Mrs. Ray turned quickly and held forth her hand. Silently Miss Sanford passed the letter to her. It was an ordinary missive, in business envelope, addressed to Lieutenant Sanford Ray, Fort Minneconjou, and it had been opened. The torn flap revealed the fact that there were two or three separate inclosures. For a moment Mrs. Ray turned it in her slender fingers, thinking intently, then, suddenly recollecting, told the maid to give her thanks to the soldier if he were still waiting. She wished to ask had anything else been found, but that, if he cared to, was for Sandy to do when he came. Then she took the letter to her room, and stowed it in a pigeonhole of her desk against her boy's return—then sat her down to wait.
Meanwhile the object of so much thought and love and care had ridden many a mile, his brain in a whirl of conflicting emotions. There had come to him the previous night, in the interval between that brief interview with Blenke and the later meeting with his mother, a messenger with a note. It was the same messenger, Butts, the soldier groom, who had only a short time earlier met him with her note upon the parade. Ray, fleeing from a possible meeting with Priscilla, had left her and her soldier protégé together, and slipping out of the rear gate had gone walking up the bluffs. It was not quite time for taps and the sentries to begin challenging. He could have gone through the yard of any one of the adjacent quarters and so reach the front, the promenade walk and the wide parade, but he wished to be alone, under the starry skies. He needed to think. What could she have meant by saying, "How they tricked me—how I lost you?" He had blamed her bitterly, savagely, for her cold-blooded, heartless jilting of him, without ever a word of explanation. It was so cruel, so abominable a thing that, perhaps, even Inez Farrell could not, without some excuse or reason, be guilty of it. And now she was striving to tell him, to make him understand; now she was alienated from her husband and not, so Dwight's own references to Foster would go to prove, not because of this affair with Captain Foster. She said it was her right to be heard. Perhaps it was. If she had been tricked, deceived, wronged—such things had happened—the story was old as the Deluge and might be true, and if true, was it decent to treat her with studied contempt? If she had been tricked into throwing him over—if, if she had been true in saying she loved him, as fervently she swore that last sweet night under the cherry blossoms in Japan, was it manly to—to crush and scorn her now?
He was again, with downcast eyes, slowly pacing the bluff and in rear of the major's quarters when, far over toward the guard-house, the soft, prolonged notes of "Lights out" were lifted on the night, and he almost collided with a man coming quickly forth from the gate. The rear door had closed with a bang but the moment before, and Félicie's voice, in subdued tone, had been faintly audible. The man proved to be the same who had come to him so short a time before, and the mission was practically the same, "A note for the lieutenant."
Ray took it to the west gate and read it under the lamp.
I ask for only five minutes, at the old place, about the same hour to-morrow. I will never ask again, for I am to leave Minneconjou—and him—forever.
Startled, stunned, he read her words. Was it then so very serious as this would imply? Was it her doing, or her husband's, that she should leave? Was it possible that he, Sandy Ray, was even remotely a cause? He could not fathom it. He would not rudely refuse. That would be simply brutal. But why could she not see him here at home on the veranda? Why must the meeting be so far from the post—so close to the—clandestine? Mother had said——Then suddenly he bethought him that mother wished to speak with him, that he had promised her to be home about taps, and, even though he could not, dare not, talk with her to-night, he could and should go to her at once.
He started; then, hearing laughing voices and light footsteps along the walk ahead of him, hesitated. Some of those teasing, tormenting garrison girls, of course! He could not face them. Abruptly he turned again, passed round in rear of Dwight's, stowing the note in a little notebook as he sped and the book in the breast pocket of his khaki tunic. Some backstair flirtation was going on in the dusk of the summer night, not ten paces ahead, for there was sound of playful Hibernian pleading, a laughing, half-repelling, half-inviting "Ah, g'wan now!" followed by a slap. A trim young trooper leaped backward from a gateway to avoid another shock—and met it on Ray's stout shoulder. The collision startled one and staggered both. The Irish lad, all confusion, sprang for his officer's hat and restored it with, "Beg a thousand pardons, Lieutenant," and blessed his young superior's kindly, "No harm done, Kelly," as, whipping out his handkerchief, Ray sped along, dusting off the felt.
And that harm had been done he never knew till later.
He had managed to put mother off until the following day; had gone forth a second time, as has been told; had passed a second time the gate where earlier in the evening she had awaited him. All at the moment was apparently quiet. He had almost reached home when the sound of harsh voices out beyond the east gate caught his ear—more poor devils coming or being dragged home from the hog ranch. Suddenly there came the sound of muffled curses and blows. Sandy wondered why No. 2 did not call the corporal. He hastened onward and out beyond the gate and came upon the explanation: no need to call the corporal when two were already there, with several of the guard, striving hard to lug peaceably to the prison room a sextette of soldier revelers who resented being either lugged or persuaded. The guard couldn't bear to hurt their fellows: who could say but that conditions and parties might be reversed within the week? The row subsided with the sight of Lieutenant Ray, but not until it had prevented his hearing the call for the corporal that came from No. 4. He found the front door bolted when he got back to the house, and, remembering having bolted it, passed round to the rear steps and then—met his mother at the door.
She had even more to ask him then, yet once more he pleaded: "Wait until to-morrow night." So wait she did, patiently, prayerfully, trustfully, until the morrow's night; and then, not so patiently, but, oh, even more prayerfully, longer, very much longer.