Complete weird tales of.., p.529
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 529
She laid one hand on his arm, looked up, searching his face, hesitated. A longing to relax the tension of self-discipline came over her — to let him guard them both — to leave all to him — let him fight for them both. It was a longing to find security in the certainty of his self-control, a desire to drift, and let him be responsible, to let him control the irresponsibility within her, the unwisdom, the delicate audacity, latent, mischievous, that needed a reversal of the role of protector and protected to blossom deliciously into the coquetry that she had never dared.
“Are you to be trusted?” she asked innocently.
“Yes, at last. You know it. Even if I — —”
“Yes, dear.”
She considered him with a new and burning curiosity. It was the feminine in her, wondering, not yet certain, whether it might safely dare.
“I suppose I’ve made an anchorite out of you,” she ventured.
“You can judge,” he said, laughing; and had her in his arms again, and kissed her consenting lips and palms, and looked down into the sweet eyes; and she smiled back at him, confident, at rest.
“What has wrought this celestial change in you, Phil?” she whispered, listlessly humourous.
“What change?”
“The spiritual.”
“Is there one? I seem to kiss you just as ardently.”
“I know. . . . But — for the first time since I ever saw you — I feel that I am safe in the world. . . . It may annoy me.”
He laughed.
“I may grow tired of it,” she insisted, watching him. “I may behave like a naughty, perverse, ungrateful urchin, and kick and scream and bite. . . . But you won’t let me be hurt, will you?”
“No, child.” His voice was laughing at her, but his eyes were curiously grave.
She put both arms up around his neck with a quick catch of her breath.
“I do love you — I do love you. I know it now, Phil — I know it as I never dreamed of knowing it. . . . You will never let me be hurt, will you? Nothing can harm me now, can it?”
“Nothing, Ailsa.”
She regarded him dreamily. Sometimes her blue eyes wandered toward the stars, sometimes toward the camp fires on the hill.
“Perfect — perfect belief in — your goodness — to me,” she murmured vaguely. “Now I shall — repay you — by perversity — misbehaviour — I don’t know what — I don’t know — what — —”
Her lids closed; she yielded to his embrace; one slim, detaining hand on his shoulder held her closer, closer.
“You must — never — go away,” her lips formed.
But already he was releasing her, pale but coolly master of the situation. Acquiescent, inert, she lay in his arms, then straightened and rested against the rail beside her.
Presently she smiled to herself, looked at him, still smiling.
“Shall we go into Dr. West’s office and have supper, Phil? I’m on duty in half an hour and my supper must be ready by this time; and I’m simply dying to have you make up for the indignity of the kitchen.”
“You ridiculous little thing!”
“No, I’m not. I could weep with rage when I think of you in the kitchen and — and — Oh, never mind. Come, will you?” And she held out her hand.
Her supper was ready, as she had predicted, and she delightedly made room for him beside her on the bench, and helped him to freshly baked bread and ancient tinned vegetables, and some doubtful boiled meat, all of which he ate with an appetite and a reckless and appreciative abandon that fascinated her.
“Darling!” she whispered in consternation, “don’t they give you anything in camp?”
“Sometimes,” he enunciated, chewing vigorously on the bread. “We don’t get much of this, darling. And the onions have all sprouted, and the potatoes are rotten.”
She regarded him for a moment, then laughed hysterically.
“I beg your pardon, Phil, but somehow this reminds me of our cook feeding her policeman: — just for one tiny second, darling — —”
They abandoned any effort to control their laughter. Ailsa had become transfigured into a deliciously mischievous and bewildering creature, brilliant of lip and cheek and eye, irresponsible, provoking, utterly without dignity or discipline.
She taunted him with his appetite, jeered at him for his recent and marvellous conversion to respectability, dared him to make love to her, provoked him at last to abandon his plate and rise and start toward her. And, of course, she fled, crying in consternation: “Hush, Philip! You mustn’t make such a racket or they’ll put us both out!” — keeping the table carefully between them, dodging every strategy of his, every endeavour to make her prisoner, quick, graceful, demoralising in her beauty and abandon. They behaved like a pair of very badly brought up children, until she was in real terror of discovery.
“Dearest,” she pleaded, “if you will sit down and resume your gnawing on that crust, I’ll promise not to torment you. . . . I will, really. Besides, it’s within a few minutes of my tour of duty — —”
She stopped, petrified, as a volley of hoof-beats echoed outside, the clash of arms and accoutrements rang close by the porch.
“Phil!” she gasped.
And the door opened and Colonel Arran walked in.
There was a dreadful silence. Arran stood face to face with Berkley, looked him squarely in the eye where he stood at salute. Then, as though he had never before set eyes on him, Arran lifted two fingers to his visor mechanically, turned to Ailsa, uncovered, and held out both his hands.
“I had a few moments, Ailsa,” he said quietly. “I hadn’t seen you for so long. Are you well?”
She was almost too frightened to answer; Berkley stood like a statue, awaiting dismissal, and later the certain consequences of guard running.
And, aware of her fright, Arran turned quietly to Berkley:
“Private Ormond,” he said, “there is a led-horse in my escort, in charge of Private Burgess. It is the easier and — safer route to camp. You may retire.”
Berkley’s expression was undecipherable as he saluted, shot a glance at Ailsa, turned sharply, and departed.
“Colonel Arran,” she said miserably, “it was all my fault. I am too ashamed to look at you.”
“Let me do what worrying is necessary,” he said quietly. “I am — not unaccustomed to it. . . . I suppose he ran the guard.”
She did not answer.
The ghost of a smile — a grim one — altered the Colonel’s expression for a second, then faded. He looked at Ailsa curiously. Then:
“Have you anything to tell me that — perhaps I may be entitled to know about, Ailsa?”
“No.”
“I see. I beg your pardon. If you ever are — perplexed — in doubt — I shall always — —”
“Thank you,” she said faintly. . . . “And — I am so sorry — —”
“So am I. I’m sorrier than you know — about more matters than you know, Ailsa—” He softly smote his buckskin-gloved hands together, gazing at vacancy. Then lifted his head and squared his heavy shoulders.
“I thought I’d come when I could. The chances are that the army will move if this weather continues. The cavalry will march out anyway. So I thought I’d come over for a few moments, Ailsa. . . . Are you sure you are quite well? And not overdoing it? You certainly look well; you appear to be in perfect health. . . . I am very much relieved. . . . And — don’t worry. Don’t cherish apprehension about — anybody.” He added, more to himself than to her: “Discipline will be maintained — must be maintained. There are more ways to do it than by military punishments, I know that now.”
He looked up, held out his hand, retained hers, and patted it gently.
“Don’t worry, child,” he said, “don’t worry.” And went out to the porch thoughtfully, gazing straight ahead of him as his horse was brought up. Then, gathering curb and snaffle, he set toe to stirrup and swung up into his saddle.
“Ormond!” he called.
Berkley rode up and saluted.
“Ride with me,” said Colonel Arran calmly.
“Sir?”
“Rein up on the left.” And, turning in his saddle, he motioned back his escort twenty paces to the rear. Then he walked his big, bony roan forward.
“Ormond?”
“Yes, Colonel.”
“You ran the guard?”
“Yes, Colonel.”
“Why?”
Berkley was silent.
The Colonel turned in his saddle and scrutinised him. The lancer’s visage was imperturbable.
“Ormond,” he said in a low voice, “whatever you think of me — whatever your attitude toward me is, I would like you to believe that I wish to be your friend.”
Berkley’s expression remained unchanged.
“It is my desire,” said the older man, “my — very earnest — desire.”
The young lancer was mute.
Arran’s voice fell still lower:
“Some day — if you cared to — if you could talk over some — matters with me, I would be very glad. Perhaps you don’t entirely understand me. Perhaps I have given you an erroneous impression concerning — matters — which it is too late to treat differently — in the light of riper experience — and in a knowledge born of years — solitary and barren years — —”
He bent his gray head thoughtfully, then, erect in his saddle again:
“I would like to be your friend,” he said in a voice perceptibly under control.
“Why?” asked Berkley harshly. “Is there any reason on God’s earth why I could ever forgive you?”
“No; no reason perhaps. Yet, you are wrong.”
“Wrong!”
“I say so in the light of the past, Berkley. Once I also believed that a stern, uncompromising attitude toward error was what God required of an upright heart.”
“Error! D-do you admit that?” stammered Berkley. “Are you awake at last to the deviltry that stirred you — the damnable, misguided, distorted conscience that twisted you into a murderer of souls? By God, are you alive to what you did to — her?”
Colonel Arran, upright in his saddle and white as death, rode straight on in front of him.. Beside him, knee to knee, rode Berkley, his features like marble, his eyes ablaze.
“I am not speaking for myself,” he said between his teeth, “I am not reproaching you, cursing you, for what you have done to me — for the ruin you have made of life for me, excommunicating me from every hope, outlawing me, branding me! I am thinking, now, only of my mother. God! — to think — to think of it — of her — —”
Arran turned on him a face so ghastly that the boy was silenced.
Then the older man said:
“Do you not know that the hell men make for others is what they are destined to burn in sooner or later? Do you think you can tell me anything of eternal punishment?” He laughed a harsh, mirthless laugh. “Do you not think I have learned by this time that vengeance is God’s — and that He never takes it? It is man alone who takes it, and suffers it. Humanity calls it justice. But I have learned that what the laws of men give you is never yours to take; that the warrant handed you by men is not for you to execute. I — have — learned — many things in the solitary years, Berkley. . . . But this — what I am now saying to you, here under the stars — is the first time I have ever, even to myself, found courage to confess Christ.”
Very far away to the south a rocket rose — a slender thread of fire. Then, to the northward, a tiny spark grew brighter, flickered, swung in an arc to right, to left, dipped, soared, hung motionless, dipped again to right, to left, tracing faint crimson semicircles against the sky.
Two more rockets answered, towering, curving, fading, leaving blue stars floating in the zenith.
And very, very far away there was a dull vibration of thunder, or of cannon.
CHAPTER XIV
THE TREMENDOUS EXODUS continued; regiment after regiment packed knapsacks, struck tents, loaded their waggons and marched back through the mud toward Alexandria, where transports were waiting in hundreds.
The 3rd Zouaves were scheduled to leave early. Celia had only a few hours now and then in camp with husband and son. Once or twice they came to the hospital in the bright spring weather where new blossoms on azalea and jasmine perfumed the fields and flowering peach orchards turned all the hills and valleys pink.
Walking with her husband and son that last lovely evening before the regiment left, a hand of each clasped in her own, she strove very hard to keep up the gaiety of appearances, tried with all her might to keep back the starting tears, steady the lip that quivered, the hands that trembled locked in theirs.
They were walking together in a secluded lane that led from behind the Farm Hospital barns to a little patch of woodland through which a clear stream sparkled, a silent, intimate, leafy oasis amid an army-ridden desert, where there was only a cow to stare at them, knee deep in young mint, only a shy cardinal bird to interrupt them with its exquisite litany.
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 pass 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-glasses, 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 nobody 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 ship 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’ God 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 — God! — Yes, it does! it does, dear. You are all three to me — I know no holier trinity than husband, God, 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 — —”
[Illustration: “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 passing 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 shining 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
