Why the recoil of the pieces did not sink the old pettiaugre with
all on board, to their imminent danger of drowning in the tumultuous
depths of the spring floods, Captain Howard could never understand,
except on the principle that “Naught is never in danger,” as he said
bluffly, now that his anxiety was satisfied. The heavy rainfall and the
melting of the snows had swollen the watercourses of the region to such
a degree that they had risen out of their deep, rock-bound channels,
and this enabled Raymond to secure water-carriage for the guns the
greater part of the return journey. He had some hardships to relate of
a long portage across country when the pack animals which had carried
his supplies and ammunition had been utilized as artillery horses, and
had drawn the guns along such devious ways as the buffalo paths from
one salt spring to another might furnish. Then they had embarked on
the Keowee, and had come down with a rushing current, firing a salute
to Fort Prince George as they approached, eliciting much responsive
cheering from the garrison, and creating more commotion than they were
worth, the commandant gruffly opined.
He hearkened with a doubtful mien to the ensign’s report of the
vicissitudes of the expedition, and was obviously of the opinion
that the whole mission could have been as well accomplished in a less
melodramatic and turbulent manner.
“I knew,” he said, “that the official demand for the guns would anger
the chiefs, for they have long craved the possession of a few pieces
of artillery, and nothing in their hands could be so dangerous to the
security of the colonies. But I was sure that being in Choté, you were
safe, and that if you should find it necessary to seize the guns they
would protect you against all odds on your march back to Fort Prince
George. I did not imagine the chiefs would venture so far as to conceal
the cannon, and of course that gave you a point of great difficulty.
But the feint of firing on the town was altogether unnecessary. There
was no occasion for incivility.”
“Stop me, sir, if it had not been for their lies and conjuring tricks I
should have been as polite as pie.”
Captain Howard listened with an impartial reservation of opinion to
the detail of the magic red light, but his face changed as Raymond
took from his pocket a gem-like stone, large, translucent, darkly red,
and caught upon it an intense reflection from the dull fire in the
commandant’s office.
“This must be their famous ‘conjuring-stone,’” he said gravely.
“The fellow dropped it when I knocked him down,” Raymond explained,
graphically. “I lost my balance, and we rolled on the ground together,
and as I pulled loose I found this in my hand.”
Early travellers in this region describe this “conjuring-stone” of the
Cherokees as the size of a hen’s egg, red and of a crystalline effect,
like a ruby, but with a beautiful dark shade in the centre, and capable
of an intense reflection of light.
The next day Captain Howard received from the Indians the strange
complaint that the British ensign had their “religion,” with a demand
that he be required to return it. They stated that they had searched
all their country for the sacred amulet, and they were convinced that
he had possessed himself of it. They were robbed of their “religion.”
“This is idolatry,” exclaimed the old missionary, rancorously, vehement
objection eloquent on his face.
“They tried to put my eyes out with their ‘religion,’” declared
Raymond. “They shall not have the amulet back again. They are better
off without such ‘religion.’”
“That is not for _you_ to judge,” said Arabella, staidly.
They were all strolling along the rampart within the stockade after
retreat. The parade was visible on one side with sundry incidents of
garrison life. The posting of sentinels was in progress; a corporal
was going out with the relief, and the echo of their brisk tramp came
marching back from the rocks of the river-bank; the guard, a glitter
of scarlet and steel, was paraded before the main gate. From the long,
dark, barrack building rose now and again the snatch of a soldier’s
song, and presently a chorus of laughter as some barrack wit regaled
the leisure of his comrades. The sunset light was reflected from the
glazed windows of the officers’ quarters; several of the mess had
already assembled in their hall to pass the evening with such kill-time
ingenuities as were possible in the wilderness. Now and again an
absentee crossed the parade with some token of how the day had been
passed;--a string of mountain trout justified the rod and reel of
an angler, coming in muddy and wet, and the envy of another soldier
meeting him; at the further end, toward the stables, a subaltern was
training a wild young horse for a hurdle race, and kept up the leaping
back and forth till he “came a cropper,” and his sore bones admonished
him that he had had enough for one day.
The air was soft and sweet; the Keowee River, flush to its brim with
the spring floods, sang a veritable roundelay and vied with the birds.
Sunset seemed to have had scant homing monitions, for wings were yet
continually astir in the blue sky. All the lovely wooded eminences
close about the fort, and the Oconee mountain, and the nearer of the
great Joree ranges, were delicately, ethereally green against the clear
amethystine tone of the mountain background.
And as if to fairly abash and surpass the spring, this dark-eyed,
fair-haired girl herself wore green, of a dainty shadowy tint, and
carried over one arm, swinging by a brown ribbon, a wide-brimmed hat,
held basket-wise, and full of violets, while the wind stirred her
tresses to a deeper, richer glitter in the sunset after-glow. For these
violets Raymond had rifled the woods for fifty miles as he came, and
she turned now and again to them with evident pleasure, sometimes to
handle a tuft especially perfect.
Despite his hopelessness, in view of the impression he had received as
to Mervyn’s place in her good graces, Raymond set a special value on
aught that seemed to commend him. He had greatly enjoyed the pose of
a successful soldier, who had returned from the accomplishment of a
difficult and diplomatic mission. He cared not a _sou marqué_ for the
criticism of several of the other officers of the post who opined that
it was a new interpretation of the idea of diplomacy to train cannon
on commissioners in session and bring off the subject of negotiation
amidst the thunders of artillery. He had felt that it was enough that
he was here again, all in one piece, and so were the cannon,--and he
had brought off, too, it seemed, the “religion” of the Cherokees. He
experienced a sudden reaction from this satisfaction when Arabella
turned from the violets, and pronounced him unfit to judge of the
Indian’s religion.
“Why not? I am as good a Christian as anybody,” he averred.
Mervyn at this moment had a certain keenness of aspect, as if he
relished the prospect of a difference. This eagerness might have
suggested to Raymond, but for his own theory on the subject, that the
placid understanding which seemed to him to subsist between Arabella
and the captain-lieutenant was not as perfect as he thought.
The Reverend Mr. Morton paused, with his snuff-box in his hand, to cast
an admonitory glance upon the young ensign.
“There is none good,--no, not one,” he said rebukingly.
He solemnly refreshed his nose with the snuff, although that feature
seemed hardly receptive of any sentiment of satisfaction, so long and
thin it was, so melancholy of aspect, giving the emphasis of asceticism
to his pallid, narrow face, and his near-sighted, absent-minded blue
eyes.
“I mean, of course, by ordinary standards, sir. I’m as good a Christian
as Mervyn, or Lawrence, here, or Innis, or--or--the captain,” Raymond
concluded, with a glance of arch audacity at the commandant.
“Hoh!” said Captain Howard, hardly knowing how to take this. He did
not pretend to be a pious man, but it savored of insubordination for a
subaltern to claim spiritual equality with the ranking officer.
“When we are most satisfied with our spiritual condition we have
greatest cause for dissatisfaction,” declared the parson.
With his lean legs encased in thread-bare black breeches and darned
hose,--he had been irreverently dubbed “Shanks” during the earlier
days of his stay at Fort Prince George,--his semi-ludicrous aspect of
cadaverous asceticism and sanctity, so incongruous with the haphazard
conditions of the frontier, it would have been difficult for a casual
observer to discern the reason of the sentiment of respect which he
seemed to command in the minds of these gallant and bluff soldiers.
Their arduous experience of the hard facts of life and the continual
defiance of death had left them but scant appreciation of the fine-spun
sacerdotal theories and subtle divergencies of doctrine in which Mr.
Morton delighted. Seldom did he open his oracular lips save to exploit
some lengthy prelection of rigid dogma or to deliver the prompt rebuke
to profanity or levity, which in the deep gravity of his nature seemed
to him of synonymous signification. He might hardly have noticed the
subject of conversation of the party as he walked by the commandant’s
side along the rampart, but for the word “religion.” He seemed to
be endowed with a separate sense for the apprehension of aught
appertaining to the theme that to him made up all the interest of this
world and the world to come. Therefore he spoke without fear or favor.
His asceticism was not of a pleasing relish, and his rebukes served
in no wise to commend him. It was his fearlessness in a different
sense that had made his name venerated. The rank and file could not
have done with rehearsing, with a gloating eye of mingled pride, and
derision, and pity, how he had driven the gospel home on the Cherokees,
in season and out, they being at his mercy, for by the rigid etiquette
of the Indians they were forbidden to interrupt or break in upon any
discourse, however lengthy or unpalatable. And how he had persisted,
albeit his life was not safe; and how the head-men had finally
notified Captain Howard; and how Captain Howard had remonstrated in
vain; and how at last Ensign Raymond had had the old parson literally
brought off in the arms of two of their own command. It is to be feared
that it was neither learning nor saintliness that so commended the old
missionary to the garrison of Fort Prince George.
Now it seemed that the Cherokees had lost their own religion, if this
amulet represented it, for by their curious racial logic Raymond
possessed its symbol and therefore they no longer had the fact.
“It is a heathen notion that I have got their religion,” protested
Raymond. “They never had any religion.”
“It is religion to them,” said Arabella. “Religion is faith. Religion
is a conviction of the soul.”
“True religion is a revelation to the mind direct from God,” said
Mr. Morton, didactically. “The name doth not befit the hideous pagan
follies of the Indians.”
She did not feel qualified to argue; she only said vaguely with a
certain primness, in contrast with her method of addressing the young
men:--
“Faith always seems to me the function of the soul, as reason is of the
mind. You can believe an error, but mistakes are not founded on reason.”
Then she asked him suddenly if the stress that the Cherokees laid on
this amulet did not remind him of the attributes of the ark of the
Hebrews and their despair because of its capture.
“The ark was a type,--a type,” he declared, looking off with
unseeing eyes into the blue and roseate sky and launching out into
a dissertation on the image and the reality, the prophecy and
its fulfilment, with many a digression to a cognate theme, while
Captain Howard affected to listen and went over in his mind his
quarter-master’s accounts, the state of the armament of the fort, and
the equipment of the men, all having relation to the settling of his
affairs in quitting his command. The younger people chatted in low
voices under cover of the monologue, it not being directly addressed to
them.
They had slowly strolled along the rampart as they talked, the two
elderly men in the rear, the girl in the centre, with her charming
fair-haired beauty, more ethereal because of that pervasive, tempered,
pearly light which just precedes the dusk, while the young officers,
in the foppery of their red coats, their white breeches, their cocked
hats, and powdered hair, kept on either side. The party made their
way out from the dead salient of the angle, only to be defended by
the musketry of soldiers standing on the banquettes, and ascended
the rising ground to the terre-pleine, where cannon were mounted _en
barbette_ to fire above the parapet.
As Arabella noticed the great guns, standing a-tilt, she said they
reminded her of grim hounds holding their muzzles up to send forth
fierce howls of defiance.
“They can send forth something fiercer than howls,” said Raymond,
applausively. He was a very young soldier, and thought mighty well of
the little cannon. Captain Howard, who had seen war on a fine scale
and was used to forts of commensurate armament, could not repress a
twinkle of the eye, although for no consideration would he have said
aught to put the subaltern out of conceit with his little guns.
The other cannon were pointed through embrasures beneath the parapet.
One of them had been run back on its chassis. She paused beside it,
and stood looking through the large aperture, languid, and silent, and
vaguely wistful, at the scene from a new point of view.
As she lingered thus, all fair-haired in her faint green dress, with
her hat on her arm full of violets, one hand on the silent cannon, she
seemed herself a type of spring, of some benison of peace, of some
grave and tender mediatrix.
The foam was aflash on the rapids of the Keowee River; the sound of its
rush was distinct in the stillness. Now and again the lowing of cattle
came from some distant ranch of pioneer settlers. The Indian town of
Keowee on the opposite side of the river was distinct to view, with its
conical roofs and its great rotunda on a high mound, all recognizable,
despite the reduction of size to the proportions of the landscape of
the distance. No wing was now astir in the pallid, colorless sky. One
might hardly say whence the light emanated, for the sun was down, the
twilight sped, and yet the darkness had not fallen. A sort of gentle
clarity possessed the atmosphere. She noted the line of the parapet of
the covered way, heretofore invisible because of the high stockade,
and beyond still the slope of the glacis, and there--
“What _is_ that?” she said, starting forward, peering through the
embrasure into the gathering gloom. A dark object was visible just
beyond the crest of the glacis. It was without form, vague, opaque,
motionless, and of a consistency impossible to divine.
“Why,--the Indian priests or conjurers,” Mervyn explained. “They have
been there all day.”
“They are called the _cheerataghe_,--men possessed of divine fire,”
Raymond volunteered.
The captain-lieutenant somewhat resented the amendment of his
explanation. “They are the only people in the world who believe that
Raymond has any religion of any sort.” He laughed with relish and
banteringly.
“Don’t you think that is funny, Mr. Mervyn?” she demanded, her tone a
trifle enigmatical. She did not look at him as she still leaned with
one hand on the cannon, her hat full of violets depending from her arm.
“Vastly amusing, sure,” declared Mervyn,--and Ensign Innis laughed,
too, in the full persuasion of pleasing.
“I can’t see their feathers or bonnets,” she said.
“No,” explained Raymond, “they have their heads covered with the cloth
they weave, and they heap ashes on the cloth.”
“Oh-h-h!” cried out Arabella.
“Watch them,--watch them now,” Raymond said quickly. “They are heaping
the ashes on their heads again.”
There was a strange, undulatory motion among the row of heavily draped
figures, each bending to the right, their hands seeming to wildly wave
as they caught up the invisible ashes before them and strewed them
over their heads, while a low wail broke forth. “And you think this is
funny?” demanded Arabella of the young men, looking at them severally.
“I can’t say I think it is _un_funny,” said Innis, with a rollicking
laugh.
“I think it is very foolish,” said Lawrence.
“I don’t believe they have lost a religion because I’ve got it in my
pocket,” said Raymond.
“And they are old men--are they?” she asked.
“Old?”--said Mervyn. “Old as Noah.”
“And they have had a long journey?”
“Pounded down here all the way from Choté on their ten old toes.”
“And how long will they stay there, fasting, and praying, and wailing,
and waiting, in sackcloth and ashes?”
“Perhaps till they work some sort of spell on me,” suggested Raymond.
She laughed at this in ridicule.
“Till the fort is evacuated, I suppose,” said Mervyn.
“So long as that!” she exclaimed, growing serious. All at once she
caught her breath with a gasp, staring at the Indians in the gathering
gloom, as with a sudden inspiration.
“I would speak with them!--Oh, la!--what a thing to tell in England!
Take me down there,--quick. Tillie vallie!--there is no water in the
fosse. What a brag to make in Kent! There can be no danger under the
guns of the fort. Lord, papa,--_let me go_!”
Captain Howard hesitated, but made no demur. The war was over, and
there was indeed no risk; and Arabella’s pilgrimage into primeval
realms would be infinitely embellished by this freak. All of the young
officers accompanied her, the interpreter, hastily summoned, following;
the commandant and the parson watched from the rampart.
She went through the gray dusk like some translucent apparition, the
figment of lines of light. The moon, now in the sky, hardly annulled
the tints of her faint green gown; her hair glittered in the sheen; her
face was ethereally white.
The wailing ceased as her advance was observed. The swaying figures
were still. A vague fear seized her as she came near to those
mysterious veiled creatures, literally abased to the ground. She
wavered for a moment,--then she paused on the crest of the glacis in
silence and evident doubt.
There was an interval of suspense. The odors of violets and dust and
ashes were blended on the air. Dew was falling; the river sang; and the
moon shone brighter as the darkness gathered.
“Good people,” she said, with a sort of agitated, hysteric break in her
clear voice, for she was realizing that she knew not how to address
magnates and priests of a strange alien nation.
The croak of the interpreter came with a harsh promptitude on each
clause.
“Good people, I hear a voice,”--she paused again, and corrected
her phrase,--“I feel a monition--to tell you that your prayers are
answered. Your ‘religion’ I have the power to restore. To-morrow, at
the fort, at high noon, it shall be returned to you. If you help the
helpless, and feed the hungry, and cherish the aged, and show mercy
to captives, it will be a better religion than ever heretofore. I
promise,--I pledge my word.”
She wavered anew and shrank back so suddenly that Raymond thought she
might fall. But no! She fled like a deer, her green draperies all
fluttering in the wind, the moonlight on her golden hair and in her
shining eyes. The officers followed, half bewildered by her freak,
Raymond first of all. He overtook her as she was climbing through the
fraise of the steep exterior slope of the rampart, clutching at the
sharp stakes to help her ascent.
“Stop! stop!” he said, catching at her sleeve and pausing to look up
gravely into her eyes as she, laughing, gasping, half-hysterical,
looked down at him standing on the berme below. “Are you in earnest?”
he demanded.
“Yes,--yes,--I shall give back the amulet.”
She seemed hardly to realize that it was his; that he had captured it
in a mêlée; that it was now in his possession; that he had a word in
the matter, a will to be consulted.
“I don’t understand--” he hesitated.
“Oh,--la,--_you_! You make no difference. _I_ have worked a spell on
_you_,--as you know!”
She laughed again, caught her breath with a gasp, and began once more
to ascend swiftly through the fraise. But he was beside her in a
moment. He caught her little hand trembling and cold in his.
“Arabella,” he cried, in agitated delight, “you know I worship
you,--you know that you have indeed all my heart,--but only a
subaltern,--I hardly dared to hope--”
“La! you needn’t bestir yourself to hope now! Sure, I didn’t say _you_
had worked any spell on _me_.”
Not another word was possible to him, for the others had overtaken
them, and it was in a twitter of laughter that she climbed through
the embrasure, and in a flutter of delighted achievement that she
breathlessly detailed the adventure to her father and the parson. Then
hanging on the commandant’s arm she demurely paced to and fro along the
moonlit rampart, now and again meeting Raymond’s gaze with a coquettish
air of bravado which seemed to say:--
“Talk love to me _now_,--if you dare!”
The embassy of Indians had disappeared like magic. The party from the
fort declared that upon glancing back at the glacis the row of veiled,
humiliated figures had vanished in the inappreciable interval of time
like a wreath of mist or a puff of dust.
One could hardly say that they returned the next day,--so unlike,
so far alien to the aspect of the humble mourners, who had wept and
gnashed their teeth and wailed in sackcloth and ashes on the glacis
of the fort in the dim dusk, was the splendidly armed and arrayed
delegation that high noon ushered into the main gate. Their coronets
of white swan’s feathers, standing fifteen inches high, with long
pendants trailing at the back, rose out of a soft band of swan’s-down
close on the forehead. They wore wide collars or capes of the same
material, and the intense whiteness heightened the brilliancy of the
blotches of decorative paint with which their faces were mottled. Each
had a feather-wrought mantle of iridescent plumage, the objects of
textile beauty so often described by travellers of that date. They bore
the arms of eld, in lieu of the more effective musket, wearing them as
ornaments and to emphasize the fact that they were needed neither for
defence nor aggression. The bows and arrows were tipped with quartz
wrought to a fine polish, and the quivers were covered with gorgeous
embroidery of beads and quills. Their hunting shirts and leggings were
similarly decorated and fringed with tinkling shells. They were shod
with the white buskins cabalistically marked with red to indicate their
calling and rank as “beloved men.” Their number was the mystic seven.
They were all old, one obviously so infirm that the pace of the others
was retarded to permit him to keep in company. They advanced with much
stateliness, and it was evidently an occasion of great moment in their
estimation.
Captain Howard, adopting the policy of the government to fall in with
the Indian ceremonial rather than to seek to force the tribes to other
methods, met them in person, and with some pomp and circumstance
conducted them to the mess-hall in one of the block-houses, as the
most pretentious apartment of the fort. He was an indulgent man when
off duty. He was rather glad, since to his surprise Ensign Raymond
had suddenly declared that he was willing to return the amulet, that
the Indians should have the bauble on which they set so much value,
and he was altogether unmoved by Mr. Morton’s remonstrance that it
was a bargaining with Satan, a recognition of a pagan worship, and a
promotion of witchcraft and conjure work to connive at the restoration
of the red stone to its purpose of delusion.
Inclination fosters an ingenuity of logic. “I am disposed to think the
stone is a symbol--a type of something I do not understand,” Captain
Howard replied; evidently he had absorbed something of Mr. Morton’s
prelections by the sheer force of propinquity, for certainly he had
never intentionally hearkened to them. “You, yourself, have often said
the Cherokees are in no sense idolaters.”
The officers of the post had no scruples. They were all present,
grouped about the walls, welcoming aught that served to break the
monotony. Mrs. Annandale, cynical, inquisitive, scornful, and deeply
interested, was seated in one of the great chairs so placed that she
could not fail to see all of what she contemptuously designated as
“the antics.” Norah stood behind her, wide-eyed and half-frightened,
gazing in breathless amazement at the proceedings. The room was lighted
only by the loop-holes for musketry, looking to the outer sides of the
bastion, and the broadly flaring door, for there was no fire this
warm, spring day. The great chimney-place was filled with masses of
pine boughs and glossy magnolia leaves, to hide its sooty aperture, and
on the wide hearth, near this improvised bower, stood Arabella, looking
on, a pleased spectator, as Raymond advanced to the table in the centre
of the floor, and laid upon it the great red stone, which shone in the
shadowy place with a translucent lustre that might well justify its
supernatural repute. The interpreter repeated the courteous phrases
in which Ensign Raymond stated that he took pleasure in returning
this object of beauty and value which had by accident fallen into his
possession.
His words were received in dead silence. The Indians absolutely ignored
him. They looked through him, beyond him, never at him. He had been
the cause of much anguish of soul, and the impulse of forgiveness is
foreign to such generosity of spirit as is predicable of the savage.
A moment of suspense ensued. Then the tallest, the stateliest of
the Indians reached forth his hand, took the amulet, passed it to a
colleague, who in his turn passed it to another, and in the continual
transfer its trail was lost and the keenest observer could not say at
length who was the custodian of the treasure.
Another moment of blank expectancy. There were always these barren
intervals in the leisurely progress of Indian diplomacy. The interview
seemed at an end. The next incident might be the silent filing out of
the embassy and their swift, noiseless departure.
Suddenly the leader took from one of the others a small bowl of their
curious pottery. It was full of fragrant green herbs which had been
drenched in clear water, for as he held them up the crystal drops fell
from them. There was a hush of amazed expectancy as he advanced toward
the young lady. With an inspired mien and a sonorous voice he cried,
casting up his eyes, “_Higayuli Tsunega!_”
“Oh, supreme white Fire!” echoed the interpreter.
“_Sakani udunuhi nigesuna usinuliyu! Yu!_”
“Grant that she may never become unhappy! Yu!”
Then lifting the fresh leafage aloft, the cheerataghe, with a solemn
gesture, sprinkled the water into her astounded face.
“Safe! Safe!” the interpreter continued to translate his words. “Safe
forever! She and hers can never know harm in the land of the Cherokee.
Not even a spirit of the air may molest her; no ghost of the departed
may haunt her sleep; not the shadow of a bird can fall upon her; no
vagrant witch can touch her with malign influence.”
“_Ha-usinuli nagwa ditsakuni denatlu hisaniga uy-igawasti dudanti!_”
declared the cheerataghe.
“We have keenly aimed our arrows against the accursed wanderers of
darkness!” chanted the interpreter.
“_Nigagi! Nigagi!_”
“Amen! Amen!”
A breathless silence ensued. No word. No stir. The amazement depicted
on the faces of the staring officers, the dubitation intimated in
Captain Howard’s corrugated, bushy eye-brows, the perplexity in Mrs.
Annandale’s eagerly observant, meagre little countenance, were as
definite a comment as if voiced in words. This was all caviare indeed
to their habits of mind, accustomed as they were to the consideration
of material interests and the antagonisms of flesh and blood. But the
pale ascetic face of the old missionary was kindled with a responsive
glow that was like the shining of a flame through an alabaster vase, so
pure, so exalted, so vivid an illumination it expressed, so perfect a
comprehension this spark of symbolism had ignited.
As a type of covenant the suggestions afforded by this incident
occupied several learned pages of Mr. Morton’s recondite work on
“Baptism in its Various Forms in Antient and Modern Times,” published
some years afterward, a subject which gratefully repays amplification
and is susceptible of infinite speculation. The peculiar interest which
the occasion developed for him served to annul the qualms of conscience
which he had suffered, despite which, however, instigated by the old
Adam of curiosity, he had permitted himself to be present at the
restoration of the conjuring-stone to its mission of delusion.
A mention of the amulet as a “lost religion” was the next moment on the
lips of the interpreter, echoing the rhetorical periods of Yachtino,
the chief of Chilhowee, who had stepped forward and was speaking
with a forceful dignity of gesture and the highly aspirated, greatly
diversified intonations of the Cherokee language, illustrating its
vaunted capacity for eloquent expressiveness, and affording the group
a signal opportunity of judging of the grace of oratory for which these
Indians were then famous.
The gratitude of the Indians, the spokesman declared, was not to be
measured by gifts. Not in recognition of her beneficence, not in return
for her kindness,--for kindness cannot be bought or repaid, and they
were her debtors forever,--but as a matter of barter the Cherokee
nation bestowed upon her their pearl, the “sleeping sun,” in exchange
for the amulet which she had caused to be returned by the ruthless
soldier.
Forthwith the chief of Chilhowee laid upon the table the beautiful
fresh-water pearl which Raymond had seen at Cowetchee.
Heedless of all the subtler significance of the ceremony, and, under
the British flag, caring naught for the vaunted puissance of Cherokee
protection against the seen and the unseen, the astonished and
delighted young beauty gazed speechless after the embassy, for their
grotesquely splendid figures had disappeared as silently as the images
of a dream, feeling that the reward was altogether out of proportion
with the simplicity of the kindly impulse that had actuated her girlish
heart. Because they were very old and savage, and, as she thought,
very poor, and were agonized for a boon which in their ignorance they
craved as dear and sacred, she had exerted the influence she knew she
possessed to restore to them this trifle, this bauble,--and here in her
hand the tear of compassion, as it were, was metamorphosed into a gem
such as she had never before beheld.
Mounted by a London jeweller between prongs set with diamonds it was
famous in her circle for its size and beauty, and regarded as a curio
it could out-vie all Kent. She long remembered the Cherokee words which
described it, and she entertained a sort of regretful reminiscence of
Fort Prince George, soon dismantled and fallen into decay, where the
spring had come so laden with beauty and charm, and with incidents of
such strange interest.
Mrs. Annandale also remembered it regretfully, and with a bitter,
oft-reiterated wish that Arabella had never seen the little stronghold
or the officers of its garrison. She used her utmost endeavors
against Raymond’s suit, but threats, persuasion, appeals, were vain
with Arabella. She had made her choice, and she would not depart
from it. Her heart was fixed, and not even the reproach to which her
generous temper rendered her most susceptible,--that she had caused
pain and unhappiness to Mervyn, encouraging him to cherish unfounded
hopes,--moved her in the least. She reminded them both that she had
warned him he must not presume on her qualified assent as a finality;
she had always feared she did not love him, and now she knew it was
impossible.
“I can’t imagine how Ensign Raymond had the opportunity to interfere,”
Mrs. Annandale said wofully to her brother in one of their many
conferences on the unexpected turn of the romance the match-maker had
fostered. “I am sure I never gave him the opportunity to make love to
her; it was dishonorable in him to introduce the subject of love when
he knew of her engagement.”
“He did not introduce the subject of love,” said Arabella, remembering
the scene in the fraise above the scarp, and laughing shyly. “I,
myself, spoke first of love.”
Then awed by her aunt’s expression of horror and offended propriety,
she added demurely:--
“It must have been the influence of that amulet. He had it then. They
say it bestows on its possessor his own best good.”
Captain Howard also remembered Fort Prince George regretfully, and
also with a vague wish that she had never seen the little stronghold.
He was not exactly discontented with Raymond as a son-in-law, but this
was not his preference, for he had advocated her acceptance of Mervyn’s
suit. His own limited patrimony lay adjoining the Mervyn estate, and he
thought the propinquity a mutual advantage to the prospects of the two
young people, and that it materially enhanced Arabella’s position as a
suitable match for the Mervyn heir. The succeeding baronet was a steady
conventional fellow, and had been very well thought of in the regiment
before he sold out upon coming into his title and fortune. Raymond
would be obliged to stick to the army, having but small means, and he
would doubtless do well if he could be kept within bounds.
“But,” Captain Howard qualified, describing the absent soldier to an
intimate friend and country neighbor in Kent, over the post-prandial
wine and walnuts,--“but he is such a frisky dare-devil! If he could be
scared half to death by somebody it would tame him, and be the making
of him.”
In a few years it might have seemed that this had been compassed,
for it was said that Raymond was afraid of his lovely wife. He was
obviously so solicitous of her approval, he considered her judgment of
such peculiar worth, and he thought her so “monstrous clever,” that
when impervious to all other admonitions, he could be reached, advised,
warned, through her influence.
When he became a personage of note, for in those days of many wars he
soon rose to eminence, and it was desired to flatter, or court, or
conciliate him, a difficult feat, for he was absolutely without vanity
for his own sake, it was understood that there was one secure road to
his favorable consideration,--he was never insensible to admiration of
his wife’s linguistic accomplishments, which included among more useful
tongues, the unique acquisition of something of the Cherokee language.
Then, too, he was always attentive and softened by any comment, in some
intimate coterie, upon the jewel, now called a pendant, which, hanging
by a slender chain, rose and fell on a bosom as delicately white as
the gem itself. The great pearl was associated with the most cherished
sentiments of his life, his love and his pride in his professional
career,--with the inauguration of his dear and lasting romance, and
his first independent command. With a tender reminiscent smile on his
war-worn face, he would ask her to repeat the word for the moon in
the several dialects, and would listen with an unwearied ear as she
rehearsed her spirited story of the “sleeping sun,” and the method of
its barter for the amulet.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE STORM CENTRE
_A NOVEL_
Cloth 12mo $1.50
“This beautiful novel by Charles Egbert Craddock shows the brilliant
and popular writer in her best vein.... The war scenes, the guiding
motives of the opposed sides, the pictures of the old Southern
household, are strikingly impressive by the nobility and the breadth
of their portrayal. The book is one to be held in high favor
long.”--_Louisville Courier-Journal._
THE STORY OF OLD FORT LOUDON
A tale of the Cherokees and the Pioneers of Tennessee, 1760
_With Illustrations by E. C. Peixotto_
Cloth 12mo $1.50
A narrative of the life of the pioneers of Tennessee and their fortunes
at the hands of the Cherokees in the uprising of 1760. The brilliant
Tennessee landscape and the old frontier fort serve as a background
to this picture of Indian craft and guile and pioneer hardships and
pleasures.
CONISTON
By WINSTON CHURCHILL
Author of “RICHARD CARVEL,” “THE CRISIS,” “THE CROSSING,” etc.
_With Illustrations by Florence Scovel Shinn_
Cloth 12mo $1.50
“A wonderful piece of work, distinguished as much by its restraint as
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man full of fine and delicate feeling, capable of great generosities
and exquisite tenderness; ... full of interest and charm as a love
story.... Altogether, an engrossing novel, singularly vigorous,
thoughtful, artistic.”--_New York Times._
“Coniston strengthens Mr. Churchill’s position as one of the ablest
writers of the day. _It possesses the irresistible grip on the emotions
possessed by the great novelists._”--_Boston Herald._
“Coniston is a greater novel than any that preceded it, and ... works
up an intense dramatic interest that almost makes one forget its
literary charm.”--_Chicago Record-Herald._
LADY BALTIMORE
By OWEN WISTER
Author of “THE VIRGINIAN,” etc., etc.
_With illustrations by Lester Ralph and Vernon Howe Bailey_
Cloth 12mo $1.50
“‘Lady Baltimore’ is the most engaging story yet written of Southern
life. It is the quiet annals of an old Southern town in the
half-whimsical, wholly sympathetic style of ‘Cranford,’ to which it
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what a delicacy of touch, with what a finished skill Owen Wister has
made an exquisite picture you must read to see. It is like a dainty
water-color portrait, delicious in itself even if it were not true; but
to its truth there will rise up a crowd of witnesses.”--By a Southern
contributor to _The Record-Herald_, Chicago.
RECENT FICTION
THE VINE OF SIBMAH
_A RELATION OF THE PURITANS_
By ANDREW MACPHAIL
Author of “Essays in Puritanism”
Illustrated Cloth 12mo $1.50
Mr. Andrew Macphail has created a novel out of the life in which he
is specially versed--that of the Puritans of Old and New England.
Puritan theologians and Puritan pirates, Jesuits, Quakers, soldiers and
savages, with their religions, their hates and their loves, are among
the characters of this book. The novel is a reading of the “eternal
thesis of love” as it was written in 1662 around the lives of a valiant
soldier and a winsome woman.
THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I
By BARBARA
Author of “The Garden of a Commuter’s Wife,” “People of the Whirlpool,”
etc., etc.
Illustrated Cloth 12mo $1.50
The author of “The Garden of a Commuter’s Wife” has returned to her
first theme; and those who revelled in that book will welcome the
outdoor volume promised for this spring under the intimate title of
“The Garden, You, and I.” Herein is the wholesome flow of good-humor
and keen observation that have always been among the charms of
“Barbara’s” writings.
IF YOUTH BUT KNEW
By AGNES AND EGERTON CASTLE
Authors of “THE PRIDE OF JENNICO,” etc.
_With illustrations by Launcelot Speed_
Cloth 12mo $1.50
“The story shows that rare combination of poetic tenderness and
romantic adventure which is the unfailing charm of the fiction of these
authors.”--_Chicago Record-Herald._
“They should be the most delightful of comrades, for their writing is
so apt, so responsive, so joyous, so saturated with the promptings and
the glamour of spring. It is because ‘If Youth But Knew’ has all these
adorable qualities that it is so fascinating.”--_Cleveland Leader._
THE WAY OF THE GODS
By JOHN LUTHER LONG
Author of “MADAME BUTTERFLY,” “HEIMWEH,” etc.
Cloth 12mo $1.50
“The Way of the Gods,” a new novel by John Luther Long, is laid in
the beautiful land of “Madame Butterfly,” and in the heart of the
Lady Hoshiko, Dream-of-a-Star. She is laved in the joy and sorrow and
mystery of the East, where Mr. Long is more than anywhere else at home.
Before her opens the possibility of a brief life of intense joy with
a samurai pledged to the great red death for the emperor; this brief
life, if she takes it, must be bought with an eternity of pain.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.