The amulet: A novel

by Charles Egbert Craddock

“Why, no—!” she cried, her voice as fresh as a lark’s. “I wanted to see you. I asked Mr. Mervyn to send for you!”

Mervyn flushed, and as she observed it she noticed that the red glow in Raymond’s cheeks was deeper and richer than even their florid wont. The eyes of both men glittered, and she had a sudden recollection of the difficulty that had heretofore risen between them touching the guard report,—had there been high words in the hall, she wondered.

Mrs. Annandale was endowed with many a sharp weapon which made her enmity feared and her favor prized, and among these were certain indescribable subtleties of manner which she wielded with great skill and murderous effect. The very glance of her eye as she turned her gaze upon Raymond might have abased many as sturdy a soul, but Arabella was smiling upon him from the opposite side of the table, both elbows on it and her chin on her clasped hands.

“Well, you here again?” the old lady said, her keen eyes twinkling malevolently upon him as he stood beside a chair, his hand on its back, “we thought—we really labored under the impression that we said farewell to you early this afternoon.”

“And you shall have that pleasure again, dear madam, within the next few minutes,” he retorted, with a courteous smile and a wave of the hat in his hand.

Her eyes narrowed—he was the very essence of a marplot, so handsome, with such a suggestion of reckless dash about him, yet with such a steady look in his eye. He had, too, all the advantages of birth and breeding, and for these she valued him even less. They placed him where she claimed he had no right to be, among his superiors as wealth would rate them. She was not rich, herself, but she had a sentiment of contumely for the indications of wear in his service uniform, of work in his heavy service sword, of the expectation of danger incident to his profession, and the preparation for it evidenced in the pistols he wore in his belt. His unpowdered hair, just drying off from the soakings of the rain, showed its dark auburn hue. He was all most freshly caparisoned, for the rain had not left a dry thread on him, and he, too, was rather conscious of the shabbiness of his second best uniform, donned since his arrival at the fort. In comparison, Mervyn, hovering about, was but a lace and velvet presentment of a soldier, a travesty of the idea expressed in fighting trim.

Arabella took, as she fancied, a sort of friendly interest in Raymond—she loved that look in his eyes, that gay, gallant, fearless glance; it reminded her of sunlight striking on water, and she knew there were depths far, far beneath. There was something so genuine, so vigorous, so hearty about his mentality; he would not know what to do with a subterfuge. She loved to see his rising anger; she laughed with a flattered delight when she thought of a suggestion of jealousy, for her sake, of Mervyn, that she had noticed even on the first day of her arrival,—things move swiftly on the frontier. She would like to sit down beside him and hear him tell of his troubles,—how he hated, and whom; how he loved, and whom; how he had only his sword to cut his way through the world, and his way was like this impenetrable wilderness, too thickly grown for a knight-errant of to-day to make place. She would care rather to hear of his griefs than the joys of another man. His failures were more picturesque than another man’s successes. She would like to take out her little house-wife, and with her crafty needle mend that rent in his white glove as he held it in his hand. She reached for it suddenly, and if ever Mrs. Annandale could have bitten an unsuspicious hand it was when her niece’s jewelled fingers began to take in and out a tiny needle and a fine thread through the ripped seam of the soldier’s glove.

“More than a few minutes,” she said, archly. “You can’t go without this!”

Mrs. Annandale had the merit of knowing when the limit of forbearance was reached.

“And now, my good Mr. Raymond,” she said, with a sour smile, “if you are quite ready, and have peacocked about to your heart’s content, and have handled your sword and fiddled with your pistols to make Arabella and me see that you have got ’em on and are about to get used to wearing such things, and are no play-soldier, though yesterday in the nursery, we want to say we admire your terrible and blood-thirsty appearance, and tremble mightily before you, and should like to know what brought you back, and if anything ails Captain Howard.”