Marion's Faith. Charles KingЧитать онлайн книгу.
which to achieve popularity, because of the various cliques and interests; and now that that very interesting Miss Sanford was with her, their pretty home on the plain was always a rendezvous for the socially disposed. And so it happened that all the long evening neither she nor Jack could obtain release from their duties as entertainers. Eleven o'clock came before the last of the ladies departed, and then Mr. Ferris lingered for a tête-à-tête 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 knob: 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 casement 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 attitude 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 passionate 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 passed 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, scraps 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 noble, 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 assurance