CHAPTER XII
Thenext day only it was that, George Mervyn being on duty as officer of the day, Arabella felt a dreary sort of freedom in being alone. A realization that this lassitude, yet sense of relief, was no good augury for her future oppressed her. She said to herself that doubtless when she should be married to him she would soon have less of his society. She knew few marriages in which the devotion was so constant as to grow wearisome; she thought it was because of the intensity of his affection that she felt it a drag. She declared with a sigh that she liked him—she liked him well. She did not realize how much her pride had predisposed her to entertain his protestations, her aunt’s artful goadings, her own ambitions, and her inherited disposition to persist, to press forward against resistance, to conquer.
She wanted to be out—away, far from the scenes with which he was associated, apart from the thought of him. She wanted to regain her old identity—to be herself—to feel free.
She was in haste as she donned her bottle-green rokelay, for the weather was keen, and she had a calash of the same dark tint, bordered with brown fur that made a distinct line along the roll of her fair hair above her brow. She went out alone upon the ramparts, walking very swiftly, catching a glimpsethrough the embrasures, as she severally passed the cannon, of the cold, steel-gray river, the leafless woods bending before the blast, the ranges of mountains, all dull brown or slate-gray save far, so far they hardly seemed real, mere pearl-tinted illusions in the sombre north. She caught her breath in deep quick respirations; she heard how rapidly her footsteps sounded on the hard-beaten red clay. She said that it was exercise she had wanted, the fresh air, to be out, the privilege every creature enjoyed—that bird, an eagle, cleaving the air with his great wings; a party of Indians on the opposite bank, going into the woods in a regular jog-trot, single file; the very garrison dogs; a group of men at the great gate. And suddenly she threw up her arm and hailed this group, for she had recognized her father among them.
She had recognized another—it was Raymond, and she wondered that she had identified him at the distance. The sentinel first perceived her gesture and called Captain Howard’s attention. The party paused, stared at the approaching, flying figure on the ramparts, then as she reached a ramp and rushed down the steep incline to the parade they came forward at a fair pace to meet her.
“Lord, papa!” she cried breathlessly, “where are you going? Let me go with you, sir, wherever it is. Truly, sir, I am perishing for a breath of change. I feel as if I have lived in Fort Prince George since America was discovered. Let me go, sir!”
She had him by the arm now, and he was looking down leniently at her.
“You are a spoil-sport, Arabella. You cannot go where we are going, child.”
“Then go somewhere else,” she insisted. “Sure, sir, I’m not a prisoner of war. Let me through that gate, or I shall die of Fort Prince George.”
“We are going to speak to one of the chiefs of Keowee Town about an important matter—feed for the pack animals; we must have feed, you know, or we shall never get away from Fort Prince George.”
“Across the river! Oh, bless us and save us, papa, Imust go. I could sit in the canoe while you bargain, or confer, or what not. You would be near at hand and I should not be afraid.”
“It is under the guns of the fort, sir,” suggested Raymond.
“Oh, thank you, Mr. Raymond, for the word!” she cried. “Papa, I am going! All for Keowee, follow me!”
As she whisked through the gates the sentinel presented arms ostensibly to the party of officers, but so promptly that it had the savor of a special compliment to her as she passed in the lead. The frozen ground was so hard beneath her flying feet, the wind struck so chill on her cheek, the sparkle in her eyes was so bright, the timbre of her clear, reedy, joyous tones was so youthful, so resonant, that she seemed indeed like some liberated thing. Mervyn’s monotonous discourse of himself, his views, his hopes, his experiences, recurred with a sarcastic suggestion to Raymond’s mind, albeit he, himself, had entered into these subjects with a fraternal warmth and interestin the days of their devoted friendship, and he reflected that an affectionate feeling for an egotist blunts the sharp point of the obtrusive pronoun.
He was suffering a blended poignancy of pain and pleasure in this unexpected meeting. He had already discovered the depth of his feeling for the commandant’s daughter before the expedition to Tamotlee. On his return he had heard the gossip as to the engagement, and realized that his love was hopeless. It had taken a strong hold upon him, and he needed all his courage to sustain the disappointment, the disillusionment, for he had dreamed that he might have found favor, the despair. He told himself sternly that he had been a fool from the beginning. She looked higher, naturally, than an ensign of foot, who had scarcely any resources but his commission,—the meagre pay of a subaltern. The very idea, reasonably considered, was a death-blow to any hope of speedy marriage. As the ensign was of good birth his lowly estate seemed only to illustrate his unworthiness of his distinguished lineage. All the remote ancestral splendors that the Heralds’ College could show were of scant worldly utility to an ensign of foot. Nevertheless, he relished the fact that Mervyn had paid him the compliment to be bitterly jealous of him, and he saw in Mrs. Annandale’s disingenuous little face that she feared him and his attractions, whatever she might esteem these endowments, beyond measure.
He had told himself that he ought to rejoice in the young lady’s good fortune, that she should be soworthily placed; that if Mervyn’s wealth and station could serve her interest this would demonstrate a purpose in his creation, hitherto doubtful. He did not deny himself the illogical grudging of this fair creature to Mervyn with an infinite rancor. He had never seemed so unworthy of her as now, failing even in fair words, just dues, which most men contrive to pay. Raymond had held his peace, however, when Mervyn had been bitterly disparaged among the little cluster of brother officers in the mess-hall, and kept away from the commandant’s parlor, denying himself even the pleasure of a formal call. It was not well that he should see her, for his own sake—the mere recollection of the contour of her face, the pensive fall of her eyelash, the clear lustre of her eyes, broke his heart, and shook his nerve, and half-maddened his brain. He did not think that she might miss him, might care for his coming. She loved Mervyn, or thought she did, and he, himself, loved her so well as to hope that she might never wear out that illusion. Now, however, that he was with her again, through no volition of his own, mere chance, his heart plunged, his cheek flushed, his poor, denied, famished love renewed its tremors, its vague, vain hopes, its tumultuous delight in her mere presence.
As they crossed the bridge, and passed the counterscarp, and took their way toward the glacis, he hastened to offer his arm to support, after the fashion of the day, the young creature, bounding on so lightly ahead of them, for no woman of quality was esteemed stalwart enough to dispense with man’s upholdingstrength. Reminded thus of etiquette Miss Howard accepted the proffer, and leaning graciously upon him, she somewhat slackened her pace as they crossed the glacis and turned down the slope toward the river.
The animation of the expedition seemed suddenly monopolized by Captain Howard and his colleagues—the quarter-master and the fort-adjutant, discussing loudly ways and means, the respective values of varieties of forage, the possibility of caches of corn among the Indians, their obvious relish of the commandant’s destitution when he most needed feed for his pack-trains, and his march in the evacuation of the fort. He had been told more than once how they wished they had now the vast stores burned by the British commander, Colonel Grant, in his furious forays through the Cherokee country two years previous—they would bestow it on the Capteny without money and without price.
Scarcely a word passed between the young people. Arabella, to her amazement, felt her hand so tremble on Raymond’s arm that she was constrained to furnish an explanation by a shiver and an exclamation on the chill of the day. She could not understand her own agitation. She felt the silence to be awkward, conscious, yet she dared not speak, lest her voice might falter. He, the dullard, had no divination of her state of mind. It never occurred to him to doubt the truth of the reported engagement. The smug satisfaction which the face of the captain-lieutenant now wore, despite the blight which hismilitary laurels had suffered, was a sufficient confirmation of the truth of the rumor he had set afloat. It never occurred to Raymond that undue persuasion had been exerted upon her—he never dreamed that Mrs. Annandale’s meagre little personality stood for a strategist of a subtlety never before seen in the Cherokee country, that she was capable of making the young lady believe herself in love with George Mervyn, and her father accept the fact on his sister’s statement. Raymond could but mark the flushed, conscious look now on Arabella’s face, the sudden timidity in her downcast eyes, the tremor of her daintily-gloved fingers on his arm. A sudden gust blew a perfumed tress of her waving golden hair over the brown fur and the dark green cloth of her calash, whence it escaped, and thence across his cheek for a moment. Its glitter seemed to blind him. He caught his breath at its touch. But the next moment they had reached the rocky declivity to the river-bank, and he was all assiduity in finding a practicable path amongst the intricacies of ledges and boulders, over which she could have bounded with the sure-footed lightness of a gazelle.
The long stretches of the still, gray river, flecked with white foam, wherever an unseen rock lay submerged beneath its full floods, reflected a sky of like dreary tone. One could see movement above, as the fleecy gray folds, that seemed to overlay a denser medium of darker shade, shifted and overlapped, thickened and receded noiselessly, a ceaseless vibrating current, not unrelated to the joyless, mechanicalrippling of the waters. The leafless trees on the banks looked down at their stark reflections in the stream that intensified the riparian glooms—here and there a grim gray promontory of solid rock broke the monotony with an incident not less grave. Mists hung in the air above the conical roofs of the Indian town on the opposite bank, not easily distinguished from the smoke issuing from the smoke-holes, for chimneys they had none. No sound came across the water; the town might have been asleep, deserted, dead. As the party reached the bank a gust came driving through the open avenue of the river, damp with the propinquity of the body of water, shrill with the compression of the air between the wooded banks, and so strong that it almost swept Arabella from her feet, and she clung to Raymond for support. Her father renewed his protests against her venturing forth upon the water—it might rain, if indeed it were not too cold for this,—and urged her to return to the fort, and await a fair day for an excursion on the river.
In reply she pertinently reminded him that this was no time to deny her whims, when she had come out all the way from England to visit him. Indeed, she did not wait for a denial. She stepped instantly into the boat as soon as the soldiers who were to row had taken their oars and brought it alongside, and as she seated herself in the stern, Captain Howard could only console his fears for her safety by wrapping her snugly in a great fur mantle and listening to her feats of prowess as she was good enough to detail them.
Apparently she had suddenly found all her facility in words, mute as she had been during the walk, and it seemed to Raymond, as he wistfully eyed her from the opposite seat, that she had said nothing then because she had nothing to say to him.
“Sure, papa, I’m neither sugar nor salt. I shan’t melt, except into tears for your cruelties. I am not such a dainty, flimsy piece of dimity as all that comes to. Why, when we crossed the sea every soul on board was sick—exceptmeand the men that worked the ship. And there was wind, no capful like this, but blowing great guns—and water! the waves went all over us—the water came into the cabin. Aunt Claudia said she hoped we would sink; she would give all she possessed to be still one moment on the bottom of the ocean. And while she was helpless I staid on deck and advised the ship’s captain. He said he hadheardof mermaids, but I was the first he had everseen! Oh, he was very gallant, was the sea-captain, and made me a fine lot of compliments. And did I expect to be cooped up in Fort Prince George, as if it were in blockade!”
Captain Howard rather winced at the word, and thought ruefully of the lack of corn, and the coming of his marching orders.
“I expected to ride, papa. I thought you might lend me a mount some day—”
“Permit me to offer you a horse of mine that might carry a lady fairly well—” Raymond began, for among his few possessions he owned several choice animals which he had bought very young from theIndians. The Cherokees boasted at that day some exceedingly fine horses, supposed to be descendants of the Spanish barbs of De Soto’s expedition through that region. Raymond was an excellent judge and had selected young creatures at a low valuation at one of the sales when the Indians had driven down a herd to barter with the ranchmen of the pastoral country further to the south. His cheek flushed, his eye flashed with a sudden accession of joyful anticipation—but Captain Howard shook his head. He was not so secure in the peace of the frontier as he had earlier been. Certain incidents of the expedition to Little Tamotlee were not reassuring. He would hardly have trusted his daughter out for a canter along the smooth reaches of the “trading-path,” as the road was called that passed Fort Prince George to the upper country, or the trail the soldiers made in the forest for fuel supplies, even could he have detailed half the garrison as her escort. Only the guns of Fort Prince George he now considered adequate protection—not because of their special efficiency, but solely because of the terrors of artillery which the Indians felt, and could never overcome.
“Why, papa—when I have ridden cross-country to hounds, and twice in Scotland I was in at the death! Papa—why, papa! are you afraid I would fall off the pony?” she demanded, with such a glance of deprecation and mortified pride that it was hard for her father not to express the true reason for his withheld consent. But as commandant of the garrison he could not acquaint the two soldiers whorowed the boat, and through them the rest of the force, with his fears for the permanence of the peace on the frontier, and his doubts as to their speedy departure. Now that the period of their exile had been placed, and that they were in sight of home, as it were, they could hardly wait a day longer, and trained and tried and true as they were, he might well have feared a mutiny, had an inopportune suggestion of delay or doubt grown rife amongst them. He hesitated and cleared his throat, and seemed about to speak, then turned and glanced over his shoulder at Keowee Town, still lying apparently asleep. If the approach of the boat had been noted, the municipality gave no sign, whether from some queer savage reason, or disfavor to the visitors, or simply a freak of affectation, he did not care to think. He was acutely conscious of the face dearest to him in the world, downcast, deprecating, and flushed, appealing to him when he could not speak.
“Oh, I know you are a monstrous fine horsewoman—” he began extravagantly, “but there is no road.”
“And now I know you are laughing at me, papa,” she said, with dignity, “and I thought you were proud of my riding so well,”—with a little plangent inflection of reproach. “But I left the whole field behind in Scotland—Iwasin at the death, twice—Icanride”—with stalwart self-assertion. “And I can shoot—I won the silver arrow at the last archery meet at home!”
“There can surely be no objection to archery, sir,”Raymond glanced at the captain, aware in some sort of the nature of his difficulty, and seeking to smooth his way.
“No—no—” said Captain Howard, heartily,—then with a sudden doubt—“except a bow and arrows of a proper size; but I can have these made for you at once—if the Indians are not too lazy, or too sullen, or too disaffected to make them. I will see if I can order a proper weapon at Keowee.”
“I have the very thing,” exclaimed Raymond, delightedly, “if Miss Howard will do me the honor to accept it. When we were at Tuckaleechee last year, Captain,” he said, turning to the commandant, “I secured, for a curiosity, a bow and quiver of arrows which had been made for the Indian king’s nephew, who had died before they were finished. Otherwise they would have been buried with him, according to Cherokee etiquette. They are as fine as the Indians can make them, for he was the heir to the throne, following the female line. You know, Miss Howard, here among the Cherokee chiefs the nephew has the right of succession, not the son. This boy was twelve or fourteen years old, and the weapons are of corresponding weight.”
“Just the thing,” said Captain Howard, cordially,—then with an afterthought,—“but this deprives you of a handsome curiosity, ornamented for royalty. You mayborrowit, Arabella.”
“Oh, but I’d love toownit,” cried Miss Howard, joyously, with a charming frankness that made the color deepen in Raymond’s cheek. “I’ll carry it homeand shoot with it at the next archery meet. I hope it is very barbaric and splendid in its decorations, Mr. Raymond.”
“I think it will not disappoint you,” replied Raymond, in a glow of enthusiasm, for it was a choice bit of aboriginal art; the Indians often spent years of labor on the ornamentation of a single weapon. “It carries all the gewgaws that it can without impairing the elasticity of the wood, but the quiver is more gorgeous; the arrows are winged with flamingo feathers, and tipped with crystal quartz.”
“Oh,” began Arabella—
But her father’s admonitions broke in upon her delight. “Those arrows are deadly,” he exclaimed, “as hard as steel. And you must be careful how you place your target; you might shoot some animal, or a soldier; you must be careful.”
“What a forlorn fate for a soldier—to die by a lady’s hand!” she exclaimed.
“Ladies usually shoot by proxy,” Raymond said, with a conscious laugh, “and first and last they have done woful execution among soldiers.”
“They never shoot by proxy at our club,” declared Arabella, densely.
“That’s mighty good of them,” said her father, laughing a little, as he turned to look at the shore. He ordered the oarsmen to pull in, despite the fact that no signs of life were yet visible about the town.
When, however, the keel grazed the gravelly bank and Captain Howard and his quarter-master and fort-adjutantstepped on shore, there appeared as suddenly as if he had risen from the ground the “second man” of Keowee Town, attended by three or four of inferior rank, a trifle sullen, very silent, and when he spoke at last, after he had led the way to the municipal booth, or cabin, he was full of ungracious excuses for the non-appearance of the chief to greet the English Capteny. He had thought the boat held only the quarter-master, the fort’s “second man”—“Confound his impudence!” interpolated that officer, an observation which the discreet interpreter did not see fit to repeat,—the fort’s “second man,” come to beg for corn. The British, he continued, were pleased to call the Indians beggars, but no mendicant that he had ever heard whine could whine as the fort’s “second man” whined when he begged for corn.
It was well for the fort’s “second man” that he was already seated on a buffalo rug on the ground, his legs doubled up, tailor-wise, in front of him, or he might have fallen to the earth in his sputtering indignation. His rubicund, round face grew scarlet. Portly as he was already he seemed puffed up with rage, and his features visibly swelled as he retorted.—Had he not offered the Frog to pay the town in golden guineas for the corn—he had not begged; he had asked to purchase.
Walasi, the Frog, shook his head. Of what good were English guineas to people who had no corn. Corn was more precious than gold—could he plant those golden guineas of the fort’s “second man,” and make corn? Could horses eat guineas?
“No,” said the fort’s “second man,” “but asses could, and did.”
Whereupon the Keowee “second man” said the fort’s “second man” spake in riddles, and relapsed into silence.
Thus brought to a dead-lock the quarter-master looked appealingly at the commandant, who, albeit sensible of the discourtesy offered him by the non-appearance of the chief, and his derogation of dignity in conferring with a “second man,” came to his subordinate’s relief.
The British officer did not wish to inconvenience the town of Keowee in any manner, he said, and regretted much that their visits were not welcome. Whereupon the Frog showed visible uneasiness, for with the Cherokees hospitality was the very first and foremost virtue, and for it to be impugned was a reflection upon the town. He hastened to say volubly that the beloved Capteny was much mistaken; the chief’s heart was wrung not to take him by his noble hand. But they had feared—they much deprecated that the British Capteny had come, too, tobeg—to beg for corn; and it would wrench the very soul of the chief of Keowee to refuse him aught.
“The chief is fortunate to be so well furnished with gold as to throw it away,” said Captain Howard.
That the Frog had learned somewhat in his intercourse with the commercial French who, with covert strategy, had plied a brisk trade with the Indians despite their treaty with the British, was evidenced in the shrug with which he declared he could not say.The Indian wanted little—he wanted his own corn—that was all. It belonged to him—he asked for no man’s gold.
Captain Howard was at a loss. The military resource of the seizing of supplies was impracticable since the treaty of peace. The British government owned merely the ground on which Fort Loudon and Fort Prince George stood, and a right of way to those works. Moreover, with his small force the measure was impossible. Therefore it was indeed necessary to beg for corn at six—nay, ten prices, in English gold. He sat for a few moments, gazing absently at the prospect, the austere wintry mountains under the gray sky, the illimitable, leafless wilderness, the shining line of the river that caught and focussed such chill light as the day vouchsafed, the bastions and flying flag of Fort Prince George on the opposite bank, and close in to the hither side the brilliant fleck of color that the scarlet coats of the oarsmen and Ensign Raymond gave to the scene, as sombre, otherwise, as a sketch in sepia. He noted that the rowers had thrust out from the shore five or six oars’ length, perhaps, and that they now and again gently dipped their oars to keep the craft at a fixed distance and obviate drifting with the current. The people of Keowee Town were not altogether proof against curiosity. From the vantage ground of the second men’s cabin Captain Howard could see stealthy figures, chiefly of women and children, peering out from doors or skulking behind bushes, all eyes directed toward the shallop rocking in a steely gleam of lightaslant upon a steely ripple of water, the only vivid chromatic tone in the neutral tinted scene.
There is a certain temperament which is incapable of sustaining success. It may cope with difficulty or it may endure disaster. But a degree of prosperity destroys its values, annuls good judgment, and distorts the perspective of all the world in the range of vision. The British Captain was at his wits’ end. He had no corn, and if none were to be bought he could get no corn. Few people have shared the Frog’s pleasure of seeing their victorious enemies the victims of so insoluble a problem. The declination of the chief of Keowee to receive the magnate from across the river was in itself a blow to pride, an insult, a flout, as contemptuous as might be devised. But as a matter of policy it was an error. If it had been a question of crops, a démêlé with a neighboring town, a matter of boundary, the selection of timbers for building purposes, no man could have acted with finer judgment than Walasi, the Frog. But he was a Cherokee and he hated the British Capteny with rancor. He must twist the knife in the wound, already gaping wide with anguish for the famishing stock. He assumed an air of reproach, and knowing even as he spoke that he transcended politic monitions, he stipulated that it was but the accident of the Capteny’s absence at Tamotlee which had precipitated disaster. When the Indians at Keowee had beheld the flames of the granary they had rushed to the assistance of their neighbors, the soldiers. Many hands do much work.But the great gates were closed against them, and when the Cherokees approached, he declared, the cannon were fired upon them from the fort, and many great balls rolled along, and popped hissing hot into the river. And it was only on account of the defective aim of the garrison that any were now left alive. And their hearts had become very poor because of their despised friendship. But cannon there were in the Cherokee nation!—and, he boasted, some day the garrison of Fort Prince George would hear, and shake with fear to hear, the loud whooping from out their throats, and the deep rumble of their howls; and would see, and be dazzled with terror to see, the fire come whizzing out of their muzzles with red-hot balls—but—but—
Walasi, the Frog, suddenly became aware that it was a very intent and steadfast gaze in the commandant’s eyes, as he sat and listened, spell-bound. And he, Walasi, who dealt only with crops, and houses, and town politics, who had never been either warrior or councillor, was conscious that he had gone too far in a position of trust beyond his deserts, and above his condition. The insult to Captain Howard in setting a second man to confer with him had developed a double-edged sharpness.
“But—but,” the Frog continued, “the good Capteny whom all loved would not be among them. None wished to harm the beloved Capteny.”
He paused again, staring in anxiety, for the intent look on the good Capteny’s face had vanished. He was shaking his head in melancholy negation.
“No, my good Walasi, no one here loves the Capteny. I am gone to visit my friend, the chief of Tamotlee, and my mad young men burn my granary and fool with my cannon—you have cannon, you say? But no,—I cannot stop to talk of cannon! I think of corn—corn—corn! And for gold you will let me have no corn. And the chief of Keowee will not see me!”
The eye-lashes of Walasi, the Frog, rose and fell so fast that he seemed blinking for some moments. He had said too much, but to obliterate the recollection in the British Capteny’s mind it might be well to interest him anew in corn—to keep him anxious and returning; he would not then have time or inclination to recur to the question of cannon—the unwary Frog felt that he had indeed said too much—but he was only a “second man,” and should not be set to deal with a capteny of the British.
The policy of sharing their corn had been doubted by the head-men. But he would take the responsibility to send—say a laden pettiaugre.
“Damme, Walasi!onepettiaugre!” cried Captain Howard, reproachfully.
“For to-day—another time, perhaps. But the heart of Keowee is very poor to deny the British Capteny, whom it loves like a brother,onepettiaugre.”
There was a great telling out and chinking of gold in the second man’s sanctum, and presently a dozen stalwart tribesmen were carrying the corn in large baskets to the pettiaugre, coming and going in endless procession in this slow method of loading.Captain Howard, resolutely mustering his patience, watched the last bushel aboard that the pettiaugre would hold—the craft, indeed, was settling in the water when he signed to the Indian boatmen to pole it across. Then he took a ceremonious, almost affectionate leave of Walasi, and walked down to the water’s edge with so absorbed and thoughtful a mien that he hardly looked up when his daughter called out to him from the canoe, which was rapidly rowing in to take him aboard; as he stepped over the gunwale and caught her eye he had a dazed look as if just awakened from a revery, or some deep and careful calculation, and he said, bluntly,—“Bless my soul, child, I had forgotten you were here!”