The doubt that this mandate expressed, nerved the timorous maid to approach the silent white-draped bed. That she had nevertheless expected both resistance and weight was manifest in the degree of strength she exerted. She fell back, overthrown by the sheer force of the recoil, with a large empty boot in her hand, nor would she believe that the miscreant had not craftily slipped off the footgear till the other came as empty, and a timorous peep ascertained that there were no feet to match within view.
“Some officer’s boots!” soliloquized Mrs. Annandale. “He must have left them here when he was turned out of these snug quarters to make room for us. I wonder when that floor was swept.”
“Sure, mem, they’re not dusty,” said Norah, all blithe and rosy once more. “I’m rej’iced that he wasn’t in ’em.”
“Who—the officer?” with a withering stare.
“No’m, the Injun I was looking for”—with a quaver.
“Or the wild-cat you was talking about! Nasty things! Never mention them again.”
Mrs. Annandale was a good deal shaken by the experience and tottered slightly as she paused at the dressing-table and laid down the curling-tongs that had masqueraded as a blunderbuss. The maid, all smiling alacrity to make amends, bustled cheerily about in the preparations for the retirement of her employer. “Sure, mem, yez would love to see ’em dead.”
“You’ve got a tongue now, but some day it will be cut out,” the old woman remarked, acridly.
“I’m maning to say, mem, they have the beautifulest fur—them wild-cats, not the Injuns. There’s a robe or blanket av ’em in the orderly room—beautiful, mem, sure, like the cats may have in heaven.”
As Mrs. Annandale sat in her great chair she seemed to be falling to pieces, so much of her identity came off as her hand-maiden removed her effects. She was severally divested of her embroidered cape, the full folds of her puce-colored satin gown, her slippers and clocked stockings; and when at last in her night-rail and white night-cap, she looked like a curious antique infant, with a malignant and coercive stare. Norah handled her with a fearful tenderness, as if she might break in two, such a wisp of a woman she was! Little like a conquering hero she seemed as she sat there before the fire, now girding at the offices of her attendant, now whimpering weakly, like a spoiled child, her white-capped head nodding and her white-clad figure fairly lost in the great chair, but she was the most puissant force that had ever invested Fort Prince George, though it had sustained both French military strategy and Indian savage wiles. And the days to come were to bear testimony to her courage, her address, and her dominant rage for power. When her little fateful presence was eclipsed at last by the ample white bed-curtains and Norah was free to draw forth her pallet and lay herself down on the floor before the fire, the girl could not refrain a long-drawn sigh, half of fatigue and half self-commiseration. It seemed a hard lot with her exacting and freakish employer. But the cold bitter wind came surging around the corner of the house, and she remembered the bleak morasses across the wild Atlantic, the little smoky hovel she called home, the many to fend from frost and famine, the close and crowded quarters, the straw bed where she had lain, neighboring the pig. She thought of her august room-mate in comparison.