Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Fiction
When Angela got a letter from Neville she always went immediately
to Mrs. Tremaine and told her what was in the letter. Mrs. Tremaine
received this in perfect silence, but she was always tremulous for a
day or two afterwards. She, who had heretofore possessed a sort of
calm alertness, went about now with a strange preoccupation. Neville’s
room had been closed and locked and Mrs. Tremaine kept the key. In it
were some of his boyish books and belongings, but Mrs. Tremaine made
no offer of them to Angela. There were times when she would disappear
for an hour or so, and all at Harrowby knew that she spent those
stolen hours in Neville’s dark and dismantled room. She paid these
visits secretly, and would not even speak of them to Colonel Tremaine,
although once or twice he met her coming out of the door, and his
eyes, full of pain and sympathy, tried to meet her averted gaze.
Every night at prayer time when the moment came that Neville’s name
had once been mentioned, Mrs. Tremaine could not control a slight
agitation, and once at the omission Colonel Tremaine groaned aloud.
At that, Mammy Tulip, suddenly throwing her white apron over her face,
broke into loud weeping. “My chile,” she cried. “Dat boy I nus same
like he wuz my own an’ ain’t never gib he mammy a impident word sence
he been born, an’ now he ma an’ pa doan’ name him at pray’r time.”
Angela went up to Mammy Tulip and, putting her arm around the old
woman’s neck, leaned upon her broad shoulder, her heart wrung with pity
for Neville. But even in that moment she knew that she was not in love
with him.
With the early summer the stupendous clamor of war and the carnival of
blood began.
Richard Tremaine’s battery had been ordered to the front and was in
most of the great battles of the summer of 1861. Often long periods
of time passed when no news of him reached Harrowby. The Richmond
newspapers, received twice in the week, which had been leisurely
read two or three days after they arrived, were now seized upon with
avidity, and the grewsome list of dead, wounded, and missing was
scanned with anxious eyes by Colonel Tremaine.
Angela, hovering about him as he read over this direful list, would
glance at it herself. Suppose she should find Isabey’s name in it. How
would she take it? She had never fainted in her life, but she had a
haunting fear that if she should read Isabey’s name among the killed
she should faint or shriek or in some way betray herself.
Madame Isabey was keyed up also to periods of anxiety, although she
showed a spirit of cheerfulness and courage which was remarkable. The
life at Harrowby, so placid without, was full of fears and tumults
within, and was extraordinarily different from the years of pleasuring
which Madame Isabey had spent between New Orleans and Paris, but she
made no complaint, nor did Adrienne, though, if anything, it was harder
on her than on the older lady.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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