after that--here is a military secret for you to tell to General
Austin; I think you like that kind, eh? Tell him I would not send it
verbally if I had my hands free. You know that regiment at whose
headquarters we saw them singing; well, tell him they are to make a move
to-day, a bad mistake, and I think if he will stay right there where he
is till they make it, we can catch the whole lot of them. As soon as
they move I shall report to him."
Two gasping words from Charlotte brought his ear down, and with a
worshipping light in his eyes he said to her "Yes,--yes!" and then to
me, "Yes, I shall report to him _in person_. Now, Smith, the top of
your speed!"
Reveillé was sounding as I entered the camp. In the middle of my story
to the General--"Saddle my horse," he said to an attendant, "and send
Mr. Gholson to me. Yes, Smith, well, what then?"--I resumed, but in a
minute--"Mr. Gholson, good-morning. My compliments to Major Harper, Mr.
Gholson, and ask him if he wouldn't like to take a ride with me; and
let me have about four couriers; and send word to Colonel Dismukes that
I shall call at his headquarters to see him a moment, on my way out of
camp. Now, Smith, you've given me the gist of the matter, haven't you?
Oh, I think you have; good-morning."
Gholson had helped me get the despatch off to Miss Harper, whose coming
no one could be more eager to hasten. Before leaving camp I saw him
again. He was strangely reticent; my news seemed to benumb and sicken
him. But as I remounted he began without connection--"You see, she'll be
absolutely alone until Miss Harper gets there; not a friend within call!
_He_ won't be there, she won't let him stay; she dislikes him too much;
I _know_ that, Smith. Why, Smith, she wouldn't ever 'a' let him carry
her off the field if she'd been conscious; she'd sooner 'a' gone to Ship
Island, or to death!" He looked as though he would rather she had. His
tongue, now it had started, could not stop. "Ned Ferry can't stay by
her; he mustn't! he hadn't ought to use around anywheres near her."
I gave a sort of assent--attended with nausea--and turned to my saddle,
but he clung. "Why, how can he hang around that way, Smith, and he a
suitor who's just killed her husband? Of course, now, he'd ought to know
he can't ever be one henceforth. I'm sorry for him, but--"
"Good-morning," I interrupted, quite in the General's manner, and made a
spirited exit, but it proved a false one; one thing had to be said, and
I returned. "Gholson, if she should be worse hurt than--" "Ah! you're
thinking of the chaplain; I've already sent him. Yonder he goes, now;
you can show him the way."
"Understand," I said as I wheeled, "I fully expect her to recover."
"Yes, oh, yes!" replied my co-religionist, with feverish zest; "we must
have faith--for her sake! But o--oh! Smith, what a chastening judgment
this is against dancing!"
I moved away, looking back at him, and seeing by his starved look how he
was racking his jaded brain for some excuse to go with me, I honestly
believe I was sorry for him. The chaplain was a thick-set, clean-shaven,
politic little fellow whose "Good-mawning, brothah?" had the heavy
sweetness of perfumed lard. We conversed fluently on spiritual matters
and also on Ned Ferry. He asked me if the Lieutenant was "a believer."
"Why," said I, "as to that, Lieutenant Ferry believes there's something
right about everything that's beautiful, and something wrong about
everything that isn't. Now, of course that's a very dangerous idea, and
yet--" So I went on; ah me! the nightmare of it hangs over me yet,
"religionist" though I am, after a fashion, unto this day. In Ferry's
defence I maintained that only so much of any man's religion as fitted
him, and fitted him not as his saddle or his clothes, but as his nervous
system fitted him, was really his, or was really religion. I said I knew
a man whose ready-made religion, small as it was, bagged all over him
and made him as grotesque as a child in his father's trousers. The
chaplain tittered so approvingly that I straightened to spout again, but
just then we saw three distant figures that I knew at a glance.
"There he is, now!--Excuse me, sir--" I clapped in the spurs, but the
chaplain clattered stoutly after me. The two horsemen moving from us
were the General and Major Harper, and the one meeting them was Ned
Ferry. Between the three and us rose out of a hollow the squad of
couriers. And yonder came the sun.