But over their tea and marmalade and toast she became less communicative; and once or twice the conversation betrayed an unexpected tendency to drift toward Berkley.
“I haven’t the slightest curiosity concerning him, dear,” said Ailsa, attempting corroboration in a yawn — which indiscretion she was unable to accomplish.
“Well,” remarked Camilla, “the chances are that you’ve seen the last of him if you showed it too plainly. Men don’t come back when a girl doesn’t wish them to. Do they?”
After Camilla had gone, Ailsa roamed about the parlours, apparently renewing her acquaintance with the familiar decorations. Sometimes she stood at windows, looking thoughtfully into the empty street; sometimes she sat in corners, critically surveying empty space.
Yes, the chances were that he would scarcely care to come back. A man of that kind did not belong in her sister-in-law’s house, anyway, nor in her own — a man who could appeal to a woman for a favourable opinion of himself, asking her to suspend her reason, stifle logic, stultify her own intelligence, and trust to a sentimental impulse that he deserved the toleration and consideration which he asked for. . . . It was certainly well for her that he should not return. . . . It would be better for her to lay the entire matter before her sister-in-law — that was what she would do immediately!
She sprang to her feet and ran lightly up-stairs; but, fast as she fled, thought outran her slender flying feet, and she came at last very leisurely into Celia’s room, a subdued, demure opportunist, apparently with nothing on her mind and conscience,
“If I may have the carriage at ten, Celia, I’ll begin on the Destitute Children to-morrow. . . . Poor babies! . . . If they only had once a week as wholesome food as is wasted in this city every day by Irish servants . . . which reminds me — I suppose you will have to invite your new kinsman to dine with you.”
“There is loads of time for that, Honey-bud,” said her sister-in-law, glancing up absently from the note she was writing.
“I was merely wondering whether it was necessary at all,” observed
Ailsa Paige, without interest.
But Celia had begun to write again. “I’ll ask him,” she said in her softly preoccupied voice, “Saturday, I think.”
“Oh, but I’m invited to the Cortlandt’s,” began Ailsa, and caught her under lip in her teeth. Then she turned and walked noiselessly into her bedroom, and sat down on the bed and looked at the wall.
CHAPTER IV
It was almost mid-April; and still the silvery-green tassels on the wistaria showed no hint of the blue petals folded within; but the maples’ leafless symmetry was already veined with fire. Faint perfume from Long Island woodlands, wandering puffs of wind from salt meadows freshened the city streets; St. Felix Street boasted a lilac bush in leaf; Oxford Street was gay with hyacinths and a winter-battered butterfly; and in Fort Greene Place the grassy door-yards were exquisite with crocus bloom. Peace, good-will, and spring on earth; but in men’s souls a silence as of winter.
To Northland folk the unclosing buds of April brought no awakening; lethargy fettered all, arresting vigour, sapping desire. An immense inertia chained progress in its tracks, while overhead the gray storm-wrack fled away, — misty, monstrous, gale-driven before the coming hurricane.
Still, for the Northland, there remained now little of the keener suspense since those first fiery outbursts in the South; but all through the winter the dull pain throbbed in silence as star after star dropped from the old galaxy and fell flashing into the new.
And it was a time of apathy, acquiescence, stupefied incredulity; a time of dull faith in destiny, duller resignation.
The printed news was read day after day by a people who understood nothing, neither the cautious arming nor the bold disarming, nor the silent fall of fortified places, nor the swift dismantling of tall ships — nor did they comprehend the ceaseless tremors of a land slowly crumbling under the subtle pressure — nor that at last the vast disintegration of the matrix would disclose the forming crystal of another nation cradled there, glittering, naming under the splendour of the Southern skies.
A palsied Old Year had gone out. The mindless old man — he who had been President — went with it. A New Year had come in, and on its infant heels shambled a tall, gaunt shape that seated itself by the White House windows and looked out into the murk of things with eyes that no man understood.
And now the soft sun of April spun a spell upon the Northland folk; for they had eyes but they saw not; ears had they, but they heard not; neither spoke they through the mouth.
To them only one figure seemed real, looming above the vast and motionless mirage where a continent stood watching the parapets of a sea-girt fort off Charleston.
But the nation looked too long; the mirage closed in; fort, sea, the flag itself, became unreal; the lone figure on the parapet turned to a phantom. God’s will was doing. Who dared doubt?
“There seems to be no doubt in the South,” observed Ailsa Paige to her brother-in-law one fragrant evening after dinner where, in the dusk, the family had gathered on the stoop after the custom of a simpler era.
Along the dim street long lines of front stoops blossomed with the light spring gowns of women and young girls, pale, dainty clusters in the dusk set with darker figures, where sparks from cigars glowed and waned in the darkness.
Windows were open, here and there a gas jet in a globe flickered inside a room, but the street was dusky and tranquil as a country lane, and unilluminated save where at far intervals lamp-posts stood in a circle of pale light, around which a few moths hovered.
“The rebels,” repeated Ailsa, “appear to have no doubts, honest or otherwise. They’ve sent seven thousand troops to the Charleston fortifications — the paper says.”
Stephen Craig heard his cousin speak but made no response. He was smoking openly and in sight of his entire family the cigar which had, heretofore, been consumed surreptitiously. His mother sat close to his shoulder, rallying him like a tormenting schoolgirl, and, at intervals, turning to look back at her husband who stood on the steps beside her, a little amused, a little proud, a little inclined to be critical of this tall son of his who yesterday had been a boy.
The younger daughters of the house, Paige and Marye, strolled past, bareheaded, arms linked, in company with Camilla and Jimmy Lent.
“O dad!” called out Paige softly, “Jim says that Major Anderson is to be reinforced at once. There was a bulletin this evening.”
“I am very glad to hear it, sweetheart,” said her father, smiling through his eye-glasses.
Stephen bent forward across his mother’s shoulder. “Is that true, father?”
“Camilla’s brother has probably been reading the Tribune’s evening bulletin. The Herald bulletin says that the Cabinet has ordered the evacuation of Fort Sumter; the Times says Major Anderson is to be reinforced; the World says that he abandoned the fort last night; and they all say he has been summoned to surrender. Take your choice, Steve,” he added wearily. “There is only one wire working from the South, and the rebels control that.”
“Are you tired, Curt?” asked his wife, looking around and up at him.
He seated himself and readjusted his eye-glasses.
“No, dear — only of this nightmare we are living in” — he stopped abruptly. Politics had been avoided between them. There was a short silence; he felt his wife’s hand touch his in the darkness — sign of a tender respect for his perplexity, but not for his political views.
“Forgive me, dear, for using the word ‘rebel,’” he said, smiling and straightening his shoulders. “Where have you and Ailsa been to-day? Did you go to New York?”
“Yes. We saw the Academy, and, oh, Curt! there are some very striking landscapes — two by Gifford; and the cutest portrait of a girl by Wiyam Hunt. And your friend Bierstadt has a Western scene — all fireworks! and, dear, Eastman Johnson was there — and Kensett sent such a cunning little landscape. We lunched at Taylor’s.” She lowered her
voice to a whisper. “Ailsa did look too cute fo’ words. I declare she is the most engaging little minx. Eve’y man sta’ed at her. I wish she would marry again and be happy. She doesn’t know what a happy love affair can be — poor baby.”
“Do you?” asked her husband.
“Are you beginning to co’t me again, Curt?”
“Have I ever ceased? — you little Rebel!”
“No,” she said under her breath.
“By the way, Celia,” he said smiling, “that young man — cousin of yours — Berkley, turned up promptly to-day. I gave him a room in the office.”
“That was certainly ve’y frien’ly of you, Curt!” she responded warmly. “You will be patient with him, won’t you?”
“I’ve had to be already. I gave him a commission to collect some rents and he came back fifty dollars short, calmly explaining that one of our lodgers looked poor and he hated to ask for the rent.”
“O Curt — the boy is ve’y sweet and wa’m-hearted. Were you cross with him?”
“Not very. I imparted a few plain truths — very pleasantly, Celia. He knew better; there’s a sort of an impish streak in him — also an inclination for the pleasant by-ways of life. . . . He had better let drink alone, too, if he expects to remain in my office. I told him that.”
“Does he — the foolish baby!”
“Oh, probably not very much. I don’t know; he’s likable, but — he hasn’t inspired me with any overwhelming respect and confidence. His record is not exactly savoury. But he’s your protege, and I’ll stand him as long as you can.”
“Thank you, Curt. We must be gentle to him. I shall ask him to dinner and we can give a May dance perhaps — something informal and pretty — What is the matter, Curt?”
“Nothing, dear. . . . Only I wouldn’t plan anything just yet — I mean for the present — not for a few days, anyway — —”
He shrugged, removed his glasses, polished them on his handkerchief, and sat holding them, his short-sighted eyes lost in reverie.
His wife endured it to the limit of patience:
“Curt,” she began in a lower voice, “you and I gen’ally avoid certain matters, dear — but — ev’ything is sure to come right in the end — isn’t it? The No’th is going to be sensible.”
“In the — end,” he admitted quietly. And between them the ocean sprang into view again.
“I wonder—” She stopped, and an inexplicable uneasiness stirred in her breast. She looked around at her son, her left hand fell protectingly upon his shoulder, her right, groping, touched her husband’s sleeve.
“I am — well cared for — in the world,” she sighed happily to herself. “It shall not come nigh me.”
Stephen was saying to Ailsa:
“There’s a piece of up-town property that came into the office to-day which seems to me significant of the future. It would be a good investment for you, Cousin Ailsa. Some day Fifth Avenue will be built up solidly with brown-stone mansions as far as the Central Park. It is all going to be wonderfully attractive when they finish it.”
Ailsa mused for a moment. Then:
“I walked down this street to Fort Greene this afternoon,” she began, “and the little rocky park was so sweet and fragrant with dogwood and Forsythia and new buds everywhere. And I looked out over the rivers and the bay and over the two cities and, Steve, somehow — I don’t know why — I found my eyes filling with tears. I don’t know why, Steve — —”
“Feminine sentiment,” observed her cousin, smoking.
Mrs. Craig’s fingers became restless on her husband’s sleeve; she spoke at moments in soft, wistful tones, watching her younger daughters and their friends grouped under the trees in the dusk. And all the time, whatever it was that had brought a new unease into her breast was still there, latent. She had no name to give it, no reason, no excuse; it was too shadowy to bear analysis, too impalpable to be defined, yet it remained there; she was perfectly conscious of it, as she held her husband’s sleeve the tighter.
“Curt, is business so plaguey poor because of all these politics?”
“My business is not very flourishing. Many men feel the uncertainty; not everybody, dear.”
“When this — matter — is settled, everything will be easier for you, won’t it? You look so white and tired, dear.”
Stephen overheard her.
“The matter, as you call it, won’t be settled without a row, mother — if you mean the rebellion.”
“Such a wise boy with his new cigar,” she smiled through a sudden resurgence of uneasiness.
The boy said calmly: “Mother, you don’t understand; and all the rest of the South is like you.”
“Does anybody understand, Steve?” asked his father, slightly ironical.
“Some people understand there’s going to be a big fight,” said the boy.
“Oh. Do you?”
“Yes,” he said, with the conviction of youth. “And I’m wondering who’s going to be in it.”
“The militia, of course,” observed Ailsa scornfully. “Camilla is forever sewing buttons on Jimmy’s dress uniform. He wears them off dancing.”
Mr. Craig said, unsmiling: “We are not a military nation, Steve; we are not only non-military but we are unmilitary — if you know what that means.”
“We once managed to catch Cornwallis,” suggested his son, still proudly smoking.
“I wonder how we did it?” mused his father.
“They were another race — those catchers of Cornwallis — those fellows in, blue-and-buff and powdered hair.”
“You and Celia are their grandchildren,” observed Ailsa, “and you are a West Point graduate.”
Her brother-in-law looked at her with a strange sort of humour in his handsome, near-sighted eyes:
“Yes, too blind to serve the country that educated me. And now
it’s too late; the desire is gone; I have no inclination to fight,
Ailsa. Drums always annoyed me. I don’t particularly like a gun.
I don’t care for a fuss. I don’t wish to be a soldier.”
Ailsa said: “I rather like the noise of drums. I think I’d like — war.”
“Molly Pitcher! Molly Pitcher! Of what are you babbling,” whispered Celia, laughing down the flashes of pain that ran through her heart. “Wars are ended in our Western World. Didn’t you know it, grandchild of Vikings? There are to be no more Lake Champlains, only debates — n’est ce pas, Curt? — very grand debates between gentlemen of the South and gentlemen of the North in Congress assembled — —”
“Two congresses assembled,” said Ailsa calmly, “and the debates will be at long range — —”
“By magnetic telegraph if you wish, Honey-bell,” conceded Celia hastily. “Oh, we must not begin disputin’ about matters that nobody can possibly he’p. It will all come right; you know it will, don’t you, Curt?”
“Yes, I know it, somehow.”
Silence, fragrance, and darkness, through which rang the distant laugh of a young girl. And, very, very far away sounds arose in the city, dull, indistinct, lost for moments at a time, then audible again, and always the same sounds, the same monotony, and distant persistence.
“I do believe they’re calling an extra,” said Ailsa, lifting her head to listen.
Celia listened, too.
“Children shouting at play,” she said.
“They are calling an extra, Celia!”
“No, little Cassandra, it’s only boys skylarking.”
For a while they remained listening and silent. The voices still persisted, but they sounded so distant that the light laughter from their neighbour’s stoop drowned the echoes.
Later, Jimmy Lent drifted into the family circle.
“They say that there’s an extra out about Fort Sumter,” he said.
“Do you think he’s given up, Mr. Craig?”
“If there’s an extra out the fort is probably safe enough, Jim,” said the elder man carelessly. He rose and went toward the
group of girls and youths under the trees.
“Come, children,” he said to his two daughters; and was patient amid indignant protests which preceded the youthful interchange of reluctant good-nights.
When he returned to the stoop Ailsa had gone indoors with her cousin. His wife rose to greet him as though he had been away on a long journey, and then, passing her arms around her schoolgirl daughters, and nodding a mischievous dismissal to Jimmy Lent, walked slowly into the house. Bolts were shot, keys turned; from the lighted front parlour came the notes of the sweet-toned square piano, and Ailsa’s voice:
— “Dear are her charms to me,
Dearest her constancy,
Aileen aroon—”
“Never mind any more of that silly song!” exclaimed Celia, imprisoning Ailsa’s arms from behind.
”Youth must with time decay,
Aileen aroon,
Beauty must fade away,
Aileen aroon—”
“Don’t, dear! please — —”
But Ailsa sang on obstinately:
”Castles are sacked in war,
Chieftains are scattered far,
Truth is a fixed star,
Aileen aroon.”
And, glancing back over her shoulder, caught her breath quickly.
“Celia! What is the matter, dear?”
“Nothing. I don’t like such songs — just now — —”
“What songs?”
“I don’t know, Ailsa; songs about war and castles. Little things plague me. . . . There’s been altogether too much talk about war — it gets into ev’ything, somehow. I can’t seem to he’p it, somehow — —”
“Why, Celia! You are not worrying?”
“Not fo’ myse’f, Honey-bud. Somehow, to-night — I don’t know — and
Curt seemed a little anxious.”
She laughed with an effort; her natural gaiety returned to buoy her above this indefinable undercurrent of unrest.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 483