All the morning she had been busy in the Craig's backyard garden,
clipping, training, loosening the earth around lilac, honeysuckle,
and Rose of Sharon. The little German florist on the corner had
sent in two loads of richly fertilised soil and a barrel of forest
mould. These she sweetened with lime, mixed in her small pan, and
applied judiciously to the peach-tree by the grape-arbour, to the
thickets of pearl-gray iris, to the beloved roses, prairie climber,
Baltimore bell, and General Jacqueminot. A neighbour's cat,
war-scarred and bold, traversing the fences in search of single
combat, halted to watch her; an early bee, with no blossoms yet to
rummage, passed and repassed, buzzing distractedly.
The Craig's next-door neighbour, Camilla Lent, came out on her back
veranda and looked down with a sleepy nod of recognition and
good-morning, stretching her pretty arms luxuriously in the
sunshine.
"You look very sweet down there, Ailsa, in your pink gingham apron
and garden gloves."
"And you look very sweet up there, Camilla, in your muslin frock
and satin skin! And every time you yawn you resemble a plump,
white magnolia bud opening just enough to show the pink inside!"
"It's mean to call me plump!" returned Camilla reproachfully.
"Anyway, anybody would yawn with the Captain keeping the entire
household awake all night. I vow, I haven't slept one wink since
that wretched news from Charleston. He thinks he's a battery of
horse artillery now; that's the very latest development; and I shed
tears and the chandeliers shed prisms every time he manoeuvres."
"The dear old thing," said Mrs. Paige, smiling as she moved among
the shrubs. For a full minute her sensitive lips remained tenderly
curved as she stood considering the agricultural problems before
her. Then she settled down again, naively--like a child on its
haunches--and continued to mix nourishment for the roses.
Camilla, lounging sideways on her own veranda window sill, rested
her head against the frame, alternately blinking down at the pretty
widow through sleepy eyes, and patting her lips to control the
persistent yawns that tormented her.
"I had a horrid dream, too," she said, "about the 'Seven Sisters.'
I was _Pluto_ to your _Diavoline_, and Philip Berkley was a phantom
that grinned at everybody and rattled the bones; and I waked in a
dreadful fright to hear uncle's spurred boots overhead, and that
horrid noisy old sabre of his banging the best furniture.
"Then this morning just before sunrise he came into my bedroom,
hair and moustache on end, and in full uniform, and attempted to
read the Declaration of Independence to me--or maybe it was the
Constitution--I don't remember--but I began to cry, and that always
sends him off."
Ailsa's quick laugh and the tenderness of her expression were her
only comments upon the doings of Josiah Lent, lately captain,
United States dragoons.
Camilla yawned again, rose, and, arranging her spreading white
skirts, seated herself on her veranda steps in full sunshine.
"We did have a nice party, didn't we, Ailsa?" she said, leaning a
little sideways so that she could see over the fence and down into
the Craig's backyard garden.
"I had such a good time," responded Ailsa, looking up radiantly.
"So did I. Billy Cortlandt is the most divine dancer. Isn't
Evelyn Estcourt pretty?"
"She is growing up to be very beautiful some day. Stephen paid her
a great deal of attention. Did you notice it?"
"Really? I didn't notice it," replied Camilla without enthusiasm.
"But," she added, "I _did_ notice you and Phil Berkley on the
stairs. It didn't take you long, did it?"
Ailsa's colour rose a trifle.
"We exchanged scarcely a dozen words," she observed sedately.
Camilla laughed.
"It didn't take you long," she repeated, "either of you. It was
the swiftest case of fascination that I ever saw."
"You are absurd, Camilla."
"But _isn't_ he perfectly fascinating? I think he is the most
romantic-looking creature I ever saw. However," she added, folding
her slender hands in resignation, "there is nothing else to him.
He's accustomed to being adored; there's no heart left in him. I
think it's dead."
Mrs. Paige stood looking up at her, trowel hanging loosely in her
gloved hand.
"Did anything--kill it?" she asked carelessly.
"I don't think it ever lived very long. Anyway there is something
missing in the man; something blank in him. A girl's time is
wasted in wondering what is going on behind those adorable eyes of
his. Because there is nothing going on--it's all on the
surface--the charm, the man's engaging ways and manners--all
surface. . . . I thought I'd better tell you, Ailsa."
"There was no necessity," said Ailsa calmly. "We scarcely
exchanged a dozen words."
As she spoke she became aware of a shape behind the veranda
windows, a man's upright figure passing and repassing. And now, at
the open window, it suddenly emerged into full sunlight, a spare,
sinewy, active gentleman of fifty, hair and moustache thickly
white, a deep seam furrowing his forehead from the left ear to the
roots of the hair above the right temple.
The most engaging of smiles parted the young widow's lips.
"Good morning, Captain Lent," she cried gaily. "You have neglected
me dreadfully of late."
The Captain came to a rigid salute.
"April eleventh, eighteen-sixty-one!" he said with clean-cut
precision. "Good morning, Mrs. Paige! How does your garden blow?
Blow--blow ye wintry winds! Ahem! How have the roses
wintered--the rose of yesterday?"
"Oh, I don't know, sir. I am afraid my sister's roses have not
wintered very well. I'm really a little worried about them."
"_I_ am worried about nothing in Heaven, on Earth, or in Hell,"
said the Captain briskly. "God's will is doing night and day, Mrs.
Paige. Has your brother-in-law gone to business?"
"Oh, yes. He and Stephen went at eight this morning."
"Is your sister-in-law well. God bless her!" shouted the Captain.
"Uncle, you _mustn't_ shout," remonstrated Camilla gently.
"I'm only exercising my voice,"--and to Ailsa:
"I neglect nothing, mental, physical, spiritual, that may be of the
slightest advantage to my country in the hour when every
respiration, every pulse beat, every waking thought shall belong to
the Government which I again shall have the honour of serving."
He bowed stiffly from the waist, to Ailsa, to his niece, turned
right about, and marched off into the house, his white moustache
bristling, his hair on end.
"Oh, dear," sighed Camilla patiently, "isn't it disheartening?"
"He is a dear," said Ailsa. "I adore him."
"Yes--if he'd only sleep at night. I am very selfish I suppose to
complain; he is so happy and so interested these days--only--I am
wondering--if there ever _should_ be a war--would it break his poor
old heart if he couldn't go? They'll never let him, you know."
Ailsa looked up, troubled:
"You mean--_because_!" she said in a low voice.
"Well _I_ don't consider him anything more than delightfully
eccentric."
"Neither do I. But all this is worrying me ill. His heart is so
entirely wrapped up in it; he writes a letter to Washington every
day, and nobody ever replies. Ailsa, it almost terrifies me to
think what might happen--and he be left out!"
"Nothing will happen. The world is too civilised, dear."
"But the papers talk about nothing else! And uncle takes every
paper in New York and Brooklyn, and he wants to have the editor of
the _Herald_ arrested, and he is very anxious to hang the entire
staff of the _Daily News_. It's all well enough to stand there
laughing, but I believe there'll be a war, and then my troubles
will begin!"
Ailsa, down on her knees again, dabbled thoughtfully in the soil,
exploring the masses of matted spider-wort for new shoots.
Camilla looked on, resignedly, her fingers playing with the
loosened masses of her glossy black hair. Each was following in
silence the idle drift of thought which led Camilla back to her
birthday party.
"Twenty!" she said still more resignedly--"four years younger than
you are, Ailsa Paige! Oh dear--and here I am, absolutely
unmarried. That is not a very maidenly thought, I suppose, is it
Ailsa?"
"You always were a romantic child," observed Ailsa, digging
vigorously in the track of a vanishing May beetle. But when she
disinterred him her heart failed her and she let him scramble away.
"There! He'll probably chew up everything," she said. "What a
sentimental goose I am!"
"The first trace of real sentiment I ever saw you display," began
Camilla reflectively, "was the night of my party."
Ailsa dug with energy. "_That_ is absurd! And not even funny."
"You _were_ sentimental!"
"I--well there is no use in answering you," concluded Ailsa.
"No, there isn't. I've seen women look at men, and men look back
again--the way _he_ did!"
"Dear, please don't say such things!"
"I'm going to say 'em," insisted Camilla with malicious
satisfaction. "You've jeered at me because I'm tender-hearted
about men. Now my chance has come!"
Ailsa began patiently: "There were scarcely a dozen words
spoken----"
Camilla, delighted, shook her dark curls.
"You've said that before," she laughed. "Oh, you pretty minx!--you
and your dozen words!"
Ailsa Paige arose in wrath and stretched out a warning arm among
her leafless roses; but Camilla placed both hands on the fence top
and leaned swiftly down from the veranda steps,
"Forgive me, dear," she said penitently. "I was only trying to
torment you. Kiss me and make up. I know you too well to believe
that you could care for a man of that kind."
Ailsa's face was very serious, but she lifted herself on tiptoe and
they exchanged an amicable salute across the fence.
After a moment she said: "What did you mean by 'a man of _that_
kind'?"
Camilla's shrug was expressive. "There are stories about him."
Ailsa looked thoughtfully into space. "Well you won't say such
things to me again, about any man--will you, dear?"
"You never minded them before. You used to laugh."
"But this time," said Ailsa Paige, "it is not the least bit funny.
We scarcely exchanged----"
She checked herself, flushing with annoyance. Camilla, leaning on
the garden fence, had suddenly buried her face in both arms. In
feminine plumpness, when young, there is usually something left of
the schoolgirl giggler.
The pretty girl below remained disdainfully indifferent. She dug,
she clipped, she explored, inhaling, with little thrills, the faint
mounting odour of forest loam and sappy stems.
"I really must go back to New York and start my own garden," she
said, not noticing Camilla's mischief. "London Terrace will be
green in another week."
"How long do you stay with the Craigs, Ailsa?"
"Until the workmen finish painting my house and installing the new
plumbing. Colonel Arran is good enough to look after it."
Camilla, her light head always ringing with gossip, watched Ailsa
curiously.
"It's odd," she observed, "that Colonel Arran and the Craigs never
exchange civilities."
"Mrs. Craig doesn't like him," said Ailsa simply.
"You do, don't you?"
"Naturally. He was my guardian."
"My uncle likes him. To me he has a hard face."
"He has a sad face," said Ailsa Paige.