She assented, smiling conventionally, not at all understanding. He laughed, too, thoroughly enjoying something.
"It isn't really very funny," he said, "Ask your brother-in-law. I had an interview with him before I came here. And I think there's a chance that he may give me a desk and a small salary in his office."
"How absurd!" she said.
"It is rather absurd. I'm so absolutely useless. It's only because of the relationship that Mr. Craig is doing this."
She said uneasily: "You are not really serious, are you?"
"Grimly serious."
"About a—a desk and a salary—in my brother-in-law's office?"
"Unless you'll hire me as a useful man. Otherwise, I hope for a big desk and a small salary. I went to Mr. Craig this morning, and the minute I saw him I knew he was fine enough to be your brother-in-law. And I said, 'I am Philip Ormond Berkley; how do you do!' And he said, 'How do you do!' And I said, 'I'm a relation,' and he said, 'I believe so.' And I said, 'I was educated at Harvard and in Leipsic; I am full of useless accomplishments, harmless erudition, and insolvent amiability, and I am otherwise perfectly worthless. Can you give me a position?'"
"And he said: 'What else is the matter?' And I said, 'The stock market.' And that is how it remains, I am to call on him to-morrow."
She said in consternation: "Forgive me. I did not think you meant it. I did not know that you were—were——"
"Ruined!" he nodded laughingly. "I am, practically. I have a little left—badly invested—which I'm trying to get at. Otherwise matters are gay enough."
She said wonderingly: "Had this happened when—I saw you that first time?"
"It had just happened. I looked the part, didn't I?"
"No. How could you be so—interesting and—and be—what you were—knowing this all the while?"
"I went to that party absolutely stunned. I saw you in a corner of the box—I had just been hearing about you—and—I don't know now what I said to you. Afterward"—he glanced at her—"the world was spinning, Mrs. Paige. You only remained real—" His face altered subtly. "And when I touched you——"
"I gave you a waltz, I believe," she said, striving to speak naturally; but her pulses had begun to stir again; the same inexplicable sense of exhilaration and insecurity was creeping over her.
With a movement partly nervous she turned toward the door, but there sounded no rustle of her sister's skirts from the stairs, and her reluctant eyes slowly reverted to him, then fell in silence, out of which she presently strove to extract them both with some casual commonplace.
He said in a low voice, almost to himself:
"I want you to think well of me."
She gathered all her composure, steadied her senses to choose a reply, and made a blunder:
"Do you really care what I think?" she asked lightly, and bit her lip too late.
"Do you believe I care about anything else in the world—now?"
She went on bravely, blindly:
"And do you expect me to believe in—in such an exaggerated and romantic expression to a staid and matter-of-fact widow whom you never saw more than once in your life?"
"You do believe it."
Confused, scarcely knowing what she was saying, she still attempted to make light of his words, holding her own against herself for the moment, making even some headway. And all the while she was aware of mounting emotion—a swift inexplicable charm falling over them both.
He had become silent again, and she was saying she knew not what—fortifying her common-sense with gay inconsequences, when he looked up straight into her eyes.
"I have distressed you. I should not have spoken as I did."
"No, you should not——"
"Have I offended you?"
"I—don't know."
Matters were running too swiftly for her; she strove to remain cool, collected, but confusion was steadily threatening her, and neither resentment nor indifference appeared as allies.
"Mrs. Paige, can you account for—that night? The moment I touched you——"
She half rose, sank back into her seat, her startled eyes meeting his.
"I—don't know what you mean."
"Yes—you know."
Flushed, voices unsteady, they no longer recognised themselves.
"You have never seen me but once," she said. "You cannot believe——"
"I have not known a moment's peace since I first saw you."
She caught her breath. "It is your business worries that torment you——"
"It is desire to be near you."
"I don't think you had better say such a thing——"
"I know I had better not. But it is said, and it is true. I'm not trying to explain it to you or to myself. It's just true. There has not been one moment, since I saw you, which has been free from memory of you——"
"Please——"
"I scarcely know what I am saying—but it's true!" He checked himself. "I'm losing my head now, which isn't like me!" He choked and stood up; she could not move; every nerve in her had become tense with emotions so bewildering that mind and body remained fettered.
He was walking to and fro, silent and white under his self-control. She, seated, gazed at him as though stunned, but every pulse was riotously unsteady.
"I suppose you think me crazy," he said hoarsely, "but I've not known a moment's peace of mind since that night—not one! I couldn't keep away any longer. I can't even hold my tongue now, though I suppose it's ruining me every time I move it. It's a crazy thing to come here and say what I'm saying."
He went over and sat down again, and bent his dark gaze on the floor. Then:
"Can you forgive what I have done to you?"
She tried to answer, and only made a sign of faint assent. She no longer comprehended herself or the emotions menacing her. A curious tranquillity quieted her at moments—intervals in which she seemed to sit apart watching the development of another woman, listening to her own speech, patient with her own silences. There was a droop to her shoulders now; his own were sagging as he leaned slightly forward in his chair, arms resting on his knees, while around them the magic ebbed, eddied, ebbed; and lassitude succeeded tension; and she stirred, looked up at him with eyes that seemed dazed at first, then widened slowly into waking; and he saw in them the first clear dawn of alarm. Suddenly she flushed and sprang to her feet, the bright colour surging to her hair.
"Don't!" he said. "Don't reason! There will be nothing left of me if you do—or of, these moments. You will hate them—and me, if you reason. Don't think—until we see each other again!"
She dropped her eyes slowly, and slowly shook her head.
"You ask too much," she said. "You should not have said that." All the glamour was fading. Her senses were seeking their balance after the incredible storm that had whirled them into chaos.
Fear stirred sharply, then consternation—flashes of panic pierced her with darts of shame, as though she had been in physical contact with this man.
All her outraged soul leaped to arms, quivering now under the reaction; the man's mere presence was becoming unendurable; the room stifled her. She turned, scarce knowing what she was doing; and at the same moment her sister-in-law entered.
Berkley, already on his feet, turned short: and when she offered him a hand as slim and white as Ailsa's, he glanced inquiringly at the latter, not at all certain who this charming woman might be.
"Mrs. Craig," said Ailsa.
"I don't believe it," he said. "You haven't grown-up children!"
"Don't you really believe it, Mr. Berkley? Or is it just the flattering Irish in you that natters us poor women to our destruction?"
He had sense and wit enough to pay her a quick and really graceful compliment; to which she responded, still laughing:
"Oh, it is the Ormond in you! I am truly ve'y glad you came. You are Constance Berkley's son—Connie Berkley! The sweetest girl that ever lived."
There was a silence. Then Mrs. Craig said gently:
"I was her maid of honour, Mr. Berkley."
Ailsa raised her eyes to his altered face, startled at the change in it. He looked at her absently, then his gaze reverted to Ailsa Paige.
"I loved her dearly," said Mrs. Craig, dropping a light, impulsive hand on his. "I want her son to know it."
Her eyes were soft and compassionate; her hand still lingered lightly on his, and she let it rest so.
"Mrs. Craig," he said, "you are the most real person I have known in many years among the phantoms. I thought your sister-in-law was. But you are still more real."
"Am I?" she laid her other hand over his, considering him earnestly. Ailsa looking on, astonished, noticed a singular radiance on his face—the pale transfiguration from some quick inward illumination.
Then Celia Craig's voice sounded almost caressingly:
"I think you should have come to see us long ago." A pause. "You are as welcome in this house as your mother would be if she were living. I love and honour her memory."
"I have honoured little else in the world," he said. They looked at one another for a moment; then her quick smile broke out. "I have an album. There are some Paiges, Ormonds, and Berkleys in it——"
Ailsa came forward slowly.
"Shall I look for it, Celia?"
"No, Honey-bell." She turned lightly and went into the back parlour, smiling mysteriously to herself, her vast, pale-blue crinoline rustling against the furniture.
"My sister-in-law," said Ailsa, after an interval of silent constraint, "is very Southern. Any sort of kinship means a great deal to her. I, of course, am Northern, and regard such matters as unimportant."
"It is very gracious of Mrs. Craig to remember it," he said. "I know nothing finer than confidence in one's own kin."
She flushed angrily. "I have not that confidence—in kinsman."
For a moment their eyes met. Hers were hard as purple steel.
"Is that final?"
"Yes."
The muscles in his cheeks grew tense, then into his eyes came that reckless glimmer which in the beginning she had distrusted—a gay, irresponsible radiance which seemed to mock at all things worthy.
He said: "No, it is not final. I shall come back to you."
She answered him in an even, passionless voice:
"A moment ago I was uncertain; now I know you. You are what they say you are. I never wish to see you again."
Celia Craig came back with the album. Berkley sprang to relieve her of the big book and a box full of silhouettes, miniatures, and daguerreotypes. They placed the family depository upon the table and then bent over it together.
Ailsa remained standing by the window, looking steadily at nothing, a burning sensation in both cheeks.
At intervals, through the intensity of her silence, she heard Celia's fresh, sweet laughter, and Berkley's humorous and engaging voice. She glanced sideways at the back of his dark curly head where it bent beside Celia's over the album. What an insolently reckless head it was! She thought that she had never before seen the back of any man's head so significant of character—or the want of it. And the same quality—or the lack of it—now seemed to her to pervade his supple body, his well-set shoulders, his voice, every movement, every feature—something everywhere about him that warned and troubled.
[Illustration: "What an insolently reckless head it was!"]
Suddenly the blood burnt her cheeks with a perfectly incomprehensible desire to see his face again. She heard her sister-in-law saying:
"We Paiges and Berkleys are kin to the Ormonds and the Earls of
Ossory. The Estcourts, the Paiges, the Craigs, the Lents, the
Berkleys, intermarried a hundred years ago. . . . My grandmother
knew yours, but the North is very strange in such matters. . . .
Why did you never before come?"
He said: "It's one of those things a man is always expecting to do, and is always astonished that he hasn't done. Am I unpardonable?"
"I did not mean it in that way."
He turned his dark, comely head and looked at her as they bent together above the album.
"I know you didn't. My answer was not frank. The reason I never came to you before was that—I did not know I would be welcomed."
Their voices dropped. Ailsa standing by the window, watching the orioles in the maple, could no longer distinguish what they were saying.
He said: "You were bridesmaid to my mother. You are the Celia
Paige of her letters."
"She is always Connie Berkley to me. I loved no woman better. I love her still."
"I found that out yesterday. That is why I dared come. I found, among the English letters, one from you to her, written—after."
"I wrote her again and again. She never replied. Thank God, she knew I loved her to the last."
He rested on the tabletop and stood leaning over and looking down.
"Dear Mr. Berkley," she murmured gently.
He straightened himself, passed a hesitating hand across his forehead, ruffling the short curly hair. Then his preoccupied gaze wandered. Ailsa turned toward him at the same moment, and instantly a flicker of malice transformed the nobility of his set features:
"It seems," he said, "that you and I are irrevocably related in all kinds of delightful ways, Mrs. Paige. Your sister-in-law very charmingly admits it, graciously overlooks and pardons my many delinquencies, and has asked me to come again. Will you ask me, too?"
Ailsa merely looked at him.
Mrs. Craig said, laughing: "I knew you were all Ormond and entirely Irish as soon as I came in the do'—befo' I became aware of your racial fluency. I speak fo' my husband and myse'f when I say, please remember that our do' is ve'y wide open to our own kin—and that you are of them——"
"Oh, I'm all sorts of things beside—" He paused for a second—"Cousin Celia," he added so lightly that the grace with which he said it covered the impudence, and she laughed in semi-critical approval and turned to Ailsa, whose smile in response was chilly—chillier still when Berkley did what few men have done convincingly since powdered hair and knee-breeches became unfashionable—bent to salute Celia Craig's fingertips. Then he turned to her and took his leave of her in a conventional manner entirely worthy of the name his mother bore,—and her mother before her, and many a handsome man and many a beautiful woman back to times when a great duke stood unjustly attainted, and the Ormonds served their king with steel sword and golden ewer; and served him faithfully and well.
Camilla Lent called a little later. Ailsa was in the backyard garden, a trowel in her hand, industriously loosening the earth around the prairie roses.
"Camilla," she said, looking up from where she was kneeling among the shrubs, "what was it you said this morning about Mr. Berkley being some unpleasant kind of man?"
"How funny," laughed Camilla. "You asked me that twice before."
"Did I? I forgot," said Mrs. Paige with a shrug; and, bending over again, became exceedingly busy with her trowel until the fire in her cheeks had cooled.
"Every woman that ever saw him becomes infatuated with Phil Berkley," said Camilla cheerfully. "I was. You will be. And the worst of it is he's simply not worth it."
"I—thought not."
"Why did you think not?"
"I don't know why."
"He can be fascinating," said Camilla reflectively, "but he doesn't always trouble himself to be."
"Doesn't he?" said Ailsa with a strange sense of relief.
Camilla hesitated, lowered her voice.
"They say he is fast," she whispered. Ailsa, on her knees, turned and looked up.
"Whatever that means," added Camilla, shuddering. "But all the same, every girl who sees him begins to adore him immediately until her parents make her stop."
"How silly," said Ailsa in a leisurely level voice. But her heart was beating furiously, and she turned to her roses with a blind energy that threatened them root and runner.
"How did you happen to think of him at all?" continued Camilla mischievously.
"He called on—Mrs. Craig this afternoon."
"I didn't know she knew him."
"They are related—distantly—I believe——"
"Oh," exclaimed Camilla. "I'm terribly sorry I spoke that way about him, dear——"
"I don't care what you say about him," returned Ailsa Paige fiercely, emptying some grains of sand out of one of her gloves; resolutely emptying her mind, too, of Philip Berkley.
"Dear," she added gaily to Camilla, "come in and we'll have tea and gossip, English fashion. And I'll tell you about my new duties at the Home for Destitute Children—every morning from ten to twelve, my dear, in their horrid old infirmary—the poor little darlings!—and I would be there all day if I wasn't a selfish, indolent, pleasure-loving creature without an ounce of womanly feeling—Yes I am! I must be, to go about to galleries and dances and Philharmonics when there are motherless children in that infirmary, as sick for lack of love as for the hundred and one ailments distressing their tender little bodies."
But over their tea and marmalade and toast she became less communicative; and once or twice the conversation betrayed an unexpected tendency to drift toward Berkley.
"I haven't the slightest curiosity concerning him, dear," said Ailsa, attempting corroboration in a yawn—which indiscretion she was unable to accomplish.
"Well," remarked Camilla, "the chances are that you've seen the last of him if you showed it too plainly. Men don't come back when a girl doesn't wish them to. Do they?"
After Camilla had gone, Ailsa roamed about the parlours, apparently renewing her acquaintance with the familiar decorations. Sometimes she stood at windows, looking thoughtfully into the empty street; sometimes she sat in corners, critically surveying empty space.
Yes, the chances were that he would scarcely care to come back. A man of that kind did not belong in her sister-in-law's house, anyway, nor in her own—a man who could appeal to a woman for a favourable opinion of himself, asking her to suspend her reason, stifle logic, stultify her own intelligence, and trust to a sentimental impulse that he deserved the toleration and consideration which he asked for. . . . It was certainly well for her that he should not return. . . . It would be better for her to lay the entire matter before her sister-in-law—that was what she would do immediately!
She sprang to her feet and ran lightly up-stairs; but, fast as she fled, thought outran her slender flying feet, and she came at last very leisurely into Celia's room, a subdued, demure opportunist, apparently with nothing on her mind and conscience,
"If I may have the carriage at ten, Celia, I'll begin on the Destitute Children to-morrow. . . . Poor babies! . . . If they only had once a week as wholesome food as is wasted in this city every day by Irish servants . . . which reminds me—I suppose you will have to invite your new kinsman to dine with you."
"There is loads of time for that, Honey-bud," said her sister-in-law, glancing up absently from the note she was writing.
"I was merely wondering whether it was necessary at all," observed
Ailsa Paige, without interest.
But Celia had begun to write again. "I'll ask him," she said in her softly preoccupied voice, "Saturday, I think."
"Oh, but I'm invited to the Cortlandt's," began Ailsa, and caught her under lip in her teeth. Then she turned and walked noiselessly into her bedroom, and sat down on the bed and looked at the wall.
CHAPTER IV
It was almost mid-April; and still the silvery-green tassels on the wistaria showed no hint of the blue petals folded within; but the maples' leafless symmetry was already veined with fire. Faint perfume from Long Island woodlands, wandering puffs of wind from salt meadows freshened the city streets; St. Felix Street boasted a lilac bush in leaf; Oxford Street was gay with hyacinths and a winter-battered butterfly; and in Fort Greene Place the grassy door-yards were exquisite with crocus bloom. Peace, good-will, and spring on earth; but in men's souls a silence as of winter.
To Northland folk the unclosing buds of April brought no awakening; lethargy fettered all, arresting vigour, sapping desire. An immense inertia chained progress in its tracks, while overhead the gray storm-wrack fled away,—misty, monstrous, gale-driven before the coming hurricane.
Still, for the Northland, there remained now little of the keener suspense since those first fiery outbursts in the South; but all through the winter the dull pain throbbed in silence as star after star dropped from the old galaxy and fell flashing into the new.
And it was a time of apathy, acquiescence, stupefied incredulity; a time of dull faith in destiny, duller resignation.
The printed news was read day after day by a people who understood nothing, neither the cautious arming nor the bold disarming, nor the silent fall of fortified places, nor the swift dismantling of tall ships—nor did they comprehend the ceaseless tremors of a land slowly crumbling under the subtle pressure—nor that at last the vast disintegration of the matrix would disclose the forming crystal of another nation cradled there, glittering, naming under the splendour of the Southern skies.
A palsied Old Year had gone out. The mindless old man—he who had been President—went with it. A New Year had come in, and on its infant heels shambled a tall, gaunt shape that seated itself by the White House windows and looked out into the murk of things with eyes that no man understood.
And now the soft sun of April spun a spell upon the Northland folk; for they had eyes but they saw not; ears had they, but they heard not; neither spoke they through the mouth.
To them only one figure seemed real, looming above the vast and motionless mirage where a continent stood watching the parapets of a sea-girt fort off Charleston.
But the nation looked too long; the mirage closed in; fort, sea, the flag itself, became unreal; the lone figure on the parapet turned to a phantom. God's will was doing. Who dared doubt?
"There seems to be no doubt in the South," observed Ailsa Paige to her brother-in-law one fragrant evening after dinner where, in the dusk, the family had gathered on the stoop after the custom of a simpler era.
Along the dim street long lines of front stoops blossomed with the light spring gowns of women and young girls, pale, dainty clusters in the dusk set with darker figures, where sparks from cigars glowed and waned in the darkness.
Windows were open, here and there a gas jet in a globe flickered inside a room, but the street was dusky and tranquil as a country lane, and unilluminated save where at far intervals lamp-posts stood in a circle of pale light, around which a few moths hovered.
"The rebels," repeated Ailsa, "appear to have no doubts, honest or otherwise. They've sent seven thousand troops to the Charleston fortifications—the paper says."
Stephen Craig heard his cousin speak but made no response. He was smoking openly and in sight of his entire family the cigar which had, heretofore, been consumed surreptitiously. His mother sat close to his shoulder, rallying him like a tormenting schoolgirl, and, at intervals, turning to look back at her husband who stood on the steps beside her, a little amused, a little proud, a little inclined to be critical of this tall son of his who yesterday had been a boy.
The younger daughters of the house, Paige and Marye, strolled past, bareheaded, arms linked, in company with Camilla and Jimmy Lent.
"O dad!" called out Paige softly, "Jim says that Major Anderson is to be reinforced at once. There was a bulletin this evening."
"I am very glad to hear it, sweetheart," said her father, smiling through his eye-glasses.
Stephen bent forward across his mother's shoulder. "Is that true, father?"
"Camilla's brother has probably been reading the Tribune's evening bulletin. The Herald bulletin says that the Cabinet has ordered the evacuation of Fort Sumter; the Times says Major Anderson is to be reinforced; the World says that he abandoned the fort last night; and they all say he has been summoned to surrender. Take your choice, Steve," he added wearily. "There is only one wire working from the South, and the rebels control that."
"Are you tired, Curt?" asked his wife, looking around and up at him.
He seated himself and readjusted his eye-glasses.
"No, dear—only of this nightmare we are living in"—he stopped abruptly. Politics had been avoided between them. There was a short silence; he felt his wife's hand touch his in the darkness—sign of a tender respect for his perplexity, but not for his political views.
"Forgive me, dear, for using the word 'rebel,'" he said, smiling and straightening his shoulders. "Where have you and Ailsa been to-day? Did you go to New York?"
"Yes. We saw the Academy, and, oh, Curt! there are some very striking landscapes—two by Gifford; and the cutest portrait of a girl by Wiyam Hunt. And your friend Bierstadt has a Western scene—all fireworks! and, dear, Eastman Johnson was there—and Kensett sent such a cunning little landscape. We lunched at Taylor's." She lowered her voice to a whisper. "Ailsa did look too cute fo' words. I declare she is the most engaging little minx. Eve'y man sta'ed at her. I wish she would marry again and be happy. She doesn't know what a happy love affair can be—poor baby."
"Do you?" asked her husband.
"Are you beginning to co't me again, Curt?"
"Have I ever ceased?—you little Rebel!"
"No," she said under her breath.
"By the way, Celia," he said smiling, "that young man—cousin of yours—Berkley, turned up promptly to-day. I gave him a room in the office."
"That was certainly ve'y frien'ly of you, Curt!" she responded warmly. "You will be patient with him, won't you?"
"I've had to be already. I gave him a commission to collect some rents and he came back fifty dollars short, calmly explaining that one of our lodgers looked poor and he hated to ask for the rent."
"O Curt—the boy is ve'y sweet and wa'm-hearted. Were you cross with him?"
"Not very. I imparted a few plain truths—very pleasantly, Celia. He knew better; there's a sort of an impish streak in him—also an inclination for the pleasant by-ways of life. . . . He had better let drink alone, too, if he expects to remain in my office. I told him that."
"Does he—the foolish baby!"
"Oh, probably not very much. I don't know; he's likable, but—he hasn't inspired me with any overwhelming respect and confidence. His record is not exactly savoury. But he's your protege, and I'll stand him as long as you can."
"Thank you, Curt. We must be gentle to him. I shall ask him to dinner and we can give a May dance perhaps—something informal and pretty—What is the matter, Curt?"
"Nothing, dear. . . . Only I wouldn't plan anything just yet—I mean for the present—not for a few days, anyway——"
He shrugged, removed his glasses, polished them on his handkerchief, and sat holding them, his short-sighted eyes lost in reverie.
His wife endured it to the limit of patience:
"Curt," she began in a lower voice, "you and I gen'ally avoid certain matters, dear—but—ev'ything is sure to come right in the end—isn't it? The No'th is going to be sensible."
"In the—end," he admitted quietly. And between them the ocean sprang into view again.
"I wonder—" She stopped, and an inexplicable uneasiness stirred in her breast. She looked around at her son, her left hand fell protectingly upon his shoulder, her right, groping, touched her husband's sleeve.
"I am—well cared for—in the world," she sighed happily to herself. "It shall not come nigh me."
Stephen was saying to Ailsa:
"There's a piece of up-town property that came into the office to-day which seems to me significant of the future. It would be a good investment for you, Cousin Ailsa. Some day Fifth Avenue will be built up solidly with brown-stone mansions as far as the Central Park. It is all going to be wonderfully attractive when they finish it."
Ailsa mused for a moment. Then:
"I walked down this street to Fort Greene this afternoon," she began, "and the little rocky park was so sweet and fragrant with dogwood and Forsythia and new buds everywhere. And I looked out over the rivers and the bay and over the two cities and, Steve, somehow—I don't know why—I found my eyes filling with tears. I don't know why, Steve——"
"Feminine sentiment," observed her cousin, smoking.
Mrs. Craig's fingers became restless on her husband's sleeve; she spoke at moments in soft, wistful tones, watching her younger daughters and their friends grouped under the trees in the dusk. And all the time, whatever it was that had brought a new unease into her breast was still there, latent. She had no name to give it, no reason, no excuse; it was too shadowy to bear analysis, too impalpable to be defined, yet it remained there; she was perfectly conscious of it, as she held her husband's sleeve the tighter.
"Curt, is business so plaguey poor because of all these politics?"
"My business is not very flourishing. Many men feel the uncertainty; not everybody, dear."
"When this—matter—is settled, everything will be easier for you, won't it? You look so white and tired, dear."
Stephen overheard her.
"The matter, as you call it, won't be settled without a row, mother—if you mean the rebellion."
"Such a wise boy with his new cigar," she smiled through a sudden resurgence of uneasiness.
The boy said calmly: "Mother, you don't understand; and all the rest of the South is like you."
"Does anybody understand, Steve?" asked his father, slightly ironical.
"Some people understand there's going to be a big fight," said the boy.
"Oh. Do you?"
"Yes," he said, with the conviction of youth. "And I'm wondering who's going to be in it."
"The militia, of course," observed Ailsa scornfully. "Camilla is forever sewing buttons on Jimmy's dress uniform. He wears them off dancing."
Mr. Craig said, unsmiling: "We are not a military nation, Steve; we are not only non-military but we are unmilitary—if you know what that means."
"We once managed to catch Cornwallis," suggested his son, still proudly smoking.
"I wonder how we did it?" mused his father.
"They were another race—those catchers of Cornwallis—those fellows in, blue-and-buff and powdered hair."
"You and Celia are their grandchildren," observed Ailsa, "and you are a West Point graduate."
Her brother-in-law looked at her with a strange sort of humour in his handsome, near-sighted eyes:
"Yes, too blind to serve the country that educated me. And now
it's too late; the desire is gone; I have no inclination to fight,
Ailsa. Drums always annoyed me. I don't particularly like a gun.
I don't care for a fuss. I don't wish to be a soldier."
Ailsa said: "I rather like the noise of drums. I think I'd like—war."
"Molly Pitcher! Molly Pitcher! Of what are you babbling," whispered Celia, laughing down the flashes of pain that ran through her heart. "Wars are ended in our Western World. Didn't you know it, grandchild of Vikings? There are to be no more Lake Champlains, only debates—n'est ce pas, Curt?—very grand debates between gentlemen of the South and gentlemen of the North in Congress assembled——"
"Two congresses assembled," said Ailsa calmly, "and the debates will be at long range——"
"By magnetic telegraph if you wish, Honey-bell," conceded Celia hastily. "Oh, we must not begin disputin' about matters that nobody can possibly he'p. It will all come right; you know it will, don't you, Curt?"
"Yes, I know it, somehow."
Silence, fragrance, and darkness, through which rang the distant laugh of a young girl. And, very, very far away sounds arose in the city, dull, indistinct, lost for moments at a time, then audible again, and always the same sounds, the same monotony, and distant persistence.
"I do believe they're calling an extra," said Ailsa, lifting her head to listen.
Celia listened, too.
"Children shouting at play," she said.
"They are calling an extra, Celia!"
"No, little Cassandra, it's only boys skylarking."
For a while they remained listening and silent. The voices still persisted, but they sounded so distant that the light laughter from their neighbour's stoop drowned the echoes.
Later, Jimmy Lent drifted into the family circle.
"They say that there's an extra out about Fort Sumter," he said.
"Do you think he's given up, Mr. Craig?"
"If there's an extra out the fort is probably safe enough, Jim," said the elder man carelessly. He rose and went toward the group of girls and youths under the trees.
"Come, children," he said to his two daughters; and was patient amid indignant protests which preceded the youthful interchange of reluctant good-nights.
When he returned to the stoop Ailsa had gone indoors with her cousin. His wife rose to greet him as though he had been away on a long journey, and then, passing her arms around her schoolgirl daughters, and nodding a mischievous dismissal to Jimmy Lent, walked slowly into the house. Bolts were shot, keys turned; from the lighted front parlour came the notes of the sweet-toned square piano, and Ailsa's voice:
—"Dear are her charms to me,
Dearest her constancy,
Aileen aroon—"
"Never mind any more of that silly song!" exclaimed Celia, imprisoning Ailsa's arms from behind.
"Youth must with time decay,
Aileen aroon,
Beauty must fade away,
Aileen aroon—"
"Don't, dear! please——"
But Ailsa sang on obstinately:
"Castles are sacked in war,
Chieftains are scattered far,
Truth is a fixed star,
Aileen aroon."
And, glancing back over her shoulder, caught her breath quickly.
"Celia! What is the matter, dear?"
"Nothing. I don't like such songs—just now——"
"What songs?"
"I don't know, Ailsa; songs about war and castles. Little things plague me. . . . There's been altogether too much talk about war—it gets into ev'ything, somehow. I can't seem to he'p it, somehow——"
"Why, Celia! You are not worrying?"
"Not fo' myse'f, Honey-bud. Somehow, to-night—I don't know—and
Curt seemed a little anxious."
She laughed with an effort; her natural gaiety returned to buoy her above this indefinable undercurrent of unrest.
Paige and Marye came in from the glass extension where their father was pacing to and fro, smoking his bedtime cigar, and their mother began her invariable running comment concerning the day's events, rallying her children, tenderly tormenting them with their shortcomings—undarned stockings, lessons imperfectly learned, little household tasks neglected—she was always aware of and ready at bedtime to point out every sin of omission.
"As fo' you, Paige, you are certainly a ve'y rare kind of Honey-bird, and I reckon Mr. Ba'num will sho'ly catch you some day fo' his museum. Who ever heard of a shif'less Yankee girl except you and Marye?"
"O mother, how can we mend everything we tear? It's heartless to ask us!"
"You don't have to try to mend _ev'y_thing. Fo' example, there's
Jimmy Lent's heart——"
A quick outbreak of laughter swept them—all except Paige, who flushed furiously over her first school-girl affair.
"That poor Jimmy child came to me about it," continued their mother, "and asked me if I would let you be engaiged to him; and I said, 'Certainly, if Paige wants to be, Jimmy. I was engaiged myse'f fo' times befo' I was fo'teen——'"
Another gale of laughter drowned her words, and she sat there dimpled, mischievous, naively looking around, yet in her careful soul shrewdly pursuing her wise policy of airing all sentimental matters in the family circle—letting in fresh air and sunshine on what so often takes root and flourishes rather morbidly at sixteen.
"It's perfectly absurd," observed Ailsa, "at your age, Paige——"
"Mother was married at sixteen! Weren't you, dearest?"
"I certainly was; but I am a bad rebel and you are good little Yankees; and good little Yankees wait till they're twenty odd befo' they do anything ve'y ridiculous."
"We expect to wait," said Paige, with a dignified glance at her sister.
"You've four years to wait, then," laughed Marye.
"What's the use of being courted if you have to wait four years?"
"And you've three years to wait, silly," retorted Paige. "But I don't care; I'd rather wait. It isn't very long, now. Ailsa, why don't you marry again?"
Ailsa's lip curled her comment upon the suggestion. She sat under the crystal chandelier reading a Southern newspaper which had been sent recently to Celia. Presently her agreeable voice sounded in appreciative recitation of what she was reading.
"Hath not the morning dawned with added light?
And shall not evening call another star
Out of the infinite regions of the night
To mark this day in Heaven? At last we are
A nation among nations; and the world
Shall soon behold in many a distant port
Another flag unfurled!"
"Listen, Celia," she said, "this is really beautiful:
A tint of pink fire touched Mrs. Craig's cheeks, but she said nothing. And Ailsa went on, breathing out the opening beauty of Timrod's "Ethnogenesis":
"Now come what may, whose favour need we court?
And, under God, whose thunder need we fear?"
She stopped short, considering the printed page. Then, doubtfully:
"And what if, mad with wrongs themselves have wrought,
In their own treachery caught,
By their own fears made bold,
And leagued with him of old
Who long since, in the limits of the North,
Set up his evil throne, and warred with God—
What if, both mad and blinded in their rage
Our foes should fling us down the mortal gauge,
And with a hostile horde profane our sod!"
The girl reddened, sat breathing a little faster, eyes on the page; then:
"Nor would we shun the battleground!
. . . The winds in our defence
Shall seem to blow; to us the hills shall lend
Their firmness and their calm,
And in our stiffened sinews we shall blend
The strength of pine and palm!
Call up the clashing elements around
And test the right and wrong!
On one side creeds that dare to preach
What Christ and Paul refused to teach——"
"Oh!" she broke off with a sharp intake of breath; "Do they believe such things of us in the South, Celia?"
The pink fire deepened in Celia Craig's cheeks; her lips unclosed, tightened, as though a quick retort had been quickly reconsidered. She meditated. Then: "Honey-bell," she said tranquilly, "if we are bitter, try to remember that we are a nation in pain."
"A nation!"
"Dear, we have always been that—only the No'th has just found it out. Charleston is telling her now. God give that our cannon need not repeat it."
"But, Celia, the cannon can't! The same flag belongs to us both."
"Not when it flies over Sumter, Honey-bird." There came a subtle ringing sound in Celia Craig's voice; she leaned forward, taking the newspaper from Ailsa's idle fingers:
"Try to be fair," she said in unsteady tones. "God knows I am not trying to teach you secession, but suppose the guns on Governor's Island were suddenly swung round and pointed at this street? Would you care ve'y much what flag happened to be flying over Castle William? Listen to another warning from this stainless poet of the South." She opened the newspaper feverishly, glanced quickly down the columns, and holding it high under the chandelier, read in a hushed but distinct voice, picking out a verse here and there at random:
"Calm as that second summer which precedes
The first fall of the snow,
In the broad sunlight of heroic deeds
A city bides her foe.
"As yet, behind high ramparts stem and proud
Where bolted thunders sleep,
Dark Sumter like a battlemented cloud
Towers o'er the solemn deep.
"But still along the dim Atlantic's line
The only hostile smoke
Creeps like a harmless mist above the brine
From some frail floating oak.
"And still through streets re-echoing with trade
Walk grave and thoughtful men
Whose hands may one day wield the patriot's blade
As lightly as the pen.
"And maidens, with such eyes as would grow dim
Over a wounded hound
Seem each one to have caught the strength of him
Whose sword-knot she hath hound.
"Thus, girt without and garrisoned at home,
Day patient following day,
Old Charleston looks from roof and spire and dome
Across her tranquil bay.
"Shall the spring dawn, and she, still clad in steel,
And with an unscathed brow,
Watch o'er a sea unvexed by hostile keel
As fair and free as now?
"We know not. In the Temples of the Fates
God has inscribed her doom;
And, all untroubled in her faith she waits
Her triumph or her tomb!"
The hushed charm of their mother's voice fascinated the children. Troubled, uncertain, Ailsa rose, took a few irresolute steps toward the extension where her brother-in-law still paced to and fro in the darkness, the tip of his cigar aglow. Then she turned suddenly.
"Can't you understand, Ailsa?" asked her sister-in-law wistfully.
"Celia—dearest," she stammered, "I simply can't understand. . . .
I thought the nation was greater than all——"
"The State is greater, dear. Good men will realise that when they see a sovereign people standing all alone for human truth and justice—standing with book and sword under God's favour, as sturdily as ever Israel stood in battle fo' the right!—I don't mean to be disloyal to my husband in saying this befo' my children. But you ask me, and I must tell the truth if I answer at all."
Slender, upright, transfigured with a flushed and girlish beauty wholly strange to them, she moved restlessly back and forth across the room, a slim, lovely, militant figure all aglow with inspiration, all aquiver with emotion too long and loyally suppressed.
Paige and Marye, astonished, watched her without a word. Ailsa stood with one hand resting on the mantel, a trifle pale but also silent, her startled eyes following this new incarnation wearing the familiar shape of Celia Craig.
"Ailsa!"
"Yes, dear."
"Can you think evil of a people who po' out their hearts in prayer and praise? Do traitors importune fo' blessings?"
She turned nervously to the piano and struck a ringing chord, another—and dropped to the chair, head bowed on her slim childish neck. Presently there stole through the silence a tremulous voice intoning the "Libera Nos," with its strange refrain:
"A furore Normanorum Libera nos, O Domme!" Then, head raised, the gas-light flashing on her dull-gold hair, her voice poured forth all that was swelling and swelling up in her bruised and stifled heart:
"God of our fathers! King of Kings!
Lord of the earth and sea!
With hearts repentant and sincere
We turn in need to thee."
She saw neither her children nor her husband nor Ailsa now, where they gathered silently beside her. And she sang on:
"In the name of God! Amen!
Stand for our Southern rights;
On our side. Southern men,
The God of Battles fights!
Fling the invader far—
Hurl back his work of woe—
His voice is the voice of a brother,
But his hands are the hands of a foe.
By the blood which cries to Heaven.
Crimson upon our sod
Stand, Southrons, fight and conquer
In the Name of the Living God!"
Like receding battle echoes the chords, clashing distantly, died away.
If she heard her husband turn, enter the hallway, and unbolt the door, she made no sign. Ailsa, beside her, stooped and passed one arm around her.
"You—are not crying, are you, Celia, darling?" she whispered.
Her sister-in-law, lashes wet, rose with decision.
"I think that I have made a goose of myse'f to-night. Marye, will you say to your father that it is after eleven o'clock, and that I am waiting to be well scolded and sent to bed?"
"Father went out a few moments ago," said Paige in an awed voice.
"I heard him unbolt the front door."
Ailsa turned and walked swiftly out into the hallway; the front door swung wide; Mr. Craig stood on the steps wearing his hat. He looked around as she touched his arm.
"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——.