the tremendous exodus continued; regiment after regiment packed knapsacks, struck tents, loaded their waggons and marched back through the mud toward alexandria, where transports were waiting in hundreds.
the 3rd zouaves were scheduled to leave early. celia had only a few hours now and then in camp with husband and son. once or twice they came to the hospital in the bright spring weather where new blossoms on azalea and jasmine perfumed the fields and flowering peach orchards turned all the hills and valleys pink.
walking with her husband and son that last lovely evening before the regiment left, a hand of each clasped in her own, she strove very hard to keep up the gaiety of appearances, tried with all her might to keep back the starting tears, steady the lip that quivered, the hands that trembled locked in theirs.
they were walking together in a secluded lane that led from behind the farm hospital barns to a little patch of woodland through which a clear stream sparkled, a silent, intimate, leafy oasis amid an army-ridden desert, where there was only a cow to stare at them, knee deep in young mint, only a shy cardinal bird to interrupt them with its exquisite litany.
their talk had been of paige and marye, of paigecourt and the advisability of selling all stock, dismissing the negroes, and closing the place with the exception of the overseer's house. and celia had made arrangements to attend to it.
"i certainly do despise travelling," she said, "but while i'm so near, i reckon i'd better use my pass and papers and try to go through to paigecourt. it's just as well to prepare for the impossible, i suppose."
colonel craig polished his eye-glasses, adjusted them, and examined the official papers that permitted his wife to go to her estate, pack up certain family papers, discharge the servants, close the house, and return through the union lines carrying only personal baggage.
he said without enthusiasm: "it's inside their lines. to go there isn't so difficult, but how about coming back? i don't want you to go, celia."
she explained in detail that there would be no difficulty—a little proudly, too, when she spoke of her personal safety among her own people.
"i understand all that," he said patiently, "but nobody except the commander-in-chief knows where this army is going. i don't want you to be caught in the zone of operations."
she flushed up with a defiant little laugh. "the war isn't going to paigecourt, anyway," she said.
he smiled with an effort. "i am not sure, dearest. all i am sure of is that we march in the morning, and go aboard ship at alexandria. i don't know where we are expected to land, or where we are going to march after we do land." . . . he smiled again, mischievously. "even if you believe that a yankee army is not likely to get very far into virginia, paigecourt is too near richmond for me to feel entirely sure that you may not have another visit from stephen and me before you start north."
"listen to the yankee!" she cried, laughing gaily to hide the sudden dimness in her blue eyes. "my darling yankee husband is ve'y absurd, and he doesn't suspect it! why! don't you perfec'ly ridiculous zouaves know that you'll both be back in new york befo' i am—and all tired out keeping up with the pace yo' general sets you?"
but when it was time to say good-bye once more, her limbs grew weak and she leaned heavily on husband and son, her nerveless feet dragging across the spring turf.
"oh, curt, curt," she faltered, her soft cheeks pressed against the stiff bullion on his sleeve and collar, "if only i had the wretched consolation of sending you away to fight fo' the right—fo' god and country—there, darling! fo'give me—fo'give me. i am yo' wife first of all—first of all, curt. and that even comes befo' country and—god!—yes, it does! it does, dear. you are all three to me—i know no holier trinity than husband, god, and native land. . . . must you go so soon? so soon? . . . where is my boy—i'm crying so i can't see either of you—stephen! mother's own little boy—mother's little, little boy—oh, it is ve'y hard—ve'y hard——"
[illustration: "must you go so soon? so soon?"]
"steve—i think you'd better kiss your mother now"—his voice choked and he turned his back and stood, the sun glittering on the gold and scarlet of his uniform.
mother and son clung, parted, clung; then colonel craig's glittering sleeve was flung about them both.
"i'll try to bring him through all right, celia. you must believe that we are coming back."
so they parted.
and at three in the morning, celia, lying in her bed, started to a sitting posture. very far away in the night reveille was sounding for some regiment outward bound; and then the bugles blew for another regiment and another, and another, until everywhere the darkened world grew gaily musical with the bugle's warning.
she crept to the window; it was too dusky to see. but in obscurity she felt that not far away husband and son were passing through darkness toward the mystery of the great unknown; and there, in her night-dress, she knelt by the sill, hour after hour, straining her eyes and listening until dawn whitened the east and the rivers began to marshal their ghostly hosts. then the sun rose, annihilating the phantoms of the mist and shining on columns of marching men, endless lines of waggons, horse-batteries, foot artillery, cavalry, engineers with gabions and pontoons, and entire divisions of blue infantry, all pouring steadily toward alexandria and the river, where lay the vast transport fleet at anchor, destined to carry them whither their maker and commanding general willed that they should go.
to celia's wet eyes there seemed to be little variation in the dull blue columns with the glitter of steel flickering about them; yet, here and there a brilliant note appeared—pennons fluttering above lances, scarfs and facings of some nearer foot battery, and, far away toward alexandria, vivid squares of scarlet in a green field, dimmed very little by the distance. those were zouaves—her own, or perhaps the 5th, or the 9th from roanoke, or perhaps the 14th brooklyn—she could not know, but she never took her eyes from the distant blocks and oblongs of red against the green until the woods engulfed them.
ailsa still lay heavily asleep. celia opened the door and called her to the window.
"honey-bud, darling," she whispered tearfully, "did you know the
lancers are leaving?"
ailsa's eyes flew wide open:
"not his regiment!"
"are there two?"
"yes," said ailsa, frightened. "that must be the 6th pennsylvania. . . . because i think—somebody would have told me—colonel arran——"
she stared through eyes from which the mist of slumber had entirely cleared away. then she sprang from her bed to the window:
"oh—oh!" she said half to herself, "he wouldn't go away without saying something to me! he couldn't! . . . and—oh, dear—oh dear, their pennons are swallow-tailed and scarlet! it looks like his regiment—it does—it does! . . . but he wouldn't go without speaking to me——"
celia turned and looked at her.
"do you mean colonel arran?" and saw that she did not.
for a while they stood there silently together, the soft spring wind blowing over their bare necks and arms, stirring the frail, sheer fabric of their night-robes.
suddenly the stirring music of cavalry trumpets along the road below startled them; they turned swiftly to look out upon a torrent of scarlet pennons and glancing lance points—troop after troop of dancing horses and blue-clad riders, their flat forage caps set rakishly, bit and spur and sabre hilt glistening, the morning sun flashing golden on the lifted trumpets.
on they came, on, on, horses' heads tossing, the ground shaking with the mellow sound of four thousand separate hoofs,—and passed, troop on troop, a lengthening, tossing wave of scarlet across the verdure.
then, far away in the column, a red lance pennon swung in a circle, a blue sleeve shot up in salute and adieu. and ailsa knew that berkley had seen her, and that the brightness of the young world was leaving her, centred there in the spark of fire that tipped his lance.
now she saw her lover turn in his saddle and, sitting so, ride on and on, his tall lance slanting from stirrup boot to arm loop, the morning sun bright across his face, and touching each metal button with fire from throat to belt.
so her lancer rode away into the unknown; and she sat on the edge of her bed, crying, until it was time to go on duty and sit beside the dying in the sick wards.
they brought her his last letter that evening.
"you wicked little thing," it ran, "if you hadn't taught me self-respect i'd have tried to run the guard to-night, and would probably have been caught and drummed out or shot. we're in a bustle; orders, totally unexpected, attach us to porter's corps, sykes's division of regulars. warren's brigade, which includes, i believe, the 5th zouaves, the 10th zouaves, 6th pennsylvania lancers, and 1st connecticut heavy artillery.
"we've scarcely time to get off; our baggage will never be ready, and how we're going to get to alexandria and aboard ship is more than i know.
"and i'm simply furious; i'd counted on a dramatic situation,
ailsa—the soldiers farewell, loud sobs, sweetheart faints, lancer
dashes away unmanly tears—'be strong, be br-r-rave, dah-ling!
hevving watches over your alonzo!'
"not so. a big brawny brute in spurs comes in the dark to stir us with the toe of his boot. 'silence,' he hisses, 'if you can't hear that damn reveille, i'll punch you in the snoot, an' then mebbe you'll spread them lop-ears o' yourn!'
"heaven! your alonzo is derided by a hireling!
"'pack up, you swallow-tailed, leather-seated, pig-prodding sons of galoots!' thus, our first sergeant, recently of the regulars, roll-call having ended.
"coffeeless, soupless, tackless, we leer furtively at the two days' rations in our haversacks which we dare not sample; lick our chops reflectively, are cruelly chidden by underlings in uniform, further insulted by other underlings, are stepped on, crowded, bitten, and kicked at by our faithful arab steeds, are coarsely huddled into line, where officers come to gloat over us and think out further ingenious indignities to heap upon us while we stand to horse. and we stand there two hours!
"i can't keep up this artificial flow of low comedy. the plain fact of the situation is that we're being hustled toward an amphibious thing with paddle-wheels named the skylark, and i haven't said good-bye to you.
"ailsa, it isn't likely that anything is going to knock my head off or puncture vital sections of me. but in case the ludicrous should happen, i want you to know that a cleaner man goes before the last court marshal than would have stood trial there before he met you.
"you are every inch my ideal of a woman—every fibre in you is utterly feminine. i adore your acquired courage, i worship your heavenly inconsistencies. the mental pleasure i experienced with you was measured and limited only by my own perversity and morbid self-absorption; the splendour of the passion i divine in you, unawakened, awes me, leaves me in wonder. the spiritual tonic, even against my own sickly will has freshened me by mere contact with the world you live in; the touch of your lips and hands—ah, ailsa—has taught me at last the language that i sneered at.
"well—we can never marry. how it will be with us, how end, he who, after all is said and done, did construct us, knows now. and we will know some day, when life is burned out in us.
"hours, days of bitter revolt come—the old madness for you, the old recklessness of desire, the savage impatience with life, assail me still. because, ailsa, i would—i could have made you a—well, an interesting husband, anyway. you were fashioned to be the divinest wife and . . . i'm not going on in this strain; i'll write you when i can. and for god's sake take care of your life. there's nothing left if you go—nothing.
"i've made a will. trooper burgess, a comrade—my former valet—carries a duplicate memorandum. don't weep; i'll live to make another. but in this one i have written you that my mother's letters and pictures are to be yours—when i have a chance i'll draw it in legal form. and, dear, first be perfectly sure i'm dead, and then destroy my mother's letters without reading them; and then look upon her face. and i think you will forgive me when i tell you that it is for her sake that i can never marry. but you will not understand why."
over this letter ailsa had little time to wonder or to make herself wretched, for that week orders came to evacuate the farm hospital and send all sick and wounded to the general hospital at alexandria.
a telegram arrived, too, from miss dix, who was authorised to detail nurses by the secretary of war, ordering the two nurses of sainte ursula's sisterhood to await letters of recommendation and written assignments to another hospital to be established farther south. but where that hospital was to be built nobody seemed to know.
a week later a dozen protestant women nurses arrived at alexandria, where they were made unwelcome. medical directors, surgeons, ward masters objected, bluntly declaring that they wouldn't endure a lot of women interfering and fussing and writing hysterical nonsense to the home newspapers.
for a while confusion reigned, intensified by the stupendous mobilisation going on all around.
a medical officer came to the farm hospital and angrily informed ailsa that the staff had had enough of women in the wards; and from forty cots forty half-dead, ghastly creatures partly rose and cursed the medical gentleman till his ears burned crimson,
ailsa, in her thin gray habit bearing the scarlet heart, stood in the middle of the ward and defied him with her credentials.
"the medical staff of the army has only to lay its case before the secretary of war," she said, looking calmly at him, "and that is where the sanitary commission obtains its authority. meanwhile our orders detail us here for duty."
"we'll see about that!" he snapped, backing away.
"so will we," said ailsa, smiling. but that afternoon she and
letty took an ambulance and went, in great distress of mind, to see
mother angela, superior of the sisters of the holy cross, who had
arrived from indiana ready to continue hospital duties on the
potomac if necessary.
the lovely superieure, a lady of rare culture and ability, took
ailsa's hand in hers with a sad smile.
"men's prejudices are hard to meet. the social structure of the world is built on them. but men's prejudices vanish when those same men fall sick. the war department has regularised our position; it will authorise yours. you need not be afraid."
she smiled again reminiscently.
"when our sisters of the holy cross first appeared in the wards, the patients themselves looked at us sullenly and askance. i heard one say: 'why can't they take off those white-winged sun-bonnets in the wards?' and another sneered: 'sun-bonnets! huh! they look like busted white parasols!' but, mrs. paige, our white 'sun-bonnets' have already become to them the symbol they love most, after the flag. be of good courage. your silver-gray garb and white cuffs will mean much to our soldiers before this battle year is ended."
that evening ailsa and letty drove back to the parm hospital in their ambulance, old black cassius managing his mules with alternate bursts of abuse and of praise. first he would beat upon his mules with a flat stick which didn't hurt, but made a loud racket; then, satisfied, he would loll in his seat singing in melodious and interminable recitative:
an' i hope to gain de prommis' lan',
yaas i do,
'deed i do.
lor' i hope to gain de prommis' lan',
dat i do,
an' dar i'll flap ma wings an' take ma stan',
yaas i will,
'deed i will,
an' i'll tune ma harp an' jine de shinin' ban'
glory, glory,
i hope to gain de prommis' lan'!
and over and over the same shouted melody, interrupted only by an outburst of reproach for his mules.
they drove back through a road which had become for miles only a great muddy lane running between military encampments, halted at every bridge and crossroads to exhibit their passes; they passed never-ending trains of army waggons cither stalled or rumbling slowly toward alexandria. everywhere were soldiers, drilling, marching, cutting wood, washing clothes, cooking, cleaning arms, mending, working on camp ditches, drains, or forts, writing letters at the edge of shelter tents, digging graves, skylarking—everywhere the earth was covered with them.
they passed the camp for new recruits, where the poor "fresh fish" awaited orders to join regiments in the field to which they had been assigned; they passed the camp for stragglers and captured deserters; the camp for paroled prisoners; the evil-smelling convalescent camp, which, still under surgeon general hammond's department, had not yet been inspected by the sanitary commission.
an officer, riding their way, talked with them about conditions in this camp, where, he said, the convalescents slept on the bare ground, rain or shine; where there were but three surgeons for the thousands suffering from intestinal and throat and lung troubles, destitute, squalid, unwarmed by fires, unwashed, wretched, forsaken by the government that called them to its standard.
it was the first of that sort of thing that ailsa and letty had seen.
after the battles in the west—particularly after the fall of fort donnelson—terrible rumours were current in the army of the potomac and in the hospitals concerning the plight of the wounded—of new regiments that had been sent into action with not a single medical officer, or, for that matter, an ounce of medicine, or of lint in its chests.
they were grisly rumours. in the neat wards of the farm hospital, with its freshly swept and sprinkled floors, its cots in rows, its detailed soldier nurses and the two nurses from sainte ursula's sisterhood, its sick-diet department, its medical stores, its two excellent surgeons, these rumours found little credence.
and now, here in the vicinity, ailsa's delicate nostrils shrank from the stench arising from the "four camps"; and she saw the emaciated forms lining the hillside, and she heard the horrible and continuous coughing.
"do you know," she said to letty the next morning, "i am going to write to miss dix and inform her of conditions in that camp."
and she did so, perfectly conscious that she was probably earning the dislike of the entire medical department. but hundreds of letters like hers had already been sent to washington, and already the sanitary commission was preparing to take hold; so, when at length one morning an acknowledgment of her letter was received, no notice was taken of her offer to volunteer for service in that loathsome camp, but the same mail brought orders and credentials and transportation vouchers for herself and letty.
letty was still asleep, but ailsa went up and waked her when the hour for her tour of duty approached.
"what do you think!" she said excitedly. "we are to pack up our valises and go aboard the mary lane to-morrow. she sails with hospital stores. what do you think of that?"
"where are we going?" asked letty, bewildered.
"you poor, sleepy little thing," said ailsa, sitting down on the bed's shaky edge, "i'm sure i don't know where we're going, dear. two protestant nurses are coming here to superintend the removal of our sick boys—and dr. west says they are old and ugly, and that miss dix won't have any more nurses who are not over thirty and who are not most unattractive to look at."
"i wonder what miss dix would do if she saw us," said letty naively, and sat up in bed; rubbing her velvety eyes with the backs of her hands. then she yawned, looked inquiringly at ailsa, smiled, and swung her slender body out of bed.
while she was doing her hair ailsa heard her singing to herself.
she was very happy; another letter from dr. benton had arrived.
celia, who had gone to washington three days before, to see mr. stanton, returned that evening with her passes and order for transportation; and to ailsa's astonishment and delight she found that the designated boat was the mary lane.
but celia was almost too nervous and too tired to talk over the prospects.
"my dear," she said wearily, "that drive from the chain bridge to alexandria has mos'ly killed me. i vow and declare there was never one moment when one wheel was not in a mud hole. all my bones ache, honey-bud, and i'm cross with talking to so many yankees, and—do you believe me !—that ve'y horrid stanton creature gave orders that i was to take the oath!"
"the—oath?" asked ailsa, amazed.
"certainly. and i took it," she added fiercely, "becose of my husband! if it had not been fo' curt i'd have told mr. stanton what i thought of his old oath!"
"what kind of an oath was it, celia?"
celia repeated it haughtily:
"'i do solemnly swear, in the presence of almighty god, to faithfully support the constitution of the united states, and of the state of new york. so he'p me god.'"
"it is the oath of fealty," said ailsa in a hushed voice.
"it was not necessa'y," said celia coldly. "my husband is sufficient to keep me—harmless. . . . but i know what i feel in my heart, honey-bud; and so does eve'y southern woman—god help us all. . . . is that little miss lynden going with us?"
"letty? yes, of course."
celia began to undress. "she's a ve'y sweet little minx. . . . she is—odd, somehow. . . . so young—such a he'pless, cute little thing. . . ailsa, in that child's eyes—or in her features somewhere, somehow, i see—i feel a—a sadness, somehow—like the gravity of expe'ience, the something that wisdom brings to the ve'y young too early. it is odd, isn't it."
"letty is a strange, gentle little thing. i've often wondered——"
"what, honey-bee?"
"i—don't know," said ailsa vaguely. "it is not natural that a happy woman should be so solemnly affectionate to another. i've often thought that she must, sometime or other, have known deep unhappiness."
when celia was ready to retire, ailsa bade her good-night and wandered away down the stairs, letty was still on duty; she glanced into the sick-diet kitchen as she passed and saw the girl bending over a stew-pan.
she did not disturb her. with evening a soft melancholy had begun to settle over ailsa. it came in the evening, now, often—a sensation not entirely sad, not unwelcome, soothing her, composing her mind for serious thought, for the sweet sadness of memory.
always she walked, now, companioned by memories of berkley. wherever she moved—in the quiet of the sick wards, in the silence of the moonlight, seated by smeared windows watching the beating rain, in the dead house, on duty in the kitchen contriving broths, or stretched among her pillows, always the memories came in troops to bear her company.
they were with her now as she paced the veranda to and fro, to and fro.
she heard letty singing happily over her stew-pan in the kitchen; the stir and breathing of the vast army was audible all around her in the darkness. presently she looked at her watch in the moonlight, returned it to her breast.
"i'm ready, dear," she said, going to the kitchen door.
and another night on duty was begun—the last she ever was to spend under the quiet roof of the farm hospital.
that night she sat beside the bed of a middle-aged man, a corporal in a minnesota regiment whose eyes had been shot out on picket. otherwise he was convalescent from dysentery. but ailsa had seen the convalescent camp, and she would not let him go yet.
so she read to him in a low, soothing voice, glancing from time to time at the bandaged face. and, when she saw he was asleep, she sat silent, hands nervously clasped above the bible on her knee. then her lids closed for an instant as she recited a prayer for the man she loved, wherever he might be that moon-lit night.
a zouave, terribly wounded on roanoke island, began to fret; she rose and walked swiftly to him, and the big sunken eyes opened and he said, humbly:
"i am sorry to inconvenience you, mrs. paige. i'll try to keep quiet."
"you foolish fellow, you don't inconvenience me. what can i do for you?"
his gaze was wistful, but he said nothing, and she bent down tenderly, repeating her question.
a slight flush gathered under his gaunt cheek bones. "i guess i'm just contrary," he muttered. "don't bother about me, ma'am."
"you are thinking of your wife; talk to me about her, neil."
it was what he wanted; he could endure the bandages. so, her cool smooth hand resting lightly over his, where it lay on the sheets, she listened to the home-sick man until it was time to give another sufferer his swallow of lemonade.
later she put on a gingham overgown, sprinkled it and her hands with camphor, and went into the outer wards where the isolated patients lay—where hospital gangrene and erysipelas were the horrors. and, farther on, she entered the outlying wing devoted to typhus. in spite of the open windows the atmosphere was heavy; everywhere the air seemed weighted with the odour of decay.
as always, in spite of herself, she hesitated at the door. but the steward on duty rose; and she took his candle and entered the place of death.
toward morning a rhode island artilleryman, dying in great pain, relapsed into coma. waiting beside him, she wrote to his parents, enclosing the little keepsakes he had designated when conscious, while his life flickered with the flickering candle. her letter and his life ended together; dawn made the candle-light ghastly; a few moments later the rumble of the dead waggon sounded in the court below. the driver came early because there was a good deal of freight for his waggon that day. a few moments afterward the detail arrived with the stretchers, and ailsa stood up, drew aside the screen, and went down into the gray obscurity of the court-yard.
grave-diggers were at work on a near hillside; she could hear the clink clink of spade and pick; reveille was sounding from hill to hill; the muffled stirring became a dull, sustained clatter, never ceasing around her for one instant.
a laundress was boiling clothing over a fire near by; ailsa slipped off her gingham overdress, unbound the white turban, and tossed them on the grass near the fire. then, rolling back her sleeves, she plunged her arms into a basin of hot water in which a little powdered camphor was floating.
while busy with her ablutions the two new nurses arrived, seated on a battery limber; and, hastily drying her hands, she went to them and welcomed them, gave them tea and breakfast in dr. west's office, and left them there while she went away to awake celia and letty, pack her valise for the voyage before her, and write to berkley.
but it was not until she saw the sun low in the west from the deck of the mary lane, that she at last found a moment to write.
the place, the hour, her loneliness, moved depths in her that she had never sounded—moved her to a recklessness never dreamed of. it was an effort for her to restrain the passionate confessions trembling on her pen's tip; her lips whitened with the cry struggling for utterance.
"dear, never before did i so completely know myself, never so absolutely trust myself to the imperious, almost ungovernable tide which has taken my destiny from the quiet harbour where it lay, and which is driving it headlong toward yours.
"you have left me alone, to wonder and to wonder. and while isolated, i stand trying to comprehend why it was that your words separated our destinies while your arms around me made them one. i am perfectly aware that the surge of life has caught me up, tossed me to its crest, and is driving me blindly out across the waste spaces of the world toward you—wherever you may be—whatever be the cost. i will not live without you.
"i am not yet quite sure what has so utterly changed me—what has so completely changed within me. but i am changed. perhaps daily familiarity with death and pain and wretchedness, hourly contact with the paramount mystery of all, has broadened me, or benumbed me. i don't know. all i seem to see clearly—to clearly understand—is the dreadful brevity of life, the awful chances against living, the miracle of love in such a maelstrom, the insanity of one who dare not confess it, live for it, love to the uttermost with heart, soul, and body, while life endures,
"all my instincts, all principles inherent or inculcated; all knowledge spiritual and intellectual, acquired; all precepts, maxims, proverbs, axioms incorporated and lately a part of me, seem trivial, empty, meaningless in sound and in form compared to the plain truths of death. for never until now did i understand that we walk always arm in arm with death, that he squires us at every step, coolly joggles our elbow, touches our shoulder now and then, wakes us at dawn, puts out our night-light, and smooths the sheets we sleep under.
"i had thought of death as something hiding very, very far away. yet i had already seen him enter my own house. but now i understand how close he always is; and, somehow, it has changed—hardened, maybe—much that was vague and unformed in my character. and, maybe, the knowledge is distorting it; i don't know. all i know is that, before life ends, if there is a chance of fulfilment, i will take it. and fulfilment means you—my love for you, the giving of it, of myself, of all i am, all i desire, all i care for, all i believe, into your keeping—into your embrace. that, for me, is fulfilment of life.
"even in your arms you tell me that there is to be no fulfilment. i have acquiesced, wondering, bewildered, confused. but, dear, you can never tell me so again—if we live—if i live to look into your eyes again—never, never. for i shall not believe it, nor shall i let you believe it, if only we can win through this deathly battle nightmare which is rising between us—if ever we can find each other again, touch each other through this red, unreal glare of war.
"oh, philip—philip—only to have your arms around me! only to touch you! you shall not tell me then that our destinies do not mingle. they shall mingle like two wines; they shall become utterly confused in one another; i was meant for that; i will not die, isolated by you, unknown to you, not belonging to you! i will not die alone this way in the world, with no deeper memory to take into the unknown than that you said you loved me.
"god alone knows what change misery and sorrow and love and death have accomplished in me; never have i stood so alone upon this earth; never have i cared so for life, never have i so desired to be a deathless part of yours.
"if you love me you will make me part of yours—somehow, some way. and, philip, if there is no way, yet there is always one way if we both live. and i shall not complain—only, i cannot die—let life go out—so that you could ever forget that my life had been part of yours.
"is it dreadful of me to think this? but the mighty domination of death has dwarfed everything around me, dear; shrivelled the little man-made formulas and laws; the living mind and body seem more vital than the by-laws made to govern them. . . . god knows what i'm writing, but you have gone into battle leaving life unfulfilled for us both, and i assented—and my heart and soul are crying out to you, unreconciled—crying out my need of you across the smoke. . . .
"there is a battery at cock-pit point, firing, and the smoke of the guns drifts across the low-hanging sun. it must be only a salute, for our fleet of transports moves on, torrents of black smoke pouring out of every tall funnel, paddle-wheels churning steadily.
"when the fleet passed mount vernon the bells tolled aboard every boat; and we could see the green trees and a glimmer of white on shore, and the flag flying.
"what sadness! a people divided who both honour the sacredness of this spot made holy by a just man's grave—gathering to meet in battle—brother against brother.
"but fate shall not longer array you and me against each other! i will not have it so! neither my heart nor my soul could endure the cruelty of it, nor my reason its wickedness and insanity. from the first instant i met your eyes, philip, somehow, within me, i knew i belonged to you. i do more hopelessly to-day than ever—and with each day, each hour, more and more until i die. you will not let me go to my end unclaimed, will you?—a poor ghost all alone, lost in the darkness somewhere among the stars—lacking that tie between you and it which even death does not know how to sever!
"i leave all to you, loving you, wishing what you wish, content with what you give—and take—so that you do give and take and keep and hold for life.
"it is very dusky; the lights, red and white, glimmer on every transport. we feel the sea-swell a little. celia left us, going ashore at acquia creek. she takes the cars to richmond and then to paigecourt. letty sits beside me on deck. there were two cases of fever aboard and we went down into a dreadfully ill-smelling cabin to do what we could. now we are here on deck again. some officers are talking very gaily with letty. i am ending my letter to you—wherever you are, my darling, under these big, staring stars that look down at me out of space. i don't want my ghost to be blown about up there—unless it belongs to you. that is the only fear of death i ever have or ever had—that i might die before you had all of me there is to give."
