"I have been reading over your letter of Thursday last, dear Steven,"
wrote Miss Travers, "and there is much that I feel I ought to answer.
You and Kate are very much of a mind about the 'temptations' with which
I am surrounded; but you are far more imaginative than she is, and far
more courteous. There is so much about your letter that touches me
deeply that I want to be frank and fair in my reply. I have been dancing
all this evening, was out at dinner before that, and have made many
calls this afternoon; but, tired as I am, my letter must be written,
for to-morrow will be but the repetition of to-day. Is it that I am cold
and utterly heartless that I can sit and write so calmly in reply to
your fervent and appealing letter? Ah, Steven, it is what may be said of
me; but, if cold and heartless to you, I have certainly given no man at
this garrison the faintest reason to think that he has inspired any
greater interest in him. They are all kind, all very attentive. I have
told you how well Mr. Royce dances and Mr. Merton rides and Mr. Foster
reads and talks. They entertain me vastly, and I _do_ like it. More than
this, Steven, I am pleased with their evident admiration,--not alone
pleased and proud that they should admire me who am pledged to you,--not
that alone, I frankly confess, but because it in itself is pleasant. It
pleases me. Very possibly it is because I am vain.
"And yet, though my hours are constantly occupied, though they are here
from morning till night, no one of them is more attentive than another.
There are five or six who come daily. There are some who do not come at
all. Am I a wretch, Steven? There are two or three that do not call who
I wish _would_ call. I would like to know them.
"Yet they know--they could not help it, with Kate here, and I never
forget--that I am your promised wife. Steven, do you not sometimes
forget the conditions of that promise? Even now, again and again do I
not repeat to you that you ought to release me and free yourself? Of
course your impulse will be to say my heart is changing,--that I have
seen others whom I like better. No, I have seen no one I like as well.
But _is_ 'like' what you deserve,--what you ask? and is it not all I
have ever been able to promise you? Steven, bear me witness, for Kate is
bitterly unjust to me at times, I told you again and again last summer
and fall that I did not love you and ought not to think of being your
wife. Yet, poor, homeless, dependent as I am, how strong was the
temptation to say yes to your plea! You know that I did not and would
not until time and again your sweet mother, whom I _do_ love, and Kate,
who had been a mother to me, both declared that _that_ should make no
difference: the love would come: the happiest marriages the world over
were those in which the girl respected the man of her choice: love would
come, and come speedily, when once she was his wife. You yourself
declared you could wait in patience,--you would woo and win by and by.
Only promise to be your wife before returning to the frontier, and you
would be content. Steven, _are_ you content? You know you are not: you
know you are unhappy; and it is all, not because I am growing to love
some one else, but because I am not growing to love you. Heaven knows I
want to love you; for so long as you hold me to it my promise is sacred
and shall be kept. More than that, if you say that it is your will that
I seclude myself from these attentions, give up dancing, give up rides,
drives, walks, and even receiving visits, here, so be it. I will obey.
But write this to me, Steven,--not to Kate. I am too proud to ask her to
show me the letters I know she has received from you,--and there are
some she has not shown me,--but I cannot understand a man's complaining
to other persons of the conduct of the woman who is, or is to be, his
wife. Forgive me if I pain you: sometimes even to myself I seem old and
strange. I have lived so much alone, have had to think and do for myself
so many years while Kate has been away, that perhaps I'm not 'like other
girls;' but the respect I feel for you would be injured if I thought you
strove to guide or govern me through others; and of one thing be sure,
Steven, _I must honor and respect and look up to the man I marry_, love
or no love.
"Once you said it would kill you if you believed I could be false to
you. If by that you meant that, having given my promise to you to be
your wife at some future time, I must school myself to love you, and
will be considered false if love do not come at my bidding or yours, I
say to you solemnly, release me now. I may not love, but I cannot and
will not deceive you, even by simulating love that does not exist.
Suppose that love were to be kindled in my heart. Suppose I were to
learn to care for some one here. You would be the first one to know it;
for I would tell you as soon as I knew it myself. _Then_ what could I
hope for,--or you? Surely you would not want to marry a girl who loved
another man. But is it much better to marry one who feels that she does
not love you? Think of it, Steven: I am very lonely, very far from
happy, very wretched over Kate's evident trouble and all the sorrow I am
bringing you and yours; but have I misled or deceived you in any one
thing? Once only has a word been spoken or a scene occurred that you
could perhaps have objected to. I told you the whole thing in my letter
of Sunday last, and why I had not told Kate. We have not met since that
night, Mr. Hayne and I, and may not; but he is a man whose story excites
my profound pity and sorrow, and he is one of the two or three I feel
that I would like to see more of. Is this being false to you or to my
promise? If so, Steven, you cannot say that I have not given you the
whole truth.
"It is very late at night,--one o'clock,--and Kate is not yet asleep,
and the captain is still down-stairs, reading. He is not looking well at
all, and Kate is sorely anxious about him. It was his evidence that
brought years of ostracism and misery upon Lieutenant Hayne, and there
are vague indications that in his own regiment the officers are
beginning to believe that possibly he was not the guilty man. The
cavalry officers, of course, say nothing to us on the subject, and I
have never heard the full story. If he has been, as is suggested, the
victim of a scoundrel, and Captain Rayner was at fault in his evidence,
no punishment on earth could be too great for the villain who planned
his ruin, and no remorse could atone for Captain Rayner's share. I never
saw so sad a face on mortal man as Mr. Hayne's. Steven Van Antwerp, I
wish I _were_ a man! I would trace that mystery to the bitter end.
"This is a strange letter to send to--to you; but I am a strange girl.
Already I am more than expecting you to write and release me
unconditionally; and you _ought_ to do it. I do not say I want it.
"Faithfully, at least, yours,
"NELLIE.
"P.S.--Should you write to Kate, you are not to tell her, remember, of
my meeting with Mr. Hayne. Of course I am anxious to have your reply to
that letter; but it will be five days yet."
An odd letter, indeed, for a girl not yet twenty, and not of a
hope-inspiring character; but when it reached Mr. Van Antwerp he did not
pale in reading it: his face was ghastly before he began. If anything,
he seemed relieved by some passages, though rejoiced by none. Then he
took from an inner pocket the letter that had reached him a few days
previous, and all alone in his room, late at night, he read it over
again, threw it upon the table at which he was sitting, then, with
passionate abandonment, buried his face in his arms and groaned aloud in
anguish.
Two days after writing this letter Miss Travers was so unfortunate as to
hear a conversation in the dining-room which was not intended for her
ears. She had gone to her room immediately after breakfast, and,
glancing from her window, saw that the officers were just going to
head-quarters for the daily _matinée_. For half or three-quarters of an
hour, therefore, there could be no probable interruption; and she
decided to write an answer to the letter which came from Mr. Van Antwerp
the previous afternoon. A bright fire was burning in the old-fashioned
stove with which frontier quarters are warmed if not ornamented, and she
perched her little, slippered feet upon the hearth, took her portfolio
in her lap, and began. Mrs. Rayner was in the nursery, absorbed with the
baby and the nurse, when a servant came and announced that "a lady was
in the kitchen" and wanted to speak with the lady of the house. Mrs.
Rayner promptly responded that she was busy and couldn't be disturbed,
and wondered who it could be that came to her kitchen to see her.
"Can I be of service, Kate?" called Miss Travers. "I will run down, if
you say so."
"I wish you would," was the reply; and Miss Travers put aside her
writing. "Didn't she give any name?" asked Mrs. Rayner of the Abigail,
who was standing with her head just visible at the stairway, it being
one of the unconquerable tenets of frontier domestics to go no farther
than is absolutely necessary in conveying messages of any kind; and this
damsel, though new to the neighborhood, was native and to the manner
born in all the tricks of the trade.
"She said you knew her name, ma'am. She's the lady from the hospital."
"Here, Jane, take the baby! Never mind, Nellie: I must go!" And Mrs.
Rayner started with surprising alacrity; but as she passed her door Miss
Travers saw the look of deep anxiety on her face.
A moment later she heard voices at the front door,--a party of ladies
who were going to spend the morning with the colonel's wife at some
"Dorcas society" work which many of them had embraced with enthusiasm.
"I want to see Miss Travers, just a minute," she heard a voice say, and
recognized the pleasant tones of Mrs. Curtis, the young wife of one of
the infantry officers: so a second time she put aside her writing, and
then ran down to the front door. Mrs. Curtis merely wanted to remind her
that she must be sure to come and spend the afternoon with her and bring
her music, and was dismayed to find that Miss Travers could not come
before stable-call: she had an engagement. "Of course: I might have
known it: you are besieged every hour. Well, can you come to-morrow?
Do." And, to-morrow being settled upon, and despite the fact that
several of the party waiting on the sidewalk looked cold and impatient,
Mrs. Curtis found it impossible to tear herself away until certain
utterly irrelevant matters had been lightly touched upon and lingeringly
abandoned. The officers were just beginning to pour forth from
head-quarters when the group of ladies finally got under way again and
Miss Travers closed the door. It was now useless to return to her
letter: so she strolled into the parlor just as she heard her sister's
voice at the kitchen door:
"Come right in here, Mrs. Clancy. Now, quick, what is it?"
And from the dining-room came the answer, hurried, half whispered, and
mysterious,--
"He's been drinkin' ever since he got out of hospital, ma'am, an' he's
worse than ever about Loot'nant Hayne. It's mischief he'll be doin',
ma'am: he's crazy-like--"
"Mrs. Clancy, you _must_ watch him. You--Hush!"
And here she stopped short, for, in astonishment at what she had already
heard, and in her instant effort to hear no more of what was so
evidently not intended for her, Miss Travers hurried from the parlor,
the swish of her skirts telling loudly of her presence there. She went
again to her room. What could it mean? Why was her proud, imperious Kate
holding secret interviews with this coarse and vulgar woman? What
concern was it of hers that Clancy should be "worse" about Mr. Hayne? It
could not mean that the mischief he would do was mischief _to_ the man
who had saved his life and his property. That was out of the question.
It could not mean that the poor, broken-down, drunken fellow had the
means in his power of further harming a man who had already been made to
suffer so much. Indeed, Kate's very exclamation, the very tone in which
she spoke, showed a distress of mind that arose from no fear for one
whom she hated as she hated Hayne. Her anxiety was personal. It was for
her husband and for herself she feared, or woman's tone and tongue never
yet revealed a secret. Nellie Travers stood in her room stunned and
bewildered, yet trying hard to recall and put together all the scattered
stories and rumors that had reached her about the strange conduct of
Clancy after he was taken to the hospital,--especially about his
heart-broken wail when told that it was Lieutenant Hayne who had rescued
him and little Kate from hideous death. Somewhere, somehow, this man was
connected with the mystery which encircled the long-hidden truth in
Hayne's trouble. Could it be possible that he did not realize it, and
that her sister had discovered it? Could it be--oh, heaven! _no!_--could
it be that Kate was standing between that lonely and friendless man and
the revelation that would set him right? She could not believe it of
her! She would not believe it of her sister! And yet what did Kate mean
by charging Mrs. Clancy to watch him,--that drunken husband? What could
it mean but that she was striving to prevent Mr. Hayne's ever hearing
the truth? She longed to learn more and solve the riddle once and for
all. They were still earnestly talking together down in the dining-room;
but she could not listen. Kate knew her so well that she had not closed
the door leading into the hall, though both she and the laundress of
Company B had lowered their voices. It was disgraceful at best, thought
Miss Travers, it was beneath her sister, that she should hold any
private conversation with a woman of that class. Confidences with such
were contamination. She half determined to rush down-stairs and put an
end to it, but was saved the scene: fresh young voices, hearty ringing
tones, and the stamp of heavy boot-heels were heard at the door; and as
Rayner entered, ushering in Royce and Graham, Mrs. Rayner and the
laundress fled once more to the kitchen.
When the sisters found themselves alone again, it was late in the
evening. Mrs. Rayner came to Nellie's room and talked on various topics
for some little time, watching narrowly her sister's face. The young
girl hardly spoke at all. It was evident to the elder what her thoughts
must be.
"I suppose you think I should explain Mrs. Clancy's agitation and
mysterious conduct, Nellie," she finally and suddenly said.
"I do not want you to tell me anything, Kate, that you yourself do not
wish to tell me. You understand, of course, how I happened to be there?"
"Oh, certainly. I wasn't thinking of that. You couldn't help hearing;
but you must have thought it queer,--her being so agitated, I mean."
No answer.
"Didn't you?"
"I wasn't thinking of her at all."
"What did you think, then?" half defiantly, yet trembling and growing
white.
"I thought it strange that _you_ should be talking with her in such a
way."
"She was worried about her husband,--his drinking so much,--and came to
consult me."
"Why should she--and you--show such consternation at his connection with
the name of Mr. Hayne?"
"Nellie, _that_ matter is one you know I cannot bear to talk of." ("Very
recently only," thought the younger.) "You once asked me to tell you
what Mr. Hayne's crime had been, and I answered that until you could
hear the whole story you could not understand the matter at all. We are
both worried about Clancy. He is not himself; he is wild and imaginative
when he's drinking. He has some strange fancies since the fire, and he
thinks he ought to do something to help the officer because he helped
him, and his head is full of Police Gazette stories, utterly without
foundation, and he thinks he can tell who the real culprits were,--or
something of that kind. It is utter nonsense. I have investigated the
whole thing,--heard the whole story. It is the trashiest, most
impossible thing you ever dreamed of, and would only make fearful
trouble if Mr. Hayne got hold of it."
"Why?"
"_Why?_ Because he is naturally vengeful and embittered, and he would
seize on any pretext to make it unpleasant for the officers who brought
about his trial."
"Do you mean that what Clancy says in any way affects them?" asked Nell,
with quickening pulse and color.
"It might, if there were a word of truth in it; but it is the maudlin
dream of a liquor-maddened brain. Mrs. Clancy and I both know that what
he says is utterly impossible. Indeed, he tells no two stories alike."
"Has he told you anything?"
"No; but she tells me everything."
"How do you know she tells the truth?"
"Nellie! Why should she deceive me? I have done everything for them."
"I distrust her all the same; and you had better be warned in time. If
he has any theory, no matter how crack-brained, or if he knows anything
about the case and wants to tell it to Mr. Hayne, you are the last woman
on earth who should stand in the way."
"Upon my word, Nellie Travers, this is going too far! One would think
you believed I wish to stand in the way of that young man's
restoration."
"Kate, if you lift a hand or speak one word to prevent Clancy's seeing
Mr. Hayne and telling him everything he knows, you will make me
believe--precisely that."
Captain Rayner heard sobbing and lamentation on the bedroom floor when
he came in a few moments after. Going aloft, he found Miss Travers's
door closed as usual, and his wife in voluble distress of mind. He
could only learn that she and Nellie had had a falling out, and that
Nell had behaved in a most unjust, disrespectful, and outrageous way.
She declined to give further particulars.