THE AMULET
[Illustration]
THE AMULET
A Novel
BY
CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK
AUTHOR OF
“THE STORM CENTRE,” “THE STORY OF OLD FORT
LOUDON,” “A SPECTRE OF POWER,” “THE
FRONTIERSMEN,” “THE PROPHET OF THE
GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS,” ETC., ETC.
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1906
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1906,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1906.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
THE AMULET
THE AMULET
CHAPTER I
The aspect of the lonely moon in this bleak night sky exerted a strange
fascination upon the English girl. She often paused to draw the
improvised red curtain at the tiny window of the log house that served
as the commandant’s quarters and gaze upon the translucent sphere as
it swung westering above the spurs of the Great Smoky Mountains, which
towered in the icy air on the horizon. Beneath it the forests gleamed
fitfully with frost; the long snowy vistas of the shadowy valleys
showed variant tones of white in its pearly lustre. So dominant was the
sense of isolation, of the infinite loneliness of the wilderness, that
to her the moon was like this nowhere else. A suspended consciousness
seemed to characterize it, almost an abeyance of animation, yet this
still serene splendor did not suggest death. She had long ago been
taught, indeed, that it was an extinct and burnt-out world. But in this
strange new existence old theories were blunted and she was ready for
fresh impressions. This majestic tranquillity seemed as of deep and
dreamless slumber, and the picturesque fancy of the Indians that the
moon is but the sun asleep took strong hold on her imagination. She
first heard the superstition one evening at dusk, as she stood at the
window with one end of the curtain in her hand, and asked her father
what was the word for “moon” in the Cherokee language.
“Don’t know! The moon in English is bright enough for me!” exclaimed
Captain Howard, as he sat in his easy-chair before the fire with
his glass of wine. A decanter was on the table beside him, and with
venison and wild-fowl for the solid business of dinner, earlier in
the afternoon, and chocolate-and-cocoanut custard, concocted by his
daughter, for the “trifle,” he had fared well enough.
Very joyous he was in these days. The Seven Years’ War was fairly over,
the treaty of peace concluded, and the surrender of the French forts on
the American frontier already imminent, even thus early in the spring
of 1763. His own difficult tour of service, here at Fort Prince George,
the British stronghold on the eastern edge of the Cherokee country, was
nearing its close. He, himself, was to be transferred to a post of ease
and comfort at Charlestown, where he would enjoy the benignities of
social courtesies and metropolitan association, and where his family,
who had come out from England for the purpose, could join him for a
time. Indeed, on his recent return from South Carolina, where he had
spent a short leave of absence, he had brought thence with him his
eldest daughter, an intelligent girl of eighteen years, who was opening
great eyes at the wonders of this new world, and who had specially
besought the privilege of a peep into the wilderness, now that the
frontier was quiet and safe.
George Mervyn, a captain-lieutenant of the garrison, a youth whom her
father greatly approved,--the grandson of his nearest neighbor at home
in Kent, Sir George Mervyn,--was inclined to pose as a picturesque
incident himself of the frontier, the soldier who had fought its
battles and at last pacified it. Now he suddenly developed unsuspected
linguistic accomplishments. He was tall, blond, and bland, conventional
of address, the model of decorous youth. He seemed quiet, steady,
trustworthy. His was evidently the material of a valuable future. He
rose and joined her at the window.
“There is no more moon,” he said with a somewhat affected but
gentlemanly drawl. “You must realize that, Miss Howard. This is ‘the
sleeping sun,’ You must not expect to see the moon on the frontier.”
“Only a stray moonling, now and then,” another subaltern struck in with
a laugh.
There was something distinctly sub-acid in the quick clear-clipped
tones, and Captain Howard lifted his head with a slightly corrugated
brow. He looked fixedly into his glass as if he discerned dregs of
bitterness lurking therein. He was experiencing a sentiment of surprise
and annoyance that had earlier harassed him, to be dismissed as absurd;
but now, recurring, it seemed to have gathered force. These two young
men were friends of the Damon-and-Pythias type. Their one-ness of heart
and unanimity of thought had been of infinite service to him in the
many difficult details of his command at Fort Prince George,--a flimsy
earth-work with a block-house or two, garrisoned by a mere handful of
troops, in a remote wilderness surrounded by a strong and savage foe.
These officers had been zealous to smooth each other’s way; they had
vied to undertake onerous duties, to encounter danger, to palliate
short-comings. They were always companions when off duty; they hunted
and fished together; they were on terms of intimate confidence, even
privileged to read each other’s letters. They were sworn comrades, and
yet to-day (Captain Howard did not know how to account for it--he was
growing old, surely) neither had addressed a kindly word to the other;
nay, Ensign Raymond was sharply and apparently intentionally sarcastic.
Captain Howard wondered that Arabella did not notice it, but there she
stood by the window, the curtain in her hand, the light of the great
flaring fire on the hair, a little paler than gold, which she had
inherited from her Scotch mother, and the large, sincere, hazel English
eyes which were like Captain Howard’s own. The delicate rose tint of
her cheek did not even fluctuate; she looked calmly at the young men
as they glared furiously at each other. But for her presence Captain
Howard would have ordered them to their respective quarters to avoid a
collision. Fort Prince George was not usually the scene of internecine
strife. He resented the suggestion as an indignity to himself. It
impaired the flavor of the dinner he had enjoyed, and jeopardized
digestion. It was a disrespect to the formality with which he had
complimented the occasion of his daughter’s arrival, inviting his old
neighbor’s grandson, with his especial friend, and wearing his powdered
wig, his punctilious dress uniform, pumps, and silk hose. It had been
long since his table was graced by a woman arrayed ceremoniously for
dinner, and the sight of his daughter in her rose-hued tabby gown, with
shining arms and shoulders and a string of pearls around her throat,
was a pleasant reminder to him, in this bleak exile, of the customs
of old times, soon to be renewed, the more appreciated for compulsory
disuse. Captain Howard, watching the group as the young men glowered at
each other, was amazed to think that she looked as if she enjoyed it,
the image of demure placidity.
“The Cherokees call the moon _Neusse anantoge_, ‘the sleeping sun,’”
said the captain-lieutenant, making no rejoinder to Raymond.
“La! How well you speak their language, Mr. Mervyn, to be sure. Oh-h,
how musical! As lovely as Italian! Oh-h-h--how I wish I could learn
it before I go back to England! Sure, ’twould be monstrous genteel to
know Cherokee in London. _Neusse anantoge._ I’ll remember that. ‘The
sleeping sun.’ I’ll say that again. _Neusse anantoge. Neusse anantoge._”
“_Neusse anantoge!_” cried Raymond, with a fleering laugh. “Gad,
Mervyn, you _are_ moon-struck.”
His bright dark eyes were angry, although laughing. They seemed to
hold a light like coals of fire, sometimes all a-smoulder, and again
vivid with caloric or choler. With his florid complexion and dark hair
and eyes the powder had a decorative emphasis which the appearance of
neither of the other men attained. The lace cravat about his throat
was of fine texture and delicately adjusted, but it was frayed along
the edge in more than one place and the lapels of his red coat hardly
concealed this. Woman-like she was quick to discern the insignia of
genteel poverty, and she pitied him with a sympathy which she would not
have felt for a rent of the skin or a broken bone. These were but the
natural incidents of a soldier’s life; blows and bruises must needs be
cogeners. She divined that his education and his commission were all
of value at his command,--the younger son of a good family, but poor
and proud,--and it was hard to live in a world of lace and powder on so
slender an endowment. She began to hate the precise and priggish George
Mervyn who roused him so, although the provocation came from Raymond,
and she was already wondering at her father that this dashing man, who
had a thousand appeals to a poetic imagination, stood no higher in
favor. She did not realize that a long command at Fort Prince George
was no promoter of a poetic imagination.
As Raymond spoke Miss Howard turned eagerly toward him, the dark red
curtain still in her hand, showing a section of the bleak, moonlit,
wintry scene in the distance, and in the foreground the stockaded
ramparts, the guard-house, its open door emitting an orange-tinted
flare of fire, the blue-and-black shadows lurking about the
block-house and the hard-trodden snow of the deserted parade.
“What do _you_ say it should be, then?” she demanded peremptorily, as
if she were determined not to be brought to confusion by venturing
incorrect Cherokee in London,--as if there a slip of the tongue would
be easily detected!
“How much Cherokee does _he_ know?” interposed Mervyn, satirically. “We
keep an interpreter in constant employ,--expressly for him.”
Raymond was spurred on to assert himself.
“_Neusse anantoge!_” he jeered. “Then what do you make of
_Nu-da-su-na-ye-hi_? That is ‘the sun sleeping in the night.’ And see
here, _Nu-da-ige-hi_. That is ‘the sun living in the day.’”
“_That?_--why, that is the Lower town dialect.”
“Oh, the Lower town dialect!” Raymond, in derision, whirled about on
the heels of his pumps, for he too was displaying all the glory of silk
hose. “The Lower town dialect,--save the mark! It is Overhill Cherokee.”
“Oh,--oh,--are there _two_ dialects of the Cherokee language?” cried
Arabella. “How wonderful! And of the different towns! Oh-h--which _are_
the lower towns? and oh,--Mr. Raymond, how prodigiously clever to know
both the dialects!”
Captain Howard lifted his head with a brusque challenge in his eye.
He tolerated none but national quarrels. He did not understand the
interests in conflict. But he thought to end them summarily. The words
“moonling,” “moon-struck,” and the tone of the whole conversation were
not conducive to the conservation of the peace. Raymond had conducted
himself in a very surly and nettling manner all through the day toward
his quondam friend, who, so far as Captain Howard could see, had given
him no cause of offence.
He was obviously about to strike into the conversation, and all three
faces turned toward him, alert, expectant. The suave inscrutable
countenance of the young lady merely intimated attention, but it was
difficult for the two young men to doff readily their half scoffing
expressions of anger and defiance and assume the facial indicia of
respect and deference and bland subservience due to their host, their
senior, and their superior officer.
His sister, however, quickly forestalled his acrid comments. Mrs.
Annandale ostensibly played the part of duenna to her niece and of
acquiescent chorus to her brother’s dictatorial opinions. But in
her secret heart she controverted his every prelection, and she
countermarched his intentions with an unsuspected skill that was the
very climax of strategy, for she brought him to the conviction that
they were his own plans she had furthered and his own orders she had
executed. Her outer aspect aided her designs--it was marvellously
incongruous with the character of tactician. She had a scanty little
visage, pale and wrinkled, with small pursed-up lips, closely drawn in
meek assent, and small bright eyes that twinkled timorously out from
gray lashes. A modish head-dress surmounted and concealed her thin
gray locks, and an elaborately embroidered kerchief, crossed over the
bosom of her puce-colored satin gown, conforming in the décolleté cut
to the universal fashion of the day, hid the bones of her wasted little
figure. She was very prim, and mild, and upright, as she sat in the
primitive arm-chair, wrought by the post-carpenter and covered with a
buffalo-skin. In a word she turned the trend of the discourse.
“M--m--m,” she hesitated. “Sure, ’twould seem one dialect might express
all the ideas of the Indians--they have a monstrous talent for silence.”
She looked directly at Raymond from out her weak, blinking little eyes.
“They talk more among themselves, madam, and when at home,” responded
Raymond, turning away from the young people at the window, and leaning
against the high mantel-piece, one hand on the shelf as he stood on the
opposite side of the fire from Mrs. Annandale. “They are ill at ease
here at the fort,--the presence of the soldiers abashes and depresses
them; they are much embittered by their late defeat.”
Mrs. Annandale shuddered. She was afraid of wind and lightning; of
waters and ghosts; of signs and omens; of savages and mice; of the dark
and of the woods; of gun-powder and a sword-blade.
“And are you not frightened of them, Mr. Raymond?” she quavered.
He stared in amazement, and Captain Howard, restored to good temper,
cocked up his eyes humorously at the young soldier. The vivid red
and white of Raymond’s complexion, his powdered side-curls, and his
bold, bright hazel eyes, were heightened by the delicacy of his lace
cravat, and his red uniform was brought out in fine effect by the
flaring light of the deep chimney-place, but Mrs. Annandale’s heart
was obdurate to all such appeals, even vicariously. A side glance
had shown her that the young people at the window had drawn closer
together and a low-toned and earnest conversation was in progress
there,--the captain-lieutenant was talking fast and eagerly, while
the girl, holding the curtain, looked out at the dreary wintry aspect
of the sheeted wilderness, the frontier fort, and the “sleeping sun”
resting softly in the pale azure sky, high, high above the Great Smoky
Mountains. The duenna pressed her lips together in serene satisfaction.
“M--m--m. I should imagine you would be so frightened of the Indians,
Mr. Raymond,” she said.
“Ha--ha--ha--!” laughed Captain Howard, outright.
Mrs. Annandale claimed no sense of humor, but she was a very efficient
mirth-maker, nevertheless.
“I am beholden to you, madam,” said the young soldier, out of
countenance. He could not vaunt his courage in the presence of his
commander, nor would he admit fear even in fun. He was at a loss for a
moment.
“It is contrary to the rules of the service to be afraid of the
Indians,” he said after a pause; “Captain Howard does not permit it.”
“Oh,--but how can anyone help it!--and they are so monstrous ugly!”
“They are considered very fine men, physically,” said Raymond.
“But they will never make soldiers,” interpolated Captain Howard. The
English government had done its utmost with the American Indians, as
with other subdued peoples of its dependencies, both earlier and later,
to incorporate their martial strength into the British armies, but the
aborigines seemed incapable of being moulded by the discipline of the
drill and the regulations of the camp, and deserted as readily as they
were enlisted, rewards and penalties alike of no effect.
“Oh, Mr. Raymond, no one could think them handsome!--they are--greasy!”
“The grease is to afford a surface for their paint, you must
understand. But it is a horribly unclean and savage custom.”
He never could account for a shade of offence on the lady’s
expressionless, limited face and a flush other than that of the rouge
on her delicate, little flabby cheek. How should he know that that
embellishment was laid on a gentle coating of pomade after the decrees
of fashion. He was not versed in the methods of cosmetics. He had been
on the frontier for the last three years--since his boyhood, in fact,
and that grace and gentlemanliness which so commended his address were
rather the results of early training and tradition than the influence
of association with cultured circles of society. He knew that he had
said something much amiss and he chafed at the realization.
“I am fitter for an atmosphere of gun-powder than attar of roses,” he
said to himself with a half glance over his shoulder at the window,
the pale moonlight making the face of the girl poetic, ethereal, and
shimmering on her golden hair.
The next moment, however, Mrs. Annandale claimed his attention,
annulling the idea that there had been aught displeasing in his remark.
“But sure, Mr. Raymond, there were never towns, called towns, such as
theirs--la!--what a disappointment, to be sure!”
“Ha! ha! ha!” exclaimed Captain Howard, mightily amused. “So you
are looking for the like of Bond Street and Charing Cross and the
Strand--eh!--in Estatoe, and Kulsage, and Seneca,--ha! ha! ha!”
Raymond winced a trifle lest the fragile little lady should find this
soldier-like pleasantry too bluff for a sensitive nature, but she
laughed with a subdued, deprecating suggestion of merriment. He could
not imagine, as she lent herself to this ridicule, that she construed
it as humoring the folly of the commandant, of whom indeed she always
spoke behind his back in a commiserating way as “poor dear Brother.”
She had so often outwitted the tough old soldier that she looked upon
his prowess as a vain thing, his fierce encounters with the national
foe mere figments of war compared with those subtle campaigns in which
she so invariably worsted him. She laughed at herself. She could afford
it.
“Dear Brother,” she said, “Charlestown is not London, to be sure,
but we found it vastly genteel for its size. There is everything a
person of taste requires for life--on a scale, to be sure--on a minute
scale. But there is a theatre, and a library of books, so learning
is not neglected, and a race-course, and a society of tone. Lord,
sir, strangers, well introduced, have nothing to complain of. I’m
sure Arabella and I were taken about till we could have dropped with
fatigue, Mr. Raymond--what with Whisk and Piquet for me and a minuet
for her, night after night, everywhere we went, we might well have
thought ourselves in London. And Lord, sir, the British officers there
are so content they seem to think they have achieved Paradise.”
“I’ll warrant ’em,” and Captain Howard wagged his head scoffingly,
meditating on the contrast with his past hardships in the frontier
service.
“And being mightily charmed with what I had seen of the province I was
struck with a cold chill by the time I’d crossed Ashley Ferry--the
woods half dark by day and a cavern by night; and such howlings of
owls, and lions, and tigers, I presume--”
“Oh, ho--ho--ho!” exclaimed Captain Howard. “I’ll detail you, Ensign
Raymond, to drill the awkward squad in natural history.”
Raymond, responsive to the spirit of the jest, stood at attention and
saluted, as if receiving a serious assignment to duty.
He was not of a wily nature, nor especially suspicious. He had keen
perceptions, however, and his own straightforward candor aided them in
detecting a circuitous divergence from the facts; when Mrs. Annandale
declared herself so terrified that she had begged and prayed her niece
and her brother to turn back, he realized dimly that this was not the
case, that it was by her own free will the party had kept on, and that
Arabella would never have had the cruelty to persist in the undertaking
against her aunt’s desire, nor had she the authority to compass this
decision. But why had the little woman mustered the determination, he
marvelled, for this long and arduous journey. He looked at her with
the sort of doubtful and pitying yet fearful repulsion with which a
scientist might study a new and very eccentric species of insect. He
could realize that she had suffered all the fright and fatigue she
described. Her puny little physique was indeed inadequate to sustain so
severe a strain, bodily and mentally. Her fastidious distaste to the
sight and customs of the Indians was itself a species of pain. Why had
she come?
“Before we reached Ninety-Six I saw the first of the savages. Oh,--Mr.
Raymond,--it seems a sort of indecency in the government to make war on
people who wear so few clothes. They ought to be allowed to peacefully
retire to the woods.”
“Oh--ho--ho--ho!--that’s the first time I ever heard the propriety of
the government called in question,” said Captain Howard. He glanced
over his shoulder to make sure that Arabella had not overheard this
jest of doubtful grace.
“She’s busy,” Mrs. Annandale reassured him with a sort of smirk of
satisfaction, which impressed Raymond singularly unpleasantly. He too
glanced over his shoulder. The tall, fair, graceful young officer could
hardly appear to greater advantage than Mervyn did at this moment, in
the blended light of the fire and the moon, for the candles on the
table scarcely sent their beams so far. The rich dress of the girl
was accented and embellished by the simplicity of the surroundings.
Her head was turned aside--only the straight and perfect lines of her
profile showed against the lustrous square of the window. She still
held the curtain and, while he talked, she silently listened and gazed
dreamily at the moon. There was a moment of embarrassment in the group
at the fireside, as they relinquished their covert scrutiny, and
Raymond’s ready tact sought the rescue of the situation.
“It has been urged that we armed the Indians against ourselves through
the trade in peace,” he suggested.
“And now Mrs. Annandale thinks they ought to be put in the pink of the
fashion before being shot at--ha--ha--ha!” returned Captain Howard.
“Then their towns,--a-lack-a-day,--to call them towns! A cluster
of huts and wigwams, and a mound, and a rotunda, and a play-yard.
They frightened me into fits with their proffers of hospitality. The
women--dressed in some vastly fine furs and with their hair plaited
with feathers--came up to our horses and offered us bread and fruit;
oh, and a kind of boiled meal and water; and Arabella partook and said
it was nice and clean but I pressed my hands to my stomach and rolled
up my eyes to intimate that I was ill; and indeed I was at the very
sight of them,” Mrs. Annandale protested.
Once more she glanced over her shoulder, thinking her niece might
hear her name; again that smirk of satisfaction to note the mutual
absorption of the two, then, lest the pause seem an interruption, she
went on:
“And have these wretches two sets of such towns? lower and
upper--filthy abominations!”
“No, no, Claudia,” said the captain, shaking his head, “they are clean,
they are clean--clean as floods of pure water can make them. Every town
is on a rock-bound water-course, finest, freshest, freest streams in
the world, and every Indian, big and little, goes under as a religious
duty every day. No, they are clean.”
“Dear heart!” exclaimed the lady, without either contention or
acquiescence.
“And they wear ample clothes, too. The buck-skin hunting-shirt and
leggings of our frontiersmen are copied from the attire of the Indians.
If you saw savages who were scantily clothed they must have been very
poor, or on the war-path against other Indians--for they wear clothes,
as they construe them, on ordinary occasions.”
“How nice of them,” commented Mrs. Annandale. “Shows their goodness of
heart.”
Once more Raymond bent the gaze of an inquiring scrutiny upon the
lady--simple as she was, he had not yet classified her. She had begun
to exert a sort of morbid fascination upon him. He did not understand
her, and the enigma held him relentlessly.
He had not observed a motion which Arabella had made once or twice to
quit the _tête-à-tête_ beside the window, and he was taken by surprise
when she suddenly approached the fire. Standing, tall and slender and
smiling, between him and her father, with her hand on the commandant’s
chair, she addressed the coterie at large:--
“What a jovial time you seem to be having!”
Raymond’s heart plunged, and Mervyn reddened slightly with an annoyance
otherwise sedulously repressed. She spoke with a naïve suggestion as of
an enforced exclusion from the fun. “What is all this talk about?”
“Mr. Raymond has been admiring the Indians’ taste in dress,” said Mrs.
Annandale, titteringly,--“he says they wear the hides of beasts,--their
own hides.”
Captain Howard frowned. It did not enter into his scheme of things to
question the discretion of a professed duenna. He was confused for a
moment, and it seemed to him that the fault lay in Raymond’s bad taste
in the remark rather than in its repetition. It did not occur to him
that it was made for the first time.
Raymond, realizing that for some reason Mrs. Annandale sought to place
him at a disadvantage, was on the point of gasping out a denial, but
the gaucherie of contradicting a lady, and she the sister of his host,
deterred him.
Though the young girl was convent-bred with great seclusion and care,
she had emerged into an atmosphere of such sophistication that she was
able to seem to have apprehended naught amiss. She bent her eyes with
quiet attention on her aunt’s face when Mrs. Annandale said abruptly:--
“Tell George Mervyn how oddly those gypsies were dressed--gypsies, or
Hindoos, or whatever they were--that camped down on the edge of the
copse close to his grandfather’s park gates last fall, and told your
fortune!”
“Was it on our side of the ha-ha, or your side?” asked Mervyn, eagerly.
For as Raymond understood the property of the two families adjoined,
large and manorial possessions on the part of the Mervyns, and with
their neighbors a very modest holding--a good old house but with little
land.
“Oh, to think of the copse!” cried Mervyn with a gush of homesick
feeling,--“to think of the beck! I could almost die to be a boy again
for one hour, bird-nesting there once more!”
“Even if I made you put the eggs back?” Arabella smiled.
“Though they would never hatch after being touched,” he corroborated.
“But tell the story, Arabella. Tell what the gypsy said,” urged Mrs.
Annandale, significantly.
The young lady still stood, her hand resting on her father’s chair. She
looked down into the fire with inscrutable hazel eyes. Her face seemed
to glow and pale, as the flames flared and fell and sent pulsations of
shoaling light along the glistening waves of her pink tabby gown.
“I don’t care what the gypsy said,” she returned.
“But you cared then--enough to cross her hand with silver!” cried
Mrs. Annandale. “And, George, your grandfather, Sir George, came
riding by--I think that gray cob is a rather free goer for the old
gentleman--and he reined up by the hedge and looked over. And he said,
‘Make it gold, young lady, if you want it rich and true. Buy your
luck--that’s the way to get it!’”
Captain Howard stirred uneasily. “Sir George is right--the gypsy hussy
is bought; she gives a shilling fortune for a shilling and a crown of
luck for a crown. I have no faith in the practice.”
“You will when you hear this, dear Brother. Tell what the gypsy said,
Arabella!” Mrs. Annandale leaned forward with her small mouth tightly
closed and her small eyes twinkling with expectation.
“Oh, I have clean forgot,” declared Arabella, her eyes still on the
coals and standing in the rich illumination of the flare.
“I have not forgot. I heard every word!” exclaimed the wily tactician.
Now Arabella lifted her long dark lashes, and it seemed to Raymond
that she sent a glance of pleading expostulation, of sensitive appeal
to meet the microscopic glitter in the pinched and wizened pale face.
Mervyn waited in a quiver of expectation, of suspense; and Raymond,
wounded, excluded, set at naught, as he had felt, was sensible of a
quickening of his pulses. But why did the old woman persist?
“There is nothing in such prophecies,” said Captain Howard, uneasily.
“She said you had a lover over seas,--didn’t she, my own?”
The girl, looking again at the red fire, nodded her golden head
casually, as if in renewing memory.
“One who loved you, and whom you loved!”
Mervyn caught his breath. The blood had flared into his face. He held
himself tense and erect by a sheer effort of will, but any moment he
might collapse into a nervous tremor.
“She said--oh, she said--” exclaimed Mrs. Annandale, prolonging the
suspense of the moment and clasping her mittened hands about her knees,
leaning forward and looking into the fire, “she said he was handsome,
and tall, and blond. And you--you didn’t know in the least who he
was; though you gave her another crown from pure good will!” And Mrs.
Annandale tittered teasingly and archly, as she glanced at Mervyn.
“Oh, yes, I did know who he was,”--the girl electrified the circle by
declaring. “That is why I gave her more money.”
Her eyes were wide and bright. She tossed her head with a knowing air.
Her cheeks were scarlet, and the breath came fast over her parted red
lips.
Mrs. Annandale sat in motionless consternation. She had lost the helm
of the conversation and it seemed driving at random through a turmoil
of chopping chances. Mervyn looked hardly less frightened,--as if he
might faint,--for he felt that his name was trembling on Arabella’s
lips. It was like the chaos of some wild unexplained dream when she
suddenly resumed:--
“The gypsy meant Monsieur Delorme, my drawing-master at Dijon--all the
pupils were in love with him--I, more than all--handsome and adorable!”
Raymond’s eyes suddenly met Mervyn’s stony stare of amazement. He did
not laugh, but that gay, bantering, comprehending look of joyful relish
had as nettling a sting as a roar of bravos.
Captain Howard was but just rescued from a dilemma that had bidden fair
to whelm all his faculties, but his disgust recovered him.
“Oh, fie!”--he said rancorously. “The drawing-master! Fudge!”
Mrs. Annandale had the rare merit of knowing when she was defeated. She
had caused her brother to invite Raymond merely that the invitation
to Mervyn might not seem too particular. But having this point secure
she had given him not one thought and not a word save to engage his
attention and permit Mervyn’s _tête-à-tête_ with her niece. Since
her little scheme of bantering the two lovers, as she desired to
consider them, or rather to have them consider each other, had gone
so much awry, she addressed herself to obliterate the impression it
had made. She now sought to ply Raymond with her fascinations, and
with such effect that Mervyn, who had been occupied with plans to
get himself away so that he might consider in quiet the meaning of
her demonstration and the girl’s unexpected rejoinder, was amazed
and dismayed. Mrs. Annandale was of stancher stuff than he thought,
and though afterward she much condemned the result of her inquiries
touching family relations and mutual acquaintance in England, this
seemed to be the only live topic between a young man and an elderly
woman such as she, specially shaken as she had been by the downfall
of all her plans in the manipulation of the treacherous Arabella. She
had not, indeed, intended to elicit the fact that Raymond was nearly
connected with some of the best people in the kingdom, that his family
was so old and of so high a repute that a modern baronetcy was really
a thing of tinsel and mean pretence in comparison. Among them there
was no wealth of note, but deeds of distinction decorated almost
every branch of the family tree. When at last she could bear no more
and rose, admonishing her niece to accompany her, terminating the
entertainment, as being themselves guests, Arabella, sitting listening
by the side of the fire, thrown back in the depths of the arm-chair
among the furs that covered it, exclaimed naively: “What! So early!”