Ailsa Paige Part 15

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 subst.i.tute 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 repet.i.tion:

"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 p.u.s.s.y 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, s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 G.o.d!"

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 pa.s.sed 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.