Marion's Faith. Charles KingЧитать онлайн книгу.
say you think her stylish, because only last year at Prescott you wouldn't admit it. And as to her winning Mr. Truscott as she did, it is simply incomprehensible. What men see in some women is beyond me. She is neither deep, nor intellectual, nor particularly well read that I ever saw or heard of, and how she's a match for him, as people say, I can't see. He's just head over heels in love with her—at least he was—and she was simply wrapped up in him—at least she is. You ought to have seen the letter she wrote Mrs. Page a few months ago; all about her happiness and Jack—just as if there never had been another man in the world worth looking at. She'd have been just as rapturous over Mr. Glenham if she'd married him as she promised to do, I haven't a doubt, or Ray. He was ready to bow down and worship her at one time; and she encouraged him not a little before we left Sandy, too."
"Don't you believe that," interposed Mrs. Raymond. "They were warm friends, I know, but Ray was never her lover."
"You always will contradict me, Nellie," protested Mrs. Turner; "but if you could not see what every one else saw you were simply blind. I wonder she doesn't sometimes regret not marrying Glenham, though. They say he has gone abroad and has more money than he can ever spend."
"More than he ever could if he's as close as he was in Arizona," interposed Mrs. Raymond.
"But did you not know that Captain Truscott's ventures were coming out wonderfully well?" asked Mrs. Stannard, eager to give a pleasanter tone to the talk. "I heard not only that was true, but that an uncle had left him a good deal of money. One thing is certain, they have fitted up their quarters beautifully at the Point, and are living there in a good deal of style."
"Here come the officers in from drill," exclaimed Mrs. Turner, as a group of bronzed and soldierly-looking men came suddenly around the corner of the adjutant's office and strolled towards them. "Ask Captain Merrill, he will know. Captain Merrill," she called, raising her voice. "Do come here a moment." And obediently he came, doffing his cap and accepting the seat tendered him beside her by Mrs. Raymond.
"You were at the Point last month. Is it true that Captain Truscott has a good deal of money now?"
"Can't prove it by me, madame," said Merrill, sententiously. "Ask Blake. He's our Jenkins. How is it, Blake?"
"Don't call me pet names, dearie. 'When my tongue blabs then let mine eyes not see,'" declaimed Mr. Blake, sauntering up to the group and swinging a long, lean leg over the railing. "What do you want to know?"
"Is Mr.—Captain Truscott rich?"
"If my individual experiences are indicative, I should say he was boundless in wealth and prodigality."
"Why?"
"He lent me a hundred dollars when I was East on leave, and I know he never expects to see it again."
"I declare, Mr. Blake, you are as bad as Mr. Ray!"
"They are scoundrels and substractors that say so of me. Mrs. Turner, you—you make me blush. Ray, come hither and bear me consolation. Friend of my youth, Merrill calls me Jenkins; Mrs. Turner calls me bad as you; and you—called me with a pair of kings when mine was a bobtail. The world is hollow, Ray."
"Mr. Blake! Will you stop your everlasting nonsense and tell us about Truscott? When were you there?"
"Mrs. Turner, you aggrieve me, but I was there in April."
"And are they so delightfully situated?"
"Yea, verily—blissfully."
"Was Miss Sanford there?"
"She came, alas! the very eve I hied me hence. I saw her but a moment; 'twas——"
"You saw her? Tell us what she's like. Is she pretty? is she sweet-mannered as they say?"
"Sweet? She's sweet, aye, dix-huit; at least she was a year agone. Pretty? Ah me!" And Blake sighed profoundly, and straddled the rail a picture of dejection. His auditors groaned in chorus, the customary recognition of one of Blake's puns, but gathered about him in manifest interest. With all his rattling nonsense he was a regimental pet.
"But where is she from? What connection of the New Jersey Sanford?"
"The Autocrat of the Preakness Stable, mean you? Marry, I know not. She is a Sanford and has a Sanford's wealth, but 'twas not for me. She adores a horse and worships a horseman. This I gathered from our too brief converse. I strove to win her ear with poesie, but she bade me cease. Her soul is not attuned to melody—she'd none of mine. She preferred my Lady Truscott and buttered muffins."
"What did Truscott say about Crook's fight with Crazy Horse?" asked Ray, who looked blank enough at Blake's jargon, and wanted facts.
"I don't think Jack liked the looks of things," said Blake, relapsing into sudden gravity. "He told me that he thought it more than likely we'd all be in the field again in less than a month."
"We?" said Merrill. "It isn't a matter that affects Truscott one way or another. He has his four years' detail at the Point. What difference does it make to him whether we're ordered up to reinforce Crook?"
"Just this difference, my bully rook: that Truscott would catch us before we got to Laramie—unless we went by rail."
"Why, Blake, you're addled!" replied the captain, in that uncomplimentary directness which sometimes manifests itself among old comrades of the frontier, even in the presence of the gentler sex. "Why, Mr. Blake, you don't suppose he is going to give up his young wife, his lovely home, his pleasant duties, to join for a mere Indian campaign, do you?" asked more than one present, and a general murmur of dissent went round. "What do you say, major?" said one voice, in direct appeal to the senior officer of the group.
"It depends on what you consider a 'mere Indian campaign,'" was the cool response.
"But as to Truscott's going, what do you think, Ray?"
"I don't think anything about it. I know."
CHAPTER III.
HEROINES.
"What is so rare as a day in June?" sings the poet, and where can a day in June be more beautiful than at this Highland Gate of the peerless Hudson? It is June of the Centennial year, and all the land is ablaze with patriotic fervor. From North, from South, from East and West, the products of a nation's ingenuity or a nation's toil have been garnered in one vast exhibition at the Quaker City; and thither flock the thousands of our people. It is June of a presidential nomination, and the eyes of statesmen and politicians are fixed on Cincinnati. It is the celebration of the first century of a nation's life that engrosses the thoughts of millions of hearts, and between that great jubilee and that quadrennial tempest-in-a-teapot, the nomination, who but a few lonely wives and children have time to think of those three columns far, far out in the broad Northwest—those three columns of regulars, cavalry and infantry, rough-garbed, bronzed and bearded, steadily closing in towards the wild and beautiful region along the northern water-shed of the Big Horn Range, where ten thousand hostile Indians are uneasily watching their coming? On the Atlantic seaboard comrades in full-dress uniform, with polished arms, are standing guard over government treasures on exhibition, and thoughtless thousands wonder at the ease and luxury of the soldier's life. Out on the frontier, in buckskin and flannel, slouch hats and leggings, and bristling prairie-belts, the little army is concentrating upon an outnumbering foe, whose signal-fires light the way by night, whose trail is red with blood by day. From the northeast, up the Yellowstone, Terry of Fort Fisher fame, the genial, the warm-hearted general, whose thoughts are ever with his officers and men, leads his few hundred footmen, while Custer, whose division has flashed through battery after battery, charge after charge, in the