Those with whom life deals liberally are often less grateful than
exacting. Any failure of the largess of fate is like withheld deserts
or a wanton injury. It is as if they had an inalienable right to expect
better usage. It never seems to occur to these favorites of fortune
that others have as fair a claim upon the munificence of circumstance,
and that but for a cloaked mystery of dispensation they would share
equally with their fellows. Thus a disconcerting chance or a temporary
obstacle rouses no disposition to measure strength with adversity,
or to cope with untoward combinations, but an angry amazement,
an indignant displeasure, a sense of trespass upon one’s lawful
domain of success and happiness that result in blundering egotistic
self-assertion, which often fails in the clearance of the obstruction
to the paths of bland and self-satisfied progress.
Mervyn, chancing to glance down from the block-house tower whither
he had repaired shortly before sunset on his rounds, to see that the
sentinels were properly posted and that they had the countersign
correctly, was not only dismayed but affronted to perceive walking
briskly up the slope from the river-bank Captain Howard, the
quarter-master, the fort-adjutant, and following them at a leisurely
pace Ensign Raymond, with Miss Howard on his arm. They were conversing
earnestly; her face was full of interest as he spoke. Now and then
she glanced up at him, as if with a question; the glow of the west
rested in a transfiguring halo about her head, her golden hair showing
beneath the dark green calash. In the setting of the bleak, cold day
her face was as illumined as a saint’s. A band of dull red was about
the horizon above the sombre wooded mountains, promising fairer skies
for the morrow, and now and then, through some translucence of the
clouds a chill white sheen spread over the landscape less like sunlight
than moonbeams. Still gazing at the two Mervyn marked that Arabella
noted this aspect, and called her companion’s attention to the abnormal
quality of its glister.
“That is like ‘the sleeping sun,’” she said. “How quaint is that idea
of the Indians--how poetic, that the moon is but the sun asleep!”
“This, though, is ‘the sun awake in the day.’ _Nu-da-ige-hi!_” he
explained.
She repeated the phrase after him. “And ‘the sleeping sun’?”
“_Nu-da-su-na-ye-hi_,” he replied.
She paused to repeat both phrases anew, smiling like a docile child,
learning a lesson.
At the distance, of course, Mervyn could not hear the words, but the
responsive smiles, the obvious mutual interest, the graceful attitudes
of the two as she once more took Raymond’s arm and they walked slowly
on toward the gate--each phase of the scene was charged with a signal
irritation to his pride, his nerves, his intense self-consciousness.
He was angry with her; why should she seek solace for his absence in
jaunting abroad? He was angry with her father for granting her this
opportunity. He could not imagine why her aunt had not been more
insistent in duty--he would have thought it well that she should be
penned up in the commandant’s parlor sewing her sampler until such time
as it was practicable for him to rejoice the dulness by his endless
talk of himself--which, indeed, those who loved him would find no
burden. He was angry more than all and beyond expression with Raymond,
who profited by his enforced absence, and whom he had feared from the
beginning as a rival. He knew well the character of the comments of
the mess upon his course in pushing the immaterial omission in the
matter of the guard report to an extreme limit, and his own reticence
afterward concerning his absence from the scene of the fire till it
was no longer possible to conceal the circumstance. Captain Howard,
himself, had opened his stubborn, reluctant eyes to the repute among
his brother officers that this had inflicted upon him. He feared
Raymond would acquaint Arabella with their estimate of his part in the
incident. He was wild when he thought of the duration of his tour of
duty. Till to-morrow he was caught fast, laid by the heels, held to
all the observances of the regulations as strictly as if the little
frontier mud fort were a fortress of value, garrisoned by thousands
of troops. He knew, nevertheless, the special utility of routine
here, where the garrison was so weak,--scant a hundred men. The
enemy--conquered, indeed, but only by the extraneous aid of a special
expeditionary force--was still strong and rancorous, able to throw two
thousand warriors against the ramparts in a few hours, but he argued it
was farcical to detail the officers to this frequent recurrent duty,
albeit appropriate to their rank, when sergeants, corporals, even
intelligent privates might be trusted in their stead.
He had been a good soldier, and ordinarily his pulse would have
quickened to the partial solution of the feed problem, evidenced
shortly by the issuance of the quarter-master’s contingent to the
unloading of the pettiaugre at the river-bank. The stable men were
riding down the horses, harnessed to slides in default of wagons, to
bring in the provender; some of them carried great baskets like those
of the Indians, but disposed upon the beasts pannier-wise. The loud,
gay voices made the dull still dusk ring again. Raymond avoided the
great gate whence now and then a horseman, thus cumbrously accoutred,
issued as suddenly as if flung from a catapult and went clattering
boisterously down to the river-bank. An abrupt encounter under the arch
with these plunging wights might not discommode Captain Howard and the
quarter-master, but with his fair charge Raymond sought the quieter
precincts of the sally-port. There he was detained for the lack of the
countersign, and while the sentinel called the corporal the two young
people stood, apparently quite content, still softly talking, now and
then a rising inflection of their suave tones coming to Mervyn’s
ear as he lingered in the block-house tower and watched them. They
were taking their way presently across the parade to the commandant’s
quarters, and as Mervyn’s eyes followed them thither, he perceived
the face of Mrs. Annandale at the window. She looked as Mervyn felt,
and as he noted it he winced from the idea that perhaps the chaperon
cared for him only for his worldly advantages. He had no mind to be
married for these values, he said to himself, indignantly. Then he had
a candid monition that he was not in great danger of being married at
all--whatever Mrs. Annandale’s convictions might be, the young lady had
stipulated that nothing was to be considered settled till she knew her
own mind--she was yet, she had protested, so little acquainted with
him. He had one natural humble impulse, like a lover, to hope that
she might never know him better to like him less. The thought cleared
the atmosphere of storm. Mrs. Annandale naturally preferred him--why
should she not?--and if she had wished to stimulate his devotion she
would have set up Raymond, and encouraged him as a rival. He could not
imagine that she considered Raymond too formidable for a fictitious
lover. A fascinating semblance might merge into a stubborn fact.
Mrs. Annandale met the two excursionists at the door with a most severe
countenance of disfavor.
“And where have you been junketing, Miss?” she demanded.
“I have been finding corn for the garrison,” Arabella replied,
demurely. “I have brought in a whole pettiaugre load.”
Mrs. Annandale lifted her gaze to the animated aspect of the parade.
A fog hung low, but through it was heard the continual tramp of
hoofs, and now and again a laden animal passed swiftly, more than one
sending forth shrill neighs of content, obviously aware of the value
of this replenishment of the larder and recognizing it as for their
own provision. Across the parade and beyond the barracks in the stable
precincts lights were flickering and lanterns swaying. One of the large
sheds was to serve as granary, and the sound of hammers and nails gave
token of some belated arrangements there for the provender.
“And did you think I should be satisfied with that bit of a message
that your father sent me through the sentinel at the gate--that he had
taken you with him amongst the Indians! Sure, I have had fits on fits!”
“’Twas but to keep in practice, Aunt Claudia,” Arabella retorted.
“Sure, you could not be afraid that papa is not able to take care of
me!”
Mrs. Annandale, in doleful eclipse, looked sourly at Raymond.
“With this gentleman’s worshipful assistance,” she snapped.
“I am always at her service--and at yours, madam,” said Raymond. He
bowed profoundly, his cocked hat in his hand almost swept the ground.
Mervyn still watching, though the dusk strained his eyes, had little
reason to grudge his rival the colloquy that looked so pretty and
gracious at the distance.
He contrived to meet Raymond that night in the mess-hall. The dinner
was concluded; the place almost deserted, the quarter-master being at
the improvised granary, and Jerrold and Innis both on extra duty, the
ensign having charge of the pettiaugre still lying half unloaded at the
bank, and the lieutenant keeping a cautious surveillance on the parties
sent out and their return with the precious commodity.
Raymond had taken down a bow and gayly decorated quiver from the wall,
and was examining them critically by the light of the candles on the
table. There was a glow of satisfaction on his face and the bright
radiance of gratulation in his eyes, for the weapons designed for a
royal hand were even more beautiful, and curious, and rare than he
had thought; the bow, elastic and strong, wrought to the smoothness
of satin, the wood showing an exquisite veining, tipped at each end
with polished and glittering quartz, the arrows similarly finished,
and winged with scarlet flamingo feathers, the quiver a mass of bead
embroideries with dyed porcupine quills and scarlet fringes.
Mervyn stared at him silently for a time, thinking this earnest
surveillance might attract his attention and induce him to speak first.
But Raymond, thoughtfully murmuring, _sotto voce_,--“‘Tell me, maidens,
have you seen,’” took no notice of his quondam Damon, save a nod of
greeting when Mervyn had entered and sat down on the opposite side of
the table.
“What are you going to do with those things?” Mervyn asked. No one can
be so brusque as the thoroughly trained. A few weeks ago, however, the
question would have savored merely of familiarity, as of boys together.
Now, in view of the strained relations subsisting between them, it was
so rude as to justify the reply. Raymond lifted his head, stared hard
at his brother officer across the table, then answered:--
“What do you suppose?”
Mervyn put his elbow on the table, with his chin in his hand, speaking
between his set teeth.
“I will tell you exactly what I suppose. I suppose you are insufferable
enough to intend to present them to Miss Howard.”
Raymond was obliged to lean backward to be rid of the intervening flame
of the candle in order to see his interlocutor, face to face, and the
action gave added emphasis to the answer,--“Why, bless me, you are a
conjurer!”
“I want you to understand distinctly that I object.”
“I shall not take the trouble to understand any objection of yours,”
declared Raymond.
“I have a right to object to your presumption in offering her any gift.
She is engaged to be married to me.”
Raymond paled visibly. Then with a sudden return of color he declared,
hardily:--
“I should send them to her even if she were already married to you.”
“You are insolent and presuming, sir. I object. I forbid it. It will be
very unpleasant to her to refuse them.”
“I should suppose so,” cried Raymond, airily, “since she has already
accepted them--this afternoon, in her father’s presence.”
Mervyn sat dumbfounded. He had not dreamed that she would continue
to exercise such free agency as to act in a matter like this without
a reference to his wish. And her father--while the distinctions of
rank in the army did not hold good in outside society or even in the
fraternal association of the mess-room, he could not easily upbraid
the commandant of the fort, in years so much his senior, for a failure
in his paternal duty, an oblivion of etiquette, of his obligations to
his daughter’s fiancé and undue encouragement of a possible rival. But
why had Captain Howard not given her a caution to refer the matter to
his, Mervyn’s, preference,--why had he permitted the offer and the
acceptance of the gift in his presence. To be sure the weapons were
but curios, and of only nominal cost in this region, but to receive
anything from Raymond! And then the pitfall into which Mervyn had so
resolutely cast himself--how could Raymond do aught but send the gift
which the lady had so willingly, so graciously accepted. Raymond’s eyes
were glancing full of laughter at his sedate objection, his lordly
prohibition. The things were already hers!
Not a syllable of speech suggested itself to Mervyn’s lips; not a
plan of retraction, or withdrawal from the room. He felt an intense
relief when Jerrold and Innis came plunging into the hall, full of
satisfaction for the accomplishment of the proper bestowal of the corn
in the makeshift granary, and their computations of the length of time
the quantity secured might by economy be made to last.
“What beauties,” said Jerrold, noticing the weapons. “You got these in
Tuckaleechee last year, didn’t you?”
“And I have presented them to Miss Howard,” said Raymond.
“Good! Just the right weight, I should judge. Does she shoot?”
Mervyn sat boiling with rage as he heard Raymond interrogated and
answering, from the vantage ground of familiar friendship, these
details, all unknown to him, concerning his fiancée.
“Won the silver arrow recently at an archery competition, she tells me.”
“Gad! I’d like to see her draw this thing!” And Jerrold pulled the taut
line of deer-sinews, noting admiringly the elasticity of the wood as
the bow bent and he fitted an arrow in place.
He laid it aside, presently, and turned to the table. “And what is
this?” he asked, picking up a bag of bead embroidery, rich and ornate,
with long bead fringes, and a stiff bead-wrought handle, like a bail.
“Oh, that’s for Mrs. Annandale--I think it must be intended for
a tobacco pouch, but it occurred to me she might use it for a
knotting-bag, and as a souvenir of the country.”
Mervyn silently cursed himself for a fool. Possibly Raymond had
naught in mind other than the ordinary civil attentions incumbent in
such a situation. He was merely making his compliments to the two
ladies, members of the commandant’s family, visiting the post under
circumstances so unusual. Jerrold evidently thought the selection and
presentation of the curios very felicitous, and was obviously racking
his brains to devise some equally pretty method of expressing his
pleasure and interest in their presence here.
Even the acute Mrs. Annandale viewed the incident in much the same
light. The simultaneous appearance of the bow and quiver with the
gorgeous little “knotting-bag” seemed only well-devised compliments to
the ladies,--guests in the fort,--and she thought it very civil of Mr.
Raymond, and said she was glad to have something worth while to take
back to Kent to prove she had ever been to America,--she apparently did
not rely on her own word.
In truth it was not every day that such things could be picked up
here. The Cherokees were growing dull and disheartened. The cheap,
tawdry European trifles with which the Indian trade had flooded the
country had served to disparage in their estimation their own laborious
ornaments and articles of use. When a pipe or a bowl of a kind turned
out by millions in a mould, strange and new to their perverted taste,
could be bought in an instant of barter, why should they expend two
years in the slow cutting of a pipe of moss agate, by the method
of friction, rubbing one stone on another; when a bushel of glass
beads was to be had for a trifle how should they care to drill holes
through tiny cylinders of shell, with a polish that bespoke a lifetime
of labor? There could be blankets bought at the traders in lieu of
fur robes and braided mantles. Now-a-days, except grease, and paint,
and British muskets,--the barrels sawed off as the Indians liked
them,--there was little to choose for souvenirs in the Cherokee country.
Arabella was unaccountably disappointed. Not in the weapons,
themselves--she cried out in delighted pleasure and astonishment on
beholding them. Then, certainly, she did not grudge Mrs. Annandale the
trophy of her knotting-bag. But she had felt that he had not intended
the present as a mere bit of gallantry, a passing compliment. She had
valued the gift because of its thoughtfulness for her pleasure; he had
noted the need it filled; it contributed to her entertainment; it came
as a personal token from him to her. But now since it was relegated to
the category of a compliment to the ladies, along with the knotting-bag
which was already blazing in considerable splendor at Mrs. Annandale’s
side, and lighting up her black satin gown with a very pretty effect,
Arabella felt as if she had lost something. A light that the skies had
not bestowed on that dark landscape was dying out of the recollection
of the day on the river,--she remembered it as it was, with its dull
sad monotone of the hills, the gray sky, the cold rippled steel of
the waters, and the cutting blasts of the wind. She had returned home
all aglow, and now she was cold, and tired, and dispirited; and she
wondered that Raymond did not come to play “Whisk” or Quadrille if he
desired to make a general compliment to the ladies--and why her father
had grown to be such dull company.
For Captain Howard did naught but sit after dinner in his great chair,
with his decanter on the table beside him, and his glass of wine
untouched in his hand, and stare at the flaming logs in deep revery,
agreeing with a nod or an irrelevant word to all his sister might say
while she detailed practically the whole history of the county of Kent,
not merely since his departure thence, but since indeed it was erected.
Captain Howard, tall, bony, muscular, stout of heart, rude of
experience, seemed hardly a man to see visions, but he beheld in the
flames of the fire that evening things that were not there.
Cannon in the Cherokee country! How they volleyed and smoked from
between the logs of the commandant’s fire. Here and there in the
brilliant dancing jets he beheld a score of war bonnets. He could see
quick figures circle, leap, and turn again in the lithe writhings of
the protean shadow and blaze. The piles of red-hot coals between the
fire-dogs were a similitude of the boulders, the cliffs, the rocky
fastnesses of those almost inaccessible wilds. Above a swirling current
of blazes bursting forth from a great hickory log he beheld a battery
planted on a commanding promontory, harassing with its scintillating
explosions, the shadowy craft that sought to escape on the turbulent
stream below.
Cannon in the Cherokee country!
Naught could so extend the power of the Indians. Always they had longed
for artillery. How many times had the crafty delegations sought to
represent to him that “one little piece” would do much to strengthen
them against the advance of the perfidious French,--whom, in truth,
they loved, and they rallied continually to the standard of the “great
French father.” But even though the French were in their aggressions
successful beyond all precedent in detaching the Cherokees from their
compact with Great Britain, and setting them in arms against the
government, they never dared to trust the tribe with cannon. So easily
is a swivel gun turned, and with the fickle Indians it might be against
the foe to-day and the friend to-morrow. With the comparative long
range of the arm of that time, a few pieces, well placed in commanding
situations, might hold the defiles of the Great Smoky Mountains against
all comers.
Cannon in the Cherokee country!
How could Walasi’s words be true! Captain Howard meditated on the
difficulty of their transportation amidst the stupendous upheavals that
made up the face of the country,--the steep slopes, the tremendous
heights, the cuplike valleys, hardly a plot of twenty acres of level
ground in the whole vast region. For his own part in expectation of
the evacuation of Fort Prince George he was thankful that the currents
of the Keowee and the broad Savannah would serve to bear its armament
to the forts in the lower country. He continued to canvass this theme
with a soldier’s interest in a problem of transportation. To the
civilian the glories and honors of war are won or lost on the fenced
field of battle, but to the military expert the secret of victory or
defeat is often discovered in the mobilization of the force. He was
returning with unappeased wonder to the problem,--and to this day it
is a matter of conjecture,--how the twelve cannon of Fort Loudon, more
than one hundred miles to the northwest, had ever been conveyed to that
remote inaccessible post. The blockade of the fort, its capitulation,
and the massacre of its starveling garrison were events that befell
before his detail to Fort Prince George, and much of mystery still
environed the catastrophe. He knew that after the Cherokees were
punished, and subdued, and practically disarmed by the British force
sent into the country to reduce them to submission, the treaty of peace
provided for the return of the cannon which the Indians had seized.
They brought them as far as they could on the Tennessee River, then
with infinite labor dragged them through the wilderness, an incredible
portage, to the Keowee. Suddenly Captain Howard sprang to his feet;
his glass of rich old port, falling from his hand and shivering into a
thousand fragments on the hearth, sent up a vinous white flame from the
coals that received the libation.
For the Indians had brought eight guns only! One piece was known to
have burst, overcharged and mishandled by the Cherokees in their
experiments in gunnery after the reduction of the fort. The others,
it was declared, had been spiked, or otherwise demolished, by the
defenders, in violation of the terms of their capitulation--it was
claimed that they had sunk each piece as they could in the river. The
fact which had been established that they had hidden large stores of
powder, in the hope and expectation that the government might soon
again reoccupy the works, was not consistent with this story of the
destruction of the guns and might serve in a degree to discredit the
statement of the Indians that all the cannon they had captured were
delivered to the British authorities. And now this boast of cannon
in the Cherokee country! He well believed it! He would have taken
his oath that there were three pieces--all part of the armament of
the ill-fated Fort Loudon, withheld by the Cherokees, awaiting an
opportunity and the long-delayed day of vengeance for the slaughter and
the conflagrations that marked the track of the British forays through
their devastated land, when for lack of powder they could oppose no
effective resistance, and were fain to submit to the bullet, the knife,
the torch, till the conquerors were tired out with their orgies of
blood and fire.
He became suddenly conscious of his daughter’s hazel eyes, wide and
lustrous with amazement, lifted to his, as he stood, alert, triumphant,
tingling with excitement, on the hearth, and heard in mingled
embarrassment and laughter his sister’s sarcastic recommendation that
he should throw the decanter into the fire after his bumper of port
wine.
“Upon my word you frontier fanfarons are mighty lavish. In England we
picture you as going sadly all the day wrapped in a greasy blanket,
eating Indian meal, and drinking ‘fire-water,’--and we come here to
find you all lace ruffles, and powdered wigs, and prancing in your silk
hose, and throwing your port wine into the fire to see it blaze!”
“The goblet slipped from my hand--it was a mischance, Sister.”
“My certie! it shows you’ve had too much already; ’twas ever the fault
of a soldier. Had I my way in the old times you should have been none.”
“I would seem more temperate under a table, after a meet, like one of
your home-staying, fox-hunting squires,” suggested the captain.
“Well, but ’tis a pity a man should have no resource but the army.
Faith, I’m glad George Mervyn is not to be forever marching and
counter-marching.”
She glanced slyly at Arabella, who looked pale in faint blue and a
little dull. She did not respond, and Mrs. Annandale had a transient
fear that she might say she did not care how George Mervyn spent his
future. The girl’s mind, like her father’s, was elsewhere, but with
what different subjects of contemplation! Captain Howard was saying to
himself that he could never leave the Cherokee country with British
cannon in the hands of the Indians. Even without this menace the
evacuation of Fort Prince George seemed a trifle premature, in view of
their inimical temper. How far this was fostered by the expectation
of securing an adequate supply of powder to utilize the guns to the
destruction of the British defences, which could not stand for an
hour against a well-directed fire of artillery, and the massacre
of the garrison, none could say. The French, now retiring from the
country on every hand, might, as a Parthian dart, supply the Indians’
need of powder, and then indeed the Cherokee War would be to fight
anew,--with much disaster to the infant settlements of the provinces
to the southward, for the stalwart pioneers were hardily pushing into
the region below, their “cow-pens,” or ranches along the watercourses,
becoming oases of a rude civilization, and their vast herds roaming the
savannas in lordly promise of bucolic wealth.
Cannon in the Cherokee country!
Captain Howard could but laugh, even in his perplexity, when he thought
of the resilient execution of the insult offered him by the chief of
Keowee Town in declining to receive the military mendicant and setting
a “second man,” Walasi, the Frog, a commercial man, so to speak, to
deal with the soldier.
“Tell us the joke,” said his sister, insistently, with no inclination
to be shut out of mind when she was aware it was closed against her.
“Only reflecting on the events of the day,” he said evasively, and
Arabella, brightening suddenly, declared with a gurgling laugh, “Yes,
we had a fine time on the river.”