Mamma, attended by Félicie, dined later, in her accustomed state. Mamma's appetite was very delicate and had to be stimulated, he said with unconscious truth, and this morning, this particular morning, he had had to wait for his breakfast. There was some kind of a squabble between Félicie and the folks in the kitchen. He couldn't understand it. They didn't like her having beaux around late at night—swore they'd seen a fellow prowling about there two or three times, and only just missed nabbing him at the foot of the back stairs last night, and Félicie was white with rage. She said Butts, the groom, was a cocaine (though he never kept any, and Félicie did) and she called the cook coshon, and scolded both for having disturbed daddy. Daddy got as far as the back stairs with his revolver, they said, before the nurse could get him back, and they swore it wasn't their doing, but hers—her scream that woke him, and even the sentry heard it out on No. 4 and yelled for the corporal, and they nearly caught somebody that hid in the woodshed, and "wasn't it funny, I never heard a thing!" and then Jimmy stopped short, for Priscilla had stepped to Aunt Marion's side at the little desk, and Aunt Marion was very pale. Priscilla had thrown him one warning glance, as though to say "Hush." But Aunt Marion asked a question.
"What time did this happen, Jimmy?"
"Why, after twelve, the nurse told the doctor. But, wasn't it funny that I didn't hear a thing of it?"
"Hear what, Jimmy?" said a voice, and Sandy, an hour late for breakfast, stood at the open door.
"Go fetch some water, quick!" said Priscilla, and Jim went like a shot, for Sandy Ray stood just one moment, pallid and uncomprehending, then, with a cry, sprang to his mother's side, for her eyes had closed, her head was drooping on Priscilla's arm. "Don't touch her, Sandy! Let me——It's—it'll be over in a minute! She has had one or two little turns like this!" And then Jim came running with a brimming glass. Mrs. Ray sipped slowly, lifted her head, put forth a feeble, wavering hand toward Sandy and faintly smiled. "How—foolish!" she muttered. "You shall have your coffee in a moment, Sandy," but Priscilla, with determined face, stood her ground and retained her hold. "Don't let her rise yet," said she warningly, her eyes on his face, "and—don't ask questions of anybody. Wait!"
For reasons of his own, Dr. Wallen, after hearing from the attendant of the stifled scream downstairs at 12:25, gave instructions to speak of it to nobody but the post surgeon when he came. He did not see, he did not ask to see, Madame. He did not wish to see Félicie, but that ubiquitous young person was on the landing and the verge of tears. Madame's rest also had been cruelly disturbed by this disturbance the most disreputable made by these miserables, the domestiques of Monsieur le Commandant. Madame not until after dawn had been able to repose herself, and as for Félicie, "me who you speak," nothing but the pathetic condition of Madame could persuade her to remain another day in a such establishment, wherein she, the experienced, the most-recommended, the companion of high nobility, the all-devoted, had been subject to insolence the most frightful——at which point the rear door to the landing opened, and in came cook, all bristling for combat, and the wordy battle would have reopened then and there but for Wallen's stern, "Silence, both of you! Pull each other's hair to your heart's content in the cellar, but not one word here." Then hied him homeward.
When the senior surgeon came over later, the patient was sleeping, and, after hearing that Wallen had been there, he left without interrogating the nurse. All seemed going well, so Waring had nothing of especial consequence to tell the colonel when dropping in at the office later.
Even the officer of the day, in response to the question, "Anything special to report, sir?" failed to make the faintest mention of the excitement reported by No. 4 as occurring soon after twelve. But it was no fault of the officer of the day. He had other and, presumably, far more important matters to mention first, and by the time he had told that two sergeants, three corporals and a dozen men had been run in by the patrols, many of them battered, most of them drunk, and all of them out of quarters, out of the post and in the thick of a row over at Skid's; that one of the guard had been slashed with a knife in the hands of a half-breed; that the patrol had been pelted with bottles, glasses and bar-room bric-a-brac; that Lieutenant Stowe had been felled by a missile that flattened the bridge of his nose, and that the prison room was filled to the limit, the colonel would hear no more. He ordered his horse and a mounted orderly, strode to the guard-house to personally look over the prisoners, then set forth to town in search of the sheriff.
So the old officer of the day and the old guard were relieved and went about their business, and while the colonel was closeted with civilian officials in town a new story started the rounds at Minneconjou—a story that only slowly found its way to the officers' club or quarters, for, if the commanding officer didn't care to hear it, Captain Rollis, the old officer of the day, cared not to refer to it, but there was one set of quarters besides that of Major Dwight's in which some portion of the story, at least, had been anticipated.
Unable to sleep, filled with anxiety about her firstborn, Marion Ray after midnight had left her room and stolen over to his, hoping vainly that he might have made his way thither. But the bed was undisturbed, the room was empty. Then she thought perhaps he might have fallen asleep in an easy-chair in the parlor; but the parlor, too, was empty, the lights turned low. The front door was closed for the night and bolted, so she went to the kitchen and found the back door ajar. Somewhere out on sentry post there was for a moment a murmur of voices, then silence fell again, except for distant sounds at the ford—sounds to which they were becoming accustomed, though still unreconciled.