"Lord, but they were mad all through," said Hodge, when describing it. "There wasn't a name they didn't call him all that winter."
"And yet I hear," said Mrs. Tremaine, a woman Fort Worth loved and looked up to as the – th did to Mrs. Stannard, "that for a long time past they have called him Sir Galahad instead of Galbraith."
"Oh," said Hodge, "that's one of old Gleason's jokes. He said they called him 'Gal I had' when he went to Omaha and 'Gal I hadn't' when he got back," – a statement which sent Major Brooks swearing sotto voce from the room.
"I don't know which I'd rather kick," said he, "Hodge or Gleason. I'd rejoice in Barclay's coming if it weren't – if Lawrence were only here, if Winn were only away."
CHAPTER III
An unhappy man was Major Brooks that gloomy month of March. The news from Washington via Department Head-Quarters was most discouraging as to Lawrence. He was both looking and doing ill. It seemed to "break him all up," said a letter from a friend in the Adjutant-General's office, that so few could be found to urge the Secretary to do something for him. What could they do? was the answer. Admitting that Lawrence had been grievously wronged, "whose fault was it?" said the Secretary; "not mine." He had only acted on the information and recommendation of officers to whom this work had been intrusted. If they had erred, he should have been informed of it before. "How could you be informed," said the Senator who had championed the poor fellow's cause, "when you resorted to a system that would have shamed a Spaniard in the days of the Inquisition, or the Bourbons with their lettres de cachet and the Bastile?" No one dreamed that Lawrence was in danger until he was done to death, and so, out of money, out of clothes, out of hope, health, and courage, poor Ned was fretting his heart out, while tender women and loyal friends were keeping guard over his shabby army home and caring for his two motherless lambs away out on the far frontier, awaiting the day when he should be restored to them.
It did not come, nor did Lawrence. An old comrade of the Sixth Corps, a gallant volunteer brigade commander, then in prosperous circumstances at Washington, had given him the shelter of his home, only too gladly keeping him in rations and cigars, as he would have done in clothes and pocket-money, but he shook his head at whiskey. "For God's sake, Ned, and for your babies' sake, leave that alone. It can't help you. You never were a drinking man before. Don't drink now, or your nerve will give out utterly." This and more he urged and pleaded, but Lawrence's pride seemed crushed and his heart broken. Legal advisers told his friends at last that restoration was impossible: his place was filled. He had only one course left if he would listen to nothing but restoration to the army, and that was to accept a second lieutenancy and begin over again at the bottom of the list. They broached it to him, and he broke out into wild, derisive laughter. "Good God! do you mean that a man who has served fifteen years in the army, fought all through the war and served as I have served, must step down from the squadron captaincy to ride behind the boys just out of the Point? be ranked out of quarters by my own son-in-law the next thing I know! I'll see the army in hell first," was his furious reply.
"No, Ned, not hell, but Texas. Take it; go back to the line, and once you're back in the army in any grade we'll legislate you up to the majority you deserve: see if we don't."
But Lawrence had lost all faith in promises, or in Congressional action. He turned in contempt from the proposition, and in early April came the tidings to San Antonio that he was desperately ill.
Meanwhile Mr. Hodge had lost the prestige of his first appearance at Worth, and fell into the customary rut of the subaltern. People found him as monotonous as did the martyrs of the Upper Platte, and, from having been the most sought-after of second lieutenants, he dropped back to the plane of semi-obscurity. This was galling. Hodge's stock in trade had been the facts or fables in his possession concerning the absent Captain Barclay, whose present whereabouts and plans were shrouded in mystery. A rumor came that he had decided not to join at all; that he was in Washington striving to arrange a transfer; that his assignment to the regiment and to the post where he must meet the woman who had jilted him for a cavalry subaltern was something unforeseen and not to be tolerated. The muster roll couldn't account for him other than as permitted to delay three months by Special Orders No. So-and-so, War Department, A.G.O., January 25, 1871. This gave Hodge unlooked-for reinforcements. A fortnight passed in March without a bid to dinner anywhere, without a request for further particulars as to Sir Galahad. So long as that interesting personage was expected any day to appear and answer for himself, it behooved Hodge to be measurably guarded in his statements, to keep within the limits of his authorities; but one day there came a letter from a lady at Department Head-Quarters to Mrs. Brooks, and before Brooks himself was made aware of the contents, he being at the club-room playing "pitch" and therefore beyond the pale of feminine consideration, the news was going the rounds of the garrison.
Mrs. Pelham, who was spending the winter in Washington, had written to an old and devoted friend of Major Waite's some very interesting news about Captain Barclay. The captain was in Washington a whole week, but had not called on Mrs. Pelham, though she had done everything she could think of for him when he was wounded. (The Pelhams were then at McPherson and near old Waite's summer camp, but no one ever heard of her ladyship's ever taking the faintest interest in Barclay until after he developed into a mine-owner and had been jilted by Laura Waite.) But let Mrs. Pelham talk for herself, as she usually did, as well as for every one else. "He spent the first week in February here, leaving just before poor Captain Lawrence came. No wonder he didn't wish to meet him! And Mrs. Waite was there, buttonholing everybody to get her pension increased, and wearing the costliest crape you ever saw, my dear, and – think of it! – solitaire diamond ear-rings with it! She had a room in a house where several prominent Congressmen boarded, and was known as 'the fascinating widow.' She sent to Barclay, – would you believe it? – and begged him to come to see her, and he actually did; and Mrs. Cutts, who lives in the same house, told me that you ought to have seen her that day, – no solitaire ear-rings or handsome crape, mind you, but tears and bombazine; and Mrs. Cutts vows that he gave her money. That woman is angling for another husband, and has been ever since poor Waite's death, and if anything were to happen to Mr. Winn it's just what Laura would be doing too. It runs in the blood, my dear. You know, and I know, that all the time she was at Omaha Barracks and the major in the field, she – a woman with a grown son and a graduating daughter – was dancing with the boys at the hops and riding – yes, and buggy-riding – with bachelors like those wretches Gates and Hagadorn." Buggy-riding was the unpardonable sin in Mrs. Pelham's eyes, she being "too massive to sit in anything short of the side seat of an ambulance," as said a regimental wit; and Mrs. Pelham looked with eyes of disfavor on women who managed to "keep their waists" as Mrs. Waite did.
"But let me tell you about Captain Barclay," continued the letter. "General Corliss called to see me two evenings ago and said he heard that Barclay was actually a millionaire, – that he had large interests in Nevada mines that were proving fabulously rich. You can understand that I wasn't at all surprised to hear that the general had intimated to Mr. Ray, of his staff, that it would be much better for him to go and serve with his regiment awhile. Ray wouldn't be an acceptable son-in-law; he has no money and too many fascinations, and there are both the Corliss girls, you know, to be provided for, and Miranda is already passé, and Ray has resigned the place, and the place is vacant, for – would you believe it? – they say the general tendered it to Barclay, and Barclay declined. Why, when we were all at McPherson there wasn't anything satirical the Corlisses didn't say about Barclay, and now that he has money they bow down to and worship him." ("Something Mrs.