I don't know if Major Vandyke was serious at first. Perhaps he wanted no more than a good flirtation with a pretty girl, one of the prettiest he had ever seen, and desperately loved by a brother officer. You see, he had probably heard already from Kitty Main, who told everything she knew and a great deal she didn't know, that Captain March was in love with Di, just as we heard from the same source that Major Vandyke was jealous of his junior because of flying exploits and honours. I think, though, that from the moment they met, Di never meant to let the man go free. She saw that he was flirting, and was angry that he should dare. This put her on her mettle; and Diana on her mettle was and ever will be formidable, because of her cleverness, which never lets the mettle show. She determined that Sidney Vandyke should fall in love—over ears and eyes in love—and he did. But she wasn't satisfied even with that. She couldn't bear to have Eagle March escape, and perhaps be snapped up by Milly Dalziel, who was sitting on the bank of the fishpond with her hook baited. Oh, it must have been an amusing little comedy for outsiders to watch; and I was an outsider in a way; but it didn't amuse me. I was sick at heart, and cross with Tony Dalziel, who wouldn't leave me alone or give me time to think things over.
This sort of maneuvering lasted for three weeks; then a bombshell fell in our midst. Two batteries of the —th Artillery were ordered immediately to El Paso, on the Mexican border, where a raid was apparently threatened. Major Vandyke and Captain March and Lieutenant Dalziel were all to go.
CHAPTER VI
There was desolation at Alvarado Springs, in the hotel, and in the super-cottages. People—when I say people, I mean women—didn't come to Alvarado to drink the celebrated waters, or to admire the wonderful scenery. They came to play with the officers, and now the bravest and best (looking) were to be snatched from them. What had happened, or what might happen, was a mystery to mere civilians; but it was whispered about that possibly there might be real fighting at El Paso. There must have been, everybody said, something serious under the rumours of a threatened attack from across the Rio Grande, otherwise government would not be sending troops to reinforce the large garrison at Fort Bliss, or be offering to take women and children away from the river towns, in armoured trains if desired. Cavalry and infantry were moving south from other army posts, we heard, to guard the concentration camp of Mexican refugee prisoners at El Paso, and to beat back a rabble of invaders if need came.
The order reached Alvarado late in the afternoon, and the batteries were to leave by train at four o'clock the next morning. As it happened, Kitty Main, Father, Di, and I were all invited to a dance that evening at the house of an officer and his wife, Captain and Mrs. Kilburn; but when the news about the batteries going away began to flash from cottage to cottage we expected the party to be given up. Di looked rather blank when Mrs. Main flung the tidings at her, for Sidney Vandyke hadn't proposed yet. If the dance were abandoned, he might be too busy getting his men ready to see her before he left; and heaven alone knew when the batteries would come back. There might be fighting; there might at worst even be war with Mexico; and whatever happened, we couldn't stay on indefinitely at Alvarado. Kitty Main had taken the cottage and asked us to visit her only for six weeks. Besides, Alvarado would be desolate without our best friends and possible lovers.
I could see these thoughts developing and following on one another's heels in Diana's mind. But in my head there was nothing concrete enough to call a "thought." Feelings seemed to have raced upstairs from heart to brain, and driven ideas out of the house. They ran wildly round and round, saying to each other, "What if I never see him again? What if he should be killed?" But while we were in this state, Mrs. Kilburn telephoned to Kitty Main that she had decided to have her dance in spite of all. Her husband was not among those ordered away, and the officers who were going had arranged to spare time to look in for three or four dances in any case. Some of them might be very early, some very late, but there would be plenty of other men to go round; and Mrs. Kilburn suggested that we might "keep things up" long enough to see the soldiers off at dawn, before motoring back to the Springs, if that would interest Lady Diana and Lady Peggy O'Malley.
There was only one answer to this, and when we went over to Fort Alvarado for the dance we put on warmer cloaks than we should have worn ordinarily.
Mrs. Kilburn had brought her husband money; and as she loved gayety she had somehow got permission to build on to the captain's quarters a ballroom surrounded on three sides by a wide veranda. Consequently, a dance at the Kilburns' was worth going to always, and particularly on this moonlight night of April when the whole fort was humming with excitement. The officers who were ordered away had their hands full of work, yet the young ones managed to get off duty if only for a few minutes, long enough to snatch a dance or two with the girls they liked best, or to "sit out" with them on the veranda, where there were colonies of chairs, and garden seats, and hammocks.
Tony Dalziel was one of those who came early to the Kilburns'. He had asked me beforehand for six dances, and I had given him three. When he appeared it was just in time for the first, a two-step. The second would follow directly after, and the third I knew already, from a note sent me in haste, he would have to miss.