Ailsa Paige

"When?"

"Recently. . . . She's another fine woman. She never had an illness worse than whooping cough. I know because I've always been her physician. Normally she's a fine, wholesome woman, Berkley—but she told a falsehood. . . . You are not the only liar south of Dixon's damnable Line!"

Berkley straightened up as though shot, and the doctor dropped a heavy hand on his shoulder.

"The sort of lie you told, Phil, is the kind she told. It doesn't concern you or me; it's between her conscience and herself; and it's in a good safe place. . . . And now I'll sketch out for you what she did. This—this beast, Hallam, wrote to Miss Dix at Washington and preferred charges against Miss Lynden. . . . I'm trying to speak calmly and coherently and without passion, damn it! Don't interrupt me. . . . I say that Hallam sent his written evidence to Miss Dix; and Ailsa Paige learned of it, and learned also what the evidence was. . . . And it was a terrible thing for her to learn, Phil—a damnable thing for a woman to learn."

He tightened his grasp on Berkley's shoulder, and his voice was not very steady.

"To believe those charges—that evidence—meant the death of her faith in you. . . . As for the unhappy revelation of what Miss Lynden had been—the evidence was hopelessly conclusive. Imagine what she thought! Any other woman would have sat aloof and let justice brand the woman who had doubly betrayed her. I want you to consider it; every instinct of loyalty, friendship, trust, modesty had apparently been outraged and trampled on by the man she had given her heart to, and by the woman she had made a friend. That was the position in which Ailsa Paige found herself when she learned of these charges, saw the evidence, and was informed by Hallam that he had forwarded his complaint."

His grip almost crushed Berkley's shoulder muscles.

"And now I'll tell you what Ailsa Paige did. She went before Miss Dix and told her that there was not one atom of truth in the charges. She accounted for every date specified by saying that Miss Lynden was with her at those times, that she had known her intimately for years, known her family—that it was purely a case of mistaken identity, which, if ever pressed, would bewilder her friend, who was neither sufficiently experienced to understand what such charges meant, nor strong enough to endure the horror and shock if their nature were explained.

"She haughtily affirmed her absolute faith in you, avowed her engagement to marry you, pointed to your splendid military record; disdainfully exposed the motive for Hallam's action. . . . And she convinced Miss Dix, who, in turn, convinced the Surgeon General. And, in consequence, I can now take my little girl away from here on furlough, thank God!—and thanks to Ailsa Paige, who lied like a martyr in her behalf. And that's what I came here to tell you."

He drew a long, shuddering breath, his hand relaxed on Berkley's shoulder, and fell away.

"I don't know to-day what Ailsa Paige believes; but I know what she did for the sake of a young girl. . . . If, in any way, her faith in you has been poisoned, remember what was laid before her, proven in black and white, apparently; remember, more than that, the terrible and physically demoralising strain she has been under in the line of duty. No human mind can remain healthy very long under such circumstances; no reasoning can be normal. The small daily vexations, the wear and tear of nerve tissue, the insufficient sleep and nourishment, the close confinement in the hospital atmosphere, the sights, sounds, odours, the excitement, the anxiety—all combine to distort reason and undermine one's natural equipoise.

"Phil, if Ailsa, in her own heart, doubts you as she now doubts Letty, you must understand why. What she did shows her courage, her sweetness, her nobility. What she may believe—or think she believes—is born only of morbid nerves, overworked body, and a crippled power of reasoning. Her furlough is on the way; I did myself the honour to solicit it, and to interest Miss Dix in her behalf. It is high time; the child cannot stand much more. . . . After a good rest in the North, if she desires to return, there is nobody to prevent her . . . unless you are wise enough to marry her. What do you think?"

Berkley made no answer. They remained silent for a long time. Then the doctor rose and picked up his lantern; and Berkley stood up, too, taking the doctor's outstretched hand.

"If I were you, Phil, I'd marry her," said Benton. "Good-night.

I'll see Colonel Arran in the morning. Good-night, my boy."

"Good-night," said Berkley in a dull voice.

Midnight found him pacing the dead sod in front of the veranda, under the stars. One by one the lights in the hospital had been extinguished; a lantern glimmered at the guard-house; here and there an illuminated window cast its oblong of paler light across the grass. Southward the crimson radiance had died out; softened echoes of distant gunshots marked the passing of the slow, dark hours, but the fitful picket firing was now no louder than the deadened stamp of horses in their stalls.

A faint scent of jasmine hung in the air, making it fresher, though no breeze stirred.

He stood for a while, face upturned to the stars, then his head fell. Sabre trailing, he moved slowly out into the open; and, at random, wandered into the little lane that led darkly down under green bushes to Letty's bridge.

It was fresher and cooler in the lane; starlight made the planking of the little foot-bridge visible in the dark, but the stream ran under it too noiselessly for him to hear the water moving over its bed of velvet sand.

A startled whippoorwill flashed into shadowy night from the rail as he laid his hand upon it, and, searching for the seat which Letty's invalid had built for her, he sank down, burying his head in his hands.

And, as he sat there, a vague shape, motionless in the starlight, stirred, moved silently, detaching itself from the depthless wall of shadow.

There was a light step on the grass, a faint sound from the bridge. But he heard nothing until she sank down on the flooring at his feet and dropped her head, face downward, on his knees.

As in a dream his hands fell from his eyes—fell on her shoulders, lay heavily inert.

"Ailsa?"

Her feverish face quivered, hiding closer; one small hand searched blindly for his arm, closed on his sleeve, and clung there. He could feel her slender body tremble at intervals, under his lips, resting on her hair, her breath grew warm with tears.

She lay there, minute after minute, her hand on his sleeve, slipping, tightening, while her tired heart throbbed out its heavy burden on his knees, and her tears fell under the stars.

Fatigued past all endurance, shaken, demoralised, everything in her was giving way now. She only knew that he had come to her out of the night's deathly desolation—that she had crept to him for shelter, was clinging to him. Nothing else mattered in the world. Her weary hands could touch him, hold fast to him who had been lost and was found again; her tear-wet face rested against his; the blessed surcease from fear was benumbing her, quieting her, soothing, relaxing, reassuring her.

Only to rest this way—to lie for the moment unafraid—to cease thinking, to yield every sense to heavenly lethargy—to forget—to forget the dark world's sorrows and her own.

The high planets shed their calm light upon her hair, silvering her slender neck and the hand holding to his sleeve, and the steel edge of his sabre hilt, and a gilded button at his throat. And all else lay in shadow, wrapping them close together in obscurity.

At times he thought she was asleep, and scarcely moving, bent nearer; but always felt the nervous closing of her fingers on his sleeve.

And at last sleep came to her, deadening every sense. Cautiously he took her hand; the slim fingers relaxed; body and limbs were limp, senses clouded, as he lifted her in his arms and rose.

"Don't—go," she murmured drowsily.

"No, dear."

Through the darkness, moving with infinite care, he bore her under the stars and stepped noiselessly across the veranda, entered, and laid her on his cot.

"Philip," she murmured.

But he whispered to her that she must sleep, that he would be near her, close to her. And she sighed deeply, and her white lids closed again and rested unstirring on her pallid cheeks.

So she slept till the stars faded, then, awaking, lifted her head, bewildered, drawing her hand from his; and saw the dawn graying his face where he sat beside her.

She sat up, rigid, on the blanket, the vivid colour staining her from throat to brow; then memory overwhelmed her. She covered her eyes with both arms and her head dropped forward under the beauty of her disordered hair.

Minute succeeded minute; neither spoke nor moved. Then, slowly, in silence, she looked up at him and met his gaze. It was her confession of faith.

He could scarcely hear her words, so tremulously low was the voice that uttered them.

"Dr. Benton told me everything. Take me back. The world is empty without you. I've been through the depths of it—my heart has searched it from the ends to the ends of it. . . . And finds no peace where you are not—no hope—no life. All is desolation without you. Take me back."

She stretched out her hands to him; he took them, and pressed them against his lips; and looking across at him, she said:

"Love me—if you will—as you will. I make no terms; I ask none. Teach me your way; your way is mine—if it leads to you; all other paths are dark, all other ways are strange. I know, for I have trodden them, and lost myself. Only the path you follow is lighted for me. All else is darkness. Love me. I ask no terms."

"Ailsa, I can offer none."

"I know. You have said so. That is enough. Besides, if you love me, nothing else matters. My life is not my own; it is yours. It has always been yours—only I did not know how completely. Now I have learned. . . . Why do you look at me so strangely? Are you afraid to take me for yourself? Do you think I do not know what I am saying? Do you not understand what the terror of these days without you has done to me? The inclination which lacked only courage lacks it no longer. I know what you have been, what you are. I ask nothing more of life than you."

"Dear," he said, "do you understand that I can never marry you?"

"Yes," she said steadily. "I am not afraid."

In the silence the wooden shutter outside the window swung to with a slam in the rising breeze which had become a wind blowing fitfully under a wet gray sky. From above the roof there came a sudden tearing sound, which at first he believed to be the wind. It increased to a loud, confusing, swishing whistle, as though hundreds of sabres were being whirled in circles overhead.

Berkley rose, looking upward at the ceiling as the noise grew in volume like a torrent of water flowing over rocks.

Ailsa also had risen, laying one hand on his arm, listening intently.

"What is it?" she breathed.

"It is the noise made by thousands of bullets streaming through the air above us. It sounds like that in the rifle-pits. Listen!"

The strange, bewildering sound filled the room. And now, as the wind shifted, the steady rattle of musketry became suddenly audible. Another sound, sinister, ominous, broke on their ears, the clang of the seminary bell.

"Is it an attack on this place?" she asked anxiously. "What can we do? There are no troops here! I—I must go to my sick boys–"

Her heart stood still as a cannon thundered, followed by the fearful sound of the shell as it came tearing toward them. As it neared, the noise grew deafening; the air vibrated with a rushing sound that rose to a shriek.

Ailsa's hands grasped his arm; her ears seemed bursting with the abominable sound; pain darted through her temples, flashing into agony as a heavy jar shook the house, followed by a dazzling light and roar.

Boom! Boom! came the distant, sullen thunder, followed by the unmistakable whir of a Parrott shell. Suddenly shrapnel shells began to come over, screaming, exploding, filling the air with the rush and clatter of bullets.

"Lie down," he said. "You can't go out in this. It will veer off in a few moments, when they find out that they're shelling our hospitals."

"I've got to go," she repeated; "my boys won't understand why I don't come."

She turned and opened the door; he caught her in his arms, and she looked up and kissed him.

"Good-bye, dear," she whispered. "You mustn't detain me–"

"You shall not go outside–"

"I've got to. Be reasonable, dear. My sick are under fire."

The bugle was sounding now; his arms fell from her waist; she smiled at him, stepped outside, and started to run; and found him keeping pace between her and the west.

"You should not do that!" she panted, striving to pass him, but he kept his body in line with the incoming missiles. Suddenly he seized her and dropped flat with her as a shell plunged downward, exploding in a white cloud laced with flame through which the humming fragments scattered.

As they rose to their knees in the dust they saw men gathering—soldiers of all arms, infantry, dismounted cavalrymen, hospital guards, limping convalescents, officers armed' with rifles, waggon drivers, negroes.

"They're attacking our works at Cedar Springs," said an officer wearing one hand in a sling. "This hospital is in a bad place."

Ailsa clapped both hands over her ears as a shell blew up at the angle of an outhouse and the ground rocked violently; then, pale but composed, she sprang inside the hospital door and ran for her ward.

It was full of pungent smoke; a Parrott shell had passed through a window, carrying everything away in its path, and had burst, terrifying the sick men lying there, but not injuring anybody.

And now a flare of light and a crash outside marked the descent of another shell. The confusion and panic among the wounded was terrible; ward-masters, nurses, surgeons, ran hither and thither, striving to quiet the excited patients as shell after shell rushed yelling overhead or exploded with terrific force, raining its whirring iron fragments over roof and chimney.

Ailsa, calm and collected in the dreadful crisis, stood at the end of the ward, directing the unnerved stretcher bearers, superintending the carrying out of cots to the barns, which stood in the shelter of the rising ground along the course of the little stream.

Letty appeared from the corridor behind her; and Ailsa smiled and kissed her lightly on the cheek; and the blood came back to the girl's face in a passion of gratitude which even the terror of death could not lessen or check.

"Ailsa—darling—" she whispered; then shuddered in the violence of an explosion that shattered the window-glass beside her,

"We're taking them to the old barns, Letty," said Ailsa, steadying her voice. "Will you take charge here while I go to Colonel Arran?"

"They've taken him out," whispered Letty. "That ward is on fire. Everybody is out. W-what a cruel thing for our boys! Some of them were getting well! Can you come now?"

"As soon as they carry out young Spencer. He's the last. . . . Look from the window! They're trying to put out the fire with water in buckets. O—h!" as a shell struck and the flame flashed out through a geyser of sand and smoke.

"Come," murmured Letty. "I will stay if there is anything to stay for–"

"No, dear; we can go. Give me your hand; this smoke is horrible.

Everything is on fire, I think. . . . Hurry, Letty!"

She stumbled, half suffocated, but Letty kept her hand fast and guided her to the outer air.

A company of cavalry, riding hard, passed in a whirlwind of dust. After them, clanking, thudding, pounding, tore a battery, horses on a dead run,

The west wing of the seminary was on fire; billows of sooty smoke rolled across the roof and blew downward over the ground where the forms of soldiers could be seen toiling to and fro with buckets.

Infantry now began to arrive, crowding the main road on the double quick, mounted officers cantering ahead. Long lines of them were swinging out east and west across the country, where a battery went into action wrapped in torrents of smoke.

Bullets swarmed, singing above and around in every key, and the distracting racket of the shrapnel shells became continuous.

Ailsa and Letty ran, stooping, into the lane where the stretchers were being hurried across the little footbridge. As they crossed they saw a dead artilleryman lying in the water, a crimson thread wavering from his head to the surface. It was Arthur Wye; and Letty knew him, and halted, trembling; but Ailsa called to her in a frightened voice, for, confused by the smoke, they had come out in the rear of a battery among the caissons, and the stretchers had turned to the right, filing down into the hollow where the barns stood on the edge of a cedar grove.

Already men were hard at work erecting hospital tents; the wounded lay on their stretchers, bloodless faces turned to the sky, the wind whipping their blankets and uncovering their naked, emaciated bodies. The faces of the dead had turned black.

"Good God!" said Dr. Benton as Letty and Ailsa came up, out of'breath, "we've got to get these sick men under shelter! Can you two girls keep their blankets from blowing away?"

They hurried from cot to cot, from mattress to mattress, from one heap of straw to another, from stretcher to stretcher, deftly replacing sheet and blanket, tucking them gently under, whispering courage, sometimes a gay jest or smiling admonition to the helpless men, soothing, petting, reassuring.

The medical director with his corps of aides worked furiously to get up the big tents. The smoke from the battery blew east and south, flowing into the hollow in sulphurous streams; the uproar from the musketry was terrific.

Ailsa, kneeling beside a stretcher to tuck in the blankets, looked up over her shoulder suddenly at Letty.

"Where did they take Colonel Arran?"

"I don't know, dear."

Ailsa rose from her knees and looked around her through the flying smoke; then she got wearily to her feet and began to make inquiries. Nobody seemed to know anything about Colonel Arran.

Anxious, she threaded her way through the stretchers and the hurrying attendants, past the men who were erecting the tents, looking everywhere, making inquiries, until, under the trees by the stream, she saw a heap of straw on which a man was dying.

He died as she came up—a big, pallid, red-headed zouave, whose blanket, soaked with blood, bore dreadful witness of his end.

A Sister of Charity rose as though dazed.

"I could not stop the hemorrhage," she said in her soft, bewildered voice.

Together they turned back toward the mass of stretchers, moving with difficulty in the confusion. Letty, passing, glanced wanly at the Sister, then said to Ailsa:

"Colonel Arran is in the second barn on the hay. I am afraid he is dying."

Ailsa turned toward the barns and hurried across the trampled sod.

Through the half light within she peered about her, moving carefully among the wounded stretched out on the fragrant hay.

Colonel Arran lay alone in the light of a window high under the eaves.

"Oh, here you are!" she said gaily. "I hear most most splendid things about you. I—" she stopped short, appalled at the terrible change that was coming over his face.

"I want to see—Phil—" he whispered.

"Yes—yes, I will find him," she said soothingly; "I will go immediately and find him."

His head was moving slowly, monotonously, from side to side.

"I want to see my boy," he murmured. "He is my son. I wish you to know it—my only son."

He lifted his brilliant eyes to Ailsa.

Twice he strove to speak, and could not, and she watched him, stunned.

He made the supreme effort.

"Philip!" he gasped; "our son! My little son! My little, little boy! I want him, Ailsa, I want him near me when I die!"

CHAPTER XX

They told her that Berkley had gone up the hill toward the firing line.

On the windy hill-top, hub deep in dry, dead grass, a section of a battery was in action, the violent light from the discharges lashing out through the rushing vapours which the wind flattened and drove, back into the hollow below so that the cannoneers seemed to be wading waist deep in fog.

The sick and wounded on their cots and stretchers were coughing and gasping in the hot mist; the partly erected tents had become full of it. And now the air in the hollow grew more suffocating as fragments of burning powder and wadding set the dead grass afire, and the thick, strangling blue smoke spread over everything.

Surgeons and assistants were working like beavers to house their patients; every now and then a bullet darted into the vale with an evil buzz, rewounding, sometimes killing, the crippled. To add to the complication and confusion, more wounded arrived from the firing line above and beyond to the westward; horses began to fall where they stood harnessed to the caissons; a fine, powerful gun-team galloping back to refill its chests suddenly reared straight up into annihilation, enveloped in the volcanic horror of a shell, so near that Ailsa, standing below in a clump of willows, saw the flash and smoke of the cataclysm and the flying disintegration of dark objects scattering through the smoke.

Far away on the hillside an artilleryman, making a funnel of his hands, shouted for stretchers; and Ailsa, repeating the call, managed to gather together half a dozen overworked bearers and start with them up through the smoke.

Deafened, blinded, her senses almost reeling under the nerve-shattering crash of the guns, she toiled on through the dry grass, pausing at the edge of charred spaces to beat out the low flames that leaped toward her skirts.

There was a leafy hollow ahead, filled with slender, willow-trees, many of them broken off, shot, torn, twisted, and splintered. Dead soldiers lay about under the smoke, their dirty shirts or naked skin visible between jacket and belt; to the left on a sparsely wooded elevation, the slope of which was scarred, showing dry red sand and gravel, a gun stood, firing obliquely across the gully into the woods. Long, wavering, irregular rings of smoke shot out, remaining intact and floating like the rings from a smoker's pipe, until another rush and blast of flame scattered them.

The other gun had been dismounted and lay on its side, one wheel in the air, helpless, like some monster sprawling with limbs stiffened in death. Behind it, crouched close, squatted some infantry soldiers, firing from the cover of the wreckage. Behind every tree, every stump, every inequality, lay infantry, dead, wounded, or alive and cautiously firing. Several took advantage of the fallen battery horses for shelter. Only one horse of that gun-team remained alive, and the gunners had lashed the prolonge to the trail of the overturned cannon and to the poor horse's collar, and were trying to drag the piece away with the hope of righting it.

This manoeuvre dislodged the group of infantry soldiers who had taken shelter there, and, on all fours, they began crawling and worming and scuffling about among the dead leaves, seeking another shelter from the pelting hail of lead.

There was nothing to be seen beyond the willow gully except smoke, set grotesquely with phantom trees, through which the enemy's fusillade sparkled and winked like a long level line of fire-flies in the mist.

The stretcher bearers crept about gathering up the wounded who called to them out of the smoke. Ailsa, on her knees, made her way toward a big cavalryman whose right leg was gone at the thigh.

She did what she could, called for a stretcher, then, crouching close under the bank of raw earth, set her canteen to his blackened lips and held it for him.

"Don't be discouraged," she said quietly, "they'll bring another stretcher in a few moments. I'll stay here close beside you until they come."

The cavalryman was dying; she saw it; he knew it. And his swollen lips moved.

"Don't waste time with me," he managed to say.

"Then—will you lie very still and not move?"

"Yes; only don't let the horse step on me."

She drew her little note-book and pencil from the pocket of her gown and gently lowered her head until one ear was close to his lips.

"What is your name and regiment?"