LOVE AND LIFE
At the same hour of the night Angela and Isabey were riding steadily
along the moonlit open road toward the Federal lines. The flat and
peaceful country was bare with the bareness of autumn and the wind
rustled over the broad fields of stubble and through the melancholy
woods. There was little evidence of the warfare which was raging only
a short distance away. The homesteads were silent and dark; there were
not many lights kept burning in those troublous times.
As Isabey and Angela rode along the highway through a world all white
moonlight and black shadows, they spoke little. Whenever Isabey looked
at her he noticed that there were tears on her cheeks, which she
brushed away with her little gloved hand. When they were an hour from
Harrowby they entered a great stretch of sandy road through which
they walked their horses. Isabey, knowing it would relieve Angela’s
overflowing heart to speak of Richard Tremaine, encouraged her to do
so, and they talked of the dead man. Isabey told of their student life
together, both in Virginia and in Paris.
“I have no other friend like Tremaine,” he said. “It seems to me that
among all who loved him there is no one who can quite fill Richard’s
place. Mr. Lyddon told me to-day that Richard was an unforgettable man.
I replied that he was an unforgettable friend.”
“But he is gone,” cried Angela, who had never seen death before, and
who knew for the first time the strangeness which comes with the
absence of the beloved. “He will never come into the study any more and
sit in the great chair opposite Mr. Lyddon and talk with him on deep
and profound things. His father will never again have Richard’s arm
to lean upon when he walks up and down the hall in the twilight. They
often did that together. And his mother will never again have him at
her side when she makes the prayer at night. Richard always sat on her
left and Neville on her right. Archie sat by Uncle Tremaine, because he
was such a restless little boy. Everybody--Mr. Lyddon, Uncle Tremaine,
and Aunt Sophia--thought Richard more brilliant than Neville, although
his mother certainly loved Neville best. But now all love and pride is
turned into anguish. I have been asking myself ever since I knew that
Richard was gone, ‘Where is he now? How far has he fared? Does he know
how broken-hearted we are?’”
“Ah,” replied Isabey, putting his hand upon the pommel of Angela’s
saddle, “you have got hold of that great question, ‘Whence goes the
soul?’ Every thinking human being traverses this problem; you will not
be able to escape from it. You will turn it over and over and read the
thoughts of many minds concerning it. After all, soldiers and saints
take the same view of this great matter. We do our duty, expecting to
render an account to the Great Commander. We know no more and it is
certain we can do no more.”
Isabey smiled a little at his brief preachment to Angela, but she was
so young and had read so few pages in the book of life that in many
ways she was a child in her questioning.
“I never talked with anyone about this,” she said. “It seemed to
me always as if it was impossible that anything could separate us
at Harrowby. Yet you see what has come--a frightful separation for
Neville, and Richard gone we know not where or how or even why.”
Both fell silent and remained so for a long time.
They had left Harrowby before seven o’clock and Isabey had thought they
would be able to make the whole distance, including an hour’s rest for
the horses, before midnight. But when at nine o’clock they had still
half the distance before them, he noticed how pale and tired Angela
looked. They stopped their horses to drink of a little brook that ran
silvery in the moonlight and then rippled darkling under a rude bridge
and into a thicket beyond where the autumn leaves still hung withered
upon the overhanging branches. Beyond lay a belt of pine woods, and
when they came to a little clear space within it Isabey said: “Here is
a spot where you may rest in safety and unseen. You can scarcely sit
your horse.”
“It is true,” replied Angela, wearily.
Isabey’s horse picked his way, followed by Angela’s, under the odorous
feathery branches of the pine trees where the ground was softly
carpeted with brown pine needles. When they were out of sight of the
road and well in the heart of the woods, Isabey dismounted and took
Angela from her horse. Her young strength had given out and she was so
fatigued that she sank, rather than sat, upon a fallen tree. Isabey
quickly tied the horses and unsaddled them; then with the saddles and
blankets he made a kind of rude couch for Angela. She lay down upon it,
and Isabey, after arranging her, began to walk up and down among the
tree trunks close by.
“Don’t leave me,” Angela called softly, in a voice like a frightened
child.
“I shan’t leave you,” replied Isabey, coming back and standing before
her, “nor even take my eyes off you. Hear the horses blowing and
snorting. Listen to them a little while. They are exactly like tired
human creatures in their complaining.”
“And I can listen also to the water under the bridge. Hear it as it
ripples past.” Angela listened a while, about five minutes, and then
Isabey, coming up softly to her again, found that the little stream to
which she had listened had become the river of forgetfulness and she
had fallen into a sudden sweet sleep.
The air was sharp, and Isabey, taking off his military cape, wrapped
it around her. Angela was so worn out with the fatigues and agitations
of the day that she slept as soundly as if she were in her own great
four-posted bed at Harrowby. Isabey, sitting on the fallen tree trunk,
kept watch over her. There were still tears upon her cheeks, and,
taking out his white handkerchief, he gently wiped them away without
waking her. Her face was pale at first, but as she felt the warmth of
the cape the blood returned to her cheeks, which in a little while
were overspread with a rosy glow like that of a sleeping child. Her
long braided hair had become loosened, and Isabey, lifting it gently
from where it had fallen against a half-bare bush, carefully disengaged
it. The silky locks fell over his hands, and he held them in his clasp
for a minute or two, then involuntarily pressed his lips upon them and
laid them upon Angela’s breast, covered with his cloak.
It seemed to Isabey the most solemn hour of his life when he found
himself alone with Angela in the darkness of the heart of the forest.
It was as if a kindly fate had given him this last farewell. He never
expected, or even desired, to see her as Neville Tremaine’s wife. He
could not disguise from himself what Angela, in her simplicity, had
not been able to disguise from him--that her soul answered to his as
the echo answers to the voice and a lake reflects the sky. She was so
little sophisticated, so frank, so fearless, that she betrayed herself
in every word and glance to his practiced eye. But not to others did
she betray herself. Though innocent she was not ignorant, and Isabey
felt a lofty pride in the same discretion of which Lyddon had spoken.
He remembered with a smile how she always brought in Neville’s name, as
if it were a talisman, when they found themselves on dangerous ground.
Isabey himself had been enough on his guard to escape a rebuff from
her or even a rebuking glance. He could look Neville Tremaine in the
eye without fear or reproach. Then, not being a man to dwell wholly
upon his own sufferings, his mind turned to Richard Tremaine. Ah,
there again was loss without repair! In war men grow not only familiar
with but contemptuous of death. Isabey had, however, but one Richard
Tremaine to lose, and when he remembered this he stopped in his halting
and stealthy walk up and down upon the pine needles and felt as if
a bolt had entered his heart. It was not meant, he thought, that he
should ever have wife or friend.
At ten o’clock, when he intended to rouse Angela, he went close to her
and found her sleeping so soundly he had not the heart to waken her.
It would, perhaps, be just as well if they reached the lines at six
o’clock in the morning. That would still give him time to return within
twenty-four hours.
The moon, hanging high in the heavens, increased in radiance, but only
here and there a patch of moonlight penetrated the plumelike branches
of the pine trees. The night grew suddenly cold and Isabey was forced
to quicken his noiseless walk. But Angela slept warmly and sweetly.
How very pretty she was, Isabey thought, in her irregular, piquant
way. She did not resemble any person or any picture that he had ever
seen. Her beauty was illusive, so dependent upon her mood that it was
difficult to reproduce. Isabey had tried often to sketch her, but he
had always thrown away the sketches in disgust. They were like Angela
and yet unlike her, having little beauty of any kind. Her charm was
one which could not be transferred through any medium whatever. Isabey
had never rated her actual beauty highly nor had it even impressed his
greatly; but when he considered her extraordinary power to interest,
to charm, to claim love as her heritage, he realized that she was one
of those women whom age could not wither nor custom stale. At first his
thoughts, his feelings, his griefs, and disappointments were fierce
and tempestuous, but as the night wore on he grew composed and even
resigned. He would take as a soldier meets death this coming blow of a
parting with Angela--take it quietly and unflinchingly and not degrade
himself by making a useless outcry against fate or fortune.
The moon grew wan and dropped out of sight and the pallid stars
heralded daybreak; it was that unearthly hour which is neither
night nor morning, when there is neither daylight nor moonlight nor
starlight, when Isabey, drawn against his will toward Angela, sat near
her and leaned over.
Suddenly she quietly opened her eyes and looked, wide awake, into his.
The hour, the place, the time, the circumstances, were such as to give
each insight into the soul of the other, and Angela saw farewell in
Isabey’s eyes. After a moment or two she spoke involuntarily, still
looking into his face: “This is the last time we shall see each other.”
She spoke softly, quietly, as if she were in a dream.
“Yes,” replied Isabey, in the same calm voice in which Angela had
spoken, “this is the last time.”
They sat quite still a minute longer, exchanging that unspoken but
intelligible language which both understood perfectly. Then Angela,
rising, held out her hand to Isabey. “Come,” she said, “we must go.”
Isabey rose, too, and they stood looking around them at the gloomy pine
trees in the faint cold light which was not light or darkness, as if
seeking to impress the spot forever upon their memories. Angela noticed
Isabey’s cloak lying at her feet, and she picked it up, saying: “You
wrapped me in your cloak; you shouldn’t have done it. But perhaps that
is why I slept in warmth and peace. I never had a sweeter sleep in my
life. I had no dream, but two or three times I was near waking, and
then I knew I was being watched over, and that made me feel so safe and
at peace, and I dropped asleep again.”
Isabey, without a word, took up the blankets, and, going to the horses,
arranged the saddles; then, lifting Angela on her horse, himself
mounted and made his way, Angela following, back through the thicket
into the straight white road beyond. Isabey looked at his watch. It was
after four o’clock in the morning. The pale gray sky was touched by the
coming dawn and a fresh wind rushed in from the sea, bringing with it a
faint mist, as cloudlike as elfland, which lay over the far-stretching
flat country. The horses, feeling the cold, were restless and struck
a sharp gait. They were not checked. Both Isabey and Angela had the
desire, having said farewell to each other, to flee from the place of
parting. They rode rapidly, without speaking to each other, except an
occasional word referring to their journeying. The wind of dawning rose
and swept away the mists and cleared the sky of clouds. All at once
the earth and the heavens were steeped in glory and the sunrise of a
new day was at hand. Isabey and Angela could see before them a long
line of breastworks and a white city of tents, and in the center a
great flagstaff up which a flag was climbing and then was flung to the
breeze with the sound of trumpets calling to one another.
Beyond the camp a great, broad, blue, rapid river flowed, and on the
opposite shore, which rose abruptly in cliffs, was another huge camp
gleaming whitely in the new-risen sun.
As they drew near the breastworks Isabey looked at Angela. She was very
pale, but she sat her horse well.
Isabey pulled up his horse. One more hateful thing remained to be
done--the delivery of General Farrington’s letter to Angela.
“I have a letter to give from General Farrington,” said Isabey gently.
“I need not say that nothing could induce me to give you such a letter
except the compulsion which is laid upon a soldier.”
He took the letter from his breast pocket and handed it to Angela, who
opened and glanced at it, her face lighting up with anger and scorn as
she read. Then, tearing the letter in half, she threw it violently from
her and, turning to Isabey, said in a trembling voice: “I feel sorry
that you should have been forced to give me such a letter. I know what
it must have cost you.”
“Thank you for saying so,” replied Isabey. “And let me speak one more
word. I would ask you not to say anything to Neville concerning the
reasons for your departure from Harrowby. It would give him deep and
unnecessary pain. Forgive me for mentioning this.”
In the storm and stress of the last twenty-four hours the thought had
vanished from Angela’s mind. All at once it returned to her--that
she was being driven away from the place of her birth and rearing by
hatred and a persecuting suspicion. It roused in her soul a tempest of
resentment and brought the beautiful angry blood to her cheeks.
“You need not ask my forgiveness,” she replied; “it is most thoughtful
to remind me, for otherwise I might have told Neville and it would
have been another pang for him, who has suffered so much. There are,
however, a few persons in the world who could never believe me guilty
of wrongdoing; Neville is one of them. No one who knows Neville will
ever dare to say one word against me where he can hear of it. I shall
always have the refuge of his love and confidence.”
Angela felt at that moment glad that she was on her way to Neville. She
had ever fled to him in all her childish griefs and sorrows, and now,
when the whole universe appeared changed to her, when she was brought
face to face on the one hand with hate and obloquy and on the other
with an unspoken love and all its mysteries and perplexities, it seemed
as if she had but one refuge, Neville Tremaine’s honest and tender
heart. Isabey, acute by nature and made more so by the prescience of
love, seeing on Angela’s part this turning to Neville, thought to
himself, “It is better so. This may be the beginning of love,” and then
was stabbed to the heart by his own thoughts. Only yesterday Angela had
been among the butterflies in the sun, and to-day she seemed like some
beautiful flowering plant cast upon the ocean. For so the great outside
world appeared to Angela.
When they came in sight of the sentry, Isabey, tying his white
handkerchief to the point of his saber, rode up and asked to see
the officer of the guard. He quickly appeared, a well-meaning,
mild-mannered young man who had recently exchanged the ferule of a
country schoolmaster for the sword of an officer. He looked keenly,
with unsophisticated admiration, at Angela, and, with the careless ease
of the volunteer, offered to pass Isabey and Angela to the tent of the
commanding officer.
When they reached, under this escort, the headquarters tent, the
commanding officer was standing before it. He was a gray-mustached
veteran who had been through the Florida wars, the Mexican War, and
that eternal warfare with the Indians on the frontier. The unexpected
presence of a lady did not disconcert him in the least. He had escorted
officers’ wives across the continent when every man in the escort had
been ordered to reserve a bullet for the ladies in case the party
should be overpowered by the Indians. He had himself taken his young
wife to a frontier post where she was the only woman among five hundred
men, and he secretly thought the ladies of the present day rather
wanting in the spirit of those fearless women of forty years before.
Isabey introduced himself and then made the necessary explanations with
tact and briefness. The old general’s bearing was courtesy itself, and
with his expert knowledge of military and social etiquette which was a
part of his training everything went smoothly.
“I have the pleasure of knowing your husband, madam,” he said, with
old-fashioned grace, to Angela. “I was once his instructor at the
Military Academy. His command is, I judge, about forty miles from
here and I can readily communicate with him by military telegraph.
If Captain Isabey will allow me to take charge of you, I can have you
conveyed, under proper escort, to Captain Tremaine--or is it Major
Tremaine? Promotion is rapid in these days.”
“He is still Captain Tremaine,” replied Angela, a slight blush coming
into her face. There had been no promotion for Neville, and Angela well
knew why.
Nothing remained for Isabey to do. He had been directed to place Mrs.
Neville Tremaine in safe hands and he felt that he had done so when he
put her in charge of the chivalrous old general. Then came the formal
farewell, which each wished to make brief--their real farewell had been
said the dawn before under the whispering pines.
Angela put her hand in Isabey’s and, with a smile both of the lips and
eyes, said: “I thank you more than I can say, and I also thank you in
Nev--in Captain Tremaine’s name. He will express his gratitude to you
himself and far better than I can.”
“It is nothing,” responded Isabey, calmly and gracefully. “I shall
always be happy to do a service to any of the Tremaine family, and
particularly to Captain Tremaine, whom I consider only a little farther
off as a friend than Richard Tremaine. When I recall all your kindness
to me at the time that I was wounded, I feel that I can never do enough
to show my appreciation of it. Pray remember me to Neville Tremaine.
Adieu--or good-by, as you say.”
“Good-by,” replied Angela, gently pressing his hand. And in another
moment he was gone.
Then the general, with antique courtesy, himself showed Angela
into a compartment of the headquarters tent which he desired her to
consider her own until she should depart to join her husband. It held
a small iron bed and some boxes which did duty for a toilet table and
washstand. The general apologized to Angela for the plainness of her
surroundings, but reminded her that she was a soldier’s wife and must
not mind trifles.
Then, the general leaving her, an orderly brought in Angela’s
portmanteau and she exchanged her riding habit for a conventional
costume, and combed and plaited her long, fair hair. In half an hour
the orderly, who was deputed to be Angela’s lady’s maid, informed her
that the general sent his compliments and begged the honor and pleasure
of her company at breakfast with him alone. Angela went into the outer
tent, where she found a small table laid for two and the gallant old
general waiting to receive her.
“Everything is arranged, my dear madam,” he said, as they seated
themselves. “I have secured a conveyance for you, not very stylish,
perhaps, but it will do--a small carriage and a pair of army mules,
with a soldier-driver. Your escort will be Lieutenant Farley, a nephew
of mine. I think it fair to tell you what, of course, I could not
mention before Captain Isabey, that your husband’s command is on the
march, and there is fighting going on. But, nevertheless, there is a
point at which you can intercept Captain Tremaine about thirty miles
from here and can, at least, have a brief interview.”
“Thank you,” replied Angela. “As you say, I am a soldier’s wife and so
must learn to bear a little hardship in order to see my husband, even
for a short time. Then he will decide what I shall do.”
Nothing could exceed the delicacy, tact, and thoughtfulness of the old
officer. He told Angela that she could send a dispatch by military
telegraph to Neville which would reach him within a few hours and
prepare him for her arrival. Angela thanked him again and felt as
if she had found a second Colonel Tremaine in this gray-mustached,
soft-voiced general. She began to speak with the frankness of an
unsophisticated nature of Neville Tremaine and his action in remaining
in the United States army. The general listened with the utmost
suavity, but made no comment. Angela had expected high commendation
from him for Neville, but instead was merely this smooth courtesy,
an attitude gracefully sympathetic but wholly noncommittal. Against
Neville Tremaine was an iron wall of prejudice which Angela’s soft
hands could not batter down. Some intuitive knowledge of this forced
itself upon her mind and cut her to the heart. The unspoken enmity of
his own people against Neville was easier than this secret distrust on
the part of those to whom Neville gave his service from the deepest
principle of conscience. This thought aroused something of the pride
and sensitiveness of wifehood in Angela. She changed from the attitude
of a young girl to that of a self-possessed woman, and told the
general, with the coolness and composure of twice her age, of the
obloquy visited upon Neville among his own people, “which,” she said,
with dignity and even stateliness, “is most undeserved. My husband lost
his inheritance; for that he does not grieve, but the disapproval of
his father and mother and of all those dear to him, except myself, is
very hard to bear. His brother Richard, who was killed only six days
ago, understood my husband better than anyone, and there was never any
breach between them. Richard Tremaine knew that only the strongest
conviction of his duty would keep his brother in your army.”
To this the general bowed again politely and sympathetically, but said
no word. Suspicion, that impalpable poison, that nameless destroyer,
had gone forth against Neville Tremaine and was withering him.
All at once the general’s kindness and hospitality grew irksome to
Angela. She asked when she could leave, and the general, who had been
all courtesy, felt that his guest wished to depart. He told her that a
boat was at her command, and the carriage would be waiting on the other
side. Then the general escorted her to the dock, his orderly carrying
her portmanteau, and there the young lieutenant, the general’s nephew,
who was to take charge of her for the next twenty-four hours, met them.
The general introduced him. He was a pink-and-white boy who had left
Harvard, where he had luxuriated on a large allowance, in order to
become a soldier. The general had no mind to trust Angela with any man
not of her own class in life, and had selected the greatest coxcomb,
who was also one of the bravest of his youngsters, to escort her.
Nothing could have pleased Farley better. He knew more of drawing-rooms
than of camps, and was delighted to figure as the guardian of anything
so charming as this young girl who was already a matron. The general,
assuming himself to be the obliged party and thanking Angela for the
privilege of serving her, put her into the boat in which the river was
crossed. On the other side was a rickety carriage drawn by a couple of
stout mules.
Farley took his seat by the side of the soldier who drove. The
coachman’s seat was on the same level as those within, and the roof of
the carriage overhung it. Farley had fully expected to be asked to take
a place within, but Angela totally forgot to ask him.
It was close upon ten o’clock when the carriage started off, and soon,
clearing the camp, passed through a flat green country, interspersed
with woods, along a road which had been cut up by artillery and
commissary wagons. The morning was beautifully fair and bright, and
Angela, leaning back in the carriage, had the feeling that she was
beginning a new volume of life. That other volume, which had begun with
her childhood as bright and fair as the morning, and had closed in
blood and tears and agony, was now locked and laid away forever.
A new perplexity occurred to her. If Neville had not heard of Richard’s
death, should she tell him? She was too inexperienced to know what was
judicious, but some instinct of the heart told her that the little time
she could spend with Neville, that one hour of brightness in his life
of undeserved hardship, should not be marred in any way. If he did not
know of Richard’s death already, he would learn it soon enough.
Thinking these thoughts, Angela, grave and preoccupied, with downcast
eyes, sat back in the corner of the carriage and took no note of
whither she went or how.
Farley had supposed that it was pure bashfulness which kept Mrs.
Neville Tremaine from inviting him to sit in the carriage with her, but
as they jolted steadily along the heavy road and the morning grew into
noon, and Angela was obviously unconscious of his existence, he began
to feel himself a much-injured man. He glanced back at her occasionally
and did not see her once look up, and, like most men, every time he
looked at her he thought her nearer to beauty. But she was no nearer to
conversation. Farley would have dearly liked to find out if her talk
were as interesting as her appearance, but she gave him no opportunity
of judging.
At sunset they reached a farmhouse where it had been arranged that
Angela should spend the night. It was a homely, tumble-down place, and
the mistress of it, Sarah Brown, a little withered, bloodless creature,
had clung to it, although it lay in the debatable ground between
contending armies. Sarah always ran away whenever a shot was fired, but
invariably trudged back to work and tremble and palpitate until her
fears drove her off again. She welcomed Angela with a kind of furtive
pleasure, she whose guests were usually embattled men, and showed her a
little plain room up a rickety flight of stairs where Angela might rest
for the night.
Farley thought it certain that he would meet Angela at supper, which
was served by Sarah in the kitchen. Angela, however, sent a polite
message asking to be excused from coming down and her supper was served
in her own little room.
Farley, reduced to his own society, soon went to his sleeping place,
which was on the floor of the “settin’ room.”
The next morning dawned mild and bright, and at eight o’clock the mules
were harnessed and the carriage was ready to start. Again was Farley
disappointed; he only saw Angela as she came tripping down the narrow
stair and bade him good morning.
She thanked Sarah Brown cordially, and, not daring to offer money for
her accommodation, took off a little gold brooch she wore, one of her
few ornaments, and handed it to Sarah. It was received in speechless
gratitude and admiration. Then Angela, smiling at Farley but without
seeing him, took her seat in the carriage. Farley by this time was
thoroughly exasperated with her for her want of appreciation of his
society, and he concluded that the surest punishment would be to leave
her to herself.
They drove on steadily through the same flat country, but around
them were evidences of fighting, past and to come. There were dreary
piles of brick, showing where humble houses had been destroyed by the
fortunes of war. The fences were all gone and gates had ceased to
exist. The people in the few homesteads they passed kept within doors
and the whole scene was one of desolation.
Presently, however, the stillness of the autumn day was broken by
ominous sounds. Afar off could be heard the dull thunder made by the
movement of troops, and about midday the highroad was suddenly blocked
by artillery wagons. For the first time Angela roused herself and
asked Farley, with interest, what it meant.
“Fighting, madam,” he replied promptly and expecting Angela’s face to
grow pale. On the contrary, she showed no tremor whatever and only said:
“I hope it will not interfere with my seeing Captain Tremaine, if only
for an hour.”
“I don’t think it will,” responded Farley. “This movement on the part
of the enemy is not entirely unexpected and we knew that Captain
Tremaine’s regiment would be on the march.”
Angela said no more and the carriage jolted on. The shadows were
growing long when the carriage, drawing up on the side of a wide road
leading through a belt of woods, stopped, and Farley, opening the door
and standing, cap in hand, said stiffly to Angela: “This is the point,
Mrs. Tremaine, where we are instructed to wait. Captain Tremaine’s
regiment will pass within a mile of us in half an hour and he will be
on the lookout for us.”
“Thank you,” Angela responded sweetly, and, accepting Farley’s
proffered hand, she descended from the carriage. “I think,” she said,
“I will walk a little way into the woods; but I shall keep within sight
of the road, so Captain Tremaine will see me as soon as he arrives.”
Farley, whose instructions were to remain with Angela and to place
himself at Neville Tremaine’s disposal, stood discontentedly watching
her as she walked daintily through the thicket, and he thought her one
of the most ungrateful women that ever lived.
When a little out of sight of the road Angela looked about her. It
might have been the same spot in which she had taken her real farewell
of Isabey--the same dark overhanging pine trees, their resonant aroma
filling the air, and the same slippery carpet of brown pine needles
lay under her feet. Angela, hitherto so calm, began to feel a strange
agitation. Neville Tremaine had been so much a part of her life since
her babyhood that she had never had any right conception of him as her
husband, but now all was changed. Her whole life was cast behind her
and Neville was her only refuge and her sole possession.
She wished, however, to forget all the past and set about resolutely at
forgetting. She had put Isabey out of her mind so far as she could, but
it is quite possible to throttle a thought and yet hear it breathing
in one’s ear. So it was with Angela. She fixed her consciousness upon
Neville Tremaine, but her subconsciousness was with Isabey. One thing
was certain: she could ever count upon Neville Tremaine’s tenderness,
chivalry, and unshakable kindness.
As she walked up and down with her own peculiar and airy grace, she
kept her eyes fixed on the open roadway. A mile off she could hear
distinctly the clanking of ammunition wagons, the steady tramp of
thousands of feet, the dull beating of the earth by horses’ hoofs.
Ten minutes had passed when she saw a horseman coming at a hard gallop
along the woodland road. It was Neville Tremaine. In a minute or two
he reached the carriage and flung himself off his horse. Farley spoke
a word to him. Throwing his bridle toward the soldier-driver, Neville
made straight through the thicket to where Angela stood. Angela felt
herself taken in his strong arms and his mustached lips against hers.
She clung to him, and it seemed to her as if it were Neville and
yet not Neville. Only one thing was unmistakable: the old sense of
well-being and protection when he was near came sweetly back to her.
But of all else that passed in those first few minutes she scarcely
knew, except that Neville held her to his strong beating heart and told
her how dear she was to him.
Then he put her off a little way and gazed at her with tender
admiration. Angela saw the great changes made in Neville by time and
war. He looked much older and his naturally dark skin had grown darker
with tan and sunburn. She could see, where his cap was raised a little
from his brow, the whiteness of his forehead contrasted with the
brownness of his face. He was campaigning, but otherwise there was the
same immaculateness about him--neatly shaven, smartly uniformed, his
accoutrement shining, all the marks of the trained officer.
As for Neville, his admiration for Angela burst from him as he looked
at her. “Dearest,” he said, holding both her hands, “you have become
beautiful. You are a woman now and not a child. You have grown up since
that night on the wharf at Harrowby.”
“I have gone through that which makes a girl into a woman,” replied
Angela, softly. “Until two nights ago I had every night at family
prayers to hear every name called except yours, but I called your name
in my heart.”
“I know it, I know it.”
“Two nights ago all was changed. Your mother once more mentioned your
name and your father sent you his blessing.”
“Thank God!” replied Neville, lifting his cap.
“And here is a letter from your mother. They sent you a thousand
messages, and so did Archie and Mr. Lyddon and all the servants. You
are forgiven.”
“Yes, forgiven by all who thought that I acted dishonorably. One
person, however, I shall never need any forgiveness from, because he
knows and respects my motives--my brother Richard.”
Richard’s name, spoken so suddenly, disconcerted Angela for a moment.
She trembled a little and looked away and then her pitying eyes sought
Neville’s, but she replied calmly: “Yes, Richard never said one word in
condemnation of you.”
“That is like him. Of all men I ever knew in my life, I think best
of Richard. Not because he is my brother, but because he is better,
larger-minded, braver, than any other man I ever knew. I had a letter
from him by flag of truce a fortnight ago and managed to reply by the
same means. He has no doubt got my letter by this time. I have so many
things to ask you, so many things to tell you, the chief of which is
how much I love you; and I only have one hour with you.”
And then Angela, with tender sophistry, replied: “I would not miss the
chance of spending this one hour with you; but surely I can be near
you--nearer than at Harrowby.”
“Yes,” answered Neville gravely; “we shall be fighting probably, if not
to-night, certainly from early in the morning, and a soldier cannot
look beyond the present hour. If I am alive, we shall meet again
within the week. If I am killed, you will return at once to Harrowby.”
Angela caught Neville’s arm. The thought of a world without him
staggered her. “Don’t say that,” she cried breathlessly, and then
stopped. In another moment the tragedy of Richard’s death would have
burst from her involuntarily.
Neville, thinking he saw in Angela’s face and words and tone that a
love for him, like his love for her, had been born in her soul, caught
her to his breast in rapture. The hour passed so quickly to Neville it
seemed as if they had but scarcely exchanged their first confidences
when it was time for him to go.
He gave Angela his last instructions--to remain for at least three
days, or until she should hear from him, at the little farmhouse where
she had spent the night.
“I shall do exactly as you say,” answered Angela quietly. “And you may
depend upon it that I shan’t fall into a panic and run away.”
“I know that you will never fall into a panic,” answered Neville,
smiling. “I think the Southern women are very like the great captain
who asked when he was a boy, ‘What is fear?’ I don’t think you know as
much about fear as I do.”
Then, as the moment of parting approached, their voices and eyes grew
grave, and presently Neville kissed Angela in the shade of the pine
trees. They walked through the purple shadows of the late afternoon
back to the road where the carriage still stood and the orderly led
Neville’s horse up and down.
Farley, consumed with chagrin and impatience, still maintained a
gentlemanlike outside. Neville thanked him with sincere gratitude, and
Angela added some graceful phrases without taking any more interest in
him than in the orderly, a fact which Farley bitterly realized. Neville
put Angela in the carriage, and, laying a letter upon her lap, said to
her:
“Good-by. Keep this letter, but do not open it unless you hear bad news
of me. You will hear something from me within three days, in any event.”
Farley turned his back and the orderly looked hard in the opposite
direction as Neville kissed Angela for the last time.
When a soldier says good-by it may be the last farewell. Angela’s
heart was suddenly pierced with this thought, and when Neville would
have turned quickly away, she drew him back to her and kissed him once
again. The next moment he was gone.
The sun was setting when Angela found herself once more upon the road.
It seemed to her as if that brief hour with Neville had been a dream;
but all had been dreamlike with her of late. Until a year or so ago
nothing had happened. That had been her grievance: she had so longed
for life, movement, color, love, even grief, anything to move the
silent pool in which she thought herself, at twenty, anchored for life.
All at once everything came. War, persecution, estrangement, love,
death, all those things most moving in human life. She looked at the
letter addressed to her in Neville’s firm handwriting, and knew well
enough what it meant--it was what she was to do in the event of his
death; but like most young creatures brimming with life, Angela could
scarcely believe in death. It seemed to her an anachronism so frightful
as to be almost incredible.
When the carriage reached once more the public road there was, even to
Angela’s untrained eyes, every sign of approaching battle. A great,
dark blue stream, with glittering muskets which the dying sun tipped
with fire, poured along the highroad. Officers were riding at a steady
pace with their commands, while constantly orderlies dashed back and
forth, silent, grimly concentrated upon their errands.
Over the quiet autumn landscape, which should have been all peace,
brooded the spirit of coming battle. The red sun itself seemed to
Angela’s mind a great bloody disk dropping behind the dreary woods. How
many of these men marching cheerfully along would live to see another
sun set?
Suddenly a sound, distant but unmistakable, smote Angela’s ear--the
reverberation across the distant hills and far-off wide river of heavy
guns. Angela had never before in her life heard a cannon fired, but
that menacing thunder, that wolfish howl before the banquet of death
begins, could not be misunderstood. Angela felt a sensation of horror,
but nothing like fear; she came of good fighting stock, and the thought
of battle did not intimidate her. Then the far-off roar was overborne
by a loud, quick crashing of guns within half the distance. Instantly
the thrill of conflict seemed to animate the long blue line, and there
were a few quick evolutions, like a lion crouching before his spring.
Farley, who had been leaning forward listening intently, took the whip
out of the hands of the soldier-driver and laid it heavily on the
mules, and they sprang ahead. Then turning to Angela, sitting upright
within the carriage, and now fully awake to all that was going on
around her, he said:
“Pray, don’t be alarmed, Mrs. Tremaine. I can get you to the farmhouse
within an hour, where you will be quite safe and out of danger.”
“Don’t disturb yourself on my account,” replied Angela. “I only regret
that I am giving you trouble when I am sure you wish to be with your
command.”
As she spoke, the soldier-driver, with the familiarity of the
volunteer, glancing back at her, said to Farley, above the rattle of
the rickety carriage: “I don’t believe she is afeered, but it’s more
’an some of them fellows on both sides can say.”
Angela said no more, but watched with a fast-beating heart what seemed
to be tumult passing before her, but was really expedition and apparent
confusion which meant order.
In a little while the carriage struck off from the highroad and passed
into a region all quietude and peace. The distant roar of the guns
stopped for a time, and the intervening hill and valley shut off the
sounds of the marching troops. The red sun was gone and the short,
enchanted autumn twilight had fallen. When the carriage drew up at the
door of the farmhouse Angela, when Farley had assisted her to alight,
said: “I think that I should now release you from your kind attendance
on me. Captain Tremaine directed me to remain here until I should hear
from him. I shan’t need any protection, and I beg that you will feel no
hesitation in leaving me.”
Farley, whose orders were to place himself at Mrs. Tremaine’s disposal
and who had looked forward to days of inaction for himself while
fighting was going on, felt a thrill of gratitude.
“Thank you,” he replied, bowing low. “If I thought there was any
possibility of danger to you, I assure you I should not leave you; but
this place is well out of the way, and, besides, we hardly expect a
general engagement.”
Sarah Brown, slatternly, frightened, helpless, but sympathetic,
came out to greet Angela, and suddenly began to wring her hands. “I
thought,” she cried hysterically, “we would have a man here in case the
Yankees, or the Confederates either, wanted to burn the house down, and
then he would stand up for us and wouldn’t let ’em do it. Oh, my, oh,
my!”
“Nonsense!” cried Angela sharply, catching Sarah by the arm. “If
anything like that should happen, no one could help us. We are just
as well off alone. Good-by, Mr. Farley, and thank you.” And bowing
politely to the soldier-driver, she fairly dragged her hostess within.
Once inside, she managed to somewhat calm Sarah Brown’s chronic
trepidation. Sarah gave her supper, and then would, out of pure good
nature, have remained with her during the night, but this Angela
declined.
When darkness fell, all grew still, and Sarah Brown took Angela’s
advice and went to bed. Angela herself did not follow her own
recommendation, and felt a strange disinclination to go to bed. Usually
her strong young nerves had given her sleep whenever she had desired
it, but this night, when every nerve was on quivering edge, sleep
eluded and defied her. She threw her mantle around her and sat for a
long time at the open window watching the moon as it rose in silvery
splendor over the half-bare woods. How still and sad and woe-begone was
the aspect of the country! Only two nights before she had been riding
with Isabey through a region almost as still and sad and woe-begone as
this, along the weed-grown highway and untraveled forest roads, and now
that time was as far removed as if æons had passed.
As the thought of Isabey occurred to her she put it resolutely out of
her mind and began to think of Neville--how he looked, what he said.
She took from her pocket the letter he had given her, and then thrust
it back out of sight. She was not to open it unless she had bad news of
him. Existence with Neville absent had been strange enough, but with
him dead--Angela could scarcely conceive of a world without him. Her
heart was oppressed with a thousand griefs and perplexities. If only
Isabey had not come into her life, how much easier would all things
have been! She remembered Lyddon having told her once, long ago, that
human beings in this world suffer or enjoy according to the imagination
with which they are endowed, and he had added, “You have a tremendous
imagination.”
This and many other half-forgotten things came back to her memory,
and all suggested struggle and conflict. After midnight she lay down
across her hard, coarse bed and fell into a restless and uneasy sleep,
haunted by painful dreams. She was glad to waken from it, and, looking
at her watch, found that it was four o’clock. Just the time, two nights
before, when she had said farewell to Isabey. Life appeared to her all
farewells. She rose and went again to the open window, and the scene of
two nights before seemed to repeat itself before her eyes, until the
miracle of the dawning came. Then Angela’s head dropped upon the window
sill and she fell for the first time into a quiet and dreamless sleep.
The sun rose in splendor, and the whole fresh and dewy world was
sparkling when Angela was awakened by a terrible sound--the crash of
bursting shells. She looked toward the woods a mile away and heard
through the stillness of the autumn morning the fearful thunder, the
shouts and cries of conflict. Almost immediately she saw half a dozen
ambulances with their attendants driving into the open field and making
straight for the farmhouse. She knew well what it meant. Those were the
wounded seeking a place of refuge. As the ambulances reached the house
she opened her door and ran quickly down the narrow stair. The passage
door was wide open, and two soldiers, carrying a stretcher, were coming
in. On it lay a figure covered up in a blue cloak. They took their
burden and laid it down in the room to the right on the ground floor.
Following them came a surgeon, grimy, bloody, anxious-eyed, but cool.
He scarcely saw Angela, and paid no heed to her, but followed the
stretcher into the little room. Then Angela heard him say, in a quick
voice: “He is gone; there is nothing more to be done here, but plenty
to be done outside.”
He passed again through the hall, followed by the two soldiers. Three
stretchers, with wounded men groaning and moaning in their agony, were
carried into the narrow hall.
Something quite outside of her own volition made Angela walk toward
the room in which the dead officer lay. As she reached the door she
felt a hand upon her arm, and the surgeon was saying to her: “Excuse
me, but you had better not go in there. The officer is dead and much
disfigured.”
“What is his name?” asked Angela.
“Captain Neville Tremaine,” was the surgeon’s answer. “Killed leading
the Forlorn Hope; as brave a man as ever lived or died.”
* * * * *
One night, a week later, Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine sat together in the
library at Harrowby. Usually they were alone, but since the family
circle had grown so pitifully small, Lyddon had left his ancient
habitat, the old study, and sat with them in the evenings. He was
pretending to read, and so was Colonel Tremaine, but both were really
absorbed in reverie. Mrs. Tremaine, with more self-possession than
either, sat knitting. Lyddon, watching her furtively, thought how like
she was to those Spartan women who bade their sons return with their
shields or upon them. Only with Mrs. Tremaine this sublime courage was
accompanied with a gentleness and softness like a Lesbian air.
The stillness remained unbroken for an hour, when there was a sound
of hoofs and wheels upon the carriage drive. As they listened the hall
door was quickly opened and some one entered.
“That is Angela,” said Mrs. Tremaine. And the next moment Angela
entered the library. She wore a black gown, which Mrs. Tremaine
instantly noticed. The two women, looking into each other’s eyes,
opened their arms, and then were clasped together.
“Neville is gone!” cried Angela. “He is with Richard.”