The victory

by Molly Elliot Seawell

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——”