The amulet: A novel

by Charles Egbert Craddock

Captain Howard did not even consider Bolt for the enterprise; he was a military machine, incapable of devising an expedient in emergency or acting on his own initiative. Besides, his duties as fort-adjutant were particularly pressing just now in view of the preparations for the early evacuation of the post and they could not be delegated. Therefore there remained only Raymond,—Captain Howard was in despair as he thought of Raymond and his interpretation of his orders to “persuade” the missionary to return. Impulsive, headstrong, eager, quick, indefatigable, emotional, imaginative,—what room was there for prudence in this fiery temperament! Still, he had shown a degree of coolness at the encounter of the boat with the Tamotlee Indians, and had given the soldiers an excellent example of imperturbability under the stress of exciting circumstances. But this was his element,—the contact of actual contention,—the shock of battle so to speak. How would he restrain himself when outwitted,—how would he gather few and feeble resources and make the best of them,—how might he see fit to tamper with his instructions and obey or not as he liked,—or if a right judgment found those orders based on fallacious premises, unknown to the commandant, how should he have discretion to modify them and act on his own initiative, or would he, like Bolt, persist in following the letter if it destroyed the spirit of his instructions? Oh, it was hard to be reduced to a choice of a madcap ensign, in this matter of paramount importance? He could not, he would not, send Raymond—his impetuosity was enough to bring the whole Cherokee country about their ears.

He shook his head, scowling unwittingly, as he chanced to catch sight of Raymond while crossing the parade, and still uncertain and morosely cogitating, he took his way to the commandant’s office and disappeared from vision.

On the space beyond the parade Raymond and Arabella were greatly exercised in marking out a course for her archery practice. The promise of a fair day had been joyously fulfilled. The breeze was fresh, but bland and straight from the south; despite the leafless forests the sun shone with a vernal brilliance; a flock of wild geese going northward passed high over the fort, the cry, unfamiliar to Arabella, floating down to her ears, and she stood as long as she could see them, her head upturned, her hat fallen on the ground, her eyes following their flight as the wedge-shaped battalion deployed through the densely blue sky: there seemed even a swifter movement in the current of the river, and through the great gate one could from the parade catch sight of a white glister on the face of the waters where the ripples reflected the sun.

So soft was the air that the young lady wore no cloak. Her close-fitting gown of hunter’s green cloth, opening over a vest and petticoat of sage-tinted paduasoy, brocaded in darker shades of green, was not out of keeping with the woodland suggestions of the bow which she held in her hand and the quiver already slung over her shoulder, its gorgeous polychromatic tints rendering her an object of mark in the brilliant sunshine from far across the parade. But she paused in her preparations to lament the lack of the uniform of the archery club which she had left in the oak press of her room at home, and Raymond listened as she described it, with her picture, thus arrayed, as vivid in his mind as the actual sight of her standing there, her golden hair glimmering in the sun, her white hands waving to and fro as she illustrated the features of the uniform and recounted the contentions of taste, the cabals and heart-burnings, the changes and counter-changes which the club had shared before at length the triumph of costume was devised, and made and worn before the acclaiming plaudits of half the county.

“Faint green,” she said, “the very shade for a Diana,—”

“I like a darker green,—Diana wears a hunter’s green,” he interrupted.

“Why do you think that?” she asked, nonplussed, her satisfaction a trifle wilted.

“I know it,” he said, a little consciously; and as she still stared at him, he went on: “hunter’s green is the shade of the forest verdure,—it is a tint selected not only for beauty but to deceive the keen vision of game. It stands to reason that Diana should wear a hunter’s green.”

She meditated on this view for a few moments in silence, and the eyes of Lieutenant Jerrold, as he loitered in the door of the mess-hall, noted their eager absorption as they stood in the grassy space between the commandant’s quarters and the block-house in the bastion, in which was situated the mess-hall. There were a few trees here, still leafless, and a number of the evergreen shrubs of the region, either spared for shade where they originally grew, or transplanted by some earlier commandant, voicing as clearly as words a yearning homesickness for a colonial or an English garden, and now attaining a considerable height and a redundant spread of boughs. An English rose, now but leafless brambles, clambered over the doorway of the commandant’s quarters, and along a hedgerow of rhododendron, which reached the proportions of a wind-break, protruded some imported bulbous plants of a simple sort, whether crocus or hyacinth, one could hardly judge from so slight a tip piercing the mould. The bare parade was quiet now; earlier in the morning there had been roll-call and guard-mounting; and Mervyn, released from duty as officer of the day, could also see from where he sat in the mess-hall the interested attitudes of the two as they paused in their preparations for target practice to enjoy the pleasures of conversation.

“The benighted ninny!” Mrs. Annandale, commenting on Mervyn, said to herself in pettish despair, watching the tête-à-tête from the window of the commandant’s parlor,—she had promised Arabella to witness her proficiency from this coigne of vantage, for the outer air was too brisk without the off-set of active exercise, “Why doesn’t George Mervyn join them?” For she had observed Mervyn as he had quitted the orderly room, and marked his start of surprise and relaxed pace as his eyes fell upon the two,—then his dogged affectation of indifference as he briskly crossed to the block-house in the bastion.