At the tavern, where we went to smarten up and to eat, we chanced upon
Gregory. He was very shy of Ferry, because Ferry was a captain, but told
me the latest news from the Wall place, where he had spent the previous
evening. Harry and the surgeon were gone to camp, the Harpers were well,
Charlotte was--better, after a bad turn of several days. We felt in duty
bound to stay within hail of the telegraph office until it should close
for the night; and when the operator was detained in it much beyond the
usual time, Ferry, as we hovered near, said at length, "Well, I'm sorry
for you, Dick; 'tis now too late for you to go yonder--this evening."
"Didn't you intend to call, too?" "No," he said; yet the moment the
operator turned the key in his door we sauntered away from the station,
tavern, town, and out into the rain-famished country. We chose a road on
high ground, under pines; the fact that a few miles of it would bring us
to Squire Wall's was not sufficient reason for us to shun it, and we
loitered on and on, discoursing philosophically on man and woman and the
duties of each to other. Through habit we went softly, and so, in time,
came up past a small garden under the house's southern side. Here
silence was only decorum, for every window in the dark upper rooms was
thrown open to the sultry air. The house's front was away from the
direction of the town, and at a corner of this garden, where the road
entered the open grove, the garden fence turned north at a right angle,
while the road went on through the grove into wide cornfields beyond.
We kept to the garden fence till it brought us along the dooryard front,
facing the house. Thus far the whole place seemed fast asleep. Along the
farthest, the northern, side a line of planted trees ran close to a
narrow wing of but one room on each of its two stories, and the upper of
these two rooms was Charlotte's. Where we paused, at the dooryard gate,
we could not see this wing, but we knew its exterior perfectly; it had a
narrow window in front, looking into the grove, and a broader one at the
rear, that overlooked an open stretch of the Wall plantation. The place
seemed fast asleep, I say, but we had not a doubt we were being
watched--by the two terrible dogs that guarded the house but never
barked. By this time they should have recognized us and ought to be
coming forward and wagging faintly, as who should say "Yes, that's all
right, but we have our orders."
"Ah!"--Ferry guardedly pointed to the ground at the corner of the house
nearest Charlotte's room; there were both the dogs, dim as phantoms and
as silent, standing and peering not toward us but around to the wing
side in a way to make one's blood stop. We drew deeper into the grove
and made a short circuit that brought us in line with Charlotte's two
windows, and there, at the farther one, with her back to us, sat
Charlotte, looking toward Hazlehurst. The bloodthirsty beasts at the
corner of the house were so intently waiting to spring upon something,
somebody, between them and the nearer window, that we were secure from
their notice. We had hardly more than become aware of these things when,
in the line of planted trees, out of the depths of the one nearest the
nearer window, sounded a note that brought Charlotte instantly to her
feet; the same feeble, smothered cry she had heard the night she was
wounded. She crossed to the front window and listened, first standing
erect, and then stooping and leaning out. When we saw her do that we
knew how little she cared for her life; Ferry beckoned me up from behind
him; neither of us needed to say he feared the signal was from Oliver.
"Watch here," he whispered, and keeping the deepest shade, started
eagerly, with drawn revolver, toward the particular tree. I saw the dogs
discover and recognize him and welcome his aid, yet I kept my closest
watch on that tree's boughs and on Charlotte. She was wondering, I
guessed, whether the call was from some messenger of Ferry, or was only
a bird's cry. As if she decided it was the latter, she moved away, and
had nearly re-crossed the room, when the same sad tremolo came searching
the air again. Nevertheless she went on to the farther window and stood
gazing out for the better part of a minute, while in my heart I besought
her not to look behind. For Ferry and the dogs had vanished in shadow,
and outside her nearer window, wavering now above and now below the
sill, I could just descry a small pale object that reminded me of that
missive Coralie Rothvelt had passed up to me outside the window-sill at
old Lucius Oliver's house exactly a month before. From the upper depths
of the nearest tree this small thing was being proffered on the end of a
fishing-rod. Presently the rod must have tapped the sill, with such a
start did she face about. Silently she ran, snatched the dumb messenger,
and drew down the window-shade. A moment later the room glowed with a
candle, while her shadow, falling upon the shade, revealed her scanning
a letter, lifting her arms with emotion, and so passing out of the
line of view.
I waited on. So absorbed was I that I did not hear the coming of a
horseman in the fields beyond the grove, nor the click of a field gate;
but when the strange quietude of Ferry and the dogs had begun to
reassure me I became aware of this new-comer approaching the dooryard.
There he reined in and hallooed. I knew the voice. An answer came from
an upper window. "Is this Squire Wall's?" asked the traveller. "Well,
Squire, I'm from General Austin's headquarters, with orders to
Captain Ferry."
"Captain Ferry ain't stopping with us now, sir, he's 'way up at
Hazlehurst."
"Yes, sir. I didn't know but he might 'a' come down to spend to-morrow
with you, it being the Sabbath. My name's Gholson, sir; I've got letters
for the Miss Harpers; yes, sir; and one for Private Smith, from his
mother, in New Orleans."
"My sakes! yo' pow'ful welcome, Mr. Wholesome; just wait till I call off
my dogs, sir, and I'll let you in."
When the dogs came at the Squire's call I breathed relief. Ferry
appeared behind me and beckoned me deeper into the grove. He sank upon a
stump, whispering "That was worse than ten fights."
"Who was it?" I asked. "Where is he?"
He pointed to the field gate through which Gholson had come. In the
field a small man was re-closing it cautiously, and now he mounted and
rode away; it was Isidore Goldschmidt, of the Plank-road swamp. I was
wondering why he had behaved in this skulking way, when Ferry, as if
reading my thought, said, "Isidore can't afford to be found seventy-five
miles inside our lines with no papers except a letter from a Yankee
officer--and not knowing, himself, what's in it."
"Oh! why should he risk his life to bring such a thing to her?"
"Because three months ago she risked her life to save the life of his
father, and now, since only last week, that Yankee has saved the life of
his mother." I asked who this Yankee might be. "Well, that is yet more
strange; he is the brother of Captain Jewett."
We were moving to the house; at the steps we halted; the place was all
alight and the ladies were arriving in the parlor. A beam of light
touching Ferry's face made his smile haggard. I asked if this Jewett was
another leader of scouts.
"No, he is a high-rank surgeon. Yet I think he must have heard all about
her; he wouldn't send that letter, that way, just for gratitude."
"Yes," I responded, pondering, "he may easily have learned about her,"
and I called to mind that chief-of-staff of whom Charlotte had told us.
Then, remembering her emotional shadow-play on the window-shade, I
added, "He knew at least what would be important news to her--Captain,
I have it!"
He made a motion of pain--"Don't say it!" and we read in each other's
eyes the one conviction that from a surgeon's personal knowledge this
man had written to warn Charlotte that Oliver was alive.