The Cavalier | Page 5

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
French at all. I wondered if they were as handsome as their
white-haired father, and when I asked their names I learned that the
niece, Cécile, was a year the junior of Estelle and as much the senior of
Camille; but of the days of the years of the pilgrimage of any of the
three "children" he gave me no slightest hint; they might be seven years
older, or seven years younger, than his new clerk.
To show him how little I cared for any girl's age whose father preferred
not to mention it, I reverted to his sister and brother. She was in New
Orleans, he said, with her nieces, but might at any moment be sent into
the Confederacy, being one of General Butler's "registered enemies."

The brother was--
"Out here somewhere. No, not in the army exactly; no, nor in the navy,
but--I expect him in camp to-night. If he comes you'll have to work
when you ought to be asleep. No, he is not in the secret service, only in
a secret service; running hospital supplies through the enemy's lines
into ours."
I was thrilled. I was taken into the staff's confidence! Me, Smith! That
Major Harper would tell me part of a matter to conceal the rest of it did
not enter my dreams, good as I was at dreaming. The flattery went to
my brain, and presently, without the faintest preamble, I asked if there
was any war-correspondent at headquarters just now. There came a
hostile flash in his eyes, but instantly it passed, and with all his happy
mildness he replied, "No, nor any room for one."
Just then entered an ordnance-sergeant, so smart in his rags that the
Major's affability seemed hardly a condescension. He asked me to
supper with his mess--"of staff attatchays," he said, winking one eye
and hitching his mouth; at which the Major laughed with kind
disapprobation, and the jocose sergeant explained as we went that that
was only one of Scott Gholson's mispronunciations the boys were
trying to tease him out of.
I found the clerks' mess a bunch of bright good fellows. After supper,
stretched on the harsh turf under the June stars, with everyone's head
(save mine) in some one's lap, we smoked, talked and sang. Only
Gholson was called away, by duty, and so failed to hear the laborious
jests got off at his expense. To me the wits were disastrously kind.
Never had I been made a tenth so much of; I was even urged to sing
"All quiet along the Potomac to-night," and was courteously praised
when I had done so. But there is where affliction overtook me; they
debated its authorship. One said a certain newspaper correspondent,
naming him, had proved it to be the work--I forget of whom. But I shall
never forget what followed. Two or three challenged the literary
preeminence of that correspondent, and from as many directions I was
asked for my opinion. Ah me! Lying back against a pile of saddles with
my head in my hands, sodden with self-assurance, I replied,

magnanimously, "Oh, I don't set up for a critic, but--well--would you
call him a better man than Charlie Toliver?"
"Who--o?" It was not one who asked; the whos came like shrapnel; and
when, not knowing what else to do, I smiled as one dying, there went
up a wail of mirth that froze my blood and then heated it to a fever. The
company howled. They rolled over one another, crying, "Charlie
Toliver!--Charlie Toliver!--Oh, Lord, where's Scott Gholson!--Charlie
Toliver!"--and leaped up and huddled down and moaned and rolled and
rose and looked for me.
But, after all, fortune was merciful, and I was gone; the Major had
summoned me--his brother had come. I went circuitously and alone. As
I started, some fellow writhing on the grass cried, "Charlie Tol--oh, this
is better than a tcharade!" and a flash of divination enlightened me.
While I went I burned with shame, rage and nervous exhaustion; the
name Scott Gholson had gasped in my ear was the name of her in the
curtained wagon, and I cursed the day in which I had heard of Charlotte
Oliver.

IV