"Perhaps he will speak to me. I'll wait," was the final decision, as,
rising from her sleepless pillow, she sat down in the gray dawn of the
morning and penned a hasty note, which she thrust into his hand at
parting, little dreaming how long a time would intervene ere they would
meet again.
He had not said to her or to his mother that he might join the army,
gathering so fast from every Northern city and hamlet; only Sam knew
this, and so the mother longing for her daughter was pleased rather than
surprised at his abrupt departure, bidding him Godspeed, and lading him
with messages of love for Adah and the little boy. Alice, too, tried to
smile as she said good-by, but it died upon her lips and a tear trembled
on her cheek, when Hugh dropped the little hand he never expected to
hold again just as he held it then.
Feeling intuitively that Irving and Alice would rather say their parting
words alone, Hugh drew his mother with him as he advanced into the midst
of the sobbing, howling negroes assembled to see him off. But Alice had
nothing to say which she would not have said in his presence. Irving
Stanley understood better than Hugh, and he merely raised her cold hand
to his lips, saying as he did so: "Just this once; I shall never kiss it again."
He was in the carriage when Hugh came up, and Alice stood leaning
against one of the tall pillars, a deep flush now upon her cheek, and
tears filling her soft blue eyes. In another moment the carriage was
rolling from the yard, neither Irving nor Hugh venturing to look back,
and both as by mutual consent avoiding the mention of Alice, whose name
was not spoken once during their journey together to Cincinnati, where
they parted company, Irving continuing his homeward route, while Hugh
stopped in the city to arrange a matter of business with his banker
there. It was not until Irving was gone and he alone in his room that he
opened the little note given him by Alice, the note which would tell him
of her approaching marriage, he believed. How then was he surprised when
he read: "DEAR HUGH: I have at last discovered the mistake under which, for
so many years, I have been laboring. It was not Irving Stanley who
saved me from the water, but your own noble self, and you have
generously kept silent all this time, permitting me to expend upon
another the gratitude due to you.
"Dear Hugh, I wish I had known earlier, or that you did not leave
us so soon. It seems so cold, thanking you on paper, but I have no
other opportunity, and must do it here.