Ailsa Paige Part 53

And another night on duty was begun-the last she ever was to spend under the quiet roof of the Farm Hospital.

That night she sat beside the bed of a middle-aged man, a corporal in a Minnesota regiment whose eyes had been shot out on picket. Otherwise he was convalescent from dysentery. But Ailsa had seen the convalescent camp, and she would not let him go yet.

So she read to him in a low, soothing voice, glancing from time to time at the bandaged face. And, when she saw he was asleep, she sat silent, hands nervously clasped above the Bible on her knee. Then her lids closed for an instant as she recited a prayer for the man she loved, wherever he might be that moon-lit night.

A zouave, terribly wounded on Roanoke Island, began to fret; she rose and walked swiftly to him, and the big sunken eyes opened and he said, humbly:

"I am sorry to inconvenience you, Mrs. Paige. I'll try to keep quiet."

"You foolish fellow, you don't inconvenience me. What can I do for you?"

His gaze was wistful, but he said nothing, and she bent down tenderly, repeating her question.

A slight flush gathered under his gaunt cheek bones. "I guess I'm just contrary," he muttered. "Don't bother about me, ma'am."

"You are thinking of your wife; talk to me about her, Neil."

It was what he wanted; he could endure the bandages. So, her cool smooth hand resting lightly over his, where it lay on the sheets, she listened to the home-sick man until it was time to give another sufferer his swallow of lemonade.

Later she put on a gingham overgown, sprinkled it and her hands with camphor, and went into the outer wards where the isolated patients lay-where hospital gangrene and erysipelas were the horrors. And, farther on, she entered the outlying wing devoted to typhus. In spite of the open windows the atmosphere was heavy; everywhere the air seemed weighted with the odour of decay.

As always, in spite of herself, she hesitated at the door. But the steward on duty rose; and she took his candle and entered the place of death.

Toward morning a Rhode Island artilleryman, dying in great pain, relapsed into coma. Waiting beside him, she wrote to his parents, enclosing the little keepsakes he had designated when conscious, while his life flickered with the flickering candle. Her letter and his life ended together; dawn made the candle-light ghastly; a few moments later the rumble of the dead waggon sounded in the court below. The driver came early because there was a good deal of freight for his waggon that day. A few moments afterward the detail arrived with the stretchers, and Ailsa stood up, drew aside the screen, and went down into the gray obscurity of the court-yard.

Grave-diggers were at work on a near hillside; she could hear the clink clink of spade and pick; reveille was sounding from hill to hill; the m.u.f.fled stirring became a dull, sustained clatter, never ceasing around her for one instant.

A laundress was boiling clothing over a fire near by; Ailsa slipped off her gingham overdress, unbound the white turban, and tossed them on the gra.s.s near the fire. Then, rolling back her sleeves, she plunged her arms into a basin of hot water in which a little powdered camphor was floating.

While busy with her ablutions the two new nurses arrived, seated on a battery limber; and, hastily drying her hands, she went to them and welcomed them, gave them tea and breakfast in Dr. West's office, and left them there while she went away to awake Celia and Letty, pack her valise for the voyage before her, and write to Berkley.

But it was not until she saw the sun low in the west from the deck of the Mary Lane, that she at last found a moment to write.

The place, the hour, her loneliness, moved depths in her that she had never sounded-moved her to a recklessness never dreamed of. It was an effort for her to restrain the pa.s.sionate confessions trembling on her pen's tip; her lips whitened with the cry struggling for utterance.

"Dear, never before did I so completely know myself, never so absolutely trust myself to the imperious, almost ungovernable tide which has taken my destiny from the quiet harbour where it lay, and which is driving it headlong toward yours.

"You have left me alone, to wonder and to wonder. And while isolated, I stand trying to comprehend why it was that your words separated our destinies while your arms around me made them one. I am perfectly aware that the surge of life has caught me up, tossed me to its crest, and is driving me blindly out across the waste s.p.a.ces of the world toward you-wherever you may be-whatever be the cost. I will not live without you.

"I am not yet quite sure what has so utterly changed me-what has so completely changed within me. But I am changed. Perhaps daily familiarity with death and pain and wretchedness, hourly contact with the paramount mystery of all, has broadened me, or benumbed me. I don't know. All I seem to see clearly-to clearly understand-is the dreadful brevity of life, the awful chances against living, the miracle of love in such a maelstrom, the insanity of one who dare not confess it, live for it, love to the uttermost with heart, soul, and body, while life endures,

"All my instincts, all principles inherent or inculcated; all knowledge spiritual and intellectual, acquired; all precepts, maxims, proverbs, axioms incorporated and lately a part of me, seem trivial, empty, meaningless in sound and in form compared to the plain truths of Death. For never until now did I understand that we walk always arm in arm with Death, that he squires us at every step, coolly joggles our elbow, touches our shoulder now and then, wakes us at dawn, puts out our night-light, and smooths the sheets we sleep under.

"I had thought of Death as something hiding very, very far away. Yet I had already seen him enter my own house. But now I understand how close he always is; and, somehow, it has changed-hardened, maybe-much that was vague and unformed in my character. And, maybe, the knowledge is distorting it; I don't know. All I know is that, before life ends, if there is a chance of fulfilment, I will take it. And fulfilment means you-my love for you, the giving of it, of myself, of all I am, all I desire, all I care for, all I believe, into your keeping-into your embrace. That, for me, is fulfilment of life.

"Even in your arms you tell me that there is to be no fulfilment. I have acquiesced, wondering, bewildered, confused. But, dear, you can never tell me so again-if we live-if I live to look into your eyes again-never, never. For I shall not believe it, nor shall I let you believe it, if only we can win through this deathly battle nightmare which is rising between us-if ever we can find each other again, touch each other through this red, unreal glare of war.

"Oh, Philip-Philip-only to have your arms around me! Only to touch you! You shall not tell me then that our destinies do not mingle. They shall mingle like two wines; they shall become utterly confused in one another; I was meant for that; I will not die, isolated by you, unknown to you, not belonging to you! I will not die alone this way in the world, with no deeper memory to take into the unknown than that you said you loved me.

"G.o.d alone knows what change misery and sorrow and love and death have accomplished in me; never have I stood so alone upon this earth; never have I cared so for life, never have I so desired to be a deathless part of yours.

"If you love me you will make me part of yours-somehow, some way. And, Philip, if there is no way, yet there is always one way if we both live. And I shall not complain-only, I cannot die-let life go out-so that you could ever forget that my life had been part of yours.

"Is it dreadful of me to think this? But the mighty domination of Death has dwarfed everything around me, dear; shrivelled the little man-made formulas and laws; the living mind and body seem more vital than the by-laws made to govern them... . G.o.d knows what I'm writing, but you have gone into battle leaving life unfulfilled for us both, and I a.s.sented-and my heart and soul are crying out to you, unreconciled-crying out my need of you across the smoke... .

"There is a battery at c.o.c.k-pit Point, firing, and the smoke of the guns drifts across the low-hanging sun. It must be only a salute, for our fleet of transports moves on, torrents of black smoke pouring out of every tall funnel, paddle-wheels churning steadily.

"When the fleet pa.s.sed Mount Vernon the bells tolled aboard every boat; and we could see the green trees and a glimmer of white on sh.o.r.e, and the flag flying.

"What sadness! A people divided who both honour the sacredness of this spot made holy by a just man's grave-gathering to meet in battle-brother against brother.

"But Fate shall not longer array you and me against each other! I will not have it so! Neither my heart nor my soul could endure the cruelty of it, nor my reason its wickedness and insanity. From the first instant I met your eyes, Philip, somehow, within me, I knew I belonged to you. I do more hopelessly to-day than ever-and with each day, each hour, more and more until I die. You will not let me go to my end unclaimed, will you?-a poor ghost all alone, lost in the darkness somewhere among the stars-lacking that tie between you and it which even death does not know how to sever!

"I leave all to you, loving you, wishing what you wish, content with what you give-and take-so that you do give and take and keep and hold for life.

"It is very dusky; the lights, red and white, glimmer on every transport. We feel the sea-swell a little. Celia left us, going ash.o.r.e at Acquia Creek. She takes the cars to Richmond and then to Paigecourt. Letty sits beside me on deck. There were two cases of fever aboard and we went down into a dreadfully ill-smelling cabin to do what we could. Now we are here on deck again. Some officers are talking very gaily with Letty. I am ending my letter to you-wherever you are, my darling, under these big, staring stars that look down at me out of s.p.a.ce. I don't want my ghost to be blown about up there-unless it belongs to you. That is the only fear of death I ever have or ever had-that I might die before you had all of me there is to give."

CHAPTER XV

Toward the end of June, as Claymore's new provisional brigade of Sykes's division, Fitz John Porter's superb corps d'armee, neared the designated rendezvous, some particularly dirty veteran regiments, bivouacked along the fields, crowded to the roadside, fairly writhing in their scorn and derision.

"Fresh fish! Oh-h! Fresh fi-sh!" they shouted. "My G.o.d, boys, just see them pretty red pants! Mother! Come and look. Oh, papa, what are they? Sa-ay, would you gentlemen kindly tell us poor old sodgers what kind ov a h.e.l.l ov a, dressmaker cut out them pantalettes? I wish I could go out to play with these nice, perlite little boys? Oh, children! why didn't you bring your nursemaids with you?"

The 3rd Zouaves marched past the jeering veterans, grinding their teeth, but making no effort at retort. They knew well enough by this time that any attempt to retort would be worse than useless.

As the head of the column of the 8th Lancers appeared from the West at the forks of the other road, the dingy veterans fairly danced in malicious delight:

"Excuse us," they simpered, kissing their dirty finger-tips to the hors.e.m.e.n, "ex-cuse us, please, but do tell us how you left dear old Fift' Avenoo. Them rocking hosses need a leetle new paint where they sit down, me lords. Hey, you ain't got any old red silk stockings we can use for guidons, have you? Oh, Alonzo darling! curl my hair an' wet me with expensive cologne!"

Colonel Egerton's 20th Dragoons, being in blue and orange, got off easier, though the freshness of their uniforms was tremendously resented; but McDunn's 10th Flying Battery, in brand new uniforms, ran the full fierce fire of chaff; the indignant cannoneers were begged to disclose the name of the stage line which had supplied their battery horses; and Arthur Wye, driving the showy swing team of No. 6, Left Section, shouted back in his penetrating voice:

"If you want to know who sells broken-down nags to suckers, it's Simon Cameron!-you Dutch-faced, barrel-bellied, Pennsylvania scuts!"

A bull-like bellow of laughter burst from the battery; even Captain McDunn's grin neutralised the scowling visage he turned to conceal it. And the fury of the Pennsylvanians knew no bounds; for, from general to drummer boy, the troops of that great State were horribly sensitive to any comment on the Hon. Mr. Cameron's horse transactions.

Warren's matchless brigade followed; but the 6th Lancers had seen service and they were not jeered; nor were the 5th and 10th Zouaves, the 1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery and the Rhode Island Battery.

Berkley, riding with his troop, bridle loose in both gauntleted hands, lance swinging wide from stirrup and elbow loop, looked to the left and noticed Warren's regiments swinging out across the breezy uplands. Half an hour later he saw the 3rd Zouaves enter a wheat field to the left of the road, form on their colour front, unsling knapsacks, and stack arms. McDunn's battery found a gap in the fence and followed, the guns b.u.mping and bouncing out over a potato field; and presently Egerton's Dragoons turned sharply to the right and entered a cool road that ran along a bushy hollow.

The 8th Lancers kept straight on for five or six hundred yards, until they encountered their regimental quartermaster and camping party. Then they wheeled to the right, pa.s.sed through a thin belt of shade trees, across a splendid marl drive and a vast unkempt lawn. Beyond this they skirted a typical planter's house of the better cla.s.s, with its white galleries, green blinds, quarters, smoke houses, barns, and outhouses innumerable; and halted, each troop moving to a point a little in the rear of where its horses were to be secured, and forming one rank. The bugles sounded "Dismount!" Eight hundred sun-burned riders set foot to sod, details were made to hold the horses, lances were stacked, picket ropes fixed, shelter tents erected, sabre and bridle hung on the twelve weapons of the troop-carbineers, and the standard carried to Colonel Arran's tent.

Directly to the right was a gentle declivity with a clear, rapid stream splashing the bottom gra.s.ses. Beyond the stream a low green hill rose, concealing the landscape and the river beyond.

And here, on the breezy meadow slope, Egerton's Dragoons went into camp and sent out their fatigue parties and grand guards.

Company and squadron streets were laid out, sinks dug, shelter tents pitched, firewood brought, horses picketed. Twenty paces in front of each pile of tents the kitchens were established; all the regimental cavalry waggons came up promptly and were parked in the rear of the picket line for sick horses; the belated and hated sutler of the 8th Lancers drove hastily in, deaf to the blandishments of veterans along the roadside, who eyed him malevolently and with every desire to work him substantial harm.

Late in the afternoon there was much visiting along the lines and between distant camps; the day was cloudless and perfect; magnolia and china-berry scented the winds which furrowed every gra.s.sy hillside; flags fluttered, breezy gusts of bugle music incited the birds to rivalry. Peace and sunshine lay over all, and there was nothing sinister to offend save, far along the horizon, the low, unbroken monotone of cannon, never louder, never lower, steady, dull, interminable; and on the southern horizon a single tall cloud, slanting a trifle to the east, like a silver pillar out of plumb.