“She will not let it be spoken of as if it were absolutely settled. She says she does not know him well enough. She has every opportunity to make his acquaintance. He is at her feet all the day long.”
Only when his daughter herself spoke to him was Captain Howard’s satisfaction dashed. He was a blunt, straightforward man, and he did not comprehend subtleties. He only felt them.
“Did Mr. Raymond tell you about the fire?” she asked, apropos of nothing.
When he replied that he had learned of the incident only after he had returned to the fort, she looked at him searchingly, silently, her hazel eyes grave and pondering as she sat beside him on the settle, her hand in his. Then she edged closer and began to pull and plait the bullion fringes of his nearest epaulet, the clumsy decoration of those days, while the white lids and long dark lashes drooped half over her pensive eyes, and a slight flush rose in her cheek.
“Did he really tell you nothing of Mr. Mervyn’s dispositions during the fire?”
“He did not mention Mervyn’s name,” Captain Howard answered, and he was thinking this silence significant—it intimated a sort of professional jealousy on Raymond’s part, which was certainly an absurd sentiment to be entertained by an ensign toward the efficiency of a captain-lieutenant—for the management of the fire and the interdependent details had been admirable in every way. It gave Captain Howard special pleasure to commend this management, for he thought that surely if she cared for Mervyn such commendation would please her. Certainly, as he doubtless would leave the army soon, it mattered little now, whether or not he were a capable officer, but the commandant had enough feeling for his profession as the art of war to greatly value efficiency in the abstract, and he had a martinet’s stern conviction that whatever a man undertakes to do should be a manly devoir, strictly rendered.
“Mervyn’s management of the fire and the demonstration of the Indians was most excellent,” he said. “It was an exceedingly difficult and nettling incident. I really should not have been surprised if a band of Cherokees had forced their way into the parade while practically the whole force was busy fighting the fire, and even if the Indians had been actuated by mere curiosity in coming in, serious consequences might have ensued, the place being at their mercy. He showed excellent conduct—excellent.”
She stared at him with wide eyes, then her face fell unaccountably.
“And Mr. Raymond said nothing,” she faltered.
He did not understand it at the time, and afterward he pondered on the matter in futile irritation. When the formal reports had been presented and Mervyn had stated that in the clamors of the storm he had heard naught of the uproar in the fort, and the officer of the day had met the emergency as best he could, Captain Howard, deeply mortified and greatly disillusioned, cared less for the facts than that they had been so long withheld. It was the business of the officers on duty to deal with the difficulties as they were presented. But he asked Mervyn why he had not mentioned the true state of the case in the presence of Jerrold and Innis, when the matter was being canvassed, since they must have perceived the misunderstanding under which the commandant was permitted to labor, and would draw most unflattering conclusions. “You give those fellows a hank over you,” he said, curtly.