But the colonel said more than that. He had found him far better read than any other officer of his age he had ever met; and one and all they expressed the hope that they might see him frequently. No wonder it was of momentous importance to him. It was the opening to a new life. It meant that here at least he had met soldiers and gentlemen and their fair and gracious wives who had welcomed him to their homes, and, though they must have known that a pall of suspicion and crime had overshadowed his past, they believed either that he was innocent of the grievous charge or that his years of exile and suffering had amply atoned. It was a happy evening indeed to him; but there was gloom at Captain Rayner's.
The captain himself had gone out soon after tattoo. He found that the parlor was filled with young visitors of both sexes, and he was in no mood for merriment. Miss Travers was being welcomed to the post in genuine army style, and was evidently enjoying it. Mrs. Rayner was flitting nervously in and out of the parlor with a cloud upon her brow, and for once in her life compelled to preserve temporary silence upon the subject uppermost in her thoughts. She had been forbidden to speak of it to her husband; yet she knew he had gone out again with every probability of needing some one to talk to about the matter. She could not well broach the topic in the parlor, because she was not at all sure how Captain and Mrs. Gregg of the cavalry would take it; and they were still there. She was a loyal wife; her husband's quarrel was hers, and more too; and she was a woman of intuition even keener than that which we so readily accord the sex. She knew, and knew well, that a hideous doubt had been preying for a long time in her husband's heart of hearts, and she knew still better that it would crush him to believe it was even suspected by any one else. Right or wrong, the one thing for her to do, she doubted not, was to maintain the original guilt against all comers, and to lose no opportunity of feeding the flame that consumed Mr. Hayne's record and reputation. He was guilty,—he must be guilty; and though she was a Christian according to her view of the case,—a pillar of the Church in matters of public charity and picturesque conformity to all the rubric called for in the services, and much that it did not,—she was unrelenting in her condemnation of Mr. Hayne. To those who pointed out that he had made every atonement man could make, she responded with the severity of conscious virtue that there could be no atonement without repentance, and no repentance without humility. Mr. Hayne's whole attitude was that of stubborn pride and resentment; his atonement was that enforced by the unanimous verdict of his comrades; and even if it were so that he had more than made amends for his crime, the rules that held good for ordinary sinners were not applicable to an officer of the army. He must be a man above suspicion, incapable of wrong or fraud, and once stained he was forever ineligible as a gentleman. It was a subject on which she waxed declamatory rather too often, and the youngsters of her own regiment wearied of it. As Mr. Foster once expressed it in speaking of this very case, "Mrs. Rayner can talk more charity and show less than any woman I know." So long as her talk was aimed against any lurking tendency of their own to look upon Hayne as a possible martyr, it fell at times on unappreciative ears, and she was quick to see it and to choose her hearers; but here was a new phase,—one that might rouse the latent esprit de corps of the Riflers,—and she was bent on striking while the iron was hot. If anything would provoke unanimity of action and sentiment in the regiment, this public recognition by the cavalry, in their very presence, of the man they cut as a criminal, was the thing of all others to do it; and she meant to head the revolt.
Possibly Gregg and his modest helpmeet discovered that there was something she desired to "spring" upon the meeting. The others present were all of the infantry; and when Captain Rayner simply glanced in, spoke hurried good-evenings, and went as hurriedly out again, Gregg was sure of it, and marched his wife away. Then came Mrs. Rayner's opportunity:
"If it were not Captain Rayner's house, I could not have been even civil to Captain Gregg. You heard what he said at the club this morning, I suppose?"
In one form or another, indeed, almost everybody had heard. The officers present maintained an embarrassed silence. Miss Travers looked reproachfully at her flushed sister, but to no purpose. At last one of the ladies remarked,—
"Well, of course I heard of it, but—I've heard so many different versions. It seems to have grown somewhat since morning."
"It sounds just like him, however," said Mrs. Rayner, "and I made inquiry before speaking of it. He said he meant to invite Mr. Hayne to his house to-morrow evening, and if the infantry didn't like it they could stay away."
"Well, now, Mrs. Rayner," protested Mr. Foster, "of course none of us heard what he said exactly, but it is my experience that no conversation was ever repeated without being exaggerated, and I've known old Gregg for ever so long, and never heard him say a sharp thing yet. Why, he's the mildest-mannered fellow in the whole ——th Cavalry. He would never get into such a snarl as that would bring about him in five minutes."
"Well, he said he would do just as the colonel did, anyway,—we have that straight from cavalry authority,—and we all know what the colonel has done. He has chosen to honor Mr. Hayne in the presence of the officers who denounce him, and practically defies the opinion of the Riflers."
"But, Mrs. Rayner, I did not understand Gregg's remarks to be what you say, exactly. Blake told me that when asked by somebody whether he was going to call on Mr. Hayne, Gregg simply replied he didn't know,—he would ask the colonel."