The amulet: A novel

by Charles Egbert Craddock

“But you said—”

“Only that I sometimes thought I was in love with him.”

“You want to tantalize me—to make me miserable. For my life I can’t see why.”

He fared better when he appealed only to her generosity, for she realized that in his way he loved her. She had begun to realize that she did not, that she had never loved him, and was prone to remind him that she had always stipulated that he must consider nothing settled.

“She only wants to feel her power,” Mrs. Annandale had reassured him.

“They tell me these Indians are cannibals on occasion,” she said to herself, for there had come to be no one in whom she could really confide. “I wish they would eat Raymond—he would doubtless prove a spicy morsel—and I really don’t see any other means to dispose of him out of harm’s way.”

Mervyn found a melancholy satisfaction in the enforced silence, when he could not upbraid nor Arabella retort, as they sat side by side on the dreary snowy Sundays in the mess-hall, where the garrison attended divine service. A drum mounted upon the table reached the proper height of a prayer desk, and all the benches and settees in the barracks, guard-house, and officers’ quarters were laid under requisition to furnish forth sittings for the force. Captain Howard was duly wakeful during the long and labored homily, although he felt in his secret soul that the most acceptable portion of the service was concluded when Arabella’s voice, soaring high above the soldiers’ chorus, had ceased to resound, sweet and indescribably clear, and sunk into silence. Mervyn found the psalms for the day for her, and they read and sang from the same book. She wore, in deference to the character of the occasion, her formal church attire, and he was reduced to further abysses of subjection by the sight of her lovely face and head, unfamiliar, and yet the same, in such a bonnet as should have graced her attendance at the parish church at home. A white beaver of the poke or coal-scuttle form framed her golden hair, and accented the flush in her cheeks and the warm whiteness of brow and chin. Her ermine muff and tippet were inconceivably reminiscent of home and church-going. Her long black velvet pelisse gave her an air of rich attire which enhanced her beauty and elegance with the idea of rank and wealth which it was to be his good fortune to bestow on her. Never had she been so beautiful as with that look of staid decorum, of solemnity and reverence. Captain Howard might well have enjoyed his regular Sabbatical nap—her attention was so sedulous it might have sufficed for all the family. But he was noting the manners of the garrison, and as they were conscious of the commandant’s eye naught could have been more seemly. Jerrold, and Innis, and Lawrence, themselves, were not more reverential than Robin Dorn, who raised the tune of psalm and hymn to the correct pitch with a tuning fork, then piped away with a high tenor, now and again essaying with good measure of success a clear falsetto. The non-professional tenors held to the normal register, the basses boomed after their kind, and above all, it might seem an echo from heaven, the clear soprano voice. The big fire flashed, hardly so red as the mass of red coats in the restricted limits of one room, ample though its size, and its decorations of red and white feathers, of grotesque paintings on buffalo hides, of flashing steel arms and gaudy bows and quivers, all glimmered, and gleamed, and flickered, and faded as the flames rose and fell.

And the homily—it was not likely that the congregation knew much about the significance of the Pentateuchal types and analogies, but if the idea of such crass ignorance could have occurred to Mr. Morton, he would have said it was time they were finding out somewhat. Perhaps as he drew near his sixthly division and began to illustrate a similarity of the religious customs of the Jews and Indians, they may have pricked up their ears, and still more when he deduced an analogy between the cruelty of the temper of the ancient Hebrews toward their enemies and the torture practised by the modern Indian. He cautioned his hearers on the danger of prying into the religious ceremonies of the Cherokees as if his audience shared the pious fervor which consumed him, but said he did not despair of using these similarities as an introduction of the Christian religion, of which they were a forerunner and type. Then he talked of the legends of the lost tribes, till Captain Howard felt that it would be a piety to fall on his own sword like the military heroes of Scripture, world-weary. At last he ended with:—

“‘Woe—woe is me if I preach not the Gospel!’”

“And—woe—woe, surely, is thy hearer!” Mrs. Annandale mimicked below her breath, as hanging on her brother’s arm she walked decorously across the snowy parade to the commandant’s quarters. Mervyn and Arabella followed in silence, the young man’s thoughts on the ivy-clad church of Chesley Parish, and the walk thence through the lush greenth of the park to Mervyn Hall, with this same fair hand laid lightly on his arm.