“So long as that!” she exclaimed, growing serious. All at once she caught her breath with a gasp, staring at the Indians in the gathering gloom, as with a sudden inspiration.
“I would speak with them!—Oh, la!—what a thing to tell in England! Take me down there,—quick. Tillie vallie!—there is no water in the fosse. What a brag to make in Kent! There can be no danger under the guns of the fort. Lord, papa,—let me go!”
Captain Howard hesitated, but made no demur. The war was over, and there was indeed no risk; and Arabella’s pilgrimage into primeval realms would be infinitely embellished by this freak. All of the young officers accompanied her, the interpreter, hastily summoned, following; the commandant and the parson watched from the rampart.
She went through the gray dusk like some translucent apparition, the figment of lines of light. The moon, now in the sky, hardly annulled the tints of her faint green gown; her hair glittered in the sheen; her face was ethereally white.
The wailing ceased as her advance was observed. The swaying figures were still. A vague fear seized her as she came near to those mysterious veiled creatures, literally abased to the ground. She wavered for a moment,—then she paused on the crest of the glacis in silence and evident doubt.
There was an interval of suspense. The odors of violets and dust and ashes were blended on the air. Dew was falling; the river sang; and the moon shone brighter as the darkness gathered.
“Good people,” she said, with a sort of agitated, hysteric break in her clear voice, for she was realizing that she knew not how to address magnates and priests of a strange alien nation.
The croak of the interpreter came with a harsh promptitude on each clause.
“Good people, I hear a voice,”—she paused again, and corrected her phrase,—“I feel a monition—to tell you that your prayers are answered. Your ‘religion’ I have the power to restore. To-morrow, at the fort, at high noon, it shall be returned to you. If you help the helpless, and feed the hungry, and cherish the aged, and show mercy to captives, it will be a better religion than ever heretofore. I promise,—I pledge my word.”
She wavered anew and shrank back so suddenly that Raymond thought she might fall. But no! She fled like a deer, her green draperies all fluttering in the wind, the moonlight on her golden hair and in her shining eyes. The officers followed, half bewildered by her freak, Raymond first of all. He overtook her as she was climbing through the fraise of the steep exterior slope of the rampart, clutching at the sharp stakes to help her ascent.