"Colonel Darrah, then," was the suggestion.
"Dicky Darrah!" laughed Mrs. Crook, in merry disdain. "Dicky Darrah never dares oppose Evvy—let alone his wife. Kate Darrah says it just serves Hal Willett right. It's no fault of hers that he's daft about Evvy, who's simply bent on giving him a lesson he richly deserves. When the Archers come she'll drop it—and him."
But the Archers came sooner than any one about Prescott deemed likely at all. Somebody said, and more than one somebody thought, that Mrs. Archer had had more than a hint as to what was going on. But never did Mrs. Archer look or admit it. The mail riders had resumed their trips. The paymaster had made his visit to McDowell and had safely traversed the Mazatzal and distributed his shekels at Almy. Almost every day there had been comings and goings, and though no letters bearing Willett's superscription went to Almy except by regular mail, even these, it seems, the pressure of his duties made brief and unlike what Lilian had looked for, so that the radiance had gone from her sweet face almost as quickly as it came. Even the girl who bravely insists that the beloved one is beyond doubt, and above suspicion, and all that is perfect, as Lilian strove to insist—even she will feel in her heart of hearts that there has been neglect, and neglect crushes.
Archer saw and said nothing but "Get ready as quick as we can." They were looked for Friday noon. They were ushered into the general's hospitable quarters late Thursday evening, relayed on from the Agua Fria, after a good noonday rest in camp, and even in bidding them welcome, welcome over again, Mrs. Crook pointed to the brightly lighted assembly room down the winding roadway. "They're having a holiday dance to-night," said she to Lilian. "We'll toddle down after tea and take them all by surprise."
For three days Willett had hardly been seen at the office, where indeed there was little for him to do, except perhaps read the letters that had begun to come again from various quarters. He had merely slept at home; he had simply lived at the Darrahs. He was hardly seen by any associates except dancing attendance upon this tall, imperious beauty, who, for her part, seemed now to accept his devotions as a matter of course, and to be regardless of public opinion. Begun in pique, or vanity, or devilment, whatever it may have been at the start, her indifference at first, her coquetry, her wiles, her defiance of his powers had spurred, fascinated and finally maddened him. Then, when she would have drawn back, his apparent, his acted or his actual desperation terrified her, and, all too late, her own battered heart cried out for relief. In spite of herself she found her resolution gone, her indifference rebuked, her strength wasted, sapped. She was yielding to him when she meant to scorn. She was clinging to him when she meant to spurn. And now the last night, the last of their—flirtation had come, and as she fluttered away on his arm to take their place in the dance, the cynosure of all eyes, Evelyn Darrah knew that she was facing her fate, that before the midnight hour she must answer. He would so have it. Recklessly enough she had begun. What meant such affairs to her but a laugh? Yet, only the night before, as they stood murmuring in the shade at her father's doorway, and he was begging for some little word, touch, token—something to bid him hope in the hell of his despair, imploring her to see his engagement as he saw it—a something entered into in his enfeebled condition because he saw, everybody saw, that fair young girl's self-betrayal, and he had mistaken gratitude, pity, tenderness for love, until he, Harold Willett, had met her, Evelyn Darrah, and at last learned what it was to love, passionately, overwhelmingly—to love, to worship, to need, to crave, and then on a sudden she had felt herself seized in his clasp, and before she could, if she would, tear herself adrift, his lips, burning with eagerness, had sought and found hers—upraised. Then she had broken from his embrace, but not till then. This morning she had pleaded headache and kept to her room. This afternoon she had had to meet him, and could not repel, reproach, rebuke as she had at last meant to do. Others were ever about them then. There must be no scene, and he was quite capable of making one. And now this night he had come for her, yes, and for her answer. He was ready, he said, to resign from the staff at once, return to his regiment, break with the Archers, explaining that it was all—all a mistake, and then with her promise to be his wife, what spur would there not be to his ambition? He—but it all made her feverish—frantic! There was but one refuge—to dance, dance until her whirling brain and throbbing heart were exhausted in the wild exhilaration, to dance incessantly, with man after man who sought her, though few had opportunity owing to his persistence. And she had been dancing incessantly, as we danced in those days—galop, deux temps, redowa, waltz, the long, undulating, luxurious, sensuous sweep of the "glide," and men and women stood and watched them, time and again, when Willett claimed her—and he hardly had look or word for others—so wondrous was that harmony of motion, that grace and beauty of feature and of form. Then at last came exhaustion.
There were some little clumps of cedars on the slope just south of the assembly hall, as it stood there on the low ground midway between the head-quarters houses on the ridge to the south, and the even less commodious cottages of the puny garrison. There was a boardwalk of creaking pine, leading across the shallow ravine, for it sometimes rained up here in the mountains, though it never seemed to in the deep, arid valleys to the east. Then there was a gravel path stretching away toward the garrison houses north and north-east, and one, still narrower and crookeder, winding up among the pines and cedars and disappearing over the top of the knoll, where the broad veranda of the general's mansion overlooked the entire scene. Sometimes when the evenings were warm and the dancers flushed, and sometimes even when there was no such excuse, young couples were wont to saunter out in the starlight for air and sentiment and "spooning." Already Willett knew the labyrinth, and welcomed the excuse to lead her forth, his arm almost supporting her. It was about eleven. The elders were absorbing mild refreshments at the moment. The musicians were glad of a rest, a sandwich and a cup of coffee, and a puff at a pipe before again resuming their melodious, if monotonous, labor. The windows of the assembly room were so near the ground that it was easy for these who did not attend the dances to supervise from without, and it often happened that a fringe of respectfully admiring spectators would surround the building until the late roll-call summoned the soldier circle away.
And yet this Thursday night there were two or three little parties peering in at the southward windows, some of whom came down from the general's quarters very late. To Mrs. Crook's laughing suggestion that they should "toddle down after tea" Mrs. Archer had entered gentle protest. It was too late. They were not dressed. She feared Lilian was too tired. What mother would not oppose her precious daughter's making her appearance at a dance in travelling garb, after a day of driving? To her mother's protest Lilian had at first made no rejoinder. The flush of the first few minutes of welcomed arrival soon left her winsome face, and the resultant pallor emphasized her mother's edict—that she was too tired. But it was not long before they noted, all of them—father, mother and hostess—that her thoughts were only there at the dance, that her ears were attentive only to the strains of music that, once in a while, came wafting upward from the hall, and when a little later, refreshed by tea and a bountiful supper, they again returned to the parlor and the sound of the dance, Mrs. Crook caught the longing in Lilian's eyes.
"Oh, come," she said, "let's just run down a few minutes and peep in; Lilian wants to see, and I'll send word in, sidewise, that will bring somebody out with a jump."
They seized their wraps and started, Archer gallantly tendering his arm to the commander's wife, but she would none of it. "Nonsense! I've got to pilot you! That walk is steep and crooked and pitch dark when you get among the cedars. I want to chat with Mrs. Archer," and the old soldier thanked her in his heart. More than ever before he wished to have that arm about his own little girl this night. Was it possible she too felt the premonition that had come to him? Had her mother, after all, told her of the little hints they had received? Something had come. He could swear it. Something to make her strangely silent, but eager, fluttering, nervous—something that prompted her as they neared the building, and the little hand clinging to her father's arm shook with strange excitement, to bend forward close to their friend and hostess, and just as the latter was about to hail some young officer on the steps, Lilian interposed. "Oh—please," was all she said, but her fingers had caught the fluttering fold of the mantle, and Mrs. Crook turned at once. "You'd rather not?" she asked, with quick, sympathetic understanding. "I won't then. Plenty of time. Let's watch the dance first."
And so saying she had marshalled them close to the southward windows, Lilian and her father at the near-most, she and Mrs. Archer going on to the next.