CHAPTER XI
Greatwere the rejoicings at Fort Prince George when the two pettiaugres pulled in with the tidings that as yet the peace of the frontier was unthreatened. The handful of troops that had garrisoned the British fort on the verge of the Cherokee country had endured their exile, the hardships of savage warfare, the peculiar dangers that menaced them, the rude conditions of their environment with a sturdy fortitude, a soldierly courage, and a long patience. But now that their return to the provinces was imminent, preparations under way for the evacuation of the post, marching orders expected by every express, they could scarcely await, day by day, the approaching event. They jealously scanned every current incident lest a reason for a postponement lurk therein; they canvassed every item of news from the Indian country for signs of uprising; they took cognizance of the personal traits of the men of influence among the Cherokees, and in the guard-room and the galleries of the barracks theorized and collogued together on their mischief-making proclivities,—all as these tended to affect the liberation from the wilderness. Some of the soldiers were pathetically pessimistic, and thought death or accident would frustrate their participation in the joyous exodus.“I’m fearedsomethingwill happen,” one protested. “I’m fairly feared to cross the level parade, lest I fall down on it and break my neck.” And a forlorn wight in hospital, who had known serious wounds, and the torture of the small-pox, and the anguish of a broken limb, suffering now from a touch of malarial fever, earnestly besought the chirurgeon daily to be frank with him and let him know if his early demise would keep him here forever.
Mervyn did not share the general eager anticipation of the return of the expedition, and he deprecated greatly that Raymond should have been at the commandant’s ear before he, himself, should have the opportunity to report the destruction of the granary. That the ensign would make the most of his supposed dereliction in the matter he did not doubt. Since he had regained his composure and recouped his self-esteem by the favorable reception of his suit by Miss Howard, he had begun to realize that he had let his wounded vanity carry him too far in his antagonism toward Raymond. In the vexatious little contretemps on the occasion of the dinner of welcome, when, like an egregious coxcomb, he had seemed to expect that her next words would be a practical avowal of her preference for him, he had detected both divination and ridicule in Raymond’s eyes. But this was an untenable cause of quarrel. He had fallen, instead, upon the omissions of the guard report, and he began to be painfully aware that if Captain Howard knew that this information, on which he had based his report, had come to him merely through the gossipof his groom,hewould have received the reprimand instead of Raymond. He was particularly pleasant to Jerrold, with that gracious unbending of the rich and highly placed, as if in the main values of humanity these fortuitous conditions count not at all. But Lieutenant Jerrold was well aware that as officer of the day he had fought the fire and saved the fort in the absence of the acting commander, and he had none of the fine-spun generosities of Raymond’s character to induce him to disregard either a nettling fact or an actual fault. He, too, was bland and inscrutable, and Mervyn could not for his life divine whether Captain Howard would be satisfied with the cursory report of his captain-lieutenant, or would he scan the reports of each tour of service during his absence on the expedition.
To Mervyn’s amazement, the commandant met at the gates of Fort Prince George the first intimation of the burning of the granary, and the spirit in which Captain Howard received it might indicate that he expected to live exclusively on Indian meal for the rest of his life. His quick, keen glance as entering, he paused under the archway of the gate, taking a cursory view of the whole place, fell upon a vacancy where the gable of the granary used to show from over the sheds of the stables. His eyes widened, the blood surged up into his cheek, he stepped forward two paces.
“My God!” he cried. “Where’s the granary, Mervyn?”
The face of the captain-lieutenant flushed. Jerroldand Innis were both standing by, and it was indeed hard that through no fault of his he should be put at so gross a disadvantage.
“The granary is burned, sir,” he replied.
“Burned!” volleyed Captain Howard. “Who burned it? Was this negligence?” he demanded, sternly.
Mervyn had a sudden monition that Jerrold and Innis were secretly commenting on the fact which he, himself, was now contemplating with stunned amazement, that Raymond had not made the most of his opportunity to decry the captain-lieutenant with a very valid cause.
“Raymond should have told you,” he began.
“Raymond has been busy.” Captain Howard nodded his head succinctly.
“I thought he came here expressly for information about the fire.”
“I am not asking you why Ensign Raymond did not give me the information he was sent to gather. I happen myself to know why. I ask you how that granary came to be burned?”
“The lightning, sir,” said Mervyn, greatly offended by the tone of his superior officer.
“And was it a total loss?” asked Captain Howard.
“A total loss, sir.”
Captain Howard set off at a resolute trot toward the charred remains and stood gazing dolorously down at the blackened, fallen heap of timbers and the pile of ashes.
The sound of his familiar voice elicited a responsivewhinny of pleasure from within the stables close at hand, where his own charger stood at the manger, unconscious of the possibilities of famine that hung above his high-bred head.
“What are you doing for feed?”
“Buying from the Indians of Keowee Town—paying six prices.”
Captain Howard shook his head disconsolately. During the late war the public granaries of the Cherokees had been destroyed by the British commands as punitive measures and the people reduced to the verge of starvation. The scanty crop of the past summer by no means replaced those great hoards of provisions, and in his report as to the store of corn he would have remaining at the time of his departure he had expressed his intention, entirely approved, to bestow it as a parting gift upon the neighboring town of Keowee. Now he, himself, was destitute, and how to forage his force on the march through the wilderness to Charlestown he could not yet imagine.
Suddenly—“How did the horses stand it?” Mervyn thought the ordeal would never end. To answer in his capacity as captain-lieutenant, temporarily in command, these strict queries in the presence of men who knew that he had seen naught of the event tried his nerve, his discretion, his ingenuity to the utmost. He revolted at the mere simulacrum of a deception, and yet he desired to report the matter to Captain Howard when they should not be at hand to hear his superior officer’s blunt comments.He felt that the unlucky chance owed him this slight shield to his pride.
He had naturally expected that his report would be made at the usual time and in the usual manner, when he could explain properly the details and account for his absence with seemliness and dignity. He said to himself that no one could have foreseen that instead of making the official inspection at the regulation time the commandant would be struck on the instant of his arrival by the absence of the granary and fly over the whole place, peering into every nook and squawking with excitement like some old house-keeping hen of a woman. The sight of the vacant place where the granary should have stood seemed to affect his nerves as an apparition might have done. He could not be through quaking over it. Mervyn, however, gave no token of the perturbation that filled his mind as he turned to Jerrold.
“You were at the stables, lieutenant.”
“I had considerable trouble with the horses,” said Jerrold. “They were terrified, of course, by the noise and glare. I had them led out of the stalls, thinking the stables might take fire.”
“Casualties?” sharply asked the captain.
“Oh, none, sir,” replied Jerrold, with dapper satisfaction. He had managed with much address an infinite number of details, depending on scanty resources and urgently pressed for time—“Only one horse, a good blood bay, became restive and kicked down his stall and caught his off hind leg in thetimbers; somehow, in the mêlée it was broken, and he had to be shot.”
“Onlyone horse,” Captain Howard commented rebukingly. “Are we on the eve of a march? And the war has left hardly a hoof in the whole Cherokee country! Do you expect to foot it to Charlestown?”
Lieutenant Jerrold asserted himself. He wished to marry no one’s handsome daughter, and he cared to play Piquet with no one’s clever sister. He would be particular not to exceed the bounds of military decorum, and that was his only consideration. He knew that he had exerted himself to the utmost to save the situation, succeeding almost beyond the possibilities, the responsibility of which devolved on another man. “I might well have lost them all, sir. The rain had not begun. The store-house and the armory were both on fire, I had no help at first, for I dared not call off the main guard—you had twenty stout fellows in the boats—and the rest of the men were asleep in barracks; some of them were pulled out of bed by the heels. By your leave, Captain, one horse is a small tribute to pay to such a lordly conflagration as that.”
The commandant, open to conviction, nodded his head meditatively. Mervyn wondered if he had not noticed the personal pronoun so obtrusive in Jerrold’s account of the measures he had taken. Mervyn had an ebullition of indignation against himself as he recognized his own inmost thought. He was so proud a man he would fain stand well with himself. Had he not been so cautious a man, soself-conscious, he would at the moment have blurted out the fact of his absence, instead of steeling himself against the waiting expectation, the cynical comment in the eyes of Jerrold and Innis, and postponing the disclosure till he was sure it could come with a good grace. And then the blunt captain! He could not submit his pride to the causticities of Howard’s unprepared surprise and brusque comments. He would say things for which he would be sorry afterward, for which Mervyn would be more sorry, and particularly that Jerrold and Innis should hear them. He was angry with himself, nevertheless, that he should give a galvanic start as Captain Howard’s voice, keyed to surprise and objection, struck smartly on the air.
“Why, that gun, there,” he said, waving his arm toward one of the cannon on the nearest bastion—“that gun has been fired!”
For the piece was run back on its chassis and stood as it was left after the alarm. Jerrold made haste to explain that the men who were detailed to the service of this gun—there were only a few regular gunners in the garrison—were with the expedition. Mervyn stipulated that as the absence of a score had left extra duty for the rest of the garrison the position of this gun had happened to be neglected, although it, as well as the rest, had been cleaned and reloaded.
“Reloaded! But why were they discharged?” demanded Captain Howard, with wide eyes.
The sight of the fire naturally attracted the attentionof the Indians—Jerrold explained. They came over from Keowee in canoes by scores. He was afraid that they would seize the opportunity of the disaster while all were so busy with the fire to rush the gates. He ordered the sentinels to disperse them, saying the cannon were to be fired to appease the storm gods. Any lie might be excused—there was such a great crowd gathered as near as the counterscarp in front of the gates. “How many Indians had assembled there, do you think, Mervyn?” Jerrold asked with a touch of mischief or malice.
“I don’t know; I didn’t see them,” Mervyn responded, shortly.
Captain Howard was meditating on the details.
“You must have had a devil of a time,” he said with emphasis. “Do you know if the ladies were much frightened?”
Mervyn was silent, but Jerrold with his crisp, fresh, capable air was ready to take the word.
“I think they knew nothing of the fire and the Cherokee demonstration till everything was over,” he said.
“You did well—you did well!” the commandant declared, addressing no one in particular, and Mervyn, who could hardly say, “It was not I,” saw him, with infinite relief, turn presently from the scene of these incidents and take his way toward his own quarters, with a belated monition that it was now in order to greet his waiting family.
There the news met him of the notable capture in his absence, for Mrs. Annandale had learned theparticulars from her niece and was herself blissful enough to be translated. In fact, so beaming, so softened, so benign was she, that Captain Howard, more gratified than he would have cared to acknowledge, could not forbear a gibe at her vicarious happiness.
“One would think you were to be the bride, Claudia,” he said, laughing in great good-humor.
“With the handsome young husband, and Mervyn Hall, and the Mervyn diamonds! But it’s none too good for my treasure—the brightest, the best, the most beautiful and winsome creature that ever stepped!” She put her handkerchief to her eyes, for those sardonic little orbs were full of tears.
“She is—she is indeed!” cried Captain Howard. He felt that no man could be worthy of Arabella.
“But now,youmust be careful—don’t speak as if it is absolutely settled. You know dear Arabella is a bit freakish—”
She would have said—“perverse like you,” but for the bliss that curbed her thoughts. But indeed Captain Howard took the alarm on the instant.
“Now, Claudia,” he said with earnest, remonstrating eyes, “you are not persuading that child into this rich marriage against her inclinations?”
Mrs. Annandale looked for a moment six feet high—so portentous was her dignity as she drew herself up. “I” she said, in freezing accents, “persuade!” with an infusion of contempt. “My goodsir,Iknew nothing whatever of his proposal of marriage, till Arabella saw fit to confide in me!”
“I beg pardon, I am sure—” began Captain Howard.
“Idisregard her inclination—Iwho have sought nothing but her happiness since her mother’s death!” said Mrs. Annandale.
“True, true, my sister. And I always gratefully remember this.”
He crossed the room, sat down beside her, and took her hand. It was a tiny wrinkled hand, soft and unsubstantial, suggestive of something uncanny,—a mouse or a young chicken, that does not lend itself to hearty pressure. Captain Howard’s gingerly touch was more as if he felt her pulse than clasped her hand.
She permitted herself to be reconciled, so benign was her triumph.
“They settled it between them.Iknew nothing of it. It was during the storm. I was not in here. I went to my room for my sal volatile partly, and partly because I could not, without screaming, see the lightning capering about like a streak of hell turned loose on earth, and when I had done with my vocalizes,”—she could afford to laugh at herself on a fair day like this—“and came back, lo! here were Corydon and Phyllis, smiling at each other, as sentimental as you please!”
Captain Howard laughed with responsive satisfaction. It was a relief to him to know that his beautiful daughter would be so safely settled in theworld—that her path would be smoothed by all that wealth and station could give. He had known Mervyn all the young man’s life, and his father and grandfather before him, and liked him well. He thought him safe, steady, conservative, of good parts, and a capable officer. Doubtless, however, he would sell out of the army when he should come into the title and estate, and Captain Howard was not sorry for this, despite his own military predilections. He was glad that Arabella’s lot should be cast in the pleasant paths of English country life, instead of following the British drumbeat around the world. He was sensible, too, of a great pleasure in the fact that her beauty, her cleverness, her careful education,—for learning was the fad of the day among women of fashion, and Miss Howard added to considerable solid acquirements musical and linguistic accomplishments of no mean order,—would all be conspicuously placed in a setting worthy of their value and calculated to enhance their lustre. She would embellish the station as no Lady Mervyn heretofore had ever graced it. As he sat gazing, half-smiling, into the fire, he could hear echoes from the future—“The beautiful and gifted Lady Mervyn,” she would be called; “the clever Lady Mervyn,”—“the fascinating and accomplished Lady Mervyn!” Life had been good to her; the most extravagant wishes would be fulfilled—wealth and station, love and beauty, grace and goodness would all be hers. The father’s heart swelled with gratification and paternal pride.
“How is she freakish?” he asked, suddenly.
“She will not let it be spoken of as if it were absolutely settled. She says she does not know him well enough. She has every opportunity to make his acquaintance. He is at her feet all the day long.”
Only when his daughter herself spoke to him was Captain Howard’s satisfaction dashed. He was a blunt, straightforward man, and he did not comprehend subtleties. He only felt them.
“Did Mr. Raymond tell you about the fire?” she asked, apropos of nothing.
When he replied that he had learned of the incident only after he had returned to the fort, she looked at him searchingly, silently, her hazel eyes grave and pondering as she sat beside him on the settle, her hand in his. Then she edged closer and began to pull and plait the bullion fringes of his nearest epaulet, the clumsy decoration of those days, while the white lids and long dark lashes drooped half over her pensive eyes, and a slight flush rose in her cheek.
“Did he really tell you nothing of Mr. Mervyn’s dispositions during the fire?”
“He did not mention Mervyn’s name,” Captain Howard answered, and he was thinking this silence significant—it intimated a sort of professional jealousy on Raymond’s part, which was certainly an absurd sentiment to be entertained by an ensign toward the efficiency of a captain-lieutenant—for the management of the fire and the interdependent details had been admirable in every way. It gave Captain Howard special pleasure to commend this management, for he thought that surely if shecared for Mervyn such commendation would please her. Certainly, as he doubtless would leave the army soon, it mattered little now, whether or not he were a capable officer, but the commandant had enough feeling for his profession as the art of war to greatly value efficiency in the abstract, and he had a martinet’s stern conviction that whatever a man undertakes to do should be a manly devoir, strictly rendered.
“Mervyn’s management of the fire and the demonstration of the Indians was most excellent,” he said. “It was an exceedingly difficult and nettling incident. I really should not have been surprised if a band of Cherokees had forced their way into the parade while practically the whole force was busy fighting the fire, and even if the Indians had been actuated by mere curiosity in coming in, serious consequences might have ensued, the place being at their mercy. He showed excellent conduct—excellent.”
She stared at him with wide eyes, then her face fell unaccountably.
“And Mr. Raymond said nothing,” she faltered.
He did not understand it at the time, and afterward he pondered on the matter in futile irritation. When the formal reports had been presented and Mervyn had stated that in the clamors of the storm he had heard naught of the uproar in the fort, and the officer of the day had met the emergency as best he could, Captain Howard, deeply mortified and greatly disillusioned, cared less for the facts than that they had been so long withheld. It was the business of the officers on duty to deal with the difficulties asthey were presented. But he asked Mervyn why he had not mentioned the true state of the case in the presence of Jerrold and Innis, when the matter was being canvassed, since they must have perceived the misunderstanding under which the commandant was permitted to labor, and would draw most unflattering conclusions. “You give those fellows a hank over you,” he said, curtly.
He realized this even more definitely afterward when he made his acknowledgments to Jerrold, as he felt bound to do.
“I was under the impression that Captain Mervyn had the conduct of the emergency,” he said, in much embarrassment. “You managed it with excellent discretion.”
“The men responded with so much good will and alacrity, sir,” replied Jerrold, waiving the commendation with an appropriate grace. “We needed hearts and hands rather than a head. They deserve all the credit, for they worked with superhuman energy. And I want to ask you, sir, now that the subject is broached, for some little indulgence for those who were burned in their exertions. No one is much hurt, but I thought some little extra, to show appreciation—”
“By all means—by all means,” said the commandant, glad to be quit of the subject.
Captain Howard perceived now that it certainly was not jealousy of Mervyn’s exploits which had kept his name from Raymond’s lips, and he returned unavailingly to his daughter’s strict questions as tothe young ensign’s silence on the subject, and her look of pondering perturbation at his answer. He wondered, too, why Raymond should have maintained this silence on a theme calculated to be of most peculiar relish to him, considering the acrimonious disposition which Mervyn had shown in reporting so trifling an omission in the guard report, necessitating a reprimand, while Mervyn’s own lapse, without being his fault in any way, was of a semi-ludicrous savor, which was not in the least diminished by his own self-conscious efforts to ignore it. He sent a glance of covert speculation now and again toward Raymond in the days that ensued as the young man came and went in the routine duties of garrison life, but saw him no more in his own parlor, and several times Arabella openly asked what had become of Ensign Raymond.
Despite the fact that she had imperiously declared she would let nothing be considered settled, Mervyn had contrived to give the impression to the officers of the garrison that his suit had won acceptance with Miss Howard. Thus it came about that when these two walked on the ramparts together on a fair afternoon, or when lights began to glimmer from the parlor windows in the purple dusk, there was a realization in the mess-room that the welcome might be scant even for well-meaning intruders, so in those precincts the cards were cut for Loo, and the punch was brewed, and the evening spent much as before there was ever a lovely lady and a lute’s sweet vibrations to gladden the air at Fort Prince George.
Mrs. Annandale artfully fired the girl’s pride. Her lover with a mingled delicacy and fervor expended his whole heart in homage. With a dutiful throb of pleasure she marked the tender content in her father’s face, and these quiet days in the citadel of the old frontier fort ought to have been the happiest of her life—but yet—she wondered at Raymond’s silence! It was too signal a disaster in the estimation of a military man—that a garrison should fight for their lives and shelter while their commander, for whatever cause, was perdu—for the ensign to have forgotten to mention it. Was he so magnanimous? Her eyes dwelt on the fire wistfully. This was not a grace that Mervyn fostered. Why did Raymond come no more? Sometimes she looked out of the window on the parade to mark when he passed. Once in a flutter and a flurry, when she would not take time to think, she threw a fur wrap about her, drawn half over her head, and stole out with Norah, wrapped in a blanket shawl, and stood in a corner of the bastion beside the ramp that ascended to the barbette, and watched him as he put the troops through the manual exercise on the parade. He noticed neither of them. He was absorbed in his work—they might both have been the laundry-maids. Arabella was afraid of her aunt’s keen questions that night in Mrs. Annandale’s bedroom when Norah broke forth with her gossip of the garrison and her comments on the drill.
“Oh, faix, mem, an’ it would gladden the heart av yez ter see how nimble the men do sthep when thedrum rowls out so grand! I wonder yez don’t come wid me an’ our young leddy to look at them, sure!”
“It will doyouno good to look at the men, and for me to look at them will dothemno good. And a sure way to make them step nimble is to set a mob of red-skins after them—push up that stool, girl. Art you going to set my silk stocking on the rough stone?”
“An’ shure it’s that hot,” declared the plump, good-natured Norah, trying its temperature with her hand, “it might bur-rn the wee, dilikit fut av yez, mem.”
She adjusted the stool and recommenced.
“Shure, mem, I doesn’t belave thim gossoons would run fur red-skins at their heels—the lave of ’em are Oirish!”
“And they haven’t got sense enough to run,” commented the mistress. “What d’ye peel my hose that way for, you vixen—you’ll take the skin as well as the stocking!”
“An’ they does the goose-sthep mos’ beautiful, mem, an’ mark time illigint. But that was for punishment,—caught in Keowee Town, gambling wid the Injuns. Larry O’Grady an’ a shquad war kep at ut, mem, for hours by Ensign Raymond’s ordhers, Pat Gilligan tould me, till they wuz fit to shed tears.”
“Shed tears—the hardened wretches!” said Mrs. Annandale, interested nevertheless,faute de mieux, in the simple annals of the garrison. For the days were monotonous, and even Arabella, who one might deem had much to think of, were it only to join George Mervyn in planning the alterations at Mervyn Hall andthe details of her future reign, lingered to listen beside her aunt’s fire, lounging in a great chair, dressed in faint blue, and slipping languidly from one hand to the other her necklace of pearls, her beautiful eyes a little distrait, a little sad, it might seem, fixed on the glowing coals.
“Shure, mem, weepin’ is all the fashion in the garrison now. Since Ensign Raymond shed tears in public the tale of it tickles the men so that if a finger be p’inted at one of ’em a whole shquad av ’em ’ll bust out sobbin’ an’ wipin’ their eyes,—but Sergeant Kelly says if they don’t quit ut, be jabbers, he’s give ’em something to cry fur.”
“You insolent wretch!” squealed Mrs. Annandale, “how dare you say ‘be jabbers’ in my presence?”
“Shure, mem, ’twuz Sergeant Kelly shpakin’—not me,” said Norah, well frightened.
“Sergeant Kelly ’shpakin’ here in my room, you limb!”
But Mrs. Annandale could not divert the inquiry—she would fain expunge the very name of Raymond from the rolls.
“How did Ensign Raymond happen to shed tears?” demanded Arabella, stiffly.
“Shure, Miss Arabella, the sojer bhoys does say that whin the ould jontleman preacher-man wouldn’t lave the Injuns,—an’ it’s a quare taste in folks he have got, to be sure,—an’ the captain, with the soft heart av him, cudn’t abide to lave him there, this young ensign,—though if he didn’t hould his head so high, an’ look loike he thought he was a lordor a juke, he’d be a most enticin’-faced young man,—he was ordered to pershuade the missionary to come. An’ he just shwooped down on the riverend man of God and bodily kidnapped him. I am acquainted with the men that he ordhered to carry the ould jontleman to the boat.”
“I think you are acquainted with the whole garrison,” snapped Mrs. Annandale.
“Shure, there’s but foive other white women in the place, an’ they are mostly old and married, an’ though I’m not called of a good favor at home I’ll pass muster on the frontier,” and Norah simpered, and actually tossed her head.
Mrs. Annandale would have preferred dealing with this insubordinate levity, and vanity, and disrespect on the spot to returning to the subject of Raymond, but the question had been Arabella’s, and the maid did not wait for its repetition.
“An’ when they had got the cr-razy ould loon in the boat—savin’ his honor’s riverence, but to want to stay wid thim Injuns!—he shpake up pitiful an’ said he was ould, an’ feeble, an’ poor—or they wouldn’t have dared to thrate him so! An’ Ensign Raymond axed his forgiveness, an’ whin he giv it, Ensign Raymond drapped down on one knee, an’ laid his head on the ould man’s ar-rm, an’ bust into tears! Think o’ that, mem! The men all call him now—Ensign Babby!”
Norah lifted a fresh, smiling, plump face and Mrs. Annandale sent up a keen, high cackle of derision. Then she stole a covert glance at her niece. Arabella,too, was smiling as she gazed into the fire—a soft radiance had transfigured her face. Her beautiful eyes were large, gentle, wistful, and—since emotion was the fashion of the hour—they were full of limpid tears, so pure, so clear, that they did not obstruct the smile that shone through them.
Mrs. Annandale was not sentimental herself, but she was familiar with sentiment in others, and its proclivities for the destruction of peace. Aided by the fortuitous circumstances of the man’s absence and Mervyn’s monopoly of Arabella’s society, she had been as thoughtful, as far-sighted, as cautious as if she had custody of the treasure of a kingdom, but she determined that she would be more on her guard hereafter, and never let the mention of the man’s name intrude into the conversation. She fell into a rage over her disrobing on slight provocation, and hounded and vilified Norah to her pallet with such rancor that the girl, who had been in high spirits, and felt that she had contributed much this evening to the entertainment of her employer, followed the lachrymose tendencies of the mode, and softly sobbed herself to sleep.