Ailsa Paige Part 60

"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, crus.h.i.+ng 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 G.o.d, 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 gla.s.s 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, pa.s.sing 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 n.o.body, 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 n.o.body had ever heard of... . Could anybody tell her where the Division Medical Director could be found?

It was not yet daybreak when Berkley awoke in his bed to find lights in the room and medical officers pa.s.sing swiftly hither and thither, the red flames from their candles blowing smokily in the breezy doorways.

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 pa.s.sing 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, extinguis.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sing 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 sh.e.l.ls traced in whirling fire far down the river, the awful glare of light as the enormous guns on the Union wars.h.i.+ps 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-gla.s.ses 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 sh.e.l.led, 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 sh.e.l.ls as they soared up into the night, whirling like fiery planets on their axes, higher, higher, mounting through majestic alt.i.tudes to the pallid stars, then, curving, falling faster, faster, till their swift downward glare split the darkness into broad sheets of light.