It was Captain Howard’s faithful belief that a good cook was as
important to the commander of a garrison as an efficient fort-adjutant.
The soup was redolent of sherry; the trout had been prepared with an
earnest solicitude that might be accounted prayer, and made a fine show
arranged on a bed of water-cress that had sprouted before the late
snows; the lamb, a rarity on the frontier, sent up an aromatic incense
of mint sauce. All the brandied cherries had not gone as gifts to the
Indians. A tart of preserved fruits, served with cream from a cherished
cow, found friends all around the board; and a charming dish of
Floating Island was so submerged in brandy that Mrs. Annandale opined
it might be called--“Half seas over.”
One might not have divined that Mrs. Annandale’s sharp truculence in
orders and admonitions had added wings to the swiftness of the cook
and roused him to accomplish his utmost. She looked suave and benign
as she presided in festival array over the feast that did the quarters
so much honor. All was jollity and genial good fellowship as the three
ranged themselves around the table. The two tall silver candle-sticks,
with their wax candles, lighted up smiling faces as they looked at one
another across the well-spread board, which so definitely belied Mrs.
Annandale’s pretended solicitude for the state of the commandant’s
larder.
There was something singularly home-like in the informal little feast,
and it appealed gratefully to the sentiment of the young soldier who
had seen naught of home for three long years. He laughed at Mrs.
Annandale’s sallies and made bold to fling them back at her. He
explained with long-winded and eager diligence all frontier conditions
that seemed to impress Arabella. He talked of his immediate future
after his return to England, his plans for the next few years, with
an intimate expectation of their responsive interest which sent a
glow to the pallid cheek of the wily tactician, for it was as if in
his anticipation they shared in these events. She doubted if Arabella
perceived this collocation of his ideas--she was sure that he was
not aware how definitely he had expressed them to her intuitive
comprehension. But she could piece together the thought in his mind
with the suggestion in his speech, and the coherence combined in the
augury of the fulfilment of her dearest dream. They sat long at table;
the candles had burned so low that Mrs. Annandale was fain to cock her
head like a sparrow as she peeped around the blaze.
“My certie,” she exclaimed at last, “you cannot sit till midnight over
your bottle when you come to dine with two lone lorn women. Clear away
the dishes, man--” (this to the servant), “and don’t let them clatter,
if you want whole bones.”
And when they were all gone,--disappearing as silently as crockery
could,--and the three were about the fire once more, the lute was
brought, and Arabella sang the songs of home to the exiles. Out at the
door the sentinel, always posted at the commanding officer’s quarters,
paused on his beat and stood still to listen, spell-bound. The grand
rounds, returning along the ramparts, slackened their march to hear
the tinkling vibrations and the dulcet, romantic, melancholy voice,
that seemed somehow of kinship with the moonlight, a-glimmer outside,
on the great bastion; with the loneliness of the vast wilderness; with
the vague lilting rune of the river; with the mournful undertone of the
wind, rising in the distance.
George Mervyn felt at the blissful portal of an earthly paradise, as
yet too sacred to enter, but in his tremors, his delighted expectancy,
his tender visions, there was no stir of doubt. He felt her demand
of homage; more than once this day he had been sensible of her power
intentionally exerted upon him. She desired him to fall at her feet.
Now and again her eyes warned him that he should not think less of
her than her large meed. And then the wistful sweetness when she had
besought his care! It was hers--it should be hers for life! There
seemed even now but a word to speak between them. He watched her as she
sat glimmering in silver and white, half in the shadow, half in the
light, the lute in her hand, her graceful head and neck bent forward,
her eyes on the fire. The song ended; the strings ceased to vibrate;
the echo stirred and failed and there was a long pause, while the
firelight flashed, and the walls glowed, and the white feathery ash
shifted lightly in the stronger draught of the fire, for the wind was
rushing in at the crevices of the window, drawing with the heated air
up the great chimney. The sentinels as they walked their beats outside
noted its gathering strength, and glanced from time to time toward
the sky, mindful of the sombre, fateful portent of the great cloud in
the west that now reached near the zenith, the moonlight showing the
tumult and trouble of its convolutions, its densities, its cavernous
recesses, the subtleties of the variations of its shoaling tints, from
the deepest purple through all the gamut of color to the edges of
glistening gray.
Suddenly there came a deafening crash. A vivid white flash flickered
through the room. The next moment the loud rote of the echoes of the
thunder was reverberating through the mountain defiles; the surging of
the wind sounded like the engulfing turmoils of a tidal wave, and the
rain beat tumultuously on the roof.
Mrs. Annandale, all unaware of the coming tempest, by reason of the
curtained window and her own absorptions, sprang to her feet with a
wild little cry of blended terror and temper, and Arabella, pressing
her hands to her eyes, let the lute slip from her lap to the floor,
where its impact sent out a hollow dissonance. Mervyn had stooped to
pick it up when Mrs. Annandale clutched him by the arm.
“Why didn’t you tell me a storm was coming?” she demanded.
“Dear madam, I did not know it myself,” said Mervyn, gently, yet
nevertheless constrained to smile. So does a superiority to the fears
of others elate the soul that he did not even shrink from the claw-like
grip that the skinny fingers of the little woman was making felt even
among the tough muscles of his stalwart arm. “Believe me, there is no
danger.”
He spoke in the random way in which men see fit to reassure a terrified
woman or child. Seldom is the insincerity of this haphazard benevolence
so signally exposed as in the next moment when an insupportable,
white, sinister brilliance filled the room, a terrific crash stunned
their ears, and the ashes and coals from the fireplace were scattered
in showers about the apartment, the bolt evidently having struck the
chimney.
“Oh!--oh!--you wicked man!--(where’s my sal volatile!) to mislead your
old friend and neighbor! No danger! No danger! Why, the powers of the
air cried out upon your deceits!” she exclaimed, between sniffs at the
hartshorn in a little gilded bottle that hung from a chain about her
waist.
There seemed a vast incongruity between Mervyn’s mild short-comings and
the tumultuous rebukes of the thunder as it rolled about the house.
Despite his duplicity he was esteemed by the old lady the most reliable
support attainable against the anger of the elements, and she clung to
one arm, while he held the lute in the other hand. As he turned to note
how far the coals had been scattered on the puncheons, the instrument
struck the back of a chair and the blow elicited a plaintive susurrus
of protest. At the unexpected sound Mrs. Annandale gave a galvanic
start so violent that it seemed as if it might have dislocated every
bone in her body.
“Man alive!” she exclaimed, irritably, upon observing the cause of the
sound, “put the dratted thing down--somewhere--anywhere! Do you think
this is a time to go perking and majoring around, like a troubadour!”
One might have thought the lute was hot, so quickly did Mervyn let
it slide upon the table. Then with a certain air of importance, for
he was not accustomed to be rated in this tone, and infinitely did
he deprecate ridicule in the presence of Arabella, he said, “Let me
conduct you to a chair, Mrs. Annandale; you would be more comfortable
seated.”
Despite her nerves and terror the little lady detected the change in
his tone, and made haste to insinuate her apology.
“Oh, child--child!” she said, gazing up artfully at him. “You do not
know what it is to be afraid--you are the very spirit and frame of a
soldier! But me--Lord!--I _am_ so timid!”
And with another flash and crash she clung to him anew.
As far as a mere matter of good-nature might go, Mervyn would not have
hesitated to sacrifice his comfort or pleasure to the terrors with
which he could not sympathize; he would have permitted her indefinitely
whatever solace she derived from her painful grip upon his arm. But
he had become alert to the idea of ridicule. He was aware that he
cut a farcical figure as he stood in the pronounced elegance of his
attire,--his brilliant gold-laced uniform, his powdered hair, the
delicate, costly lace at throat and wrist, his silk stockings and
gold-buckled shoes,--in the custody of the ancient lady, clinging
frantically to his arm, and berating him as she would. At all events
he had been subjected to the situation in Arabella’s presence as long
as he had a mind to endure it. Mrs. Annandale felt very definitely
the firmness of his intention under the gentle touch as he contrived
to unloose her clutch, and holding the tips of her fingers with a
courtly gesture he led her across the room and to a seat. She sank
down with a sense of luxury amidst the soft folds of the buffalo rug
that covered it, but she relinquished his arm reluctantly. She felt
the need of something alive to cling to--a fold of the buffalo rug did
not answer; something to clutch that could tingle and respond with
sympathy. Suddenly she caught at the chain that hung from her waist and
supported her fan, her pomander-box, and a bunch of trinkets of more or
less utility, and sounded a silver whistle--a dulcet, seductive tone
all incongruous with the service to which it summoned. This man was no
better than a lay-figure, she said scornfully within herself,--a mere
bit of padding, tricked out in the latest military style! He hadn’t
enough mortality about him to feel the electric thrills in the air. He
could not hear the thunder, he could not see the lightning,--and for
her own part she wished it might strike close enough to tickle him, and
to tickle him well, provided of course it tickled no one else. She
wanted her maid; she wanted Norah; who was here on the instant at the
door, with very big eyes and red cheeks, smart enough, too, with a blue
dimity gown and white cap and apron.
“And why are you genuflecting there at the door, you vixen?” cried the
irate lady, as the girl reached her side. “Waiting to see me struck by
lightning, eh?”
“Oh, no, sure, mem. God is good!” volunteered the girl, reassuringly.
“Oh,” said Mrs. Annandale, fairly rebuked. “Oh--ah--He has that
reputation, to be sure!” Then recovering herself and mindful of the
presence of Mervyn: “And remember, girl, nobody but the sinner ever
doubts it--the depraved sinner! Never--_never_ let me hear of your
doubting it!”
She tossed up her chin with her head-dress aloft with something of a
pose, as if she herself had preached the little sermon. Then she turned
smoothly to Mervyn, with her best airy grace somewhat shivered as she
quaked before inconsiderable flashes of lightning--“If you will excuse
me I will return, after taking a dose of that Indian remedy for the
nerves which was recommended so highly to dear Brother.”
Mervyn, remembering the curious knowledge of toxicology which the
Indians possessed and their extraordinary skill in distilling vegetable
poisons, ventured to remonstrate.
“Dear madam,” he said, still standing beside the table where he was
waiting to hand her to the door, “have a care what you drink.”
“I might say that to you--if the decanter were on the table,” she
retorted, with her customary sparkle and smile, which a sudden flash
distorted into a grimace before she had finished speaking.
“True,--only too true, and especially on the frontier,” assented
Mervyn, showing his susceptibility to her pleasantry by a formal
smile, something really in the manner of the lay-figure, “but some
acquaintance with the herbal remedies is essential to safety,
and--pardon me--the only Indian remedy that Captain Howard uses is
bullets.”
“For his own nerves--” began the lady.
“The decanter,”--Mervyn laughed, a trifle abashed.
“Dear Aunt,” Arabella struck in, somewhat alarmed, “pray be careful.”
She had been standing most of the time since the tempest began to rage,
one hand resting on the back of the chair beside her, the other lifted
to the high mantel-piece. Her face was pale and grave, now and then she
shuddered at the sinister white glister of the lightning. She looked
tall and stately in her silver-shotted shoaling gray silk, glimmering
in the shadow and sheen of the fire, and now and then of a transcendent
dazzling whiteness in the fugitive flashes of the lightning. Mervyn
had longed to reassure her with a word, a look, for he divined her
fright, and even--so does love extend the sympathies--the nervous
shock that the mere flarings and uproar of the tempest must inflict on
more delicate sensibilities than those of a frontier soldier, but Mrs.
Annandale’s demands upon his attention had absorbed his every faculty.
His heart melted within him at her next words.
“Pray,--pray, dear Aunt, do be careful. Listen to Mr. Mervyn.”
“Listen to him yourself!” cried the old lady, who hardly for her life
could have forborne the quip and the confusion it occasioned her niece.
It gave less point to the moment when she flustered out of the room,
and Mervyn, hastily bestirring himself to hand her to the door which
her maid ran to open, turned with a sense of infinite relief toward the
fire.
He wondered at himself afterward. He knew that he had but a moment;
that Arabella’s poise was already shaken by the events of the evening;
that there were days to come when occasion would offer a more
propitious opportunity for solitude _à deux_. He could not resist
her aspect; he could no longer deny himself the bliss of merging
expectation in certainty.
He crossed the hearth and stood by her side. He saw the surprise in her
eyes; the flush flutter in her cheek; the tense lifting of her figure
into an added stateliness, an obvious pride. She looked a very queen as
she turned her head--and after all, he was the suitor.
“And will you listen?”--he said, catching the phrase. “Will you let me
tell you how I worship you--how I worship you, how every glance of your
eye and every turn of your head and every intonation of your voice is
almost sacred to me? It hardly seems a sacrilege to say I could fall at
your feet and adore you. And will you look kindly on my suit? And will
you hear my humble prayer? And will you reward my devotion? Will you be
my wife?”
He had acquitted himself very prettily, and with a rare interpretation
of her state of mind. She had begun to like him well, but it was not
enough that she should like him. His phrase-making fed her pride. He
had much to offer, and he offered his abundance in great abasement.
As she slowly lifted her eyes they met his; and he went on without
waiting for a reply. “I wonder at my courage in speaking at all,” he
said. “It seems impossible that you should care--or that you should
come in time to care for me.”
He paused, and in the tenseness of the silence the beat of the rain on
the roof had an inimical suggestion as if in its turbulence it might
come flying in at them. The thunder rolled and the echoes followed with
hollow reverberations hardly less resonant. The lightnings flickered
over her face and figure, and she visibly quailed a little, and he drew
nearer.
“When you asked me to take care of you--the other day--I could scarcely
keep from begging for that privilege forever. It would be my blessed
and sacred duty--it would be my life’s crown. No behest on earth can be
so dear to me as those words. But let it be forever.”
There was continued silence.
“You will speak to me,” he said with feeling.
She turned her fan in her hand--she was agitated, but inscrutable.
“I know you so little,” she faltered, and he was sensible of a sudden
reaction of the heart; he had been chilled by the fear that she might
actually refuse.
“And I am glad of that,” he said heartily, and with a cheery
intonation. “While there is nothing in my experience that is
dishonorable, still I feel so unworthy of you that I am glad to have
the chance of building myself up into something better than I have
been, for you to learn to know. I love you for what you are, but I
want you to love me for what I shall be for your dear sake.” His words
were enthusiastic, his heart beat fast, his face flushed with eager
expectation.
It was impossible not to be flattered. “Nobody that was _anybody_,”
quotha! “He held himself so high! So far,” forsooth, “above a girl
without fortune,” the good duenna had said!
Arabella’s pride had stormed the citadel, albeit his own fancy had made
the breach. Her pride shone in her eyes, held her head aloft, flushed
her fair, meditative, dignified face. He thought with exultation how
she would grace all he had to bestow--more--far more.
“My love,” he almost whispered, “I wish I had a crown to lay at your
feet; you look like a queen.”
She burst out laughing with pleasure, declaring that Love was indeed a
villainous hood-winker, that he should be thus blinded to the aspect of
a girl whom he had known all her life, and whom he was now minded to
fancy a goddess.
“No fancy--no fancy--it is the truth--the eternal truth!”
“Yes--yes--tell the truth,” Mrs. Annandale cried, catching the last
word as she entered the room.
“Tell the truth while you can--while you are young. For when you are
old your conscience is stiff and you can’t. Well, the marplot storm
is almost over, and I suppose we may deal the cards for ‘three-handed
Ombre.’”
She noticed--for what could escape her keen glance--that the young
officer, though embarrassed and agitated, had an elated aspect, and the
girl’s stately carriage impressed her. “_My lady_, that is to be!” she
thought, with a glow of triumph. “And yet I departed this place only
some three minutes and a half ago.”
Still the thunder rolled, but further and further and further away,
and only the echoes were near--from the rocks of the neighboring
river-banks, the mountains, and the foothills hard by. Still the
lightning flashed, now in broad sheets, and now in long zigzag streaks
beyond the eastern woods. The tempest had passed over, and the moon was
struggling through the rack, now seeming on the crest of waves, again
lying in the trough of tossing clouds, like some beaten and buffeted
barque, resigned to fate, and riding out the storm.
Mrs. Annandale, seated at the table, glancing over the top of her
cards, was annoyed to perceive Norah genuflecting at the door to the
inner apartment, now opening it a bit, and as she caught the eye of
her irate mistress, closing it hastily.
“You baggage!” called out Mrs. Annandale, with such sudden sharpness
that Mervyn, notwithstanding his cast-iron nerves, started as if he
had been shot. The door closed instanter, tight and fast, and Norah,
leaning against it outside, had the strength to hope that her last hour
had not come. “What ails that girl? Are you bewitched, you hussy?”
“Perhaps she wants something,” suggested Arabella, whose loyal
temperament seldom made question of her aunt’s right to her
peculiarities; but she was somewhat ashamed of their exhibition
to-night--to-night, when she was both proud and happy.
“No, Miss, sit you still. By the time you and George Mervyn would be
through with all your bowings, and counter-bowings, and minuet-ings,
and handing each other to the door, the besom would have forgot what
she wants, or would have run a mile for fear of me. Come in, girl, and
speak up. Sure, I’ve no secrets to keep. Now, minx, what have you to
say to this worshipful company?”
Norah, red, miserable, and embarrassed, emerged from the door and stood
dropping courtesies of humble placation and twisting with a gesture of
apology one corner of her apron between her fingers.
“Please, mem,” she said, “I do be hearing that same knocking what went
on bangin’ an’ bangin’ in the storm, at the dure agin.”
“You ninny!” exclaimed Mrs. Annandale, in scorn. “Do you know that in
these colonies they burn folks alive for hearing what they can’t hear
and seeing what is not to be seen?”
The girl, looking thoroughly wretched, emitted a short, sharp squeal of
dismay that she tried a moment afterward to retrieve as a cough.
Mervyn had all an officer’s aversion to familiarity with inferiors
in rank, but as Arabella leaned back in her chair to be out of her
aunt’s range of vision, and gazed smilingly, reassuringly, at the maid,
blithely shaking her head the while, he thought her as kind as she was
lovely, and benignly watched the restoration of Norah’s composure.
“Sure, mem, all the time I did hear ut I tould yez av ut incessant, an’
yez thought ’twuz but the thunder, an’ the wind, an’ the rain. But now,
mem, it’s at the dure agin, fit to break it in, an’ onst at that low
windy some man climbed up, an’ knocked, he did, with his knuckles on
the glass.”
In the moment’s silence that followed her words the sullen sound of a
repeated knocking at the outer door was obvious. Mervyn suddenly rose,
throwing his cards down upon the table, and dashed through the hallway
to the outer door.
“Indians! Indians!” quavered Mrs. Annandale, in a paroxysm of terror.
“Indians, I’ll wager! Cherokees! Chickasaws, and those devils that wear
nose-rings--oh-h-h! and _me_--so timid!”
Then she said something that Arabella did not understand, and only
remembered long afterward.
“We might have caught this bird in England. There was no need to lime a
twig for him! Oh--why did I come, and leave my good home--and journey
over that nasty smelly ocean to this queer distracted country! Indians!
Indians! Indians!” she continued to quaver, rocking herself back and
forth, and Norah, flying to her side for protection, knelt at her knee
and mechanically repeated the word--Indians! Indians! as if it were the
response of some curious liturgy they had picked up in their travels.
Arabella snatched a blunderbuss of her father’s that swung above the
mantel-piece and pressed forward into the hall to make sure what
disaster had befallen them.
The outer door was open, and the wind still blowing steadily, had
extinguished the lamp. Without there was more light than within. She
could see the glistening surface of the parade in the moonbeams,
shining like darkly lustrous glass with the rainfall, and beyond,
the guard-house, near the gate. Its door stood broadly aflare, and
the yellow radiance of the firelight fell on the sodden and soaked
ground. But what surprised her at this hour was the number of figures
astir.--Could there really be a demonstration of the Cherokees
impending? she wondered, with a clutch of fear at the heart, hearing
always the ominous chant from within--“Indians--Indians!” as mistress
and maid swayed in unison. She knew it behooved the rank and file to
be in barracks and in bed at this hour. She glanced toward the long,
low building where the soldiers were quartered. To her surprise the
lanterns, swinging in the galleries, showed the doors were open;
figures were going in and coming out. Then she observed that they moved
slowly and at their ease, loungingly, and there seemed to be much loud
but unexcited talk amongst them, continuous, as of the details of
individual experience. Whatever the sensation had been it was obviously
spent now. And thus she marked the conversation at the door.
Mervyn stood on the threshold, and on the step below a non-commissioned
officer was punctiliously saluting, his attitude, his uniform, his
face, rendered visible by the lantern which one of two soldiers held.
“Lieutenant Jerrold’s compliments, sir, hand Hi was to hinform you,
sir, that the fire is hout.”
“Fire! what fire?” exclaimed Mervyn, wildly, looking out in keen
anxiety, as if he expected to see the substantial block-houses, the
store-house, the armory, the guard-house, the barracks all vanish like
a mirage. The wind tossed his hair, dispersing its perfumed powder
backward through the hall, where Arabella scented the fragrance of
attar of roses blended with the dank odors of the rain-drenched woods.
“Sure, sir, the granary. The lightning struck it fust volley, and it
was blazing like a puffick pyr’mid in ten seconds.”
“The granary! Damme! Why was I not informed?”
“Sure, sir, the hofficer of the day sent a detail ’ere, sir, to hammer
on the door, but they got no answer, an’ the fire ’ad to be fit with
all ’ands, sir. Lieutenant Jerrold ’ad ’is fears for the fort.”
Mervyn, all unmindful of the dank, wintry air that played round his
legs, inadequately protected in silk hose and pumps, felt as if he
could faint. The garrison had fought out its battle for the very
existence of the little frontier fort, and he, the acting commandant,
tucked away in a lady’s bower, making love to one and soothing the
terrors of another--what did he say in the confidence of his inner
consciousness as he heard Mrs. Annandale’s patter, “Indians! Indians!”
He vaguely fancied there was a relish of the situation in the face of
the corporal, but he whirled about, intending to take his hat and go
to the scene of action. Then reflection stayed him. This would merely
gratify his personal curiosity and interest. Before he should meet the
other officers he preferred full official information of so serious a
mischance during his service as commandant of the garrison and fort.
“What was saved of the corn? What was done with it?”
“Lord, sir,--nothing! The fire raged like ’ell, and was as tall as a
tree, sir. And ’twas hall the men could do, sir, to keep the armory an’
store-house from going, too--they both caught fire. Nothing but the
tremenjous rain-burst saved the fort. The force ’ere couldn’t handle no
such fire as this ’ere one.”
“I daresay,--I daresay--” Mervyn affected an ease of manner he was
far from feeling. Then fury for the dilemma in which he was placed
overcame him anew. “It should have been reported to me. Who did he send
here?”
“Meself, sir, an’ Hi ’ammered with two men. But we was of the gyard,
sir, an’ the Injuns was right around the counterscarp an’ the horficer
of the gyard was fearful they’d rush the gate. Sure, sir, he had the
guns manned an’ fired blank ca’tridges to keep ’em at a distance.”
Was ever a commanding officer in so dolorous a plight--and for no fault
of his own?
Mervyn suddenly heard the rich stir of a paduasoy skirt in the darkness
near him, and with an effort curbed his vexation.
“This is all very well, since it ends well. But, my man, this is the
duty of the officer of the guard and the officer of the day. It doesn’t
concern me. You ought to know that. What is your mission to me from the
officer of the day?”
The man hesitated and stammered. He knew that he was detailing
news--the most momentous that had befallen Fort Prince George for many
a moon. He could hardly accept the statement that it concerned only the
officer of the day. He recalled himself hastily.
“Yes, sir, Hi was to mention Ensign Raymond’s arrival, sir. He wishes
to report to you, sir, and to see if the leddies have any messages for
Captain Howard, sir, as ’e is about to start up the river to rejoin
’im.”