A week went rapidly by. Captain Barclay had gone on duty, and Mr.
Brayton, his sub, had not yet "sized him up." Lieutenant Trott, the new
regimental quartermaster, had arrived by the Saturday's stage, and was
ready to receipt to Lieutenant Winn for all property he had to turn
over; but Winn had broken down under his weight of woe and taken to his
bed. From Washington came tidings, telegraphed as far as San Antonio,
that Lawrence was slowly mending and would soon be sitting up. Mrs.
Winn, absorbed in the care of her suffering husband, had accepted no
invitations, but the many sympathetic women who called to ask if there
were not some way in which they could be of aid reported her as looking
feverish and far from well. Some of them had ventured to speak of the
new arrival, and, though her ears were evidently open, her lips were
closed. That she was willing, if not eager, to hear anything they had to
say or tell about Captain Barclay was all very well as far as it went,
but what some of her visitors most desired was to hear what she had to
say about him; as she would say nothing, one or two had resorted to a
little delicate questioning in the hope of drawing her out. Mrs.
Faulkner, a young matron of her own age and previous social standing, an
army girl like herself, and for some time her one intimate friend at
Worth, went so far as to ask, "You used to know him very well, did you
not?" and was checkmated by the answer, "Not well enough to talk about,"
which answer Mrs. Faulkner pondered over and considered deliberately and
inexcusably rude. With the kindest feeling for her in the world, as all
the women avowed, and no animosity whatever towards Barclay over and
beyond that feeling on poor Colonel Lawrence's account, there was the
liveliest interest at Worth as regarded Mrs. Winn and Captain Barclay in
seeing what they would do; and, to the disappointment of all Fort Worth,
they had done nothing.
Barclay promptly returned the calls of the officers who had called upon
him, and had done all proper homage to the wives of those who were
possessed of such blessings, but there were still certain quarters where
his face or his card had not been seen: at Captain Cram's, for instance,
because that warrior was on scout and couldn't call, ditto his
lieutenant; at one or two of the new and unpolished pillars of the
temple, because they had not known enough or had been too shy to call;
and at Winn's, because that officer was ill of a fever and could not
call. There was another set of quarters in which he had not yet set
foot,--Ned Lawrence's; and that was the house most people expected him
to visit first.
Nor did he remain at Brooks's. The major's house was big, but so was his
household. "You have a vacant room here, Mr. Brayton," he said, the
third day after his arrival, as he dropped in at his subaltern's. "It
may be a month before I get shaken down into place. I dislike to disturb
women and children, and so have decided to ask you to let me move my cot
and trunk in here awhile and to propose my name at the mess." And
Brayton, blushing at the realization of the fact that the furniture in
the room referred to consisted solely of some chairs, a square pine
table covered with a cavalry blanket, with a cigar-box half full of
smoking-tobacco, another half full of white beans, and a pack of cards
for its sole ornaments, nevertheless bravely ushered his new captain
into the bower, and Barclay looked neither surprised nor satirical at
the sight. "We sometimes play a mild game of draw here, sir," said
downright Brayton, "which accounts for the appearance of things; but my
striker can clean it up in ten minutes, and you are most welcome."
"It won't put you out in any way?" asked Barclay, without the comment
of an uplifted eyebrow on the evidence adduced.
"Not so much as poker, if it does at all," said Brayton, promptly. He
was determined his captain should know the extent of his frailties at
the start.
Barclay smiled quietly and turned to the boy with liking in his eye.
"I'm hardly ten years your senior, Brayton," said he, "and so shall not
preach, but I believe we can put that room to a little better use."
The next day he took his seat at the bachelors' mess, where a dozen
officers were congregated, all of them but two his juniors in rank. The
sideboard was lavishly decked with the indispensables of that benighted
day. The old-timers and the new took their anteprandial cocktail or
toddy, and hospitably invited Barclay to join. Barclay smiled
gratefully, but said he had "never yet got in the way of it, somehow,"
nor did he more than sip at the Bordeaux which the presiding officer
ordered served in honor of the occasion. The mess was rather silent.
Most men seemed desirous of listening to Barclay when he spoke at all.
They knew every twist and turn of each other's mode of speech by that
time, and could repeat verbatim every story in the combination. Barclay
might have something new; but if he did he had no chance. Captain
Follansbee took and kept the floor from first to last. He was airing his
views on the subject of consolidation, reorganization, and purification
as practised at the War Department, a topic which the others considered
inexcusable, not so much from the fact that it must be most unpalatable
to Captain Barclay, a beneficiary of the business, as it turned out, as
because Follansbee had worn them all out with it weeks before.
And, to everybody's surprise, so far from seeming annoyed or embarrassed
or bored, Barclay led him on from point to point, and, even after coffee
was served, sat an apparently absorbed listener, for by that time
Follansbee had absorbed most of the claret and was dilating on the
matter with especial reference to the case of Colonel Lawrence. Later
that evening Barclay spent an hour at the Blythes', and two days after
he and Brayton dined there.
It was a seven-o'clock dinner. The doctor and his wife, Major and Mrs.
Brooks, Miss Frazier and Miss Amanda Frazier, were the other guests.
Those were the days when officers of all grades wore epaulets when in
full uniform, but, except in one or two swell messes, full dress was not
considered requisite for either dinner or hops. The men wore the
uniform frock-coat with shoulder-straps; some few privileged characters
even dared to appear in a sack-coat with white tie. Such a thing as the
evening dress of civil life was unknown at a military post, and unowned
in the fighting force of the army, outside, perhaps, of the artillery.
The doctor was a privileged character, a man who said what he thought
and did what he thought right; and when Mrs. Blythe, glancing out of her
parlor window, saw their favored friend and medical adviser coming along
the walk, his hands deep in his trousers-pockets and himself in a fit of
abstraction and a new sack-coat, while the partner of his joys and
sorrows chatted briskly with the Frazier girls, Mrs. Blythe called
up-stairs to her massive liege lord, "Wear your blouse, dear; the doctor
has on his"; whereupon Blythe slipped out of the uniform coat of formal
cut and into the easy sack, and came trotting down the creaking stair in
time to welcome his guests. Brooks, Barclay, and Brayton, who came
later, were in the prescribed regulation dress, whereat Dr. Collabone
exclaimed, "Hullo! Now that's what I ought to have done, if I'd had as
much regard for conventionality as I have for health. Gentlemen, do you
know you simply invite an apoplectic seizure by sitting down to dinner
in a tightly buttoned uniform coat? It is barbarous. There ought to be
a regulation against it."
It was observed that while the doctor included all three of the
cavalrymen in his remarks he looked at and apparently addressed only
one, Captain Barclay, whose uniform coat was brand-new, very handsomely
cut, its buttons and shoulder-straps of the finest make and finish,
whereas the doctor's were tarnished, if not actually shabby. Brooks
frowned, and Brayton looked embarrassed lest Barclay should take it
amiss; but that officer remained smilingly interested, and in nowise
troubled. The Frazier girls giggled, and Miss Amanda was prompt to
assert that for her part she loved to see the officers wear the proper
uniform, and she wasn't alarmed about apoplexy; whereupon Collabone
smiled benignly and said, "What did I tell you about the danger of tight
lacing?" Amanda couldn't bear the doctor. Her elder and primmer sister
only half liked him. Many of the women thought him brusque and rude, but
officers and men and mothers of families swore by him, and children
adored him. A childless man himself, he seemed to keep open house for
the offspring of his comrades. They swarmed about his quarters at all
hours of the day. They invaded his parlor, overflowed his dining-room,
and ruled his kitchen.
A kindly and placid soul was Mrs. Collabone, a woman who had few cares
or perplexities, and these she promptly turned over to her broad-minded,
broad-shouldered liege for final disposition, as serenely confident of
their speedy dissipation as she was of the prompt conquest of any and
all the manifold ills to which childish flesh is heir by that
practitioner's infallible remedies. Children ran loose in those days in
Texas; and so they ought to, said Collabone. "Savage races are the only
scientific rearers," he maintained. "Boys or girls, they should be
burdened with but a single garment, or less, from the time they're born
until they're eight or ten, and meantime they should be made to eat,
sleep, and live outdoors." He preached for children regularity in
matters of diet, prescribed four light meals a day, practised
heterodoxy, and distributed bread and milk, bread and syrup, bread and
jam, cookies, corn dodgers, and molasses candy, morning, noon, and
night. Aunt Purlina, the fat and jocund goddess of the Collabones'
kitchen, had standing orders on such subjects, and many a time had the
post surgeon to wait for his own refreshments because "the kids" had
possession of the premises. There was never a worry along officers' row
when children strayed from home. "Oh, they're over at the doctor's," was
the soothing response to all queries. The doctor's big yard was the
garrison play-ground; for, when a soulless, heartless, childless,
wifeless post commander, Frazier's predecessor, had dared to prohibit
the use of the parade-ground for croquet, hop-scotch, marbles, or "Tom,
Tom Pull-away," it was Collabone who rigged up swings and giant strides
at his own expense and without the aid of the post quartermaster, and
sent away to New Orleans for croquet sets for the exclusive use of the
youngsters. It nettled inexpressibly the field officer commanding. He
took it as a rebuke from his junior, and took it out in a course of
nagging and persecution at the doctor's expense, that roused the
energies of the entire post. Frazier was sent from Concho to supersede
the objectionable lieutenant-colonel, who thereupon declared his
intention of moving the doctor out and taking his quarters; but a
courier galloped all the way from Worth to the camp at San Patricio,
whither the department commander had gone a-hunting, and another got
back in the nick of time with orders for the devastating officer to move
to the cantonment on the Pecos, the worst hole in all Texas, as reported
by the department inspector. The children had won the day.
At the very moment when the party took their seats at Blythe's, the
children of that establishment and their friends the Lawrences were
holding high carnival at the doctor's, Aunt Purlina and the colored maid
vying with each other in efforts to stuff them to repletion. Over this
uproarious feast presided the tall slip of a damsel with whom poor Ned
had parted so mournfully when he went away in February. Ada's was the
only face in all the merry party that seemed to have known a trace of
sorrow. Her big, dark, mournful eyes and shaggy hair, her sallow face
and shabby frock, twice let down and still "skimpy," told a pathetic
story. Thirteen years of age, the child had already seen much of anxiety
and trouble,--much, indeed, beyond the ken of many an elder; and the
week going by brought hour after hour of nervous wear and tear, the
cause of which only one woman knew, and strove in vain to banish. Ada
shrank with actual dread and repulsion from the thought of having to
meet the man who had come to take her loved father's place.
Thrice had Barclay spoken to Mrs. Blythe of a desire to see the children
of Colonel Lawrence; now he felt confident that he knew the cause of her
evasion, and pressed no more. But all through dinner, even while
speaking in the low, somewhat measured tones habitual to him, he lost no
talk in which the children were mentioned; and at Blythe's they were
never forgotten. It was not long before he discovered that the Blythes
and Lawrences--the young people--were at the doctor's, Ada presiding.
Indeed, with much gusto, almost as soon as soup was served, Collabone
began telling of her matronly, motherly ways. Half an hour later a
messenger came to the door and asked if Dr. Collabone would please step
over and see Mrs. De Lancy a moment. "Tell her I'll be there in just one
hour," said the doctor, looking at his watch. Then he added, for the
benefit of the party present, "There's nothing in the world the matter
with Mrs. De Lancy, and by that time she'll have forgotten she sent for
me." Ten minutes later came another call. It was the Collabones'
domestic this time. "Little Jimmy's cut his hand, and Miss Ada can't
stop the bleeding." "Say I'll come instantly," said he, springing from
the table and making his excuses to the lady of the house.
Barclay's face shone with instant sympathy and interest. Dessert was
nearly over. He turned to the motherly woman whose own gentle face
betrayed her anxiety.
"Will you think me very rude?" he said. "You know I do not smoke, and I
do want so much to meet those children. I feel that Ada purposely shuns
me, and this is an opportunity not to be lost. May I be excused? I will
soon return." Mrs. Blythe's eyes were eloquent as she bade him go.
Three minutes later he softly entered the doctor's sitting-room. There
in a big easy-chair sat a tall, sallow-faced, tumbled-haired girl,
holding in her arms a burly little fellow whose frightened sobbings she
had at last controlled, and who, with only an occasional whimper, was
now submitting to the doctor's examination and deriving much comfort
from his professional and reassuring manner.
"Why, this is no cut at all, Jimmy, my boy. The reason you bled so much
is that you are so uncommonly healthy and full of blood. This won't keep
you out of mischief six hours. Hold the basin steady, Purlina. Kick all
you want to, Jimmy. Don't you dare to laugh, Kittie Blythe. Well, if
here isn't Captain Barclay, too, come in to see you! Here is the little
wounded soldier, captain. You had your arm in a sling six long months,
didn't you? The Sioux did that for him, Jimmy, and you've only got to be
done up in a bandage till to-morrow night. Let Captain Barclay hold you?
Indeed I won't. He doesn't know how to hold little boys--like Ada. He's
got no little boys, nor big Ada either. Bet your boots he wishes he had,
Jimmy." Thus the doctor chatted as he bathed and bandaged the pudgy
little fist, while Jimmy lay, half relieved at the rapid termination to
his woes, half resentful they should be declared so trifling, and, with
eyes much swollen with weeping, critically studied the new captain's
appearance and gave token of modified approval. But Ada's white lids and
long dark lashes were never once uplifted.
Presently Collabone pronounced everything doing finely, and said he'd go
and see Mrs. De Lancy. "You tell them there's nothing much the matter,
will you?" he said to Barclay.
"I will--when I get there," was the smiling reply; "but I'm going to
tell this little fellow a story first about a Sioux baby boy I knew in
Wyoming, and his playmate, a baby bear." And, with wondering, wide-open
eyes upon him, Barclay seated himself close to Ada's chair, while the
doctor stole silently away.
Half an hour later, when he returned, a circle of absorbed listeners was
gazing into Barclay's face. Ada only sat apart, and little Jimmy's curly
head was pillowed on the story-teller's breast.