After that once or twice a week Mammy Tulip would come to Angela with suggestions that she write to Neville, following the same method as at first, and Angela invariably did so. The steady march of negroes to the Federal lines revealed easily to Angela what became of her letters.
The month which Isabey had given himself had passed quickly, and at the end of that time he was ready, as far as his health was concerned, to take the road. But broken and lacerated limbs are not mended in a month, and Colonel Tremaine put an absolute veto upon Isabey’s leaving Harrowby.
“My dear sir,” he said, authoritatively, “I am an old campaigner and I can assure you that a soldier who is practically legless and armless is no help to an army, and merely serves to eat up the provender. You are absolutely useless in any capacity until you are able to walk and use your right arm freely, and until then it is your duty—your duty, sir, to our country—to remain at Harrowby and recuperate.”
“It’s rather hard,” remarked Isabey, “to sit here in idleness and comfort, eating and sleeping and reading and dozing when every man who can carry a musket is needed at the front.”
“How do you think,” asked Colonel Tremaine, calmly, “you would get on riding a horse? It would be necessary to help you up and help you off again, and as for arms, you would have to manage your horse, and fire your pistol at the same time with your left hand. And if all went well, the best that you could expect would be to be in a hospital at the end of a week. No, sir, you will remain at Harrowby.”
Colonel Tremaine’s logic was unanswerable, and Isabey remained. Nevertheless, he had waked from the soft dream in which he spent the first few weeks of his return. It was now February and the land still lay in an icy grasp, but spring would soon be at hand, and Isabey felt a soldier’s impatience to be at his post. Angela’s society was not less delicious to him; rather had he become more absolutely enchained. But being a man he put fetters upon his will, his inclination, his voice, and, taking his passion by the throat, mastered it. Only his eyes remained uncontrolled, and sometimes in unguarded moments were eloquent in a language which Angela perfectly understood.
Only Lyddon saw this; Colonel Tremaine never saw anything.
CHAPTER XVI
THE TONGUE OF CALUMNY
ONE Sunday morning a week or two after this, Angela announced that she intended to ride to church. The roads were still impassable for carriages, but a sure-footed horse could make his way along. Colonel Tremaine at once said that he, too, would join the enterprise. When Angela, in her riding habit, came downstairs about ten o’clock she found the horse at the door and a third one, upon which Hector was assisting Isabey. The horse was a retired cob of Colonel Tremaine’s and had passed his fifteenth birthday and being well gaited was admirably suited as a charger for a wounded officer. Just as Isabey had settled himself in the saddle and gathered the reins in his uninjured left hand, Colonel Tremaine came out.
“My dear sir,” he protested to Isabey, “this is extremely rash. You are not able to manage a horse.”