"Yes, our side does the same. If I wanted such a fate to overtake him I should only have to let him alone. At risks too hideous to name I have saved him from it twice. I am here to-day chiefly to circ.u.mvent his purposes; but if I may do so in the way I wish to propose to you, I shall also save him once more. I am willing to save him--in that way--although by so doing I shall lose--fearfully." She dropped her glance and turned aside.
"How do you propose to circ.u.mvent and yet save him?"
"By getting you to send him so far to your own army"s rear that he cannot get back; to compel him to leave the country; to go into your country, where law and order reign as they cannot here between the lines."
"And you consider that a reasonable request?"
"Oh, sir, I must make it! I can ask no less!"
"But you say if this scheme works you lose by it. What will you lose?"
"I may lose track of him! If I lose track of him I may have to go through a long life not knowing whether he is dead or alive."
"And suppose--why,--young lady, I thought you were unmarried. I--oh, what do you mean; is he--?"
Charlotte"s head drooped and her hands trembled. "Yes, by law and church decree he is my husband."
"Good Heaven!" murmured the General, drew a breath, and folded his arms. "But, madam! if a man abandons his wife--"
"I abandoned him."
"Good for you!" "It was vital for me. But I did it on evidence which our laws ignore, the testimony of slaves. Oh, General, don"t try to untangle me; only stop him!"
"Ah! madam, I"ll do the little I can. How am I to know him?"
"By a pistol-wound in his right hand, got last week. He would have got it in his brain but for my pleading. His name is Oliver."
"Oliver; hmm! any relation to Charlotte Oliver, your so called newspaper correspondent? I"d like to stop her.--How?--I don"t quite hear you."
"I am Charlotte Oliver."
The two officers glanced sharply at each other. When the General turned again he flushed resentfully. "Have you never resumed your maiden name?"
"Never."
"Then, madam, tell me this! With a whole world of other people"s names to choose from, why have you borrowed Charlotte Oliver"s? Have you come here determined to be sent to prison, Miss Coralie Rothvelt?"
XLV
STAY TILL TO-MORROW
Charlotte did not move an eyelash. Gradually a happy confidence lighted her face. "Freedom or prison is to me a secondary question. I came here determined to use only the truth. No wild creature loves to be free more than I do. I want to go back into our lines, and to go at once; but--I am Charlotte Oliver."
"Young lady, listen to me. I know your story is nearly all true. I know some good things about you which you have modestly left out; one of the rebels who stopped where you did last night and rode with you this morning was brought to me a prisoner half an hour ago. But he said your name was Rothvelt. How"s that?"
"Unfortunately, General, my name is Charlotte Oliver. Two or three times I have had use for so much concealment as there was in the childish prank of turning my name wrong side out." The speaker made a sign to the chief-of-staff: "Write the two names side by side and see if they are not one."
He was already doing so, and nodded laughingly to his superior. Charlotte spoke on. "I tell you the truth only, gentlemen, though I tell you no more of it than I must. I have run many a risk to get the truth, and to get it early. If it is your suspicion that by so doing, or in any other way, I have forfeited a lady"s liberty, let me hear and answer. If not--"
"Oh, I"ll have to send you to the provost-martial at Baton Rouge and let you settle that with him."
"Ah, no, General! By the name of the lady you love best, I beg you to see my need and let me go. I promise you never henceforth to offend your cause except in that mere woman"s sympathy with what you call rebellion, for which women are not so much as banished by you--or if they are, then banish me! Treat me no better, and no worse, than a "registered enemy"!"
The General shook his head. "Your registration has been in the open field of military action; sometimes, I fear, between the lines. At least it has been with your pen."
"General, I have laid down the pen."
"Indeed! to take up what?"
"The spoon!" said Charlotte, with that smile which no man ever wholly resisted. "I leave the sword and its questions to my brother man, in the blue and in the gray--G.o.d save it!--and have pledged myself to the gray, to work from now on only under the yellow flag of mercy and healing."
"Yes, of course; mercy--and comfort--and every sort of unarmed aid--to rebels."
"To the men you call so, yes. Yet I pledge you, General, to deal as tenderly with every man in blue who comes within range of my care as I did with Captain Jewett."
"Oh, I know you did even better than you"ve told me, but I"d be a fool to send you back on the instant, so. Stay till to-morrow or next day." The captor smiled. "Major, I think we owe the lady that much hospitality."
The Major thought so, and that she must need a day"s rest, more than she realized. She could be made in every way comfortable--under guard at "Mr. Gilmer"s." The Gilmers were Unionists, whose fine character had been their only protection through two years of ostracism, yet he believed they would treat her well. "Oh! not there, please," said Charlotte; "I hear they are to give some of your officers a dance to-morrow evening!" and there followed a parley that called forth all her playfullest tact. "Oh, no," she said, at one critical point, "I"m not so narrow or sour but I could dance with a blue uniform; but suppose--why, suppose one"s friends in gray should catch one dancing with one"s enemies in blue. Such things have happened, you know."
"It sha"n"t happen to-morrow night," laughed the General.
She offered to nurse the Federal sick, instead, in the command"s field-hospital, but no, the General rose to end the interview. "My dear young lady, the saintliest thing we can let you do is to dance at that merrymaking."
She rose. "As a prisoner under guard, General, I can nurse the sick, but I will not dance."
The General smiled. "I"ll take your parole."
"Oh! exact a parole from a woman?"
"Good gracious, why shouldn"t I! As for you,--ha!--I"d as soon turn a commissioned rebel officer loose in my camp unparoled as you."
"Then take my parole! I give it! you have it! I"ll take the chances."
"And the dances?" asked the Major.
"Very good," said the General, "you are now on parole. See the lady conducted to Squire Gilmer"s, Major. And now, Miss--eh,--day after to-morrow morning I shall either pa.s.s you beyond my lines or else send you to Baton Rouge. Good-day." When Charlotte found herself alone in a room of the Gilmer house she lay down upon the bed staring and sighing with dismay; she was bound by a parole! If within its limit of time Oliver should appear, "It will mean Baton Rouge for me!" she cried under her breath, starting up and falling back again; "Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Ship Island!" She was in as feminine a fright as though she had never braved a danger. Suddenly a new distress overwhelmed her: if--if--someone to deliver her should come--"Oh Heaven! I am paroled!--bound hand and foot by my insane parole!"
Softly she sprang from the bed, paced the floor, went to the window, seemed to look out upon the landscape; but in truth she was looking in upon herself. There she saw a most unaccountable tendency for her judgment--after some long overstrain--momentarily, but all at once, to swoon, collapse, turn upside down like a boy"s kite and dart to earth; an impulse--while fancying she was playing the supremely courageous or generous or clever part--suddenly to surrender the key of the situation, the vital point in whatever she might be striving for. "Ah me, ah me! why did I give my parole?"
At the close of the next day--"Walter," said the General as the chief-of-staff entered his tent glittering in blue and gold,--"oh, thud devil!--you going to that dance?"