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