Her hatred and horror of him gave her no peace. Angry, incensed,
at moments almost beside herself with grief and shame and
self-contempt, she awaited the letter which he must write--the
humble and hopeless effort for pardon which she never, never would
answer or even in her own soul grant.
Day after day she brooded, intent, obsessed, fiercely pondering his
obliteration.
But no letter came.
No letter came that week, nor Monday, nor at the end of the next
week, nor the beginning of the next.
Wrath, at night, had dried her eyes where she lay crying in her
humiliation; wrath diminished as the days passed; scorn became less
rigid, anger grew tremulous. Then what was lurking near her
pillow lifted a pallid head. Fear!
She waited. Wrath died, scorn died; there was not enough to dry
her tears at night--a deeper, more hopeless humiliation had become
the shame of forgiving him, of loneliness without him, of waiting
for his letter, heart sick--his letter that never came.
Letter after letter to him she destroyed, and fell ill of the
tension, or perhaps of a heavy cold caught in the rain where she
had walked for hours, aimlessly, unable to bear her longing and her
desolation.
Dr. Benton attended her; the pretty volunteer nurse came to sit
with her during convalescence.
The third week in June she was physically well enough to dress and
go about the house. And on that day she came to her shameful
decision.
She wrote him, waited a dreary week for an answer; wrote him again,
waited two weeks; wrote him a third and last letter. No answer
came. And she went dully about the task of forgetting.
About the middle of July she heard from Stephen that Berkley had
enlisted in one of the new unattached cavalry companies, but which
one he did not know. Also she learned that the 3rd Zouaves had
their marching orders and would probably come to the city to
receive their colours. Later she heard from the mayor, the common
council, and from Major Lent; and prepared for the ceremony.
The ceremony was prettily impressive; Ailsa, Mrs. Craig, her
daughters, Paige and Marye, and Camilla Lent wearing a bell button
from Stephen's zouave jacket, stood on the lawn in front of Ailsa's
house, escorted by Colonel Arran who had returned from Washington,
with his commission, by the mayor of the city, and several
red-faced, fat-paunched gentlemen of the common council, and by a
young officer, Captain Hallam, who stood behind Ailsa and seemed
unable to keep his handsome eyes off her.
Twenty-third Street was packed solid with people and all aflutter
with flags under the July sun when the distant strains of military
music and blue lines of police heralded the coming of the 3rd
Zouaves.
Band crashing, raw, gray horses of field and staff-officers
dancing, the regiment came swinging down the wide stony street,--a
torrent of red and gold, a broad shaft of silvery bayonets;--and
halted facing the group of ladies and officials.
Celia Craig looked down at her husband where he sat his great gray
horse. Their last good-bye had already been said; he sat erect,
calm, gazing quietly up at her through his gold-rimmed eye-glasses;
from his blue sleeves' edge to the points of his shoulders
glittered in twisted gold the six-fold arabesques of his rank.
The roar of cheers was dying away now; a girlish figure in white
had moved forward to the edge of the lawn, carrying two standards
in her arms, and her voice was very clear and sweet and perfectly
audible to everybody;
"Colonel Craig, officers, and soldiers of the 3rd New York Zouaves;
the ladies of the Church of Sainte Ursula have requested me, in
their name, to present to you this set of colours. God guard them
and you!
"Remember that, although these flags are now yours, they still
remain ours. Your cause is ours. Your vows our vows. Your
loyalty to God and country is part of our loyalty to God, to
country, and to you."
She stood silent, pensive a moment; then stretched out her arms, a
flag in either hand; and the Colonel rode straight up to where she
stood, took the silken colours and handed them to the two
colour-sergeants. Then, while an orderly advanced to the head of
his horse, Colonel Craig dismounted and quietly ascended the steps
beside the little group of ladies and city officials:
"On behalf of the officers and men of the 3rd New York Zouaves," he
said, "I thank you. We are grateful. I think that we all mean to
do our best.
"If we cannot, in the hour of trial, do all that is expected of us,
we will do all that is in us to do.
"It is very easy to dress a thousand men in uniform, and invest
them with the surroundings of military life; but it is not thus
alone that soldiers are made. It is only discipline; regular
steady, rigid discipline--that forms a soldier to be relied upon in
the hour of need.
"At present we are only recruits. So I ask, in justice to the
regiment, that you will not demand too much of us in the beginning.
We desire to learn; we desire most earnestly to deserve your
confidence. I can only say that we will try to prove ourselves not
unworthy guardians of these flags you have given us."
He bowed, turned to go, swung around sharply and looked at his wife.
"Good-bye, my darling," he said under his breath; and the nest
moment he was in the saddle.
All the rest that Ailsa recollected distinctly was the deafening
outcrash of military music, the sustained cheering, the clatter of
hoofs, the moving column of red and gold--and Celia, standing there
under the July sun, her daughters' hands in hers.
So the 3rd Zouaves marched gaily away under their new silk flags to
their transport at Pier No. 3, North River. But the next day
another regiment received its colours and went, and every day or so
more regiments departed with their brand-new colours; and after a
little only friends and relatives remembered the 3rd Zouaves, and
what was their colonel's name.
By the middle of July the transformation of the metropolis from a
city into a vast military carnival was complete. Gaudy uniforms
were no longer the exception; a madness for fantastic brilliancy
seized the people; soldiers in all kinds of colours and all kinds
of dress filled the streets. Hotels, shops, ferry-boats, stages,
cars, swarmed with undisciplined troops of all arms of the service,
clad in every sort of extravagant uniforms. Except for the more
severe state uniform and the rarer uniform of National troops,
eccentric costumes were the rule. It was a carnival of military
absurdity. Regiments were continually entering the city, regiments
were continually leaving it; regiments in transit disembarked
overnight only to resume the southward journey by steamer or train;
regiments in camp and barrack were completing organisation and
being mustered in by United States officers. Gorgeous regiments
paraded for inspection, for drill, for the reception of state and
regimental colours; three-month troops were returning, bands madly
playing; two- and three-year regiments leaving, drums beating
frantically.
The bewildering variety of cut and colour in the uniforms of this
vast army, which was being made to order, had been, in a measure,
rendered comparatively homogeneous by the adoption of the
regulation blue overcoat, but many a regiment wore its own pattern
of overcoat, many a regiment went forward in civilian attire,
without arms and equipment, on the assurance that these details
were to be supplied in Washington.
The dress of almost every foreign army in Europe was represented
among the regiments forming or in transit. The 79th Highlanders,
it is true, discarded kilt and bagpipe on the eve of departure,
marching in blouse and cap and breeks of army blue; but the 14th.
Brooklyn departed in red cap and red breeches, the 1st and 2d Fire
Zouaves discarded the Turkish fez only; the 5th, 9th, 10th Zouaves
marched wearing fez and turban; and bizarre voltigeurs, foot
chasseurs, hussars, lancers, rocket batteries in costume de
fantasie poured southward,--no two regiments equipped and armed
alike.
The city remained in painful suspense concerning its raw,
multicoloured, and undisciplined army. Every few days arose
rumours of a great battle fought on Virginia soil, corroborated by
extras, denied next morning. During the last half of July such
reports had been current daily, tightening the tension, frightening
parents, wives, and sweethearts. Recent armed affrays had been
called battles; the dead zouaves at Big Bethel, a dead trooper at
Alexandria sobered and silenced the street cheering. Yet, what a
real battle might be, nobody really comprehended or even surmised.
To Ailsa Paige June and July passed like fevered dreams; the brief
sweet spring had suddenly turned into summer in a single day--a
strange, stifling, menacing summer full of heavy little
thunder-storms which rolled crackling and banging up the Hudson
amid vivid electric displays, leaving no coolness behind their
trailing wake of rain.
Society was lingering late in town--if the few nebulous,
unorganised, and scattered social groups could be called
society--small coteries drawn temporarily together through accident
of environment, inherited family acquaintance, traditional,
material, or religious interest, and sometimes by haphazard
intellectual compatibility.
In the city, and in Ailsa's little world, the simple social routine
centring in Sainte Ursula's and the Assembly in winter, and in Long
Branch and Saratoga in summer, had been utterly disorganised. Very
few of her friends had yet left for the country; nor had she made
any arrangements for this strange, unreal summer, partly because,
driven to find relief from memory in occupation, she was devoting
herself very seriously to the medical instruction under Dr. Benton;
partly because she did not consider it a fitting time to seek the
coolness and luxury of inland spa or seaside pier.
Colonel Arran had brought back with him from Washington a Captain
Hallam, a handsome youngster who wore his cavalry uniform to
perfection and who had become instantly attentive to Ailsa,--so
attentive that before she realised it he was a regular visitor at
her house, appropriating the same chair that Berkley always
had--Berkley!----
At the memory she closed her eyes instinctively. The wound
throbbed,
"What is the matter, Mrs. Paige?" inquired Captain Hallam
anxiously. "Are you faint?"
She opened her eyes and smiled in pretence of surprise at such a
question; and Hallam muttered: "I thought you seemed rather pale
all of a sudden." Then he brightened up and went gaily on with
what he had been saying:
"We've got nine full companies already, and the 10th, K, is an
independent company which we're taking in to complete our
organisation. Colonel Arran and I stopped in Philadelphia to
inspect Colonel Rush's regiment of lancers--the 6th Pennsylvania
Cavalry--because the French officers on McClellan's staff have put
it into his head that he needs lancers----"
"Is Colonel Arran's regiment to carry lances?" interrupted Ailsa in
surprise.
Hallam nodded, laughing: "We recruited as light cavalry, armed with
sabre and pistol, but General McClellan has ordered that we carry
the lance in addition. The department had none to issue until the
foreign samples arrived. We are ordered to carry a lance of the
Austrian pattern, nine feet long with an eleven-inch, three-edged
blade; the staff of Norway fir about an inch and a quarter through,
with ferrule and counter poise at the heel. Do I make myself
clear, Mrs. Paige?"
Ailsa, thinking of Berkley, flushed slightly and nodded.
"There'll be a scarlet swallow-tailed pennon on the end just below
the blade point. The whole affair will weigh about five pounds,"
concluded Hallam, rising to take his leave; "and I've got to be off
to camp."
"Must you go, Captain Hallam?"
"I really must. That K Company is due in camp this evening, and I
expect our uniforms and equipments will be delivered in the
morning. Are you coming to see us off, Mrs. Paige?"
"When do you go? Colonel Arran said nothing about going."
"Oh, I expect we'll be on our way before very long. We are not in
the best of shape yet; that's not to be expected. But there's a
sad lack of cavalry in Washington, and they may want us to go
whether we're ready or not. They sent off a regiment that had
neither arms nor uniforms and couldn't even keep step, the other
day. I've an idea we are going pretty soon." He took Ailsa's
offered hand, looked at her a little earnestly, smiled in
self-satisfaction, and went his way.
Later in the week he came back for a few moments; and all through
the week he continued to come back for a few moments whenever he
had an hour's leave.
And every time he took his leave his smile became less nervous and
more confident.
She was very unhappy; devotion to Dr. Benton's class helped;
devotion to Celia in her brief visits to Brooklyn helped, too;
devotion to others, to prayer, all helped as long as it was
devotion of some sort.
And now this young, blue-eyed, blonde-haired fellow was on the edge
of offering to devote himself to her. She knew it, wondered
whether this was her refuge from care. And when he did, at last,
she was quietly prepared to answer.
"Captain Hallam," she said slowly, "I _do_ like you. I don't know
whether I could ever learn to love you. I am not very happy; it
might influence my judgment. If you are willing to wait until I
know more about myself----"
Oh, he _would_ wait! Certainly. Meanwhile would she wear his
ring--not exactly an engagement--unless she was willing--but----
She hesitated. Lonelier than she had ever been in all her life, no
longer self-sufficient, wistfully hopeless, needing to devote
herself absolutely to something or somebody, she hesitated. But
that evening when Hallam came with his ring she could not bring
herself to accept what she now seemed to be most deeply in need
of--the warm, eager, complacent affection that he laid at her feet.
She was not yet able--could not; and the desolate memories of
Berkley set the wound aching anew. . . . No, she could promise
nothing to this young fellow--nothing yet. . . . Perhaps, in the
future--as time passed--she might venture to wear his ring, and see
what happened to her. But she would not promise--she would not
talk of marrying him. . . . And cried herself to sleep over the
memory of Berkley, and his vileness, and his heartless wickedness,
and his ignoble love that had left her so ashamed, so humiliated,
so cruelly crushed for ever. And all night long she dreamed of
Berkley and of his blessed nearness; and the sweetness of her dream
troubled her profoundly. She sat up, still asleep, her straining
throat whispering his name, her arms outstretched, blindly
searching the darkness for him, until suddenly awake, she realised
what she was doing, and dropped back among her pillows.
All that day the city was filled with rumours of a great battle
fought in Virginia. The morning's papers hailed it with triumphant
head-lines and columns of praise and thanksgiving for a great
victory won. But at night the stunned city knew that Bull Run had
been fought and lost, and the Confederacy was at the gates of
Washington.