The amulet: A novel

by Charles Egbert Craddock

One might not have divined that Mrs. Annandale’s sharp truculence in orders and admonitions had added wings to the swiftness of the cook and roused him to accomplish his utmost. She looked suave and benign as she presided in festival array over the feast that did the quarters so much honor. All was jollity and genial good fellowship as the three ranged themselves around the table. The two tall silver candle-sticks, with their wax candles, lighted up smiling faces as they looked at one another across the well-spread board, which so definitely belied Mrs. Annandale’s pretended solicitude for the state of the commandant’s larder.

There was something singularly home-like in the informal little feast, and it appealed gratefully to the sentiment of the young soldier who had seen naught of home for three long years. He laughed at Mrs. Annandale’s sallies and made bold to fling them back at her. He explained with long-winded and eager diligence all frontier conditions that seemed to impress Arabella. He talked of his immediate future after his return to England, his plans for the next few years, with an intimate expectation of their responsive interest which sent a glow to the pallid cheek of the wily tactician, for it was as if in his anticipation they shared in these events. She doubted if Arabella perceived this collocation of his ideas—she was sure that he was not aware how definitely he had expressed them to her intuitive comprehension. But she could piece together the thought in his mind with the suggestion in his speech, and the coherence combined in the augury of the fulfilment of her dearest dream. They sat long at table; the candles had burned so low that Mrs. Annandale was fain to cock her head like a sparrow as she peeped around the blaze.

“My certie,” she exclaimed at last, “you cannot sit till midnight over your bottle when you come to dine with two lone lorn women. Clear away the dishes, man—” (this to the servant), “and don’t let them clatter, if you want whole bones.”

And when they were all gone,—disappearing as silently as crockery could,—and the three were about the fire once more, the lute was brought, and Arabella sang the songs of home to the exiles. Out at the door the sentinel, always posted at the commanding officer’s quarters, paused on his beat and stood still to listen, spell-bound. The grand rounds, returning along the ramparts, slackened their march to hear the tinkling vibrations and the dulcet, romantic, melancholy voice, that seemed somehow of kinship with the moonlight, a-glimmer outside, on the great bastion; with the loneliness of the vast wilderness; with the vague lilting rune of the river; with the mournful undertone of the wind, rising in the distance.

George Mervyn felt at the blissful portal of an earthly paradise, as yet too sacred to enter, but in his tremors, his delighted expectancy, his tender visions, there was no stir of doubt. He felt her demand of homage; more than once this day he had been sensible of her power intentionally exerted upon him. She desired him to fall at her feet. Now and again her eyes warned him that he should not think less of her than her large meed. And then the wistful sweetness when she had besought his care! It was hers—it should be hers for life! There seemed even now but a word to speak between them. He watched her as she sat glimmering in silver and white, half in the shadow, half in the light, the lute in her hand, her graceful head and neck bent forward, her eyes on the fire. The song ended; the strings ceased to vibrate; the echo stirred and failed and there was a long pause, while the firelight flashed, and the walls glowed, and the white feathery ash shifted lightly in the stronger draught of the fire, for the wind was rushing in at the crevices of the window, drawing with the heated air up the great chimney. The sentinels as they walked their beats outside noted its gathering strength, and glanced from time to time toward the sky, mindful of the sombre, fateful portent of the great cloud in the west that now reached near the zenith, the moonlight showing the tumult and trouble of its convolutions, its densities, its cavernous recesses, the subtleties of the variations of its shoaling tints, from the deepest purple through all the gamut of color to the edges of glistening gray.

Suddenly there came a deafening crash. A vivid white flash flickered through the room. The next moment the loud rote of the echoes of the thunder was reverberating through the mountain defiles; the surging of the wind sounded like the engulfing turmoils of a tidal wave, and the rain beat tumultuously on the roof.

Mrs. Annandale, all unaware of the coming tempest, by reason of the curtained window and her own absorptions, sprang to her feet with a wild little cry of blended terror and temper, and Arabella, pressing her hands to her eyes, let the lute slip from her lap to the floor, where its impact sent out a hollow dissonance. Mervyn had stooped to pick it up when Mrs. Annandale clutched him by the arm.

“Why didn’t you tell me a storm was coming?” she demanded.

“Dear madam, I did not know it myself,” said Mervyn, gently, yet nevertheless constrained to smile. So does a superiority to the fears of others elate the soul that he did not even shrink from the claw-like grip that the skinny fingers of the little woman was making felt even among the tough muscles of his stalwart arm. “Believe me, there is no danger.”

He spoke in the random way in which men see fit to reassure a terrified woman or child. Seldom is the insincerity of this haphazard benevolence so signally exposed as in the next moment when an insupportable, white, sinister brilliance filled the room, a terrific crash stunned their ears, and the ashes and coals from the fireplace were scattered in showers about the apartment, the bolt evidently having struck the chimney.