The amulet: A novel

by Charles Egbert Craddock

“Oh,—oh,—are there two dialects of the Cherokee language?” cried Arabella. “How wonderful! And of the different towns! Oh-h—which are the lower towns? and oh,—Mr. Raymond, how prodigiously clever to know both the dialects!”

Captain Howard lifted his head with a brusque challenge in his eye. He tolerated none but national quarrels. He did not understand the interests in conflict. But he thought to end them summarily. The words “moonling,” “moon-struck,” and the tone of the whole conversation were not conducive to the conservation of the peace. Raymond had conducted himself in a very surly and nettling manner all through the day toward his quondam friend, who, so far as Captain Howard could see, had given him no cause of offence.

He was obviously about to strike into the conversation, and all three faces turned toward him, alert, expectant. The suave inscrutable countenance of the young lady merely intimated attention, but it was difficult for the two young men to doff readily their half scoffing expressions of anger and defiance and assume the facial indicia of respect and deference and bland subservience due to their host, their senior, and their superior officer.

His sister, however, quickly forestalled his acrid comments. Mrs. Annandale ostensibly played the part of duenna to her niece and of acquiescent chorus to her brother’s dictatorial opinions. But in her secret heart she controverted his every prelection, and she countermarched his intentions with an unsuspected skill that was the very climax of strategy, for she brought him to the conviction that they were his own plans she had furthered and his own orders she had executed. Her outer aspect aided her designs—it was marvellously incongruous with the character of tactician. She had a scanty little visage, pale and wrinkled, with small pursed-up lips, closely drawn in meek assent, and small bright eyes that twinkled timorously out from gray lashes. A modish head-dress surmounted and concealed her thin gray locks, and an elaborately embroidered kerchief, crossed over the bosom of her puce-colored satin gown, conforming in the décolleté cut to the universal fashion of the day, hid the bones of her wasted little figure. She was very prim, and mild, and upright, as she sat in the primitive arm-chair, wrought by the post-carpenter and covered with a buffalo-skin. In a word she turned the trend of the discourse.

“M—m—m,” she hesitated. “Sure, ’twould seem one dialect might express all the ideas of the Indians—they have a monstrous talent for silence.”

She looked directly at Raymond from out her weak, blinking little eyes.

“They talk more among themselves, madam, and when at home,” responded Raymond, turning away from the young people at the window, and leaning against the high mantel-piece, one hand on the shelf as he stood on the opposite side of the fire from Mrs. Annandale. “They are ill at ease here at the fort,—the presence of the soldiers abashes and depresses them; they are much embittered by their late defeat.”

Mrs. Annandale shuddered. She was afraid of wind and lightning; of waters and ghosts; of signs and omens; of savages and mice; of the dark and of the woods; of gun-powder and a sword-blade.

“And are you not frightened of them, Mr. Raymond?” she quavered.

He stared in amazement, and Captain Howard, restored to good temper, cocked up his eyes humorously at the young soldier. The vivid red and white of Raymond’s complexion, his powdered side-curls, and his bold, bright hazel eyes, were heightened by the delicacy of his lace cravat, and his red uniform was brought out in fine effect by the flaring light of the deep chimney-place, but Mrs. Annandale’s heart was obdurate to all such appeals, even vicariously. A side glance had shown her that the young people at the window had drawn closer together and a low-toned and earnest conversation was in progress there,—the captain-lieutenant was talking fast and eagerly, while the girl, holding the curtain, looked out at the dreary wintry aspect of the sheeted wilderness, the frontier fort, and the “sleeping sun” resting softly in the pale azure sky, high, high above the Great Smoky Mountains. The duenna pressed her lips together in serene satisfaction.