"Does he know Captain Barclay, do you think?" she asked, after a reflective pause.
"I'm sure I don't know. Probably not," was the answer. "They never served in the same part of the army. Why do you ask?"
"Oh, I was wishing—I couldn't help thinking—how much Mr. Winn needed some good friend, too."
"Winn and Lawrence are very different men," said Blythe, gravely. "Lawrence has made friends, while poor Winn has only enemies, I fear, and, really, none worse than himself."
Mrs. Blythe sighed as she turned away. It was much as her husband said. The Winns had come to the regiment after a round of receptions, dinners, and dances in their honor all the way from Washington to Worth, and had "started with a splurge," as the chroniclers declared. Laura's gowns and airs and graces won her no end of prominence, but very few friends. Winn's "high and mighty" ways, so they were termed by all the garrison, in which at that time only two or three West Pointers could be found, had alienated all the subs, most of the seniors, and many of the women. Their extravagance during the first year of service, the explanations and excuses tendered by Laura in the next, and Harry's increasing moodiness and distraction, served only to widen the breach. Men and women both, who began by envying, turned to openly decrying. Cutting things were said to Laura, whose mendacities provoked them. Sneering or at least suggestive things were often said in presence of Winn, if not exactly to him; for there was one quality about the swell the garrison had to respect,—his cheerful and entire readiness to fight on very small provocation, and those were the days when the tenets of the "code" were not totally forgotten, and there still remained in the army a sentiment in favor of the doctrine of personal responsibility for disparaging words. There would be fewer courts-martial to-day were there more of it left. But when women heard the stories about the big bill at the sutler's and others that came by mail, and made little icy comments about some people being able to afford much more than they could, Laura laughed off the allusions to their superior style of living by stories of an indulgent papa, until papa's death left her without further resource from that quarter. Then she set afloat a fabrication about a doting aunt of Harry's who had no children of her own,—an amiable old widow who was to leave him all her money. He did have an aunt of that description, but she didn't have the money, and there were men who were malicious enough to refer in Winn's presence to their wish that they had wealthy fathers-in-law or doting dowager aunts, thereby giving some other fellow a chance to say, "And so does Fuller, no doubt."
Indeed, so practically friendless were the Winns that among nine out of ten families along officers' row there was a feeling of lively curiosity to note the effect of this supposably crushing blow on the unhappy pair, and a consequent sentiment, only partially veiled in many cases, of keen disappointment when the news flew around the garrison that Mr. Winn had announced his readiness to meet the demand in full.
"Why, it can't be true," said many a woman. "I'll believe it when I see the money," said many a man. "Do you suppose—he could have accepted it from—Captain Barclay?" asked, in strictest confidence, Mrs. De Lancy of Laura's erstwhile intimate, Mrs. Faulkner.
"Not Harry Winn, probably," answered Mrs. Faulkner, in confidence equally inviolable, "but——" and the pause that followed was suggestive. Follansbee and Bellows bolted down to the sutler's with the surprising news, wondering if Fuller could have been ass enough to advance the money. There was a time when he would have done so, perhaps, for he was one of the first to be enthralled by young Mrs. Winn's grace and beauty, and lavished presents upon her—and upon Winn, of course—for a month, until Winn put a stop to the presents and Mrs. Fuller came post-haste back from San Antonio and put a stop to other manifestations. But Fuller had long since become estranged from the Winns,—the presentation of his bill at inopportune times having later widened the apparent breach. His jaw fell and his mouth opened wide when he heard the news, for Fuller had begun to believe that he would never get his money, and resented it that Uncle Sam should be luckier.
"Send up another 'bill rendered' by Ikey to Mr. Winn this afternoon," he bade his clerk, as the investigators departed to follow other clues. Fuller had gone down into his pockets, unbeknown to the post, and had actually pressed on Lawrence a loan of three hundred dollars, and bade him come for more when that was gone, but not a cent would he put up for Harry Winn,—not he; "the damned supercilious snob," was what Fuller now called him, not so much because he thought him a snob or supercilious or even deserving of damnation, as because he had allowed himself to be robbed of three thousand dollars' worth of goods that might otherwise have been purchased of him, Fuller, for double or treble the money. No, plainly, Fuller was not the angel that had come to the rescue of Winn, nor could Follansbee or Bellows or the rest of the fellows find out who had. The mystery of Gilgal was outdone. Even Frazier and Brooks did not know, and when some one, possibly Mrs. Frazier, suggested to the colonel that as the commanding officer he really ought to know, the colonel did send for his new quartermaster and say to him, "Mr. Trott, as you are to receipt to Mr. Winn for the money value of his shortage, it would be well to be very circumspect. He probably cannot have that much in currency here. How does he propose to pay it?"
"I don't know, sir," said the man of business, promptly. "He says he will be ready to cover the entire amount on or before the 20th of May. I didn't like to ask him where it was to come from."