She sat down in the low chair in which she had read to him. It seemed to her if Isabey and she had spent hours in explanations they could not have understood each other better.
So thought Isabey. Angela could never be his, but at least he had found that jewel which all men seek and few discover—that other half of his being, the woman who perfectly understood him. He remembered that the hearts of men and women are like the cello and the violin—both are required to form the perfect strain of music.
CHAPTER XV
THE HEGIRA
IT is possible in remote country houses, especially when snowbound, for one day to be exactly like the other for a long period. Such was the case at Harrowby during the month after Isabey’s arrival. Each day repeated itself; it was the worst winter known for thirty years in eastern Virginia, and one snowstorm succeeded another. The river was frozen, cutting off communication by water. George Charteris managed to plunge on mule-back daily through the snow to Harrowby, but no such mode of progression was possible for Mrs. Charteris. Angela, fired by George Charteris’s example, had her side-saddle put on a sure-footed mule and so ventured out a few times, but found riding rather more difficult than walking. She had not since her marriage paid visits anywhere except to Greenhill, and the mutual attitude of herself and the county people was such that she had no visitors. The mails were interrupted, and, although Mrs. Tremaine wrote daily, her letters were long in coming and generally arrived in a batch. Richard was recovering slowly, but Mrs. Tremaine could not think of leaving him, and Archie would remain with them until his mother could return to Harrowby.
Madame Isabey and Adrienne were established at a Richmond hotel, and the elder lady from her letters seemed perfectly happy. There was much going on in the Confederate capital, and, to add zest to events, was the continual prospect of siege and battle. She wrote that Adrienne was much admired. At the first levee the ladies attended at the Confederate White House, Adrienne had attracted universal admiration. The fame of her charming voice having reached the President, he had asked her on the occasion of her first formal visit to the executive mansion to sing and play for him. His grave and anxious face had lightened under the spell of her little French songs so full of grace and sentiment and so exquisitely rendered. Great attention was shown her by everyone, and they were asked to “refugee” for the war in several distinguished families, but Madame Isabey declared she preferred Harrowby, and had not seen any boy so sweet as “Monsieur Archie” with his rose-red hair. Refugeeing was exactly like the life her grandfather lived when he was an émigré in England in 1789. She often thought what a delightful supply of stories she would have to tell of her days as an émigré in Virginia.
Adrienne, too, wrote, and her letters were more interesting though less expansive than Madame Isabey’s. These first letters had been written in ignorance of Isabey’s arrival at Harrowby, but when that was known Madame Isabey expressed the greatest solicitude, and would have come back instantly except for the impassability of the roads between Richmond and Harrowby.
Adrienne received in a letter from Angela the news of Isabey’s presence at Harrowby one night just as she was dressing to go to a levee at the White House, where she was certain to be courted and admired by all, from the grave-faced President down to the boy lieutenants, who rode from camp into Richmond for an evening’s pleasuring. It was, perhaps, the knowledge that Isabey and Angela were together which brought the color to Adrienne’s lips and cheeks and the light to her eyes. She realized, as women do, the marked admiration she excited, the way in which the eyes of the Confederate officers followed her slight figure in her pale-blue draperies with diamonds in her hair and on her breast. If only her vanity had been wounded by Isabey’s coldness to her charms it would have been soothed by the flattering attentions lavished upon her. But Adrienne’s wound was deeper than that. While she was receiving with soft and smiling grace the compliments and gallant speeches of young officers and the more insidious flattery of older men, she was like that Spanish lover whose body was at Cordova, but whose soul was at Seville.
Angela’s letter had described quite naturally and prettily how each day passed at Harrowby, and Adrienne had no difficulty in calling up the scene. At that time in the evening they were all sitting in the study in order to keep Isabey company. Lyddon was probably reading to him while Angela did needlework and—and Colonel Tremaine dozed during the reading and waked up to compliment Lyddon upon his “instructive and entertaining performance.”
Adrienne by some psychic force felt as if this scene were passing before her in the midst of the crowded levee with the hubbub around her, the voices high-pitched as men’s voices grow in time of war, and with the deep and only half-concealed excitement of soldiers who turn from looking into women’s eyes to meet the face of death in a thousand different forms, and of women who laugh tremulously to-night because after to-morrow they might never laugh again. The crowd, the laughter, the voices, the glances, bold, or shy, or meditative, seemed wholly unreal to Adrienne, and what was tangible was the scene in the quiet study, with Lyddon’s calm voice, as Angela had described—Isabey’s eyes fixed upon Angela with that expression of profound interest and tenderness which Adrienne had observed more than once. When the levee was over and she was back in her room at the hotel, she sat for a long time before her mirror, surveying herself in her laces and diamonds. She pitied Isabey quite as much as herself, for Adrienne was not incapable of generosity. Isabey was only a few days too late when he reached the gate of paradise; it was closing, and nothing can arrest the closing of those immortal gates. One thing, however, Adrienne divined with the prescience of love, that Isabey would have a month of happiness, a little time of radiance when Angela’s image, already strongly impressed upon him, would become a part of himself. The thought of this was poignant to her and kept her awake as she lay in her bed.
Angela had written that Isabey’s improvement was wonderful even in the three or four days he had been at Harrowby. It continued so, and in a week he was another man. The thinness about his temples disappeared, and his face was no longer pinched and wan, nor did his uniform hang so pitifully loose upon his figure. In a fortnight he was well except for his arm and leg. He could, with the assistance of a stick, limp about the ground floor, but his arm was still in a sling. Nevertheless, he would abate none of his invalid privileges as far as Angela was concerned. He made the same silent appeal to her for her gentle ministrations, and it never occurred to Angela to withhold them. Life went on, dreamlike, in the isolated country house, and was sweeter for being so dreamlike. Little news of any sort reached them either from the Confederate camp fifteen miles in one direction or the Federal camp twenty miles the other way. The outside world seemed so distant to Angela that what she heard of the crouching dogs of war so close at hand made little impression upon her. However, it was brought home to her through the most unlikely of mediums—Mammy Tulip.