The elderly officer was a literal-minded campaigner, and as he put his foot in the stirrup he felt rather dolorously that if ever he did meet Guy Fisher again, it would probably be at point-blank range where one would have to swallow the other's pistol ball.
The war, however, was seldom so seriously regarded at the Fisher mansion, one of the fine modern houses of the town,—brick with heavy limestone facings and much iron grille work, perched up on a double terrace, from which two flights of stone steps descended to the pavement. The more youthful officers contrived to import fruits and hothouse flowers, the fresh books and sheet music of the day, and they stood by the piano and wagged their heads to the march in "Faust," which was all the rage at that time, and sped around nimbly to the vibrations of its waltz, that might have made a pair of spurs dance. She had a very pretty wit of an exaggerated tenor, and it seemed to whet the phrase of every one who was associated with "The Fair One with the Equivocal Locks," as an imitator of her methods had dubbed her.
No order was so strictly enforced as to touch her mother's and her aunt's household. Their poultry roosted in peace. Their firearms were left by officers conducting searches through citizens' houses and confiscating pistols, guns, and knives.
"We are as capable of armed rebellion as ever," she would declare joyously.
Miss Fisher's favorite horse bore her airy weight as jauntily down the street as if no impress had desolated equestrian society. On these occasions she was always accompanied by two or three officers, sometimes more, and there was a fable in circulation that once the cavalcade was so numerous that the guard was turned out at the fort, the sentries mistaking the gayly caparisoned approach for the major general commanding the division and his mounted escort.
She sang in a very high soprano voice and with a considerable degree of culture, but one may be free to say that her rendering of "Il Bacio" and "La Farfalletta" was by no means the triumph of art that it seemed to Seymour, and it was suggested to the mind of several of the elder officers that there ought to be something more arduous for him to do than to languish over the piano in a sentimental daze, fairly hypnotized by the simpler melodies—"Her bright smile haunts me still" and "Sweet Evangeline."
Serious thoughts were sometimes his portion, and Vertnor Ashley now and again received the benefit of them.
"I heard some news when I was in town to-day—and I don't believe it," Seymour said as he sat on a camp-stool on the grass in front of the colonel's tent.
The so-called "street" of the cavalry encampment lay well to the rear. Hardly a sound emanated therefrom save now and then the echo of a step, the jingling of a spur or sabre, and sometimes voices in drowsy talk—perhaps a snatch of song or the thrumming of a guitar. A sort of luminous hush pervaded the atmosphere of the sunny spring afternoon. The shadows slanted long on the lush blue-grass that, despite the trampling to which it had been subjected, sent a revivifying impetus from its thickly interlaced mat of roots and spread a turf like dark rich velvet. The impulse of bloom was rife throughout nature—in a sort of praise offering for the grace of the spring. Humble untoward sprigs of vegetation, nameless, one would think, unnoticed, must needs wear a tiny corolla or offer a chalice full of dew—so minute, so apart from observation, that their very creation seemed a work of supererogation. The dandelions' rich golden glow was instarred along the roadside, and there was a bunch of wood violets in the roots of the maple near Ashley's head, the branches of the tree holding far down their dark garnet blossoms with here and there clusters of flat wing-like seed-pods, striped with green and brown. A few paces distant was a tulip-tree, gloriously aflare with red and yellow blooms through all its boughs to the height of eighty feet, and between was swung Ashley's hammock with Ashley luxuriously disposed therein. His eyes were on the infinite roseate ranges of the Great Smoky Mountains in the amethystine distance; the purple Chilhowee darkly loomed closer at hand, and about the foot-hills was belted the placid cestus of tents, all gleaming white, while the splendid curves of the river, mirroring the sky, vied with the golden west. Nothing could have more picturesquely suggested the warrior in his hours of ease. The consciousness of one's own graces ought to add a zest to their value, especially when vanity is as absolutely harmless as Vertnor Ashley's enjoyment of his own good opinion of himself.
"What news? Why don't you believe it? Grape-vine?" asked Ashley. (Grape-vine was the telegraph of irresponsible rumor.)