The Deserter. Charles KingЧитать онлайн книгу.
until Rayner, too, succumbed, and then were sent adrift. She meant that no penniless subaltern should carry off her "baby sister,"—they had long been motherless—and a season at the sea-shore had done her work well. Steven Van Antwerp, with genuine distress and loneliness, went back to his duties in Wall Street after seeing them safely on their way to the West. "Guard her well for me," he whispered to Mrs. Rayner. "I dread those fellows in buttons." And he shivered unaccountably as he spoke.
Nellie was pledged, therefore, and this youth in the Pullman was not one of "those fellows in buttons," so far as Mrs. Rayner knew, but she was ready to warn him off, and meant to do so, until, to her surprise, she saw that he gave no symptom of a desire to approach. By noon of the second day she was as determined to extract from him some sign of interest as she had been determined to resent it. I can in no wise explain or account for this. The fact is stated without remark.
"What on earth can we be stopping so long here for?" was Mrs. Rayner's somewhat petulant inquiry, addressed to no one in particular. There was no reply. Miss Travers was busily twitching the ears of the kitten at the moment and sparring with upraised finger at the threatening paw.
"Do look out of the window, Nell, and see."
"There is nothing to see, Kate—nothing but whirling drifts and a big water-tank all covered with ice. Br-r-r-r!? how cold it looks!" she answered, after vainly flattening her face against the inner pane.
"There must be something the matter, though," persisted Mrs. Rayner. "We have been here full five minutes, and we are behind time now. At this rate we'll never get to Warrener to-night. I do wish the porter would stay here where he belongs."
The young man quietly laid down his book and arose. "I will inquire, madame," he said, with grave courtesy. "You shall know in a moment."
"How very kind of you!" said the lady. "Indeed I must not trouble you. I'm sure the porter will be here after a while."
And even as she spoke, and as he was pulling on an overcoat, the train rumbled off again. Then came an exclamation, this time from the younger:
"Why, Kate! Look! see all these men—and horses! Why, they are soldiers—cavalry! Oh, how I love to see them again! But, oh, how cold they look!—frozen!"
"Who can they be?" said Mrs. Rayner, all vehement interest now, and gazing eagerly from the window at the lowered heads of the horses and the muffled figures in blue and fur. "What can they be doing in the field in such awful weather? I cannot recognize one of them, or tell officers from men. Surely that must be Captain Wayne—and Major Stannard. Oh, what can it mean?"
The young man had suddenly leaped to the window behind them, and was gazing out with an eagerness and interest little less apparent than her own, but in a moment the train had whisked them out of sight of the storm-beaten troopers. Then he hurried to the rear window of the car, and Mrs. Rayner as hastily followed.
"Do you know them?" she asked.
"Yes. That was Major Stannard. It is his battalion of the——th Cavalry, and they have been out scouting after renegade Cheyennes. Pardon me, madame, I must go forward and see who have boarded the train."
He stopped at his section, and again she followed him, her eyes full of anxiety. He was busy tugging at a flask in his travelling-bag.
"You know them! Do you know—have you heard of any infantry being out? Pardon me for detaining you, but I am very anxious. My husband is Captain Rayner, of Fort Warrener."
"No infantry have been sent, madame, I—have reason to know; at least, none from Warrener."
And with that he hurriedly bowed and left her. The next moment, flask in hand, he was crossing the storm-swept platform and making his way to the head of the train.
"I believe he is an officer," said Mrs. Rayner to her sister. "Who else would be apt to know about the movement of the troops? Did you notice how gentle his manner was?—and he never smiled: he has such a sad face. Yet he can't be an officer, or he would have made himself known to us long ago."
"Is there no name on the satchel?" asked Miss Travers, with pardonable curiosity. "He has an interesting face—not handsome." And a dreamy look came into her deep eyes. She was thinking, no doubt, of a dark, oval, distingué face with raven hair and moustache. The youth in the travelling-suit was not tall, like Steven—not singularly, romantically handsome, like Steven. Indeed, he was of less interest to her than to her married sister.
Mrs. Rayner could see no name on the satchel—only two initials; and they revealed very little.
"I have half a mind to peep at the fly-leaf of that book," she said. "He walked just like a soldier: but there isn't anything there to indicate what he is," she continued, with a doubtful glance at the items scattered about the now vacant section. "Why isn't that porter here? He ought to know who people are."
As though to answer her request, in came the porter, dishevelled and breathless. He made straight for the satchel they had been scrutinizing, and opened it without ceremony. Both ladies regarded this proceeding with natural astonishment, and Mrs. Rayner was about to interfere and question his right to search the luggage of passengers, when the man turned hurriedly towards them, exhibiting a little bundle of handkerchiefs, his broad Ethiopian face clouded with anxiety and concern:
"The gentleman told me to take all his handkerchiefs. We'se got a dozen frozen soldiers in the baggage-car—some of 'em mighty bad—and they'se tryin' to make 'em comfortable until they get to the fort."
"Soldiers frozen! Why do you take them in the baggage-car?—such a barn of a place! Why weren't they brought here, where we could make them warm and care for them?" exclaimed Mrs. Rayner, in impulsive indignation.
"Laws, ma'am! never do in the world to bring frozen people into a hot car! Sure to make their ears an' noses drop off, that would! Got to keep 'em in the cold and pile snow around 'em. That gentleman sittin' here—he knows," he continued: "he's an officer, and him and the doctor's workin' with 'em now."
And Mrs. Rayner, vanquished by a statement of facts well known to her yet forgotten in the first impetuosity of her criticism, relapsed into the silence of temporary defeat.
"He is an officer, then," said Miss Travers, presently. "I wonder what he belongs to."
"Not to our regiment, I'm sure. Probably to the cavalry. He knew Major Stannard and other officers whom we passed there."
"Did he speak to them?"
"No: there was no time. We were beyond hearing-distance when he ran to the back door of the car; and there was no time before that. But it's very odd!"
"What's very odd?"
"Why, his conduct. It is so strange that he has not made himself known to us, if he's an officer."
"Probably he doesn't know you—or we—are connected with the army, Kate."
"Oh, yes, he does. The porter knows perfectly well, and I told him just before he left."
"Yes, but he didn't know before that time, did he?"
"He ought to have known," said Mrs. Rayner, uncompromisingly. "At least, he should if he had taken the faintest interest. I mentioned Captain Rayner so that he could not help hearing."
This statement being one that Miss Travers could in no wise contradict—as it was one, indeed, that Mrs. Rayner could have dispensed with as unnecessary—the younger lady again betook herself to silence and pulling the kitten's ears.
"Even if he didn't know before," continued her sister, after a pause in which she had apparently been brooding over the indifference of the young man in question, "he ought to have made himself known after I told him who I was." Another pause. "That's what I did it for," she wound up, conclusively.
"And that's what I thought," said Miss Travers, with a quiet smile. "However, he had no time then: he was hurrying off to see whether any of the soldiers had come on board. He took his flask with him, and apparently