Complete weird tales of.., p.513
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 513
“Oh, is it you, Ailsa?” There was a moment’s indecision. Through it, once more, far away in the city The Voices became audible again, distant, vague, incessant.
“I thought — if it is actually an extra—” he began carelessly and hesitated; and she said:
“Let me go with you. Wait. I’ll speak to Celia.”
“Say to her that I’ll be gone only a moment.”
When Ailsa returned she slipped her arm through his and they descended the steps and walked toward Fulton Avenue. The Voices were still distant; a few people, passing swiftly through the dusk, preceded them. Far down the vista of the lighted avenue dark figures crossed and recrossed the street, silhouetted against the gas-lights; some were running. A man called out something as they passed him. Suddenly, right ahead in the darkness, they encountered people gathered before the boarded fence of a vacant lot, a silent crowd shouldering, pushing, surging back and forth, swarming far out along the dimly lighted avenue.
“There’s a bulletin posted there,” whispered Ailsa. “Could you lift me in your arms?”
Her brother-in-law stooped, clasped her knees, and lifted her high up above the sea of heads. Kerosene torches flickered beyond, flanking a poster on which was printed in big black letters:
“WASHINGTON, April 13, 1861, 6 A.M. “At half-past four o’clock this morning fire was opened on Fort Sumter by the rebel batteries in the harbour. Major Anderson is replying with his barbette guns.”
”8 A.M.
”A private despatch to the N. Y. Herald says that
the batteries on Mount Pleasant have opened on
Sumter. Major Anderson has brought into action two tiers
of guns trained on Fort Moultrie and the Iron Battery.”
”3 P.M.
”The fire at this hour is very heavy. Nineteen
batteries are bombarding Sumter. The fort replies
briskly. The excitement in Charleston is intense.”
”LATER.
”Heavy rain storm. Firing resumed this evening.
The mortar batteries throw a shell into the fort every
twenty minutes. The fort replies at intervals.”
”LATEST.
”The fort is still replying. Major Anderson has
signalled the fleet outside.”
All this she read aloud, one hand resting on Craig’s shoulder as he held her aloft above the throng. Men crowding around and striving to see, paused, with up-turned faces, listening to the emotionless young voice. There was no shouting, no sound save the trample and shuffle of feet; scarcely a voice raised, scarcely an exclamation.
As Craig lowered her to the pavement, a man making his way out said to them:
“Well, I guess that ends it.”
Somebody replied quietly: “I guess that begins it.”
Farther down the avenue toward the City Hall where the new marble court house was being built, a red glare quivered incessantly against the darkness; distant hoarse rumours penetrated the night air, accented every moment by the sharper clamour of voices calling the Herald’s extras.
“Curt?”
“Yes, dear.”
“If he surrenders — —”
“It makes no difference what he does now, child.”
“I know it. . . . They’ve dishonoured the flag. This is war, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Will it be a long war?”
“I think not.”
“Who will go?”
“I don’t know. . . . Soldiers.”
“I didn’t suppose we had enough. Where are we going to get more?”
“The people—” he said absently— “everybody, I suppose. How do I know, child?”
“Just ordinary people?”
“Just ordinary people,” he responded quietly. A few minutes later as they entered their own street he said:
“I suppose I had better tell my wife about this to-night. I don’t know — it will be in the morning papers; but I think I had better break it to her to-night.”
“She will have to know — sometime — of course — —”
Halting at the foot of the stoop he turned and peered through his glasses at his sister-in-law.
“I don’t want Stephen to start any nonsense about going.”
“Going where?” she asked innocently.
He hesitated: “I don’t want to hear any talk from him about enlisting. That is what I mean. Your influence counts with him more deeply than you know. Remember that.”
“Steve — enlist!” she repeated blankly.
She could not yet comprehend what all this had to do with people she personally knew — with her own kin.
“He must not enlist, of course,” she said curtly. “There are plenty of soldiers — there will be plenty, of course. I — —”
Something silenced her, something within her sealed her lips. She stood in silence while Craig fitted his night-key, then entered the house with him. Gas burned low in the hall globes; when he turned it off a fainter light from above guided them.
“Celia, is that you?” she called gently,
“Hush; go to bed, Honey-bell. Everybody is asleep. How pale you are, Curt — dearest — dearest — —”
The rear room was Ailsa’s; she walked into it and dropped down on the bed in the darkness. The door between the rooms closed: she sat perfectly still, her eyes were wide open, staring in front of her.
Queer little luminous shapes danced through obscurity like the names from the kerosene torches around the bulletin; her ears still vibrated with the hoarse alarm of the voices; through her brain sounded her brother-in-law’s words about Steve, repeated incessantly, stupidly.
Presently she began to undress by sense of touch. The gas in the bathroom was lighted; she completed her ablutions, turned it off, and felt her way back to the bed.
Lying there she became aware of sounds from the front room. Celia was still awake; she distinguished her voice in quick, frightened exclamation; then the low murmur continued for a while, then silence fell.
She raised herself on one elbow; the crack of light under the door was gone; there was no sound, no movement in the house except the measured tick of the hall clock outside, tic-toc! — tic-toc! — tic-toc!
And she had been lying there a long, long while, eyes open, before she realised that the rhythm of the hall clock was but a repetition of a name which did not concern her in any manner:
“Berk-ley! — Berk-ley! — Berk-ley!”
How it had crept into her consciousness she could not understand; she lay still, listening, but the tic-toc seemed to fit the syllables of his name; and when, annoyed, she made a half disdainful mental attempt to substitute other syllables, it proved too much of an effort, and back into its sober, swinging rhythm slipped the old clock’s tic-toe, in wearisome, meaningless repetition:
“Berk-ley! — Berk-ley! — Berk-ley!”
She was awakened by a rapping at her door and her cousin’s imperative voice:
“I want to talk to you; are you in bed?”
She drew the coverlet to her chin and called out:
“Come in, Steve!”
He came, tremendously excited, clutching the Herald in one hand.
“I’ve had enough of this rebel newspaper!” he said fiercely. “I don’t want it in the house again, ever. Father says that the marine news makes it worth taking, but — —”
“What on earth are you trying to say, Steve?”
“I’m trying to tell you that we’re at war! War, Ailsa! Do you understand? Father and I’ve had a fight already — —”
“What?”
“They’re still firing on Sumter, I tell you, and if the fort doesn’t hold out do you think I’m going to sit around the house like a pussy cat? Do you think I’m going to business every day as though nothing was happening to the country I’m living in? I tell you now — you and mother and father — that I’m not built that way — —”
Ailsa rose in bed, snatched the paper from his grasp, and leaning on one arm gazed down at the flaring head-lines:
THE WAR BEGUN
Very Exciting News from Charleston
Bombardment of Fort Sumter Commenced
Terrible Fire from the Secessionists’ Batteries
Brilliant Defence of Maj. Anderson
Reckless Bravery of the Confederate States Troops.
And, scanning it to the end, cried out:
“He hasn’t hauled down his flag! What are you so excited about?”
“I — I’m excited, of course! He can’t possibly hold out with only eighty men and nothing to feed them on. Something’s got to be done!” he added, walking up and down the room. “I’ve made fun of the militia — like everybody else — but Jimmy Lent is getting ready, and I’m doing nothing! Do you hear what I’m saying, Ailsa?”
She looked up from the newspaper, sitting there cross-legged under the coverlet.
“I hear you, Steve. I don’t know what you mean by ‘something’s got to be done.’ Major Anderson is doing what he can — bless him!”
“That’s all right, but the thing isn’t going to stop there.”
“Stop where?”
“At Sumter. They’ll begin firing on Fortress Monroe and Pensacola — I — how do you know they’re not already thinking about bombarding Washington? Virginia is going out of the Union; the entire South is out, or going. Yesterday, I didn’t suppose there was any use in trying to get them back again. Father did, but I didn’t. I think it’s got to be done, now. And the question is, Ailsa, whose going to do it?”
But she was fiercely absorbed again in the news, leaning close over the paper, tumbled dull-gold hair falling around her bare shoulders, breath coming faster and more irregularly as she read the incredible story and strove to comprehend its cataclysmic significance.
“If others are going, I am,” repeated her cousin sullenly.
“Going where, Steve? — Oh —— —”
She dropped the paper and looked up, startled; and he looked back at her, defiant, without a flicker in those characteristic family eyes of his, clear as azure, steady to punishment given or taken — good eyes for a boy to inherit. And he inherited them from his rebel mother.
“Father can’t keep me home if other people go,” he said.
“Wait until other people go.” She reached out and laid a hand on his arm.
“Things are happening too fast, Steve, too fast for everybody to quite understand just yet. Everybody will do what is the thing to do; the family will do what it ought to. . . . Has your mother seen this?”
“Yes. Neither she nor father have dared speak about it before us—” He made a gesture of quick despair, walked to the window and back.
“It’s a terrible thing, Ailsa, to have mother feel as she does.”
“How could she feel otherwise?”
“I’ve done my best to explain to her — —”
“O Steve! You! — when it’s a matter between her soul and God!”
He said, reddening: “It’s a matter of common-sense — I don’t mean to insult mother — but — good Lord, a nation is a nation, but a state is only a state! I — hang it all — what’s the use of trying to explain what is born in one — —”
“The contrary was born in your mother, Steve. Don’t ever talk to her this way. And — go out, please, I wish to dress.”
He went away, saying over his shoulders: “I only wanted to tell you that I’m not inclined to sit sucking my thumb if other men go, and you can say so to father, who has forbidden me to mention the subject to him again until I have his permission.”
But he went away to business that morning with his father, as usual; and when evening came the two men returned, anxious, dead tired, having passed most of the day standing in the dense throngs that choked every street around the bulletin boards of the newspaper offices.
Ailsa had not been out during the day, nor had Mrs. Craig, except for an hour’s drive in the family coupe around the district where preliminary surveys for the new Prospect Park were being pushed.
They had driven for almost an hour in utter silence. Her sister-in-law’s hand lay clasped in hers, but both looked from the carriage windows without speaking, and the return from the drive found them strangely weary and inclined for the quiet of their own rooms. But Celia Craig could not close her eyes even to feign sleep to herself.
When husband and son returned at evening, she asked nothing of the news from them, but her upturned face lingered a second or two longer as her husband kissed her, and she clung a little to Stephen, who was inclined to be brief with her.
Dinner was a miserable failure in that family, which usually had much to compare, much to impart, much badinage and laughter to distribute. But the men were weary and uncommunicative; Estcourt Craig went to his club after dinner; Stephen, now possessing a latch-key, disappeared shortly afterward.
Paige and Marye did embroidery and gossipped together under the big crystal chandelier while their mother read aloud to them from “Great Expectations,” which was running serially in Harper’s Weekly. Later she read in her prayer-book; later still, fully dressed, she lay across the bed in the alcove staring at the darkness and listening for the sound of her husband’s latch-key in the front door,
When it sounded, she sprang up and hastily dried her eyes.
“The children and Ailsa are all abed, Curt. How late you are! It was not very wise of you to go out — being so tired—” She was hovering near him as though to help his weariness with her small offices; she took his hat, stood looking at him, then stepped nearer, laying both hands on his shoulders, and her face against his.
“I am — already tired of the — war,” she sighed. “Is it ended yet,
Curt?”
“There is no more news from Sumter.”
“You will — love me — best — anyway. Curt — won’t you?”
“Do you doubt it?”
She only drew a deep, frightened breath. For within her heart she felt the weight of the new apprehension — the clairvoyant premonition of a rival that she must prepare to encounter — a rival that menaced her peace of mind — a shape, shadowy as yet, but terrible, slowly becoming frightfully denned — a Thing that might one day wean this man from her — husband, and son, too — both perhaps —— .
“Curt,” she faltered, “it will all come right in the end. Say it.
I am afraid.”
“It will come out all right,” he said gently. They kissed, and she turned to the mirror and silently began preparing for the night.
With the calm notes of church bells floating out across the city, and an April breeze blowing her lace curtains, Ailsa awoke. Overhead she heard the trample of Stephen’s feet as he moved leisurely about his bedroom. Outside her windows in the backyard, early sunshine slanted across shrub and grass and white-washed fence; the Sunday quiet was absolute, save for the church bells.
She lay there listening and thinking; the church bells ceased; and after a while, lying there, she began to realise that the silence was unnatural — became conscious of something ominous in the intense quiet outside — a far-spread stillness which was more than the hush of Sabbath.
Whether or not the household was still abed she did not know; no sound came from Celia’s room; nor were Marye and Paige stirring on the floor above when she rose and stole out barefooted to the landing, holding a thin silk chamber robe around her. She paused, listening; the tic-toc of the hall clock accented the silence; the door that led from Celia’s chamber into the hall stood wide open, and there was nobody in sight. Something drew her to the alcove window, which was raised; through the lace curtains she saw the staff of the family flag set in its iron socket at right angles to the facade — saw the silken folds stirring lazily in the sunshine, tiptoed to the window and peered out.
As far as her eyes could see, east and west, the street was one rustling mass of flags.
For a second her heart almost hurt her with its thrilling leap; she caught her breath; the hard tension in her throat was choking her; she dropped to her knees by the sill, drew a corner of the flag to her, and laid her cheek against it.
Her eyes unclosed and she gazed out upon the world of flags; then, upright, she opened her fingers, and the crinkled edges of the flag, released, floated leisurely out once more into the April sunshine.
When she had dressed she found the family in the dining-room — her sister-in-law, serene but pale, seated behind the coffee urn, Mr. Craig and Stephen reading the Sunday newspapers, Paige and Marye whispering together over their oatmeal and cream.
She kissed Celia, dropped the old-fashioned, half-forgotten curtsey to the others, and stood hesitating a moment, one hand resting on Celia’s shoulder.
“Is the fort holding out?” she asked.
Stephen looked up angrily, made as though to speak, but a deep flush settled to the roots of his hair and he remained silent.
“Fort Sumter has surrendered,” said her brother-in-law quietly.
Celia whispered: “Take your seat now, Honey-bell; your breakfast is getting cold.”
At church that Sunday the Northern clergy prayed in a dazed sort of way for the Union and for the President; some addressed the Most High as “The God of Battles.” The sun shone brightly; new leaves were startling on every tree in every Northern city; acres of starry banners drooped above thousands of departing congregations, and formed whispering canopies overhead.
Vespers were solemn; April dusk fell over a million roofs and spires; twinkling gas jets were lighted in street lamps; city, town, and hamlet drew their curtains and bowed their heads in darkness. A dreadful silence fell over the North — a stillness that breeds epochs and the makers of them.
But the first gray pallor of the dawn awoke a nation for the first time certain of its entity, roaring its comprehension of it from the Lakes to the Potomac, from sea to sea; and the red sun rose over twenty States in solid battle line thundering their loyalty to a Union undivided,
And on that day rang out the first loud call to arms; and the first battalion of the Northland, seventy-five thousand strong, formed ranks, cheering their insulted flag.
