  BY TWOS. MARCH The Arkansan was happy. "Come up, Legs," he bawled to me as soon as we were beyond the pickets, "come up from behind there; this ain't no dress parade." "Are they married?" I softly asked Harry at the first opportunity, but he could not tell me. He knew only that Ferry had been expected to arrive about an hour before midnight; if he arrived later the wedding would be deferred until to-day. On our whole ride we met no one from Gallatin until near the edge of the town we passed a smiling rider who called after us, "You-all a-hurryin' for nothin'!" We dropped to a more dignified gait and moved gayly in among our gathering friends, asking if we were in time. "No--o! you're too late!--but still we've waited for you; couldn't help ourselves; she wouldn't stir without you." The happy hubbub was bewildering. "Where's this one?" "Where's that one?" "See here, I'm looking for you!" "Now, you and I go together--" "Dick Smith! where's Dick Sm'--Miss Harper wants you, Smith, up at the bride's door." But Miss Harper only sent me in to Charlotte. "Richard, tell me," the fair vision began to say, but there the cloud left her brow. "No," she added, "you couldn't look so happy if there were the least thing wrong, could you?" Her fathoming eyes filled while her smile brightened, and meeting them squarely I replied "There's a-many a thing wrong, but not one for which this wedding need wait another minute." "God bless you, Richard!" she said; "and now you may go tell Edgard I am coming." Old Gallatin is no more. I would not mention without reverence the perishing of a town however small, though no charm of antiquity, of art or of nature were lost in its dissolution. Yet it suits my fancy that old Gallatin has perished. Neither war nor famine, flood nor fever were the death of it; the railroad and Hazlehurst sapped its life. Some years ago, on a business trip for our company--not cavalry, insurance,--I went several miles out of my way to see the spot. Not a timber, not a brick, of the old county-seat remained. Where the court-house had stood on its square, the early summer sun drew tonic odor from a field of corn. In place of the tavern a cotton-field was ablush with blossoms. Shops and houses had utterly vanished; a solitary "store," as transient as a toadstool, stood at the cross-roads peddling calico and molasses, shoes and snuff. But that was the only discord, and by turning my back on it I easily called up the long past scene: the wedding, the feast, the fiery punch, the General's toast to the bridal pair, and the heavy-eyed Colonel's bumper to their posterity! It was hardly drunk when a courier brought word that the enemy were across Big Black, and the brigade pressing north to meet them. Charlotte glided away to her room to be "back in a moment"; into their saddles went the General, the Colonel, the Major and the aide-de-camp, and thundered off across the bridge in the woods; Charlotte came back in riding-habit, and here was my horse with her saddle on him, and the Harpers and Mrs. Wall clasping and kissing her; and now her foot was in Ferry's hand and up she sprang to her seat, he vaulted to his, and away they galloped side by side, he for the uttermost front of reconnoissance and assault, she for the slow but successful uplifting of Sergeant Jim back to health and into his place in the train of our hero and hers. In the little leather-curtained wagon, with the old black man and his daughter, and all her mistress's small belongings, and with my saddle and bridle, I followed on to the house where lay the sergeant, and where my horse would be waiting to bear me on to Ferry's scouts. I saw the Harpers only twice again before the war was over. Nearly all winter our soldiering was down in the Felicianas, but by February we were once more at Big Black when Sherman with ten thousand of his destroyers swarmed out of Vicksburg on his great raid to Meridian. Three or four mounted brigades were all that we could gather, and when we had fought our fiercest we had only fought the tide with a broom; it went back when it was ready, a month later, leaving what a wake! The Harpers set up a pretty home in Jackson, where both Harry and Gholson were occasional visitors, on errands more or less real to department headquarters in that State capital; yet Harry and CÉcile did not wed until after the surrender. Gholson's passion far Charlotte really did half destroy him, while it lasted; nevertheless, one day about a year after her marriage, when I had the joy of visiting the Harpers, I saw that Gholson's heart was healed of that wound and had opened in a new place. That is why Estelle, with that danger-glow of emotion ever impending on her beautiful cheek, never married. She was of that kind whose love, once placed, can never remove itself, and she loved Gholson. Both CÉcile and Camille had some gift to discern character, and some notion of their own value, and therefore are less to be excused for not choosing better husbands than they did; but Estelle could never see beyond the outer label of man, woman or child, and Gholson's label was his piety. She believed in it as implicitly, as consumingly, as he believed in it himself; and when her whole kindred spoke as one and said no, and she sent him away, she knew she was a lifelong widow from that hour. Gholson found a wife, a rich widow ten years his senior, and so first of all, since we have reached the page for partings, good-bye Gholson. "Whom the gods love die young"--you must be sixty years old now, for they say you're still alive. And good-bye, old Dismukes; the Colonel made a fortune after the war, as a penitentiary lessee, but they say he has--how shall we phrase it?--gone to his reward? Let us hope not. But what is this; are we calling the roll after we have broken ranks? Our rocket has scaled the sky, poised, curved, burst, spread out all its stars, and dropped its stick. All is done unless we desire to watch the fading sparks slowly sink and melt into darkness. The General, the Major, his brother, their sister, my mother, Quinn, Kendall, Sergeant Jim, the Sessionses, the Walls--do not inquire too closely; some have vanished already, and soon all will be gone; then--another rocket; it is the only way, and why is it not a good one? Harry and CÉcile--yes, they still shine, in "dear old New Orleans." Camille kept me on the tenter-hooks while she "turned away her eyes" for years; but one evening when we were reading an ancient book together out dropped those same old sweet-pea blossoms; whereupon I took her hand and--I have it yet. There, we have counted the last spark--stop, no! two lights beam out again; Edgard and Charlotte, our neighbors and dearest friends through all our life; they glow with nobility and loveliness yet, as they did in those young days when his sword led our dying fortunes, and she, in her gypsy wagon, followed them, binding the torn wound, and bathing the aching bruise and fevered head. Oh, Ned Ferry, my long-loved partner, as dear a leader still as ever you were in the days of bloody death, life's choicest gifts be yours, and be hers whose sons and daughters are yours, and the eldest and tallest of whom is the one you and she have named Richard. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ OTHER BOOKS BY MR. CABLE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ There are few living American writers who can reproduce for us more perfectly than MR. CABLE does, in his best moments, the speech, the manners, the whole social atmosphere of a remote time and peculiar people. A delicious flavor of humor permeates his stories.--The New York Tribune. STRONG HEARTS 12mo, $1.25 "Under the title "Strong Hearts," MR. CABLE has grouped three stories of varying length, which we think must stand as among the most charming things he has written. Not even in "Old Creole Days," is there found more delicate work, and yet underneath it there is felt the strong grasp of the master. There is so much delicacy, such a fine touch that one is wholly captivated by the handiwork until it is realized how much this is part and parcel of this picture."--Brooklyn Eagle. ------------------------- A New Edition of Mr. Cable's Romances comprising the following 5 vols., printed on deckle-edge paper, gilt top and bound in sateen with full gilt design. Each 12mo, $1.50. The set, 5 volumes, in a box, $7.50. JOHN MARCH SOUTHERNER 12mo, $1.50 "The most careful and thorough going study of the reconstruction period in the South which has yet been offered in the world of fiction.--The Outlook. "In many respects MR. CABLE'S finest work."--Boston Advertiser. ------------------------- THE GRANDISSIMES A STORY OF CREOLE LIFE 12mo, $1.50. "Such a book goes far towards establishing an epoch in fiction, and it places it beyond a doubt that we have in MR. CABLE a novelist of positive originality, and of the very first quality."--The Boston Journal. The Grandissimes. with 12 full-page illustrations and 8 head and tail pieces by Albert Herter, all reproduced in photogravure, and with an original cover design by the same artist. 8vo, $6.00. A Special limited Edition of 204 numbered copies printed on Japan paper, net, $12.00. ------------------------- OLD CREOLE DAYS 12mo, $1.50. Cameo Edition with an etching by Percy Moran, $1.25 "These charming stories attract attention and commendation by their quaint delicacy of style, their faithful delineation of Creole character, and a marked originality."--The New Orleans Picayune. Old Creole Days. With 8 full-page illustrations and 14 head and tail pieces by Albert Herter, all reproduced in photogravure, and with an original cover design by the same artist. 8vo, $6.00. A Special Limited Edition of 204 numbered copies printed on Japan paper, net $12.00. BONAVENTURE A PROSE PASTORAL OF ACADIAN LOUISIANA 12mo, $1.50 "A noble, tender, beautiful tale."--MRS. L. C. MOULTON in Boston Herald. "MR. CABLE has never produced anything so delightful and so artistic as "Bonaventure." The charm of the pastoral life of these unlearned, unsuspicious people in rude homes far away from the stir of modern life is as novel as it is indescribable."--North American Review. DR. SEVIER 12mo, $1.50 "The story contains a most attractive blending of vivid descriptions of local scenery, with admirable delineations of personal character."--The Congregationalist. ------------------------- STRANGE TRUE STORIES OF LOUISIANA Illustrated. 12mo, $2.00 "What a field of romance, of color, of incident, of delicate feeling, and unique social conditions these stories show!"--Hartford Courant. "They are tales whose interest and variety seem inexhaustible.--MR. CABLE has done lasting service to literature in giving us this remarkable and delightful collection. In themselves they are memorably charming."--Boston Transcript. MADAME DELPHINE 16mo, 75 cents "This is one of the gems of a collection of exquisite stories of the old Creole days in Louisiana."--Boston Advertiser. Ivory series edition, 16mo, 75c. ------------------------- THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA ILLUSTRATED FROM DRAWINGS BY FENNEL Square 12mo, $2.50 "As a history of the Louisiana Creoles, it occupies a field in which it will not find a competitor. Mr. Cable has given us an exceedingly attractive piece of work."--The Nation. ------------------------- THE SILENT SOUTH Together with the Freedman's Case in Equity and the Convict Lease System. Revised and Enlarged Edition. With portrait. 12mo, $1.00 "Whatever other literature on these themes may arise Mr. Cable's book must be a permanent influence impossible for writers on either side to ignore."--The Critic. ------------------------- THE NEGRO QUESTION 12mo, 75c "Mr. Cable has the Puritan conscience, the agitator's courage, and the Anglo-Saxon's fearless adhesion to what he deems right."--The Churchman. ------------------------- THE CABLE STORY BOOK Selections for School Reading. Edited by Mary E. Burt and Lucy L. Cable. [The Scribner Series of School Reading]. Illustrated. 12mo, net 60c. |
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