“Then,” said Angela, “we must do everything we can to get you in good condition and supply you with some comforts as soon as you are in camp. I shall give you some tallow candles and blackberry wine and everything else a soldier can use.”
How well fitted she was, thought Isabey, to be a soldier’s wife! No idle repining, no tears to make the parting harder, no timid apprehensions to be combated, were in this girl, but calm courage, hope, cheerfulness, and faith.
That day a letter was received from Mrs. Tremaine. Richard was well recovered and able to join his battery. His mother and Archie were then in Richmond, staying at the hotel with Madame Isabey and Adrienne. Adrienne was a great belle, and their little drawing-room was full of officers every evening, riding in from the surrounding country for an hour or two, to listen to Adrienne’s pretty French songs and delightful conversation.
Mrs. Tremaine fully expected Adrienne and Madame Isabey to return with her, but they had received a pressing invitation from some friends above Richmond to spend a month or two, and had accepted it. They promised, however, to return to Harrowby in the early summer and to remain during the war. Archie was much disappointed because Madame Isabey would not return to Harrowby with them, and declared he admired her more than any of the pretty girls he had seen so far in his career. Mrs. Tremaine hoped that Captain Isabey was improving and that Angela had omitted nothing to make him comfortable. Hard as the parting had been with Richard, Mrs. Tremaine wrote she could no longer be satisfied away from Colonel Tremaine, and hoped, as this was the longest separation of their married life, that they would never be apart again.
Colonel Tremaine was like a lover expecting his mistress, and Angela busied herself more than ever in training the green hands about the house, so that Mrs. Tremaine should not miss the familiar servants who had gone to the Yankees. There were no longer twenty-five of them to be called by the bell on the back porch. Ten only answered to the call, and most of these were half-grown boys and girls.
A few days before Mrs. Tremaine arrived Isabey left Harrowby. On the morning of his departure he lingered for a moment in the old study, recalling the exquisite hours he had spent there listening to Angela’s voice, watching her slight and supple figure and delicate hands as she ministered to him. The sweetness and pain of it was so sharp that he could not linger, and, going out, he began his farewells.
The servants were all sorry to part with him. Mammy Tulip, who had “nursed him like a baby,” as she expressed it, called down blessings on his head and warned him to keep well away from Yankee bullets, which Isabey gravely promised her he would do.
Hector declared that the parting reminded him of when he bade a last farewell to General Scott at the end of the Mexican War.
“De gineral when he shook my han’ say: ‘Hector, dis heah partin’ is de hardest I ever see, but, thank Gord, I had you while I need you most—when we was fightin’ dem damn, infernal, low-lived Mexicans. An’ as fur dat scoundrel, Gineral Santa Anna, I never would ha’ cotch him ef it hadn’t been fur you.’”
Out on the porch in the spring morning stood Angela, Colonel Tremaine, and Lyddon. Nothing could exceed the kindness of their parting words. Colonel Tremaine urged Isabey to come to see them whenever the pressure of his military duties relaxed, and especially if he fell ill to remember that Harrowby was his home. Lyddon said with truth that Isabey’s presence during the stormy winter had brightened Harrowby. When Angela bade him farewell, Isabey thanked her with French ceremony for her kindness to him and said truly it had helped more than anything else toward his recovery.