The Arkansan was happy. "Come up, Legs," he bawled to me as soon as we
were beyond the pickets, "come up from behind there; this ain't no
dress parade."
"Are they married?" I softly asked Harry at the first opportunity, but
he could not tell me. He knew only that Ferry had been expected to
arrive about an hour before midnight; if he arrived later the wedding
would be deferred until to-day. On our whole ride we met no one from
Gallatin until near the edge of the town we passed a smiling rider who
called after us, "You-all a-hurryin' for nothin'!"
We dropped to a more dignified gait and moved gayly in among our
gathering friends, asking if we were in time. "No--o! you're too
late!--but still we've waited for you; couldn't help ourselves; she
wouldn't stir without you."
The happy hubbub was bewildering. "Where's this one?" "Where's that
one?" "See here, I'm looking for you!" "Now, you and I go together--"
"Dick Smith! where's Dick Sm'--Miss Harper wants you, Smith, up at the
bride's door." But Miss Harper only sent me in to Charlotte.
"Richard, tell me," the fair vision began to say, but there the cloud
left her brow. "No," she added, "you couldn't look so happy if there
were the least thing wrong, could you?" Her fathoming eyes filled while
her smile brightened, and meeting them squarely I replied "There's
a-many a thing wrong, but not one for which this wedding need wait
another minute."
"God bless you, Richard!" she said; "and now _you_ may go tell Edgard I
am coming."
Old Gallatin is no more. I would not mention without reverence the
perishing of a town however small, though no charm of antiquity, of art
or of nature were lost in its dissolution. Yet it suits my fancy that
old Gallatin has perished. Neither war nor famine, flood nor fever were
the death of it; the railroad and Hazlehurst sapped its life. Some years
ago, on a business trip for our company--not cavalry, insurance,--I went
several miles out of my way to see the spot. Not a timber, not a brick,
of the old county-seat remained. Where the court-house had stood on its
square, the early summer sun drew tonic odor from a field of corn. In
place of the tavern a cotton-field was ablush with blossoms. Shops and
houses had utterly vanished; a solitary "store," as transient as a
toadstool, stood at the cross-roads peddling calico and molasses, shoes
and snuff. But that was the only discord, and by turning my back on it I
easily called up the long past scene: the wedding, the feast, the fiery
punch, the General's toast to the bridal pair, and the heavy-eyed
Colonel's bumper to their posterity! It was hardly drunk when a courier
brought word that the enemy were across Big Black, and the brigade
pressing north to meet them. Charlotte glided away to her room to be
"back in a moment"; into their saddles went the General, the Colonel,
the Major and the aide-de-camp, and thundered off across the bridge in
the woods; Charlotte came back in riding-habit, and here was my horse
with her saddle on him, and the Harpers and Mrs. Wall clasping and
kissing her; and now her foot was in Ferry's hand and up she sprang to
her seat, he vaulted to his, and away they galloped side by side, he for
the uttermost front of reconnoissance and assault, she for the slow but
successful uplifting of Sergeant Jim back to health and into his place
in the train of our hero and hers. In the little leather-curtained
wagon, with the old black man and his daughter, and all her mistress's
small belongings, and with my saddle and bridle, I followed on to the
house where lay the sergeant, and where my horse would be waiting to
bear me on to Ferry's scouts.
I saw the Harpers only twice again before the war was over. Nearly all
winter our soldiering was down in the Felicianas, but by February we
were once more at Big Black when Sherman with ten thousand of his
destroyers swarmed out of Vicksburg on his great raid to Meridian. Three
or four mounted brigades were all that we could gather, and when we had
fought our fiercest we had only fought the tide with a broom; it went
back when it was ready, a month later, leaving what a wake! The Harpers
set up a pretty home in Jackson, where both Harry and Gholson were
occasional visitors, on errands more or less real to department
headquarters in that State capital; yet Harry and Cécile did not wed
until after the surrender. Gholson's passion far Charlotte really did
half destroy him, while it lasted; nevertheless, one day about a year
after her marriage, when I had the joy of visiting the Harpers, I saw
that Gholson's heart was healed of that wound and had opened in a new
place. That is why Estelle, with that danger-glow of emotion ever
impending on her beautiful cheek, never married. She was of that kind
whose love, once placed, can never remove itself, and she loved Gholson.
Both Cécile and Camille had some gift to discern character, and some
notion of their own value, and therefore are less to be excused for not
choosing better husbands than they did; but Estelle could never see
beyond the outer label of man, woman or child, and Gholson's label was
his piety. She believed in it as implicitly, as consumingly, as he
believed in it himself; and when her whole kindred spoke as one and said
no, and she sent him away, _she_ knew she was a lifelong widow from that
hour. Gholson found a wife, a rich widow ten years his senior, and so
first of all, since we have reached the page for partings, good-bye
Gholson. "Whom the gods love die young"--you must be sixty years old
now, for they say you're still alive. And good-bye, old Dismukes; the
Colonel made a fortune after the war, as a penitentiary lessee, but they
say he has--how shall we phrase it?--gone to his reward? Let us
hope not.
But what is this; are we calling the roll after we have broken ranks?
Our rocket has scaled the sky, poised, curved, burst, spread out all its
stars, and dropped its stick. All is done unless we desire to watch the
fading sparks slowly sink and melt into darkness. The General, the
Major, his brother, their sister, my mother, Quinn, Kendall, Sergeant
Jim, the Sessionses, the Walls--do not inquire too closely; some have
vanished already, and soon all will be gone; then--another rocket; it is
the only way, and why is it not a good one? Harry and Cécile--yes, they
still shine, in "dear old New Orleans." Camille kept me on the
tenter-hooks while she "turned away her eyes" for years; but one evening
when we were reading an ancient book together out dropped those same old
sweet-pea blossoms; whereupon I took her hand and--I have it yet. There,
we have counted the last spark--stop, no! two lights beam out again;
Edgard and Charlotte, our neighbors and dearest friends through all our
life; they glow with nobility and loveliness yet, as they did in those
young days when his sword led our dying fortunes, and she, in her gypsy
wagon, followed them, binding the torn wound, and bathing the aching
bruise and fevered head. Oh, Ned Ferry, my long-loved partner, as dear a
leader still as ever you were in the days of bloody death, life's
choicest gifts be yours, and be hers whose sons and daughters are yours,
and the eldest and tallest of whom is the one you and she have
named Richard.
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