Ferris lingered for a _tete-a-tete_ with Miss Sanford, and poor Grace found herself compelled to sit and talk with Mr. Barnard, who was a musical devotee and afflicted with a conviction that they ought to sing duets, and Mrs. Truscott could not be induced to sing duets with any man, unless Jack would try.
She knew that he had gone to the little library where he kept his favorite books and did his writing. She heard the door close after him, and, with unutterable longing, she desired to go and throw herself upon her favorite perch, his knee, and twine her arms around his neck and bury her head upon his broad shoulder. She could think of nothing but that fateful letter from Hays. She wished that it might be Mr. Waring who had come in, for he was in the cavalry and would know something of what really was going on out on the frontier. She was feverishly anxious to learn the truth, and twice directed the talk that way, but Mr.
Barnard was obtuse. He only vaguely knew from remarks he had heard at mess that General Crook had called for reinforcements, and that Sheridan was ordering up cavalry and infantry to his support. He did not know what cavalry,--in fact, he did not care,--he was in the artillery, and, forgetful of Modoc experiences, believed that Indian fighting was an abnormal species of warfare of which men of his advanced education were not expected to take cognizance. That it ever could call for more science, skill, and pluck than the so-called civilized wars of which Mr.
Barnard was a conscientious student he would probably never have admitted, and his comment at mess on the frequently-recurring tales of unsuccessful attack upon savage foes was the comprehensive remark that the affair must have been badly handled; "those fellows of the cavalry didn"t seem to understand the nature of the work they had to tackle." As those were the days before a cavalry superintendent went to the Academy and showed an astonished academic board what a cavalryman"s idea of scholarship and discipline really was, it followed that the corps of instructors was made up almost entirely from the more scientific arms; only two or three cavalrymen were on the detail of forty officers, and they were mainly for duty as instructors in tactics and horsemanship. So when Mr. Barnard dreamily blew the smoke of his cigarette through his elevated nostrils and gave it as his opinion that those cavalry fellows didn"t seem to understand their work, his audience, consisting mainly of staff and artillery officers, gave the acquiescence of silence or the nod of wisdom; and the casual visitor would have left with the impression that the whole mistake of this Indian business lay in failure to consult the brilliantly-trained intellects of the higher corps. Odd as it may seem, it is the men who have had the least to do with Indians and Indian fighting who have apparently the most ideas on the subject.
This is not a paradox. Those who have spent several years at it probably started in with just as many, and exploded them one after another.
Mr. Barnard, therefore, was more intent on humming the tenor part of "See the Pale Moon" than of affording Mrs. Truscott any information as to rumors of the orders sending additional troops to the field, but her anxiety was only slightly appeased by his airy dismissal of the subject.
"Indeed, Mrs. Truscott, I would not feel any concern in the matter; with the forces now concentrated up there in the Yellowstone country, the result is a foregone conclusion. The Indians will simply be surrounded and starved into surrender."
At last they went. Mr. Ferris with evident reluctance and not until he had plainly received intimation from Miss Sanford that it was more than time. Knowing Mrs. Truscott well, she could see what was imperceptible to their visitors, that the strain was becoming almost unbearable. The moment they were gone she turned to her friend.
"I must write a short letter before going to bed, Grace dear. Now go to him at once;" then impulsively she threw her arms around her. "I shall pray it is not true," she murmured, then turned and ran quickly to her room.
Mrs. Truscott closed and bolted the front door, turned out the parlor lights, and stepped quickly to the library; then she paused a moment before turning the k.n.o.b: her heart was beating heavily, her hands trembling. She strove hard to control the weakness which had seized her, and, for support, rested her head upon the cas.e.m.e.nt and took two or three long breaths; then with a murmured prayer for strength she gently opened the door, and the soft swish of her trailing skirts announced her presence.
His back was towards her as she entered; he was seated in a low-backed library-chair, with both elbows upon the writing-table before him, and resting his head upon the left hand in an att.i.tude that was habitual with him when seated there thinking. Before him, opened, lay a long letter,--the adjutant"s letter from Hays. A pen was in his hand, but not a scratch had he made on the virgin surface of the paper. Truscott never so much as wrote the date until he had fully made up his mind what the entire letter should be, and he had far from made up his mind what to say in this.
Without a word Mrs. Truscott stole quietly up behind him. He had been expecting her any moment; he knew well she would come the instant her visitors left her free; he was listening, waiting for her step, and had heard Miss Sanford trip lightly up-stairs. Then came the soft, quick pitapat of her tiny feet along the hall and the _frou-frou_ of the skirts,--never yet could he hear it without a little thrill of pa.s.sionate delight. He half turned in readiness to welcome her, his love, his wife; then came her pause at the door,--a new, an unknown hesitancy, for from the first he had taught her that she alone could never be unwelcome, undesired, no matter what his occupation in the sanctum, and Jack"s heart stood still while hers was throbbing heavily.
Could she have heard? Could she have suspected? _Must_ he tell her to-night? He turned again to the desk as she entered, and waited for--something he loved more than he could ever tell,--her own greeting.
Often when he was reading or writing during the day, and she, on household cares intent, was tripping lightly about the house, singing sweetly, softly as she pa.s.sed the library, and bursting into carolling melody when at undisturbing distance away, it was odd to note the many little items that required her frequent incursions on the sanctum itself,--books to be straightened and dusted, sc.r.a.ps of writing-paper to be tidied up, maps to be rolled and tied. Mollie, the housemaid, could sweep or tend the fires in that domestic centre, the captain"s den, but none but the young housewife herself presumed to touch a pen or dust a tome. Jack"s mornings were mainly taken up at the barracks, riding-hall, or in mounted drill far out on the cavalry plain, whence his ringing baritone voice could reach her admiring ears and--for it was only honeymoon with her still--set her to wondering if it really were possible that that splendid fellow were her own, her very own; and time and again Mrs. Grace would find herself stopping short in her avocation and going to the front windows and gazing with all her lovely brown eyes over to the whirling dust-cloud on the eastern plain and revelling in the power and ring of Jack"s commanding voice, and going off into day-dreams. _Was_ it possible that there had been a great, a fearful war, in which the whole country was threatened with ruin, and hundreds of men had made wonderful names for themselves, and Jack not one of them,--Jack, her hero, her soldier beyond compare? _Could_ it be that the war was fought and won without him? But then, who could be braver in action, wiser in council, than he? Did not the --th worship him to a man? Was not Indian fighting the most trying, hazardous, terrible of all warfares, and was not Jack pre-eminent as an Indian-fighter? Was there not a deep scar on his breast that would have been deeper and redder but for her little filmy handkerchief that stopped the cruel arrow just in time? Was any one so gallant, so n.o.ble, so gentle, so tender, true, faithful,--um-m-m,--sweet? was the way Mrs. Grace"s intensified thoughts would have found expression, had she dared, even to herself, to give them utterance? And he loved her! he loved her! and--heavens and earth!
but _this_ isn"t practising, or housework either; and pretty, happy, blushing Mrs. Truscott would shake herself together, so to speak, and try to get back to the programme of daily duty she had so conscientiously mapped out for herself. Perhaps it was because she accomplished so little in the mornings that, when Jack betook himself to his study for his two hours of reading or writing in the afternoon, his witching wife would find such frequent need of entering. At first she had been accustomed to trip in on tiptoe after a timid little knock and the query, "Do I disturb you, Jack dear?"--a query which he answered with quite superfluous a.s.surance to the contrary. Later, even after their wise conclusion that they must be rational, she had been accustomed to put the question, not at all as a purely perfunctory marital civility, but, as she shyly admitted to herself, because it was so sweet to hear Jack"s negation and see the love-light in the eyes that soon brought her, fascinated and fluttering, to be folded in his arms a moment. Later still, so confident had she become in her dominion, both knock and query were abandoned, and, unless only five minutes or so had elapsed since the previous visit, she had a pretty little way of greeting him that, though very gradually acquired despite surging impulse, was at last quite a settled fact, and he loved it,--well, he would have been an unappreciative, undeserving brute had he not. She would steal behind him, lean over the back of the chair (Jack refused to exchange it for the high-backed one suggested by Mrs. Pelham on the occasion of a brief visit paid them in March), and, twining her arms around his neck, would draw back his head till it rested on her bosom, then sink her soft, sweet lips upon his forehead. It was this he waited for to-night, and not in vain.
Another minute and he had drawn her around and seated her on his knee, folding her closely in his arms. But soon she gently released herself, slipped to the little ottoman that stood always ready by his chair, and, clasping her hands upon his knee, looked bravely up in his face. No need to speak one word,--no need to break it to her; he saw she well divined that news, and hard news, had come from the frontier,--news which meant more to her than to any woman at West Point.
"Shall I read it, Gracie?" he presently asked, gently stroking the shining, shimmering wealth of her hair,--her glory and his. She bowed lower her head and clasped tightly her hands.
"One word first, Jack. Does the --th go?"
"Yes, darling."
She shivered as though a sudden chill had seized her, but spoke no word.
Truscott bent and strove to draw her again to his breast, but she roused herself with gallant effort,--threw back her head and again looked bravely up in his eyes.
"No; I"ll bear it best here, Jack. I won"t----Read it, dear."
"My brave girlie!" was all he said, as his eyes moistened suspiciously and his hand lingered in its caress upon her soft cheek.
"It"s from Billings, you know."
"Yes, Jack; go on."
And then he read to her:
"FORT HAYS, KANSAS, June 6, "76.
"DEAR TRUSCOTT,--Stannard showed me your letter and bade me answer it. There was no time for him to do it, and I myself am writing "on the jump." You sized up the situation about as comprehensively as Crook himself could have done it, and your predictions have come true. Eight troops of the regiment left night before last by rail for Cheyenne _via_ Denver, and by this time headquarters and most of the --th are tenting somewhere near Fort Russell, where we are all to take station and wait further developments. The band follows as fast as we can pack up plunder and be off. It means, of course, a permanent transfer of the regiment to the Department of the Platte, and from the mere fact that the colonel and eight companies were hurried ahead, there can be no question but that we are destined to take part in the campaign against Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, etc., and for myself, I"m glad of it.
"But I"m glad you weren"t here, Jack. There was weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth among the women-folks, and some two or three Benedicts looked bluer than brimstone. You know they had counted on a peaceful summer and a good time, and it"s particularly rough on those who had fitted up their quarters so handsomely and had young ladies to visit them, like the Raymonds and others. Most of them have to break up and go East, but as six troops are to take permanent station at Russell, yours among them, those who are ordered there will simply move from Hays to Russell with us, as the officers can choose quarters on the way up; for up we are going, and I"ll bet a farm we water our horses in the Yellowstone before we see Russell a second time. As soon as packed I shall move all baggage to Russell, public and personal, escort the ladies thither and see them comfortably settled in their new quarters.
Mrs. Stannard, Mrs. Turner, and Mrs. Wilkins (of course) go to Russell with us. Old Whaling of the Infantry is to remain in command there until the campaign is over, as it will be the main supply depot. His wife is an enlivening Christian, a sort of Mrs. Gummidge and Mrs. Malaprop rolled into one, but, barring a sensational tendency and a love for theatricals in every-day life, there is nothing dangerous about her. I"m glad my own wife will be able to remain with the home people, for Mrs. Whaling would scare the life out of her with her tales of fearful adventure in the Indian country, and I don"t quite like the idea of our ladies being subjected to her ministrations during the separation. However, Mrs. Stannard will be there, and she"s a balance-wheel. Bless that woman! What would we do without her?
"Now, Jack, a word from Stannard himself. He said to write you fully, that nothing might be concealed. Stryker"s letter is straight to the point. It is going to be the biggest Indian war the country has ever seen, and one in which there must be hard fighting. Armed, equipped, and supplied and mounted as those Sioux and Cheyennes are, it will take our best to thrash them.
Stannard says that you must be influenced in your action by no misrepresentation one way or other. No man in the regiment can say in his presence or mine that you have not done your full share of Indian work, and no gentleman in the regiment will blame you should you see fit to stick to the Point and let the rest of us tackle Mr. Lo. You are the only newly-married man in the crowd. On the other hand, your troop is commanded in your absence by Gleason, whom--well, you know him better than I; and in his absence by young Wells, who is to take his first lesson in campaigning this summer. Just as luck would have it, Gleason and Ray were ordered to Leavenworth on a horse board, and were not here to go with the command. Ray heard of the move and telegraphed, begging Stannard to get him relieved and sent at once to the regiment, but the board was ordered at division headquarters and "twas no use. Ray will have to stay until the horses are all bought; and I"m bound to say he did his best to get back. For some reason, which I could better explain if I didn"t have to write, Ray and I don"t seem to "gee." He has been offish to me ever since our first meeting here, and was one of the men whose failure to congratulate me on the adjutancy I felt. Then I heard of some unjustifiable though, perhaps, natural things he said. However, let that slide. I wish you were adjutant again, that"s all. Very probably the others do too. The colonel telegraphed to all officers on leave, and every blessed one responded inside of twenty-four hours, "Coming first train, you bet," or words to that effect.
It makes one proud of the old --th. Gleason hasn"t chirped, but then he is somewhere in central Iowa buying. They say Ray"s brother-in-law is one of the largest horse-dealers, and Stannard clamps his mug and looks ugly when it is spoken of. He knows something about him, and was a good deal stampeded when he heard Ray was being wined and dined by him at Kansas City.
But, be it understood, I don"t think Ray has any suspicion of Stannard"s objection to the man. And now, Jack, I"ll wind up this rigmarole. It is long after taps, and the men are still at work packing. I"ve been interrupted time and again, and this is all incoherency. If you decide to join, let it not be said for an instant that the faintest urging came from us. Address your next to Russell. The colonel forbade my telegraphing you lest it might sound like a hint. My compliments to Mrs. Truscott, and tell her I saw her old friend Ranger off for the wars two nights ago; likewise that young imp of the devil,--the Kid.
Tanner"s old troop isn"t what it was in his day.
"Yours always faithfully, "BILLINGS."
Long before he had finished reading she had bowed her head upon her hands, but there came no sound. At last he laid the letter down, and then bent over her.
"Grace,--darling!"
Slowly she lifted her eyes and looked up in his face. All the light, all the joy and gladness had fled. Her lips moved as though to question, but a hard, dry lump seemed to have formed in her throat; she could not speak. His strong hands trembled as they gently raised her from the lowly att.i.tude in which she had been crouching at his knee. He would have drawn her to his breast again, but she put her little hands upon his shoulder and held herself back. Twice she essayed to speak before the words came,--
"Jack, G.o.d knows I have tried to be ready for this. But is there _no_ way? I never thought to stand between you and your duty--your honor. I would not--I would not now if I were--all. Oh, Jack,--my husband, there--there is another reason."
CHAPTER V.
MARION SANFORD.
As a school-girl Marion Sanford started by being unpopular. On first acquaintance there were very few girls in Madame Reichard"s excellent establishment who did not decide that she was cold and unsympathetic.
Courteous, well-bred, self-possessed, she was to a fault, but--unpardonable sin in school-girl eyes--she shrank from those dear and delicious intimacies, those mushroom friendships of our tender years, that are as explosive as fire-crackers and as evanescent as the smoke thereof. The volumes of satire that have been written on the subject have exhausted the field and rendered new ideas out of the question, but they have in no wise diminished the impetuosity with which such friendships are daily, hourly entered into, and they never will.
Ours is a tale which has little that is new and less that is didactic.
Army life and army loves differ, after all, but little from those which one sees in every community. Human nature is the same the world over, despite our different tenets and traditions. Boys are as full of mischief and sure to get into sc.r.a.pes as in the days of Elijah and the bears. Girls have had their sweet secrets and desperate intimacies with one another since long before Elijah was heard of. Nothing one can say is apt to put a stop to what the Almighty set in motion. Let us not rail at what we cannot correct, but make the best of it. Let us accept the truth. School-girls meet, take desperate and sudden fancies, swear eternal friendships, have eternal tiffs and squabbles, kiss and make up, fall out again, and as they grow in grace and wisdom they keep up the system, simply taking a new object every few months. It is one of their weaknesses by divine right, over which common sense has no more control than it has over most of ours.
But Marion Sanford had no such weakness. Being dest.i.tute of the longing for intimate and confidential intercourse with some equally romantic sister, she was spared the concomitant heartburnings, recriminations, and enmities. She pa.s.sed her first year at the school without an intimate friend. She left it without an enemy. Hers was not the most brilliant mind in the cla.s.s. She was not the valedictorian of the school on that eventful day when,
"Sweet girl-graduates with their shining hair,"
they listened in tears and white muslin to Madame"s parting injunctions; but her last two years at the old _pension_ had been very precious to her. Grace Pelham was her room-mate, and Grace Pelham"s loving arms had opened to her when, motherless and heart-broken, Marion Sanford had returned from the second year"s summer vacation. Between the two girls there had gradually grown a deep and faithful friendship, born of mutual respect and esteem. It would be saying too much to a.s.sert that at first there had been no differences. Four years at one school give opportunities which are illimitable, but the present writer knew neither of them in the bread-and-b.u.t.ter period, and was properly reproved by the one and snubbed by the other when, in the supposed superiority of his years and co-extensive views on the frangibility of feminine friendship, he had sought to raise the veil of the past and peer into the archives of those school-days. Partly from school-mates and partly from observation the author formed his opinion of what Marion Sanford had been as an undergraduate. What she became the candid reader must judge for ----self.
For a woman she was reticent to a marked degree in discussing the faults and foibles of others. She was slow to anger, loath to believe ill of a man or woman, truth-loving, sincere, and simple-hearted. She had not been the most studious girl at school. Deep down in her heart of hearts she had a vein of romance that made the heroes of fiction the idols of a vivid imagination. Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, Sir Galahad, Launcelot, William Wallace, Bayard, Philip Sidney, were men whom she fondly believed to have existed in other shapes and names time and again, and yet she was staggered in her faith because the annals of our matter-of-fact days told no such tales as those she loved of knighthood and chivalry.
Once--once she had found a modern hero. Heaven only knows to what a wild worship would not that brief dream have expanded had she not seen him.
He was the elder brother of one of her friends at school,--a navy officer,--a man who when his ship was cut down by a blundering Briton, and sent to the bottom with over a hundred gallant hearts high-beating because "homeward bound," he, the young ensign, gave his whole strength, his last conscious minute to getting the helpless into the lowered boats, and was the last man in the "sick-bay" before the stricken ship took her final plunge, carrying him into the vortex with a fevered boy in his strong young arms. Both were unconscious when hauled into safety, and that ensign, said Marion, was the man she would marry. She was less than sixteen and had never seen him. The nearest approach to a desperate intimacy she ever had was with that fellow"s sister: a girl of hitherto faint attractions. At last the ensign came to the school,--such a day of excitement!--and as a great, a _very_ great concession, Madame had permitted that he should be allowed in her presence to speak with his sister"s most intimate friends. She was threatened with popularity for the time being, and Marion was presented. The hero of her four months"
dream was a stoutly-built youth of twenty-five, with florid complexion and hair, and a manner so painfully shy and embarra.s.sed that additional color was lent to his sun-blistered features. He had faced death without a tremor and, in the most matter-of-fact way in the world, had saved three lives at the imminent risk of his own, but he could not face these wide-eyed, worshipping school-girls, and was manifestly ill at ease in a very unbecoming civilian suit. Still, he wriggled through the interview and made his escape, leaving only a modified sensation behind. The fatal _coup_ occurred next day when, as prearranged, he came to say farewell.
This time Jack Tar had braced for the occasion, and was unexpectedly hilarious and demonstrative. In bidding good-by to his sister he had effusively embraced her, then turned suddenly upon Marion, and before she could dream of what was coming, had caught her in his arms and imprinted upon her fresh young lips a baccha.n.a.lian salute that left thereon a mingled essence of Angostura bitters, cloves, and tobacco, and drove her in dismay and confusion from the room to seek her own in a pa.s.sion of angry tears and disenchantment. Never before in her life had she known such an affront. Never for long afterwards did she worship modern heroes.
But while she sought no intimacies, as a school-girl her friendship and affection for Grace Pelham strengthened with every week of their a.s.sociation. Their last two years at school were spent as room-mates, and then Marion had gone almost immediately abroad. Some hint has been conveyed to the reader of a domestic unpleasantness in the Sanford homestead. Sanford paterfamilias was a successful business man of large means and small sensibilities. His first wife, Marion"s mother, was a New York beauty, a sweet, sensitive, refined, and delicate girl; in fine, "a sacrifice at the altar of Mammon." She married Mr. Sanford when she was eighteen and he thirty-eight, and she married him because the family necessities were such that she could not help herself. Marion was their first child, the darling of a young mother"s heart, and later, the pride of a fond father"s. Yet, before that daughter was eighteen she was called upon to welcome in the place of her idolized mother--who had died after some years of patient suffering--the children"s governess. It marred all joys of graduation, so far as Miss Sanford was concerned. She had gone home in obedience to her conviction of filial duty, and had striven to make her little sister and her brother believe that the new mamma was all that she should be. She had been conscientiously earnest in her effort to like in her new role the ex-governess, whom she had found it impossible to believe in before. The effort was a failure, due quite as much to the jealous and suspicious nature of the lady of the house as to Miss Sanford"s unconquerable prejudice. Pretences for rupture were easily found; the rupture came; Mrs. Sanford did all the talking, Miss Sanford said nothing. When her father came home from the city he found his new wife in tears and his daughter fled. The Frenchman who wrote _les absents ont toujours tort_ was undoubtedly thinking of the field as left in possession of a woman, and that Mrs. Sanford"s recital of the trouble was a finished calumny at Marion"s expense we are spared the necessity of a.s.serting. In her few words written to her father that day, Miss Sanford simply said that she was going to pay a brief visit to the Zabriskies; but in less than a fortnight, with his full consent and a liberal allowance, she went with them abroad. That his experiences in his new marital relations were not blissful we may conjecture from the fact that he soon found reason to believe that he couldn"t believe Mrs. Sanford. Unbelief grew to conviction and developed into profound distrust. Still, as she not infrequently had to remind him, she was his lawfully wedded wife, and held the fort. He aged rapidly, and his struggles for the mastery were futile. She was young, active, healthy, and wise as the serpent. He mourned for his absent daughter, and when, yielding to her own yearnings, she returned to America in the spring of the Centennial year, he sent for her to come to him. She went, and remained as long as she could, but in leaving, she told him, with eyes that filled and lips that quivered but never shrank, that it was her last visit so long as her step-mother remained beneath the roof, and he broke down and sobbed like a little child, but sought not to dissuade her.
"Her mother"s fortune," said the Mrs. Grundys of Fort Hays, was now her own; but her mother had no fortune, and if she had, it would have been shared by the two other children. In the old days her father had laughingly bought and set aside for Marion"s own account some government bonds and some railway stocks; the latter at time of purchase being practically drugs on the market. In fifteen years they were at a heavy premium. When it came to parting, he had placed these bonds with all their unclipped coupons to her credit at his banker"s, and she was mistress of a little fortune it seemed to her, which, added to the liberal allowance he insisted on keeping up, gave her far more than she could ever spend on herself even were her tastes extravagant.
She dressed richly; she would have nothing that was not of the best, but she was never wasteful. It had been her habit to keep accurate account of her expenditure, and to send her father a quarterly balance-sheet that was a delight to his pragmatical eyes. He would have doubled her allowance her last two years at school, but she would not agree to it.
She was in deep mourning and in sore distress, and money was the one thing she had no use for. All the same he paid it to her account, as he termed it, and in due time the money became her own. She had loved him dearly despite his rough exterior and what she thought his lack of appreciation of her gentle mother. But when he married the governess before that second winter"s snow had mantled the hallowed grave, her soul rebelled in indignation and dismay. For a year her heart had held out against him, and softened only when she saw that he was breaking under the self-imposed burden,--a shrewish second wife. However, Mrs.