"What!--gone?" he asked again, and I nodded. He turned and trotted lightly after the departing column. I remember his pensive mien as he moved down the grove, and how a soft gleam flashed from his sword, above his head, as with the hand that held it he fingered his slender mustache, and how another gleam followed it as he reversed the blade and let it into its sheath. Then my eyes lost him; for Gholson had taken his place under the window and was beckoning for my attention.

"Is she coming?" he called up, and Charlotte, at my side, spoke downward:

"I shall be with you in a moment."

While he waited the second lieutenant of the Louisianians came, and as guard and prisoners started away she came out upon the veranda steps. Across her knee, as she and Gholson galloped off by a road across fields, lay in a wrapping of corn-husks the huge sabre of the dead northerner.

XL

HARRY LAUGHS

The first hush of the deserted camp-ground was lost in the songs of returning birds. Captain Jewett, his majestic length blanket-bound from brow to heel as trimly as a bale, had been laid under ground, and the Harpers stood in prayer at the grave's head and foot with hats on for their journey. The burial squad, turned guard of honor to the dead captain of the Louisianians, were riding away on either side of a light wagon that bore his mortal part. I, after all, was to be the Harpers' guardian on their way.

Day widened into its first perfection as we moved down the highroad toward a near fork whose right was to lead Harry and his solemn cortege southward, while the left should be our eastward course. Camille and I rode horseback, side by side, with no one near enough to smile at my sentimental laudations of the morning's splendors, or at her for repaying my eloquence with looks so full of tender worship, personal acceptance and self-bestowal, that to tell of them here would make as poor a show as to lift a sea-flower out of the sea; they call for piccolo notes and I am no musician.

The familiar little leather-curtained wagon was just ahead of us, bearing the other three Harpers, the old negro driver and--to complete its overloading--his daughter, Charlotte's dark maid. Beside the wheels ambled and babbled Harry Helm. At the bridge he fell back to us and found us talking of Charlotte. Camille was telling me how well Charlotte knew the region south of us, and how her plan was to dine at mid-day with such a friend and to pa.s.s the night with such another; but the moment Harry came up she began to upbraid him in her mellowest flute-notes for not telling us that he had got his wound in saving--

"Now, you ladies--" cried the teased aide-de-camp, "I--I didn't save Gholson's life! I didn't try to save it! I only tried to split a Yankee's head and didn't even do that! d.i.c.k Smith, if you tell anybody else that I saved--Well, who did, then? Good Lordy! if I'd known that to save a man's life would make all this fuss I wouldn't 'a' done it! Why, Quinn and I had to sit and listen to Ned Ferry a solid half-hour last night, telling us the decent things he'd known Gholson to do, and the allowances we'd ought to make for a man with Gholson's sort of a conscience! And then, to cap--to clap--to clap the ki'--to cap--the climax--consound that word, I never did know what it meant--to clap the climax, Ned sends for Gholson and gets Quinn to speak to him civilly--aw, haw, haw!--Quinn showing all the time how he hated the job, like a cat when you make him jump over a stick! And then he led us on, with just a word here and there, until we all agreed as smooth as gla.s.s, that all Quinn had said was my fault, and all I had done was Gholson's fault, and all Gholson had said or done or left undone was our fault, and the rest was partly Ned's fault, but mostly accident."

Camille declared she did not and would not believe there had been any fault with any one, anywhere, and especially with Mr. Gholson, and I liked Lieutenant Helm less than ever, noticing anew the unaccountable freedom with which Camille seemed to think herself ent.i.tled to rebuke him. "Oh, I'm in your power," he cried to her, "and I'll call him a spotless giraffe if you want me to! that's what he is; I've always thought so!" The spring-wagon was taking the left fork and he cantered ahead to begin his good-byes there and save her for the last. When he made his adieu to her he said, "Won't you let Mr. Smith halt here with me a few moments? I want to speak of one or two matters that--"

She resigned me almost with scorn; which privately amused me, and, I felt sure, hoodwinked the aide-de-camp.

"Say, d.i.c.k!" he began, as she moved away, "look here, I'm going to tell you something; Ned Ferry's in love with Charlotte Oliver!"

"You don't mean it!"

"Yes, I do, mean it! Smith, Ned's a grand fellow. I'm glad I came here yesterday."

"Yes, you've secured a furlough."

"Oh, this thing, yes; don't you wish you had it! No, I'm glad I came, for what I've learned. I'm glad for what Ned Ferry has taught me a man can do, and keep from doing, when he's got the upper hold of himself. And I'm glad for what she--you know who--by George! any man would know who ever saw her, for she draws every man who comes within her range, as naturally as a rose draws a bee. I'm glad for what she has taught me a woman can be, and can keep from being, so long as she knows there's one real man to live up to! just up to, mind you, I don't even say to live for."

I stared with surprise. Was this the trivial Harry talking? Fact is, the pair we were talking about had by some psychical magic rarified the atmosphere for all of us until half our notes were above our normal pitch.

"Do you mean she loves him; what sign of such a thing did she show yesterday or last evening?"

"Not a sign of a sign! And yet I'll swear it! Do you know where she's gone?"

"To-day? I think I do."

"Where?"

"Well, Lieutenant, if I were she, I should go straight into the Yankee lines behind Port Hudson. She's got Jewett's messages and his sword, and the Yank's won't know her as a Confederate any better than they ever did; for it's only these men whom we've captured who have found out she's Charlotte Oliver, or that she had any knowing part in General Austin's ruse."

"If Oliver doesn't tell," said Harry, lifting his bad hand in pain.

"He will not dare! If she can only get her word in first and tell them, herself, that he's Charlotte Oliver's husband and has just led the finest company of Federal scouts in the two States to destruction--"

"Hi! that ought to cook his dough!--with her face--and her voice!"

"Yes," I responded, "--and his breath."

"And why do you think she wants to do this?" asked Harry.

"She doesn't want to do it; but she feels she must, knowing that every blow he strikes from now on is struck on her account. I believe she's gone to warn the Yankees that his whole animus is personal revenge and that he will sacrifice anything or anybody, any principle or pledge or cause, at any moment, to wreak that private vengeance, in whole or in part."

"d.i.c.k Smith, yes! But don't you see, besides, what she does want? Why, she wants to keep Oliver and Ferry apart until somebody else for whom she doesn't care as she cares for Ned, say you, or I, or--or--"

"Gholson?"

"Gholson, no! she can't trust Gholson, Gholson's conscience is too vindictive; that's why she's keeping him with her as long as she can. No, but until some of us, I say, can give Oliver a thousand times better than he ought ever to get--except for her sake--"

"Yes, you mean a soldier's clean death; and what you want of me is for me to say that I, for one, will lose no honest chance to give it to him, isn't it?"

"What I want of you, Smith, is to tell you that I shall lose no such chance."

"Well, neither shall I."

"Bully for you, d.i.c.k; bully boy with the gla.s.s eye! You see, you're one of only half a dozen or so that know Oliver when they see him; so Ned will soon be sending you after him. Ned's got a conscience, too, you know, as squirmy as Gholson's. Oh, Lord! yes, you don't often see it, but it's as big and hard as a conscript's ague-cake." The Lieutenant gathered his rein; "Smith, I want Ned and her to get one another; that's me!"

I was tempted to say it was me, too, but I forbore and only said it was I.

"All the same," said Harry, "I'm sorry for the little girl!"

"Little girl?"

"Oh, come, now, you know!" He leaned to me and whispered, "Miss Cecile!"

"Lieutenant," I replied, with a flush, realizing what I owed to the family as a prospective member of it, "you're mistaking a little patriotic ardor--"

"Pat who--oh? I tell you, my covey,--and of course, you understand, I wouldn't breathe it any further--"

"I'd rather you would not."

"Phew-ew! I don't know why in the devil you'd rather I would not, but--Smith,--she's so dead-gone in love with Ned Ferry, that if she doesn't get him--I George! it'll e'en a'most kill her!"

I guffawed in derision. "And she didn't even have to tell you so! She can't even hide its deadly intensity from the casual bystander! haw! haw! haw! And it's all the outcome of a three-days acquaintance! It beats Doctor Swiftgrow's Mustache Invigor'--aw, haw! haw!" "Oh, you think so? Pity you couldn't get a few barrels of it--aw, haw! haw!" said Harry, and my laughter left off where his began. But, some way hurting his hand, he, too, stopped short. I drew my horse back.

"Is that all you've noticed?" I smilingly inquired. "Isn't anybody else mortally in love with anybody else? You can't make me believe that's all you know!"

"Well, then, I sha'n't try. I do know one thing more; heard it yesterday. Like to hear it?"

"Like! Why, I'm just that dead-gone with curiosity that if I don't hear it it'll e'en a'most kill me--aw, haw! haw! haw!"