Ailsa Paige

"Letty asked me to say that a zouave of the 5th Regiment, a Mr. Cortlandt, was also killed. So many, many people I knew or had heard of have been killed or have died of disease since the war began. One sees a great many people wearing mourning in the city—crape is so common, on sword-hilts, on arms, veils, gowns, bonnets.

"Letty made the loveliest bride you or I ever beheld. Usually brides do not look their best, but Letty was the most charming, radiant, bewildering creature—and so absurdly young—as though suddenly she had dropped a few years and was again beginning that girlhood which I sometimes thought she had never had.

"Dr. Benton is a darling. He looks twenty years younger and wears a monocle! They are back from their honeymoon, and are planning to offer their services to the great central hospital at Philadelphia.

"Dear, your letter breaking the news to me that Marye Mead was burned when the cavalry burned Edmund Ruffin's house was no news to me. I saw it on fire. But, Philip, there was a fiercer flame consuming me than ever swept that house. I thank God it Is quenched for ever and that my heart and soul, refreshed, made new, bear no scars now of that infernal conflagration.

"I sit here at my window and see below me the folds of the dear flag stirring; in my ears, often, is the noise of drums from the dusty avenue where new regiments are passing on into the unknown—no longer the unknown to us—but the saddest of all truths.

"Sometimes Celia comes from the still, leafy seclusion of Fort Greene Place, to love me, caress me, gently jeer at me for the hint of melancholy in my gaze, shaming me for a love-sick thing that droops and pines in the absence of all that animates her soul and body with the desire to live.

"She is only partly right; I am very tired, Phil. Not that I am ill. I am well, now. It only needs you. She knows it; I have always known it. Your love, and loving you, is all that life means to me.

"I see them all here—Celia fussing with my trousseau, gowns, stockings, slippers, hovering over them with Paigie and Marye in murmurous and intimate rapture. They lead me about to shops and in busy thoroughfares; and I see and understand, and I hear my own voice as at an infinite distance, and I am happy in the same indefinite way. But, try as I may, I cannot fix my thoughts on what I am about, on the pretty garments piled around me, on the necessary arrangements to be made, on the future—our future! I cannot even think clearly about that. All that my mind seems able to contain is my love for you, the knowledge that you are coming, that I am to see you, touch you.

"I try to realise that I am to be your wife; the heavenly reality seems vaguely impossible. Yet every moment I am schooling myself to the belief, telling myself that it is to be, repeating the divine words again and again. And all I am capable of understanding is that I love you, and that the world stands still, waiting for you as I wait; and that without you nothing is real, and I move in a world of phantoms.

"I have been to the mirror to look at myself. To be certain, I also asked Celia. She says that you will not be disappointed.

"She sat here searching the morning paper for news of her husband's regiment, but found none. What women endure for men no man that ever lives can understand.

"She is perfectly cheerful about it all. And, oh, such a rebel! She read aloud to me with amused malice the order from the War Department which does away with regimental bands and substitutes a brigade band.

"I sca'cely blame them,' she observed; 'I'd be ve'y glad myse'f to hear less of Yankee Doodle and the Star-spangled Banner. When they let President Davis alone, and when Curt comes home, I've got some ve'y pretty songs fo' him to learn to appreciate.'

"She's down stairs now, seated at the piano, singing very softly to herself some gaily impudent rebel song or other. I know it's a rebel song by the way she sings it.

"And, as I sit here, alone, thinking of how I love you—far away I hear the 'old line's bugle'—the quaint, quick rhythm of the fifes and drums; and it stirs depths in me where my very soul lies listening—and the tears spring to my eyes. And I try to understand why every separate silver star in the flag is mine to hold, mine to rescue and replace, mine to adore. And I try to understand why all of it is part of the adoration of you, and of God who gave you to me—Philip—Philip—my lover, my country, my God—worshipped and adored of men!"

THE END