Part 10 (1/2)
”In any event I'm glad the cavalry did no better,” was Miss Renwick's loyal response. ”You remember the evening we rode out to the range and Captain Gray said that there was the man who would win the first prize from Mr. Jerrold,--that tall cavalry sergeant who fainted away,--Sergeant McLeod; don't you remember, mother? Well, he did not even get a place, and Mr. Jerrold beat him easily.”
Something in her mother's eyes warned her to be guarded, and, in that indefinable but unerring system of feminine telegraphy, called her attention to the man sitting by the door. Looking quickly to her right, Miss Renwick saw that he was intently regarding her. At the mention of Fort Sibley the stranger had lowered his paper, revealing a bronzed face clean-shaven except for the thick blonde moustache, and a pair of clear, steady, searching blue eyes under heavy brows and lashes, and these eyes were very deliberately yet respectfully fixed upon her own; nor were they withdrawn in proper confusion when detected. It was Miss Renwick whose eyes gave up the contest and returned in some sense of defeat to her mother's face.
”What letters have you for the colonel?” asked Mrs. Maynard, coming _au secours_.
”Three,--two of them from his devoted henchman Captain Chester, who writes by every mail, I should imagine; and these he will go off into some secluded nook with and come back looking blue and worried. Then here's another, forwarded from Sibley, too. I do not know this hand.
Perhaps it is from Captain Armitage, who, they say, is to come back next month. Poor Mr. Jerrold!”
”Why poor Mr. Jerrold?” asked Aunt Grace, with laughing interest, as she noted the expression on her niece's pretty face.
”Because he can't bear Captain Armitage, and--”
”Now, Alice!” said her mother, reprovingly. ”You must not take his view of the captain at all. Remember what the colonel said of him--”
”Mother dear,” protested Alice, laughing, ”I have no doubt Captain Armitage is the paragon of a soldier, but he is unquestionably a most unpleasant and ungentlemanly person in his conduct to the young officers. Mr. Hall has told me the same thing. I declare, I don't see how they can speak to him at all, he has been so harsh and discourteous and unjust.” The color was rising in earnest now, but a warning glance in her mother's eye seemed to check further words. There was an instant's silence. Then Aunt Grace remarked,--
”Alice, your next-door neighbor has vanished. I think your vehemence has frightened him.”
Surely enough, the big, blue-eyed man in tweeds had disappeared. During this brief controversy he had quickly and noiselessly let himself out of the open door, swung lightly to the ground, and was out of sight among the trees.
”Why, what a strange proceeding!” said Aunt Grace again. ”We are fully a mile and a half from the hotel, and he means to walk it in this glaring sun.”
Evidently he did. The driver reined up at the moment in response to a suggestion from some one in a forward seat, and there suddenly appeared by the wayside, striding out from the shelter of the sumachs, the athletic figure of the stranger.
”Go ahead!” he called, in a deep chest-voice that had an unmistakable ring to it,--the tone that one so readily recognizes in men accustomed to prompt action and command. ”I'm going across lots.” And, swinging his heavy stick, with quick, elastic steps and erect carriage the man in gray plunged into a wood-path and was gone.
”Alice,” said Aunt Grace, again, ”that man is an officer, I'm sure, and you have driven him into exile and lonely wandering. I've seen so much of them when visiting my brother in the old days before my marriage that even in civilian dress it is easy to tell some of them. Just look at that back, and those shoulders! He has been a soldier all his life.
Horrors! suppose it should be Captain Armitage himself!”
Miss Renwick looked genuinely distressed, as well as vexed. Certainly no officer but Captain Armitage would have had reason to leave the stage.
Certainly officers and their families occasionally visited Sablon in the summer-time, but Captain Armitage could hardly be here. There was comforting a.s.surance in the very note she held in her hand.
”It cannot be,” she said, ”because Mr. Jerrold writes that they have just heard from him at Sibley. He is still at the sea-sh.o.r.e, and will not return for a month. Mr. Jerrold says he implored Captain Chester to let him have three days' leave to come down here and have a sail and a picnic with us, and was told that it would be out of the question.”
”Did he tell you any other news?” asked Mrs. Maynard, looking up from her letter again,--”anything about the german?”
”He says he thinks it a shame we are to be away and--well, read it yourself.” And she placed it in her mother's hands, the dark eyes seriously, anxiously studying her face as she read. Presently Mrs.
Maynard laid it down and looked again into her own, then, pointing to a certain pa.s.sage with her finger, handed it to her daughter.
”Men were deceivers ever,” she said, laughing, yet oracularly significant.
And Alice Renwick could not quite control the start with which she read,--
”Mr. Jerrold is to lead with his old love, Nina Beaubien. They make a capital pair, and she, of course, will be radiant--with Alice out of the way.”
”That is something Mr. Jerrold failed to mention, is it not?”
Miss Renwick's cheeks were flushed, and the dark eyes were filled with sudden pain, as she answered,--
”I did not know she was there. She was to have gone to the Lakes the same day we left.”