The amulet: A novel

by Charles Egbert Craddock

“Oh, thank you, Mr. Raymond, for the word!” she cried. “Papa, I am going! All for Keowee, follow me!”

As she whisked through the gates the sentinel presented arms ostensibly to the party of officers, but so promptly that it had the savor of a special compliment to her as she passed in the lead. The frozen ground was so hard beneath her flying feet, the wind struck so chill on her cheek, the sparkle in her eyes was so bright, the timbre of her clear, reedy, joyous tones was so youthful, so resonant, that she seemed indeed like some liberated thing. Mervyn’s monotonous discourse of himself, his views, his hopes, his experiences, recurred with a sarcastic suggestion to Raymond’s mind, albeit he, himself, had entered into these subjects with a fraternal warmth and interest in the days of their devoted friendship, and he reflected that an affectionate feeling for an egotist blunts the sharp point of the obtrusive pronoun.

He was suffering a blended poignancy of pain and pleasure in this unexpected meeting. He had already discovered the depth of his feeling for the commandant’s daughter before the expedition to Tamotlee. On his return he had heard the gossip as to the engagement, and realized that his love was hopeless. It had taken a strong hold upon him, and he needed all his courage to sustain the disappointment, the disillusionment, for he had dreamed that he might have found favor, the despair. He told himself sternly that he had been a fool from the beginning. She looked higher, naturally, than an ensign of foot, who had scarcely any resources but his commission,—the meagre pay of a subaltern. The very idea, reasonably considered, was a death-blow to any hope of speedy marriage. As the ensign was of good birth his lowly estate seemed only to illustrate his unworthiness of his distinguished lineage. All the remote ancestral splendors that the Heralds’ College could show were of scant worldly utility to an ensign of foot. Nevertheless, he relished the fact that Mervyn had paid him the compliment to be bitterly jealous of him, and he saw in Mrs. Annandale’s disingenuous little face that she feared him and his attractions, whatever she might esteem these endowments, beyond measure.

He had told himself that he ought to rejoice in the young lady’s good fortune, that she should be so worthily placed; that if Mervyn’s wealth and station could serve her interest this would demonstrate a purpose in his creation, hitherto doubtful. He did not deny himself the illogical grudging of this fair creature to Mervyn with an infinite rancor. He had never seemed so unworthy of her as now, failing even in fair words, just dues, which most men contrive to pay. Raymond had held his peace, however, when Mervyn had been bitterly disparaged among the little cluster of brother officers in the mess-hall, and kept away from the commandant’s parlor, denying himself even the pleasure of a formal call. It was not well that he should see her, for his own sake—the mere recollection of the contour of her face, the pensive fall of her eyelash, the clear lustre of her eyes, broke his heart, and shook his nerve, and half-maddened his brain. He did not think that she might miss him, might care for his coming. She loved Mervyn, or thought she did, and he, himself, loved her so well as to hope that she might never wear out that illusion. Now, however, that he was with her again, through no volition of his own, mere chance, his heart plunged, his cheek flushed, his poor, denied, famished love renewed its tremors, its vague, vain hopes, its tumultuous delight in her mere presence.

As they crossed the bridge, and passed the counterscarp, and took their way toward the glacis, he hastened to offer his arm to support, after the fashion of the day, the young creature, bounding on so lightly ahead of them, for no woman of quality was esteemed stalwart enough to dispense with man’s upholding strength. Reminded thus of etiquette Miss Howard accepted the proffer, and leaning graciously upon him, she somewhat slackened her pace as they crossed the glacis and turned down the slope toward the river.

The animation of the expedition seemed suddenly monopolized by Captain Howard and his colleagues—the quarter-master and the fort-adjutant, discussing loudly ways and means, the respective values of varieties of forage, the possibility of caches of corn among the Indians, their obvious relish of the commandant’s destitution when he most needed feed for his pack-trains, and his march in the evacuation of the fort. He had been told more than once how they wished they had now the vast stores burned by the British commander, Colonel Grant, in his furious forays through the Cherokee country two years previous—they would bestow it on the Capteny without money and without price.

Scarcely a word passed between the young people. Arabella, to her amazement, felt her hand so tremble on Raymond’s arm that she was constrained to furnish an explanation by a shiver and an exclamation on the chill of the day. She could not understand her own agitation. She felt the silence to be awkward, conscious, yet she dared not speak, lest her voice might falter. He, the dullard, had no divination of her state of mind. It never occurred to him to doubt the truth of the reported engagement. The smug satisfaction which the face of the captain-lieutenant now wore, despite the blight which his military laurels had suffered, was a sufficient confirmation of the truth of the rumor he had set afloat. It never occurred to Raymond that undue persuasion had been exerted upon her—he never dreamed that Mrs. Annandale’s meagre little personality stood for a strategist of a subtlety never before seen in the Cherokee country, that she was capable of making the young lady believe herself in love with George Mervyn, and her father accept the fact on his sister’s statement. Raymond could but mark the flushed, conscious look now on Arabella’s face, the sudden timidity in her downcast eyes, the tremor of her daintily-gloved fingers on his arm. A sudden gust blew a perfumed tress of her waving golden hair over the brown fur and the dark green cloth of her calash, whence it escaped, and thence across his cheek for a moment. Its glitter seemed to blind him. He caught his breath at its touch. But the next moment they had reached the rocky declivity to the river-bank, and he was all assiduity in finding a practicable path amongst the intricacies of ledges and boulders, over which she could have bounded with the sure-footed lightness of a gazelle.

The long stretches of the still, gray river, flecked with white foam, wherever an unseen rock lay submerged beneath its full floods, reflected a sky of like dreary tone. One could see movement above, as the fleecy gray folds, that seemed to overlay a denser medium of darker shade, shifted and overlapped, thickened and receded noiselessly, a ceaseless vibrating current, not unrelated to the joyless, mechanical rippling of the waters. The leafless trees on the banks looked down at their stark reflections in the stream that intensified the riparian glooms—here and there a grim gray promontory of solid rock broke the monotony with an incident not less grave. Mists hung in the air above the conical roofs of the Indian town on the opposite bank, not easily distinguished from the smoke issuing from the smoke-holes, for chimneys they had none. No sound came across the water; the town might have been asleep, deserted, dead. As the party reached the bank a gust came driving through the open avenue of the river, damp with the propinquity of the body of water, shrill with the compression of the air between the wooded banks, and so strong that it almost swept Arabella from her feet, and she clung to Raymond for support. Her father renewed his protests against her venturing forth upon the water—it might rain, if indeed it were not too cold for this,—and urged her to return to the fort, and await a fair day for an excursion on the river.

In reply she pertinently reminded him that this was no time to deny her whims, when she had come out all the way from England to visit him. Indeed, she did not wait for a denial. She stepped instantly into the boat as soon as the soldiers who were to row had taken their oars and brought it alongside, and as she seated herself in the stern, Captain Howard could only console his fears for her safety by wrapping her snugly in a great fur mantle and listening to her feats of prowess as she was good enough to detail them.

Apparently she had suddenly found all her facility in words, mute as she had been during the walk, and it seemed to Raymond, as he wistfully eyed her from the opposite seat, that she had said nothing then because she had nothing to say to him.