It was unfortunate for Landor, as most things seemed to be just then,
that the Department Commander happened to have an old score to settle.
It resulted in the charges preferred by Brewster being given precedence
over the request for a court of inquiry. The Department Commander was a
man of military knowledge, and he foresaw that the stigma of having been
court-martialled for cowardice would cling to Landor through all his
future career, whatever the findings of the court might be. An officer
is in the position of the wife of Cæsar, and it is better for him, much
better, that the charge of "unsoldierly and unofficer-like conduct, in
violation of the sixty-first article of war," should never come up
against him, however unfounded it may be.
It was a very poor case, indeed, that Brewster made out, despite a
formidable array of specifications. As it progressed, the situation took
on a certain ludicrousness. The tale of woe was so very trivial; it
seemed hardly worth the trouble of convening twelve officers from the
four corners of the Department to hear it. And there was about Brewster,
as he progressed, a suggestion of dragging one foot after the other,
leaving out a word here, overlooking an occurrence there, cutting off a
mile in one place, and tacking on an hour in another.
Landor's wrath was mighty, but he smiled as he sat balancing a ruler on
his fingers and hearing how the citizens of San Tomaso, eager to avenge
their wrongs, had met him at early morning, had gone bravely forward,
keen on the scent, had implored him to hasten, while he halted on
worthless pretexts, and had, towards evening, reluctantly left a hot
trail, going from it at right angles, "and camping," said Brewster,
regretfully, "as far away as it was possible to get, considering the
halts."
At one moment it appeared that Landor had given his command into the
hands of the citizens, at another that he had flatly refused to follow
them into danger, that he had threatened and hung back by turns, and
had, in short, made himself the laughing-stock of civilians and enlisted
men, by what Brewster called "his timid subterfuges."
Yet somehow "timid subterfuges" seemed hardly the words to fit with the
hard, unswerving eye and the deep-lined face of the accused. It struck
the court so. There were other things that struck the court, notably
that Brewster had criticised his captain to civilians and to enlisted
men. The Judge Advocate frowned. The frown settled to a permanency when
Brewster sought out that honorable personage to complain, unofficially,
that his case was being neglected. It was about upon a par with an
accusation of bribery against a supreme judge in civil life, and
naturally did not do the plaintiff much good when the Judge Advocate
rose, terrible in his indignation, to repeat the complaint officially to
the assembled court at the next sitting. The court was resentful. It
listened and weighed for six days, and then it acquitted Landor on every
charge and specification "most honorably," to make it more strong, and
afterward went over, in a body, to his quarters, to congratulate him.
The rest of the post followed.
Landor was in the dining room, and Felipa stood in the sitting room
receiving the praises of her husband with much tact. If he were the hero
of the hour, she was the heroine. The officers from far posts carried
their admiration to extravagance, bewitched by the sphinx-riddle written
somehow on her fair face, and which is the most potent and bewildering
charm a woman can possess. When they went away, they sent her boxes of
fresh tomatoes and celery and lemons, from points along the railroad,
which was a highly acceptable and altogether delicate attention in the
day and place.
The garrison gave a hop in her honor and Landor's. It was quite an
affair, as many as five and thirty souls being present, and it was
written up in the _Army and Navy_ afterward. The correspondent went into
many adjectives over Mrs. Landor, and her fame spread through the land.
Brewster stood in his own window, quite alone, and watched them all
crowding down to Landor's quarters. The beauty of the Triumph of Virtue
did not appeal to him. He was very uneasy. Countercharges were looming
on his view. To be sure, he had not lied, not absolutely and in so many
words, but his citizen witnesses had not been so adroit or so careful.
It would not have taken much to make out a very fair case of conduct
unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. Practical working texts, anent
looking before leaping, and being sure you are right ere going ahead,
occurred to him with new force. His morality at the moment was worthy
the law and the prophets. He was Experience in person, and as such would
have been an invaluable teacher, if there had been any seeking
instruction. But there was none. They were all with Landor, drinking his
wine and helping success succeed, than which one may find less pleasant
occupations.
Yet there came a rap at his door directly. It was the McLane's striker,
bearing a note from Miss McLane. Brewster knew what was in it before he
opened it. But he went back to the window and read it by the fading
light. When he looked up it was to see Miss McLane and Ellton going up
the walk together, returning from Landor's house.
And at another window Felipa also stood looking out into the dusk. There
had been a shower in the afternoon, and the clouds it had left behind
were like a soft moss of fire floating in the sky. A bright golden light
struck slantwise from the sunset. They had all gone away to dine and to
dress for the hop; Landor had walked down to the post trader's for the
mail, and she was left alone.
She watched the figure of a man coming down the line. Because of the
dazzling, low light behind him, the outline was blurred in a shimmer. At
first she thought without any interest in it, one way or another, that
he was a soldier, then she could see that he was in citizen's clothes
and wore a sombrero and top boots. Even with that, until he was almost
in front of the house, she did not realize that it was Cairness, though
she knew well enough that he was in the post, and had been one of
Landor's most valuable witnesses. He had remained to hear the findings,
but she had kept close to the house and had not seen him before. He was
a government scout, a cow-boy, a prospector, reputed a squaw-man,
anything vagrant and unsettled, and so the most he might do was to turn
his head as he passed by, and looking up at the windows, bow gravely to
the woman standing dark against the firelight within.
The blaze of glory had gone suddenly from the clouds, leaving them
lifeless gray, when she turned her eyes back to them; and the outlook
across the parade ground was very bare. She went and stood by the fire,
leaning her arm on the mantel-shelf and setting her determined lips.
Three weeks later she left the post and the West. Landor's health was
broken from the effects of the poisonweed and the manifold troubles of
the months past. In lieu of sick leave, he was given a desirable detail,
and sent on to Washington, and for a year and a half he saw his wife
fitted into a woman's seemly sphere. She was heralded as a beauty, and
made much of as such, and the little vanities that had rarely shown
before came to the surface now. He was proud of her. Sought after and
admired, clothed in purple and scarlet and fine linen, within the limits
of a captain's pay, a creature of ultra-civilization, tamed, she was a
very charming woman indeed. There seemed to be no hint of the Apache
left. He all but forgot it himself. There was but one relapse in all the
time, and it chanced that he had no knowledge of that.
Yet, in the midst of her little triumph, Felipa fell ill, failing
without apparent cause, and then the uneasiness that had only slept in
Landor for eighteen months came awake again. He did not believe when the
doctors told him that it was the lassitude of the moist, warm springtime
which was making the gray circles about her eyes, the listlessness of
her movements.
When she lay, one day, with her face, too white and sharp, looking out
from the tangle of hair upon the pillow, he asked her almost abruptly if
she had rather go back to the West. He could not bring himself to ask if
she were longing to be near Cairness. He shrank too much from her frank,
unhesitating assent.
The face on the pillow lighted quickly, and she put out her hand to him
impulsively. "Could we go back, Jack, even before the detail is up?" she
said. And yet her life of late had surely been one that women would have
thought enviable--most women.
He himself had never dreamed how it irked her until now. It was many
years since he had been in the East, not, indeed, since Felipa had been
a small child. Keeping his promise to Cabot, as he understood it, had
left him little for such pleasures as that. But he had done his duty
then; he would do it again, and reap once more what seemed to him the
inevitable reward, the reward which had been his all through his
life,--sheer disappointment, in all he prized most, ashes and dust.
"I can throw up the detail," he said indifferently, "I dare say I might
as well. There is only half a year more of it. Some one will be glad
enough to take that."
"But you," said Felipa, wistfully, "you do not want to go back?"
For a moment he stood looking straight into her eyes, yet neither read
the other's thoughts. Then he turned away with a baffled half laugh.
"Why should it matter to me?" he asked.