A SOLDIER’S ERRAND
The capture of Colonel Gratiot, following upon Isabey’s narrow escape,
made an immense stir in the county. There had been other descents by
night and day upon places, and a few Confederate private soldiers had
been picked up, but there had been nothing like the concerted design
which had resulted in the capture of officers.
From a little spark of suspicion grew a great flame of accusation
against Angela. The minds of men and women were so unbalanced, so
tortured, so driven hither by calamity, that anything could be believed
of anyone.
The greatest braggart in the county had died like a hero, cheering
on his men; the softest spoken university-bred men had become hard
swearers and iron disciplinarians; the most shiftless of idlers had
made admirable soldiers; and all seemed to go according to the law of
contrary.
Angela herself was quite unconscious of the storm which raged against
her in the county. She kept close to Harrowby and saw no one, even
rarely George Charteris, who still came daily to study under Lyddon.
Heretofore George had been content to pass Angela with a cold and
negligent bow, after having for years before pestered her with his
boyish lovemaking. Now he avoided as far as possible meeting her on his
daily visits to Harrowby. But once, when it was inevitable, he passed
her on the lawn without removing his hat. Angela stopped and looked
after him with blazing eyes of wrath. Was it possible that this boy
dared to insult her by not speaking to her?
She said nothing of this, keeping it with many other bitter things in
her own heart. But the next day when George came out of the study door
Angela faced him in the path. He was forced to make her something in
the nature of a bow and, after an unpleasant pause, said: “Do you wish
anything of me?”
“Nothing at all,” responded Angela sweetly, “only to find out whether
you were a gentleman or not. Good morning.”
She passed on leaving him consumed with inward rage.
Colonel Tremaine went nowhere except to the post office for the
semioccasional mail, and to church, and no one dared mention to him the
grim suspicion against Angela. But deep in his heart he himself felt
sometimes a sharp and piercing doubt of Angela. He dared not speak of
it even to Mrs. Tremaine, and put it away from him with all his inborn
chivalry and the parental affection for the girl which was a part of
his nature.
In spite of himself he could not forget the opened window, the
answering signal, and the letter dropped on the lawn. He tried to
assume that even if the worst were true and Angela were communicating
with Federals, she did not understand her own wrongdoing, but this
view was totally unconvincing even to himself. Angela was no fool,
and never had been, and it was impossible to give her the credit of
ignorance.
When Colonel Tremaine looked at her going about her daily tasks
with fiery energy and even a feverish gayety, when he saw how this
young creature, so lately a child, had grown so self-controlled, so
unshakably courageous, she was acquitted in his own mind. But when
he waked in the night, or when he sat in the library writing up his
diary, or read in the ill-printed Richmond newspapers of Federal raids
and captures, a suspicion would rise in his mind that would not be
strangled.
No more Confederate officers came to Harrowby, which Colonel Tremaine
reckoned a blessing.
Isabey had come no more; he remained in camp, going about his duties
with unswerving regularity but without cheerfulness, and was restless
at the surgeons’ prohibition against his going to the front for some
months to come. There was plenty of work for him to do, but, like most
men with a gnawing pain in the heart, Isabey wanted action, action,
action to drive away the specter of his lost love, which had for him
all the power of the first love and the last. He remembered with a grim
smile his early infatuation for Adrienne, which was so natural as to be
almost inevitable.
He recalled that he made verses in those days and set them to music
and sang them to Adrienne. He could not have made a verse about Angela
to save his life, and concluded that when men could write, as did
Petrarch, Tasso, and Dante Alighieri, of a wrecked passion, it could
not have hurt very much. He recalled that Paolo had not written a line
about Francesca, and it seemed to him that the tragic love of those
two poor souls was paralleled in his own case. For, put it away as he
might, he could not deny to himself that Angela’s heart had struck an
answering chord to his.
He reasoned with himself that it would have been too much happiness
if Angela had been free to marry him: but at least he had what was
next best and a million times better than what falls to the lot of
most dwellers upon the earth--the full and perfect confidence, the
completest sympathy and understanding, with the only woman he had ever
loved. He remembered the ancient saying that each mortal has so much of
the wine of life given to him, sweet or bitter, strong or weak, and the
goblet may be of gold or of base metal. He concluded that his share was
strong and bitter, but it was served to him in a golden goblet.
There was a species of lofty flattery on Angela’s part in the perfect
confidence with which she treated him. She had not hesitated to spend
long hours alone with him in the old study during the month when they
were snowbound; and Isabey reckoned those hours as spent in the Elysian
Fields of the soul.
In the beginning he had tried to put her image from him, as the normal
man of gentlemanly instincts does concerning the wife of his friend;
but after that month when Angela had tended him and eased his wounds
of body and laid the soft spell of her constant presence upon him,
the thought of her would not vanish away. It was easy enough to keep
her name out of his speech or even when he spoke it to do so quite
naturally, but to banish her sweet image--ah, no man who loved as
Isabey could do that.
Each night when he slept the sleep of exhaustion after a day of hard
work in his regimental duties some faint dream of Angela would pass
through his sleep.
He was thinking of this one night sitting in his tent in camp and
working hard over some regimental papers. It was now autumn, and not
since that May night had he been to Harrowby or seen Angela’s face. His
excuse for not going was good, as no Confederate officer had ventured
within the zone of danger except under orders, and such orders had
not been given to Isabey. Colonel Gratiot had been exchanged and had
returned to duty, but Isabey had not seen him since.
It was close upon midnight before his work was finished. Isabey rose
and, lifting the flap of his tent, looked out upon the misty night.
A fine, cold rain was falling and the lights in camp shone dull and
yellow in the murky darkness.
While he stood looking out upon the night an orderly emerged from the
darkness and handed him a note from the commanding officer, General
Farrington, requesting Isabey’s presence at headquarters immediately.
Isabey, taking his cap and military cape, made at once for the
headquarters building. The long lines of tents were still, and the
steady tramp of the sentries back and forth alone broke the silence.
The headquarters building was a rude structure of logs containing
several compartments, for they could not be called rooms. The orderly
outside the general’s door immediately passed Isabey in, and he entered
a room to the left roughly fitted up as an office. At a big deal
table, lighted by a couple of tallow dips, sat General Farrington. He
was a burly man with a loud, shrill voice, and a saber and spurs which
generally clattered furiously. To-night, however, he was singularly
quiet and his usually jovial countenance had a somber expression.
Isabey knew in a moment that there was unpleasant business on hand.
General Farrington, on greeting Isabey, carefully shut the door himself
after observing that no one was in the next room. The two men then
sat down at the table, Isabey taking off his wet cap and cloak. There
was a pause, and then General Farrington spoke in a quiet voice, very
different from his usual method of hallooing.
“I have sent for you to-night, Captain Isabey, to direct you to perform
a duty which is as distressing for me to order as it can possibly be
for you to execute.”
Isabey bowed. General Farrington’s air and manner had told him as much
before.
“It is this,” continued the general. “There has been, as you know,
much mysterious communication with the enemy. There are, of course,
innumerable ways by which this information could be conveyed, but
suspicion strongly points to one person.”
Isabey rose to his feet, and the words burst from him without his
volition. “Mrs. Neville Tremaine!” he said.
“Yes,” replied General Farrington briefly. Isabey sat down again.
“It is a most infamous lie--!” he began, and then stopped. His head
was in a whirl. He longed to knock down his commanding officer so
coolly voicing this odious charge against the woman Isabey loved and
respected above all women in the world.
“Mind you,” said General Farrington, still quietly, “I am not fully
committed to the belief in Mrs. Neville Tremaine’s guilt. I am,
however, inclined to think that she is used as an unconscious tool
by unprincipled persons. She is in constant communication with her
husband--that I know--and I believe that through her information leaks
out which is extremely dangerous to us. I have talked with Colonel
Gratiot since his exchange, and there is not the slightest doubt
that some signaling was going on the night he was captured. It is
significant that Mrs. Neville Tremaine was out of the way both times
the Federals made an incursion by night upon Harrowby.”
“The first time,” replied Isabey coolly, “she was absent because she
was assisting in my escape; but for her I should certainly have been
captured.”
“Very likely, and I have considered that circumstance. But the night
Colonel Gratiot was captured she was also not to be found. However, in
these conflicting circumstances I determined to make a test myself. I
wrote to Colonel Tremaine a fortnight ago, saying that I should spend
last night at Harrowby, and contrived to get the note to him through
reliable hands. Of course I never had the slightest intention of going,
and to-night I received information that last night a Federal gunboat
came up the river again, landed a force with much secrecy and dispatch,
and would certainly have got me if I had been there. That settled it as
far as Mrs. Neville Tremaine is concerned.”
“But it is probable that everyone on the plantation, black and white,
knew that you were expected,” replied Isabey, still composed and
self-controlled.
“That is true, and I can’t arrest everybody, black and white, on the
plantation. Whether Mrs. Neville Tremaine is giving information to
the enemy or not I am not prepared to say, but I think that prudence
imperatively demands that--that--” General Farrington got up and walked
up and down the narrow room, came back again, and then, looking Isabey
full in the eye, he said “--that Mrs. Neville Tremaine be quietly
arrested and sent into the enemy’s lines; and it is you whom I desire
to do this.”
“I of all men in the world! My relatives have received the hospitality
of the Harrowby family for more than a year. There is no woman on earth
whom I respect so much as I do Mrs. Neville Tremaine.” Isabey stopped,
conscious that the words and his tone had revealed something. One look
into General Farrington’s keen eyes showed that he understood the full
meaning of the admission.
“No doubt it would be a most painful duty to you, but it is equally
painful to others. You are the third officer whom I have sent for this
evening to do this piece of business, and each of the others asked me
to reconsider. Then your name occurred to me. I wondered I had not
thought of it before. You are peculiarly well situated to do it. You
are, I believe, intimate with both of Colonel Tremaine’s sons, and you
could readily make it appear that you have been designated merely to
escort Mrs. Neville Tremaine within the Federal lines in order that
she may join her husband. You have the tact and judgment to allay any
suspicion which might arise in the minds of Colonel Tremaine and his
family, and the fact that your relatives are guests at Harrowby would
make it seem the most natural thing in the world that you should be
the one chosen to escort Mrs. Neville Tremaine. You will approach the
Federal lines under flag of truce, and everything possible will be done
to make it appear that Mrs. Neville Tremaine is going of her own free
will to her husband. But you must not forget, Captain Isabey, that you
will be performing a military duty, and that Mrs. Neville Tremaine must
be closely watched, and not the slightest opportunity given her to
communicate with the enemy until she is safely within their lines.”
Isabey remained silent, sitting with folded arms, and his black eyes
fixed on General Farrington’s light blue ones. His soul was in a
tumult, and, being a fighting man, he felt a perfectly natural and
human desire to wreak vengeance on the man who had given him this work
to do; but his sober common sense had in no wise deserted him. If the
hateful thing had to be done, was it not better, as General Farrington
said, that it should be done by one who loved the ground on which
Angela trod, and who could no more have doubted her integrity than he
could have murdered her?
“I give you much liberty in carrying out my orders,” said General
Farrington, after a while. “I understand fully the disagreeable nature
of what I am directing you to do; and one of the consolations I have in
this matter is that everything possible will be done, to save not only
Mrs. Neville Tremaine’s own feelings, but those of Colonel Tremaine’s
family. Surely you can arrange so that Mrs. Neville Tremaine’s
departure will appear a voluntary act?”
“There is not the slightest difficulty in persuading anyone of that,”
replied Isabey, in a low voice, “except Mrs. Neville Tremaine herself.
It would be impossible to deceive her.”
“I should like this duty executed at the earliest possible moment, but,
of course, at a time and hour which would not excite alarm or suspicion
in the minds of the rest of the family. If you leave early to-morrow
morning, it will answer. Here are your written instructions, and here
is some gold with which to provide Mrs. Neville Tremaine.” General
Farrington drew out of his breast pocket a few gold pieces wrapped up
in brown paper. “It is all I have,” he said, holding it out.
“I thank you,” replied Isabey, stiffly, “but I have some gold, too. I
should prefer, and I think Mrs. Neville Tremaine would prefer, that I
should furnish the money for her necessary expenses.”
He read the carefully written instructions given him, and they were
perfectly intelligible. He was to be at Harrowby by two o’clock the
next day, and at the earliest possible moment was to escort Mrs.
Neville Tremaine to the Federal lines. A brief official note to Mrs.
Neville Tremaine was inclosed, in which she was notified that if she
was again found within Confederate lines she would be subject to arrest
and imprisonment.
“This you will give to Mrs. Neville Tremaine at parting,” said General
Farrington.
As Isabey folded the papers up and put them in his breast pocket
General Farrington said to him:
“I would rather put fifty men in jail for life than arrest this one
girl. I feel as if I were plunging my sword into the breast of a dove.
But this is war, Captain Isabey.”
Isabey said no word, and, silently saluting, went out again into the
night. The cold rain struck him like a sharp hand in the face.
As he had said, it was easy enough to make it appear that Angela, under
his protection, was seeking her husband; but Angela herself, how should
he tell her, what words could he use to soften it? Ah, there was no
softening it! And suppose she should refuse to go? She was an impulsive
creature, knowing little of the world, full of rash courage, and the
last woman on earth to sit calmly under a charge of treachery. And if
she went quietly it would be to go to Neville Tremaine’s arms, and he,
Isabey, would be the one to send her to that haven. He would never
see her again, of that he felt quite sure; nor could he bear to see
her as Neville Tremaine’s wife. In one more day, one day of shame and
wretchedness, he would be forever parted from Angela.
Isabey was no more generous in his love than are most men. He wanted
Angela’s sweet society for himself, and grudged every look and word
she might give her husband. He realized what Angela did not--that all
those sweet confidences, however innocent, between Isabey and herself,
that turning to him always for his opinion, that delicious intimacy of
the soul between them, must come to an end when Angela held her real
position as a wife.
Angela, in a way, was as novel to Isabey as he was to her. He had
never, under the social customs in New Orleans, been thrown into a
close and unguarded intimacy with any woman as with her. Her heart
and mind had been like a volume of poetry open before him, and he had
read on, pleased, touched, amused, reverencing, and surprised. She
knew so much in some ways and so little in others. The thing of which
she knew least, but could feel most, was love. If she had possessed
more guile or even more knowledge of herself, she would never have
slipped into that soft, sweet intercourse with Isabey. All of them,
the whole Harrowby family, were the most guileless people that Isabey
had ever known. The mere saying of the words which made Angela the
wife of Neville Tremaine on the wharf that April night at Harrowby was
confidently felt, not only by the Harrowby family, but by the whole
community, to put her definitely and forever out of the reach of any
other man than her husband. Such a thing as a flirtation with a married
woman had never been heard of among those patriarchal people. They had
never known anything between the perfect dignity of a wife and the
bottomless pit of degradation into which, once in a hundred years, a
woman sometimes fell to be lost forever in the abyss.
“Wherever divorce is unknown, and the honor of women is protected by
men with arms in their hands, this state of society must result,”
thought Isabey, as he plodded along through the rain back to his tent,
and he would be the last person in the world to wish this unwritten law
changed. He would rather have died than speak a word of open love to
Angela. But love speaks without words, and to people more worldly-wise
than these simple Virginian country gentry Isabey’s secret might have
been suspected long ago.
When he reached his tent he rolled himself in his blanket and lay
down in the darkness, not to sleep, but to dream, to think, to suffer
torments. The waking hours of a night are usually long, but when the
rosy dawn crept in, Isabey thought it was the shortest night he had
ever spent.
The October morning was of an exquisite softness. The Indian summer
had come, that time of mellow sunshine, of faint blue mists upon the
uplands, of caressing winds among the fading leaves when summer turns
back, as it were, for a last farewell. Old Euripides said, in the long
ago, “In all fair things, the autumn, too, is fair.”
Isabey left camp about seven o’clock in the morning, so that he might
allow his horse a long rest before reaching Harrowby, for after that
there might be hard riding. He had settled the details of how he should
convey Angela to the Federal lines. So good a horse-woman as she could
easily ride the twenty miles over the level road. It would be better,
however, that the journey be made at night. The season was mild and the
moon was at its full, so that there would be no hardship involved. But
Isabey recognized that it would be just as well that they should not
be seen together riding upon the highway a long distance from Harrowby.
When he reached the Federal lines, he would, of course, be obliged to
leave her. He apprehended no trouble for her; there were gentlemen
among the Federal officers who would readily assume charge of a brother
officer’s wife. It was all simple enough, only it broke Isabey’s heart.
As he rode soberly along through the blue-and-gold October morning he
kept a moderate pace and it was quite eleven o’clock before he reached
the place where he meant to rest his horse. It was in the little glade
in the woods where he remembered to have walked with Angela and Richard
Tremaine and Lyddon the first spring afternoon he ever met Angela,
almost a year and a half before. Then it had been springtime; now it
was autumn, and the dead leaves were thick underfoot.
Isabey dismounted, took the saddle off his horse, and sat down on the
same fallen tree where he had sat with Angela. He was not equal to much
exercise on foot, and sat quite still, living over the past with Angela
and dreading the interview that lay before him.
How would she take his message? Would she weep and wring her hands as
women usually do in such emergencies? Would she turn upon him and visit
him with her indignation. Or would she be angry with an icy anger?
It might well seem to this unsophisticated girl a terrible thing to
be thrust alone among soldiers, men whom she had never seen and whom
she daily heard reviled, to depend upon them for her safe conduct to
Neville.
Isabey’s heart was so tortured with this thought that he got up and,
in spite of his injured knee, walked up and down like a madman. The
squirrels looked at him curiously, and a family of wood robins, which
was preparing to fly southward, grew frightened, suddenly rose, and
with a rush of wings cleft the blue air. Isabey glanced at his watch
every few minutes and when it was half past one threw the saddle on his
horse, mounted, and, picking his way through the underbrush, struck the
cedar lane, down which he cantered rapidly.
Time was when no guest could approach Harrowby without being heralded
by a multitude of negroes, young and old, rushing in the house and
announcing the coming guest as if it were the most stupendous and
sensational event which had ever occurred. Not so now. There were only
a few negroes left on the estate and they were not much in evidence.
As Isabey neared the house he was struck with its lonely aspect as it
lay basking in the unclouded midday. No one was moving about and not
even a sleeping dog was in sight. The river lay bright and still like
a lake. Over the whole scene brooded the peculiar stillness of autumn
noonday, broken only by the distant clanking cry of a mob of crows
circling high in the blue air, while below them a vulture, silent,
contemptuous, and majestically evil, winged his steady flight upon
unquivering wings toward the wooded uplands.
It occurred to Isabey that Angela would most likely be in the garden,
and as he came within sight of the broad main walk he glanced down
toward the bench at the end and saw the flutter of a crimson mantle.
He sprang from his horse and, throwing the reins over the gatepost,
entered the rusty iron gateway and walked quickly toward Angela at the
end of the garden.
In spite of Isabey’s jingling spurs, which announced his arrival when
he was still some distance off, he had a good opportunity to observe
Angela before she looked up and saw him.
The mantle had half-slipped off her shapely shoulders and her head
was bare. Little vagrant breezes had ruffled her beautiful hair. Some
coarse knitting lay in her lap, but she was not at work upon it. She
seemed so lost in abstraction that she did not notice the sound of
Isabey’s approach or even when he stopped and gazed full upon her.
The sudden sharp cry of the crows overhead seemed to rouse her at last.
She raised her eyes and her glance fell upon Isabey, his trim figure,
in the gray uniform, silhouetted before her and the buttons gleaming
like fire in the golden light.
The change that came over her was like the lighting of a lamp in an
alabaster vase. Isabey had seen that same flash of joy in her eyes
the night he had arrived wounded at Harrowby. Now it smote him to the
heart. He knew--what Angela did not know--that when a woman changes
color, smiles, trembles, and casts down her eyes at the coming of a
certain man, it has a tragic meaning. She half-rose from the old bench
and put her slender hand into Isabey’s, a custom which, from Isabey’s
French education, always seemed strange and exciting to him.
He asked how she had fared since last he saw her, but Angela, without
replying, began to question him about his disabled arm and knee.
“I think they are both quite well, or rather well enough, but the
surgeons (may evil befall them!) swear to General Farrington that I am
not yet fit to be sent to join my battery, and he listens to them. But
I hardly think they will be able to keep me in camp after this.”
Then they sat down, and Angela, taking up the knitting, said to him
eagerly, like a child:
“Do you see what this is? All the ladies in the county are knitting
stockings for the soldiers. Very well; I concluded that I would knit
some stockings for my soldier, for Neville. I felt so triumphant when I
told Aunt Sophia about it. She said nothing--you know that icy silence
which falls upon her whenever Neville’s name is mentioned--but she made
no objection. Do you know that the Federals paid us another visit night
before last?”
Yes, Isabey knew it, and knew much more about it than Angela suspected.
But he merely asked her how things went off on the occasion.
“It was exactly like the night they came after Colonel Gratiot, but
this time they didn’t catch anybody. A letter had come from General
Farrington saying that he was coming to Harrowby to spend that night.
Uncle Tremaine was in a terrible way and so was Aunt Sophia. They
didn’t like to write to the general telling him not to come, because
it might look inhospitable or as if they were afraid, but it really
was quite serious business. Uncle Tremaine swore--the first time, I
believe, in forty years--and Aunt Sophia told him that there was a
place prepared down below for blasphemers. And then Uncle Tremaine
begged her pardon and my pardon and Mr. Lyddon’s pardon and made public
confession of his fault that night at prayers. However, when General
Farrington didn’t come we all felt easy. But about twelve o’clock the
negroes all came running to the house, and we saw the gunboat at the
wharf, just as the time before. The house was searched, the stables,
and every place, but, of course, no one was found. It is the first time
I have ever seen Uncle Tremaine really discomposed, and he has not been
like himself since. We lost nothing except our night’s rest. And a
great many ridiculous things have happened which I shall tell you about
some time.”
Angela stopped, suddenly. Something in Isabey’s expressive face gave
warning. She looked attentively at him and waited for him to speak. The
pause grew awkward and even painful, and Isabey, in spite of his usual
self-control, showed a slight agitation.
“My dear Mrs. Tremaine,” he said, “I have come here to do you what I
hope is a service. I know that you wish very much to join your husband,
and this very day I am prepared to take you part of the way.”
Isabey said so much by way of preparing her, as he had not the
slightest idea that Angela’s acute intelligence would not fathom
the whole story very quickly. She did so, even more quickly than he
expected.
“Yes,” she said, after a moment, looking at him with her piercing
sidelong glance, “I do wish to join my husband, but so far he has not
sent for me. I may be only an impediment to him. And why should you be
the one to take me to him?”
“It is necessary that you should go immediately, and I will escort you
to the Federal lines.”
“Is Neville ill,” asked Angela, adding, after a moment, “or dead?”
“Not as far as I know,” answered Isabey. “This has nothing to do with
Neville’s well-being.”
Angela looked at him with wide eyes of amazement. “To take me to my
husband,” she said, after a moment. “You? It is very strange, most
strange.”
“But you are not unwilling to go?”
Angela hesitated, and the color dropped out of her face, leaving her
deathly pale. All at once her whole heart seemed revealed to her. Once
set forth upon her journey to join her husband meant separation, an
eternal separation, from Isabey. He watched her, reading easily the
meaning of her pallor and tremors, and understanding equally well her
quick recovery of herself, the calm courage, and even high spirit, with
which she replied: “Certainly it is my wish as well as my duty to join
my husband; but why you, I can’t understand--” Nor could Isabey, his
eyes fixed upon Angela’s pale face, understand either why he should
be the instrument to put the coming degradation upon her, and be, as
it were, the executioner of his own happiness--that faint and shadowy
happiness which a man enjoys in the presence of the woman he loves but
who is irrevocably beyond his reach.
Then Angela, without waiting for a reply to her first question, asked:
“Where shall I meet my husband?”
“That I can’t tell you. We can reach him by military telegraph as soon
as we are within the Federal lines.”
“Are those my husband’s directions?”
“No,” said Isabey, taking out his white handkerchief and passing it
over his face, on which Angela’s fixed glance noticed drops were
standing.
“Then what are my husband’s directions? Why has he not informed me?”
To this Isabey made no reply; but his agitation, although well
mastered, could not be wholly concealed.
Angela rose to her feet, and Isabey rose also. Facing each other, she
said to him in a voice which she vainly endeavored to make calm: “There
is some mystery about this which must be explained to me. Tell me the
truth, and tell me all the truth.”
There was no gainsaying this, and Isabey, unconscious that he called
her by her first name, replied: “Angela, since you command me, I must
tell you the truth. There is a cruel and most unjust suspicion abroad
against you. The people in the county think and say that you are
conveying information from the Confederate side to your husband.”
Angela straightened up her slender figure and smiled contemptuously.
“Is that all?” she asked. “Then it is very easily disproved. What do I
know about military matters? Who speaks of them before me? If I told
all I knew, or have ever known, it would be nothing.”
“So I believe; but the capture of Colonel Gratiot gave rise to these
reports, and the coming of the gunboat up the river the night that
General Farrington was expected to be at Harrowby was an unfortunate
coincidence. General Farrington sent for me last night and told me that
you must be escorted within the Federal lines, and at once. I asked
him why I, whose family had received such kindness from the Harrowby
family, should be required to do this hateful duty, and he told me that
it could be done with least publicity if it were in my hands.”
Angela remained silent for a few minutes, looking down. She was
revolving things in her mind and Isabey, who had a high opinion of her
natural good sense, did not interrupt her consideration of the position.
“It would be best,” she said, after a pause, “that I go quietly with
you, letting everyone in this house think that you bring me a command
from my husband. It is by far the best, that you will go with me to
the Federal lines. Yes, oh, more than that--stay with me until you can
give me into Neville’s hands. I implore you!” She clasped her hands and
looked, with eyes dark and full of sudden tears, at Isabey. After all,
she was but twenty and had lived a life almost as secluded as Miranda
upon her solitary isle, and the thought of being left alone with
strangers had in it for the moment something terrifying to her.
“I wish it could be so,” replied Isabey, his heart in his eyes. “But I
am afraid--I am afraid it cannot be. It will only be a question of a
day or two.”
“How shall we travel?”
“On horseback; you don’t mind a twenty-mile ride, do you?”
“Not in the least, and I can carry a portmanteau on my horse.”
Then, without more words, they turned and walked slowly up the broad
path.
As they went Angela looked about her with troubled eyes.
“I feel,” she said, “as if I were going to another planet or into
another world. I wonder if I shall ever return here again or ever, ever
walk in this garden again with you!”
“We shall never walk here any more,” replied Isabey, in a low voice.
Angela glanced toward him, and each read the other’s soul. Then they
averted their eyes; their glances were too poignant. After a pause
Isabey said: “When I have taken you to your husband I shall hope for
your happiness. You are very young and life holds much for you. Some
day I shall see you a happy wife.”
“I am sure you will,” replied Angela, calmly. “I have no one in the
world except Neville and I shall devote my life to him, and why
shouldn’t we be happy together?”
“You will be very happy together,” replied Isabey. Like Angela, he
believed in a decent cloaking of the chained passions, those wild
beasts which, if they are not subdued, devour men and women.