“I believe so, sir.”
“Very good, Tomkins. I will be with his lordship as soon as I can borrow a sword.”
The order reached me early on the morning after my arrival at Winnsboro’. But owing either to the fatigue of the ride—though I had rested six hours at Fishing Creek—or to other causes, I had already begun to experience, early as the hour was, the lassitude and ennui which await the man, who after startling adventures returns to a dull routine. The scarlet of the King’s uniform, peeping here and there through the trees that shaded the village street, the smart sentries who paced the walk before this door or that, the Twenty-Third drilling in an open space with their queues and ribbons and powdered heads, the old flag flying above Headquarters—these were sights pleasant enough. And the greetings of old friends were welcome; the camaraderie of an army campaigning abroad is a thing by itself. But when that was said, all was said. A camp is a camp, and the older it is the worse it grows. After the life of the Bluff, with its primitive cleanliness, its great spaces, its comfort and its stillness, the close air and squalor of billets, the shifts and dirty floors, the sharp orders and sounds of punishment, even the oaths and coarse talk to which custom had once inured me, jarred on me unspeakably. Nor was the distaste with which I looked about me, as I passed along the village street, lessened by the thought that for some time to come my wound would withhold me from action and confine me to the narrow bounds of the camp.
I had not many minutes to spare for these or for any reflections. It was but a short distance, the length of a measured stroll, from the lodging where Paton had taken me in, to where my Lord had his headquarters, nearly at the end of the village. I soon arrived at the place, a low white house, set back a little from the street and separated from it by a row of fine shade trees which sheltered a rough table and some benches. There was the usual throng about the door, but I pushed my way through it, and the orderly who had summoned me, and who was on the look-out, ushered me without delay into my Lord’s presence.
A man of my own age, twenty-seven or twenty-eight, was seated at the head of a table strewn with papers and maps. Webster, who commanded the Twenty-Third, sat at the foot of the table and between the two were ranged five or six men of varying ages, of whom one or two were not in uniform. I saw as much as this at a glance, as I crossed the threshold. Then my Lord rose and came forward to meet me with a cordiality that sat well on his years without derogating from his rank.
“My dear Craven,” he said, shaking me by the hand, “welcome back to life! Tarleton has done some good work, but he has never done His Majesty’s cause a greater service than by restoring you to it. Your arm? How is it?”
“Doing well, my lord,” I murmured. And I thanked him.
“Excellent! Well, an express went to your father three weeks ago enclosed in the Commander-in-Chief’s despatches, which told him of your safety. You will dine with me to-night and tell me about poor Ferguson’s affair. Poor fellow! Poor fellow! But there, sit down now! No, gentlemen, you must keep your congratulations until later. Time presses and the matter we are on brooks no delay. Brigadier,” he continued, addressing Webster, “find room for Major Craven beside you—and have a care of his arm. He is here just in time to be of service to us, and now—” He broke off, his attention diverted by a movement at the table. “What is it?” he asked, turning sharply in his chair, and extending his arm so as to bar the way to the door.
One of the men in civilian dress, who had risen from his seat at my entrance, muttered something. He would be glad of his lordship’s permission to—and with a murmur and a low bow, he was for leaving the room.
But my lord stopped him. “No, sir,” he cried peremptorily. “Sit down!” And without deigning to hear the man’s reasons, he motioned him back to his chair. “Sit down, sir! Sit down! Nonsense, man we shall not be fifteen minutes, and your matter can wait. We may need you, we shall almost certainly need you. Now Major Craven, I require your attention. Am I right in saying that about three months ago you rode across the country that lies between the forks of the Congaree—from the Enoree to the Broad River? That is so, is it not?”