The amulet: A novel

by Charles Egbert Craddock

He realized this even more definitely afterward when he made his acknowledgments to Jerrold, as he felt bound to do.

“I was under the impression that Captain Mervyn had the conduct of the emergency,” he said, in much embarrassment. “You managed it with excellent discretion.”

“The men responded with so much good will and alacrity, sir,” replied Jerrold, waiving the commendation with an appropriate grace. “We needed hearts and hands rather than a head. They deserve all the credit, for they worked with superhuman energy. And I want to ask you, sir, now that the subject is broached, for some little indulgence for those who were burned in their exertions. No one is much hurt, but I thought some little extra, to show appreciation—”

“By all means—by all means,” said the commandant, glad to be quit of the subject.

Captain Howard perceived now that it certainly was not jealousy of Mervyn’s exploits which had kept his name from Raymond’s lips, and he returned unavailingly to his daughter’s strict questions as to the young ensign’s silence on the subject, and her look of pondering perturbation at his answer. He wondered, too, why Raymond should have maintained this silence on a theme calculated to be of most peculiar relish to him, considering the acrimonious disposition which Mervyn had shown in reporting so trifling an omission in the guard report, necessitating a reprimand, while Mervyn’s own lapse, without being his fault in any way, was of a semi-ludicrous savor, which was not in the least diminished by his own self-conscious efforts to ignore it. He sent a glance of covert speculation now and again toward Raymond in the days that ensued as the young man came and went in the routine duties of garrison life, but saw him no more in his own parlor, and several times Arabella openly asked what had become of Ensign Raymond.

Despite the fact that she had imperiously declared she would let nothing be considered settled, Mervyn had contrived to give the impression to the officers of the garrison that his suit had won acceptance with Miss Howard. Thus it came about that when these two walked on the ramparts together on a fair afternoon, or when lights began to glimmer from the parlor windows in the purple dusk, there was a realization in the mess-room that the welcome might be scant even for well-meaning intruders, so in those precincts the cards were cut for Loo, and the punch was brewed, and the evening spent much as before there was ever a lovely lady and a lute’s sweet vibrations to gladden the air at Fort Prince George.

Mrs. Annandale artfully fired the girl’s pride. Her lover with a mingled delicacy and fervor expended his whole heart in homage. With a dutiful throb of pleasure she marked the tender content in her father’s face, and these quiet days in the citadel of the old frontier fort ought to have been the happiest of her life—but yet—she wondered at Raymond’s silence! It was too signal a disaster in the estimation of a military man—that a garrison should fight for their lives and shelter while their commander, for whatever cause, was perdu—for the ensign to have forgotten to mention it. Was he so magnanimous? Her eyes dwelt on the fire wistfully. This was not a grace that Mervyn fostered. Why did Raymond come no more? Sometimes she looked out of the window on the parade to mark when he passed. Once in a flutter and a flurry, when she would not take time to think, she threw a fur wrap about her, drawn half over her head, and stole out with Norah, wrapped in a blanket shawl, and stood in a corner of the bastion beside the ramp that ascended to the barbette, and watched him as he put the troops through the manual exercise on the parade. He noticed neither of them. He was absorbed in his work—they might both have been the laundry-maids. Arabella was afraid of her aunt’s keen questions that night in Mrs. Annandale’s bedroom when Norah broke forth with her gossip of the garrison and her comments on the drill.

“Oh, faix, mem, an’ it would gladden the heart av yez ter see how nimble the men do sthep when the drum rowls out so grand! I wonder yez don’t come wid me an’ our young leddy to look at them, sure!”

“It will do you no good to look at the men, and for me to look at them will do them no good. And a sure way to make them step nimble is to set a mob of red-skins after them—push up that stool, girl. Art you going to set my silk stocking on the rough stone?”

“An’ shure it’s that hot,” declared the plump, good-natured Norah, trying its temperature with her hand, “it might bur-rn the wee, dilikit fut av yez, mem.”