LOVE'S LAST APPEAL
Going, as usual, next day to read an hour or so to the invalid major,
still under injunctions not to tax his eyes, Miss Sanford became
conscious of an undercurrent of something akin to sensation, something
approximating unusual excitement. Both doctors had earlier been there,
and Wallen came again. The hospital attendant seemed abnormally anxious
and officious. Felicie, infelicitously named, if it was her name,
fluttered upstairs and down, in and out of my lady's chamber, effusively
greeting the neighbors who somewhat significantly began coming in with
anxious inquiry, tender of sympathy, etc. "Couldn't help noticing the
doctor had been over three times, so fearing the major might have had a
turn for the worse," etc., etc., but it wasn't the man so much as his
wife of whom they hoped for tidings. But Felicie could fence, and would
not favor even the adroit with the desired information. Madame was still
reposing herself. Madame would assuredly promenade at horse or in
vehicle later. Madame adored the fresh, free air, and though Madame was
desolate that, alas, her physicians, these medicines, adjured her that
it was the most important she should at this time live hours in the air
and sunshine, and she was forbidden the bliss of sharing her husband's
confinement and alleviating his ennui, it was for his sake more than her
own and for the sake of their cherished hope that she meekly yield to
their mandates; and was it not a circumstance the most felicitous that
the charming Mademoiselle should be so ever-ready to read to Monsieur
the Commandant?
With all its graceful, polished pleasantries at the expense of the
unmarried sister of thirty and upwards, the social world that professes
to regard her matrimonial prospects as past praying for, and herself as
oddly unattractive, is quick to take alarm when, apparently accepting
their unflattering view, she likewise accepts duties denied, as a rule,
to those who are attractive. The very girls who giggled behind "Aunt
Priscilla's" back and pitied her undesired lot were promptly and
properly aggrieved that she should prove to be so forward, so
unmaidenly. Because the right man does not happen to come into a woman's
life until so late, or because the wrong one happened in and won her
fresh young heart all too early, it results that many a better, wiser,
lovelier woman lives unmated to-day than many a woman married in her
teens. Lucky is the man the Indian summer of whose life is blessed by
the companionship of such. Minneconjou laughed at Priscilla so long as
she read to the man in hospital or the bed-ridden dames in the married
quarters; but it shied violently at her spending an hour or more each
day in reading to Dwight, even though the attendant was never away, and
Mrs. Ray, with her needlework, was often present. Was Minneconjou
already consigning the present incumbent to outer darkness and thinking
of prescribing another mate for Oswald Dwight?
Not only did Priscilla note the incessant flittings about the house, but
presently she saw that Dwight's attention was wandering. From the
adjoining room the muffled sound of voices, in petulant appeal or
expostulation, was at times distinctly audible. Felicie wished Madame to
do something, apparently, which Madame was determined not to do.
Felicie came once or twice with Madame's devoted love to ask if there
was anything Monsieur desired or lacked, and to flash guarded
malevolence at Priscilla. Felicie came again to say Madame was
recalcitrant. She feared Monsieur had not rested well _cette nuit_, and
she wished well to postpone her promenade, but the doctor he had
prescribed and Monsieur he had desired that Madame neglect no
opportunity to take the air, and would not Monsieur again conjure
Madame? Madame was deaf to these the protestations of her most devoted.
Dwight rose slowly from his reclining chair and, excusing himself to the
patient reader, was gone but a moment or two, and Madame was ravishingly
gowned and most becomingly hatted and veiled when, just for a moment, as
the day's session was closing and the fair reader about departing,
Madame rustled in to archly upbraid Monsieur for his cruelty in ordering
her to take her drive when it was impossible for him to be at her side.
"Ah, but next week--next week!"--this, doubtless, for the benefit of
Priscilla--"we shall see!"
The phaeton was at the door and Priscilla walked silently, thoughtfully,
homeward. Aunt Marion was at her desk, writing pages to the
soldier-husband and father in the distant Philippines. The sweet face
was looking grave and careworn. There were traces of tears, there were
dark lines, about the soft blue eyes, as Priscilla bent and tenderly
kissed her. "Do come down and let me make you a cup of tea," she
pleaded. "You've been writing--and I reading--long. I'd like some, too.
Is--is Sandy home?"
"Riding," said Aunt Marion briefly, and Priscilla knew.
Ordinarily, half a dozen women would come drifting in to Mrs. Ray's
during the summer afternoon. To-day there were none. They heard voices
on the walk, voices that seemed to hush as the gate was neared, and only
to resume in low tone after it was passed. Priscilla could not account
for the unusual depression that had seemed to possess Aunt Marion even
when struggling against it herself. At breakfast time Aunt Marion had
been unusually silent, unusually watchful of Sandy, who, before he would
touch his fruit or sip his coffee, had gone forth to the bench in rear
of quarters, searching, he said, for some memoranda he might have
dropped out there at night. He had hunted all through the pockets of his
khaki rig, that he happened to be wearing at that time, and to no
purpose. He must have whipped it out with his handkerchief, he
said--"just that little flat memorandum book" they had often seen him
have, with a few loose pages--no earthly use to anybody but him, no
great consequence, and yet, after breakfast, he was searching again, and
had Hogan searching, and again he returned and hunted all through his
room, and investigated cook and housemaid, and again went forth.
Priscilla found herself unable to cast it from her mind or to cause her
aunt to forget it. Sandy had been gone an hour when she returned, and
had said not to wait dinner; he might ride late and long and far.
"But not toward the reservation," he assured his mother, seeing the
trouble in her face. "Though I'd more than like to ride over there with
the troop and round up those blackguard reds that turned me back."
"Those blackguard reds" were forbidden by their agent to set foot north
of the Minneconjou, where the ranchers and settlers and miners were
frequent. But still the mother was anxious, filled with dread she could
not speak, and even as she now sat, absently toying with her teaspoon,
the maid came in with a note. "A soldier friend of Blenke" had just
brought it for Miss Sanford.
So Priscilla opened and read:
Miss Sanford will pardon, I pray, the liberty I probably take in
presuming to address her, but our plea to the captain was
fruitless. He insists on my going with the detachment to the wood
camp; so, long before this reaches Miss Sanford we shall have
started, and it may be days before relief will come. Meantime, with
my assurance that with Heaven's help I shall yet redeem myself in
her estimation, I remain Miss Sanford's grateful and humble
servant,
P. BLENKE.
Verily, the young man wrote with a pen of the courtier and scholar of
olden time rather than the rude trooper. Verily, Blenke was a man of
parts--and played them.
"Where is that wood camp?" asked Aunt Marion, with languid interest,
relieved, she knew not why, that Blenke should be gone.
"Far up the foothills--west. It seems that lately the Indians have been
threatening and abusive," said Priscilla. "That's why the guard was
sent. They march soon after reveille, and--he was so unwilling to go
just now, when he hoped to arrange matters about his--commission," and
Miss Sanford's clear gray eyes, much finer and softer they seemed
without the _pince nez_, were lifted again, half timidly, half
hopefully.
"How could he expect or hope for such a thing now?" answered Mrs. Ray,
with some asperity. "What officer would recommend him after that--that
exhibition?"
Priscilla colored. That episode was a sore point, but not a settler. "He
said it depended little on the officers, auntie," was the gently
forceful answer, "so long as he had the senator behind him." Whereupon
Aunt Marion arose and peered through the one window in the little
dining-room that opened to the west. She was forever peering up the
valley now, and Priscilla well knew why. The maid again appeared.
"Phelps, ma'am, Blenke's friend, came back with this," and she held
forth a letter. "He said it was found on sentry post up the bench."
Mrs. Ray turned quickly and held forth her hand. Silently Miss Sanford
passed the letter to her. It was an ordinary missive, in business
envelope, addressed to Lieutenant Sanford Ray, Fort Minneconjou, and it
had been opened. The torn flap revealed the fact that there were two or
three separate inclosures. For a moment Mrs. Ray turned it in her
slender fingers, thinking intently, then, suddenly recollecting, told
the maid to give her thanks to the soldier if he were still waiting. She
wished to ask had anything else been found, but that, if he cared to,
was for Sandy to do when he came. Then she took the letter to her room,
and stowed it in a pigeonhole of her desk against her boy's return--then
sat her down to wait.
Meanwhile the object of so much thought and love and care had ridden
many a mile, his brain in a whirl of conflicting emotions. There had
come to him the previous night, in the interval between that brief
interview with Blenke and the later meeting with his mother, a messenger
with a note. It was the same messenger, Butts, the soldier groom, who
had only a short time earlier met him with her note upon the parade.
Ray, fleeing from a possible meeting with Priscilla, had left her and
her soldier _protege_ together, and slipping out of the rear gate had
gone walking up the bluffs. It was not quite time for taps and the
sentries to begin challenging. He could have gone through the yard of
any one of the adjacent quarters and so reach the front, the promenade
walk and the wide parade, but he wished to be alone, under the starry
skies. He needed to think. What could she have meant by saying, "How
they tricked me--how I lost you?" He had blamed her bitterly, savagely,
for her cold-blooded, heartless jilting of him, without ever a word of
explanation. It was so cruel, so abominable a thing that, perhaps, even
Inez Farrell could not, without some excuse or reason, be guilty of it.
And now she was striving to tell him, to make him understand; now she
was alienated from her husband and not, so Dwight's own references to
Foster would go to prove, not because of this affair with Captain
Foster. She said it was her right to be heard. Perhaps it was. If she
had been tricked, deceived, wronged--such things had happened--the story
was old as the Deluge and might be true, and if true, was it decent to
treat her with studied contempt? If she had been tricked into throwing
him over--if, if she had been true in saying she loved him, as fervently
she swore that last sweet night under the cherry blossoms in Japan, was
it manly to--to crush and scorn her now?
He was again, with downcast eyes, slowly pacing the bluff and in rear of
the major's quarters when, far over toward the guard-house, the soft,
prolonged notes of "Lights out" were lifted on the night, and he almost
collided with a man coming quickly forth from the gate. The rear door
had closed with a bang but the moment before, and Felicie's voice, in
subdued tone, had been faintly audible. The man proved to be the same
who had come to him so short a time before, and the mission was
practically the same, "A note for the lieutenant."
Ray took it to the west gate and read it under the lamp.
I ask for only five minutes, at the old place, about the same hour
to-morrow. I will never ask again, for I am to leave
Minneconjou--and him--forever.
Startled, stunned, he read her words. Was it then so _very_ serious as
this would imply? Was it her doing, or her husband's, that she should
leave? Was it possible that he, Sandy Ray, was even remotely a cause? He
could not fathom it. He would not rudely refuse. That would be simply
brutal. But why could she not see him here at home on the veranda? Why
must the meeting be so far from the post--so close to the--clandestine?
Mother had said----Then suddenly he bethought him that mother wished to
speak with him, that he had promised her to be home about taps, and,
even though he could not, dare not, talk with her to-night, he could and
should go to her at once.
He started; then, hearing laughing voices and light footsteps along the
walk ahead of him, hesitated. Some of those teasing, tormenting garrison
girls, of course! He could not face them. Abruptly he turned again,
passed round in rear of Dwight's, stowing the note in a little notebook
as he sped and the book in the breast pocket of his khaki tunic. Some
backstair flirtation was going on in the dusk of the summer night, not
ten paces ahead, for there was sound of playful Hibernian pleading, a
laughing, half-repelling, half-inviting "Ah, g'wan now!" followed by a
slap. A trim young trooper leaped backward from a gateway to avoid
another shock--and met it on Ray's stout shoulder. The collision
startled one and staggered both. The Irish lad, all confusion, sprang
for his officer's hat and restored it with, "Beg a thousand pardons,
Lieutenant," and blessed his young superior's kindly, "No harm done,
Kelly," as, whipping out his handkerchief, Ray sped along, dusting off
the felt.
And that harm had been done he never knew till later.
He had managed to put mother off until the following day; had gone forth
a second time, as has been told; had passed a second time the gate where
earlier in the evening she had awaited him. All at the moment was
apparently quiet. He had almost reached home when the sound of harsh
voices out beyond the east gate caught his ear--more poor devils coming
or being dragged home from the hog ranch. Suddenly there came the sound
of muffled curses and blows. Sandy wondered why No. 2 did not call the
corporal. He hastened onward and out beyond the gate and came upon the
explanation: no need to call the corporal when two were already there,
with several of the guard, striving hard to lug peaceably to the prison
room a sextette of soldier revelers who resented being either lugged or
persuaded. The guard couldn't bear to hurt their fellows: who could say
but that conditions and parties might be reversed within the week? The
row subsided with the sight of Lieutenant Ray, but not until it had
prevented his hearing the call for the corporal that came from No. 4. He
found the front door bolted when he got back to the house, and,
remembering having bolted it, passed round to the rear steps and
then--met his mother at the door.
She had even more to ask him then, yet once more he pleaded: "Wait until
to-morrow night." So wait she did, patiently, prayerfully, trustfully,
until the morrow's night; and then, not so patiently, but, oh, even more
prayerfully, longer, very much longer.