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.
Letty was still asleep, but Ailsa went up and waked her when the
hour for her tour of duty approached.
"What do you think!" she said excitedly. "We are to pack up our
valises and go aboard the _Mary Lane_ to-morrow. She sails with
hospital stores. _What_ do you think of that?"
"Where are we going?" asked Letty, bewildered.
"You poor, sleepy little thing," said Ailsa, sitting down on the
bed's shaky edge, "I'm sure I don't know where we're going, dear.
Two Protestant nurses are coming here to superintend the removal of
our sick boys--and Dr. West says they are old and ugly, and that
Miss Dix won't have any more nurses who are not over thirty and who
are not _most_ unattractive to look at."
"I wonder what Miss Dix would do if she saw us," said Letty
naively, and sat up in bed; rubbing her velvety eyes with the backs
of her hands. Then she yawned, looked inquiringly at Ailsa,
smiled, and swung her slender body out of bed.
While she was doing her hair Ailsa heard her singing to herself.
She was very happy; another letter from Dr. Benton had arrived.
Celia, who had gone to Washington three days before, to see Mr.
Stanton, returned that evening with her passes and order for
transportation; and to Ailsa's astonishment and delight she found
that the designated boat was the _Mary Lane_.
But Celia was almost too nervous and too tired to talk over the
prospects.
"My dear," she said wearily, "that drive from the Chain Bridge to
Alexandria has mos'ly killed me. I vow and declare there was never
one moment when one wheel was not in a mud hole. All my bones
ache, Honey-bud, and I'm cross with talking to so many Yankees,
and--do you believe me !--that ve'y horrid Stanton creature gave
orders that I was to take the oath!"
"The--oath?" asked Ailsa, amazed.
"Certainly. And I took it," she added fiercely, "becose of my
husband! If it had not been fo' Curt I'd have told Mr. Stanton
what I thought of his old oath!"
"What kind of an oath was it, Celia?"
Celia repeated it haughtily:
"'I do solemnly swear, in the presence of Almighty God, to
faithfully support the Constitution of the United States, and of
the State of New York. So he'p me God.'"
"It is the oath of fealty," said Ailsa in a hushed voice.
"It was not necessa'y," said Celia coldly. "My husband is
sufficient to keep me--harmless. . . . But I know what I feel in
my heart, Honey-bud; and so does eve'y Southern woman--God help us
all. . . . Is that little Miss Lynden going with us?"
"Letty? Yes, of course."
Celia began to undress. "She's a ve'y sweet little minx. . . .
She is--odd, somehow. . . . So young--such a he'pless, cute little
thing. . . Ailsa, in that child's eyes--or in her features
somewhere, somehow, I see--I feel a--a sadness, somehow--like the
gravity of expe'ience, the _something_ that wisdom brings to the
ve'y young too early. It is odd, isn't it."
"Letty is a strange, gentle little thing. I've often wondered----"
"What, Honey-bee?"
"I--don't know," said Ailsa vaguely. "It is not natural that a
happy woman should be so solemnly affectionate to another. I've
often thought that she must, sometime or other, have known deep
unhappiness."
When Celia was ready to retire, Ailsa bade her good-night and
wandered away down the stairs, Letty was still on duty; she glanced
into the sick-diet kitchen as she passed and saw the girl bending
over a stew-pan.
She did not disturb her. With evening a soft melancholy had begun
to settle over Ailsa. It came in the evening, now, often--a
sensation not entirely sad, not unwelcome, soothing her, composing
her mind for serious thought, for the sweet sadness of memory.
Always she walked, now, companioned by memories of Berkley.
Wherever she moved--in the quiet of the sick wards, in the silence
of the moonlight, seated by smeared windows watching the beating
rain, in the dead house, on duty in the kitchen contriving broths,
or stretched among her pillows, always the memories came in troops
to bear her company.
They were with her now as she paced the veranda to and fro, to and
fro.
She heard Letty singing happily over her stew-pan in the kitchen;
the stir and breathing of the vast army was audible all around her
in the darkness. Presently she looked at her watch in the
moonlight, returned it to her breast.
"I'm ready, dear," she said, going to the kitchen door.
And another night on duty was begun--the last she ever was to spend
under the quiet roof of the Farm Hospital.
That night she sat beside the bed of a middle-aged man, a corporal
in a Minnesota regiment whose eyes had been shot out on picket.
Otherwise he was convalescent from dysentery. But Ailsa had seen
the convalescent camp, and she would not let him go yet.
So she read to him in a low, soothing voice, glancing from time to
time at the bandaged face. And, when she saw he was asleep, she
sat silent, hands nervously clasped above the Bible on her knee.
Then her lids closed for an instant as she recited a prayer for the
man she loved, wherever he might be that moon-lit night.
A zouave, terribly wounded on Roanoke Island, began to fret; she
rose and walked swiftly to him, and the big sunken eyes opened and
he said, humbly:
"I am sorry to inconvenience you, Mrs. Paige. I'll try to keep
quiet."
"You foolish fellow, you don't inconvenience me. What can I do for
you?"
His gaze was wistful, but he said nothing, and she bent down
tenderly, repeating her question.
A slight flush gathered under his gaunt cheek bones. "I guess I'm
just contrary," he muttered. "Don't bother about me, ma'am."
"You are thinking of your wife; talk to me about her, Neil."
It was what he wanted; he could endure the bandages. So, her cool
smooth hand resting lightly over his, where it lay on the sheets,
she listened to the home-sick man until it was time to give another
sufferer his swallow of lemonade.
Later she put on a gingham overgown, sprinkled it and her hands
with camphor, and went into the outer wards where the isolated
patients lay--where hospital gangrene and erysipelas were the
horrors. And, farther on, she entered the outlying wing devoted to
typhus. In spite of the open windows the atmosphere was heavy;
everywhere the air seemed weighted with the odour of decay.
As always, in spite of herself, she hesitated at the door. But the
steward on duty rose; and she took his candle and entered the place
of death.
Toward morning a Rhode Island artilleryman, dying in great pain,
relapsed into coma. Waiting beside him, she wrote to his parents,
enclosing the little keepsakes he had designated when conscious,
while his life flickered with the flickering candle. Her letter
and his life ended together; dawn made the candle-light ghastly; a
few moments later the rumble of the dead waggon sounded in the
court below. The driver came early because there was a good deal
of freight for his waggon that day. A few moments afterward the
detail arrived with the stretchers, and Ailsa stood up, drew aside
the screen, and went down into the gray obscurity of the court-yard.
Grave-diggers were at work on a near hillside; she could hear the
clink clink of spade and pick; reveille was sounding from hill to
hill; the muffled stirring became a dull, sustained clatter, never
ceasing around her for one instant.
A laundress was boiling clothing over a fire near by; Ailsa slipped
off her gingham overdress, unbound the white turban, and tossed
them on the grass near the fire. Then, rolling back her sleeves,
she plunged her arms into a basin of hot water in which a little
powdered camphor was floating.
While busy with her ablutions the two new nurses arrived, seated on
a battery limber; and, hastily drying her hands, she went to them
and welcomed them, gave them tea and breakfast in Dr. West's
office, and left them there while she went away to awake Celia and
Letty, pack her valise for the voyage before her, and write to
Berkley.
But it was not until she saw the sun low in the west from the deck
of the _Mary Lane_, that she at last found a moment to write.
The place, the hour, her loneliness, moved depths in her that she
had never sounded--moved her to a recklessness never dreamed of.
It was an effort for her to restrain the passionate confessions
trembling on her pen's tip; her lips whitened with the cry
struggling for utterance.
"Dear, never before did I so completely know myself, never so
absolutely trust myself to the imperious, almost ungovernable tide
which has taken my destiny from the quiet harbour where it lay, and
which is driving it headlong toward yours.
"You have left me alone, to wonder and to wonder. And while
isolated, I stand trying to comprehend why it was that your words
separated our destinies while your arms around me made them one. I
am perfectly aware that the surge of life has caught me up, tossed
me to its crest, and is driving me blindly out across the waste
spaces of the world toward you--wherever you may be--whatever be
the cost. I will not live without you.
"I am not yet quite sure what has so utterly changed me--what has
so completely changed within me. But I am changed. Perhaps daily
familiarity with death and pain and wretchedness, hourly contact
with the paramount mystery of all, has broadened me, or benumbed
me. I don't know. All I seem to see clearly--to clearly
understand--is the dreadful brevity of life, the awful chances
against living, the miracle of love in such a maelstrom, the
insanity of one who dare not confess it, live for it, love to the
uttermost with heart, soul, and body, while life endures,
"All my instincts, all principles inherent or inculcated; all
knowledge spiritual and intellectual, acquired; all precepts,
maxims, proverbs, axioms incorporated and lately a part of me, seem
trivial, empty, meaningless in sound and in form compared to the
plain truths of Death. For never until now did I understand that
we walk always arm in arm with Death, that he squires us at every
step, coolly joggles our elbow, touches our shoulder now and then,
wakes us at dawn, puts out our night-light, and smooths the sheets
we sleep under.
"I had thought of Death as something hiding very, very far away.
Yet I had already seen him enter my own house. But now I
understand how close he always is; and, somehow, it has
changed--hardened, maybe--much that was vague and unformed in my
character. And, maybe, the knowledge is distorting it; I don't
know. All I know is that, before life ends, if there is a chance
of fulfilment, I will take it. And fulfilment means you--my love
for you, the giving of it, of myself, of all I am, all I desire,
all I care for, all I believe, into your keeping--into your
embrace. That, for me, is fulfilment of life.
"Even in your arms you tell me that there is to be no fulfilment.
I have acquiesced, wondering, bewildered, confused. But, dear, you
can never tell me so again--if we live--if I live to look into your
eyes again--never, never. For I shall not believe it, nor shall I
let you believe it, if only we can win through this deathly battle
nightmare which is rising between us--if ever we can find each
other again, touch each other through this red, unreal glare of war.
"Oh, Philip--Philip--only to have your arms around me! Only to
touch you! You shall not tell me then that our destinies do not
mingle. They shall mingle like two wines; they shall become
utterly confused in one another; I was meant for that; I will not
die, isolated by you, unknown to you, not belonging to you! I will
not die alone this way in the world, with no deeper memory to take
into the unknown than that you said you loved me.
"God alone knows what change misery and sorrow and love and death
have accomplished in me; never have I stood so alone upon this
earth; never have I cared so for life, never have I so desired to
be a deathless part of yours.
"If you love me you will make me part of yours--somehow, some way.
And, Philip, if there is no way, yet there is always one way if we
both live. And I shall not complain--only, I cannot die--let life
go out--so that you could ever forget that my life had been part of
yours.
"Is it dreadful of me to think this? But the mighty domination of
Death has dwarfed everything around me, dear; shrivelled the little
man-made formulas and laws; the living mind and body seem more
vital than the by-laws made to govern them. . . . God knows what
I'm writing, but you have gone into battle leaving life unfulfilled
for us both, and I assented--and my heart and soul are crying out
to you, unreconciled--crying out my need of you across the
smoke. . . .
"There is a battery at Cock-pit Point, firing, and the smoke of the
guns drifts across the low-hanging sun. It must be only a salute,
for our fleet of transports moves on, torrents of black smoke
pouring out of every tall funnel, paddle-wheels churning steadily.
"When the fleet passed Mount Vernon the bells tolled aboard every
boat; and we could see the green trees and a glimmer of white on
shore, and the flag flying.
"What sadness! A people divided who both honour the sacredness of
this spot made holy by a just man's grave--gathering to meet in
battle--brother against brother.
"But Fate shall not longer array you and me against each other! I
will not have it so! Neither my heart nor my soul could endure the
cruelty of it, nor my reason its wickedness and insanity. From the
first instant I met your eyes, Philip, somehow, within me, I knew I
belonged to you. I do more hopelessly to-day than ever--and with
each day, each hour, more and more until I die. You will not let
me go to my end unclaimed, will you?--a poor ghost all alone, lost
in the darkness somewhere among the stars--lacking that tie between
you and it which even death does not know how to sever!
"I leave all to you, loving you, wishing what you wish, content
with what you give--and take--so that you do give and take and keep
and hold for life.
"It is very dusky; the lights, red and white, glimmer on every
transport. We feel the sea-swell a little. Celia left us, going
ashore at Acquia Creek. She takes the cars to Richmond and then to
Paigecourt. Letty sits beside me on deck. There were two cases of
fever aboard and we went down into a dreadfully ill-smelling cabin
to do what we could. Now we are here on deck again. Some officers
are talking very gaily with Letty. I am ending my letter to
you--wherever you are, my darling, under these big, staring stars
that look down at me out of space. I don't want my ghost to be
blown about up there--unless it belongs to you. That is the only
fear of death I ever have or ever had--that I might die before you
had all of me there is to give."