CHAPTER VIII
Mervynhad not earlier been aware of the presence of Arabella in the dimly lighted hall during the report of the corporal, but it was coercive now. She had not intended concealment, and she broke out with sudden enthusiasm. Her father’s absence counted but a few hours, but the thought of it was as heavy as if it had endured for a year.
“Lord,—to be sure we want to send messages. Have Mr. Raymond in at once, Mr. Mervyn, and let us hear what he has to say of papa, and how he weathered the storm.”
The rich rustling of her silk dress as she fluttered through the shadowy place, the clear, resonant note of happiness in her voice, her gurgling, melodious laughter, and the striking of the light on her sheeny attire and her golden hair as she flashed into the illuminated room beyond were as unexpected as a supernatural vision to the corporal, standing at gaze with his lantern at the door. Mervyn made haste to dismiss him, hearing all the time the voices of the ladies within raised beyond precedent.
“Not Indians—no Indians have come, Aunt Claudia!” cried Arabella. The words merely added another repetition to the monotonous chant of the two swaying women. “No Indians at all. Ensign Raymond has returned, and is coming in!”
She stood in the centre of the floor, resplendent and joyous, and waved her hand at arm’s length with a wide, free gesture to express gratulation and safety.
Mrs. Annandale was suddenly silent, her face more dismayed than when terror had distorted it. One might have thought the presence of Raymond was even less welcome than a raid of Indians. Her jaw fell; her head-dress was awry; her eyes grew troubled and then bright with a spark of irritation.
“Why does the creature have to come here? Has George Mervyn no better sense than to receive official reports inmypresence?” She drew herself up to her extreme height to express the dignity of her personality and to repudiate the contaminating influences of official reports. But Raymond was already at the door.
A brief conference with Mervyn in the hall had sufficed for business, for he had no official matters to report to the acting commandant. It was merely a form to report at all. Raymond still cherished a proud and wounded consciousness of the false position in which he had been placed because of an exacting whim of his quondam friend. He could not have put his finger on the spot, but he knew he was suffering a counter-stroke for some blow dealt Mervyn’s vanity, unintentionally, unperceived, he could not say how. He had taken his punishment—the commandant’s reprimand, a most half-hearted performance—and the matter had passed. But Mervyn, in view of their old intimacy, had an uneasy wonder as to the termson which they should meet again, and would fain it had been otherwise than under circumstances in which, if not obviously at fault, he was the ridiculous sport of an unsoldierly chance. Raymond, throughout the interview, had deported himself with punctilious formality, saluting with the respect due a superior officer, bearing himself with a null inexpressiveness, phrasing what he had to say with not a word to spare; only when he turned to the door of the parlor, and Mervyn bade him pause, did his impetuous identity assert itself.
“I hardly think,” said Mervyn, whose quick senses had caught something of the old lady’s protest, which reinforced a jealous folly that grudged even a glimpse of Arabella, “that a visit is in order at present. Mrs. Annandale is not well and the hour is late; the pettiaugre should not be kept waiting within the reach of marauding Indians.”
He even went so far as to lay a detaining hand on the door.
“Under your favor, sir,” said Raymond, stiffly, his blood boiling, his eyes on fire, “in so personal a matter I shall not consult your pleasure. I shall wait upon the ladies with such news as I can give them of the expedition.”
He had lifted his voice, and its round, rich volume penetrated the inner apartment. The door opened suddenly from within and he was greeted by Arabella, herself, in a sort of ecstasy of expectation. The wilderness, in whose vastness her father was submerged, seemed not so formidable when so soonafter his departure she might have word how he was faring in its depths.
“Oh, Mr. Raymond!—how good of you to come and tell us the news—”
“I feared I might be intrusive,” he hesitated, his ill-humor put to rout at the very sight of her, and feeling a little abashed, a little wistful in having forced his way, so to speak, into her presence.
“Why, no—!” she cried, her voice as fresh as a lark’s. “I wanted to see you. I asked Mr. Mervyn to send for you!”
Mervyn flushed, and as she observed it she noticed that the red glow in Raymond’s cheeks was deeper and richer than even their florid wont. The eyes of both men glittered, and she had a sudden recollection of the difficulty that had heretofore risen between them touching the guard report,—had there been high words in the hall, she wondered.
Mrs. Annandale was endowed with many a sharp weapon which made her enmity feared and her favor prized, and among these were certain indescribable subtleties of manner which she wielded with great skill and murderous effect. The very glance of her eye as she turned her gaze upon Raymond might have abased many as sturdy a soul, but Arabella was smiling upon him from the opposite side of the table, both elbows on it and her chin on her clasped hands.
“Well, you here again?” the old lady said, her keen eyes twinkling malevolently upon him as he stood beside a chair, his hand on its back, “we thought—wereally labored under the impression that we said farewell to you early this afternoon.”
“And you shall have that pleasure again, dear madam, within the next few minutes,” he retorted, with a courteous smile and a wave of the hat in his hand.
Her eyes narrowed—he was the very essence of a marplot, so handsome, with such a suggestion of reckless dash about him, yet with such a steady look in his eye. He had, too, all the advantages of birth and breeding, and for these she valued him even less. They placed him where she claimed he had no right to be, among his superiors as wealth would rate them. She was not rich, herself, but she had a sentiment of contumely for the indications of wear in his service uniform, of work in his heavy service sword, of the expectation of danger incident to his profession, and the preparation for it evidenced in the pistols he wore in his belt. His unpowdered hair, just drying off from the soakings of the rain, showed its dark auburn hue. He was all most freshly caparisoned, for the rain had not left a dry thread on him, and he, too, was rather conscious of the shabbiness of his second best uniform, donned since his arrival at the fort. In comparison, Mervyn, hovering about, was but a lace and velvet presentment of a soldier, a travesty of the idea expressed in fighting trim.
Arabella took, as she fancied, a sort of friendly interest in Raymond—she loved that look in his eyes, that gay, gallant, fearless glance; it reminded her of sunlight striking on water, and she knew therewere depths far, far beneath. There was something so genuine, so vigorous, so hearty about his mentality; he would not know what to do with a subterfuge. She loved to see his rising anger; she laughed with a flattered delight when she thought of a suggestion of jealousy, for her sake, of Mervyn, that she had noticed even on the first day of her arrival,—things move swiftly on the frontier. She would like to sit down beside him and hear him tell of his troubles,—how he hated, and whom; how he loved, and whom; how he had only his sword to cut his way through the world, and his way was like this impenetrable wilderness, too thickly grown for a knight-errant of to-day to make place. She would care rather to hear of his griefs than the joys of another man. His failures were more picturesque than another man’s successes. She would like to take out her little house-wife, and with her crafty needle mend that rent in his white glove as he held it in his hand. She reached for it suddenly, and if ever Mrs. Annandale could have bitten an unsuspicious hand it was when her niece’s jewelled fingers began to take in and out a tiny needle and a fine thread through the ripped seam of the soldier’s glove.
“More than a few minutes,” she said, archly. “You can’t go without this!”
Mrs. Annandale had the merit of knowing when the limit of forbearance was reached.
“And now, my good Mr. Raymond,” she said, with a sour smile, “if you are quite ready, and have peacocked about to your heart’s content, and havehandled your sword and fiddled with your pistols to make Arabella and me see that you have got ’em on and are about to get used to wearing such things, and are no play-soldier, though yesterday in the nursery, we want to say we admire your terrible and blood-thirsty appearance, and tremble mightily before you, and should like to know what brought you back, and if anything ails Captain Howard.”
Arabella looked up quickly.
“Oh, nothing! Captain Howard is in fine health and spirits,” Raymond hastened to stipulate.
“Then take time to sit down, Mr. Raymond,” Arabella said, for Mrs. Annandale had malevolently left him standing. “What brought you back?”
“The sight of the burning granary,” said Raymond, sinking into a chair with a goodly clatter of his warlike paraphernalia. “We had made fair headway when we met the storm, and the wind scattered the pettiaugres and drove us ashore. We went into an inlet where a ravine ran down the mountain-side, but the water rose and backed up till we took to the rocks, and emerging upon a high pinnacle commanding the face of the country I spied the bonfire you had started here.”
“Did you hear the guns?” Mervyn asked, quietly. He had no hope to delude the ladies with the idea that he had ordered the protective firing. But if Raymond had heard the circumstance of his inopportune seclusion it might foster a doubt in his mind.
Arabella noted that jovial widening of the pupils of Raymond’s eyes, an expression as hilarious as alaugh. But he said gravely that at the distance they had not discriminated between the discharge of the cannon and of the thunder.
“Captain Howard was not very uneasy about the Cherokees; he thought the fire was kindled by lightning, and at all events the main part of our force was here. But he sent me to bring certain intelligence, and as I am to rejoin him before dawn”—he was rising—“you will not, Mrs. Annandale, tempt me beyond my strength.”
He looked down at her with so sarcastic a gleam in his eyes that for once she was out of countenance.
“Hoity—toity,” she exclaimed, “we sharpen our wits in the pettiaugres.”
The glove was mended. Mervyn could not judge whether it were a merefaçon de parler, or whether the girl were a coquette at heart, or whether Raymond had won upon her predilections, but he was seriously disturbed and displeased when, with a pretty gesture of significance, she cast it upon the table.
“I fling down the glove!” she said.
“I lift the glove!” he responded, in his full, steady voice.
And neither Mrs. Annandale nor Mervyn had quite the courage to ask what manner of defiance this gage signified, or whether indeed it were merely one of those vain trifles with which young people are wont to solace their emptiness and lack of thought.
Raymond was bowing over the hands of the ladies, presently, and after the fashion of the time he carriedMrs. Annandale’s to his lips. She gave it to him with a touch of reluctance, as if she thought he had some cause to bite it, but he dropped the member uninjured, and then he was gone.
Mervyn lingered, but the fire was low, the geniality spent; Arabella, half lost in one of the great chairs as she leaned far back, seemed pensive, distraite; he, himself, could not raise his spirits to their wonted tone; his mind was preoccupied with the unlucky chances of the evening and the sorry figure he had cut when his rank had placed him in command of the fort, and when he would most desire to deserve his prominence. Mrs. Annandale alone preserved her uncanny, indomitable freshness, and talked on with unabated vigor. But the evening was over; to recur to its tender passages would need more auspicious circumstances. He had few words for leave-taking, and when he had gone Arabella slowly pulled herself out of the depths of the big chair, and said how tired she was, and how long he had stayed. And then she yawned. Mrs. Annandale looked at her sternly, opened her mouth for rebuke, thought better of it, lighted her bedroom candle, and disappeared.
Arabella stood for some moments with her own lighted candle in her hand. The room was otherwise dark now, but for a dull glow of embers; the barbaric decorations on the walls, the swan’s wings, the aboriginal pictures, the quivers and fantastic medley of baskets, and calabashes, and painted jugs wavered into visibility and again disappeared as theflame flickered in the draught. She was thinking—she hardly knew of what—she was tired—the evening had brought so much. She had a sense of triumph in the capture of Mervyn, and that was an abiding impression. She was glad to see Raymond—her heart was warm when she thought of him. She fancied they had quarrelled because of her, and this made her lips curl with relish—but they might quarrel again. She must not let Mervyn’s jealousy go too far. She had half a mind to tell her aunt of her victory—she, the penniless! But there would be time enough. She took the candle in her hand and started up the steep stairway from the hall. It was of rude construction, and the apartment to which it led was an empty disused place upon which the rooms on either side opened. It was situated in one angle of the house, and when it was built had been intended for defensive service. Its outer sides had a row of loop-holes at the usual height, and its walls projected some three feet beyond the walls below like the upper story of a block-house; a series of loop-holes that pierced the floor close to the outer wall gave an opportunity to its possible defenders of shooting downward at an enemy who should seek to enter or to fire the house below. With all these loop-holes, admitting the air, the place was far too open for occupation, save by soldiers, perhaps, in stress of siege. In peace it had lapsed into simple utility as hallway, and possessed a sort of attraction for Arabella, so different was it from aught she had ever seen in the old country. The commandant’sresidence, otherwise, a quadrangular building, with an open square in the centre, wherein was a well to insure a water supply in any event of blockade or siege, was reminiscent to her of country granges which she had seen on the continent, but these quaint corner rooms above stairs, each practically a citadel, with its loop-holes both for direct and vertical fire, seemed to be peculiarly of the new world, full of the story and the struggle of the frontier. Her own and her aunt’s rooms lay to the south, her father’s to the east. The other citadel corners and sides of the quadrangle were appropriated to the officers of the garrison, and, like separate houses, there was no means of communication.
The great strong timbers, capable of turning a musket-ball, the heavy low beams, all clear of cobwebs, for these military wights were great housekeepers, came first into view as she slowly ascended the rude stair; then she caught a glimpse of a star shining through a loop-hole in the wall, and she stood still for a moment in the cavernous place, with the candle in one hand and the other on the rough stair-rail, while she watched its white glister, and listened to the sullen drops falling from the eaves, and the continuous sobbing of the unreconciled wind; then she went on up, up, till she stood at the top and turned to glance about, as she always did, at the place which must have stories to tell if there were any idle enough to listen. The next moment the candle was set a-flicker by a gust of wind through a neighboring loop-hole. She held up one hand to shield it. The flame suddenlybowed again before the errant gust, flickered tremulously and flared up anew, failed, and all was darkness. Before crossing the slight distance to her aunt’s door Arabella stood waiting till her eyes should become more accustomed to the gloom. She knew that the loop-holes in the floor were close to the wall, and that so long as she kept her direction through the middle of the apartment there was no danger of a false step. But a certain direction is difficult to maintain in darkness, as she realized, and she eagerly attempted to discern the small squares of the light outside which should apprize her of the position of the upper row of loop-holes, just above the lower series. She would have called out to Norah to open the door of the lighted room, but that she dreaded her aunt’s outcries, and reproaches, and rebukes for the carelessness of allowing her candle to be blown out at peril of a sprained ankle or a broken limb.
Suddenly she heard a voice in the parade; it was near at hand and through the loop-hole at her left she could see that two figures were standing close to the wall below. She had no intention of listening. She would have moved, but for her terror of the pitfalls in the floor. Their words were few, but their voices, though low, carried with unusual distinctness in the dull damp air.
“Split me! but I’ve laughed myself sick,” Raymond was saying. “God-a-mercy, the commandant of a fort smirking in a lady’s parlor, while his granaries burn and subalterns fire cannon to keep the Indians from rushing the gates. Oh—ho! oh—ho!I hope I haven’t done my chest any serious damage, but I ache fit to kill.”
“Lieutenant Jerrold was pretty hot, to have to shoulder all the responsibility,” said another voice that she did not recognize. “What will the captain say, do you suppose, when you tell him?”
“I shall not tell him! No—burst me if I will. It wasn’t the damn fool’s fault. It was just so funny! It was as if Fate had tweaked him by the nose!”
“He was quick enough to reportyou,” said Ensign Lawrence. “For something notyourfault.”
“Child, I never try to measure my duty by other men’s consciences. I shall tell the captain that all his corn is gone and his horses are inquiring about breakfast already, and the cook has no griddle-cakes for Mrs. Annandale—and Indian meal is the only Indian thing she approves of. And that the guard behaved well and stood off the Indians under the command of a gay little ensign, who shall not be nameless, and that the force from the barracks turned out and dealt strenuously with the fire under the orders of Lieutenant Jerrold, officer of the day, till the rain took up the matter and put it out. But unless he asks point-blank of the acting commandant I shall say naught. Let him have all the credit he can get—”
“And the young lady besides?”
“If she will have him.”
But there was a change in Raymond’s voice. He was aware of it himself, for he broke off—“I take it mighty kind of you, Lawrence, to let me have thesebullets. I had enough moulded, as I thought, but the captain—queer in an old soldier—went off without any, and I left him all I had. But for you I couldn’t use these pistols at all.”
She could see now in the pallid and uncertain moonlight that they were dividing some small commodities between them, and presently, the transfer complete, she watched them trudge off toward the gates. She stepped cautiously across the loop-holes in the floor and looked through one of the slits high enough for window-like usage. It gave a good range toward the south, and she noted flickering lights at the river-bank. Evidently Raymond was on the point of re-embarkation. Soon the lights were extinguished, there was more the sense of movement on the dark water than visible craft, till suddenly a pettiaugre glided into view in a great slant of white glister on the shining water, with the purple mountains beyond, and the massive wooded foothills on either side, with the tremulous stars, and the skurrying clouds, and the fugitive moon above. And on—and on—and on in this white glister, as in some enchanted progress, the lonely boat glided till it rounded the point, and was lost to view.