The Cavalier | Page 4

my part I privately wished this saint wouldn't rub my uninteresting surname into me every time he spoke. As we dismounted near the tents I leaned against my saddle and asked further concerning the object of his loving anxiety. Was Ned Ferry generous, pleasant, frank?
"Why, in outward manner, yes; but, Smith, he was raised to be a Catholic priest. I could a heap-sight easier trust him if he'd sometimes show distrust, himself. If he ever does I've never seen it. And yet--Oh, we're the best of friends, and I'm speaking now only as a friend and toe a friend. Oh, if it wa'n't for just one thing, I could admit what Major Harper said of him not ten minutes ago to me; that you never finish talking to Ned Ferry without feeling a little brighter, happier and cleaner than when you began; whereas talking with some men it's just the reverse."
I looked carefully at my companion and asked him if the Major had said all of that. He had, and Gholson's hide had turned it without taking a scratch. "That's fine!--as to Ferry," I said.
"Oh, yes,--it would be--if it was only iso. Trouble is, you keep remembering he's such a stumbling-block to any real spiritual inquirer. Yes, and to himself; for, you know, spiritually there's so much less hope for the moralist than what there is for the up-and-down reprobate! You know that,--Smith."
My silence implied that I knew it, though I did not feel any brighter, happier or cleaner.
"Smith, Ned Ferry is not only a Romanist, he's a romanticist. We--you and me--are religionists. Our brightness and happiness air the brightness and happiness of faith; our cleanness is the cleanness of religious scruples. Worst of it with Ned is he's satisfied with the difference, I'm afraid! That's what makes him so pleasant to fellows who don't care a sou marquee about religion."
I said one might respect religion even if he did not--
"Oh, he's always polite to it; but he's--he's read Voltaire! Oh, yes, Voltaire, George Sand, all those men. He questions the Bible, Smith. Not to me, though; hah, he knows better! Smith, I can discuss religion and not get mad, with any one who don't question the Bible; but if he does that, I just tell you, I wouldn't risk my soul in such a discussion! Would you?"
I could hardly say, and we moved pensively toward Major Harper's tent. Evidently the main poison was still in Gholson's stomach, and when I glanced at him he asked, "What d'you reckon brought Ned Ferry here just at this time?"
I made no reply. He looked momentous, leaned to me sidewise with a hand horizontally across his mouth, and whispered a name. It was new to me. "Charlie Toliver?" I murmured, for we were at the tent door.
"The war-correspondent," whispered Gholson; "don't you know?" But the flap of the tent lifted and I could not reply.

III
SHE
Major Harper was the most capable officer on the brigade staff. I had never met a man of such force and dignity who was so modestly affable. His new clerk dined with him that first day, at noon in his tent, alone. Hot biscuits! with butter! and rock salt. Fried bacon also--somewhat vivacious, but still bacon. When the tent began to fill with the smoke of his meerschaum pipe, and while his black boy cleared the table for us to resume writing, we talked of books. Here was joy! I vaunted my love for history, biography, the poets, but spoke lightly of fiction.
The smoker twinkled. "You're different from Ned Ferry," he said.
"Has he a taste for fiction?" I asked, with a depreciative smirk.
"Yes, a beautiful story is a thing Ned Ferry loves with a positive passion."
"I suppose we might call him a romanticist," said I, "might we not?"
The patient gentleman smiled again as he said, "Oh--Gholson can attend to that."
I took up my pen, and until twilight we spoke thereafter only of abstracts and requisitions. But then he led me on to tell him all about myself. I explained why my first name was Richard and my second name Thorndyke, and dwelt especially on the enormous differences between the Smiths from whom we were and those from whom we were not descended.
And then he told me about himself. He was a graduate of West Point, the only one on the brigade staff; was a widower, with a widowed brother, a maiden sister, two daughters, and a niece, all of one New Orleans household. The brothers and sister were Charlestonians, but the two men had married in New Orleans, twin sisters in a noted Creole family. The brother's daughter, I was told, spoke French better than English; the Major's elder daughter spoke English as perfectly as her father; and the younger, left in her aunt's care from infancy, knew no