Mervyn had not earlier been aware of the presence of Arabella in the
dimly lighted hall during the report of the corporal, but it was
coercive now. She had not intended concealment, and she broke out with
sudden enthusiasm. Her father’s absence counted but a few hours, but
the thought of it was as heavy as if it had endured for a year.
“Lord,--to be sure we want to send messages. Have Mr. Raymond in at
once, Mr. Mervyn, and let us hear what he has to say of papa, and how
he weathered the storm.”
The rich rustling of her silk dress as she fluttered through the
shadowy place, the clear, resonant note of happiness in her voice, her
gurgling, melodious laughter, and the striking of the light on her
sheeny attire and her golden hair as she flashed into the illuminated
room beyond were as unexpected as a supernatural vision to the
corporal, standing at gaze with his lantern at the door. Mervyn made
haste to dismiss him, hearing all the time the voices of the ladies
within raised beyond precedent.
“Not Indians--no Indians have come, Aunt Claudia!” cried Arabella. The
words merely added another repetition to the monotonous chant of the
two swaying women. “No Indians at all. Ensign Raymond has returned, and
is coming in!”
She stood in the centre of the floor, resplendent and joyous, and
waved her hand at arm’s length with a wide, free gesture to express
gratulation and safety.
Mrs. Annandale was suddenly silent, her face more dismayed than when
terror had distorted it. One might have thought the presence of
Raymond was even less welcome than a raid of Indians. Her jaw fell;
her head-dress was awry; her eyes grew troubled and then bright with a
spark of irritation.
“Why does the creature have to come here? Has George Mervyn no
better sense than to receive official reports in _my_ presence?” She
drew herself up to her extreme height to express the dignity of her
personality and to repudiate the contaminating influences of official
reports. But Raymond was already at the door.
A brief conference with Mervyn in the hall had sufficed for business,
for he had no official matters to report to the acting commandant. It
was merely a form to report at all. Raymond still cherished a proud
and wounded consciousness of the false position in which he had been
placed because of an exacting whim of his quondam friend. He could
not have put his finger on the spot, but he knew he was suffering a
counter-stroke for some blow dealt Mervyn’s vanity, unintentionally,
unperceived, he could not say how. He had taken his punishment--the
commandant’s reprimand, a most half-hearted performance--and the matter
had passed. But Mervyn, in view of their old intimacy, had an uneasy
wonder as to the terms on which they should meet again, and would
fain it had been otherwise than under circumstances in which, if not
obviously at fault, he was the ridiculous sport of an unsoldierly
chance. Raymond, throughout the interview, had deported himself with
punctilious formality, saluting with the respect due a superior
officer, bearing himself with a null inexpressiveness, phrasing what he
had to say with not a word to spare; only when he turned to the door
of the parlor, and Mervyn bade him pause, did his impetuous identity
assert itself.
“I hardly think,” said Mervyn, whose quick senses had caught something
of the old lady’s protest, which reinforced a jealous folly that
grudged even a glimpse of Arabella, “that a visit is in order at
present. Mrs. Annandale is not well and the hour is late; the
pettiaugre should not be kept waiting within the reach of marauding
Indians.”
He even went so far as to lay a detaining hand on the door.
“Under your favor, sir,” said Raymond, stiffly, his blood boiling,
his eyes on fire, “in so personal a matter I shall not consult your
pleasure. I shall wait upon the ladies with such news as I can give
them of the expedition.”
He had lifted his voice, and its round, rich volume penetrated the
inner apartment. The door opened suddenly from within and he was
greeted by Arabella, herself, in a sort of ecstasy of expectation. The
wilderness, in whose vastness her father was submerged, seemed not so
formidable when so soon after his departure she might have word how he
was faring in its depths.
“Oh, Mr. Raymond!--how good of you to come and tell us the news--”
“I feared I might be intrusive,” he hesitated, his ill-humor put to
rout at the very sight of her, and feeling a little abashed, a little
wistful in having forced his way, so to speak, into her presence.
“Why, no--!” she cried, her voice as fresh as a lark’s. “I wanted to
see you. I asked Mr. Mervyn to send for you!”
Mervyn flushed, and as she observed it she noticed that the red glow in
Raymond’s cheeks was deeper and richer than even their florid wont. The
eyes of both men glittered, and she had a sudden recollection of the
difficulty that had heretofore risen between them touching the guard
report,--had there been high words in the hall, she wondered.
Mrs. Annandale was endowed with many a sharp weapon which made her
enmity feared and her favor prized, and among these were certain
indescribable subtleties of manner which she wielded with great skill
and murderous effect. The very glance of her eye as she turned her gaze
upon Raymond might have abased many as sturdy a soul, but Arabella was
smiling upon him from the opposite side of the table, both elbows on it
and her chin on her clasped hands.
“Well, you here again?” the old lady said, her keen eyes twinkling
malevolently upon him as he stood beside a chair, his hand on its back,
“we thought--we really labored under the impression that we said
farewell to you early this afternoon.”
“And you shall have that pleasure again, dear madam, within the next
few minutes,” he retorted, with a courteous smile and a wave of the hat
in his hand.
Her eyes narrowed--he was the very essence of a marplot, so handsome,
with such a suggestion of reckless dash about him, yet with such a
steady look in his eye. He had, too, all the advantages of birth and
breeding, and for these she valued him even less. They placed him
where she claimed he had no right to be, among his superiors as wealth
would rate them. She was not rich, herself, but she had a sentiment of
contumely for the indications of wear in his service uniform, of work
in his heavy service sword, of the expectation of danger incident to
his profession, and the preparation for it evidenced in the pistols
he wore in his belt. His unpowdered hair, just drying off from the
soakings of the rain, showed its dark auburn hue. He was all most
freshly caparisoned, for the rain had not left a dry thread on him,
and he, too, was rather conscious of the shabbiness of his second best
uniform, donned since his arrival at the fort. In comparison, Mervyn,
hovering about, was but a lace and velvet presentment of a soldier, a
travesty of the idea expressed in fighting trim.
Arabella took, as she fancied, a sort of friendly interest in
Raymond--she loved that look in his eyes, that gay, gallant, fearless
glance; it reminded her of sunlight striking on water, and she knew
there were depths far, far beneath. There was something so genuine, so
vigorous, so hearty about his mentality; he would not know what to do
with a subterfuge. She loved to see his rising anger; she laughed with
a flattered delight when she thought of a suggestion of jealousy, for
her sake, of Mervyn, that she had noticed even on the first day of her
arrival,--things move swiftly on the frontier. She would like to sit
down beside him and hear him tell of his troubles,--how he hated, and
whom; how he loved, and whom; how he had only his sword to cut his way
through the world, and his way was like this impenetrable wilderness,
too thickly grown for a knight-errant of to-day to make place. She
would care rather to hear of his griefs than the joys of another man.
His failures were more picturesque than another man’s successes. She
would like to take out her little house-wife, and with her crafty
needle mend that rent in his white glove as he held it in his hand. She
reached for it suddenly, and if ever Mrs. Annandale could have bitten
an unsuspicious hand it was when her niece’s jewelled fingers began to
take in and out a tiny needle and a fine thread through the ripped seam
of the soldier’s glove.
“More than a few minutes,” she said, archly. “You can’t go without
this!”
Mrs. Annandale had the merit of knowing when the limit of forbearance
was reached.
“And now, my good Mr. Raymond,” she said, with a sour smile, “if you
are quite ready, and have peacocked about to your heart’s content,
and have handled your sword and fiddled with your pistols to make
Arabella and me see that you have got ’em on and are about to get used
to wearing such things, and are no play-soldier, though yesterday in
the nursery, we want to say we admire your terrible and blood-thirsty
appearance, and tremble mightily before you, and should like to know
what brought you back, and if anything ails Captain Howard.”
Arabella looked up quickly.
“Oh, nothing! Captain Howard is in fine health and spirits,” Raymond
hastened to stipulate.
“Then take time to sit down, Mr. Raymond,” Arabella said, for Mrs.
Annandale had malevolently left him standing. “What brought you back?”
“The sight of the burning granary,” said Raymond, sinking into a chair
with a goodly clatter of his warlike paraphernalia. “We had made fair
headway when we met the storm, and the wind scattered the pettiaugres
and drove us ashore. We went into an inlet where a ravine ran down the
mountain-side, but the water rose and backed up till we took to the
rocks, and emerging upon a high pinnacle commanding the face of the
country I spied the bonfire you had started here.”
“Did you hear the guns?” Mervyn asked, quietly. He had no hope to
delude the ladies with the idea that he had ordered the protective
firing. But if Raymond had heard the circumstance of his inopportune
seclusion it might foster a doubt in his mind.
Arabella noted that jovial widening of the pupils of Raymond’s eyes, an
expression as hilarious as a laugh. But he said gravely that at the
distance they had not discriminated between the discharge of the cannon
and of the thunder.
“Captain Howard was not very uneasy about the Cherokees; he thought
the fire was kindled by lightning, and at all events the main part of
our force was here. But he sent me to bring certain intelligence, and
as I am to rejoin him before dawn”--he was rising--“you will not, Mrs.
Annandale, tempt me beyond my strength.”
He looked down at her with so sarcastic a gleam in his eyes that for
once she was out of countenance.
“Hoity--toity,” she exclaimed, “we sharpen our wits in the pettiaugres.”
The glove was mended. Mervyn could not judge whether it were a mere
_façon de parler_, or whether the girl were a coquette at heart, or
whether Raymond had won upon her predilections, but he was seriously
disturbed and displeased when, with a pretty gesture of significance,
she cast it upon the table.
“I fling down the glove!” she said.
“I lift the glove!” he responded, in his full, steady voice.
And neither Mrs. Annandale nor Mervyn had quite the courage to ask
what manner of defiance this gage signified, or whether indeed it were
merely one of those vain trifles with which young people are wont to
solace their emptiness and lack of thought.
Raymond was bowing over the hands of the ladies, presently, and after
the fashion of the time he carried Mrs. Annandale’s to his lips. She
gave it to him with a touch of reluctance, as if she thought he had
some cause to bite it, but he dropped the member uninjured, and then he
was gone.
Mervyn lingered, but the fire was low, the geniality spent; Arabella,
half lost in one of the great chairs as she leaned far back, seemed
pensive, distraite; he, himself, could not raise his spirits to their
wonted tone; his mind was preoccupied with the unlucky chances of the
evening and the sorry figure he had cut when his rank had placed him
in command of the fort, and when he would most desire to deserve his
prominence. Mrs. Annandale alone preserved her uncanny, indomitable
freshness, and talked on with unabated vigor. But the evening was
over; to recur to its tender passages would need more auspicious
circumstances. He had few words for leave-taking, and when he had gone
Arabella slowly pulled herself out of the depths of the big chair,
and said how tired she was, and how long he had stayed. And then
she yawned. Mrs. Annandale looked at her sternly, opened her mouth
for rebuke, thought better of it, lighted her bedroom candle, and
disappeared.
Arabella stood for some moments with her own lighted candle in her
hand. The room was otherwise dark now, but for a dull glow of embers;
the barbaric decorations on the walls, the swan’s wings, the aboriginal
pictures, the quivers and fantastic medley of baskets, and calabashes,
and painted jugs wavered into visibility and again disappeared as
the flame flickered in the draught. She was thinking--she hardly
knew of what--she was tired--the evening had brought so much. She had
a sense of triumph in the capture of Mervyn, and that was an abiding
impression. She was glad to see Raymond--her heart was warm when she
thought of him. She fancied they had quarrelled because of her, and
this made her lips curl with relish--but they might quarrel again.
She must not let Mervyn’s jealousy go too far. She had half a mind to
tell her aunt of her victory--she, the penniless! But there would be
time enough. She took the candle in her hand and started up the steep
stairway from the hall. It was of rude construction, and the apartment
to which it led was an empty disused place upon which the rooms on
either side opened. It was situated in one angle of the house, and when
it was built had been intended for defensive service. Its outer sides
had a row of loop-holes at the usual height, and its walls projected
some three feet beyond the walls below like the upper story of a
block-house; a series of loop-holes that pierced the floor close to the
outer wall gave an opportunity to its possible defenders of shooting
downward at an enemy who should seek to enter or to fire the house
below. With all these loop-holes, admitting the air, the place was far
too open for occupation, save by soldiers, perhaps, in stress of siege.
In peace it had lapsed into simple utility as hallway, and possessed
a sort of attraction for Arabella, so different was it from aught
she had ever seen in the old country. The commandant’s residence,
otherwise, a quadrangular building, with an open square in the centre,
wherein was a well to insure a water supply in any event of blockade
or siege, was reminiscent to her of country granges which she had seen
on the continent, but these quaint corner rooms above stairs, each
practically a citadel, with its loop-holes both for direct and vertical
fire, seemed to be peculiarly of the new world, full of the story and
the struggle of the frontier. Her own and her aunt’s rooms lay to the
south, her father’s to the east. The other citadel corners and sides of
the quadrangle were appropriated to the officers of the garrison, and,
like separate houses, there was no means of communication.
The great strong timbers, capable of turning a musket-ball, the heavy
low beams, all clear of cobwebs, for these military wights were great
housekeepers, came first into view as she slowly ascended the rude
stair; then she caught a glimpse of a star shining through a loop-hole
in the wall, and she stood still for a moment in the cavernous place,
with the candle in one hand and the other on the rough stair-rail,
while she watched its white glister, and listened to the sullen drops
falling from the eaves, and the continuous sobbing of the unreconciled
wind; then she went on up, up, till she stood at the top and turned to
glance about, as she always did, at the place which must have stories
to tell if there were any idle enough to listen. The next moment the
candle was set a-flicker by a gust of wind through a neighboring
loop-hole. She held up one hand to shield it. The flame suddenly bowed
again before the errant gust, flickered tremulously and flared up anew,
failed, and all was darkness. Before crossing the slight distance to
her aunt’s door Arabella stood waiting till her eyes should become more
accustomed to the gloom. She knew that the loop-holes in the floor were
close to the wall, and that so long as she kept her direction through
the middle of the apartment there was no danger of a false step. But
a certain direction is difficult to maintain in darkness, as she
realized, and she eagerly attempted to discern the small squares of the
light outside which should apprize her of the position of the upper row
of loop-holes, just above the lower series. She would have called out
to Norah to open the door of the lighted room, but that she dreaded her
aunt’s outcries, and reproaches, and rebukes for the carelessness of
allowing her candle to be blown out at peril of a sprained ankle or a
broken limb.
Suddenly she heard a voice in the parade; it was near at hand and
through the loop-hole at her left she could see that two figures were
standing close to the wall below. She had no intention of listening.
She would have moved, but for her terror of the pitfalls in the floor.
Their words were few, but their voices, though low, carried with
unusual distinctness in the dull damp air.
“Split me! but I’ve laughed myself sick,” Raymond was saying.
“God-a-mercy, the commandant of a fort smirking in a lady’s parlor,
while his granaries burn and subalterns fire cannon to keep the Indians
from rushing the gates. Oh--ho! oh--ho! I hope I haven’t done my chest
any serious damage, but I ache fit to kill.”
“Lieutenant Jerrold was pretty hot, to have to shoulder all the
responsibility,” said another voice that she did not recognize. “What
will the captain say, do you suppose, when you tell him?”
“I shall not tell him! No--burst me if I will. It wasn’t the damn
fool’s fault. It was just so funny! It was as if Fate had tweaked him
by the nose!”
“He was quick enough to report _you_,” said Ensign Lawrence. “For
something not _your_ fault.”
“Child, I never try to measure my duty by other men’s consciences. I
shall tell the captain that all his corn is gone and his horses are
inquiring about breakfast already, and the cook has no griddle-cakes
for Mrs. Annandale--and Indian meal is the only Indian thing she
approves of. And that the guard behaved well and stood off the Indians
under the command of a gay little ensign, who shall not be nameless,
and that the force from the barracks turned out and dealt strenuously
with the fire under the orders of Lieutenant Jerrold, officer of the
day, till the rain took up the matter and put it out. But unless he
asks point-blank of the acting commandant I shall say naught. Let him
have all the credit he can get--”
“And the young lady besides?”
“If she will have him.”
But there was a change in Raymond’s voice. He was aware of it himself,
for he broke off--“I take it mighty kind of you, Lawrence, to let
me have these bullets. I had enough moulded, as I thought, but the
captain--queer in an old soldier--went off without any, and I left him
all I had. But for you I couldn’t use these pistols at all.”
She could see now in the pallid and uncertain moonlight that they
were dividing some small commodities between them, and presently,
the transfer complete, she watched them trudge off toward the gates.
She stepped cautiously across the loop-holes in the floor and looked
through one of the slits high enough for window-like usage. It gave a
good range toward the south, and she noted flickering lights at the
river-bank. Evidently Raymond was on the point of re-embarkation. Soon
the lights were extinguished, there was more the sense of movement on
the dark water than visible craft, till suddenly a pettiaugre glided
into view in a great slant of white glister on the shining water, with
the purple mountains beyond, and the massive wooded foothills on either
side, with the tremulous stars, and the skurrying clouds, and the
fugitive moon above. And on--and on--and on in this white glister, as
in some enchanted progress, the lonely boat glided till it rounded the
point, and was lost to view.