The Cavalier Part 22

"Daring game that was you fellows let her put up on us night before last, my boy,--and it hung by a thread. If our officers had only asked the old man his name--it would have been--a flash of light. If I had dreamed, when I saw--you and Ned Ferry--yesterday,--that Coralie Rothvelt was--Charlotte Oliver,--and could have known her then--as I've--learned to know her--to-day--from her--worst enemy,--you know,--"

"Yes, Captain."

"I should--have turned back, my boy." After a silence the hero said more to himself than to me "Ah, if my brother were here to-night--I might live!"

Many days afterward I thought myself dull not to have guessed what that speech meant, but now I was too distressed by the change I saw coming over him to do any surmising. He began to say things entirely to himself. "Home!" he murmured; "sweet, sweet home!--my home! my country!--My G.o.d, my country, my home!--Smith,--you know what that is you're--wiping off my brow,--don't you?"

"Yes, Captain."

"I--I didn't want you to be--taken too unpleasantly by surprise--just at the--end. You know what's--happening,--don't you?"

"Yes, Captain." As I wiped the brow again I heard the tread of two horses down in front of the house; they were Gholson's, and Ned Ferry's for Charlotte. "Captain, may I go and bring her--tell her what you say, and bring her?"

"Do you think she'd come? She'd have gone to Ship Island if I had caught her."

"I know she'll come."

"I wish she would; she could 'bear a message and a token,' as the song says."

She came. I met her outside the door, and for a moment I feared she would come no farther. "How can I, Richard! Oh, how can I?" she whispered; "this is my doing!" But presently she stood at the bedside calm and compa.s.sionate, in the dark dress and limp hat of two nights before. The dying man's eyes were l.u.s.trous with grat.i.tude.

"I have one or two things," he said, after a few words of greeting, "that I'd like to send home--to my mother--and my wife; some trifles--and a message or two; if I--if--if I--"

"Will you let me take them?" Charlotte asked. I did not see or hear what they were; Gholson beckoned me into the hall. He did not whisper; there are some people, you know, who can never exercise enough self-suppression to whisper; he mumbled. He admitted the dying had some rights, but--he feared the delay might result unfortunately; wanted me to tell Charlotte so, and was sure I was ever so wrong to ask to have Ned Ferry awakened for the common incident of a prisoner's death; he would let him know the moment he awoke.

When I came back into the room the captive had asked Charlotte to pray. "Tisn't that I'm--the least bit afraid," he was saying.

"Oh, no," she responded, wiping his brow, "why should you be? Dying isn't nearly so fearful a thing as living. I'd rather, now, you'd pray for me; I'm such an unbeliever--in the beliefs, I mean, the beliefs the church people think we can't get on without. My religion is scarcely anything but longings and strivings"--she sadly smiled--"longings and strivings and hopes."

"Yet you wouldn't--"

"Part with it? Oh, not for the world beside!"

"Neither would I--with mine." The soldier folded his hands in supplication. "Neither would I--though mine, O Lord--is only the--old-fashioned sort--for whose beliefs our fathers--used to kill one another; G.o.d have mercy--on them--and us."

There was a great stillness. Against the bedside Charlotte had sunk to her knees, and under the broad brim of her Leghorn hat leaned her brow upon her folded hands. Thus, presently, she spoke again.

x.x.xIX

CHARLOTTE SINGS

"I know, Captain," she said, "that we can't have longings, strivings, or hopes, without beliefs; beliefs are what they live on. I believe in being strong and sweet and true for the pure sake of being so; and yet more for the world's sake; and as much more again for G.o.d's sake as G.o.d is greater than his works. I believe in beauty and in joy. I believe they are the goal of all goodness and of all G.o.d's work and wish. As to resurrection, punishment, and reward, I can't see what my n.o.blest choice has to do with them; they seem to me to be G.o.d's part of the matter; mine is to love perfect beauty and perfect joy, both in and infinitely beyond myself, with the desiring love with which I rejoice to believe G.o.d loves them, and to pity the lack of them with the loving pity with which G.o.d pities it. And above all I believe that no beauty and no joy can be perfect apart from a love that loves the whole world's joy better than any separate joy of any separate soul."

"Thank you," was murmured from the pillow. Then, as Charlotte once more wiped the damp brow, the captive said, with much labor, "After that--war seems--an awful thing. I suppose it isn't half so much a crime--as it is a--penalty--for the crimes that bring it on. But anyhow--you know--being--" The bugle rang out the reveille.

"Being a soldier," said Charlotte, "you want to die like one?"

"Yes, oh, yes!--the best I can. I'd like to sit half up--and hold my sword--if there's--no objection. I've loved it so! It would almost be like holding--the hand that's far away. Of course, it isn't really necessary, but--it would be more like--dying--for my country."

He would not have it in the scabbard, and when I laid it naked in his hand he kissed the hilt. Charlotte sent Gholson for Ned Ferry. Glancing from the window, I noticed that for some better convenience our scouts had left the grove, and the prisoners had been marched in and huddled close to the veranda-steps, under their heavy marching-guard of Louisianians. One of the blue-coats called up to me softly: "Dying--really?" He turned to his fellows--"Boys, Captain's dying."

Every Northern eye was lifted to the window and I turned away. "Richard!" gently called Charlotte, and I saw the end was at hand; a new anguish was on the brow; yet the soldier was asking for a song; "a soldier's song, will you?"

"Why, Captain," she replied, "you know, we don't sing the same words to our soldier-songs that you do--except in the hymns. Shall I sing 'Am I a soldier of the cross?'"

He did not answer promptly; but when he did he said "Yes--sing that."

She sang it. As the second stanza was begun we heard a responsive swell grow softly to fuller and fuller volume beneath the windows; the prisoners were singing. I heard an austere voice forbid it, but it rose straight on from strength to strength:

"Sure I must fight if I would win, Increase my courage, Lord.

I'll bear the toil, endure the pain, Supported by thy word."

The dying man lifted a hand and Charlotte ceased. He had not heard the m.u.f.fled chorus of his followers below; or it may be that he had, and that the degree of liberty they seemed to be enjoying prompted him to seek the new favor he now asked. I did not catch his words, but Charlotte heard, and answered tenderly, yet with a thrill of pain so keen she could not conceal it even from him.

"Oh! you wouldn't ask a rebel to sing that," she sighed, "would you?"

He made no rejoinder except that his eyes were insistent. She wiped his temples. "I hate to refuse you."

His gaze was grateful. She spoke again: "I suppose I oughtn't to mind it."

Miss Harper came in, and Charlotte, taking her hand without a glance, told the Captain's hard request under her voice. Miss Harper, too, in her turn, gave a start of pain, but when the dying eyes and smile turned pleadingly to her she said, "Why, if you can, Charlotte, dear, but oh! how can you?"

Charlotte addressed the wounded man: "Just a little bit of it, will that do?" and as he eagerly a.s.sented she added, to Miss Harper, "You know, dear, in its history it's no more theirs than ours."

"No, not so much," said Miss Harper, with a gleam of pride; and thereupon it was my amazement to hear Charlotte begin guardedly to sing:

"O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?"

But guardedly as she began, the effect on the huddled crowd below was instant and electrical. They heard almost the first note; looking down anxiously, I saw the wonder and enthusiasm pa.s.s from man to man. They heard the first two lines in awed, ecstatic silence; but at the third, warily, first one, then three, then a dozen, then a score, bereft of arms, standard, and leader, little counting ever again to see freedom, flag, or home, they raised their voices, by the dawn's early light, in their song of songs.

Our main body were out in the highway, just facing into column, and the effect on them I could not see. The prisoners' guards, though instantly ablaze with indignation, were so taken by surprise that for two or three seconds, with carbines at a ready, they--and even their sergeant in command--only darted fierce looks here and there and up at me. The prisoners must have been used to singing in ordered chorus, for one of them strode into their middle, and smiling st.u.r.dily at the maddened guard and me, led the song evenly. "No, sir!" he cried, as I made an angry sign for them to desist, "one verse through, if every d.a.m.ned fool of us dies for it--let the Captain hear it boys--sing!

"'The rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air--'"

Charlotte had ceased, in consternation not for the conditions without more than for those within. With the first strong swell of the song from below, the dying leader strove to sit upright and to lift his blade, but failed and would have slammed back upon the pillows had not she and Miss Harper saved him. He lay in their arms gasping his last, yet clutching his sabre with a quivering hand and listening on with rapt face untroubled by the fiery tumult of cries that broke into and over the strain.

"Club that man over the head!" cried the sergeant of the guard, and one of his men swung a gun; but the Yankee sprang inside of its sweep, crying, "Sing her through, boys!" grappled his opponent, and hurled him back. In the same instant the sergeant called steadily, "Guard, ready--aim--"

There sounded a clean slap of levelled carbines, yet from the prisoners came the continued song in its closing couplet:

"The star-spangled banner! O, long may it wave!--"

and out of the midst of its swell the oaths and curses and defiant laughter of a dozen men crying, with tears in their eyes, "Shoot! shoot! why don't you shoot?"

But the command to fire did not come; suddenly there was a drumming of hoofs, then their abrupt stoppage, and the voice of a vigilant commander called, "Attention!"

With a few words to the sergeant, more brief than harsh, and while the indomitable singers pressed on to the very close of the stanza without a sign from him to desist, Ferry bade the subaltern resume his command, and turned toward me at the window. He lifted his sword and spoke in a lowered tone, the sullen guard stood to their arms, and every captive looked up for my reply.

"Shall I come?" he inquired; but I shook my head.