"II'm excited, of course! He can't possibly hold out with only eighty men and nothing to feed them on. Something's got to be done!" he added, walking up and down the room. "I've made fun of the militialike everybody elsebut Jimmy Lent is getting ready, and I'm doing nothing! Do you hear what I'm saying, Ailsa?"
She looked up from the newspaper, sitting there cross-legged under the coverlet.
"I hear you, Steve. I don't know what you mean by 'something's got to be done.' Major Anderson is doing what he canbless him!"
"That's all right, but the thing isn't going to stop there."
"Stop where?"
"At Sumter. They'll begin firing on Fortress Monroe and PensacolaIhow do you know they're not already thinking about bombarding Washington? Virginia is going out of the Union; the entire South is out, or going. Yesterday, I didn't suppose there was any use in trying to get them back again. Father did, but I didn't. I think it's got to be done, now. And the question is, Ailsa, whose going to do it?"
But she was fiercely absorbed again in the news, leaning close over the paper, tumbled dull-gold hair falling around her bare shoulders, breath coming faster and more irregularly as she read the incredible story and strove to comprehend its cataclysmic significance.
"If others are going, I am," repeated her cousin sullenly.
"Going where, Steve?Oh"
She dropped the paper and looked up, startled; and he looked back at her, defiant, without a flicker in those characteristic family eyes of his, clear as azure, steady to punishment given or takengood eyes for a boy to inherit. And he inherited them from his rebel mother.
"Father can't keep me home if other people go," he said.
"Wait until other people go." She reached out and laid a hand on his arm.
"Things are happening too fast, Steve, too fast for everybody to quite understand just yet. Everybody will do what is the thing to do; the family will do what it ought to. . . . Has your mother seen this?"
"Yes. Neither she nor father have dared speak about it before us" He made a gesture of quick despair, walked to the window and back.
"It's a terrible thing, Ailsa, to have mother feel as she does."
"How could she feel otherwise?"
"I've done my best to explain to her"
"O Steve! You!when it's a matter between her soul and God!"
He said, reddening: "It's a matter of common-senseI don't mean to insult motherbutgood Lord, a nation is a nation, but a state is only a state! Ihang it allwhat's the use of trying to explain what is born in one"
"The contrary was born in your mother, Steve. Don't ever talk to her this way. Andgo out, please, I wish to dress."
He went away, saying over his shoulders: "I only wanted to tell you that I'm not inclined to sit sucking my thumb if other men go, and you can say so to father, who has forbidden me to mention the subject to him again until I have his permission."
But he went away to business that morning with his father, as usual; and when evening came the two men returned, anxious, dead tired, having passed most of the day standing in the dense throngs that choked every street around the bulletin boards of the newspaper offices.
Ailsa had not been out during the day, nor had Mrs. Craig, except for an hour's drive in the family coupe around the district where preliminary surveys for the new Prospect Park were being pushed.
They had driven for almost an hour in utter silence. Her sister-in-law's hand lay clasped in hers, but both looked from the carriage windows without speaking, and the return from the drive found them strangely weary and inclined for the quiet of their own rooms. But Celia Craig could not close her eyes even to feign sleep to herself.
When husband and son returned at evening, she asked nothing of the news from them, but her upturned face lingered a second or two longer as her husband kissed her, and she clung a little to Stephen, who was inclined to be brief with her.
Dinner was a miserable failure in that family, which usually had much to compare, much to impart, much badinage and laughter to distribute. But the men were weary and uncommunicative; Estcourt Craig went to his club after dinner; Stephen, now possessing a latch-key, disappeared shortly afterward.
Paige and Marye did embroidery and gossipped together under the big crystal chandelier while their mother read aloud to them from "Great Expectations," which was running serially in Harper's Weekly. Later she read in her prayer-book; later still, fully dressed, she lay across the bed in the alcove staring at the darkness and listening for the sound of her husband's latch-key in the front door,
When it sounded, she sprang up and hastily dried her eyes.
"The children and Ailsa are all abed, Curt. How late you are! It was not very wise of you to go outbeing so tired" She was hovering near him as though to help his weariness with her small offices; she took his hat, stood looking at him, then stepped nearer, laying both hands on his shoulders, and her face against his.
"I amalready tired of thewar," she sighed. "Is it ended yet, Curt?"
"There is no more news from Sumter."
"You willlove mebestanyway. Curtwon't you?"
"Do you doubt it?"
She only drew a deep, frightened breath. For within her heart she felt the weight of the new apprehensionthe clairvoyant premonition of a rival that she must prepare to encountera rival that menaced her peace of minda shape, shadowy as yet, but terrible, slowly becoming frightfully denneda Thing that might one day wean this man from herhusband, and son, tooboth perhaps.
"Curt," she faltered, "it will all come right in the end. Say it. I am afraid."
"It will come out all right," he said gently. They kissed, and she turned to the mirror and silently began preparing for the night.
With the calm notes of church bells floating out across the city, and an April breeze blowing her lace curtains, Ailsa awoke. Overhead she heard the trample of Stephen's feet as he moved leisurely about his bedroom. Outside her windows in the backyard, early sunshine slanted across shrub and grass and white-washed fence; the Sunday quiet was absolute, save for the church bells.
She lay there listening and thinking; the church bells ceased; and after a while, lying there, she began to realise that the silence was unnaturalbecame conscious of something ominous in the intense quiet outsidea far-spread stillness which was more than the hush of Sabbath.
Whether or not the household was still abed she did not know; no sound came from Celia's room; nor were Marye and Paige stirring on the floor above when she rose and stole out barefooted to the landing, holding a thin silk chamber robe around her. She paused, listening; the tic-toc of the hall clock accented the silence; the door that led from Celia's chamber into the hall stood wide open, and there was nobody in sight. Something drew her to the alcove window, which was raised; through the lace curtains she saw the staff of the family flag set in its iron socket at right angles to the facadesaw the silken folds stirring lazily in the sunshine, tiptoed to the window and peered out.
As far as her eyes could see, east and west, the street was one rustling mass of flags.
For a second her heart almost hurt her with its thrilling leap; she caught her breath; the hard tension in her throat was choking her; she dropped to her knees by the sill, drew a corner of the flag to her, and laid her cheek against it.
Her eyes unclosed and she gazed out upon the world of flags; then, upright, she opened her fingers, and the crinkled edges of the flag, released, floated leisurely out once more into the April sunshine.