The fight was over only in degree. Our brigade was drawing away into the
north and the enemy were pressing revengefully after them. Our hundreds
of prisoners and our few wounded were being taken back eastward over the
road by which we had come in the night, and even after we had turned
into it I saw a Yankee shell kill a wounded man and his horse not thirty
yards from me.
Before we had gone another mile I met Harry Helm. The General had left
him in camp with flat orders to remain, but at daylight he had ridden
out to find us. He was in two tremendous moods at once; lifted to heaven
on the glory of our deeds, yet heart-broken over the fate of Ned Ferry.
"Surgeon's told him he can't live, Dick! And all the effect that's
had--'No opiates, then, Doctor,' s'e, 'till I get off these two or three
despatches.' So there he lies in that ambulance cross-questioning
prisoners and making everybody bring him every scrap of information, as
if he were General Austin and Major Harper rolled into one and they were
wounded instead of him--By George! Dick, he knows you're hit and just
how you're hit, and has sent me to find you!"
I said I thought I could gallop if Harry could, and in a few minutes we
were up with the ambulance. It had stopped. There were several men about
it, including Sergeant Jim and Kendall, which two had come from Quinn,
and having just been in the ambulance, at Ferry's side, were now
remounting, both of them openly in tears. "Hello, Kendall."
"Hello, Smith." He turned sharply from me, horse and all.
"Good-morning, sergeant, is Lieutenant Ferry--worse?"
The sergeant only jabbed in the spurs, and leapt away with Kendall,
bearing despatches to the brigade. Harry, looking back to me from the
ambulance, called softly, "All right again; it was only a bad swoon!"
"Hello, Smith," said some one whom I was too sick and dizzy to
recognize, "one of those prisoners says he saw Oliver dead."
They say two or three men sprang to catch me, but the first thing I knew
was that the ambulance was under way and I in it on my back within
elbow-touch of Ferry, looking up into a surgeon's face. "How's the
Lieutenant?" I asked.
"Oh--getting on, getting on," he replied. Doctors think patients are
fools.
In a parlor under the room where Charlotte lay they made a bed for Ferry
and one for me, and here, lapped in luxury and distinction, I promptly
fell asleep, and when I reopened my eyes it was again afternoon. In the
other bed Ferry was slumbering, and quite across the room, beside a
closed door, sat Cécile and Camille. The latter tiptoed to me. Her
whispers were as soft as breathing, and when I answered or questioned,
her ear sank as near as you would put a rose to smell it. "The
Lieutenant, sleeping? yes, this hour past; surgeons surprised and more
hopeful. Miss Estelle? in another room with other wounded. Her aunt?
upstairs with Charlotte, who was--oh--getting on, getting on." That made
me anxious.
"Does Charlotte," I asked, "know--everything?"
Camille allowed herself all the motions of a laugh, and said "No, not
quite everything;" and then with solemn tenderness she added that
Charlotte knew about Ferry. "And she knows about _you,"_ the whisperer
went on; "they all know."
I thought she was alluding to the verses, and had an instant of terror
and rage before I saw what she meant. She glided back to the door and
the two opened it an inch or so to answer some inquirer without. I saw
her no more until bedtime, when she stood at her aunt's elbow to hand
and hold things, while Miss Harper, to my all but screaming
embarrassment, bared the whole upper half of one side of me and washed
and dressed my wound anew. Ferry it was imperative to let alone, but
when I awoke the next morning there was a radiance of joy throughout all
the house; for he had slept and improved. The next morning again he was
ever so much stronger, and Harry Helm rode off in simulated disgust, not
seeing "any fun in hanging round girls who were hanging round
other fellows."
Another day arose. A courier brought passes for our three or four other
wounded to go home as soon as they were fit to travel, and by night they
were all gone. At early bedtime came two surgeons of high rank all the
way from Johnston's army up in Mississippi. General Austin had asked
this favor by telegraph. Harry had been gone thirty-six hours, and Ferry
was just asking if he had not yet got back, when the surgeons came in to
the room. A pleasantry or two consumed a few moments. Then the surgeon
in charge of us told of a symptom or two, to which they responded only
"hmm," and began the examination. Miss Harper sent her three nieces
away. I lay and listened in the busy stillness. Presently one of the
examiners murmured with a certain positiveness to the other, who after a
moment's silence replied with conviction; Miss Harper touched our
surgeon's arm inquiringly and he looked back in a glad way and nodded.
Miss Harper nodded to me; they had located the ball! Now the
conversation turned upon men and events of the day, while one of the
visitors, with his back to the patient, opened a case of glittering
knives. Presently the professional heads came so close together as quite
to hide the patient; they spoke once or twice in a manly soothing tone.
Miss Harper stroked my temples to keep me down, one of the busy ones
spoke again, and lo! the thing was done, there was the ball in the
basin. As the men of blood sped through their kind after-work the news
flew to and fro; Camille wept,--since she could not hurrah,--Cécile told
Charlotte, the heavenly-minded Estelle was confirmed in her faith, Miss
Harper's black eyes, after a brief overflow, were keener and kindlier
than ever, and as the surgeons spoke the word "done," Ferry asked again
if Harry had not got back yet. Pretty soon Harry did arrive, with news
of great feats by our cavalry against our old enemy Grierson, in which
Austin's brigade had covered themselves with glory, and in which he had
had his own share; his hand was swelled as big as his heart. In all the
Confederacy no houseful went to sleep that night in sweeter content. I
sank into perfect bliss planning a double wedding.