Complete weird tales of.., p.528
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 528
And, one afternoon when Letty was on duty and she and Celia were busy with their mending in Celia’s room, she thought about Berkley’s letter and his enmity, and remembered Celia’s silent aversion at the same moment.
“Celia,” she said, looking up, “would you mind telling me what it is that you dislike about my old and very dear friend, Colonel Arran?”
Celia continued her needlework for a few moments. Then, without raising her eyes, she said placidly:
“You have asked me that befo’, Honey-bird.”
“Yes, dear. . . . You know it is not impertinent curiosity — —”
“I know what it is, Honey-bee. But you can not he’p this gentleman and myse’f to any ground of common understanding.”
“I am so sorry,” sighed Ailsa, resting her folded hands on her work and gazing through the open window.
Celia continued to sew without glancing up. Presently she said:
“I reckon I’ll have to tell you something about Colonel Arran after all. I’ve meant to for some time past. Because — because my silence condemns him utterly; and that is not altogether just.” She bent lower over her work; her needle travelled more slowly as she went on speaking:
“In my country, when a gentleman considers himse’f aggrieved, he asks fo’ that satisfaction which is due to a man of his quality. . . . But Colonel Arran did not ask. And when it was offered, he refused.” Her lips curled. “He cited the Law,” she said with infinite contempt.
“But Colonel Arran is not a Southerner,” observed Ailsa quietly.
“You know how all Northerners feel — —”
“It happened befo’ you were born, Honey-bud. Even the No’th recognised the code then.”
“Is that why you dislike Colonel Arran? Because he refused to challenge or be challenged when the law of the land forbade private murder?”
Celia’s cheeks flushed deeply; she tightened her lips; then:
“The law is not made fo’ those in whom the higher law is inherent,” she said calmly. “It is made fo’ po’ whites and negroes.”
“Celia!”
“It is true, Honey-bird. When a gentleman breaks the law that makes him one, it is time fo’ him to appeal to the lower law. And Colonel Arran did so.”
“What was his grievance?”
“A deep one, I reckon. He had the right on his side — and his own law to defend it, and he refused. And the consequences were ve’y dreadful.”
“To — him?”
“To us all. . . . His punishment was certain.”
“Was he punished?”
“Yes. Then, in his turn, he punished — terribly. But not as a gentleman should. Fo’ in that code which gove’ns us, no man can raise his hand against a woman. He must endure all things; he may not defend himse’f at any woman’s expense; he may not demand justice at the expense of any woman. It is the privilege of his caste to endure with dignity what cannot be remedied or revenged except through the destruction of a woman. . . . And Colonel Arran invoked the lower law; and the justice that was done him destroyed — a woman.”
She looked up steadily into Ailsa’s eyes.
“She was only a young girl, Honey-bud — too young to marry anybody, too inexperienced to know her own heart until it was too late.
“And Colonel Arran came; and he was ve’y splendid, and handsome, and impressive in his cold, heavy dignity, and ve’y certain that the child must marry him — so certain that she woke up one day and found that she had done it. And learned that she did not love him.
“There was a boy cousin. He was reckless, I reckon; and she was ve’y unhappy; and one night he found her crying in the garden; and there was a ve’y painful scene, and she let him kiss the hem of her petticoat on his promise to go away fo’ ever. And — Colonel Arran caught him on his knees, with the lace to his lips — and the child wife crying. . . . He neither asked nor accepted satisfaction; he threatened the — law! And that settled him with her, I reckon, and she demanded her freedom, and he refused, and she took it.
“Then she did a ve’y childish thing; she married the boy — or supposed she did — —”
Celia’s violet eyes grew dark with wrath:
“And Colonel Arran went into co’t with his lawyers and his witnesses and had the divorce set aside — and publicly made this silly child her lover’s mistress, and their child nameless! That was the justice that the law rendered Colonel Arran. And now you know why I hate him — and shall always hate and despise him.”
Ailsa’s head was all awhirl; lips parted, she stared at Celia in stunned silence, making as yet no effort to reconcile the memory of the man she knew with this cold, merciless, passionless portrait.
Nor did the suspicion occur to her that there could be the slightest connection between her sister-in-law’s contempt for Colonel Arran and Berkley’s implacable enmity.
All the while, too, her clearer sense of right and justice cried out in dumb protest against the injury done to the man who had been her friend, and her parents’ friend — kind, considerate, loyal, impartially just in all his dealings with her and with the world, as far as she had ever known.
From Celia’s own showing the abstract right and justice of the matter had been on his side; no sane civilisation could tolerate the code that Celia cited. The day of private vengeance was over; the era of duelling was past in the North — was passing in the South. And, knowing Colonel Arran, she knew also that twenty odd years ago his refusal to challenge had required a higher form of courage than to face the fire of a foolish boy’s pistol.
And now, collecting her disordered thoughts, she began to understand what part emotion and impulse had played in the painful drama — how youthful ignorance and false sentiment had combined to invest a silly but accidental situation with all the superficial dignity of tragedy.
What must it have meant to Colonel Arran, to this quiet, slow, respectable man of the world, to find his girl wife crying in the moonlight, and a hot-headed boy down on his knees, mumbling the lace edge of her skirts?
What must it have meant to him — for the chances were that he had not spoken the first word — to be confronted by an excited, love-smitten, reckless boy, and have a challenge flung in his face before he had uttered a word.
No doubt his calm reply was to warn the boy to mind his business under penalty of law. No doubt the exasperated youth defied him — insulted him — declared his love — carried the other child off her feet with the exaggerated emotion and heroics. And, once off their feet, she saw how the tide had swept them together — swept them irrevocably beyond reason and recall.
Ailsa rose and stood by the open window, looking out across the hills; but her thoughts were centred on Colonel Arran’s tragedy, and the tragedy of those two hot-headed children whom his punishment had out-lawed.
Doubtless his girl wife had told him how the boy had come to be there, and that she had banished him; but the clash between maturity and adolescence is always inevitable; the misunderstanding between ripe experience and Northern logic, and emotional inexperience and Southern impulse was certain to end in disaster.
Ailsa considered; and she knew that now her brief for Colonel Arran was finished, for beyond the abstract right she had no sympathy with the punishment he had dealt out, even though his conscience and civilisation and the law of the land demanded the punishment of these erring’ ones.
No, the punishment seemed too deeply tainted with vengeance for her to tolerate.
A deep unhappy sigh escaped her. She turned mechanically, seated herself, and resumed her sewing.
“I suppose I ought to be asleep,” she said. “I am on duty to-night, and they’ve brought in so many patients from the new regiments.”
Celia bent and bit off her thread, then passing the needle into the hem, laid her work aside.
“Honey-bud,” she said, “you are ve’y tired. If you’ll undress I’ll give you a hot bath and rub you and brush your hair.”
“Oh, Celia, will you? I’d feel so much better.” She gave a dainty little shudder and made a wry face, adding:
“I’ve had so many dirty, sick men to cleanse — oh, incredibly dirty and horrid! — poor boys — it doesn’t seem to be their fault, either; and they are so ashamed and so utterly miserable when I am obliged to know about the horror of their condition. . . . Dear, it will be angelic of you to give me a good, hot scrubbing. I could go to sleep if you would.”
“Of co’se I will,” said Celia simply. And, when Ailsa was ready to call her in she lifted the jugs of water which a negro had brought — one cold, one boiling hot — entered Ailsa’s room, filled the fiat tin tub; and, when Ailsa stepped into it, proceeded to scrub her as though she had been two instead of twenty odd.
Then, her glowing body enveloped in a fresh, cool sheet, she lay back and closed her eyes while Celia brushed the dull gold masses of her hair.
“Honey-bee, they say that all the soldiers are in love with you, even my po’ Confederate boys in Ward C. Don’t you dare corrupt their loyalty!”
“They are the dearest things — all of them,” smiled Ailsa sleepily, soothed by the skilful brushing. “I have never had one cross word, one impatient look from Union or Confederate.” She added: “They say in Washington that we women are not needed — that we are in the way — that the sick don’t want us. . . . Some very important personage from Washington came down to the General Hospital and announced that the Government was going to get rid of all women nurses. And such a dreadful row those poor sick soldiers made! Dr. West told us; he was there at the time. And it seems that the personage went back to Washington with a very different story to tell the powers that be. So I suppose they’ve concluded to let us alone.”
“It doesn’t surprise me that a Yankee gove’nment has no use fo’ women,” observed Celia.
“Hush, dear. That kind of comment won’t do. Besides, some horrid stories were afloat about some of the nurses not being all they ought to be.”
“That sounds ve’y Yankee, too!”
“Celia! And perhaps it was true that one or two among thousands might not have been everything they should have been,” admitted Ailsa, loyal to her government in everything. “And perhaps one or two soldiers were insolent; but neither Letty Lynden nor I have ever heard one unseemly word from the hundreds and hundreds of soldiers we have attended, never have had the slightest hint of disrespect from them.”
“They certainly do behave ve’y well,” conceded Celia, brushing away vigorously. “They behave like our Virginians.”
Ailsa laughed, then, smiling reflectively, glanced at her hand which still bore the traces of a healed scar. Celia noticed her examining the slender, uplifted hand, and said:
“You promised to tell me how you got that scar, Honey-bud.”
“I will, now — because the man who caused it has gone North.”
“A — man!”
“Yes, poor fellow. When the dressings were changed the agony crazed him and he sometimes bit me. I used to be so annoyed,” she added mildly, “and I used to shake my forefinger at him and say, ‘Now it’s got to be done, Jones; will you promise not to bite me.’ And the poor fellow would promise with tears in his eyes — and then he’d forget — poor boy — —”
“I’d have slapped him,” said Celia, indignantly. “What a darling you are, Ailsa! . . . Now bundle into bed,” she added, “because you haven’t any too much time to sleep, and poor little Letty Lynden will be half dead when she comes off duty.”
Letty really appeared to be half dead when she arrived, and bent wearily over the bed where Ailsa now lay in calm-breathing, rosy slumber.
“Oh, you sweet thing!” she murmured to herself, “you can sleep for two hours yet, but you don’t know it.” And, dropping her garments from her, one by one, she bathed and did up her hair and crept in beside Ailsa very softly, careful not to arouse her.
But Ailsa, who slept lightly, awoke, turned on her pillow, passed one arm around Letty’s dark curls.
“I’ll get up,” she said drowsily. “Why didn’t Flannery call me?”
“You can sleep for an hour or two yet, darling,” cooed Letty, nestling close to her. “Mrs. Craig has taken old Bill Symonds, and they’ll be on duty for two hours more.”
“How generous of Celia — and of old Symonds, too. Everybody seems to be so good to me here.”
“Everybody adores you, dear,” whispered Letty, her lips against
Ailsa’s flushed cheek. “Don’t you know it?”
Ailsa laughed; and the laugh completed her awakening past all hope of further slumber.
“You quaint little thing,” she said, looking at Letty. “You certainly are the most engaging girl I ever knew.”
Letty merely lay and looked her adoration, her soft cheek pillowed on Ailsa’s arm. Presently she said:
“Do you remember the first word you ever spoke to me?”
“Yes, I do.”
“And — you asked me to come and see you.”
“Who wouldn’t ask you — little rosebud?”
But Letty only sighed and closed her eyes; nor did she awaken when
Ailsa cautiously withdrew her arm and slipped out of bed.
She still had an hour and more; she decided to dress and go out for a breath of fresh, sweet air to fortify her against the heavy atmosphere of the sick wards.
It was not yet perfectly dark; the thin edge of the new moon traced a pale curve in the western sky; frogs were trilling; a night-bird sang in a laurel thicket unceasingly.
The evening was still, but the quiet was only comparative because, always, all around her, the stirring and murmur of the vast army never entirely ended.
But the drums and bugles, answering one another from hill to hill, from valley to valley, had ceased; she saw the reddening embers of thousands of camp fires through the dusk; every hill was jewelled, every valley gemmed.
In the darkness she could hear the ground vibrate under the steady tread of a column of infantry passing, but she could not see them — could distinguish no motion against the black background of the woods.
Standing there on the veranda, she listened to them marching by. From the duration of the sound she judged it to be only one regiment, probably a new one arriving from the North.
A little while afterward she heard on some neighbouring hillside the far outbreak of hammering, the distant rattle of waggons, the clash of stacked muskets. Then, in sudden little groups, scattered starlike over the darkness, camp fires twinkled into flame. The new regiment had pitched its tents.
It was a pretty sight; she walked out along the fence to see more clearly, stepping aside to avoid collision with a man in the dark, who was in a great hurry — a soldier, who halted to make his excuses, and, instead, took her into his arms with a breathless exclamation.
“Philip!” she faltered, trembling all over.
“Darling! I forgot I was not to touch you!” He crushed her hands swiftly to his lips and let them drop.
“My little Ailsa! My — little — Ailsa!” he repeated under his breath — and caught her to him again.
“Oh — darling — we mustn’t,” she protested faintly. “Don’t you remember, Philip? Don’t you remember, dear, what we are to be to one another?”
He stood, face pressed against her burning cheeks; then his arm encircling her waist fell away.
“You’re right, dear,” he said with a sigh so naively robust, so remarkably hearty, that she laughed outright — a very tremulous and uncertain laugh.
“What a tragically inclined boy! I never before heard a ‘thunderous sigh’; but I had read of them in poetry. Philip, tell me instantly how you came here!”
“Ran the guard,” he admitted.
“No! Oh, dear, oh, dear! — and I told you not to. Philip! Philip! Do you want to get shot?”
“Now you know very well I don’t,” he said, laughing. “I spend every minute trying not to. . . . And, Ailsa, what do you think? A little while ago when I was skulking along fences and lurking in ditches — all for your sake, ungrateful fair one! — tramp — tramp — tramp comes a column out of the darkness! ‘Lord help us,’ said I, ‘it’s the police guard, or some horrible misfortune, and I’ll never see my Ailsa any more!’ Then I took a squint at ‘em, and I saw officers riding, with about a thousand yards of gold lace on their sleeves, and I saw their music trudging along with that set of silver chimes aloft between two scarlet yaks’ tails; and I saw the tasselled fezzes and the white gaiters and— ‘Aha!’ said I— ‘the Zou-Zous! But which?’
“And, by golly, I made out the number painted white on their knapsacks; and, Ailsa, it was the 3d Zouaves, Colonel Craig! — just arrived! And there — on that hill — are their fires!”
“Oh, Phil!” she exclaimed in rapture, “how heavenly for Celia! I’m perfectly crazy to see Curt and Steve — —”
“Please transfer a little of that sweet madness to me.”
“Dear — I can’t, can I?”
But she let him have her hands; and, resting beside him on the rail fence, bent her fair head as he kissed her joined hands, let it droop lower, lower, till her cheek brushed his. Then, turning very slowly, their lips encountered, rested, till the faint fragrance of hers threatened his self-control.
She opened her blue eyes as he raised his head, looking at him vaguely in the dusk, then very gently shook her head and rested one cheek on her open palm.
“I don’t know,” she sighed. “I — don’t — know—” and closed her lids once more.
“Know what, dearest of women?”
“What is going to happen to us, Phil. . . . It seems incredible — after our vows — after the lofty ideals we — —”
“The ideals are there,” he said in a low voice. And, in his tone there was a buoyancy, a hint of something new to her — something almost decisive, something of protection which began vaguely to thrill her, as though that guard which she had so long mounted over herself might be relieved — the strain relaxed — the duty left to him.
