The amulet: A novel

by Charles Egbert Craddock

And was this a seemly lover for Arabella Howard? He wondered how she could tolerate the dissembler who was not even frank with himself. He wondered how her father, an epitome of stout-hearted candor, her aunt, the cleverest of keen-sighted women, would permit this sacrifice of her. But there were inducements,—rank, fortune, station,—all powerful to embellish ugly traits, to obliterate unworthy actions, to place the most creditable construction on selfish sentiments. Raymond, however, had not time to rail at Fate according to her perverse deserts, for the hour was late, and his departure imminent.

He was gone on the morrow by the time the garrison was fairly astir, marching out of the gates as the bugle sounded the reveille. The day broke clouded and drear; the wind veered to the north; the temperature fell, and then ensued a long interval of suspense, of gray monotony. The air became still; it was perceptibly warmer; the dense clouds hung low and motionless; it was impossible to prognosticate the character of the change when it should terminate the indefinite uncertainty. Occasionally as the cheerless afternoon wore on, a vague brightening over the landscape gave a delusive promise of fairer skies, and then the sullen day lowered anew. The morrow brought no flattering augury. Now and then Captain Howard, looking at the heavy clouds, portending falling weather, meditated anxiously on the difficulties of the expedition. The temperature was unusually uncertain considering the season. He did not, however, expect a recurrence of cold weather, with spring already astir in the warm earth. But with the fickleness of the southern climate, on the third day after the departure of the little force, a freeze set in at dawn, and as the temperature moderated toward noon the threatened falling weather made good its menace in whirls of snow-flakes.

Captain Howard felt that he could not have been expected to foresee these climatic changes, and least of all he anticipated snow, which, most of all, he dreaded. The mission had already been unduly postponed, and time pressed sorely. The emergency was urgent and this he did not doubt, but with the complication of wintry storms in the wilderness he began to seriously question the wisdom of his selection of the officer to conduct the enterprise to a satisfactory conclusion. He wondered if Raymond would have the prudence to turn about should the route prove impracticable through the snowy tangled forests and across a score of precipitous high mountains and retrace his way to Fort Prince George.

He felt sure that at the first flurry betokening now in the trackless mountain defiles either Mervyn or Jerrold would have ordered an “About-face” movement. His heart misgave him as he reflected on Raymond’s pertinacity. He knew in his secret soul that if ever he saw the ensign again it would be after he had accomplished his mission to Choté Great.

“Will he really freeze himself and his twenty men first?” he asked petulantly,—“or lose his way in the storm?”

Mervyn, albeit somewhat anxious himself after the flakes had begun to whirl, could but experience a little relish of the discomforts of his superior, who had apparently passed him over without reason, and had conferred a duty of difficulty and danger on a very young officer, probably incapable of executing it with requisite discretion. He had no inclination to stay and condole with the commandant before the fire in the orderly room. Here Captain Howard sat and toasted his spurs half the morning, having a mind himself to ride out on the trail of the expedition, if its route could be ascertained. There was the usual routine,—the reports of the orderly room, guard-mounting, drill,—all the various tours of duty to be observed as rigorously as if the fort held ten thousand men, instead of its complement of a scant hundred. Mervyn went about these details with a military promptness and efficiency and apparent content which commended him much to the morose commandant, who wished a hundred times that day that he had Raymond here and that Mervyn were in Raymond’s place, thirty miles away,—nay, fifty by this time.

“He will have those men off their feet,” muttered Captain Howard. “He’ll race them through these drifts as if they were sunshine.”

He looked out drearily at the snow now lying trodden and criss-crossed in devious paths on the parade. It was untouched, unsullied on the ramparts, where it had lodged in the clefts between the sharp points of the stockade. It hung in massive drifts on the roofs of the barracks, the guard-house near the gate, the block-houses; icicles wrought by an arrested thaw depended from the tower, in which the sentinel was fain to walk briskly to and fro, beating his breast the while, although the relief came at close intervals. The flakes were altogether hiding the contiguous woods, and it seemed that noon had hardly passed before there were suggestions of dusk in the darkening atmosphere, and nightfall was early at hand.

“Wonder where he will bivouac, to-night?” the commandant suggested to the group of officers in the mess-hall before the great fireplace that half filled one side of the room, for they were all somewhat familiar with the topography of the region through which Raymond would have to pass and the names of the Cherokee towns.

It was a cheerful scene indeed. The aroma of a skilfully compounded punch pervaded it, and the great silver gilt bowl was genially disposed on the nearest end of the long table, within easy access of the group about the hearth. The fire roared joyously up the great cavernous chimney and was brilliantly reflected from the glimmering steel of the arms suspended on the walls,—trophies, curios, or merely decorations. The wide-spread wings of the white swan and the scarlet flamingo arranged above the wainscot in gorgeous alternations hardly now suggested a mere fiction of flight; they seemed to move, to flutter and flicker as the firelight fluctuated and the shadows danced. On a smaller table there was the steady, chaste white focus of candle-light, for the tapers were illumined in two tall candle-sticks, the cards were cut for Loo, and the expectant faces of the officers showed in the calm white gleam, with all the details of their red coats, their white belts, their powdered hair. Only one of the officers was smoking, an on-looker at the game, the quarter-master, but Captain Howard’s snuff-box was repeatedly in his hands.