The amulet: A novel

by Charles Egbert Craddock

“I fling down the glove!” she said.

“I lift the glove!” he responded, in his full, steady voice.

And neither Mrs. Annandale nor Mervyn had quite the courage to ask what manner of defiance this gage signified, or whether indeed it were merely one of those vain trifles with which young people are wont to solace their emptiness and lack of thought.

Raymond was bowing over the hands of the ladies, presently, and after the fashion of the time he carried Mrs. Annandale’s to his lips. She gave it to him with a touch of reluctance, as if she thought he had some cause to bite it, but he dropped the member uninjured, and then he was gone.

Mervyn lingered, but the fire was low, the geniality spent; Arabella, half lost in one of the great chairs as she leaned far back, seemed pensive, distraite; he, himself, could not raise his spirits to their wonted tone; his mind was preoccupied with the unlucky chances of the evening and the sorry figure he had cut when his rank had placed him in command of the fort, and when he would most desire to deserve his prominence. Mrs. Annandale alone preserved her uncanny, indomitable freshness, and talked on with unabated vigor. But the evening was over; to recur to its tender passages would need more auspicious circumstances. He had few words for leave-taking, and when he had gone Arabella slowly pulled herself out of the depths of the big chair, and said how tired she was, and how long he had stayed. And then she yawned. Mrs. Annandale looked at her sternly, opened her mouth for rebuke, thought better of it, lighted her bedroom candle, and disappeared.

Arabella stood for some moments with her own lighted candle in her hand. The room was otherwise dark now, but for a dull glow of embers; the barbaric decorations on the walls, the swan’s wings, the aboriginal pictures, the quivers and fantastic medley of baskets, and calabashes, and painted jugs wavered into visibility and again disappeared as the flame flickered in the draught. She was thinking—she hardly knew of what—she was tired—the evening had brought so much. She had a sense of triumph in the capture of Mervyn, and that was an abiding impression. She was glad to see Raymond—her heart was warm when she thought of him. She fancied they had quarrelled because of her, and this made her lips curl with relish—but they might quarrel again. She must not let Mervyn’s jealousy go too far. She had half a mind to tell her aunt of her victory—she, the penniless! But there would be time enough. She took the candle in her hand and started up the steep stairway from the hall. It was of rude construction, and the apartment to which it led was an empty disused place upon which the rooms on either side opened. It was situated in one angle of the house, and when it was built had been intended for defensive service. Its outer sides had a row of loop-holes at the usual height, and its walls projected some three feet beyond the walls below like the upper story of a block-house; a series of loop-holes that pierced the floor close to the outer wall gave an opportunity to its possible defenders of shooting downward at an enemy who should seek to enter or to fire the house below. With all these loop-holes, admitting the air, the place was far too open for occupation, save by soldiers, perhaps, in stress of siege. In peace it had lapsed into simple utility as hallway, and possessed a sort of attraction for Arabella, so different was it from aught she had ever seen in the old country. The commandant’s residence, otherwise, a quadrangular building, with an open square in the centre, wherein was a well to insure a water supply in any event of blockade or siege, was reminiscent to her of country granges which she had seen on the continent, but these quaint corner rooms above stairs, each practically a citadel, with its loop-holes both for direct and vertical fire, seemed to be peculiarly of the new world, full of the story and the struggle of the frontier. Her own and her aunt’s rooms lay to the south, her father’s to the east. The other citadel corners and sides of the quadrangle were appropriated to the officers of the garrison, and, like separate houses, there was no means of communication.

The great strong timbers, capable of turning a musket-ball, the heavy low beams, all clear of cobwebs, for these military wights were great housekeepers, came first into view as she slowly ascended the rude stair; then she caught a glimpse of a star shining through a loop-hole in the wall, and she stood still for a moment in the cavernous place, with the candle in one hand and the other on the rough stair-rail, while she watched its white glister, and listened to the sullen drops falling from the eaves, and the continuous sobbing of the unreconciled wind; then she went on up, up, till she stood at the top and turned to glance about, as she always did, at the place which must have stories to tell if there were any idle enough to listen. The next moment the candle was set a-flicker by a gust of wind through a neighboring loop-hole. She held up one hand to shield it. The flame suddenly bowed again before the errant gust, flickered tremulously and flared up anew, failed, and all was darkness. Before crossing the slight distance to her aunt’s door Arabella stood waiting till her eyes should become more accustomed to the gloom. She knew that the loop-holes in the floor were close to the wall, and that so long as she kept her direction through the middle of the apartment there was no danger of a false step. But a certain direction is difficult to maintain in darkness, as she realized, and she eagerly attempted to discern the small squares of the light outside which should apprize her of the position of the upper row of loop-holes, just above the lower series. She would have called out to Norah to open the door of the lighted room, but that she dreaded her aunt’s outcries, and reproaches, and rebukes for the carelessness of allowing her candle to be blown out at peril of a sprained ankle or a broken limb.

Suddenly she heard a voice in the parade; it was near at hand and through the loop-hole at her left she could see that two figures were standing close to the wall below. She had no intention of listening. She would have moved, but for her terror of the pitfalls in the floor. Their words were few, but their voices, though low, carried with unusual distinctness in the dull damp air.

“Split me! but I’ve laughed myself sick,” Raymond was saying. “God-a-mercy, the commandant of a fort smirking in a lady’s parlor, while his granaries burn and subalterns fire cannon to keep the Indians from rushing the gates. Oh—ho! oh—ho! I hope I haven’t done my chest any serious damage, but I ache fit to kill.”

“Lieutenant Jerrold was pretty hot, to have to shoulder all the responsibility,” said another voice that she did not recognize. “What will the captain say, do you suppose, when you tell him?”