When Mrs. Maynard came to Sibley in May and the officers with their
wives were making their welcoming call, she had with motherly pride and
pleasure yielded to their constant importunities and shown to one party
after another an album of photographs,--likenesses of her only daughter.
There were little _cartes de visite_ representing her in long dresses
and baby-caps; quaint little pictures of a chubby-faced, chubby-legged
infant a few months older; charming studies of a little girl with great
black eyes and delicate features; then of a tall, slender slip of a
maiden, decidedly foreign-looking; then of a sweet and pensive face,
with great dark eyes, long, beautiful curling lashes, and very heavy,
low-arched brows, exquisitely moulded mouth and chin, and most luxuriant
dark hair; then others, still older, in every variety of dress,--even in
fancy costume, such as the girl had worn at fair or masquerade. These
and others still had Mrs. Maynard shown them, with repressed pride and
pleasure and with sweet acknowledgment of their enthusiastic praises.
Alice still tarried in the East, visiting relatives whom she had not
seen since her father's death three years earlier, and, long before she
came to join her mother at Sibley and to enter upon the life she so
eagerly looked forward to, "'way out in the West, you know, with
officers and soldiers and the band, and buffalo and Indians all around
you," there was not an officer or an officer's wife who had not
delightedly examined that album. There was still another picture, but
that one had been shown to only a chosen few just one week after her
daughter's arrival, and rather an absurd scene had occurred, in which
that most estimable officer, Lieutenant Sloat, had figured as the hero.
A more simple-minded, well-intentioned fellow than Sloat there did not
live. He was so full of kindness and good nature and readiness to do
anything for anybody that it never seemed to occur to him that everybody
on earth was not just as ready to be equally accommodating. He was a
perpetual source of delight to the colonel, and one of the most loyal
and devoted of subalterns, despite the fact that his locks were long
silvered with the frosts of years and that he had fought through the war
of the rebellion and risen to the rank of a field-officer in Maynard's
old brigade. The most temperate of men, ordinarily, the colonel had one
anniversary he loved to celebrate, and Sloat was his stand-by when the
3d of July came round, just as he had been at his shoulder at that
supreme moment when, heedless of the fearful sweep of shell and canister
through their shattered ranks, Pickett's heroic Virginians breasted the
slope of Cemetery Hill and surged over the low stone wall into Cushing's
guns. Hard, stubborn fighting had Maynard's men to do that day, and for
serene courage and determination no man had beaten Sloat. Both officers
had bullet-hole mementos to carry from that field; both had won their
brevets for conspicuous gallantry, and Sloat was a happy and grateful
man when, years afterwards, his old commander secured him a lieutenancy
in the regular service. He was the colonel's henchman, although he never
had brains enough to win a place on the regimental staff, and when Mrs.
Maynard came he overwhelmed her with cumbrous compliments and incessant
calls. He was, to his confident belief, her chosen and accepted knight
for full two days after her arrival. Then Jerrold came back from a brief
absence, and, as in duty bound, went to pay his respects to his
colonel's wife; and that night there had been a singular scene. Mrs.
Maynard had stopped suddenly in her laughing chat with two ladies, had
started from her seat, wildly staring at the tall, slender subaltern who
entered the gateway, and then fell back in her chair, fairly swooning as
he made his bow.
Sloat had rushed into the house to call the colonel and get some water,
while Mr. Jerrold stood paralyzed at so strange a reception of his first
call. Mrs. Maynard revived presently, explained that it was her heart,
or the heat, or something, and the ladies on their way home decided that
it was possibly the heart, it was certainly not the heat, it was
unquestionably something, and that something was Mr. Jerrold, for she
never took her eyes off him during the entire evening, and seemed unable
to shake off the fascination. Next day Jerrold dined there, and from
that time on he was a daily visitor. Every one noted Mrs. Maynard's
strong interest in him, but no one could account for it. She was old
enough to be his mother, said the garrison; but not until Alice Renwick
came did another consideration appear: he was singularly like the
daughter. Both were tall, lithe, slender; both had dark, lustrous eyes,
dark, though almost perfect, skin, exquisitely-chiselled features, and
slender, shapely hands and feet. Alice was "the picture of her father,"
said Mrs. Maynard, and Mr. Renwick had lived all his life in New York;
while Mr. Jerrold was of an old Southern family, and his mother a Cuban
beauty who was the toast of the New Orleans clubs not many years before
the war.
Poor Sloat! He did not fancy Jerrold, and was as jealous as so
unselfish a mortal could be of the immediate ascendency the young fellow
established in the colonel's household. It was bad enough before Alice
joined them; after that it was wellnigh unbearable. Then came the
3d-of-July dinner and the colonel's one annual jollification. No man
ever heard of Sloat's being intoxicated; he rarely drank at all; but
this evening the reminiscences of the day, the generous wine, the
unaccustomed elegance of all his surroundings, due to Mrs. Maynard's
taste and supervision, and the influence of Alice Kenwick's exquisite
beauty, had fairly carried him away.
They were chatting in the parlor, while Miss Renwick was entertaining
some young-lady friends from town and listening to the band on the
parade. Sloat was expatiating on her grace and beauty and going over the
album for the twentieth time, when the colonel, with a twinkling eye,
remarked to Mrs. Maynard,--
"I think you ought to show Major[A] Sloat the 'Directoire' picture, my
dear."
"Alice would never forgive me," said madame, laughing; "though I
consider it the most beautiful we have of her."
"Oh, where is it?" "Oh, do let us see it, Mrs. Maynard!" was the chorus
of exclamations from the few ladies present. "Oh, I _insist_ on seeing
it, madame," was Sloat's characteristic contribution to the clamor.
"I want you to understand it," said Mrs. Maynard, pleased, but still
hesitating. "We are very daft about Alice at home, you know, and it's
quite a wonder she has not been utterly spoiled by her aunts and uncles;
but this picture was a specialty. An artist friend of ours fairly _made_
us have it taken in the wedding-dress worn by her grandmother. You know
the Josephine Beauharnais 'Directoire' style that was worn in seventeen
ninety-something. Her neck and shoulders are lovely, and that was why we
consented. I went, and so did the artist, and we posed her, and the
photograph is simply perfect of her face, and neck too, but when Alice
saw it she blushed furiously and forbade my having them finished.
Afterwards, though, she yielded when her aunt Kate and I begged so hard
and promised that none should be given away, and so just half a dozen
were finished. Indeed, the dress is by no means as _décolleté_ as many
girls wear theirs at dinner now in New York; but poor Alice was
scandalized when she saw it last month, and she never would let me put
one in the album."
"Oh, _do_ go and get it, Mrs. Maynard!" pleaded the ladies. "Oh,
_please_ let me see it, Mrs. Maynard!" added Sloat; and at last the
mother-pride prevailed. Mrs. Maynard rustled up-stairs, and presently
returned holding in her hands a delicate silver frame in filigree-work,
a quaint foreign affair, and enclosed therein was a cabinet photograph
_en vignette_,--the head, neck, and shoulders of a beautiful girl; and
the dainty, diminutive, what-there-was-of-it waist of the old-fashioned
gown, sashed almost immediately under the exquisite bust, revealed quite
materially the cause of Alice Renwick's blushes. But a more beautiful
portrait was never photographed. The women fairly gasped with delight
and envy. Sloat could not restrain his impatience to get it in his own
hands, and finally he grasped it and then eyed it in rapture. It was two
minutes before he spoke a word, while the colonel sat laughing at his
worshipping gaze. Mrs. Maynard somewhat uneasily stretched forth her
hand, and the other ladies impatiently strove to regain possession.
"Come, Major Sloat, you've surely had it long enough. _We_ want it
again."
"Never!" said Sloat, with melodramatic intensity. "Never! This is my
ideal of perfection,--of divinity in woman. I will bear it home with me,
set it above my fireside, and adore it day and night."
"Nonsense, Major Sloat!" said Mrs. Maynard, laughing, yet far from being
at her ease. "Come, I _must_ take it back. Alice may be in any minute
now, and if she knew I had betrayed her she would never forgive me.
Come, surrender!" And she strove to take it from him.
But Sloat was in one of his utterly asinine moods. He would have been
perfectly willing to give any sum he possessed for so perfect a picture
as this. He never dreamed that there were good and sufficient reasons
why _no_ man should have it. He so loved and honored his colonel that he
was ready to lay down his life for any of his household. In laying claim
to this picture he honestly believed that it was the highest proof he
could give of his admiration and devotion. A tame surrender now meant
that his protestations were empty words. "Therefore," argued Sloat, "I
must stand firm."
"Madame," said he, "I'd die first." And with that he began backing to
the door.
Alarmed now, Mrs. Maynard sprang after him, and the little major leaped
upon a chair, his face aglow, jolly, rubicund, beaming with bliss and
triumph. She looked up, almost wringing her hands, and turned half
appealingly to the colonel, who was laughing heartily on the sofa, never
dreaming Sloat could be in earnest.
"Here, I'll give you back the frame: I don't want that," said Sloat, and
began fumbling at the back of the photograph. This was too much for the
ladies. They, too, rushed to the rescue. One of them sprang to and shut
the door, the other seized and violently shook the back of his chair,
and Sloat leaped to the floor, still clinging to his prize, and laughing
as though he had never had so much entertainment in his life. The long
Venetian windows opened upon the piazza, and towards the nearest one he
retreated, holding aloft the precious gage and waving off the attacking
party with the other hand. He was within a yard of the blinds, when they
were suddenly thrown open, a tall, slender form stepped quickly in, one
hand seized the uplifted wrist, the other the picture, and in far less
time than it takes to tell it Mr. Jerrold had wrenched it away and, with
quiet bow, restored it to its rightful owner.
"Oh, I say, now, Jerrold, that's downright unhandsome of you!" gasped
Sloat. "I'd have been on my way home with it."
"Shut up, you fool!" was the sharp, hissing whisper. "Wait till I go
home, if you want to talk about it." And, as quickly as he came, Mr.
Jerrold slipped out again upon the piazza.
Of course the story was told with varied comment all over the post.
Several officers were injudicious enough to chaff the old subaltern
about it, and--he was a little sore-headed the next day, anyway--the
usually placid Sloat grew the more indignant at Jerrold. He decided to
go and upbraid him; and, as ill luck would have it, they met before noon
on the steps of the club-room.
"I want to say to you, Mr. Jerrold, that from an officer of your age to
one of mine I think your conduct last night a piece of impertinence."
"I had a perfect right to do what I did," replied Jerrold, coolly. "You
were taking a most unwarrantable liberty in trying to carry off that
picture."
"How did you know what it was? You had never seen it!"
"There's where you are mistaken, Mr. Sloat" (and Jerrold purposely and
exasperatingly refused to recognize the customary _brevet_): "I had seen
it,--frequently."
Two officers were standing by, and one of them turned sharply and faced
Jerrold as he spoke. It was his former company commander. Jerrold noted
the symptom, and flushed, but set his teeth doggedly.
"Why, Mr. Jerrold! Mrs. Maynard said she never showed that to any one,"
said Sloat, in much surprise. "You heard her, did you not, Captain
Chester?"
"I did, certainly," was the reply.
"All the same, I repeat what I've said," was Jerrold's sullen answer. "I
have seen it frequently, and, what's more--" He suddenly stopped.
"Well, what's more?" said Sloat, suggestively.
"Never mind. I don't care to talk of the matter," replied Jerrold, and
started to walk away.
But Sloat was angry, nettled, jealous. He had meant to show his intense
loyalty and admiration for everything that was his colonel's, and had
been snubbed and called a fool by an officer many years, though not so
many "files," his junior. He never had liked him, and now there was an
air of conscious superiority about Jerrold that fairly exasperated him.
He angrily followed and called to him to stop, but Jerrold walked on.
Captain Chester stood still and watched them. The little man had almost
to run before he overtook the tall one. They were out of earshot when he
finally did so. There were a few words on both sides. Then Jerrold
shifted his light cane into his left hand, and Chester started forward,
half expecting a fracas. To his astonishment, the two officers shook
hands and parted.
"Well," said he, as Sloat came back with an angry yet bewildered face,
"I'm glad you shook hands. I almost feared a row, and was just going to
stop it. So he apologized, did he?"
"No, nothing like it."
"Then what did you mean by shaking hands?"
"That's nothing--never you mind," said Sloat, confusedly. "I haven't
forgiven him, by a good deal. The man's conceit is enough to disgust
anything--but a woman, I suppose," he finished, ruefully.
"Well, it's none of my business, Sloat, but pardon my saying I don't see
what there was to bring about the apparent reconciliation. That
hand-shake meant something."
"Oh, well--damn it! we had some words, and he--or I--Well, there's a
bet, and we shook hands on it."
"Seems to me that's pretty serious business, Sloat,--a bet following
such a talk as you two have had. I hope--"
"Well, captain," interrupted Sloat, "I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't
been mad as blazes; but I made it, and must stick to it,--that's all."
"You wouldn't mind telling me what it was, I suppose?"
"I can't; and that ends it."
Captain Chester found food for much thought and speculation over this
incident. So far as he was concerned, the abrupt remark of Sloat by no
means ended it. In his distrust of Jerrold, he too had taken alarm at
the very substantial intimacy to which that young man was welcomed at
the colonel's quarters. Prior to his marriage old Maynard had not liked
him at all, but it was mainly because he had been so negligent of his
duties and so determined a beau in city society after his arrival at
Sibley. He had, indeed, threatened to have him transferred to a company
still on frontier service if he did not reform; but then the
rifle-practice season began, and Jerrold was a capital shot and sure to
be on the list of competitors for the Department team, so what was the
use? He would be ordered in for the rifle-camp anyway, and so the
colonel decided to keep him at head-quarters. This was in the summer of
the year gone by. Then came the colonel's long leave, his visit to
Europe, his meeting with his old friend, now the widow of the lamented
Renwick, their delightful winter together in Italy, his courtship, her
consent, their marriage and return to America. When Maynard came back to
Sibley and the old regiment, he was so jolly and content that every man
was welcomed at his house, and it was really a source of pride and
pleasure to him that his accomplished wife should find any of his young
officers so thoroughly agreeable as she pronounced Mr. Jerrold. Others
were soldierly, courteous, well bred, but he had the air of a foreign
court about him, she privately informed her lord; and it seems, indeed,
that in days gone by Mr. Jerrold's father had spent many years in France
and Spain, once as his country's representative near the throne. Though
the father died long before the boy was out of his knickerbockers, he
had left the impress of his grand manner, and Jerrold, to women of any
age, was at once a courtier and a knight. But the colonel never saw how
her eyes followed the tall young officer time and again. There were
women who soon noted it, and one of them said it was such a yearning,
longing look. _Was_ Mrs. Maynard really happy? they asked each other.
_Did_ she really want to see Alice mate with him, the handsome, the
dangerous, the selfish fellow they knew him to be? If not, could
anything be more imprudent than that they should be thrown together as
they were being, day after day? Had Alice wealth of her own? If not, did
the mother know that nothing would tempt Howard Jerrold into an alliance
with a dowerless daughter? These, and many more, were questions that
came up every day. The garrison could talk of little else; and Alice
Renwick had been there just three weeks, and was the acknowledged Queen
of Hearts at Sibley, when the rifle-competitions began again, and a
great array of officers and men from all over the Northwest came to the
post by every train, and their canvas tents dotted the broad prairie to
the north.
One lovely evening in August, just before the practice began, Colonel
Maynard took his wife to drive out and see the camp. Mr. Jerrold and
Alice Renwick followed on horseback. The carriage was surrounded as it
halted near the range, and half a score of officers, old and young, were
chatting with Mrs. Maynard, while others gathered about the lovely girl
who sat there in the saddle. There came marching up from the railway a
small squad of soldiers, competitors arriving from the far West. Among
them--apparently their senior non-commissioned officer--was a tall
cavalry sergeant, superbly built, and with a bronzed and bearded and
swarthy face that seemed to tell of years of campaigning over mountain
and prairie. They were all men of perfect physique, all in the neat,
soldierly fatigue-dress of the regular service, some wearing the
spotless white stripes of the infantry, others the less artistic and
equally destructible yellow of the cavalry. Their swinging stride, erect
carriage, and clear and handsome eyes all spoke of the perfection of
health and soldierly development. Curious glances were turned to them as
they advanced, and Miss Renwick, catching sight of the party,
exclaimed,--
"Oh, who are these? And what a tall soldier that sergeant is!"
"That sergeant, Miss Renwick," said a slow, deliberate voice, "is the
man I believe will knock Mr. Jerrold out of the first prize. That is
Sergeant McLeod."
As though he heard his name pronounced, the tall cavalryman glanced for
the first time at the group, brought his rifle to the carry as if about
to salute, and was just stepping upon the roadside, where he came in
full view of the occupants of the carriage, when a sudden pallor shot
across his face, and he plunged heavily forward and went down like a
shot. Sympathetic officers and comrades surrounded the prostrate form in
an instant. The colonel himself sprang from his carriage and joined the
group; a blanket was quickly brought from a neighboring tent, and the
sergeant was borne thither and laid upon a cot. A surgeon felt his pulse
and looked inquiringly around:
"Any of you cavalrymen know him well? Has he been affected this way
before?"
A young corporal who had been bending anxiously over the sergeant
straightened up and saluted:
"I know him well, sir, and have been with him five years. He's only had
one sick spell in all that time,--'twas just like this,--and then he
told me he'd been sunstruck once."
"This is no case of sunstroke," said the doctor. "It looks more like the
heart. How long ago was the attack you speak of?"
"Three years ago last April, sir. I remember it because we'd just got
into Fort Raines after a long scout. He'd been the solidest man in the
troop all through the cold and storm and snow we had in the mountains,
and we were in the reading-room, and he'd picked up a newspaper and was
reading while the rest of us were talking and laughing, and, first thing
we knew, he was down on the floor, just like he was to-night."
"Hm!" said the surgeon. "Yes. That's plenty, steward. Give him that.
Raise his head a little, corporal. Now he'll come round all right."