The interval had not passed so quietly within the precincts of Mrs. Annandale’s chamber. The connecting door was closed, and Arabella did not notice the clamor, as the maid was constrained to try the latches of the outer door and adjust and readjust the bars, and finally to push by main force and a tremendous clatter one of the great chairs against it, lest some discerning and fastidious marauder should select out of all Fort Prince George, Mrs. Annandale’s precious personality to capture, or “captivate,” to use the incongruous and archaic phrase of the day. Now that the outer door was barricaded beyond all possibility of being carried by storm or of surreptitious entrance, Mrs. Annandale was beset with anxiety as to egress on an emergency.
“But look, you hussy,” she exclaimed, as she stood holding the candle aloft to light the tusslings and tuggings of the maid with the furniture and the bar, “suppose the place should take fire. How am I to get out! You have shut me in here to perish like a rat in a trap, you heartless jade!”
“Oh, sure, mem, the fort will never take fire—the captain is that careful—the foine man he is!” said the girl, turning up her fresh, rosy, Irish face.
“I know the ‘foine man’ better than you do,” snapped her mistress. The victory of the evening had been so long deferred, so hardly won at last, that the conqueror was in little better case than the defeated; she was fit to fall with fatigue, and her patience was in tatters. The War Office intrusted Captain Howard with the lives of its stanch soldiers and the value of many pounds sterling in munitions of war. But his sister belittled the enemy she had so often worsted, and who never even knew that he was beaten. “And those zanies of soldiers—smoking their vile tobacco like Indians!”
“Lord, mem,” said the girl, still on her knees, vigorously chunking and jobbing at the door, “the sojers are in barracks, in bed and asleep these three hours agone.”
“Look at that guard-house, flaring like the gates of hell! What do you mean by lying, girl!” Mrs. Annandale glanced out of the white curtained window, showing a spark of light in the darkness.
“Sure, ma’am, it’s the watch they be kapin’ so kindly all night, like the stars, or the blissed saints in heaven!”
“Mightily like the ‘blissed saints in heaven,’ I’ll wager,” said the old lady, sourly.
“I was fair afeard o’ Injuns and wild-cats till I seen the gyard turn out, mem,” said the maid, relishing a bit of gossip.
Mrs. Annandale gave a sudden little yowl, not unlike a feline utterance.