“How did Ensign Raymond happen to shed tears?” demanded Arabella, stiffly.
“Shure, Miss Arabella, the sojer bhoys does say that whin the ould jontleman preacher-man wouldn’t lave the Injuns,—an’ it’s a quare taste in folks he have got, to be sure,—an’ the captain, with the soft heart av him, cudn’t abide to lave him there, this young ensign,—though if he didn’t hould his head so high, an’ look loike he thought he was a lord or a juke, he’d be a most enticin’-faced young man,—he was ordered to pershuade the missionary to come. An’ he just shwooped down on the riverend man of God and bodily kidnapped him. I am acquainted with the men that he ordhered to carry the ould jontleman to the boat.”
“I think you are acquainted with the whole garrison,” snapped Mrs. Annandale.
“Shure, there’s but foive other white women in the place, an’ they are mostly old and married, an’ though I’m not called of a good favor at home I’ll pass muster on the frontier,” and Norah simpered, and actually tossed her head.
Mrs. Annandale would have preferred dealing with this insubordinate levity, and vanity, and disrespect on the spot to returning to the subject of Raymond, but the question had been Arabella’s, and the maid did not wait for its repetition.
“An’ when they had got the cr-razy ould loon in the boat—savin’ his honor’s riverence, but to want to stay wid thim Injuns!—he shpake up pitiful an’ said he was ould, an’ feeble, an’ poor—or they wouldn’t have dared to thrate him so! An’ Ensign Raymond axed his forgiveness, an’ whin he giv it, Ensign Raymond drapped down on one knee, an’ laid his head on the ould man’s ar-rm, an’ bust into tears! Think o’ that, mem! The men all call him now—Ensign Babby!”
Norah lifted a fresh, smiling, plump face and Mrs. Annandale sent up a keen, high cackle of derision. Then she stole a covert glance at her niece. Arabella, too, was smiling as she gazed into the fire—a soft radiance had transfigured her face. Her beautiful eyes were large, gentle, wistful, and—since emotion was the fashion of the hour—they were full of limpid tears, so pure, so clear, that they did not obstruct the smile that shone through them.
Mrs. Annandale was not sentimental herself, but she was familiar with sentiment in others, and its proclivities for the destruction of peace. Aided by the fortuitous circumstances of the man’s absence and Mervyn’s monopoly of Arabella’s society, she had been as thoughtful, as far-sighted, as cautious as if she had custody of the treasure of a kingdom, but she determined that she would be more on her guard hereafter, and never let the mention of the man’s name intrude into the conversation. She fell into a rage over her disrobing on slight provocation, and hounded and vilified Norah to her pallet with such rancor that the girl, who had been in high spirits, and felt that she had contributed much this evening to the entertainment of her employer, followed the lachrymose tendencies of the mode, and softly sobbed herself to sleep.
CHAPTER XII
The next day only it was that, George Mervyn being on duty as officer of the day, Arabella felt a dreary sort of freedom in being alone. A realization that this lassitude, yet sense of relief, was no good augury for her future oppressed her. She said to herself that doubtless when she should be married to him she would soon have less of his society. She knew few marriages in which the devotion was so constant as to grow wearisome; she thought it was because of the intensity of his affection that she felt it a drag. She declared with a sigh that she liked him—she liked him well. She did not realize how much her pride had predisposed her to entertain his protestations, her aunt’s artful goadings, her own ambitions, and her inherited disposition to persist, to press forward against resistance, to conquer.