United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Fiction
I said I thought I could gallop if Harry could, and in a few minutes we
were up with the ambulance. It had stopped. There were several men about
it, including Sergeant Jim and Kendall, which two had come from Quinn,
and having just been in the ambulance, at Ferry's side, were now
remounting, both of them openly in tears. "Hello, Kendall."
"Hello, Smith." He turned sharply from me, horse and all.
"Good-morning, sergeant, is Lieutenant Ferry--worse?"
The sergeant only jabbed in the spurs, and leapt away with Kendall,
bearing despatches to the brigade. Harry, looking back to me from the
ambulance, called softly, "All right again; it was only a bad swoon!"
"Hello, Smith," said some one whom I was too sick and dizzy to
recognize, "one of those prisoners says he saw Oliver dead."
They say two or three men sprang to catch me, but the first thing I knew
was that the ambulance was under way and I in it on my back within
elbow-touch of Ferry, looking up into a surgeon's face. "How's the
Lieutenant?" I asked.
"Oh--getting on, getting on," he replied. Doctors think patients are
fools.
In a parlor under the room where Charlotte lay they made a bed for Ferry
and one for me, and here, lapped in luxury and distinction, I promptly
fell asleep, and when I reopened my eyes it was again afternoon. In the
other bed Ferry was slumbering, and quite across the room, beside a
closed door, sat Cecile and Camille. The latter tiptoed to me. Her
whispers were as soft as breathing, and when I answered or questioned,
her ear sank as near as you would put a rose to smell it. "The
Lieutenant, sleeping? yes, this hour past; surgeons surprised and more
hopeful. Miss Estelle? in another room with other wounded. Her aunt?
upstairs with Charlotte, who was--oh--getting on, getting on." That made
me anxious.
"Does Charlotte," I asked, "know--everything?"
Camille allowed herself all the motions of a laugh, and said "No, not
quite everything;" and then with solemn tenderness she added that
Charlotte knew about Ferry. "And she knows about _you,"_ the whisperer
went on; "they all know."
I thought she was alluding to the verses, and had an instant of terror
and rage before I saw what she meant. She glided back to the door and
the two opened it an inch or so to answer some inquirer without. I saw
her no more until bedtime, when she stood at her aunt's elbow to hand
and hold things, while Miss Harper, to my all but screaming
embarrassment, bared the whole upper half of one side of me and washed
and dressed my wound anew. Ferry it was imperative to let alone, but
when I awoke the next morning there was a radiance of joy throughout all
the house; for he had slept and improved. The next morning again he was
ever so much stronger, and Harry Helm rode off in simulated disgust, not
seeing "any fun in hanging round girls who were hanging round
other fellows."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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