Part 13 (1/2)

If I am driving him too hard you have yourself to thank. You have upset all my plans, and I am not very happy. Don't you think a woman deserves as much consideration as a horse?”

”They are to be treated according to their deserts,” I answered, gravely. ”They know what duty is. Private O'Halloran says that you are no woman, and I say that you are no man. Where does consideration fall in your case?”

”I ask for no more consideration than you would accord to a human being. Mr. O'Halloran has never seen me in my proper dress before, and he knows only how I appear at night when I am working for the cause of the Union. But who are you that you should judge of the deserts of men and women? You are nothing but a boy, and you'll not be different when you are a man. Instead of marching with your comrades, here you are riding in a buggy with a woman--and for what? In the name of heaven, tell me for what?”

She seemed to be overcome by quite a little flurry of pa.s.sion, and her manner irritated me. ”You know why as well as I do,” I replied, soberly enough. ”You heard the orders my General gave me in the first place, and, in the second place, you know that I am a prisoner. It is odd that you can play a game and forget the score. I imagined when I started that my duty would be the greatest pleasure of my life.”

”Do you know where you are going now?” she inquired, very seriously.

”It is a matter of indifference to me,” I answered. ”Wherever I go, I am in the hands of Providence.”

”If you could believe that,” she remarked, ”it would do you a world of good.”

I laughed at her serious manner. ”Believe it!” I exclaimed. ”Why, it is too plain for mere belief. I do not believe it--I know it.”

She was silent for a long time, and when she did speak her words, showed that the matter was still on her mind. ”It seems to me very peculiar,” she said, ”that one so young should have such solemn thoughts.”

”Why do you call them solemn thoughts?” I asked. ”Can anything be more cheerful than to know that you are altogether in the hands of a higher Power--to know that you will be taken care of; or, if you perish, to know that it will be in the very nick of time?”

”You are too serious to be romantic,” she said. ”I should like to see you making love.”

”I can gratify your humor with a right good will--only the lady I would make love to despises me.”

”I'll never believe it,” she declared, and it was evident that she meant what she said.

”That is because you have only a vague idea of the cruelty of woman when she has a man at her mercy--and knows it.”

”I should like to see some woman at your mercy,” she said. ”No doubt you would give free play to the strap and the rawhide and other implements of the slave-driver.”

Her words made me wince, and I must have shown the wound, for when I looked at her her countenance wore an expression of regret and repentance. ”You must forgive me,” she declared. ”If we were to be thrown together you would have to forgive me fifty times a day.”

”Well, I thank heaven,” I exclaimed, with some feeling, ”that I was never at the mercy of more than one woman, and that fact was mitigated somewhat. She was arrayed in the garb of a man, and I was so sorry for her that I forgot she had me at her mercy.”

”You should have told her,” the little lady declared. ”Perhaps if she had known her conduct would have been vastly different. You never know what a woman will do until she has been put to the test.”

”She did a good deal,” I said, sullenly. ”She called me a coward, a rebel, and a traitor.”

”Then she must have been in despair,” replied the little lady in the most matter-of-fact way. ”When you are a little older you will discover that despair has an anger all its own. But I hope you will never feel it,” she sighed. ”Anyone can I see that you know very little about women.”

”I hope my ignorance does me no harm,” I suggested.

”Not the slightest,” she answered. ”It is a help to you. It is the sort that goes with youth, and I had rather have your youth than all the experience in the world.”

The answer I made I shall always regard as an inspiration. ”You can have my youth,” I said, ”if you will take all that goes with it.” For one or two little moments she either doubted her ears or failed to catch my meaning. But when she could no longer doubt--when she was obliged to understand me--she hid her face in her hands to conceal the result of her emotions. I seized her hands and compelled her to look at me. She was blus.h.i.+ng like a school-girl. ”Is my youth, with all its appurtenances, worth your acceptance?” I asked. She made no reply, and I think she would have maintained silence the rest of the way but for my persistent chattering.

To me her embarra.s.sment was very beautiful--thrilling, indeed--and in some mysterious way her youth came back to her, and she seemed to be no more than sixteen. ”My youth is not too youthful for you,” I insisted.

”I have grown very much older lately, and you have become a girl again in the last five minutes.” She was still silent, and I took advantage of it to draw her hands under the lap-robe. ”There is no reason why your fingers should freeze,” I said.

”They are not likely to--now,” she declared, and, though it may have been pure imagination, I thought she leaned a little nearer, and the bare idea of such graciousness on her part seemed to change my whole nature. All the folly of youth went out of me, and love came in and took its place and filled my whole being. What I had been belonged to the remote past; I knew that I should never be the same again.