The Cavalier | Page 3

I had shaved it off to stimulate it. She smiled in sweet propitiation and then came gravely to business. "Have you come from beyond the pickets?"
"No, madam."
"Have you met any officer riding toward them?"
I had not. Her driver gathered the reins and I drew back.
"Good-bye, New Orleans soldier-boy," she said, gaily, and as I raised my cap she gave herself a fetching air and added, "I'll wager I know your name."
"Madam,"--my cap went higher, my head lower--"I never bet."
I could not divine what there was ridiculous about me, except a certain damage to my dress, of which she could not possibly be aware as long as I remained in the saddle. Yet plainly she wanted to laugh. I made it as plain that I did not.
"Good-day, sir," she said, with forced severity, but as I smiled apologetically and moved my rein, she broke down under new temptation and, as the wagon moved away, twittered after me unseen,--"Good-bye, Mr. Smith."

II
LIEUTENANT FERRY
I passed on, flattered but scandalized, wasting no guesses on how she knew me--if she really knew me at all--but taking my revenge by moralizing on her, to myself, as a sign of the times, until brigade headquarters were in full view, a few rods off the road; four or five good, white wall-tents in a green bit of old field backed by a thicket of young pines.
Midway of this space I met Scott Gholson, clerk to the Adjutant-general. It was Gholson who had first spoken of me for this detail. He was an East Louisianian, of Tangipahoa; aged maybe twenty-six, but in effect older, having from birth eaten only ill-cooked food, and looking it; profoundly unconscious of any shortcoming in his education, which he had got from a small church-pecked college of the pelican sort that feed it raw from their own bosoms. One of his smallest deficiencies was that he had never seen as much art as there is in one handsome dinner-plate. Now, here he was, riding forth to learn for himself, privately, he said, why I did not appear. Yet he halted without turning, and seemed to wish he had not found me.
"Did you"--he began, and stopped; "did you notice a"--he stopped again.
"What, a leather-curtained spring-wagon?"
"No-o!" he said, as if nobody but a gaping idiot would expect anybody not a gaping idiot to notice a leather-curtained spring-wagon. "No-o! did you notice the brown horse that man was riding who just now passed you as you turned off the road?"
No, I barely remembered the rider had generously moved aside to let me go by. In pure sourness at the poverty of my dress and the perfection of his, I had avoided looking at him higher than his hundred-dollar boots. My feet were in uncolored cowhide, except the toes.
"He noticed you," said Gholson; "he looked back at you and your bay. Wouldn't you like to turn back and see his horse?"
"Why, hardly, if I'm behindhand now. Is it so fine as that?"
"Well, no. It's the horse he captured the time he got the Yankee who had him prisoner."
"Who?" I cried. "What! You don't mean to say--was that Lieutenant Ferry?"
"Yes, so called. He wa'n't a lieutenant then, he was a clerk, like you or me."
"Oh, I wish I had noticed him!"
"We can see him yet if you--"
"Do you want to see him?" I gathered my horse.
"Me!--No, sir. But you spoke as if--"
I shook my head and we moved toward the tents. This was worse than the dream; the rat had not seen the cockerel, but the cockerel had observed the rat--dropping into the barrel: the cockerel, yes, and not the cockerel alone, for I saw that Gholson was associating him with her of the curtained wagon. By now they were side and side. I asked if Ferry came often to headquarters. "Yes, quite as often as he's any business to." "Ah, ha!" thought I, and presently said I had heard he was a great favorite.
"Well,--yes,--he--he is,--with some."
"Don't you like him?"
"Who, me? Oh!--I--I admire Ned Ferry--for a number of things. He's more foolhardy than brave; he's confessed as much to me. Women call him handsome. He sings; beautifully, I suppose; I can't sing a note; and wouldn't if I could. Still, if he only wouldn't sing drinking-songs --but, Smith, I think that to sing drinking-songs--and all the more to sing them as well as some folks think he does--is to advocate drinking, and to advocate drinking is next door to excusing drunkenness!"
"Then Ned Ferry doesn't drink?"
"Indeed he does! I don't like to say it, and I don't say he drinks 'too much', as they call it; but, Smith, he drinks with men who do! Oh, I admire him; only I do wish--"
"Wish what?"
"Oh, I--I wish he wouldn't play cards. Smith, I've seen him play cards with the shells bursting over us!"
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