She did nothing. She would see nobody from the instant the news came.
She had hardly slept at night,--was always awake at dawn and out at the
gate to get the earliest copy of the morning papers; but the news
reached them at nightfall, and when some of the ladies from the fort
drove in to offer their sympathy and condolence in the morning, and to
make tender inquiry, the answer at the door was that Miss Nina saw
nobody, that her mother alone was with her, and that "she was very
still." And so it went for some days. Then there came the return of the
command to Sibley; and hundreds of people went up from town to see the
six companies of the fort garrison march up the winding road amid the
thunder of welcome from the guns of the light battery and the exultant
strains of the band. Mrs. Maynard and Alice were the only ladies of the
circle who were not there: a son and brother had joined them, after long
absence, at Aunt Grace's cottage at Sablon, was the explanation, and the
colonel would bring them home in a few days, after he had attended to
some important matters at the fort. In the first place, Chester had to
see to it that the tongue of scandal was slit, so far as the colonel's
household was concerned, and all good people notified that no such thing
had happened as was popularly supposed (and "everybody" received the
announcement with the remark that she knew all along it couldn't be so),
and that a grievous and absurd but most mortifying blunder had been
made. It was a most unpleasant ghost to "down," the shadow of that
scandal, for it would come up to the surface of garrison chat at all
manner of confidential moments; but no man or woman could safely speak
of it to Chester. It was gradually assumed that he was the man who had
done all the blundering and that he was supersensitive on the subject.
There was another thing never satisfactorily explained to some of the
garrison people, and that was Nina Beaubien's strange conduct. In less
than a week she was seen on the street in colors,--brilliant
colors,--when it was known she had ordered deep mourning, and then she
suddenly disappeared and went with her silent old mother abroad. To this
day no woman in society understands it, for when she came back, long,
long afterwards, it was a subject on which she would never speak. There
were one or two who ventured to ask, and the answer was, "For reasons
that concern me alone." But it took no great power of mental vision to
see that her heart wore black for him forever.
His letter explained it all. She had received it with a paroxysm of
passionate grief and joy, kissed it, covered it with wildest caresses
before she began to read, and then, little by little, as the words
unfolded before her staring eyes, turned cold as stone:
"It is my last night of life, Nina, and I am glad 'tis so. Proud and
sensitive as I am, the knowledge that every man in my regiment has
turned from me,--that I have not a friend among them,--that there is no
longer a place for me in their midst,--more than all, that I _deserve_
their contempt,--has broken my heart. We will be in battle before the
setting of another sun. Any man who seeks death in Indian fight can find
it easily enough, and I can _compel_ their respect in spite of
themselves. They will not recognize me, living, as one of them; but
dying on the field, they have to place me on their roll of honor.
"But now I turn to you. What have I been,--what am I,--to have won such
love as yours? May God in heaven forgive me for my past! All too late I
hate and despise the man I have been,--the man whom you loved. One last
act of justice remains. If I died without it you would mourn me
faithfully, tenderly, lovingly, for years, but if I tell the truth you
will see the utter unworthiness of the man, and your love will turn to
contempt. It is hard to do this, knowing that in doing it I kill the
only genuine regret and dry the only tear that would bless my memory;
but it is the one sacrifice I can make to complete my self-humiliation,
and it is the one thing that is left me that will free you. It will
sting at first, but, like the surgeon's knife, its cut is mercy. Nina,
the very night I came to you on the bluffs, the very night you perilled
your honor to have that parting interview, I went to you with a lie on
my lips. I had told _her_ we were nothing to each other,--you and I.
More than that, I was seeking her love; I hoped I could win her; and had
she loved me I would have turned from you to make her my wife. Nina, I
loved Alice Renwick. Good-by. Don't mourn for me after this."