CHAPTER XIIIWARP AND WOOF
WHEN Isabey left Harrowby, Angela had again that fearful sense of loss which with the young follows upon the going away of any person who fills a great place in the mind.
She remembered having that feeling of desolation when she was barely ten years old and Neville had first gone to West Point. Afterwards, however, although she always parted from him reluctantly and made a loud lament, the feeling had not been so poignant as when she was a child.
Now, however, it returned in full force and not for Neville but for Philip Isabey. She began to think as Lyddon did, that the sooner she joined Neville the better.
When she had parted from him it had not occurred to her that she should not soon see him again. She knew not what war was, but as time passed on and the first great conflicts began, she realized that every parting with a soldier might mean a last farewell. She might hear any day of Neville’s death and also of Philip Isabey’s.
But it was the thought of the latter which made her heart stand still, then beat tempestuously.
Her letters to Neville were frequent, and she managedto forward them through Lyddon, who, as a British subject, could communicate with the British Consul at Norfolk and the British Minister at Washington.
After much delay, these letters reached Neville. His replies were far more irregular. He was not at the front, but engaged in recruiting duty in the far West—a duty he always disliked and which he felt now to be a practical illustration of how little he was trusted by those among whom he had cast his lot. He accepted it with outward stoicism, but inwardly it humiliated him to the very marrow of his bones. His work led him to the roughest part of the then thinly settled West. It was no place for a woman and least of all for a girl like Angela, who had never been outside of her native county three times in her life.
When Angela got a letter from Neville she always went immediately to Mrs. Tremaine and told her what was in the letter. Mrs. Tremaine received this in perfect silence, but she was always tremulous for a day or two afterwards. She, who had heretofore possessed a sort of calm alertness, went about now with a strange preoccupation. Neville’s room had been closed and locked and Mrs. Tremaine kept the key. In it were some of his boyish books and belongings, but Mrs. Tremaine made no offer of them to Angela. There were times when she would disappear for an hour or so, and all at Harrowby knew that she spent those stolen hours in Neville’s dark and dismantled room. She paid these visits secretly, and would not even speak of them to Colonel Tremaine, although once or twice he met hercoming out of the door, and his eyes, full of pain and sympathy, tried to meet her averted gaze.
Every night at prayer time when the moment came that Neville’s name had once been mentioned, Mrs. Tremaine could not control a slight agitation, and once at the omission Colonel Tremaine groaned aloud.
At that, Mammy Tulip, suddenly throwing her white apron over her face, broke into loud weeping. “My chile,” she cried. “Dat boy I nus same like he wuz my own an’ ain’t never gib he mammy a impident word sence he been born, an’ now he ma an’ pa doan’ name him at pray’r time.”
Angela went up to Mammy Tulip and, putting her arm around the old woman’s neck, leaned upon her broad shoulder, her heart wrung with pity for Neville. But even in that moment she knew that she was not in love with him.
With the early summer the stupendous clamor of war and the carnival of blood began.
Richard Tremaine’s battery had been ordered to the front and was in most of the great battles of the summer of 1861. Often long periods of time passed when no news of him reached Harrowby. The Richmond newspapers, received twice in the week, which had been leisurely read two or three days after they arrived, were now seized upon with avidity, and the grewsome list of dead, wounded, and missing was scanned with anxious eyes by Colonel Tremaine.
Angela, hovering about him as he read over this direful list, would glance at it herself. Suppose she should find Isabey’s name in it. How would she take it?She had never fainted in her life, but she had a haunting fear that if she should read Isabey’s name among the killed she should faint or shriek or in some way betray herself.
Madame Isabey was keyed up also to periods of anxiety, although she showed a spirit of cheerfulness and courage which was remarkable. The life at Harrowby, so placid without, was full of fears and tumults within, and was extraordinarily different from the years of pleasuring which Madame Isabey had spent between New Orleans and Paris, but she made no complaint, nor did Adrienne, though, if anything, it was harder on her than on the older lady.
Adrienne had few resources, music being the chief. But with natural tact she forbore from spending long hours at the piano, which she would have done in her own home. Her taste for reading lay in a few pessimistic French poets and romancers, but even with these, the time was heavy on her hands. She had found life disappointing from the first. Formed for love, her first marriage had been as loveless as it was respectable. Then had come a mortal wound to her pride—when she was free Isabey no longer cared. It was not as if they had been separated and her image had gradually faded from his mind; they had been thrown constantly together during the seven years of her widowhood, and all their world was continually suggesting the appropriateness of their marriage. So that the idea of it was necessarily before Isabey’s mind, yet he had spoken no word, and Adrienne felt a sad certainty that no word would be spoken by him.
She had a quiet pride which not even jealousy could lash into resentment. She saw the sudden witchery which this nineteen-year-old Angela, this wife who was no wife, had cast over Isabey, and did not wonder at it. Angela was to Adrienne as much an unknown quantity as she herself was to Angela. Adrienne felt herself robbed of something which could be of no use to Angela, who possessed it, and Adrienne was thirty with her youth behind her while Angela, not yet twenty, was entering upon those ten years which to most women count for more than all that has gone before or can come after.
The most unfailing courtesy prevailed between these two women. They exchanged small kindnesses, spent some hours of every day together in feminine employment, but a great gulf lay between them.
Angela felt instinctively and intuitively the things which Adrienne knew, and reasoned upon them calmly and sadly. Adrienne had everything and yet she had nothing. A still and mortal antagonism had been growing steadily from the first between the women, but not the smallest indication of it was given in manner or behavior. Both were women of the highest breeding, and each was secretly ashamed of the ignoble passion of jealousy which possessed them, and had the art to conceal it.
Something of what each suffered was dimly suspected by the other and was actually known to one person—Lyddon. Of the two, he felt more sorry for Adrienne, torn from a life of gayety brightened by art and music, and transplanted like an exquisite exotic into the depthsof a sunless forest. He felt acutely sorry for her and tried in many ways to lighten the burden ofennuiwhich he suspected, in spite of her composure, lay heavy upon her. But there was no common ground between them.
Lyddon, observing Angela day by day, saw her, as it were, growing up. In January she had been a child: in July she was a woman with more problems and perplexities weighing upon her than happen to most women during the course of a long life.
Everyone at Harrowby was in a state of unrest, the negroes not the least so. Several of the house servants could read, and occasionally newspapers would disappear mysteriously and after a time be replaced.
In the summer nights these children of the sun would build a fire out of doors in their quarters, and sitting around it in a circle, the house servants would tell in whispers what they had picked up of the great events going on.
The early autumn in warm climates is a depressing time of feverish heat alternating with shivery nights like the fever and ague which was certain to appear at that season. In November, when the cool weather had declared itself and all danger of fever was supposed to be passed, Madame Isabey had a slight touch of it. In a great fright she determined to go to Richmond, where she might consult a doctor. Adrienne, of course, must go with her, so it was arranged that the two ladies, late in autumn, should leave Harrowby for the winter in the Confederate capital.
Adrienne looked forward to it with something likepleasure. Life at Harrowby was wearing on her. She felt its sameness, which was now without serenity, and the exciting and kaleidoscopic life of a beleaguered capital would be a distraction to her. Adrienne’s problems were not inconsiderable.
In December, therefore, the hegira occurred. The whole journey to Richmond was made by carriage and took three days. Colonel Tremaine, in the excess of gallantry and good will, declared to Madame Isabey: “My boy, Hector, madame, shall drive the coach upon this occasion, and I will cheerfully do without his services in order to feel sure that you are in safe hands.”
“O Heavens!” cried Madame Isabey, who abhorred Hector. “That ridiculous old creature, always getting tipsy and quoting the Bible and telling romances—such romances! About the war in Mexico! And you, yourself, my dear Colonel, tell me that the creature is a grand coward. Never can I let him drive me!”
Colonel Tremaine colored with displeasure. Not even Mrs. Tremaine had dared to speak the truth so openly about Hector. But the courtesy due a guest made the Colonel pass over Madame Isabey’s frankness.
“I, madame,” he responded, a little stiffly, after a moment, “shall have the pleasure of accompanying you, as I always intended. I could not think of allowing two ladies to travel from Harrowby to Richmond alone, although I do not believe that any actual danger may be apprehended.”
“Until Hector gets drunk and upsets the carriage in a ditch,” whispered Lyddon to Angela, who was present.
The start was made on a bright morning in the middle of December. The Harrowby carriage, like all those of the period, had boxes under the seats meant to carry clothes and a rack behind for a trunk, and that accommodated the ladies’ luggage. In addition was a large box filled with provisions and with a dozen bottles of Mrs. Tremaine’s very best blackberry wine, for supplies were scarce and dear in Richmond. It was arranged that the ladies should return in April.
To themselves and to all the family at Harrowby, except Archie, there was a slight feeling of relief at the separation for the winter. Archie had become devotedly attached to Madame Isabey and insisted on following the carriage on horseback a day’s journey to show his regret at parting with his elderly friend, who never ceased to amuse and delight him.
The parting was courtesy itself on both sides. Mrs. Tremaine accepted as a certainty that the ladies would return in April to remain during their pleasure. Many of the county families had guests upon the same indefinite terms, and the arrangement was thought in no way remarkable.
Madame Isabey and Adrienne both expressed the deepest gratitude for the kindness shown them, and promised to return in the spring. Yet there was a certain and secret feeling of satisfaction on both sides when the carriage drove off.
Colonel Tremaine sat by Hector’s side upon the box to see that he did not upset the carriage at the first opportunity, and Archie, like a true cavalier, galloped by the carriage window. He was not expected to returnuntil the morrow. But at sunset on the same day he was seen riding rapidly down the wide cedar-bordered lane. Angela, who was returning from an afternoon walk with Lyddon, said to him: “Archie must bring bad news.”
So thought Mrs. Tremaine, who saw him from the window and came out on the porch to meet him.
“It’s nothing, mother!” he cried, “only Richard is a little ill in Richmond. He caught the measles, just think of it, just think of it! And father met a messenger coming to tell us of it. He sent me back to tell you and to say that if you start at once you will be able to catch up with him at King William Court House to-morrow night, where he will sleep. I am to drive you in the Stanhope gig.”
“I shall be ready to start in half an hour,” replied Mrs. Tremaine without a moment’s hesitation.
Immediately preparations were begun for her departure. Angela followed her, anxious to be of service, and to her Mrs. Tremaine gave the keys and a few household directions. Angela had taken a share in housekeeping since she was twelve years old and accepted the responsibility now laid upon her as the most natural thing in the world. Most of the autumn labor on the estate was over; the negroes’ clothes and shoes were made, and the winter provisions laid in. The chief thing to be attended to was an army of turkeys, ducks, and chickens, and Mammy Tulip, as an expert, had charge of the fowl yard.
Only one thing remained to be arranged, and that a difficult matter. How was Mrs. Tremaine to get news of Neville when his letters to Angela came? Pride forbadeher to ask, but Angela, who knew what was in her mind, said gently to her as she tied Mrs. Tremaine’s bonnet strings for her: “Whenever I hear from Neville, Aunt Sophia, I will let you know.”
Mrs. Tremaine made no reply in words, but her eyes were eloquent.
It was arranged if Richard’s illness was slight, as was supposed, that Colonel Tremaine would probably return, while Mrs. Tremaine would remain with Richard in the little town near Richmond where he had been taken ill.
After Mrs. Tremaine had left the house which had been so populous only the day before, it had in it but two occupants—Angela and Lyddon. George Charteris came over every day to do lessons with Lyddon, but he avoided Angela, and she, while indifferent to his dislike, kept out of his way.
It had been Mrs. Tremaine’s parting injunction to Angela to have family prayers for the servants, and so at half past nine o’clock on the first evening, the servants were all assembled in the library as usual. Angela read the Gospel, as Colonel Tremaine did, and then followed closely Mrs. Tremaine’s simple prayer, but when she prayed for “the sons of this house,” she named Neville first, as had been the case from the day of his birth until the day of his defection. A loud Amen burst from Mammy Tulip, followed by a dozen other Amens from the other servants. When the negroes’ Amens had died away, Lyddon said distinctly, “Amen!”
Prayers being over, the servants dispersed, and all the house closed for the night, Angela, as usual, went into the study, and sat an hour with Lyddon. In the perplexitiesand the strange events which had arisen in her life, she had found great comfort in Lyddon. His talk to her always subtly conveyed the lesson of endurance, and after being with him, Angela always felt more able to endure. He brought before her the elemental fact that all the griefs, disappointments, perplexities, and passions of human life were to be found in the smallest circle, nay, under every roof.
The conduct of the house and estate, even for a short time, gave Angela much to do, and in the days that followed she had but little time to think. It was a full week before any news came of the travelers. Then arrived a letter from Colonel Tremaine saying that he and Mrs. Tremaine had reached Richard and found him, although not seriously ill, low in health, and as the winter had set in with great severity there was no prospect of moving him for at least a month. Archie would remain with his mother to bring her and Richard home when the latter was able to travel, but Colonel Tremaine would return to Harrowby within a few days, certainly before Christmas eve.
This day was close at hand. Christmas means little, however, as a festival, in time of war. Angela contrived to fill the stockings of the negro children with apples and walnuts and molasses candy made in the kitchen by Mummy Tulip, but otherwise there was no attempt at festivity.
Some of the neighbors and friends had already lost brothers and sons in the bloody battles of the summer, and the rest were too much concerned for the fate of their best beloved to attempt any merrymaking.
Mrs. Charteris, whose heart was as good as her tongue was active, had taken in a family of refugees which included five children, and as she assumed the duties of doctor, nurse, and governess, her hands were full, and she scarcely had time even to revile Mr. Brand, who showed no signs of taking up arms for his country.
The weather, which up to that time had been singularly mild and beautiful, suddenly grew gray and stormy and bitterly cold. No guest had passed the doors of Harrowby since Colonel Tremaine left. It was now the day before Christmas, and all day long Angela had anxiously watched for Colonel Tremaine’s arrival.
About five o’clock, when it was already dark, and earth and sky and river were all an icy and forbidding gray, Angela stood by the hall fire with Lyddon, who had just come in from his afternoon tramp.
“I do so hope,” Angela said, “that Uncle Tremaine will get here before it snows. Mammy Tulip says that she feels it in her bones that snow will fall deep and everything will be frozen up. She thinks so because she hears the owls hooting at night or something of the sort.”
“I think so,” replied Lyddon, “because the wind is from the northwest and the clouds have hung heavy all day.”
“How different it is,” cried Angela, “from last year!”
She came close to Lyddon and, as she often did in her earnestness, laid her hand upon his arm and looked with dark and bewildered eyes into his face.
“Last year,” she continued, “all was peace; this year all is war. Not only everywhere, but here in my heart.It seems to me as if I were at war with everyone in this house except you.”
“Poor child!” was all Lyddon could reply.
Angela drew back on the other side of the hearth and said: “But I want to be at peace. I would like to be at peace with Uncle Tremaine and Aunt Sophia—I love them so much. Even Archie is changed toward me, and that little insignificant George Charteris looks at me with contempt when he takes off his hat to me. And do you remember how pleased I was at the idea of Madame Isabey and Madame Le Noir coming here? Well, Madame Le Noir is at war with me.”
“Life is all a battle and a march,” was Lyddon’s answer.
He glanced at the dim and worn painting of Penelope and the suitors over the fireplace. Here, indeed, was a Penelope, and Lyddon considered she had narrowly missed having an unconscious suitor in the person of Philip Isabey. Luckily he had gone away before the impression made upon him by Angela had deepened and changed the current of his being.
Lyddon looked critically at Angela. She was certainly growing very pretty, with a kind of beauty captivating as it was irregular. She would never be classed as a beauty, but was as charming as Adrienne Le Noir was seductive.
While these thoughts flashed through Lyddon’s mind he glanced toward the western window and saw in the gloom of the wintry evening the Harrowby carriage coming down the cedar lane.
“There’s Colonel Tremaine,” he said.
Angela’s thoughts were suddenly diverted into practical channels. “I must have Uncle Tremaine’s fire lighted at once!” she cried, and, stepping out upon the back porch, she rang the bell five times, which was supposed to summon Tasso, but, after ringing in turn for Mirandy and Jim Henry, finally succeeded in getting both of them, who proceeded to hunt the place for Tasso instead of lighting the fire themselves.
Meanwhile the carriage was at the door, and Angela, snatching up her crimson mantle and throwing it over her fair head, ran down the steps and herself opened the carriage door.
Out stepped Colonel Tremaine and kissed her affectionately. But there was another person within the carriage—a man, pale and worn and haggard, with a leg and an arm bound up. It was Philip Isabey.
The shock of seeing him was shown in Angela’s expressive face. Instead of the warm and ready greeting which a guest usually receives, she stood at the carriage door, her mantle dropping off her shoulders, looking at Isabey with eyes which had in them something both of fear and of delight. She felt more emotion at this sudden apparition of him than she had ever felt at seeing anyone in her life before. And with it an instinctive dread of being thrown with him again instantly sprang into life.
Isabey, himself, had the disadvantage of being a close observer. He had looked forward to this meeting not with fear but with pure delight, and was prepared to watch how Angela greeted him; she was so guileless that she was easily read by an experienced eye.
He held out his hand feebly and said in his old, pleasant, musical voice: “How glad I am to see you again!”
Then Colonel Tremaine began explaining sonorously: “My dear Angela, I had the extreme good fortune to come across Captain Isabey when he most needed a friend. He had been severely wounded and, though out of danger, was quite helpless, and lying on the floor in a miserable shanty. I, of course, picked him up, bag and baggage, and, instead of leaving him in the hospital at Richmond, brought him back to Harrowby. You must do for him what my dearest Sophie is doing for our beloved Richard—be nurse, amanuensis, reader, and companion for him.”
“I will do all I can,” answered Angela, as if in a dream. And then Lyddon appearing, he and Colonel Tremaine assisted Isabey up the steps and into the hall.
It was not until he was seated in a great chair before the hall fire and in the full glare of the blazing lightwood knots, that Angela saw the havoc made in him by wounds and illness. He was very thin, and his gray uniform was shabby and too large for his shrunken figure. His dark complexion had grown pale, and there was a painful thinness about his eyes and temples. His voice, however, had the same cheerful, musical ring.
Isabey, in truth, was filled with rapture. By the hand of fate he had been brought out of the direst misery into the companionship, without seeking it, of this girl whose image he had been unable to drive from his mind. His imagination had already been at work. He knew perfectly well the conditions which prevailed at Harrowby.No one would be there except Colonel Tremaine, Lyddon, Angela, and himself. He would see Angela every day and all day long. She would minister to him, and he might ask services of her inexpressibly sweet to receive from her. And he would have long hours when he could talk to her unheard by others. He had pictured to himself the welcome which would shine in her face when she saw him, and the divine pity with which she would listen to the story of his sufferings.
He did not fail to remind himself that Angela was not for him; she was the wife of another man. But it is not in masculine nature to refrain from inhaling the odor of a delicious flower which belongs to another man or of breathing the air of heaven, although it may be in the garden of another.
Any thought of betraying himself to Angela, or acquiring any ascendency over her, was very far from Isabey’s mind, but when at last they had met he had seen enough of agitation in her to know that the meeting meant something to her as well as to him. And being a very human man, he was penetrated with secret joy.
He saw still more plainly when she stood looking at him by the firelight that she was reckoning up with a sympathy dangerously near to tenderness all of his wounds, his pains, his fevers, all the miseries which he had suffered. It seemed to Isabey then as if they were but a small price to pay for a month in Angela’s society or even for that one hour of peace and warmth and rest with Angela looking down upon him with eyes of sweetest pity.
Colonel Tremaine, in response to Lyddon’s inquiries,began to tell about Richard, and Angela, forcing herself to look away from Isabey, listened to the story:
“We found our son recovering from the measles, a most grotesque complaint for a soldier to have, but he had not taken proper care of himself during the illness and was in a very low state when we arrived. If he had been in fit condition to travel like our friend Captain Isabey, we should have at once brought him to Harrowby, but the snow is four feet deep in the upper country, and it is impossible to think of moving Richard at this inclement season. His mother, therefore, remains with him and Archibald also to minister to them both. I felt it my duty to return to Harrowby. Your Aunt Sophia, my dear, has sent you a letter, so has your brother Archibald, and Richard sent you his best love and says you are to write to him as well as to your Aunt Sophia.” And Colonel Tremaine handed two letters to Angela.
“Our son had heard that Captain Isabey had been badly wounded, and was somewhere in the neighborhood of Winchester. I at once caused inquiries to be made and found that he was easily accessible——”
“I beg your pardon,” interrupted Isabey with a wan smile, “coming to fetch me meant traveling twenty-five miles over mountain roads in December after a fortnight of snow.”
“At all events,” cried Colonel Tremaine expansively, “I was able to find Captain Isabey, and, unlike our son, he was in a condition to be moved, and the surgeon said if he could be made comfortable and have rest and proper treatment for a couple of months, his right arm and right leg would be as good as his left arm and left leg. So Iand my boy, Hector, wrapped him up in blankets, bundled him in the carriage——”
“And drove most of the way himself,” said Isabey in a voice of gratitude.
“And here he is, and I think, my dear Angela, if you could get him some of your aunt’s excellent blackberry wine——”
Angela disappeared as soon as the word blackberry wine was mentioned. In a few minutes she returned with a glass of it, piping hot with spices in it. By that time she had recovered her composure and was the Angela of old.
“This,” she said, smiling as she handed the glass to Isabey, “is an Elizabethan drink—one of what Mr. Lyddon calls his formulas. In the Elizabethan days, you know, people made wine out of everything.”
“And very good wine, too,” responded Isabey. “Better, no doubt, than the doctored stuff of the post-Elizabethan days.”
He took the glass from Angela’s hand and drank the mulled wine, warm and comforting. The wine and the fire brought the color into his pale face and warmth into his chilled body. Angela, leaning her elbow upon the mantle, said meditatively and with the air of the chatelaine of Harrowby: “What would be the best room for Captain Isabey?”
“Richard’s room,” suggested Lyddon. “It’s on the same level with the study.”
“Capital!” exclaimed Colonel Tremaine.
“I think so,” said Angela, “and I shall go now and have it prepared.” She went out, and in half an hourMammy Tulip came into the hall and delivered this message to Isabey:
“Miss Angela, she sent her bes’ ’spects an’ say Marse Richard’s room is ready fur you, an’ I’se gwine ondress you an’ put you to baid.”
Colonel Tremaine looked much shocked. “That, Tulip,” he said severely, “will be Tasso’s duty, who in the absence of Peter in attendance upon his young master has charge of that room.”
Mammy Tulip received this emendation with undisguised contempt. “Tasso, he good ’nuff fur well folks, but Cap’n Isabey, he’s wounded and distrusted an’ I ain’t gwine let dat fool nigger ondress a sick man.” And then to Isabey, “Come ’long, honey, an’ le’ me do fur you jes’ what I do fur dem boys.”
Lyddon had seen this cool defiance of master and mistress every day of the twelve years he had spent at Harrowby, but was still surprised at it.
However, Isabey with the weakness of illness felt a placid pleasure in yielding himself to Mammy Tulip’s motherly care, and willingly allowed her to “hyst” him up as she expressed it, and leaning upon her stout arm with Lyddon on the other side, Colonel Tremaine walking behind, and Tasso, Jim Henry, Mirandy, and several of their coadjutors bringing up the rear, the procession moved toward Richard’s room.
One charm no room at Harrowby could ever lack—a roaring wood fire. It had already taken the chill off the unused room, and to Isabey the glow, the warmth, the great soft feather bed with its snowy linen, was a little glimpse of paradise. And Angela moving softly aboutand concerned for his comfort was the sweetest part of the dream.
A round table was drawn up to an armchair in front of the fireplace, and on it were quilled pens, cut by Lyddon, and red ink made from the sumac berries, and the coarse writing paper which was the best to be had in the Confederacy; and there were also some books. One rapid glance showed Isabey that they were the books he liked; Angela remembered all his tastes.
“Here,” she said, “you will have your supper, and then,” she added with perfect simplicity, “Mammy Tulip will put you to bed.”
“And,” continued Mammy Tulip as she settled Isabey comfortably in the chair with pillows, “I gwine to hab a big washtub brought in heah an’ a kittle of b’iling water an’ I gwine gib you a nice hot bath wid plenty ob soap an’ towels.” At which Isabey laughed faintly and Lyddon grinned, much to the amazement of Angela and Colonel Tremaine, who were accustomed to Mammy Tulip’s ministrations.
Isabey did not see Angela any more that night, and did not in truth feel able to stand further excitement.
Mummy Tulip was as good as her word, and took entire charge of him, and when she had given him his supper and had bathed him in the big washtub as she had threatened, and had covered him up in the great soft bed, Isabey felt that most exquisite of all bodily sensations, release from pain. He had not slept an unbroken night through since his leg and arm had been torn by a shell, but by the time he realized his delicious well-being, sleep came upon him. Nor did he open his eyes again untilnext morning. The fire was again dancing in the chimney and Mammy Tulip was standing by his bedside and holding a cup of something hot.
“It sutney is Gord’s mercy,” she said to him, “dat you an’ ole Marse git heah lars’ night. De snow begin fallin’ a’ter sundown an’ ain’ stop one single minit sence. De boys had to shovel a path in de snow so ter git f’om de kitchen to de house, an’ dey had to breck de ice in de waterin’ troughs fur de ho’ses an’ cows an’ sich.”
Isabey felt if anything an increase in his ease of body and mind at what Mammy Tulip told him. There was something ineffably seductive in the thought that he was, as it were, shut in from the whole world by the rampart of snow and ice. That he could lie in the soft bed and rise when he chose, and be washed and dressed like an infant, and take that short and easy journey into the study where he would find the companionship of books and Lyddon’s strong talk and Colonel Tremaine’s warm courtesy and best of all—Angela.
For many months he had marched and fought and starved by day and night. In summer heats, in autumn’s drenching rains and chilling nights he had ridden and tramped through mud and latterly through snow, and had known hunger and sleeplessness and, with all, incessant fighting. Then had come a day of battle when almost the last shot that was fired had nearly torn him to pieces. Following had come a time of fearful suffering in a wretched shanty, where all that could be done for him was an occasional hurried dressing of his wounds by a surgeon who had learned to do without food or sleep. Around Isabey had been others sufferingas miserably as himself, and his mind was distracted from his own tortures by watching with pity others more tortured than himself.
Now, however, all this seemed a painful dream, and here he was in warmth and peace and ease and paradise for a little time, and when these should have done their work he would be ready once more for hard campaigning.