"Certainly. I've told him so."
"By heaven, Buxton, is there no limit to your asininity? What fearful work will you do next?"
"I'll arrest you, sir, if you speak another disrespectful word!" thundered Buxton, recovering consciousness that as commanding officer he could defend himself against Blake's assault.
"Do it and be—— you know what I would say if a lady were not present! Do it, if you think you can stand having this thing ventilated by a court. Pah! I can't waste words on you. Who's gone for the doctor? Here, you men, let go of Mr. Hurley now. Help me, Mr. Hurley, please. Get your wife back to her room. Bring me some water, one of you." And with that he was bending over Hayne and unbuttoning the fatigue-uniform in which he was still dressed. Another moment, and the doctor had come in, and with him half the young officers of the garrison. Rayner was led away to his own quarters. Buxton, dazed and frightened now, ordered the guards back to their post, and stood pondering over the enormity of his blunder. No one spoke to him or paid the faintest attention other than to elbow him out of the way occasionally. The doctor never so much as noticed him. Blake had briefly recounted the catastrophe to those who first arrived, and as the story went from mouth to mouth it grew no better for Buxton. Once he turned short on Mr. Foster and in aggrieved and sullen tone remarked,—
"I thought you fellows in the Riflers said he had no relations."
"We weren't apt to be invited to meet them if he had; but I don't know that anybody was in position to know anything about it. What's that got to do with this affair, I'd like to hear?"
At last somebody took him home. Mrs. Waldron, meantime, had arrived and been admitted to Mrs. Hurley's room. The doctor refused to go to Captain Rayner's, even when a messenger came from Mrs. Rayner herself. He referred her to his assistant, Dr. Grimes. Hayne had regained consciousness, but was sorely shaken. He had been floored by a blow from the butt of a musket; but the report that he was shot proved happily untrue. His right hand still lay near the hilt of his light sword: there was little question that he had raised his weapon against a superior officer and would have used it with telling effect.
Few people slept that night along officers' row. Never had Warrener heard of such excitement. Buxton knew not what to do. He paced the floor in agony of mind, for he well understood that there was no shirking the responsibility. From beginning to end he was the cause of the whole catastrophe. He had gone so far as to order his corporal to fire, and he knew it could be proved against him. Thank God, the perplexed corporal had shot high, and the other men, barring the one who had saved Rayner from a furious lunge of the lieutenant's sword, had used their weapons as gingerly and reluctantly as possible. At the very least, he knew, an investigation and fearful scandal must come of it. Night though it was, he sent for the acting adjutant and several of his brother captains, and, setting refreshments before them, besought their advice. He was still commanding officer de jure, but he had lost all stomach for its functions. He would have been glad to send for Blake and beg his pardon for submitting to his insubordinate and abusive language, if that course could have stopped inquiry; but he well knew that the whole thing would be noised abroad in less than no time. At first he thought to give orders against the telegraph-operator's sending any messages concerning the matter; but that would have been only a temporary hinderance: he could not control the instruments and operators in town, only three miles away. He almost wished he had been knocked down, shot, or stabbed in the mêlée; but he had kept in the rear when the skirmish began, and Rayner and the corporal were the sufferers. They had been knocked "endwise" by Mr. Hurley's practised fists after Hayne was struck down by the corporal's musket. It was the universal sentiment among the officers of the ——th as they scattered to their homes that Buxton had "wound himself up this time, anyhow;" and no one had any sympathy for him,—not one. The very best light in which he could tell the story only showed the affair as a flagrant and inexcusable outrage.
Captain Rayner, too, was in fearful plight. He had simply obeyed orders; but all the old story of his persecution of Hayne would now be revived; all men would see in his participation in the affair only additional reason to adjudge him cruelly persistent in his hatred of the young officer, and, in view of the utter ruthlessness and wrong of this assault, would be more than ever confident of the falsity of his position in the original case. As he was slowly led up-stairs to his room and his tearful wife and silent sister-in-law bathed and cleansed his wound, he saw with frightful clearness how the crush of circumstances was now upon him and his good name. Great heaven! how those words of Hayne's five years before rang, throbbed, burned, beat like trip-hammers through his whirling brain! It seemed as though they followed him and his fortunes like a curse. He sat silent, stunned, awe-stricken at the force of the calamity that had befallen him. How could he ever induce an officer and a gentleman to believe that he was no instigator in this matter?—that it was all Buxton's doing, Buxton's low imagination that had conceived the possibility of such a crime on the part of Mr. Hayne, and Buxton's blundering, bull-headed abuse of authority that had capped the fatal climax? It was some time before his wife could get him to speak at all. She was hysterically bemoaning the fate that had brought them into contact with such people, and from time to time giving vent to the comforting assertion that never had there been a cloud on their domestic or regimental sky until that wretch had been assigned to the Riflers. She knew from the hurried and guarded explanations of Dr. Grimes and one or two young officers who helped Rayner home that the fracas had occurred at Mr. Hayne's,—that there had been a mistake for which her husband was not responsible, but that Captain Buxton was entirely to blame. But her husband's ashen face told her a story of something far deeper: she knew that now he was involved in fearful trouble, and, whatever may have been her innermost thoughts, it was the first and irresistible impulse to throw all the blame upon her scapegoat. Miss Travers, almost as pale and quite as silent as the captain, was busying herself in helping her sister; but she could with difficulty restrain her longing to bid her be silent. She, too, had endeavored to learn from her escort on their hurried homeward rush across the parade what the nature of the disturbance had been. She, too, had suggested Clancy, but the officer by her side set his teeth as he replied that he wished it had been Clancy. She had heard, too, the message brought by a cavalry trumpeter from Mr. Blake: he wanted Captain Ray to come to Mr. Hayne's as soon as he had seen Mrs. Ray safely home, and would he please ask Mrs. Stannard to come with him at the same time? Why should Mr. Blake want Mrs. Stannard at Mr. Hayne's? She saw Mr. Foster run up and speak a few words to Mrs. Waldron, and heard that lady reply, "Certainly. I will go with you now." What could it mean? At last, as she was returning to her sister's room after a moment's absence, she heard a question at which her heart stood still. It was Mrs. Rayner who asked,—
"But the creature was there, was she not?"