"Oh," said Hallam slowly.
She stood silent, the colour racing through her cheeks. She could not, in the same breath, ask Hallam to release her. It was impossible. Nothing on earth could prevent his believing that it was because she wished to marry Berkley. And she was never to marry Berkley. She knew it, now.
"Who is this Private Ormond, anyway?" asked Hallam, handsome eyes bent curiously on her.
And she said, calmly: "I think you did not mean to ask me that,
Captain Hallam."
"Why not?"
"Because the man in question would have told you had he not desired the privilege of privacy—to which we all are entitled, I think."
"It seems to me," said Hallam, reddening, "that, under the circumstances, I myself have been invested by you with some privileges."
"Not yet," she returned quietly. And again her reply implied deceit; and she saw, too late, whither that reply led—where she was drifting, helpless to save herself, or Berkley, or this man to whom she had been betrothed.
"I've got to speak now," she began desperately calm. "I must tell you that I cannot marry you. I do not love you enough. I am forced to say it. I was a selfish, weak, unhappy fool when I thought I could care enough for you to marry you. All the fault is mine; all the blame is on me. I am a despicable woman."
"Are you crazy, Ailsa!"
"Half crazed, I think. If you can, some day, try to forgive me—I should be very grateful."
"Do you mean to tell me that you—you are—have been—in love with this—this broken-down adventurer——"
"Yes. From the first second in my life that I ever saw him. Now you know the truth. And you will now consider me worthy of this—adventurer——"
"No," he replied. And thought a moment. Then he looked at her.
"I don't intend to give you up," he said.
"Captain Hallam, believe me, I am sorry——"
"I won't give you up," he repeated doggedly.
"You won't—release me?"
"No."
She said, with heightened colour: "I am dreadfully sorry—and bitterly ashamed. I deserve no mercy, no consideration at your hands. But—I must return your ring—" She slipped it from her finger, laid it on the table, placed the chain and locket beside it.
She said, wistfully: "I dare not hope to retain your esteem—I dare not say to you how much I really desire your forgiveness—your friendship——"
Suddenly he turned on her a face, red, distorted, with rage.
"Do you know what this means to me? It means ridicule in my regiment! What kind of figure do you think I shall cut after this? It's—it's a shame!—it's vile usage. I'll appear absurd—absurd! Do you understand?"
Shocked, she stared into his inflamed visage, which anger and tortured vanity had marred past all belief.
"Is that why you care?" she asked slowly.
"Ailsa! Good God—I scarcely know what I'm saying——"
"I know."
She stepped back, eyes darkening to deepest violet—retreated, facing him, step by step to the doorway, through it; and left him standing there.
CHAPTER XIII
Berkley's first letter to her was written during that week of lovely weather, the first week in March. The birds never sang more deliriously, the regimental bands never played more gaily; every camp was astir in the warm sunshine with companies, regiments, brigades, or divisions drilling.
At the ceremonies of guard mount and dress parade the country was thronged with visitors from Washington, ladies in gay gowns and scarfs, Congressmen in silk hats and chokers, apparently forgetful of their undignified role in the late affair at Bull Run—even children with black mammies in scarlet turbans and white wool dresses came to watch a great army limbering up after a winter of inaction.
He wrote to her:
"Dearest, it has been utterly impossible for me to obtain leave of absence and a pass to go as far as the Farm Hospital. I tried to run the guard twice, but had to give it up. I'm going to try again as soon as there seems any kind of a chance.
"We have moved our camp. Why, heaven knows. If our general understood what cavalry is for we would have been out long ago—miles from here—if to do nothing more than make a few maps which, it seems, our august leaders entirely lack.
"During the night the order came: 'This division will move at four o'clock in the morning with two days' rations.' All night long we were at work with axe and hammer, tearing down quarters, packing stores, and loading our waggons.
"We have an absurd number of waggons. There is an infantry regiment camped near us that has a train of one hundred and thirty-six-mule teams to transport its household goods. It's the 77th New York,
"The next morning the sun rose on our army in motion. You say that I am a scoffer. I didn't scoff at that spectacle. We were on Flint Hill; and, as far as we could see around us, the whole world was fairly crawling with troops. Over them a rainbow hung. Later it rained, as you know.
"I'm wet, Ailsa. The army for the first time is under shelter tents. The Sibley wall tents and wedge tents are luxuries of the past for officers and men alike.
"The army—that is, the bulk of it—camped at five. We—the cavalry—went on to see what we could see around Centreville; but the rebels had burned it, so we came back here where we don't belong—a thousand useless men armed with a thousand useless weapons. Because, dear, our lances are foolish things, picturesque but utterly unsuited to warfare in such a country as this.
"You see, I've become the sort of an ass who is storing up information and solving vast and intricate problems in order to be kind to my superiors when, struck with panic at their own tardily discovered incapacity, they rush to me in a body to ask me how to do it.
"Rush's Lancers are encamped near you now; our regiment is not far from them. If I can run the guard I'll do it. I'm longing to see you, dear.
"I've written to Celia, as you know, so she won't be too much astonished if I sneak into the gallery some night.
"I've seen a lot of Zouaves, the 5th, 9th, 10th, and other regiments, but not the 3rd. What a mark they make of themselves in their scarlet and blue. Hawkins' regiment, the 9th, is less conspicuous, wearing only the red headgear and facings, but Duryea's regiment is a sight! A magnificent one from the spectacular stand-point, but the regiments in blue stand a better chance of being missed by the rebel riflemen. I certainly wish Colonel Craig's Zouaves weren't attired like tropical butterflies. But for heaven's sake don't say this to Celia.
"Well, you see, I betray the cloven hoof of fear, even when I write you. It's a good thing that I know I am naturally a coward; because I may learn to be so ashamed of my legs that I'll never run at all, either way.
"Dear, I'm too honest with you to make promises, and far too intelligent not to know that when people begin shooting at each other somebody is likely to get hit. It is instinctive in me to avoid mutilation and extemporary death if I can do it. I realise what it means when the air is full of singing, buzzing noises; when twigs and branches begin to fall and rattle on my cap and saddle; when weeds and dead grass are snipped off short beside me; when every mud puddle is starred and splashed; when whack! smack! whack! on the stones come flights of these things you hear about, and hear, and never see. And—it scares me.
"But I'm trying to figure out that, first, I am safer if I do what my superiors tell me to do; second, that it's a dog's life anyway; third, that it's good enough for me, so why run away from it?
"Some day some of these Johnnies will scare me so that I'll start after them. There's no fury like a man thoroughly frightened.
"Nobody has yet been hurt in any of the lancer regiments except one of Rush's men, who got tangled up in the woods and wounded himself with his own lance.
"Oh, these lances! And oh, the cavalry! And, alas! a general who doesn't know how to use his cavalry.
"No sooner does a cavalry regiment arrive than, bang! it's split up into troops—a troop to escort General A., another to gallop after General B., another to sit around headquarters while General C. dozes after dinner! And, if it's not split up, it's detailed bodily on some fool's job instead of being packed off under a line officer to find out what is happening just beyond the end of the commander's nose.
"The visitors like to see us drill—like to see us charge, red pennons flying, lances at rest. I like to see Rush's Lancers, too. But, all the same, sometimes when we go riding gaily down the road, some of those dingy, sunburnt Western regiments who have been too busy fighting to black their shoes line up along the road and repeat, monotonously:
"'Who-ever-saw-a-dead-cavalryman?'
"It isn't what they say, Ailsa, it's the expression of their dirty faces that turns me red, sometimes, and sometimes incites me to wild mirth.
"I'm writing this squatted under my 'tente d'abri.' General McClellan, with a preposterous staff the size of a small brigade, has just passed at a terrific gallop—a handsome, mild-eyed man who has made us into an army, and who ornaments headquarters with an entire squadron of Claymore's 20th Dragoons and one of our own 8th Lancers. Well, some day he'll come to me and say: 'Ormond, I understand that there is only one man in the entire army fit to command it. Accept this cocked hat.'
"That detail would suit me, dear. I could get behind the casemates of Monroe and issue orders. I was cut out to sit in a good, thick casemate and bring this cruel war to an end.
"A terribly funny thing happened at Alexandria. A raw infantry regiment was camped near the seminary, and had managed to flounder through guard mount. The sentinels on duty kept a sharp lookout and turned out the guard every time a holiday nigger hove in sight; and sentinels and guard and officer were getting awfully tired of their mistakes; and the day was hot, and the sentinels grew sleepy.
"Then one sentry, dozing awake, happened to turn and glance toward the woods; and out of it, over the soft forest soil, and already nearly on top of him, came a magnificent cavalcade at full gallop—the President, and Generals McClellan and Benjamin Butler leading.
"Horror paralyzed him, then he ran toward the guard house, shrieking at the top of his lungs:
"'Great God! Turn out the guard! Here comes Old Abe and Little
Mac and Beast Butler!'
"And that's all the camp gossip and personal scandal that I have to relate to you, dear.
"I'll run the guard if I can, so help me Moses!
"And I am happier than I have ever been in all my life. If I don't run under fire you have promised not to stop loving me. That is the bargain, remember.
"Here comes your late lamented. I'm no favorite of his, nor he of mine. He did me a silly trick the other day—had me up before the Colonel because he said that it had been reported to him that I had enlisted under an assumed name.
"I had met the Colonel. He looked at me and said:
"'Is Ormond your name?'
[Illustration: "'Is Ormond your name?'"]
"I said: 'It is, partly.'
"He said: 'Then it is sufficient to fight under.'
"Ailsa, I am going to tell you something. It has to do with me, as you know me, and it has to do with Colonel Arran.
"I'm afraid I'm going to hurt you; but I'm also afraid it will be necessary.
"Colonel Arran is your friend. But, Ailsa, I am his implacable enemy. Had I dreamed for one moment that the Westchester Horse was to become the 10th troop of Arran's Lancers, I would never have joined it.
"It was a bitter dose for me to swallow when my company was sworn into the United States service under this man.
"Since, I have taken the matter philosophically. He has not annoyed me, except by being alive on earth. He showed a certain primitive decency in not recognizing me when he might have done it in a very disagreeable fashion. I think he was absolutely astonished to see me there; but he never winked an eyelash. I give the devil his due.
"All this distresses you, dear. But I cannot help it; you would have to know, sometime, that Colonel Arran and I are enemies. So let it go at that; only, remembering it, avoid always any uncomfortable situation which must result in this man and myself meeting under your roof."
His letter ended in lighter vein—a gay message to Celia, a cordial one to Letty, and the significant remark that he expected to see her very soon.
The next night he tried to run the guard, and failed.
She had written to him, begging him not to; urging the observance of discipline, while deploring their separation—a sweet, confused letter, breathing in every line her solicitation for him, her new faith and renewed trust in him.
Concerning what he had told her about his personal relations with Colonel Arran she had remained silent—was too unhappy and astonished to reply. Thinking of it later, it recalled to her mind Celia's studied avoidance of any topic in which Colonel Arran figured. She did not make any mental connection between Celia's dislike for the man and Berkley's—the coincidence merely made her doubly unhappy.
And, one afternoon when Letty was on duty and she and Celia were busy with their mending in Celia's room, she thought about Berkley's letter and his enmity, and remembered Celia's silent aversion at the same moment.
"Celia," she said, looking up, "would you mind telling me what it is that you dislike about my old and very dear friend, Colonel Arran?"
Celia continued her needlework for a few moments. Then, without raising her eyes, she said placidly:
"You have asked me that befo', Honey-bird."
"Yes, dear. . . . You know it is not impertinent curiosity——"
"I know what it is, Honey-bee. But you can not he'p this gentleman and myse'f to any ground of common understanding."
"I am so sorry," sighed Ailsa, resting her folded hands on her work and gazing through the open window.
Celia continued to sew without glancing up. Presently she said:
"I reckon I'll have to tell you something about Colonel Arran after all. I've meant to for some time past. Because—because my silence condemns him utterly; and that is not altogether just." She bent lower over her work; her needle travelled more slowly as she went on speaking:
"In my country, when a gentleman considers himse'f aggrieved, he asks fo' that satisfaction which is due to a man of his quality. . . . But Colonel Arran did not ask. And when it was offered, he refused." Her lips curled. "He cited the Law," she said with infinite contempt.
"But Colonel Arran is not a Southerner," observed Ailsa quietly.
"You know how all Northerners feel——"
"It happened befo' you were born, Honey-bud. Even the No'th recognised the code then."
"Is that why you dislike Colonel Arran? Because he refused to challenge or be challenged when the law of the land forbade private murder?"
Celia's cheeks flushed deeply; she tightened her lips; then:
"The law is not made fo' those in whom the higher law is inherent," she said calmly. "It is made fo' po' whites and negroes."
"Celia!"
"It is true, Honey-bird. When a gentleman breaks the law that makes him one, it is time fo' him to appeal to the lower law. And Colonel Arran did so."
"What was his grievance?"
"A deep one, I reckon. He had the right on his side—and his own law to defend it, and he refused. And the consequences were ve'y dreadful."
"To—him?"
"To us all. . . . His punishment was certain."
"Was he punished?"
"Yes. Then, in his turn, he punished—terribly. But not as a gentleman should. Fo' in that code which gove'ns us, no man can raise his hand against a woman. He must endure all things; he may not defend himse'f at any woman's expense; he may not demand justice at the expense of any woman. It is the privilege of his caste to endure with dignity what cannot be remedied or revenged except through the destruction of a woman. . . . And Colonel Arran invoked the lower law; and the justice that was done him destroyed—a woman."
She looked up steadily into Ailsa's eyes.
"She was only a young girl, Honey-bud—too young to marry anybody, too inexperienced to know her own heart until it was too late.
"And Colonel Arran came; and he was ve'y splendid, and handsome, and impressive in his cold, heavy dignity, and ve'y certain that the child must marry him—so certain that she woke up one day and found that she had done it. And learned that she did not love him.
"There was a boy cousin. He was reckless, I reckon; and she was ve'y unhappy; and one night he found her crying in the garden; and there was a ve'y painful scene, and she let him kiss the hem of her petticoat on his promise to go away fo' ever. And—Colonel Arran caught him on his knees, with the lace to his lips—and the child wife crying. . . . He neither asked nor accepted satisfaction; he threatened the—law! And that settled him with her, I reckon, and she demanded her freedom, and he refused, and she took it.
"Then she did a ve'y childish thing; she married the boy—or supposed she did——"
Celia's violet eyes grew dark with wrath:
"And Colonel Arran went into co't with his lawyers and his witnesses and had the divorce set aside—and publicly made this silly child her lover's mistress, and their child nameless! That was the justice that the law rendered Colonel Arran. And now you know why I hate him—and shall always hate and despise him."
Ailsa's head was all awhirl; lips parted, she stared at Celia in stunned silence, making as yet no effort to reconcile the memory of the man she knew with this cold, merciless, passionless portrait.
Nor did the suspicion occur to her that there could be the slightest connection between her sister-in-law's contempt for Colonel Arran and Berkley's implacable enmity.
All the while, too, her clearer sense of right and justice cried out in dumb protest against the injury done to the man who had been her friend, and her parents' friend—kind, considerate, loyal, impartially just in all his dealings with her and with the world, as far as she had ever known.
From Celia's own showing the abstract right and justice of the matter had been on his side; no sane civilisation could tolerate the code that Celia cited. The day of private vengeance was over; the era of duelling was past in the North—was passing in the South. And, knowing Colonel Arran, she knew also that twenty odd years ago his refusal to challenge had required a higher form of courage than to face the fire of a foolish boy's pistol.
And now, collecting her disordered thoughts, she began to understand what part emotion and impulse had played in the painful drama—how youthful ignorance and false sentiment had combined to invest a silly but accidental situation with all the superficial dignity of tragedy.
What must it have meant to Colonel Arran, to this quiet, slow, respectable man of the world, to find his girl wife crying in the moonlight, and a hot-headed boy down on his knees, mumbling the lace edge of her skirts?
What must it have meant to him—for the chances were that he had not spoken the first word—to be confronted by an excited, love-smitten, reckless boy, and have a challenge flung in his face before he had uttered a word.
No doubt his calm reply was to warn the boy to mind his business under penalty of law. No doubt the exasperated youth defied him—insulted him—declared his love—carried the other child off her feet with the exaggerated emotion and heroics. And, once off their feet, she saw how the tide had swept them together—swept them irrevocably beyond reason and recall.
Ailsa rose and stood by the open window, looking out across the hills; but her thoughts were centred on Colonel Arran's tragedy, and the tragedy of those two hot-headed children whom his punishment had out-lawed.
Doubtless his girl wife had told him how the boy had come to be there, and that she had banished him; but the clash between maturity and adolescence is always inevitable; the misunderstanding between ripe experience and Northern logic, and emotional inexperience and Southern impulse was certain to end in disaster.
Ailsa considered; and she knew that now her brief for Colonel Arran was finished, for beyond the abstract right she had no sympathy with the punishment he had dealt out, even though his conscience and civilisation and the law of the land demanded the punishment of these erring' ones.
No, the punishment seemed too deeply tainted with vengeance for her to tolerate.
A deep unhappy sigh escaped her. She turned mechanically, seated herself, and resumed her sewing.
"I suppose I ought to be asleep," she said. "I am on duty to-night, and they've brought in so many patients from the new regiments."
Celia bent and bit off her thread, then passing the needle into the hem, laid her work aside.
"Honey-bud," she said, "you are ve'y tired. If you'll undress I'll give you a hot bath and rub you and brush your hair."
"Oh, Celia, will you? I'd feel so much better." She gave a dainty little shudder and made a wry face, adding:
"I've had so many dirty, sick men to cleanse—oh, incredibly dirty and horrid!—poor boys—it doesn't seem to be their fault, either; and they are so ashamed and so utterly miserable when I am obliged to know about the horror of their condition. . . . Dear, it will be angelic of you to give me a good, hot scrubbing. I could go to sleep if you would."
"Of co'se I will," said Celia simply. And, when Ailsa was ready to call her in she lifted the jugs of water which a negro had brought—one cold, one boiling hot—entered Ailsa's room, filled the fiat tin tub; and, when Ailsa stepped into it, proceeded to scrub her as though she had been two instead of twenty odd.
Then, her glowing body enveloped in a fresh, cool sheet, she lay back and closed her eyes while Celia brushed the dull gold masses of her hair.
"Honey-bee, they say that all the soldiers are in love with you, even my po' Confederate boys in Ward C. Don't you dare corrupt their loyalty!"
"They are the dearest things—all of them," smiled Ailsa sleepily, soothed by the skilful brushing. "I have never had one cross word, one impatient look from Union or Confederate." She added: "They say in Washington that we women are not needed—that we are in the way—that the sick don't want us. . . . Some very important personage from Washington came down to the General Hospital and announced that the Government was going to get rid of all women nurses. And such a dreadful row those poor sick soldiers made! Dr. West told us; he was there at the time. And it seems that the personage went back to Washington with a very different story to tell the powers that be. So I suppose they've concluded to let us alone."
"It doesn't surprise me that a Yankee gove'nment has no use fo' women," observed Celia.
"Hush, dear. That kind of comment won't do. Besides, some horrid stories were afloat about some of the nurses not being all they ought to be."
"That sounds ve'y Yankee, too!"
"Celia! And perhaps it was true that one or two among thousands might not have been everything they should have been," admitted Ailsa, loyal to her government in everything. "And perhaps one or two soldiers were insolent; but neither Letty Lynden nor I have ever heard one unseemly word from the hundreds and hundreds of soldiers we have attended, never have had the slightest hint of disrespect from them."
"They certainly do behave ve'y well," conceded Celia, brushing away vigorously. "They behave like our Virginians."
Ailsa laughed, then, smiling reflectively, glanced at her hand which still bore the traces of a healed scar. Celia noticed her examining the slender, uplifted hand, and said:
"You promised to tell me how you got that scar, Honey-bud."
"I will, now—because the man who caused it has gone North."
"A—man!"
"Yes, poor fellow. When the dressings were changed the agony crazed him and he sometimes bit me. I used to be so annoyed," she added mildly, "and I used to shake my forefinger at him and say, 'Now it's got to be done, Jones; will you promise not to bite me.' And the poor fellow would promise with tears in his eyes—and then he'd forget—poor boy——"
"I'd have slapped him," said Celia, indignantly. "What a darling you are, Ailsa! . . . Now bundle into bed," she added, "because you haven't any too much time to sleep, and poor little Letty Lynden will be half dead when she comes off duty."
Letty really appeared to be half dead when she arrived, and bent wearily over the bed where Ailsa now lay in calm-breathing, rosy slumber.
"Oh, you sweet thing!" she murmured to herself, "you can sleep for two hours yet, but you don't know it." And, dropping her garments from her, one by one, she bathed and did up her hair and crept in beside Ailsa very softly, careful not to arouse her.
But Ailsa, who slept lightly, awoke, turned on her pillow, passed one arm around Letty's dark curls.
"I'll get up," she said drowsily. "Why didn't Flannery call me?"
"You can sleep for an hour or two yet, darling," cooed Letty, nestling close to her. "Mrs. Craig has taken old Bill Symonds, and they'll be on duty for two hours more."
"How generous of Celia—and of old Symonds, too. Everybody seems to be so good to me here."
"Everybody adores you, dear," whispered Letty, her lips against
Ailsa's flushed cheek. "Don't you know it?"
Ailsa laughed; and the laugh completed her awakening past all hope of further slumber.
"You quaint little thing," she said, looking at Letty. "You certainly are the most engaging girl I ever knew."
Letty merely lay and looked her adoration, her soft cheek pillowed on Ailsa's arm. Presently she said:
"Do you remember the first word you ever spoke to me?"
"Yes, I do."
"And—you asked me to come and see you."
"Who wouldn't ask you—little rosebud?"
But Letty only sighed and closed her eyes; nor did she awaken when
Ailsa cautiously withdrew her arm and slipped out of bed.
She still had an hour and more; she decided to dress and go out for a breath of fresh, sweet air to fortify her against the heavy atmosphere of the sick wards.
It was not yet perfectly dark; the thin edge of the new moon traced a pale curve in the western sky; frogs were trilling; a night-bird sang in a laurel thicket unceasingly.
The evening was still, but the quiet was only comparative because, always, all around her, the stirring and murmur of the vast army never entirely ended.
But the drums and bugles, answering one another from hill to hill, from valley to valley, had ceased; she saw the reddening embers of thousands of camp fires through the dusk; every hill was jewelled, every valley gemmed.
In the darkness she could hear the ground vibrate under the steady tread of a column of infantry passing, but she could not see them—could distinguish no motion against the black background of the woods.
Standing there on the veranda, she listened to them marching by. From the duration of the sound she judged it to be only one regiment, probably a new one arriving from the North.
A little while afterward she heard on some neighbouring hillside the far outbreak of hammering, the distant rattle of waggons, the clash of stacked muskets. Then, in sudden little groups, scattered starlike over the darkness, camp fires twinkled into flame. The new regiment had pitched its tents.
It was a pretty sight; she walked out along the fence to see more clearly, stepping aside to avoid collision with a man in the dark, who was in a great hurry—a soldier, who halted to make his excuses, and, instead, took her into his arms with a breathless exclamation.
"Philip!" she faltered, trembling all over.
"Darling! I forgot I was not to touch you!" He crushed her hands swiftly to his lips and let them drop.
"My little Ailsa! My—little—Ailsa!" he repeated under his breath—and caught her to him again.
"Oh—darling—we mustn't," she protested faintly. "Don't you remember, Philip? Don't you remember, dear, what we are to be to one another?"
He stood, face pressed against her burning cheeks; then his arm encircling her waist fell away.
"You're right, dear," he said with a sigh so naively robust, so remarkably hearty, that she laughed outright—a very tremulous and uncertain laugh.
"What a tragically inclined boy! I never before heard a 'thunderous sigh'; but I had read of them in poetry. Philip, tell me instantly how you came here!"
"Ran the guard," he admitted.
"No! Oh, dear, oh, dear!—and I told you not to. Philip! Philip! Do you want to get shot?"
"Now you know very well I don't," he said, laughing. "I spend every minute trying not to. . . . And, Ailsa, what do you think? A little while ago when I was skulking along fences and lurking in ditches—all for your sake, ungrateful fair one!—tramp—tramp—tramp comes a column out of the darkness! 'Lord help us,' said I, 'it's the police guard, or some horrible misfortune, and I'll never see my Ailsa any more!' Then I took a squint at 'em, and I saw officers riding, with about a thousand yards of gold lace on their sleeves, and I saw their music trudging along with that set of silver chimes aloft between two scarlet yaks' tails; and I saw the tasselled fezzes and the white gaiters and—'Aha!' said I—'the Zou-Zous! But which?'
"And, by golly, I made out the number painted white on their knapsacks; and, Ailsa, it was the 3d Zouaves, Colonel Craig!—just arrived! And there—on that hill—are their fires!"
"Oh, Phil!" she exclaimed in rapture, "how heavenly for Celia! I'm perfectly crazy to see Curt and Steve——"
"Please transfer a little of that sweet madness to me."
"Dear—I can't, can I?"
But she let him have her hands; and, resting beside him on the rail fence, bent her fair head as he kissed her joined hands, let it droop lower, lower, till her cheek brushed his. Then, turning very slowly, their lips encountered, rested, till the faint fragrance of hers threatened his self-control.
She opened her blue eyes as he raised his head, looking at him vaguely in the dusk, then very gently shook her head and rested one cheek on her open palm.
"I don't know," she sighed. "I—don't—know—" and closed her lids once more.
"Know what, dearest of women?"
"What is going to happen to us, Phil. . . . It seems incredible—after our vows—after the lofty ideals we——"
"The ideals are there," he said in a low voice. And, in his tone there was a buoyancy, a hint of something new to her—something almost decisive, something of protection which began vaguely to thrill her, as though that guard which she had so long mounted over herself might be relieved—the strain relaxed—-the duty left to him.
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
Lancers are leaving?"
Ailsa's eyes flew wide open:
"Not his regiment!"
"Are there two?"
"Yes," said Ailsa, frightened. "That must be the 6th Pennsylvania. . . . Because I think—somebody would have told me—Colonel Arran——"
She stared through eyes from which the mist of slumber had entirely cleared away. Then she sprang from her bed to the window:
"Oh—oh!" she said half to herself, "he wouldn't go away without saying something to me! He couldn't! . . . And—oh, dear—oh dear, their pennons are swallow-tailed and scarlet! It looks like his regiment—it does—it does! . . . But he wouldn't go without speaking to me——"
Celia turned and looked at her.
"Do you mean Colonel Arran?" And saw that she did not.
For a while they stood there silently together, the soft spring wind blowing over their bare necks and arms, stirring the frail, sheer fabric of their night-robes.
Suddenly the stirring music of cavalry trumpets along the road below startled them; they turned swiftly to look out upon a torrent of scarlet pennons and glancing lance points—troop after troop of dancing horses and blue-clad riders, their flat forage caps set rakishly, bit and spur and sabre hilt glistening, the morning sun flashing golden on the lifted trumpets.
On they came, on, on, horses' heads tossing, the ground shaking with the mellow sound of four thousand separate hoofs,—and passed, troop on troop, a lengthening, tossing wave of scarlet across the verdure.
Then, far away in the column, a red lance pennon swung in a circle, a blue sleeve shot up in salute and adieu. And Ailsa knew that Berkley had seen her, and that the brightness of the young world was leaving her, centred there in the spark of fire that tipped his lance.
Now she saw her lover turn in his saddle and, sitting so, ride on and on, his tall lance slanting from stirrup boot to arm loop, the morning sun bright across his face, and touching each metal button with fire from throat to belt.
So her lancer rode away into the unknown; and she sat on the edge of her bed, crying, until it was time to go on duty and sit beside the dying in the sick wards.
They brought her his last letter that evening.
"You wicked little thing," it ran, "if you hadn't taught me self-respect I'd have tried to run the guard to-night, and would probably have been caught and drummed out or shot. We're in a bustle; orders, totally unexpected, attach us to Porter's Corps, Sykes's division of regulars. Warren's brigade, which includes, I believe, the 5th Zouaves, the 10th Zouaves, 6th Pennsylvania Lancers, and 1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery.
"We've scarcely time to get off; our baggage will never be ready, and how we're going to get to Alexandria and aboard ship is more than I know.
"And I'm simply furious; I'd counted on a dramatic situation,
Ailsa—the soldiers farewell, loud sobs, sweetheart faints, lancer
dashes away unmanly tears—'Be strong, be br-r-rave, dah-ling!
Hevving watches over your Alonzo!'
"Not so. A big brawny brute in spurs comes in the dark to stir us with the toe of his boot. 'Silence,' he hisses, 'if you can't hear that damn reveille, I'll punch you in the snoot, an' then mebbe you'll spread them lop-ears o' yourn!'
"Heaven! Your Alonzo is derided by a hireling!
"'Pack up, you swallow-tailed, leather-seated, pig-prodding sons of galoots!' Thus, our first sergeant, recently of the regulars, roll-call having ended.
"Coffeeless, soupless, tackless, we leer furtively at the two days' rations in our haversacks which we dare not sample; lick our chops reflectively, are cruelly chidden by underlings in uniform, further insulted by other underlings, are stepped on, crowded, bitten, and kicked at by our faithful Arab steeds, are coarsely huddled into line, where officers come to gloat over us and think out further ingenious indignities to heap upon us while we stand to horse. And we stand there two hours!
"I can't keep up this artificial flow of low comedy. The plain fact of the situation is that we're being hustled toward an amphibious thing with paddle-wheels named The Skylark, and I haven't said good-bye to you.
"Ailsa, it isn't likely that anything is going to knock my head off or puncture vital sections of me. But in case the ludicrous should happen, I want you to know that a cleaner man goes before the last Court Marshal than would have stood trial there before he met you.
"You are every inch my ideal of a woman—every fibre in you is utterly feminine. I adore your acquired courage, I worship your heavenly inconsistencies. The mental pleasure I experienced with you was measured and limited only by my own perversity and morbid self-absorption; the splendour of the passion I divine in you, unawakened, awes me, leaves me in wonder. The spiritual tonic, even against my own sickly will has freshened me by mere contact with the world you live in; the touch of your lips and hands—ah, Ailsa—has taught me at last the language that I sneered at.
"Well—we can never marry. How it will be with us, how end, He who, after all is said and done, did construct us, knows now. And we will know some day, when life is burned out in us.
"Hours, days of bitter revolt come—the old madness for you, the old recklessness of desire, the savage impatience with life, assail me still. Because, Ailsa, I would—I could have made you a—well, an interesting husband, anyway. You were fashioned to be the divinest wife and . . . I'm not going on in this strain; I'll write you when I can. And for God's sake take care of your life. There's nothing left if you go—nothing.
"I've made a will. Trooper Burgess, a comrade—my former valet—carries a duplicate memorandum. Don't weep; I'll live to make another. But in this one I have written you that my mother's letters and pictures are to be yours—when I have a chance I'll draw it in legal form. And, dear, first be perfectly sure I'm dead, and then destroy my mother's letters without reading them; and then look upon her face. And I think you will forgive me when I tell you that it is for her sake that I can never marry. But you will not understand why."
Over this letter Ailsa had little time to wonder or to make herself wretched, for that week orders came to evacuate the Farm Hospital and send all sick and wounded to the General Hospital at Alexandria.
A telegram arrived, too, from Miss Dix, who was authorised to detail nurses by the Secretary of War, ordering the two nurses of Sainte Ursula's Sisterhood to await letters of recommendation and written assignments to another hospital to be established farther south. But where that hospital was to be built nobody seemed to know.
A week later a dozen Protestant women nurses arrived at Alexandria, where they were made unwelcome. Medical directors, surgeons, ward masters objected, bluntly declaring that they wouldn't endure a lot of women interfering and fussing and writing hysterical nonsense to the home newspapers.
For a while confusion reigned, intensified by the stupendous mobilisation going on all around.
A medical officer came to the Farm Hospital and angrily informed Ailsa that the staff had had enough of women in the wards; and from forty cots forty half-dead, ghastly creatures partly rose and cursed the medical gentleman till his ears burned crimson,
Ailsa, in her thin gray habit bearing the scarlet heart, stood in the middle of the ward and defied him with her credentials.
"The medical staff of the army has only to lay its case before the Secretary of War," she said, looking calmly at him, "and that is where the Sanitary Commission obtains its authority. Meanwhile our orders detail us here for duty."
"We'll see about that!" he snapped, backing away.
"So will we," said Ailsa, smiling. But that afternoon she and
Letty took an ambulance and went, in great distress of mind, to see
Mother Angela, Superior of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, who had
arrived from Indiana ready to continue hospital duties on the
Potomac if necessary.
The lovely Superieure, a lady of rare culture and ability, took
Ailsa's hand in hers with a sad smile.
"Men's prejudices are hard to meet. The social structure of the world is built on them. But men's prejudices vanish when those same men fall sick. The War Department has regularised our position; it will authorise yours. You need not be afraid."
She smiled again reminiscently.
"When our Sisters of the Holy Cross first appeared in the wards, the patients themselves looked at us sullenly and askance. I heard one say: 'Why can't they take off those white-winged sun-bonnets in the wards?' And another sneered: 'Sun-bonnets! Huh! They look like busted white parasols!' But, Mrs. Paige, our white 'sun-bonnets' have already become to them the symbol they love most, after the flag. Be of good courage. Your silver-gray garb and white cuffs will mean much to our soldiers before this battle year is ended."
That evening Ailsa and Letty drove back to the Parm Hospital in their ambulance, old black Cassius managing his mules with alternate bursts of abuse and of praise. First he would beat upon his mules with a flat stick which didn't hurt, but made a loud racket; then, satisfied, he would loll in his seat singing in melodious and interminable recitative:
An' I hope to gain de prommis' lan',
Yaas I do,
'Deed I do.
Lor' I hope to gain de prommis' lan',
Dat I do,
An' dar I'll flap ma wings an' take ma stan',
Yaas I will,
'Deed I will,
An' I'll tune ma harp an' jine de Shinin' Ban'
Glory, Glory,
I hope to gain de prommis' lan'!
And over and over the same shouted melody, interrupted only by an outburst of reproach for his mules.
They drove back through a road which had become for miles only a great muddy lane running between military encampments, halted at every bridge and crossroads to exhibit their passes; they passed never-ending trains of army waggons cither stalled or rumbling slowly toward Alexandria. Everywhere were soldiers, drilling, marching, cutting wood, washing clothes, cooking, cleaning arms, mending, working on camp ditches, drains, or forts, writing letters at the edge of shelter tents, digging graves, skylarking—everywhere the earth was covered with them.
They passed the camp for new recruits, where the poor "fresh fish" awaited orders to join regiments in the field to which they had been assigned; they passed the camp for stragglers and captured deserters; the camp for paroled prisoners; the evil-smelling convalescent camp, which, still under Surgeon General Hammond's Department, had not yet been inspected by the Sanitary Commission.
An officer, riding their way, talked with them about conditions in this camp, where, he said, the convalescents slept on the bare ground, rain or shine; where there were but three surgeons for the thousands suffering from intestinal and throat and lung troubles, destitute, squalid, unwarmed by fires, unwashed, wretched, forsaken by the government that called them to its standard.
It was the first of that sort of thing that Ailsa and Letty had seen.
After the battles in the West—particularly after the fall of Fort Donnelson—terrible rumours were current in the Army of the Potomac and in the hospitals concerning the plight of the wounded—of new regiments that had been sent into action with not a single medical officer, or, for that matter, an ounce of medicine, or of lint in its chests.
They were grisly rumours. In the neat wards of the Farm Hospital, with its freshly swept and sprinkled floors, its cots in rows, its detailed soldier nurses and the two nurses from Sainte Ursula's Sisterhood, its sick-diet department, its medical stores, its two excellent surgeons, these rumours found little credence.
And now, here in the vicinity, Ailsa's delicate nostrils shrank from the stench arising from the "Four Camps"; and she saw the emaciated forms lining the hillside, and she heard the horrible and continuous coughing.
"Do you know," she said to Letty the next morning, "I am going to write to Miss Dix and inform her of conditions in that camp."
And she did so, perfectly conscious that she was probably earning the dislike of the entire medical department. But hundreds of letters like hers had already been sent to Washington, and already the Sanitary Commission was preparing to take hold; so, when at length one morning an acknowledgment of her letter was received, no notice was taken of her offer to volunteer for service in that loathsome camp, but the same mail brought orders and credentials and transportation vouchers for herself and Letty.