To Berkley the times were surcharged with agreeable agitation. A
hullabaloo diverted him. He himself was never noisy; but agitated
and noisy people always amused him.
Day after day the city's multi-coloured militia regiments passed
through its echoing streets; day after day Broadway resounded with
the racket of their drums. Rifles, chasseurs, zouaves, foot
artillery, pioneers, engineers, rocket batteries, the 79th
Highlanders, dismounted lancers of the 69th and dragoons of the
8th--every heard-of and unheard-of unnecessary auxiliary to a
respectable regiment of state infantry, mustered for inspection and
marched away in polychromatic magnificence. Park, avenue, and
square shrilled with their windy fifes; the towering sides of the
transports struck back the wild music of their bands; Castle
William and Fort Hamilton saluted them from the ferries to the
Narrows; and, hoarse with cheering, the people stared through dim
eyes till the last stain of smoke off Sandy Hook vanished seaward.
All of which immensely diverted Berkley.
The city, too, had become a thoroughfare for New England and
Western troops hurrying pell-mell toward the capital and that
unknown bourne so vaguely defined as the "seat of war." Also all
avenues were now dotted with barracks and recruiting stations,
around which crowds clamoured. Fire Zouaves, Imperial Zouaves,
National Zouaves, Billy Wilson's Zouaves appropriated without
ceremony the streets and squares as drill grounds. All day long
they manoeuvred and double-quicked; all day and all night herds of
surprised farm horses destined for cavalry, light artillery, and
glory, clattered toward the docks; files of brand-new army waggons,
gun-carriages, smelling of fresh paint, caissons, forges,
ambulances bound South checked the city traffic and added to the
city's tumult as they jolted in hundreds and hundreds toward the
wharves--materially contributing to Berkley's entertainment.
Beginning with the uproarious war meeting in Union Square, every
day saw its crowds listening to the harangue of a somebody or a
nobody. Sometimes short, ugly demonstrations were made against an
unpopular newspaper office or the residence of an unpopular
citizen; the police were rough and excitable, the nerves of the
populace on edge, the city was now nearly denuded of its militia,
and everybody was very grateful for the temporary presence of
volunteer regiments in process of formation.
As yet the tension of popular excitement had not jaded the capacity
of the city for pleasure. People were ready for excitement,
welcomed it after the dreadful year of lethargy. Stocks fell, but
the theatres were the fuller; Joseph Jefferson at Winter Garden,
Wallack at his own theatre, "The Seven Sisters" at Laura Keene's,
drew unsatisfied crowds, galloping headlong on the heels of
pleasure.
Philharmonics, plays, burlesques, concerts, minstrel
entertainments, never lacked audiences, especially when the
proceeds were destined for the Union Defence Committee; the hotels,
Bancroft, St. Nicholas, Metropolitan, New York, Fifth Avenue, were
all brilliantly thronged at night; cafes and concert halls like the
Gaieties, Canterbury, and American, flourished and flaunted their
advertisements; grills, restaurants, saloons, multiplied. There
were none too many for Berkley's amusement.
As yet no battle lightning flickered along the Southern horizon to
sober folk with premonition; but the nightly illumination of the
metropolis was becoming tinged with a more sinister reflection
where licence had already begun to lift a dozen hydra-heads from
certain lurid resorts hitherto limited in number and in impudence.
It was into the streets of such a city, a meaner, dirtier, uglier,
noisier, perhaps more vicious edition of the French metropolis of
the Third Empire, thronged with fantastic soldiery and fox-eyed
contractors, filled already with new faces--faces of Western born,
Yankee born, foreign born; stupid faces, crafty faces, hard faces,
bedizened faces--it was into the streets of such a city that
Berkley sauntered twice a day to and fro from his office,
regretting only that his means did not permit him to go to the
devil like a gentleman.
And one day, out of the hurly-burly, and against all laws of
probability and finance, an incredible letter was handed to him.
And he read it, standing by his window, and calmly realised that he
was now no longer penniless.
Some inspired idiot had become a credulous market for his
apparently unmarketable securities. Who this person was his
brokers did not say; but, whoever it was, had bought every rotten
share he held; and there was money for him in the world to help him
out of it.
As he stood there, the letter in his hands, drums sounded across
the street, and Stephen came in from the outer office.
"Another regiment," he said. "Do you know where they come from?"
Berkley shook his head, and they went to the windows; below them
surged the flood of dead wood driven before the oncoming
waves--haggard men, ragged men, small boys, darkies, Bowery b'hoys,
stray red-shirted firemen, then the police, then solid double ranks
of drums battered by flashing, brass-bound drumsticks, then line
after line of blue and steel, steadily flowing through the streets
and away, away into the unknown.
"How young they are!" muttered Farren, the gray-haired cashier,
standing behind Stephen's shoulders. "God bless me, they're
children!"
"It's a Vermont regiment," said Berkley; "they're filing out of the
Park Barracks. What a lot of hawk-nosed, hatchet-faced,
turkey-necked cow milkers!--all heroes, too, Steve. You can tell
that because they're in uniform and carry guns."
Stephen watched the lank troops, fascinated by the long, silent,
almost gliding stride of officers and men loaded down with
knapsack, blanket, and canteen, their caps pushed high on their red
and sweating foreheads. There was a halt; big hands, big red
knuckles, big feet, and the delicate curve of the hawk's beak
outlining every Yankee nose, queer, humourous, restless glances
sweeping Gotham streets and windows where Gotham crowded to gaze
back at the halted youngsters in blue; then a far tenor cry, nasal
commands, thin voices penetrating from out of the crowded distance;
a sudden steadying of ranks; the level flash of shouldered steel; a
thousand men marking time; and at last the drums' quick outbreak;
and the 1st Vermont Infantry passed onward into the unknown.
"I'd rather like to go there--to see what there is there," observed
Berkley.
"Where?"
"Where they're going--wherever that may be--and I think I know."
He glanced absently at his letter again.
"I've sold some stock--all I had, and I've made a lot of money," he
said listlessly.
Stephen dropped an impulsive hand on his shoulder.
"I'm terribly glad, Berkley! I'm delighted!" he said with a warmth
that brought a slight colour into Berkley's face.
"That's nice of you, Stephen. It solves the immediate problem of
how to go there."
"Go where?"
"Why--where all our bright young men are going, old fellow," said
Berkley, laughing. "I can go with a regiment or I can go alone.
But I really must be starting."
"You mean to enlist?"
"Yes, it can be done that way, too. Or--other ways. The main
thing is to get momentum. . . . I think I'll just step out and
say good-bye and many thanks to your father. I shall be quite busy
for the rest of my career."
"You are not leaving here?"
"I am. But I'll pay my rent first," said Berkley, laughing.
And go he did that very afternoon; and the office of Craig & Son
knew him no more.
A few days later Ailsa Paige returned to New York and reoccupied
her own house on London Terrace.
A silk flag drooped between the tall pilasters. Under it, at the
front door stood Colonel Arran to welcome her. It had been her
father's house; he had planted the great catalpa trees on the
grassy terrace in front. Here she had been born; from here she had
gone away a bride; from here her parents had been buried, both
within that same strange year that left her widowed who had
scarcely been a wife. And to this old house she had returned alone
in her sombre weeds--utterly alone, in her nineteenth year.
This man had met her then as he met her now; she remembered it,
remembered, too, that after any absence, no matter how short, this
old friend had always met her at her own door-sill, standing aside
with head bent as she crossed the sill.
Now she gave him both hands.
"It is so kind of you, dear Colonel Arran! It would not be a
home-coming without you--" And glancing into the hall, nodded
radiantly to the assembled servants--her parents' old and
privileged and spoiled servants gathered to welcome the young
mistress to her own.
"Oh--and there's Missy!" she said, as an inquiring "meow!" sounded
close to her skirts. "You irresponsible little thing--I suppose
you have more kittens. Has she, Susan?"
"Five m'm," said Susan drily.
"Oh, dear, I suppose it can't be avoided. But we mustn't drown
any, you know." And with one hand resting on Colonel Arran's arm
she began a tour of the house to inspect the new improvements.
Later they sat together amid the faded splendours of the southern
drawing-room, where sunshine regilded cornice and pier glass,
turned the lace curtains to nets of gold, and streaked the red
damask hangings with slanting bars of fire.
Shiftless old Jonas shuffled in presently with the oval silver
tray, ancient decanters, and seedcakes.
And here, over their cakes and Madeira, she told him about her
month's visit to the Craigs'; about her life in the quaint and
quiet city, the restful, old-fashioned charm of the cultivated
circles on Columbia Heights and the Hill; the attractions of a
limited society, a little dull, a little prim, pedantic, perhaps
provincially simple, but a society caring for the best in art, in
music, in literature, instinctively recognising the best although
the best was nowhere common in the city.
She spoke of the agreeable people she had met--unobtrusive,
gentle-mannered folk whose homes may have lacked such Madeira and
silver as this, but lacked nothing in things of the mind.
She spoke of her very modest and temporary duties in church work
there, and in charities; told of the advent of the war news and its
effect on the sister city.
And at last, casually, but without embarrassment, she mentioned
Berkley.
Colonel Arran's large hand lay along the back of the Virginia sofa,
fingers restlessly tracing and retracing the carved foliations
supporting the horns of plenty. His heavy, highly coloured head
was lowered and turned aside a little as though to bring one ear to
bear on what she was saying.
"Mr. Berkley seems to be an--unusual man," she ventured. "Do you
happen to know him, Colonel Arran?"
"Slightly."
"Oh. Did you know his parents?"
"His mother."
"She is not living, I believe."
"No."
"Is his father living?"
"I--don't know."
"You never met him?"
Colonel Arran's forefinger slowly outlined the deeply carved horn
of plenty.
"I am not perfectly sure that I ever met Mr. Berkley's father."
She sat, elbows on the table, gazing reflectively into space.
"He is a--curious--man."
"Did you like him?" asked Colonel Arran with an effort.
"Yes," she said, so simply that the Colonel's eyes turned directly
toward her, lingered, then became fixed on the sunlit damask folds
behind her.
"What did you like about Mr. Berkley, Ailsa?"
She considered.
"I--don't know---exactly."
"Is he cultivated?"
"Why, yes--I suppose so."
"Is he well bred?"
"Oh, yes; only--" she searched mentally--"he is not--may I say,
conventional? formal?"
"It is an age of informality," observed Colonel Arran, carefully
tracing out each separate grape in the horn of plenty.
Ailsa assented; spoke casually of something else; but when Colonel
Arran brought the conversation around again to Berkley, she in
nowise seemed reluctant.
"He is unusually attractive," she said frankly; "his features, at
moments, are almost beautiful. I sometimes wonder whether he
resembles his mother. Was she beautiful?"
"Yes."
"I thought she must have been. He resembles her, does he not?"
"Yes."
"His father was--is--" She hesitated, looked curiously at Colonel
Arran, then smiled.
"There was something I never thought of when I first met Mr.
Berkley, but now I understand why his features seemed to me not
entirely unfamiliar. I don't know exactly what it is, but there
seems to be something about him that recalls you."
Colonel Arran sat absolutely still, his heavy hand gripping the
horn of plenty, his face so gray that it was almost colourless.
Ailsa, glancing again at his profile, saw nothing now in it
resembling Berkley; and, as he made no response, thought him
uninterested. But when again she would have changed the subject,
the Colonel stirred, interrupting:
"Does he seem--well?"
"Well?" she repeated. "Oh, yes."
"He--seems well . . . and in good spirits? Contented? Is he that
type of young man? Happy?"
"I don't think he is really very happy, though he is cheerful
and--and amusing. I don't see how he can be very light-hearted."
"Why?"
She shook her head:
"I believe he--I know he must be in painfully straightened
circumstances."
"I have heard so," nodded Colonel Arran.
"Oh, he certainly _is_!" she said with decision. "He lost
everything in the panic, and he lives in a most wretched
neighbourhood, and he hasn't any business except a very little now
and then. It made me quite unhappy," she added naively.
"And you find him personally agreeable?"
"Yes, I do. I didn't at first--" She checked herself--"I mean I
_did_ at the very first--then I didn't--then I did again, then
I--didn't--" The delicate colour stole into her cheeks; she lifted
her wineglass, looked into it pensively, set it back on the table.
"But I understand him better now, I think."
"What, in him, do you understand better now?"
"I--don't--know."
"Is he a better kind of a man than you thought him at first?"
"Y-es. He has it in him to be better, I mean. . . . Yes, he is a
better man than I thought him--once."
"And you like him----"
"Yes, I do. Colonel Arran."
"Admire him?"
She flushed up. "How do you mean?"
"His qualities?"
"Oh. . . . Yes, he has qualities."
"Admirable?"
"He is exceedingly intelligent."
"Intellectual?"
"I don't exactly know. He pretends to make fun of so many things.
It is not easy to be perfectly sure what he really believes;
because he laughs at almost everybody and everything. But I am
quite certain that he really has beliefs."
"Religious?"
She looked grave. "He does not go to church."
"Does he--does he strike you as being--well, say,
irresponsible--perhaps I may even say reckless?"
She did not answer; and Colonel Arran did not ask again. He
remained silent so long that she presently drifted off into other
subjects, and he made no effort to draw her back.
But later, when he took his leave, he said in his heavy way:
"When you see Mr. Berkley, say to him that Colonel Arran remembers
him. . . . Say to him that it would be my--pleasure--to renew our
very slight acquaintance."
"He will be glad, I know," she said warmly.
"Why do you think so?"
"Why? Because _I_ like you!" she explained with a gay little
laugh. "And whoever I like Mr. Berkley must like if he and I are
to remain good friends."
The Colonel's smile was wintry; the sudden animation in his face
had subsided.
"I should like to know him--if he will," he said absently. And
took his leave of Ailsa Paige.
Next afternoon he came again, and lingered, though neither he nor
Ailsa spoke of Berkley. And the next afternoon he reappeared, and
sat silent, preoccupied, for a long time, in the peculiar hushed
attitude of a man who listens. But the door-bell did not ring and
the only sound in tile house was from Ailsa's piano, where she sat
idling through the sunny afternoon.
The next afternoon he said:
"Does he never call on you?"
"Who?"
"Mr. Berkley."
"I--asked him," she replied, flushing faintly.
"He has not come, then?"
"Not yet. I suppose--business----"
The Colonel said, ponderously careless: "I imagine that he is
likely to come in the late afternoon--when he does come."
"I don't know. He is in business."
"It doesn't keep him after three o'clock at his office."
She looked up surprised: "Doesn't it?" And her eyes asked
instinctively: "How did you know?" But the Colonel sat silent
again, his head lowered and partly averted as though to turn his
good ear toward her. Clearly his mind already dwelt on other
matters, she was thinking; but she was mistaken.
"When he comes," said Colonel Arran slowly, "will you have the
kindness to say to him that Colonel Arran will be glad to renew the
acquaintance?"
"Yes. . . . Perhaps he has forgotten the street and number. I
might write to him--to remind him?" Colonel Arran made no answer.
She wrote that night:
"DEAR MR. BERKLEY:
"I am in my own house now and am very contented--which does not
mean that I did not adore being with Celia Craig and Estcourt and
the children.
"But home is pleasant, and I am wondering whether you might care to
see the home of which I have so often spoken to you when you used
to come over to Brooklyn to see me [_me_ erased and _us_ neatly
substituted in long, sweeping characters].
"I have been doing very little since I last saw you--it is not
sheer idleness, but somehow one cannot go light-heartedly to
dinners and concerts and theatres in times like these, when
traitors are trampling the nag under foot, and when thousands and
thousands of young men are leaving the city every day to go to the
defence of our distracted country.
"I saw a friend the other day--a Mrs. Wells--and _three_ of her
boys, friends of mine, have gone with the 7th, and she is so
nervous and excited that she can scarcely speak about it. _So_
many men I know have gone or are going. Stephen was here
yesterday, wild to go with the 8d Zouaves, but I promised his
father to use my influence--and he _is_ too young--although it is
very fine and chivalrous of him to wish to go.
"I thought I would write you a little note, to remind you that I am
at home, and already it has become a letter. Please remember--when
you think of it at all--that it would give me pleasure to receive
you.
"Sincerely yours,
"AILSA PAIGE."
Toward the end of the week she received a heart-broken note from
Celia Craig, which caused her to hasten over to Brooklyn. She
arrived late; the streets were continually blocked by departing
troops, and the omnibus took a circuitous course to the ferry,
going by way of Fourth Avenue and the Bowery.
"Honey-bee! O Honey-bell!" whispered her sister-in-law, taking
Ailsa into her arms, "I could have behaved myse'f better if Curt
were on the side of God and Justice!--But to have to let him go
this way--to know the awful danger--to know he is going against my
own people, my own home--against God and the Right!--O Honey-bird!
Honey-bud! And the Charleston _Mercury_ says that the South is
most bitter against the Zouaves----"
"Curt! With the Zouaves!"
"Oh yes, yes, Honey-bee! The Third Regiment. And he--some wicked
old men came here yesterday and read a speech--right befo' me--here
in this ve'y room--and began to say that they wished him to be
colonel of the 3d Zouaves, and that the Governor wished it
and--other fools! And I rose straight up f'om my chair and I said,
'Curt!' And he gave me one look. Oh, Honey-bud! His face was
changed; there was _that same thing_ in it that I saw the night the
news came about Sumter! And he said: 'Gentlemen, my country
educated me; now it honours me.' And I tried to speak again and my
lips were stiff; and then he said: 'I accept the command you
offer----'"
"Oh, Celia!"
"Yes, he said it, darling! I stood there, frozen--in a corner of
my heart I had been afraid--such a long time!--but to have it come
real--'this terror!--to have this thing take my husband--come into
our own home befo' I knew--befo' I dreamed--and take Curt!--take
--my--Curt!"
"Where is he?"
"With--_them_. They have a camp near Fort Hamilton. He went there
this morning."
"When is he coming back?"
"I don't know. Stephen is scaring me most to death; he is wild to
go, too. And, oh--do you believe it? Captain Lent has gone with
Curt to the camp, and Curt means to recommend him for his major.
_What_ a regiment!--all the soldiers are mere boys, they
say--wilful, reckless, hair-brained boys who don't know--_can't_
know--where they're going. . . . And Curt is so blind without his
glasses, and Captain Lent is certainly a little mad, and I'm most
distracted myse'f----"
"Darling--darling--don't cry!"
"Cry? Oh, I could die, Ailsa. Yet, I'm Southern enough to choke
back eve'y tear and let them go with a smile if they had to go fo'
God and the Right! But to see my Curt go this way--and my only son
crazy to join him--Oh, it is ha'd, Honey-bee, ve'y, ve'y ha'd."
"Dearest!"
"O Honey-bud! Honey-bud!"
And the two women mourned, uncomforted.
Ailsa remained for three unhappy days in Fort Greene Place, then
fled to her own house. A light, amusing letter from Berkley
awaited her. It was so like him, gay, cynical, epigrammatic, and
inconsequent, that it cheered her. Besides, he subscribed himself
very obediently hers, but on re-examining the letter she noticed
that he had made no mention of coming to pay his respects to her.
So she lived her tranquil life for another week; and Colonel Arran
came every day and seemed always to be waiting for
something--always listening--gray face buried in his stock. And at
the week's end she answered Berkley's letter--although, in it, he
had asked no question.
"DEAR MR. BERKLEY:
"Such sad news from the Craigs. Estcourt has accepted the command
of one of the new zouave regiments--the 3d, in camp near Fort
Hamilton. But, being in his office, I suppose you have heard all
about it from Stephen. Poor Celia Craig! It is peculiarly
distressing in her case; all her sympathies are with her native
state, and to have her husband go under such unusually tragic
circumstances seems too dreadful. Celia is convinced that he will
never return; she reads some Southern paper which breathes awful
threats against the Zouaves in particular. Besides, Stephen is
perfectly determined to enlist in his father's regiment, and I can
see that they can't restrain him much longer. I have done my best;
I have had him here and talked to him and argued with him, but I
have made no headway. No appeal moves him; he says that the land
will need every man sooner or later, and that the quicker he begins
the sooner he will learn how to look out for himself in battle.
"The regiment is almost full; to-day, the first six companies are
to be mustered into the United States service for three years or
for the war. Captain Barris of the regular army is the mustering
officer. And on their departure I am to present a set of colours
to the regiment. It is to be quite solemn. I have already bought
the lances, and they are beautiful; the spears are silver gilt, the
rings gilded, too, and the flags are made of the most beautiful
silk with tassels and fringe of gold bullion. There are three
flags: the national colours, the state flag, and a purple
regimental flag lettered in gold: '3d Regt. N. Y. Zouaves,' and
under it their motto: '_Multorum manibus grande levatur onus_.' I
hope it is good Latin, for it is mine. Is it?
"AILSA PAIGE."
To this letter he made no reply, and, after a week, his silence
hurt her.
One afternoon toward the middle of May Stephen was announced; and
with a sudden sense of foreboding she hastened down to the
drawing-room.
"_Oh_!" she cried. "_You_--Stephen!"
But the boy in his zouave uniform was beside himself with
excitement and pride, and he embraced her, laughing, and then began
to walk up and down the room gesticulating.
"I couldn't stand it any longer, and they let me go. I'm sorry for
mother, but look at other men's mothers! They're calling for more
and more troops every week! I knew everybody would have to go, and
I'm mighty fortunate to get into father's regiment--And O Ailsa!
It is a fine regiment! We're drilling every minute, and now that
we've got our uniforms it won't be long before our orders come----"
"Stephen--does your mother----"
"Mother knows I can't help it. I _do_ love her; she knows that
perfectly well. But men have got to settle this thing----"
"Two hundred thousand are getting ready to settle it! Are there
hot enough without you?--your mother's only son----"
"Suppose everybody thought that way, where would our army be?"
"But there are hundreds of regiments forming here--getting ready,
drilling, leaving on boats and trains every day----"
"And every regiment is composed of men exactly like me! They go
because the Nation's business is everybody's business. And the
Nation's business comes first. There's no use talking to me,
Ailsa. I've had it but with father. He saw that he couldn't
prevent me from doing what he has done. And old Lent is our major!
Lord, Ailsa, _what_ a terrible old man for discipline! And father
is--well he is acting as though we ought to behave like West
Pointers. They're cruelly hard on skylarkers and guard runners,
and they're fairly kicking discipline into us. But I'm willing.
I'm ready to stand anything as long as we can get away!"
He was talking in a loud, excited voice, pacing restlessly to and
fro, pausing at intervals to confront Ailsa where she sat, limp and
silent, gazing up at this slender youth in his short blue jacket
edged with many bell-buttons, blue body sash, scarlet zouave
trousers and leather gaiters.
Presently old Jonas shuffled in with Madeira, cakes, and
sandwiches, and Stephen began on them immediately.
"I came over so you could see me in my uniform," he explained; "and
I'm going back right away to see mother and Paige and Marye and
Camilla." He paused, sandwich suspended, then swallowed what he
had been chewing and took another bite, recklessly.
"I'm very fond of Camilla," he said condescendingly. "She's very
nice about my going--the only one who hasn't snivelled. I tell
you, Ailsa, Camilla is a good deal of a girl. . . . And I've
promised to look out for her uncle--keep an eye on old Lent, you
know, which seems to comfort her a good deal when she begins
crying----
"Oh. . . I thought Camilla didn't cry."
"She cries a little--now and then."
"About her uncle?"
"Certainly."
Ailsa looked down at her ringless fingers. Within the week she had
laid away both rings, meaning to resume them some day.
"If you and your father go, your office will be closed, I suppose."
"Oh, no. Farren will run it."
"I see. . . . And Mr. Berkley, too, I suppose."
Stephen looked up from his bitten seedcake.
"Berkley? He left long ago."
"Left--where?" she asked, confused.
"Left the office. It couldn't be helped. There was nothing for
him to do. I was sorry--I'm sorrier now----"
He checked himself, hesitated, turned his troubled eyes on Ailsa.
"I _did_ like him so much."
"Don't you like him--still?"
"Yes--_I_ do. I don't know what was the matter with that man. He
went all to pieces."
"W-what!"
"Utterly. Isn't it too bad."
She sat there very silent, very white. Stephen bit into another
cake, angrily.
"It's the company he keeps," he said--"a lot of fast men--fast
enough to be talked about, fashionable enough to be tolerated--Jack
Casson is one of them, and that little ass, Arthur Wye. _That's_
the crowd--a horse-racing, hard-drinking, hard-gambling crew."
"But--he is--Mr. Berkley's circumstances--how can he do such
things----"
"Some idiot--even Berkley doesn't know who--took all those dead
stocks off his hands. Wasn't it the devil's own luck for Berkley
to find a market in times like these?"
"But it ended him. . . . Oh, I was fond of him, I tell you, Ailsa!
I hate like thunder to see him this way----"
"_What_ way!"
"Oh, not caring for anybody or anything. He's never sober. I
don't mean that I ever saw him otherwise--he doesn't get drunk like
an ordinary man: he just turns deathly white and polite. I've met
him--and his friends--several times. They're too fast a string of
colts for me. But isn't it a shame that a man like Berkley should
go to the devil--and for no reason at all?"
"Yes," she said.
When Stephen, swinging his crimson fez by the tassel, stood ready
to take his leave, she put her arms around his neck and kissed him.
After he departed Colonel Arran came, and sat, as usual, silent,
listening.
Ailsa was very animated; she told him about Stephen's enlistment,
asked scores of questions about military life, the chances in
battle, the proportion of those who went through war unscathed.
And at length Colonel Arran arose to take his departure; and she
had not told what was hammering for utterance in every heart beat;
she did not know how to tell, what to ask.
Hat in hand Colonel Arran bent over her hot little hand where it
lay in his own.
"I have been offered the colonelcy of a volunteer regiment now
forming," he said without apparent interest.
"You!"
"Cavalry," he explained wearily.
"But--you have not accepted!"
He gave her an absent glance. "Yes, I have accepted. . . . I am
going to Washington to-night."
"Oh!" she breathed, "but you are coming back before--before----"
"Yes, child. Cavalry is not made in a hurry. I am to see General
Scott--perhaps Mr. Cameron and the President. . . . If, in my
absence--" he hesitated, looked down, shook his head. And somehow
she seemed to know that what he had not said concerned Berkley.
Neither of them mentioned him. But after Colonel Arran had gone
she went slowly to her room, sat down at her desk, sat there a
long, long while thinking. But it was after midnight before she
wrote to Berkley:
"Have you quite forgotten me? I have had to swallow a little pride
to write you again. But perhaps I think our pleasant friendship
worth it.
"Stephen has been here. He has enlisted as a private in his
father's regiment of zouaves. I learned by accident from him that
you are no longer associated with Craig & Son in business. I trust
this means at least a partial recovery of your fortune. If it
does, with fortune recovered responsibilities increase, and I
choose to believe that it is these new and exacting duties which
have prevented me from seeing you or from hearing from you for more
than three weeks.
"But surely you could find a moment to write a line to a friend who
is truly your very sincere well-wisher, and who would be the first
to express her pleasure in any good fortune which might concern you.
"AILSA PAIGE."
Two days passed, and her answer came:
"Ailsa Paige, dearest and most respected, I have not forgotten you
for one moment. And I have tried very hard.
"God knows what my pen is trying to say to you, and not hurt you,
and yet kill utterly in you the last kindly and charitable memory
of the man who is writing to you.
"Ailsa, if I had known you even one single day before that night I
met you, you would have had of me, in that single day, all that a
man dare lay at the feet of the truest and best of women.
"But on that night I came to you a man utterly and hopelessly
ruined--morally dead of a blow dealt me an hour before I saw you
for the first time.
"I had not lived an orderly life, but at worst it was only a
heedless life. I had been a fool, but not a damned one. There was
in me something loftier than a desire for pleasure, something
worthier than material ambition. What else lay latent--if
anything--I may only surmise. It is all dead.
"The blow dealt me that evening--an hour before I first laid eyes
on you--utterly changed me; and if there was anything spiritual in
my character it died then. And left what you had a glimpse
of--just a man, pagan, material, unmoral, unsafe; unmoved by
anything except by what appeals to the material senses.
"Is that the kind of man you suppose me? That is the man I am.
And you _know_ it now. And you know, now, what it was in me that
left you perplexed, silent, troubled, not comprehending--why it was
you would not dance with me again, nor suffer my touch, nor endure
me too near you.
"It was the less noble in me--all that the blow had not
killed--only a lesser part of a finer and perfect passion that
might perhaps have moved you to noble response in time.
"Because I should have given you all at the first meeting; I could
no more have helped it than I could have silenced my heart and
lived. But what was left to give could awake in you no echo, no
response, no comprehension. In plainer, uglier words, I meant to
make you love me; and I was ready to carry you with me to that hell
where souls are lost through love--and where we might lose our
souls together.
"And now you will never write to me again."
All the afternoon she bent at her desk, poring over his letter. In
her frightened heart she knew that something within her, not
spiritual, had responded to what, in him, had evoked it; that her
indefinable dread was dread of herself, of her physical
responsiveness to his nearness, of her conscious inclination for it.
Could this be she--herself--who still bent here over his written
words--this tense, hot-cheeked, tremulous creature, staring
dry-eyed at the blurring lines which cut her for ever asunder from
this self-outlawed man!
Was this letter still unburned. Had she not her fill of its
brutality, its wickedness?
But she was very tired, and she laid her arms on the desk and her
head between them. And against her hot face she felt the cool
letter-paper.
All that she had dreamed and fancied and believed and cared for in
man passed dully through her mind. Her own aspirations toward
ideal womanhood followed--visions of lofty desire, high ideals,
innocent passions, the happiness of renunciation, the glory of
forgiveness----
She sat erect, breathing unevenly; then her eyes fell on the
letter, and she covered it with her hands, as hands cover the shame
on a stricken face. And after a long time her lips moved,
repeating:
"The glory of forgiveness--the glory of forgiveness----"
Her heart was beating very hard and fast as her thoughts ran on.
"To forgive--help him--teach truth--nobler ideals----"
She could not rest; sleep, if it really came, was a ghostly thing
that mocked her. And all the next day she roamed about the house,
haunted with the consciousness of where his letter lay locked in
her desk. And that day she would not read it again; but the next
day she read it. And the next.
And if it were her desire to see him once again before all ended
irrevocably for ever--or if it was what her heart was striving to
tell her, that he was in need of aid against himself, she could not
tell. But she wrote him:
"It is not you who have written this injury for my eyes to read,
but another man, demoralised by the world's cruelty--not knowing
what he is saying--hurt to the soul, not mortally. When he
recovers he will be you. And this letter is my forgiveness."
Berkley received it when he was not particularly sober; and
lighting the end of it at a candle let it burn until the last ashes
scorched his fingers.
"Burgess," he said, "did you ever notice how hard it is for the
frailer things to die? Those wild doves we used to shoot in
Georgia--by God! it took quail shot to kill them clean."
"Yes, sir?"
"Exactly. Then, that being the case, you may give me a
particularly vigorous shampoo. Because, Burgess, I woo my volatile
goddess to-night--the Goddess Chance, Burgess, whose wanton and
naughty eyes never miss the fall of a card. And I desire that all
my senses work like lightning, Burgess, because it is a fast
company and a faster game, and that's why I want an unusually
muscular shampoo!"
"Yes, sir. Poker, sir?"
"I--ah--believe so," said Berkley, lying back in his chair and
closing his eyes. "Go ahead and rub hell into me--if I'll hold any
more."
The pallor, the shadows under eyes and cheeks, the nervous lines at
the corners of the nose, had almost disappeared when Burgess
finished. And when he stood in his evening clothes pulling a
rose-bud stem through the button-hole of his lapel, he seemed very
fresh and young and graceful in the gas-light.
"Am I very fine, Burgess? Because I go where youth and beauty
chase the shining hours with flying feet. Oh yes, Burgess, the
fair and frail will be present, also the dashing and
self-satisfied. And we'll try to make it agreeable all around,
won't we? . . . And don't smoke _all_ my most expensive cigars,
Burgess. I may want one when I return. I hate to ask too much of
you, but you won't mind leaving one swallow of brandy in that
decanter, will you? Thanks. Good night, Burgess."
"Thank _you_, sir. Good night, sir."
As he walked out into the evening air he swung his cane in
glittering circles.
"Nevertheless," he said under his breath, "she'd better be careful.
If she writes again I might lose my head and go to her. You can
never tell about some men; and the road to hell is a lonely
one--damned lonely. Better let a man travel it like a gentleman if
he can. It's more dignified than sliding into it on your back,
clutching a handful of lace petticoat."
He added: "There's only one hell; and it's hell, perhaps, because
there are no women there."