Ailsa Paige Part 51

Their talk had been of Paige and Marye, of Paigecourt and the advisability of selling all stock, dismissing the negroes, and closing the place with the exception of the overseer's house. And Celia had made arrangements to attend to it.

"I certainly do despise travelling," she said, "but while I'm so near, I reckon I'd better use my pa.s.s and papers and try to go through to Paigecourt. It's just as well to prepare for the impossible, I suppose."

Colonel Craig polished his eye-gla.s.ses, adjusted them, and examined the official papers that permitted his wife to go to her estate, pack up certain family papers, discharge the servants, close the house, and return through the Union lines carrying only personal baggage.

He said without enthusiasm: "It's inside their lines. To go there isn't so difficult, but how about coming back? I don't want you to go, Celia."

She explained in detail that there would be no difficulty-a little proudly, too, when she spoke of her personal safety among her own people.

"I understand all that," he said patiently, "but n.o.body except the commander-in-chief knows where this army is going. I don't want you to be caught in the zone of operations."

She flushed up with a defiant little laugh. "The war isn't going to Paigecourt, anyway," she said.

He smiled with an effort. "I am not sure, dearest. All I am sure of is that we march in the morning, and go aboard s.h.i.+p at Alexandria. I don't know where we are expected to land, or where we are going to march after we do land." ... He smiled again, mischievously. "Even if you believe that a Yankee army is not likely to get very far into Virginia, Paigecourt is too near Richmond for me to feel entirely sure that you may not have another visit from Stephen and me before you start North."

"Listen to the Yankee!" she cried, laughing gaily to hide the sudden dimness in her blue eyes. "My darling Yankee husband is ve'y absurd, and he doesn't suspect it! Why! don't you perfec'ly ridiculous Zouaves know that you'll both be back in New York befo' I am-and all tired out keeping up with the pace yo' general sets you?"

But when it was time to say good-bye once more, her limbs grew weak and she leaned heavily on husband and son, her nerveless feet dragging across the spring turf.

"Oh, Curt, Curt," she faltered, her soft cheeks pressed against the stiff bullion on his sleeve and collar, "if only I had the wretched consolation of sending you away to fight fo' the Right-fo' G.o.d and country-There, darling! Fo'give me-fo'give me. I am yo' wife first of all-first of all, Curt. And that even comes befo' country and-G.o.d!-Yes, it does! it does, dear. You are all three to me-I know no holier trinity than husband, G.o.d, and native land... . Must you go so soon? So soon? ... Where is my boy-I'm crying so I can't see either of you-Stephen! Mother's own little boy-mother's little, little boy-oh, it is ve'y hard-ve'y hard--"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Must you go so soon? So soon?"]

"Steve-I think you'd better kiss your mother now"-his voice choked and he turned his back and stood, the sun glittering on the gold and scarlet of his uniform.

Mother and son clung, parted, clung; then Colonel Craig's glittering sleeve was flung about them both.

"I'll try to bring him through all right, Celia. You must believe that we are coming back."

So they parted.

And at three in the morning, Celia, lying in her bed, started to a sitting posture. Very far away in the night reveille was sounding for some regiment outward bound; and then the bugles blew for another regiment and another, and another, until everywhere the darkened world grew gaily musical with the bugle's warning.

She crept to the window; it was too dusky to see. But in obscurity she felt that not far away husband and son were pa.s.sing through darkness toward the mystery of the great unknown; and there, in her night-dress, she knelt by the sill, hour after hour, straining her eyes and listening until dawn whitened the east and the rivers began to marshal their ghostly hosts. Then the sun rose, annihilating the phantoms of the mist and s.h.i.+ning on columns of marching men, endless lines of waggons, horse-batteries, foot artillery, cavalry, engineers with gabions and pontoons, and entire divisions of blue infantry, all pouring steadily toward Alexandria and the river, where lay the vast transport fleet at anchor, destined to carry them whither their Maker and commanding general willed that they should go.

To Celia's wet eyes there seemed to be little variation in the dull blue columns with the glitter of steel flickering about them; yet, here and there a brilliant note appeared-pennons fluttering above lances, scarfs and facings of some nearer foot battery, and, far away toward Alexandria, vivid squares of scarlet in a green field, dimmed very little by the distance. Those were zouaves-her own, or perhaps the 5th, or the 9th from Roanoke, or perhaps the 14th Brooklyn-she could not know, but she never took her eyes from the distant blocks and oblongs of red against the green until the woods engulfed them.

Ailsa still lay heavily asleep. Celia opened the door and called her to the window.

"Honey-bud, darling," she whispered tearfully, "did you know the Lancers are leaving?"

Ailsa's eyes flew wide open:

"Not his regiment!"

"Are there two?"

"Yes," said Ailsa, frightened. "That must be the 6th Pennsylvania... . Because I think-somebody would have told me-Colonel Arran--"

She stared through eyes from which the mist of slumber had entirely cleared away. Then she sprang from her bed to the window:

"Oh-oh!" she said half to herself, "he wouldn't go away without saying something to me! He couldn't! ... And-oh, dear-oh dear, their pennons are swallow-tailed and scarlet! It looks like his regiment-it does-it does! ... But he wouldn't go without speaking to me--"

Celia turned and looked at her.

"Do you mean Colonel Arran?" And saw that she did not.

For a while they stood there silently together, the soft spring wind blowing over their bare necks and arms, stirring the frail, sheer fabric of their night-robes.

Suddenly the stirring music of cavalry trumpets along the road below startled them; they turned swiftly to look out upon a torrent of scarlet pennons and glancing lance points-troop after troop of dancing horses and blue-clad riders, their flat forage caps set rakishly, bit and spur and sabre hilt glistening, the morning sun flas.h.i.+ng golden on the lifted trumpets.

On they came, on, on, horses' heads tossing, the ground shaking with the mellow sound of four thousand separate hoofs,-and pa.s.sed, troop on troop, a lengthening, tossing wave of scarlet across the verdure.

Then, far away in the column, a red lance pennon swung in a circle, a blue sleeve shot up in salute and adieu. And Ailsa knew that Berkley had seen her, and that the brightness of the young world was leaving her, centred there in the spark of fire that tipped his lance.

Now she saw her lover turn in his saddle and, sitting so, ride on and on, his tall lance slanting from stirrup boot to arm loop, the morning sun bright across his face, and touching each metal b.u.t.ton with fire from throat to belt.

So her lancer rode away into the unknown; and she sat on the edge of her bed, crying, until it was time to go on duty and sit beside the dying in the sick wards.

They brought her his last letter that evening.

"You wicked little thing," it ran, "if you hadn't taught me self-respect I'd have tried to run the guard to-night, and would probably have been caught and drummed out or shot. We're in a bustle; orders, totally unexpected, attach us to Porter's Corps, Sykes's division of regulars. Warren's brigade, which includes, I believe, the 5th Zouaves, the 10th Zouaves, 6th Pennsylvania Lancers, and 1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery.

"We've scarcely time to get off; our baggage will never be ready, and how we're going to get to Alexandria and aboard s.h.i.+p is more than I know.

"And I'm simply furious; I'd counted on a dramatic situation, Ailsa-the soldiers farewell, loud sobs, sweetheart faints, lancer dashes away unmanly tears-'Be strong, be br-r-rave, dah-ling!

Hevving watches over your Alonzo!'

"Not so. A big brawny brute in spurs comes in the dark to stir us with the toe of his boot. 'Silence,' he hisses, 'if you can't hear that d.a.m.n reveille, I'll punch you in the snoot, an' then mebbe you'll spread them lop-ears o' yourn!'

"Heaven! Your Alonzo is derided by a hireling!

"'Pack up, you swallow-tailed, leather-seated, pig-prodding sons of galoots!' Thus, our first sergeant, recently of the regulars, roll-call having ended.

"Coffeeless, soupless, tackless, we leer furtively at the two days' rations in our haversacks which we dare not sample; lick our chops reflectively, are cruelly chidden by underlings in uniform, further insulted by other underlings, are stepped on, crowded, bitten, and kicked at by our faithful Arab steeds, are coa.r.s.ely huddled into line, where officers come to gloat over us and think out further ingenious indignities to heap upon us while we stand to horse. And we stand there two hours!

"I can't keep up this artificial flow of low comedy. The plain fact of the situation is that we're being hustled toward an amphibious thing with paddle-wheels named The Skylark, and I haven't said good-bye to you.

"Ailsa, it isn't likely that anything is going to knock my head off or puncture vital sections of me. But in case the ludicrous should happen, I want you to know that a cleaner man goes before the last Court Marshal than would have stood trial there before he met you.

"You are every inch my ideal of a woman-every fibre in you is utterly feminine. I adore your acquired courage, I wors.h.i.+p your heavenly inconsistencies. The mental pleasure I experienced with you was measured and limited only by my own perversity and morbid self-absorption; the splendour of the pa.s.sion I divine in you, unawakened, awes me, leaves me in wonder. The spiritual tonic, even against my own sickly will has freshened me by mere contact with the world you live in; the touch of your lips and hands-ah, Ailsa-has taught me at last the language that I sneered at.

"Well-we can never marry. How it will be with us, how end, He who, after all is said and done, did construct us, knows now. And we will know some day, when life is burned out in us.

"Hours, days of bitter revolt come-the old madness for you, the old recklessness of desire, the savage impatience with life, a.s.sail me still. Because, Ailsa, I would-I could have made you a-well, an interesting husband, anyway. You were fas.h.i.+oned to be the divinest wife and ... I'm not going on in this strain; I'll write you when I can. And for G.o.d's sake take care of your life. There's nothing left if you go-nothing.

"I've made a will. Trooper Burgess, a comrade-my former valet-carries a duplicate memorandum. Don't weep; I'll live to make another. But in this one I have written you that my mother's letters and pictures are to be yours-when I have a chance I'll draw it in legal form. And, dear, first be perfectly sure I'm dead, and then destroy my mother's letters without reading them; and then look upon her face. And I think you will forgive me when I tell you that it is for her sake that I can never marry. But you will not understand why."

Over this letter Ailsa had little time to wonder or to make herself wretched, for that week orders came to evacuate the Farm Hospital and send all sick and wounded to the General Hospital at Alexandria.

A telegram arrived, too, from Miss Dix, who was authorised to detail nurses by the Secretary of War, ordering the two nurses of Sainte Ursula's Sisterhood to await letters of recommendation and written a.s.signments to another hospital to be established farther south. But where that hospital was to be built n.o.body seemed to know.