The Cavalier | Page 3

you got your second
figure upside down?" I glared, but with one look of hurt sisterliness she

melted me. Then, pensive just long enough to say, "I was nineteen
once," she shot me a sidelong glance so roguish that I was dumb with
indignation and tried to find my mustache, forgetting 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