Ray's Daughter. Charles KingЧитать онлайн книгу.
him the minimum of a show of interest, curiosity, or even consciousness of his presence. Then the train made its second stop on account of the fires, and Bre'r Rabbit his luckless break into the long monotony of the declining day.
Tentative spikes, clods, and empty flasks having failed to find him, the beaters had essayed a skirmish line, and with instant result. Like a meteoric puff of gray and white, to a chorus of yells and the accompaniment of a volley of missiles, Jack had shot into space from behind his shelter and darted zigzagging through the brush. A whizzing spike, a chance shot that nearly grazed his nose, so dazzled his brainlet that the terrified creature doubled on his trail and came bounding back towards the train.
Close to the track-side ran a narrow ditch. In this ditch at the instant crouched the tall lieutenant. Into this ditch leaped Bunny, and the next second had whizzed past the stooping form and bored straight into a little wooden drain. There some unseen, unlooked-for object blocked him.
Desperately the hind-legs kicked and tore in the effort to force the passage, and with a shout of triumph the tall soldier swooped upon the prize, seized the struggling legs, swung the wretched creature aloft, and for the first time in six mortal hours met full in his own the gaze of the deep, beautiful brown eyes he had so striven to attract, and they were half pleading, half commanding for Bunny. The next instant, uninjured, but leaping madly for life, Bre'r Rabbit was streaking eastward out of harm's way, a liberated victim whose first huge leap owed much of its length to the impetus of Stuyvesant's long, lean, sinewy arm.
This time when he looked up and raised his cap, and stood there with his blond hair blowing down over his broad white forehead, although the soft curves of the ripe red lips at the window above him changed not, there was something in the dark-brown eyes that seemed to say "Thank you!"
Yet when he would have met those eyes again that evening, when "Last call for dinner in the dining-car" was sounding through the train, he could not. Neither were they among those that peered from between parted curtains in the dim light of the sleeper, many in fright, all in anxiety, when somewhere in the dead of the summer night, long after all occupants of the rearmost cars were wrapped in slumber, the long train bumped to sudden jarring standstill, and up ahead there arose sound of rush, of excitement and alarm.
CHAPTER II.
It was just after sunset when, for the second time, the hot boxes of the recruit car had been treated to liberal libations from the water-tank, and the belated train again moved on.
Dinner had been ready in the dining-car a full hour, but so long as the sickening smell of burning waste arose from the trucks immediately in front very few of the passengers seemed capable of eating. The car, as a consequence, was crowded towards eight o'clock, and the steward and waiters were busy men.
The evening air, drifting in through open windows, was cooler than it had been during the day, but still held enough of the noontide caloric to make fans a comfort, and Mr. Stuyvesant, dining at a "four-in-hand" table well to the front, and attempting to hold his own in a somewhat desultory talk with his fellow-men, found himself paying far more attention to the lovely face of the girl across the aisle than to the viands set before him.
She was seated facing the front, and opposite the austere maiden previously mentioned. Conversation had already begun, and now Stuyvesant was able to see that, beautiful in feature as was her face in repose, its beauty was far enhanced when animated and smiling.
When to well-nigh perfect external features there is added the charm of faultlessly even and snowy teeth and a smile that illumines the entire face, shining in the eyes as it plays about the pretty, sensitive mouth, a young woman is fully equipped for conquest.
Stuyvesant gazed in fascination uncontrollable. He envied the prim, precise creature who sat unbending, severe, and, even while keeping up a semblance of interest in the conversation, seemed to feel it a duty to display disapprobation of such youthful charms.
No woman is so assured that beauty is only skin deep as she who has none of it. Her manner, therefore, had been decidedly stiff, and from that had imperceptibly advanced to condescension, but when the steward presently appeared with a siphon of iced seltzer, and, bowing deferentially, said he hoped everything was to Miss Ray's liking, and added that it seemed a long time since they had seen the captain and supposed he must be a colonel now, the thin eyebrows of the tall maiden were uplifted into little arches that paralleled the furrows of her brow as she inquired:
"Miss Ray?—from Fort Leavenworth?"
The answer was a smiling nod of assent as the younger lady buried her lovely, dark face in the flowers set before her by the assiduous waiter, and Stuyvesant felt sure she was trying to control an inclination to laugh.
"Well, you must excuse me if I have been a little—slow," said the elder in evident perturbation. "You see—we meet such queer people travelling—sometimes. Don't you find it so?"
The dark face was dimpling now with suppressed merriment.
"Yes—occasionally," was the smiling answer.
"But then, being the daughter of an army officer," pursued the other hurriedly, "you have to travel a great deal. I suppose you really—have no home?" she essayed in the half-hopeful tone to be expected of one who considered that a being so endowed by nature must suffer some compensatory discomforts.
"Yes and—no," answered Miss Ray urbanely. "In one sense we army girls have no home. In another, we have homes everywhere."
It is a reproach in the eyes of certain severe moralists that a fellow-being should be so obviously content with his or her lot. The elder woman seemed to feel it a duty to acquaint this beaming creature with the manifest deficiency in her moral make-up.
"Yes, but I should think most any one would rather have a real home, a place where they weren't bounden to anybody, no matter if it was homely." (She called it "humbly," and associated it in mind with the words of Payne's immortal song.) "Now, when I went to see Colonel Ray about our society, he told me he had to break up everything, going to Cuba, but he didn't mention about your going West."
"Father was a little low in his mind that day," said Miss Ray, a shade of sadness passing over her face. "Both my brothers are in the service, and one is barely seventeen."
"Out at service!" interrupted the other. "You don't mean——"
"No," was the laughing answer, and in Miss Ray's enjoyment of the situation her eyes came perilously near seeking those of Mr. Stuyvesant, which she well knew were fixed upon her. "I mean that both are in the army."
"Well—I thought not—still—I didn't know. It's all rather new to me, this dealin' with soldiers, but I suppose I'll get to know all about it after a spell. Our society's getting much encouraged."
"Red Cross?" queried Miss Ray, with uplifted brows and evident interest, yet a suspicion of incredulity.
"Well, same thing, only we don't propose to levy contributions right and left like they do. I am vice-president of the Society of Patriotic Daughters of America, you know. I thought perhaps your father might have told you. And our association is self-sustaining, at least it will be as soon as we are formally recognized by the government. You know the Red Cross hasn't any real standing, whereas our folks expect the President to issue the order right away, making us part of the regular hospital brigade. Now, your father was very encouraging, though some officers we talked to were too stuck up to be decent. When I called on General Drayton he just as much as up and told me we'd only be in the way."
Just here, it must be owned, Miss Ray found it necessary to dive under the table for a handkerchief which she had not dropped.
Mr. Stuyvesant, ignoring the teachings of his childhood and gazing over the rim of his coffee-cup, observed that she was with difficulty concealing her merriment. Then, all of a sudden, her face, that had been so full of radiance, became suddenly clouded by concern and