Home > Authors Index > Robert W. Chambers > Ailsa Paige: A Novel > This page
Ailsa Paige: A Novel, a novel by Robert W. Chambers |
||
Chapter 16 |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER XVI On every highway, across every wood trail, footpath, and meadow streamed the wreckage of seven battle-fields. Through mud and rain crowded heavy artillery, waggons, herds of bellowing cattle, infantry, light batteries, exhausted men, wounded men, dead men on stretchers, men in straw-filled carts, some alive, some dying. Cannoneers cut traces and urged their jaded horses through the crush, cursed and screamed at by those on foot, menaced by bayonets and sabres. The infantry, drenched, starving, plastered with mud to the waists, toiled doggedly on through the darkness; batteries in deplorable condition struggled from mud hole to mud hole; the reserve cavalry division, cut out and forced east, limped wearily ahead, its rear-guard firing at every step. To the north, immense quantities of stores--clothing, provisions, material of every description were on fire, darkening the sky with rolling, inky clouds; an entire army corps with heavy artillery and baggage crossed the river enveloped in the pitchy, cinder-laden smoke from two bridges on fire. The forests, which had been felled from the Golden Farm to Fair Oaks to form an army's vast abattis, were burning in sections, sending roaring tornadoes of flame into rifle pits, redoubts, and abandoned fortifications. Cannon thundered at Ellison's Mills; shells rained hard on Gaines's Farm; a thousand simultaneous volleys of musketry mingled with the awful uproar of the cannon; uninterrupted sheets of light from the shells brightened the smoke pall like the continuous flare of electricity against a thundercloud. The Confederacy, victorious, was advancing wrapped in flame and smoke. At Savage's Station the long railroad bridge was now on fire; trains and locomotives burned fiercely; millions of boxes of hard bread, barrels of flour, rice, sugar, coffee, salt pork, cases of shoes, underclothing, shirts, uniforms, tin-ware, blankets, ponchos, harness, medical stores, were in flames; magazines of ammunition, flat cars and box cars loaded with powder, shells, and cartridges blazed and exploded, hurling jets and spouting fountains of fire to the very zenith. And through the White Oak Swamp rode the Commander-in-chief of an army in full retreat, followed by his enormous staff and escort, abandoning the siege of Richmond, and leaving to their fate the wretched mass of sick and wounded in the dreadful hospitals at Liberty Hall. And the red battle flags of the Southland fluttered on every hill. Claymore's mixed brigade, still holding together, closed the rear of Porter's powder-scorched _corps d'armee_. The Zouaves of the 3rd Regiment--what was left of them--marched as flankers; McDunn's battery, still intact, was forced to unlimber every few rods; and the pouring rain turned to a driving golden fire in the red glare of the guns, which lighted up the halted squadrons of the Lancers ranged always in support. Every rod in retreat was a running combat. In the darkness the discharge of the Zouaves' rifles ran from the guns' muzzles like streams of molten metal spilling out on the grass. McDunn's guns spirted great lumps of incandescence; the fuses of the shells in the sky showered the darkness with swarming sparks. Toward ten o'clock the harried column halted on a hill and bivouacked without fires, food, or shelter. The Zouaves slept on their arms in the drenched herbage; the Lancers, not daring to unsaddle, lay down on the grass under their patient horses, bridle tied to wrist. An awful anxiety clutched officers and men. Few slept; the ceaseless and agonised shrieking from an emergency hospital somewhere near them in the darkness almost unnerved them. At dawn shells began to plunge downward among the Dragoons. McDunn's battery roused itself to reply, but muddy staff-officers arrived at full speed with orders for Claymore to make haste; and the starving command staggered off stiffly through the mud, their ears sickened by the piteous appeals of the wounded begging not to be abandoned. Berkley, his face a mass of bloody rags, gazed from his wet saddle with feverish eyes at the brave contract surgeons standing silent amid their wounded under the cedar trees. Cripples hobbled along the lines, beseeching, imploring, catching at stirrups, plucking feebly, blindly at the horses' manes for support. "Oh, my God!" sobbed a wounded artilleryman, lifting himself from the blood-stained grass, "is this what I enlisted for? Are you boys going to leave us behind to rot in rebel prisons?" "Damn you!" shrieked another, "you ain't licked! What'n hell are you runnin' away for? Gimme a gun an' a hoss an' I'll go back with you to the river!" And another pointed a mangled and shaking hand at the passing horsemen. "Oh, hell!" he sneered, "we don't expect anything of the cavalry, but why are them Zouaves skedaddlin'? They fit like wild cats at the river. Halt! you red-legged devils. You're goin' the wrong way!" A Sister of Charity, her snowy, wide-winged headdress limp in the rain, came out of a shed and stood at the roadside, slender hands joined imploringly. "You mustn't leave your own wounded," she kept repeating. "You wouldn't do that, gentlemen, would you? They've behaved so well; they've done all that they could. Won't somebody tell General McClellan how brave they were? If he knew, he would never leave them here." The Lancers looked down at her miserably as they rode; Colonel Arran passed her, saluting, but with heavy, flushed face averted; Berkley, burning with fever, leaned from his saddle, cap in hand. "We can't help it, Sister. The same thing may happen to us in an hour. But we'll surely come back; you never must doubt that!" Farther on they came on a broken-down ambulance, the mules gone, several dead men half buried in the wet straw, and two Sisters of Charity standing near by in pallid despair. Colonel Arran offered them lead-horses, but they were timid and frightened; and Burgess gave his horse to the older one, and Berkley took the other up behind him, where she sat sideways clutching his belt, white coiffe aflutter, feet dangling. At noon the regiment halted for forage and rations procured from a waggon train which had attempted to cross their line of march. The rain ceased: a hot sun set their drenched clothing and their horses' flanks steaming. At two o'clock they resumed their route; the ragged, rain-blackened pennons on the lance heads dried out scarlet; a hot breeze set in, carrying with it the distant noise of battle. All that afternoon the heavy sound of the cannonade jarred their ears. And at sunset it had not ceased. Berkley's Sister of Charity clung to his belt in silence for a while. After a mile or two she began to free her mind in regard to the distressing situation of her companion and herself. She informed Berkley that the negro drivers had become frightened and had cut the traces and galloped off; that she and the other Sister were on their way to the new base at Azalea Court House, where thousands of badly wounded were being gathered from the battles of the last week, and where conditions were said to be deplorable, although the hospital boats had been taking the sick to Alexandria as fast as they could be loaded. She was a gentle little thing, with ideas of her own concerning the disaster to the army which was abandoning thousands of its wounded to the charity and the prisons of an enemy already too poor to feed and clothe its own. "Some of our Sisters stayed behind, and many of the medical staff and even the contract surgeons remained. I hope the rebels will be gentle with them. I expected to stay, but Sister Aurelienne and I were ordered to Azalea last night. I almost cried my eyes out when I left our wounded. The shells were coming into the hospital yesterday, and one of them killed two of our wounded in the straw. Oh, it was sad and terrible. I am sure the rebels didn't fire on us on purpose. Do you think so?" "No, I don't. Were you frightened, Sister." "Oh, yes," she said naively, "and I wished I could run into the woods and hide." "But you didn't?" "Why, no, I couldn't," she said, surprised. The fever in his wound was making him light-headed. At intervals he imagined that it was Ailsa seated behind him, her arms around his waist, her breath cool and fragrant on his neck; and still he knew she was a phantom born of fever, and dared not speak--became sly, pretending he did not know her lest the spell break and she vanish into thin air again. What the little sister said was becoming to him only a pretty confusion of soft sounds; at moments he was too deaf to hear her voice at all; then he heard it and still believed it to be Ailsa who was speaking; then, for a, few seconds, reality cleared his clouded senses; he heard the steady thunder of the cannonade, the steady clattering splash of his squadron; felt the hot, dry wind scorching his stiffened cheek and scalp where the wound burned and throbbed under a clotted bandage. When the regiment halted to fill canteens the little sister washed and re-bandaged his face and head. It was a ragged slash running from the left ear across the cheek-bone and eyebrow into the hair above the temple--a deep, swollen, angry wound. "What _were_ you doing when you got this?" she asked in soft consternation, making him as comfortable as possible with the scanty resources of her medical satchel. Later, when the bugles sounded, she came back from somewhere down the line, suffered him to lift her up behind him, settled herself, slipped both arms confidently around his waist, and said: "So you are the soldier who took the Confederate battle flag? Why didn't you tell me? Ah--I know. The bravest never tell." "There is nothing to tell," he replied. "They captured a guidon from us. It evens the affair." She said, after a moment's thought; "It speaks well for a man to have his comrades praise him as yours praise you." "You mean the trooper Burgess," he said wearily. "He's always chattering." "All who spoke to me praised you," she observed. "Your colonel said: 'He does not understand what fear is. He is absolutely fearless.'" "My colonel has been misinformed, Sister. I am intelligent enough to be afraid--philosopher enough to realise that it doesn't help me. So nowadays I just go ahead." "Trusting in God," she murmured. He did not answer. "Is it not true, soldier?" But the fever was again transfiguring her into the shape of Ailsa Paige, and he remained shyly silent, fearing to disturb the vision--yet knowing vaguely that it was one. She sighed; later, in silence, she repeated some Credos and Hail Marys, her eyes fixed on space, the heavy cannonade dinning in her ears. All around her rode the Lancers, tall pennoned weapons swinging from stirrup and loop, bridles loose under their clasped hands. The men seemed stupefied with fatigue; yet every now and then they roused themselves to inquire after her comfort or to offer her a place behind them. She timidly asked Berkley if she tired him, but he begged her to stay, alarmed lest the vision of Ailsa depart with her; and she remained, feeling contented and secure in her drowsy fatigue. Colonel Arran dropped back from the head of the column once to ride beside her. He questioned her kindly; spoke to Berkley, also, asking with grave concern about his wound. And Berkley answered in his expressionless way that he did not suffer. But the little Sister of Charity behind his back laid one finger across her lips and looked significantly at Colonel Arran; and when the colonel again rode to the head of the weary column his face seemed even graver and more careworn. By late afternoon they were beyond sound of the cannonade, riding through a golden light between fields of stacked wheat. Far behind in the valley they could see the bayonets of the Zouaves glistening; farther still the declining sun glimmered on the guns of the 10th battery. Along a parallel road endless lines of waggons stretched from north to south, escorted by Egerton's Dragoons. To Berkley the sunset world had become only an infernal pit of scarlet strung with raw nerves. The terrible pain in his face and head almost made him lose consciousnesss. Later he seemed to be drifting into a lurid sea of darkness, where he no longer felt his saddle or the movement of his horse; he scarcely saw the lanterns clustering, scarcely heard the increasing murmur around him, the racket of picket firing, the noise of many bewildered men, the cries of staff-officers directing divisions and brigades to their camping ground, the confused tumult which grew nearer, nearer, mounting like the ominous clamour of the sea as the regiment rode through Azalea under the July stars. He might have fallen from his saddle; or somebody perhaps lifted him, for all he knew. In the glare of torches he found himself lying on a moving stretcher. After that he felt straw under him; and vaguely wondered why it did not catch fire from his body, which surely now was but a mass of smouldering flame.
Other things bothered him; he was convinced that his mother was in the room. At intervals he was aware of Hallam's handsome face, cut out like a paper picture from _Harper's Weekly_ and pasted flat on the tent wall. Also there were too many fire zouaves around his bed--if it was a bed, this vague vibrating hammock he occupied. It was much more like a hollow nook inside a gigantic pendulum which swung eternally to and fro until it swung him into senselessness--or aroused him with fierce struggles to escape. But his mother's slender hand sometimes arrested the maddening motion, or--and this was curiously restful--she cleverly transferred him to a cradle, which she rocked, leaning close over him. Only she kept him wrapped up too warmly. And after a long while there came a day when his face became cooler, and his skin grew wet with sweat; and on that day he partly unclosed his eyes and saw Colonel Arran sitting beside him. Surprised, he attempted to sit up, but not a muscle of his body obeyed him, and he lay there stupid, inert, hollow eyes fixed meaninglessly on his superior, who spoke cautiously. "Berkley, do you know me?" His lips twitched a voiceless affirmative. Colonel Arran said: "You are going to get well, now. . . . Get well quickly, because--the regiment misses you. . . . What is it you desire to say? Make the effort if you wish." Berkley's sunken eyes remained focussed on space; he was trying to consider. Then they turned painfully toward Colonel Arran again. "Ailsa Paige?" he whispered. The other said quietly: "She is at the base hospital near Azalea. I have seen her. She is well. . . . I did not tell her you were ill. She could not have left anyway. . . . Matters are not going well with the army, Berkley." "Whipped?" His lips barely formed the question. Colonel Arran's careworn features flushed. "The army has been withdrawing from the Peninsula. It is the commander-in-chief who has been defeated--not the Army of the Potomac." "Back?" "Yes, certainly we shall go back. This rebellion seems to be taking more time to extinguish than the people and the national authorities supposed it would require. But no man must doubt our ultimate success. I do not doubt it. I never shall. You must not. It will all come right in the end." "Regiment?" whispered Berkley. "The regiment is in better shape, Berkley. Our remounts have arrived; our wounded are under shelter, and comfortable. We need rest, and we're getting it here at Azalea, although they shell us every day. We ought to be in good trim in a couple of weeks. You'll be in the saddle long before that. Your squadron has become very proud of you; all the men in the regiment have inquired about you. Private Burgess spends his time off duty under the oak trees out yonder watching your window like a dog. . . . I--ah--may say to you, Berkley, that you--ah--have become a credit to the regiment. Personally--and as your commanding officer--I wish you to understand that I am gratified by your conduct. I have said so in my official reports." Berkley's sunken eyes had reverted to the man beside him. After a moment his lips moved again in soundless inquiry. Colonel Arran replied: "The Zouaves were very badly cut up; Major Lent was wounded by a sabre cut. He is nearly well now. Colonel Craig and his son were not hurt. The Zouaves are in cantonment about a mile to the rear. Both Colonel Craig and his son have been here to see you--" he hesitated, rose, stood a moment undecided. "Mrs. Craig--the wife of Colonel Craig--has been here. Her plantation, Paigecourt, is in this vicinity I believe. She has requested the medical authorities to send you to her house for your convalescence. Do you wish to go?" The hollow-eyed, heavily bandaged face looked up at him from the straw; and Colonel Arran looked down at it, lips aquiver. "Berkley--if you go there, I shall not see you again until you return to the regiment. I--" suddenly his gray face began to twitch again--and he set his jaw savagely to control it. "Good-bye," he said. . . "I wish--some day--you could try to think less harshly of me. I am a--very--lonely man." Berkley closed his eyes, but whether from weakness or sullen resentment the older man could not know. He stood looking down wistfully at the boy for a moment, then turned and went heavily away with blurred eyes that did not recognise the woman in bonnet and light summer gown who was entering the hospital tent. As he stood aside to let her pass he heard his name pronounced, in a cold, decisive voice; and, passing his gloved hand across his eyes to clear them, recognised Celia Craig. "Colonel Arran," she said coolly, "is it necessa'y fo' me to request yo' permission befo' I am allowed to move Philip Berkley to my own house?" "No, madam. The brigade surgeon is in charge. But I think I can secure for you the necessary authority to do so if you wish." She thanked him haughtily, and passed on; and he turned and walked out, impassive, silent, a stoop to his massive shoulders which had already become characteristic. And that evening Berkley lay at Paigecourt in the chintz-hung chamber where, as a girl, his mother had often slept, dreaming the dreams that haunt young hearts when the jasmine fragrance grows heavier in the stillness and the magnolia's snowy chalice is offered to the moon, and the thrush sings in the river thickets, and the fire-fly's lamp drifts through the fairy woods. Celia told him this on the third day, late in the afternoon--so late that the westering sun was already touching the crests of the oak woods, and all the thickets had turned softly purple like the bloom on a plum; the mounting scent of phlox from the garden was growing sweeter, and the bats fluttered and dipped and soared in the calm evening sky. She had been talking of his mother when she was Constance Paige and wore a fillet over her dark ringlets and rode to hounds at ten with the hardest riders in all Prince Clarence County. "And this was her own room, Phil; nothing in it has been moved, nothing changed; this is the same bird and garland chintz, matching the same wall-paper; this is the same old baid with its fo' ca'ved columns and its faded canopy, the same gilt mirror where she looked and saw reflected there the loveliest face in all the valley. . . . A child's face, Phil--even a child's face when she drew aside her bridal veil to look. . . . Ah--God--" She sighed, looking down at her clasped hands, "if youth but knew--if youth but knew!" He lay silent, the interminable rattle of picket firing in his ears, his face turned toward the window. Through it he could see green grass, a magnolia in bloom, and a long flawless spray of Cherokee roses pendant from the gallery. Celia sighed, waited for him to speak, sighed again, and picked up the Baltimore newspaper to resume her reading if he desired. Searching the columns listlessly, she scanned the headings, glanced over the letter press in silence, then turned the crumpled page. Presently she frowned. "Listen to this, Philip; they say that there is yellow fever among the Yankee troops in Louisiana. It would be like them to bring that horror into the Ca'linas and Virginia----" He turned his head suddenly, partly rose from where he lay; and she caught her breath and bent swiftly over him, placing one hand on his arm and gently forcing him down upon the-pillow again. "Fo'give me, dear," she faltered. "I forgot what I was reading----" He said, thoughtfully: "Did you ever hear exactly how my mother died, Celia? . . . But I know you never did. . . . And I think I had better tell you." "She died in the fever camp at Silver Bayou, when you were a little lad," whispered Celia. "No." "Philip! What are you saying?" "You don't know how my mother died," he said quietly. "Phil, we had the papers--and the Governor of Louisiana wrote us himse'f----" "I know what he wrote and what the papers published was not true. I'll tell you how she died. When I was old enough to take care of myself I went to Silver Bayou. . . . Many people in that town had died; some still survived. I found the parish records. I found one of the camp doctors who remembered that accursed year of plague--an old man, withered, indifferent, sleeping his days away on the rotting gallery of his tumble-down house. _He_ knew. . . . And I found some of the militia still surviving; and one among them retained a confused memory of my mother--among the horrors of that poisonous year----" He lay silent, considering; then: "I was old enough to remember, but not old enough to understand what I understood later. . . . Do you want to know how my mother died?" Celia's lips moved in amazed assent. "Then I will tell you. . . . They had guards north, east, and west of us. They had gone mad with fright; the whole land was quarantined against us; musket, flintlock, shotgun, faced us through the smoke of their burning turpentine. I was only a little lad, but the horror of it I have never forgotten, nor my mother's terror--not for herself, for me." He lay on his side, thin hands clasped, looking not at Celia but beyond her at the dreadful scene his fancy was painting on the wall of his mother's room: "Often, at night, we heard the shots along the dead line. Once they murdered a man behind our water garden. Our negroes moaned and sobbed all day, all night, helpless, utterly demoralised. Two were shot swimming; one came back dying from snake bite. I saw him dead on the porch. "I saw men fall down in the street with the black vomit--women, also--and once I saw two little children lying dead against a garden wall in St. Catharine's Alley. I was young, but I remember." A terrible pallor came into his wan face. "And I remember my mother," he said; "and her pleading with the men who came to the house to let her send me across the river where there was no fever. I remember her saying that it was murder to imprison children there in Silver Bayou; that I was perfectly well so far. They refused. Soldiers came and went. Their captain died; others died, we heard. Then my mother's maid, Alice, an octoroon, died on the East Gallery. And the quarters went insane that day. "When night came an old body-servant of my grandfather scratched at mother's door. I heard him. I thought it was Death. I was half dead with terror when mother awoke and whispered to me to dress in the dark and to make no sound. "I remember it perfectly--remember saying: 'I won't go if you don't, mother. I'd rather be with you.' And I remember her saying: 'You shall not stay here to die when you are perfectly well. Trust mother, darling; Jerry will take you to Sainte Jacqueline in a boat.' "And after that it is vaguer--the garden, the trench dug under the north wall--and how mother and I, in deadly fear of moccasins, down on all fours, crept after Jerry along the ditch to the water's edge----" His face whitened again; he lay silent for a while, crushing his wasted hands together. "Celia, they fired on us from the levee. After that I don't know; I never knew what happened. But that doctor at Silver Bayou said that I was found a mile below in a boat with the first marks of the plague yellowing my skin. Celia, they never found my mother's body. It is not true that she died of fever at Silver Bayou. She fell under the murderous rifles of the levee guard--gave her life trying to save me from that pest-stricken prison. Jerry's body was found stranded in the mud twenty miles below. He had been shot through the body. . . . And now you know how my mother died." He raised himself on one elbow, watching Celia's shocked white face for a moment or two, then wearily turned toward the window and sank back on his pillows. In the still twilight, far away through the steady fusillade from the outposts, he heard the dull boom-booming of cannon, and the heavy shocks of the great guns aboard the Union gun-boats. But it sounded very far off; a mocking-bird sang close under his window; the last rosy bar faded from the fleecy cloud bank in the east. Night came abruptly--the swift Southern darkness quickly emblazoned with stars; and the whip-poor-wills began their ghostly calling; and the spectres of the mist crept stealthily inland. "Celia?" Her soft voice answered from the darkness near him. He said: "I knew this was her room before you told me. I have seen her several times." "Good God, Phil!" she faltered, "what are you saying?" "I don't know. . . . I saw her the night I came here." After a long silence Celia rose and lighted a candle. Holding it a little above her pallid face she glided to his bedside and looked down at him. After a moment, bending, she touched his face with her palm; then her cool finger-tips brushed the quiet pulse at his wrist. "Have I any fever?" "No, Phil." "I thought not. . . . I saw mother's face a few moments ago in that mirror behind you." Celia sank down on the bed's edge, the candle trembling in her hand. Then, slowly, she turned her head and looked over her shoulder, moving cautiously, until her fascinated eyes found the glass behind her. The mirror hung there reflecting the flowered wall opposite; a corner of the bed; nothing else. He said in an even voice; "From the first hour that you brought me into this room, she has been here. I knew it instantly. . . . The first day she was behind those curtains--was there a long while. I knew she was there; I watched the curtains, expecting her to step out. I waited all day, not understanding that I--that it was better that I should speak. I fell asleep about dusk. She came out then and sat where you are sitting." "It was a dream, Phil. It was fever. Try to realise what you are saying!" "I do. The next evening I lay watching; and I saw a figure reflected in the mirror. It was not yet dusk. Celia, in the sunset light I saw her standing by the curtains. But it was star-light before she came to the bed and looked down at me. "I said very quietly: 'Mother dear!' _Then_ she spoke to me; and I knew she was speaking, but I could not hear her voice. . . . It was that way while she stood beside me--I could not hear her, Celia. I could not hear what she was saying. It was no spirit I saw--no phantom from the dead there by my bed, no ghost--no restless wraith, grave-driven through the night. I believe she is living. She knows I believe it. . . . As you sat here, a moment ago, reading to me, I saw her reflected for a moment in the mirror behind you, passing into the room beyond. Her hair is perfectly white, Celia--or," he said vaguely to himself, "was it something she wore?--like the bandeaux of the Sisters of Charity----" The lighted candle fell from Celia's nerveless fingers and rolled over and over across the floor, trailing a smoking wick. Berkley's hand steadied her trembling arm. "Why are you frightened?" he asked calmly. "There is nothing dead about what I saw." "I c-can't he'p myse'f," stammered Celia; "you say such frightful things to me--you tell me that they happen in my own house--in _her_ own room--How can I be calm? How can I believe such things of--of Constance Berkley--of yo' daid mother----" "I don't know," he said dully. The star-light sparkled on the silver candle-stick where it lay on the floor in a little pool of wax. Quivering all over, Celia stooped to lift, relight it, and set it on the table. And, over her shoulder, he saw a slim shape enter the doorway. "Mother dear?" he whispered. And Celia turned with a cry and stood swaying there in the rays of the candle. But it was only a Sister of Charity--a slim, childish figure under the wide white head-dress--who had halted, startled at Celia's cry. She was looking for the Division Medical Director, and the sentries had misinformed her--and she was very sorry, very deeply distressed to have frightened anybody--but the case was urgent--a Sister shot near the picket line on Monday; and authority to send her North was, what she had come to seek. Because the Sister had lost her mind completely, had gone insane, and no longer knew them, knew nobody, not even herself, nor the hospital, nor the doctors, nor even that she lay on a battle-field. And she was saying strange and dreadful things about herself and about people nobody had ever heard of. . . . Could anybody tell her where the Division Medical Director could be found?
The picket firing along the river had not ceased. At the same instant he felt the concussion of heavy guns shaking his bed. The lawn outside the drawn curtains resounded with the hurrying clatter of waggons, the noise of pick and spade and crack of hammer and mallet. He drew himself to a sitting posture. A regimental surgeon passing through the room glanced at him humorously, saying: "You've got a pretty snug berth here, son. How does it feel to sleep in a real bed?" And, extinguishing his candle, he went away through the door without waiting for any answer. Berkley turned toward the window, striving to reach the drawn curtains. And at length he managed to part them, but it was all dark outside. Yet the grounds were evidently crowded with waggons and men; he recognised sounds which indicated that tents were being erected, drains and sinks dug; the rattle of planks and boards were significant of preparation for the construction of "shebangs." Farther away on the dark highway he could hear the swift gallop of cavalry and the thudding clank of light batteries, all passing in perfect darkness. Then, leaning closer to the sill, he gazed between the curtains far into the southwest; and saw the tall curve of Confederate shells traced in whirling fire far down the river, the awful glare of light as the enormous guns on the Union warships replied. Celia, her lovely hair over her shoulders, a scarf covering her night-dress, came in carrying a lighted candle; and instantly a voice from outside the window bade her extinguish the light or draw the curtain. She looked at Berkley in a startled manner, blew out the flame, and came around between his bed and the window, drawing the curtains entirely aside. "General Claymore's staff has filled eve'y room in the house except yours and mine," she said in her gentle, bewildered way. "There's a regiment--Curt's Zouaves--encamped befo' the west quarters, and a battery across the drive, and all the garden is full of their horses and caissons." "Poor little Celia," he said, reaching out to touch her hand, and drawing her to the bed's edge, where she sat down helplessly. "The Yankee officers are all over the house," she repeated. "They're up in the cupola with night-glasses now. They are ve'y polite. Curt took off his riding boots and went to sleep on my bed--and oh he is so dirty!--my darling Curt' my own husband!--too dirty to touch! I could cry just to look at his uniform, all black and stained and the gold entirely gone from one sleeve! And Stephen!--oh, Phil, some mise'ble barber has shaved the heads of all the Zouaves, and Steve is perfectly disfigured!--the poor, dear boy"--she laughed hysterically--"he had a hot bath and I've been mending the rags that he and Curt call unifo'ms--and I found clean flannels fo' them both in the attic----" "_What_ does all this mean--all this camping outside?" he interrupted gently. "Curt doesn't know. The camps and hospitals west of us have been shelled, and all the river roads are packed full of ambulances and stretchers going east." "Where is my regiment?" "The Lancers rode away yesterday with General Stoneman--all except haidqua'ters and one squadron--yours, I think--and they are acting escort to General Sykes at the overseers house beyond the oak grove. Your colonel is on his staff, I believe." He lay silent, watching the burning fuses of the shells as they soared up into the night, whirling like fiery planets on their axes, higher, higher, mounting through majestic altitudes to the pallid stars, then, curving, falling faster, faster, till their swift downward glare split the darkness into broad sheets of light. "Phil," she whispered, "I think there is a house on fire across the river!" Far away in the darkness rows of tiny windows in an unseen mansion had suddenly become brilliantly visible. "It--it must be Mr. Ruffin's house," she said in an awed voice. "Oh, Phil! It _is_! Look! It's all on fire--it's--oh, see the flames on the roof! This is terrible--terrible--" She caught her breath. "Phil! There's another house on fire! Do you see--do you _see_! It's Ailsa's house--Marye-mead! Oh, how could they set it on fire--how could they have the heart to burn that sweet old place!" "Is that Marye-mead?" he asked. "It _must_ be. That's where it ought to stand--and--oh! oh! it's all on fire, Phil, all on fire!" "Shells from the gun-boats," he muttered, watching the entire sky turn crimson as the flames burst into fury, lighting up clumps of trees and outhouses. And, as they looked, the windows of another house began to kindle ominously; little tongues of fire fluttered over a distant cupola, leaped across to a gallery, ran up in vinelike tendrils which flowered into flame, veining everything in a riotous tangle of brilliancy. And through the kindling darkness the sinister boom--boom! of the guns never ceased, and the shells continued to mount, curve, and fall, streaking the night with golden incandescence. Outside the gates, at the end of the cedar-lined avenue, where the highway passes, the tumult was increasing every moment amid shouts, cracking of whips, the jingle and clash of traces and metallic racket of wheels. The house, too, resounded with the heavy hurried tread of army boots trampling up and down stairs and crossing the floors above in every direction. In the summer kitchen loud-voiced soldiers were cooking; there came the clatter of plates from the dining-room, the odour of hot bread and frying pork. "All my negroes except old Peter and a quadroon maid have gone crazy," said Celia hopelessly. "I had them so comfo'tably qua'tered and provided foh!--Cary, the ove'seer, would have looked after them while the war lasts--but the sight of the blue uniforms unbalanced them, and they swa'med to the river, where the contraband boats were taking runaways. . . . Such foolish creatures! They were ve'y happy here and quite safe and well treated. . . . And everyone has deserted, old and young!--toting their bundles and baskets on their silly haids--every negro on Paigecourt plantation, every servant in this house except Peter and Sadie has gone with the contrabands . . . I'm sure I don't know what these soldiers are cooking in the kitchen. I expect they'll end by setting the place afire, and I told Curt so, but he can't he'p it, and I can't. It's ve'y hard to see the house turned out of the windows, and the lawns and gardens cut to pieces by hoofs and wheels, but I'm only too thankful that Curt can find shelter under this roof, and nothing matters any mo' as long as he and Stephen are alive and well." "Haven't you heard from Ailsa yet?" asked Berkley in a low voice. "Oh, Phil! I'm certainly worried. She was expecting to go on board some hospital boat at the landing the day befo' your regiment arrived. I haven't set eyes on her since. A gun-boat was to take one of the Commission's steamers to Fortress Monroe, and all that day the fleet kept on firing at our--at the Confederate batteries over the river"--she corrected herself wearily--"and I was so afraid, that Ailsa's steamer would try to get out----" "Did it?" "I don't know. There are so many, many boats at the landing, and there's been so much firing, and nobody seems to know what is happening or where anybody is. . . . And I don't know where Ailsa is, and I've been ve'y mise'ble because they say some volunteer nurses have been killed----" "What!" "I didn't want to tell you, Phil--until you were better----" "Tell me what?" he managed to say, though a terrible fear was stiffening his lips and throat. She said dully: "They get shot sometimes. You remember yo'se'f what that Sister of Charity said last night. I heard Ailsa cautioning Letty--the little nurse, Miss Lynden----" "Yes, I know. What else?" Celia's underlip quivered: "Nothing, only Ailsa told me that she was ordered to the field hospital fo' duty befo' she went aboard the commission boat--and she never came back--and there was a battle all that day----" "Is that all?" he demanded, rising on one elbow. "Is there anything else you are concealing?" "No, Phil. I'd tell you if there was. Perhaps I'm foolish to be so nervous--but I don't know--that Sister of Charity struck by a bullet--and to think of Ailsa out there under fire--" She closed her eyes and sat shivering in the gray chill of the dawn, the tears silently stealing over her pale cheeks. Berkley stared out of the window at a confused and indistinct mass of waggons and tents and moving men, but the light was still too dim to distinguish uniforms; and presently Celia leaned forward and drew the curtains. Then she turned and took Berkley's hands in hers. "Phil, dear," she said softly, "I suspect how it is with you and Ailsa. Am I indiscreet to speak befo' you give me any warrant?" He said nothing. "The child certainly is in love with you. A blind woman could divine that," continued Celia wistfully. "I am glad, Phil, because I believe you are as truly devoted to her as she is to you. And when the time comes--if God spares you both----" "You are mistaken," he said quietly, "there is no future before us." She coloured in consternation. "Wh--why I certainly supposed--believed----" "Celia!" "W-what, dear?" "Don't you _know_ I cannot marry?" "Why not, Philip?" "Could I marry Ailsa Craig unless I first told her that my father and my mother were never married?" he said steadily. "Oh, Philip!" she cried, tears starting to her eyes again, "do you think that would weigh with a girl who is so truly and unselfishly in love with you?" "You don't understand," he said wearily. "I'd take _that_ chance now. But do you think me disloyal enough to confess to any woman on earth what my mother, if she were living, would sacrifice her very life to conceal?" He bent his head, supporting it in his hands, speaking as though to himself: "I believe that the brain is the vehicle, not the origin of thought. I believe a brain becomes a mind only when an immortality exterior to ourselves animates it. And this is what is called the soul. . . . Whatever it is, it is what I saw--or what that _something_, exterior to my body, recognised. "Perhaps these human eyes of mine did not see her. Something that belongs to me saw the immortal visitor; something, that is the vital part of me, saw, recognised, and was recognised." For a long while they sat there, silent; the booming guns shook the window; the clatter and uproar of the passing waggon train filled their ears. Suddenly the house rocked under the stunning crash of a huge gun. Celia sprang to her feet, caught at the curtain as another terrific blast shivered the window-panes and filled the room with acrid dust. Through the stinging clouds of powdered plaster Colonel Craig entered the room, hastily pulling on his slashed coat as he came. "There's a fort in the rear of us--don't be frightened, Celia. I think they must be firing at----" His voice was drowned in the thunder of another gun; Celia made her way to him, hid her face on his breast as the room shook again and the plaster fell from the ceiling, filling the room with blinding dust. "Oh, Curt," she gasped, "this is dreadful. Philip cannot stay here----" "Better pull the sheets over his head," said her husband, meeting Berkley's eyes with a ghost of a smile. "It won't last long; and there are no rebel batteries that can reach Paigecourt." He kissed her. "How are you feeling, dear? I'm trying to arrange for you to go North on the first decent transport----" "I want to stay with you, Curt," she pleaded, tightening her arms around his neck. "Can't I stay as long as my husband and son are here? I don't wish to go----" "You can't stay," he said gently. "There is no immediate danger here at Paigecourt, but the army is turning this landing into a vast pest hole. It's deadly unhealthy. I wish you to go home just as soon as I can secure transportation----" "And let them burn Paigecourt? Who is there to look after----" "We'll have to take such chances, Celia. The main thing is for you to pack up and go home as soon as you possibly can. . . . I've got to go out now. I'll try to come back to-night. The General understands that it's your house, and that you are my wife; and there's a guard placed and a Union flag hung out from the gallery----" She looked up quickly; a pink flush stained her neck and forehead. "I would not use that wicked flag to protect myse'f," she said quietly--"nor to save this house, either, Curt. It's only fo' you and Phil that I care what happens to anything now----" "Then go North, you bad little rebel!" whispered her husband, drawing her into his arms. "Paige and Marye have been deserted long enough; and you've seen sufficient of this war--plenty to last your lifetime----" "I saw Ailsa's house burn," she said slowly. "Marye-mead. When?" "This mo'ning, Curt. Phil thinks it was the shells from the gun-boats. It can't be he'ped now; it's gone. So is Edmund Ruffin's. And I wish I knew where that child, Ailsa, is. I'm that frightened and mise'ble, Curt----" An orderly suddenly appeared at the door; her husband kissed her and hurried away. The outer door swung wide, letting in a brassy clangour of bugles and a roll of drums, which softened when the door closed with a snap. It opened again abruptly, and a thin, gray-garbed figure came in, hesitated, and Celia turned, staring through her tears: "Miss Lynden!" she exclaimed. "Is Ailsa here?" Berkley sat up and leaned forward, looking at her intently from the mass of bandages. "Letty!" he said, "where is Mrs. Paige?" Celia had caught the girl's hands in hers, and was searching her thin white face with anxious eyes; and Letty shook her head and looked wonderingly at Berkley. "Nothing has happened to her," she said. "A Sister of Mercy was wounded in the field hospital near Azalea, and they sent for Mrs. Paige to fill her place temporarily. And," looking from Celia to Berkley, "she is well and unhurt. The fighting is farther west now. Mrs. Paige heard yesterday that the 8th Lancers were encamped near Paigecourt and asked me to find Mr. Berkley--and deliver a letter----" She smiled, drew from her satchel a letter, and, disengaging her other hand from Celia's, went over to the bed and placed it in Berkley's hands. "She is quite well," repeated Letty reassuringly; and, to Celia: "She sends her love to you and to your husband and son, and wishes to know how they are and where their regiment is stationed." "You sweet little thing!" said Celia, impulsively taking her into her arms and kissing her pale face. "My husband and my son are safe and well, thank God, and my cousin, Phil Berkley, is convalescent, and you may tell my sister-in-law that we all were worried most to death at not hearing from her. And now I'm going to get you a cup of broth--you poor little white-faced child! How did you ever get here?" "Our ambulance brought me. We had sick men to send North. Ailsa couldn't leave, so she asked me to come." She accepted a chair near the bed. Celia went away to prepare some breakfast with the aid of old Peter and Sadie, her maid. And as soon as she left the room Letty sprang to her feet and went straight to Berkley. "I did not tell the entire truth," she said in a low, excited voice. "I heard your regiment was here; Ailsa learned it from me. I was coming anyway to see you." "To see me, Letty?" he repeated, surprised and smiling. "Yes," she said, losing what little colour remained in her cheeks. "I am in--in much--anxiety--to know--what to do." "Can _I_ help you?" She looked wistfully at him; the tears rushed into her eyes; she dropped on her knees at his bedside and hid her face on his hands. "Letty--Letty!" he said in astonishment, "what on earth has happened?" She looked up, lips quivering, striving to meet his gaze through her tears. "Dr. Benton is here. . . . He--he has asked me to--marry him." Berkley lay silent, watching her intently. "Oh, I know--I know," she sobbed. "I can't, can I? I should have to tell him--and he would never speak to me again--never write to me--never be what he has been all these months!--I know I cannot marry him. I came to tell you--to ask--but it's no use--no use. I knew what you would say----" "Letty! Wait a moment----" She rose, controlling herself with a desperate effort. "Forgive me, Mr. Berkley; I didn't mean to break down; but I'm so tired--and--I wanted you--I needed to hear you tell me what was right. . . . But I knew already. Even if I were--were treacherous enough to marry him--I know he would find me out. . . . I can't get away from it--I can't seem to get away. Yesterday, in camp, the 20th Cavalry halted--and there was John Casson!--And I nearly dropped dead beside Dr. Benton--oh the punishment for what I did!--the awful punishment!--and Casson stared at me and said: 'My Lord, Letty! is that you?'" She buried her burning cheeks in her hands. "I did not lie to him. I offered him my hand; and perhaps he saw the agony in my face, for he didn't say anything about the Canterbury, but he took off his forage cap and was pleasant and kind. And he and Dr. Benton spoke to each other until the bugles sounded for the regiment to mount." She flung her slender arm out in a tragic gesture toward the horizon. "The world is not wide enough to hide in," she said in a heart-breaking voice. "I thought it was--but there is no shelter--no place--no place in all the earth!" "Letty," he said slowly, "if your Dr. Benton is the man I think he is--and I once knew him well enough to judge--he is the only man on earth fit to hear the confession you have made this day to me." She looked at him, bewildered. "I advise you to love him and marry him. Tell him about yourself if you choose; or don't tell him. There is a vast amount of nonsense talked about the moral necessity of turning one's self inside out the moment one comes to marry. Let me tell you, few men can do it; and their fiancees survive the shock. So, few men are asses enough to try it. As for women, few have any confessions to make. A few have. You are one." "Yes," she whispered. "But I wouldn't if I were you. If ever any man or woman took the chance of salvation and made the most of it, that person is you! And I'm going to tell you that I wouldn't hesitate to marry you if I loved you." "W-what!" He laughed. "Not one second! It's a good partnership for any plan. Don't be afraid that you can't meet men on their own level. You're above most of us now; and you're mounting steadily. There, that's my opinion of you--that you're a good woman, and a charming one; and Benton is devilish lucky to get you. . . . Come here, Letty." She went to him as though dazed; and he took both her hands in his. "Don't you know," he said, "that I have seen you, day after day, intimately associated with the woman I love? Can you understand now that I am telling the truth when I say, let the past bury its ghosts; and go on living as you have lived from the moment that your chance came to live nobly. I know what you have made of yourself. I know what the chances were against you. You are a better woman to-day than many who will die untempted. And you shall not doubt it, Letty. What a soul is born into is often fine and noble; what a soul makes of itself is beyond all praise. "Choose your own way; tell him or not; but if you love him, give yourself to him. Whether or not you tell him, he will want you--as I would--as any man would. . . . Now you must smile at me, Letty." She turned toward him a face, pallid, enraptured, transfigured with an inward radiance that left him silent--graver after that swift glimpse of a soul exalted. She said slowly: "You and Ailsa have been God's own messengers to me. . . . I shall tell Dr. Benton. . . . If he still wishes it, I will marry him. It will be for him to ask--after he knows all." Celia entered, carrying the breakfast on a tray. "Curt's Zouaves have stolen ev'y pig, but I found bacon and po'k in the cellar," she said, smilingly. "Oh, dear! the flo' is in such a mess of plaster! Will you sit on the aidge of the bed, Miss Lynden, and he'p my cousin eat this hot co'n pone?" So the napkin was spread over the sheets, and pillows tucked behind Berkley; and Celia and Letty fed him, and Letty drank her coffee and thankfully ate her bacon and corn pone, telling them both, between bites, how it had been with her and with Ailsa since the great retreat set in, swamping all hospitals with the sick and wounded of an unbeaten but disheartened army, now doomed to decimation by disease. "It was dreadful," she said. "We could hear the firing for miles and miles, and nobody knew what was happening. But all the northern papers said it was one great victory after another, and we believed them. All the regimental bands at the Landing played; and everybody was so excited. We all expected to hear that our army was in Richmond." Celia reddened to the ears, and her lips tightened, but she said nothing; and Letty went on, unconscious of the fiery emotions awaking in Celia's breast: "Everybody was so cheerful and happy in the hospital--all those poor sick soldiers," she said, "and everybody was beginning to plan to go home, thinking the war had nearly ended. I thought so, too, and I was so glad. And then, somehow, people began to get uneasy; and the first stragglers appeared. . . . Oh, it did seem incredible at first; we wouldn't believe that the siege of Richmond had been abandoned." She smiled drearily. "I've found out that it is very easy to believe what you want to believe in this world. . . . Will you have some more broth, Mr. Berkley?" Before he could answer the door opened and a red zouave came in, carrying his rifle and knapsack. "Mother," he said in an awed voice, "Jimmy Lent is dead!" "What!" He looked stupidly around the room, resting his eyes on Letty and Berkley, then dropped heavily onto a chair. "Jim's dead," he repeated vacantly. "He only arrived here yesterday--transferred from his militia to McDunn's battery. And now he's dead. Some one had better write to Camilla. I'm afraid to. . . . A shell hit him last night--oh--he's all torn to pieces--and Major Lent doesn't know it, either. . . . Father let me come; we're ordered across the river; good-bye, mother--" He rose and put his arms around her. "You'll write to Camilla, won't you?" he said. "Tell her I love her. I didn't know it until just a few minutes ago. But I do, mother. I'd like to marry her. Tell her not to cry too much. Jimmy was playing cards, they say, and a big shell fell inside the redoubt. Philip--I think you knew Harry Sayre? Transferred from the 7th to the Zouaves as lieutenant in the 5th company?" "Yes. Was he killed?" "Oh, Lord, yes; everybody in the shebang except Arthur Wye was all torn to pieces. Tommy Atherton, too; you knew him, of course--5th Zouaves. He happened in--just visiting Arthur Wye. They were all playing cards in a half finished bomb-proof. . . . Mother, you _will_ write to Camilla, won't you, dear? Good-bye--good-bye, Phil--and Miss Lynden!" He caught his mother in his arms for a last hug, wrenched himself free, and ran back across the hall, bayonet and canteen clanking. "Oh, why are they sending Curt's regiment across the river?" wailed Celia, following to the window. "Look at them, Phil! Can you see? The road is full of Zouaves--there's a whole regiment of them in blue, too. The batteries are all harnessed up; do you think there's going to be another battle? I don't know why they want to fight any mo'!" she exclaimed in sudden wrath and anguish. "I don't understand why they are not willing to leave the South alone. My husband will be killed, and my only son--like Jimmy Lent--if they don't ever stop this wicked fighting----" The roar of a heavy gun buried the room in plaster dust. Letty calmly lifted the tray from the bed and set it on a table. Then very sweetly and with absolute composure she took leave of Celia and of Berkley. They saw her climb into an ambulance which was drawn up on the grass. Then Berkley opened the letter that Letty had brought him:
"AILSA PAIGE."
As for Arthur Wye and Billy Cortlandt, they were incapable of anything contemptible or malicious. He asked Celia for a pencil and paper, and, propped on his pillows, he wrote:
"PHILIP BERKLEY."
He had not answered the two questions concerning Letty. He could not. So he had evaded them. Preoccupied, still conscious of the lingering sense of uneasiness, he turned on his pillows and looked out of the window. An enormous cloud of white smoke rose curling from the river, another, another; and boom! boom! boom! came the solid thunder of cannon. The gunboats at the Landing were opening fire; cavalry were leading their horses aboard transports; and far down the road the sun glistened on a long column of scarlet, where the 3rd Zouaves were marching to their boats. The sharpshooters had already begun to trouble them. Their officers ordered them to lie down while awaiting their turn to embark. After a while many of the men sat up on the ground to stretch and look about them, Stephen among the others. And a moment later a conoidal bullet struck him square in the chest and knocked him flat in the dirt among his comrades. _ |
||