CHAPTER II
WhenMrs. Annandale and her niece repaired to the quarters assigned them, the young lady passed through the room of the elder to the inner apartment, as if she feared that her contumacy might be upbraided. But if Mrs. Annandale felt her armor a burden and was a-wearied with the untoward result of the evening’s campaign she made no sign, but gallantly persevered, realizing the truism that more skill is requisite in conducting a retreat than in leading the most spirited assault. She followed her niece and seated herself by the fire while Arabella at the dressing-table let down her mass of golden hair and began to ply the brush, looking meanwhile at a very disaffected face in the mirror. The youthful maid who officiated for both ladies, monopolized chiefly by Mrs. Annandale, was busied with some duties touching a warming-pan in the outer room, and thus the opportunity for confidential conversation was ample.
“These soldiers talk so much about their hard case,” said the elder lady, looking about her with an appraising eye. “Many folks at home might call this luxury.”
For Captain Howard had exerted his capacity and knowledge to the utmost to compass comfort for hissister and daughter, with the result that he was held to complain without a grievance. A great fire roared in a deep chimney-place—there were no andirons, it is true, but two large dornicks served as well. The log walls were white-washed and glittered with a vaunt of cleanliness. The bed-curtains were pink, and fluttered in a draught from the fire. Rose-tinted curtains veiled the meagre sashes of the glazed windows. The chairs, of the clumsy post manufacture, were big and covered with dressed furs. Buffalo rugs lay before the wide hearth and on the floor. A candle flickered unneeded on the white-draped dressing-table, and there was the glitter of silver and glass and of suchbijouterieas dressing-case and jewel-box could send forth. The young girl, now in a pinkrobe de chambre, seemed in accord with the rude harmony of the place.
“They line their nests right well, these tough soldiers,” said the elder woman. “If it were not for the Indians, and the marching, and the guns, and the noisy powder, and the wild-cats, and the wilderness, one might marry a soldier with a fair prospect. George Mervyn is a handsome young man, Bella.”
“He looks like a sheep,” said Arabella, petulantly. “That long, thin, mild face of his, pale as the powder on his hair, without a spark of spirit, and those stiff side-curls on each side of his head, exactly like a ram’s horns! He looks like a sheep, and heisa sheep.”
With all her unrevealed and secret purposes it was difficult to hold both temper and patience after thestrain of the mishaps of the evening. But Mrs. Annandale merely yawned and replied, “I think he is a handsome young man, and much like Sir George.”
“Ba-a-a!—Ba-a-a!”—said the dutiful niece.
The weary little woman still held stanchly on. “I believe you’d rather marry the grandfather.”
“I would—but I don’t choose to marry either.”
Mrs. Annandale had a sudden inspiration. “No, my poor love,” she said with a downward inflection, “a girl like you, with beauty, and brains, and good birth, and fine breeding,—but no money, too often doesn’tchooseto marry anybody, for anybody thatisanybody doesn’t want her.”
There was dead silence in front of the mirror. A troublous shade settled on the fair face reflected therein. The brush was motionless. An obvious dismay was expressed in the pause. Self-pity is a poignant pain.
“Lord! Lord!—how unevenly the good things of this world are divided,” sighed the philosopher. “The daughter of a poor soldier, and it makes no difference how lovely, how accomplished!—while if you were the bride of Sir George Mervyn’s grandson—bless me, girl, your charms would be on every tongue. You’d be the toast of all England!”
There was a momentary silence while the light flashed from the lengths of golden hair as the brush went back and forth with strong, quick strokes. The head, intently poised, betokened a sedulous attention.
“Out upon the injustice of it!” cried Mrs. Annandale,with unaffected fervor. “To be beautiful, and well-bred, and well-born, and well-taught, and faultless, and capable of gracing the very highest station in the land, and to be driven by poverty to take a poor, meagre, contemned portion in life, simply and solely because those whom you are fit for, and who are fit for you, will not condescend to think of you.”
“I am not so sure of that!” cried Arabella, suddenly, with a tense note of elation. The mirror showed the vivid flush rising in her cheeks, the spirit in her eyes, the pride in the pose of her head. “And, Aunt, mark you now,—no man cancondescendto me!”
“Lord! you poor child, how little you know of the ways of the world. But they were not in the convent course, I warrant you. Wealth marries wealth. Station climbs to higher station. Gallantry, admiration, all that is very well in a way, to pass the time. But men’s wounded hearts are easily patched with title-deeds and long rent-rolls. Don’t let your pride make you think that your bright eyes can shine like the Golightly diamonds. Bless my soul, Miss Eva had them all on at the county ball last year. Ha! ha! ha! I remember Sir George Mervyn said she looked a walking pawn-shop,—they were so prodigiously various. You know the Mervyns always showed very chaste taste in the matter of jewellery—the family jewels are few, but monstrous fine; every stone is a small fortune. But he was vastly polite to her at supper. I thought Iwould warn you, sweet, don’t bother to be civil to young George, for old Sir George is determined on that match. Though the money was made in trade ’twas a long time ago, and there’s a mort of it. The girl has a dashing way with her, too, and sets up for a beauty whenyouare out of the county.”
“Lord, ma’am, Eva Golightly?” questioned Arabella, in scornful amaze.
“Sure, she has fine dark eyes, and she can make them flash and play equal to the diamonds in her hair. Maybe I’m as dazzled as the men, but she fairly looked like a princess to me. Heigho! has that besom ever finished fixing my bed? Good night—good night—my poor precious—and—say your prayers, child, say your prayers!”
The face in the mirror—the brush was still again—showed a depression of spirit, but the set teeth and an intimation of determination squared its delicate chin till Arabella looked like Captain Howard in the moment of ordering a desperate assault on the enemy’s position. There was, nevertheless, a sort of flinching, as of a wound received, sensitive in a thousand keen appreciations of pain. The word “condescend” had opened her eyes to new interpretations of life. Her father might realize that a captain, however valorous, did not outrank a major-general, but in the splendor of her young beauty, and cultured intelligence, and indomitable spirit, she had felt a regal preëminence, and the world accorded her homage. That it was a merefaçon de parlerhad never before occurred to her—a sort of cheap indulgenceto a pretension without solid foundation. Her pride was cut to the quick. She was considered, forsooth, very pretty, and vastly accomplished, and almost learned with her linguistic acquirements and the mastery of heavy tomes of dull convent lore, yet of no sort of account because her people were not rich and she had no dowry, and unless she should be smitten by some stroke of good fortune, as uncontrollable as a bolt of lightning, she was destined to mate with some starveling curate or led captain, when as so humbly placed a dame she would lack the welcome in the circles that had once flattered her beauty and her transient belleship. The candle on the dressing-table was guttering in its socket when its fitful flaring roused her to contemplate the pallid reflection, all out of countenance, the fire dwindling to embers, and the shadows that had crept into the retired spaces of the bed, between the rose-tinted curtains, with a simulacrum of dull thoughts for the pillow and dreary dreams.
The interval had not passed so quietly within the precincts of Mrs. Annandale’s chamber. The connecting door was closed, and Arabella did not notice the clamor, as the maid was constrained to try the latches of the outer door and adjust and readjust the bars, and finally to push by main force and a tremendous clatter one of the great chairs against it, lest some discerning and fastidious marauder should select out of all Fort Prince George, Mrs. Annandale’s precious personality to capture, or “captivate,” to use the incongruous and archaic phrase of the day.Now that the outer door was barricaded beyond all possibility of being carried by storm or of surreptitious entrance, Mrs. Annandale was beset with anxiety as to egress on an emergency.
“But look, you hussy,” she exclaimed, as she stood holding the candle aloft to light the tusslings and tuggings of the maid with the furniture and the bar, “suppose the place should take fire. How am I to get out! You have shut me in here to perish like a rat in a trap, you heartless jade!”
“Oh, sure, mem, the fort will never take fire—the captain is that careful—the foine man he is!” said the girl, turning up her fresh, rosy, Irish face.
“I know the ‘foine man’ better than you do,” snapped her mistress. The victory of the evening had been so long deferred, so hardly won at last, that the conqueror was in little better case than the defeated; she was fit to fall with fatigue, and her patience was in tatters. The War Office intrusted Captain Howard with the lives of its stanch soldiers and the value of many pounds sterling in munitions of war. But his sister belittled the enemy she had so often worsted, and who never even knew that he was beaten. “And those zanies of soldiers—smoking their vile tobacco like Indians!”
“Lord, mem,” said the girl, still on her knees, vigorously chunking and jobbing at the door, “the sojers are in barracks, in bed and asleep these three hours agone.”
“Look at that guard-house, flaring like the gates of hell! What do you mean by lying, girl!” Mrs.Annandale glanced out of the white curtained window, showing a spark of light in the darkness.
“Sure, ma’am, it’s the watch they be kapin’ so kindly all night, like the stars, or the blissed saints in heaven!”
“Mightily like the ‘blissed saints in heaven,’ I’ll wager,” said the old lady, sourly.
“I was fair afeard o’ Injuns and wild-cats till I seen the gyard turn out, mem,” said the maid, relishing a bit of gossip.
Mrs. Annandale gave a sudden little yowl, not unlike a feline utterance.
“You Jezebel,” she cried in wrath, “what did you remind me of them for—look behind the curtains—under the valance of the bed—yow!—there is no telling who is hid there—robbers, murderers!”
Norah, young, plump, neat, and docile to the last degree, sprang up from her knees and rushed at these white dimity fabrics, tossing their fringed edges, with a speed and spirit that might have implied a courage equal to the encounter with concealed braves or beasts. But too often had she had this experience, finding nothing to warrant a fear. It was a mere form of search in her estimation, and her ardor was assumed to give her mistress assurance of her efficiency and protection. Therefore, when on her knees by the bedside she sprang back with a sudden cry of genuine alarm, her unexpected terror out-mastered her, and she fled whimpering to the other side of the room behind the little lady, who, dropping the candle in amazement and a convulsivetremor, might have achieved the conflagration she had prefigured without the aid of the zanies of the barracks, but that the flame failed in falling.
“Boots!—Boots!—” cried the girl, her teeth chattering.
Mrs. Annandale’s courage seemed destined to unnumbered strains. It was not her will to exert it. She preferred panic as her prerogative. She glanced at the door, barred by her own precautions against all possibility of a speedy summons for help. Even to hail the guard-house through the window was futile at the distance; to escape by way of the casement was impossible, the rooms being situated in the second story of the large square building; a moment of listening told her that her niece was all unaware of the crisis, asleep, perhaps, silent, still. There was nothing for it but her own prowess.
“I have a blunderbuss here, man,” she said, seizing the curling-iron from her dressing-table and marking with satisfaction the long and formidable shadow it cast in the firelight on the white wall. “Bring those boots out or I’ll shoot them off you!”
There was dead silence. She heard the fire crackle, the ash stir, even, she fancied, the tread of a sentry in the tower above the gate.
“It’s a Injun—a Injun—he don’t understand the spache, mem!” said Norah, wondering that the unknown had the temerity to disregard this august summons.
“Norah,” said Mrs. Annandale, autocratically, and as she flourished the curling-tongs Norah coweredand winced as from a veritable blunderbuss, so did the little lady dominate by her asseverations the mind of her dependent—and indeed stancher mental endowments than poor little Norah’s—“fetch me out those boots.”
“Oh, mem—what am I to do with the man that’s in ’em?” quavered the Abigail, dolorously.
“Fetch him, too, if he’s there. Give him a tug, I say, girl.”
The doubt that this mandate expressed, nerved the timorous maid to approach the silent white-draped bed. That she had nevertheless expected both resistance and weight was manifest in the degree of strength she exerted. She fell back, overthrown by the sheer force of the recoil, with a large empty boot in her hand, nor would she believe that the miscreant had not craftily slipped off the footgear till the other came as empty, and a timorous peep ascertained that there were no feet to match within view.
“Some officer’s boots!” soliloquized Mrs. Annandale. “He must have left them here when he was turned out of these snug quarters to make room for us. I wonder when that floor was swept.”
“Sure, mem, they’re not dusty,” said Norah, all blithe and rosy once more. “I’m rej’iced that he wasn’t in ’em.”
“Who—the officer?” with a withering stare.
“No’m, the Injun I was looking for”—with a quaver.
“Or the wild-cat you was talking about! Nasty things! Never mention them again.”
Mrs. Annandale was a good deal shaken by the experience and tottered slightly as she paused at the dressing-table and laid down the curling-tongs that had masqueraded as a blunderbuss. The maid, all smiling alacrity to make amends, bustled cheerily about in the preparations for the retirement of her employer. “Sure, mem, yez would love to see ’em dead.”
“You’ve got a tongue now, but some day it will be cut out,” the old woman remarked, acridly.
“I’m maning to say, mem, they have the beautifulest fur—them wild-cats, not the Injuns. There’s a robe or blanket av ’em in the orderly room—beautiful, mem, sure, like the cats may have in heaven.”
As Mrs. Annandale sat in her great chair she seemed to be falling to pieces, so much of her identity came off as her hand-maiden removed her effects. She was severally divested of her embroidered cape, the full folds of her puce-colored satin gown, her slippers and clocked stockings; and when at last in her night-rail and white night-cap, she looked like a curious antique infant, with a malignant and coercive stare. Norah handled her with a fearful tenderness, as if she might break in two, such a wisp of a woman she was! Little like a conquering hero she seemed as she sat there before the fire, now girding at the offices of her attendant, now whimpering weakly, like a spoiled child, her white-capped head nodding and her white-clad figure fairly lost in the great chair, but she was the mostpuissant force that had ever invested Fort Prince George, though it had sustained both French military strategy and Indian savage wiles. And the days to come were to bear testimony to her courage, her address, and her dominant rage for power. When her little fateful presence was eclipsed at last by the ample white bed-curtains and Norah was free to draw forth her pallet and lay herself down on the floor before the fire, the girl could not refrain a long-drawn sigh, half of fatigue and half self-commiseration. It seemed a hard lot with her exacting and freakish employer. But the cold bitter wind came surging around the corner of the house, and she remembered the bleak morasses across the wild Atlantic, the little smoky hovel she called home, the many to fend from frost and famine, the close and crowded quarters, the straw bed where she had lain, neighboring the pig. She thought of her august room-mate in comparison.
“But faix!—how much perliter was the crayther to be sure!”