From the Ranks Part 19

"I was going up to the avenue, mum," he explained, "but I seen you here."

Nina's face paled as she tore it open and read the curt lines:

"Come to me, here. Your help needed instantly."

She sprang from the carriage. "Tell mother I have gone over to see some Fort friends,--not to wait," she called to the coachman, well knowing he would understand that she meant the ladies with whom she had been so recently talking. Like a frightened deer she sped around the corner, hailed the driver of a cab, lounging with his fellows along the walk, ordered him to drive with all speed to Summit Avenue, and with beating heart decided on her plan. Her glorious eyes were flas.h.i.+ng: the native courage and fierce determination of her race were working in her woman's heart. She well knew that imminent danger threatened him. She had dared everything for love of his mere presence, his sweet caress. What would she not dare to save him, if save she could? He had not been true to her. She knew, and knew well, that, whether sought or not, Alice Renwick had been winning him from her, that he was wavering, that he had been cold and negligent; but with all her soul and strength she loved him, and believed him grand and brave and fine as he was beautiful. Now--now was her opportunity. He needed her. His commission, his honor, depended on her. He had intimated as much the night before,--had told her of the accusations and suspicions that attached to him,--but made no mention of the photograph. He had said that though nothing could drag from him a word that would compromise _her_, _she_ might be called upon to stand 'twixt him and ruin; and now perhaps the hour had come. She could free, exonerate, glorify him, and in doing so claim him for her own. Who, after this, could stand 'twixt her and him? He loved her, though he _had_ been cold; and she--? Had he bidden her bow her dusky head to earth and kiss the print of his heel, she would have obeyed could she but feel sure that her reward would be a simple touch of his hand, an a.s.surance that no other woman could find a moment's place in his love.

Verily, he had been doing desperate wooing in the long winter, for the very depths of her nature were all athrob with love for him. And now he could no longer plead that poverty withheld his offer of his hand. She would soon be mistress of her own little fortune, and, at her mother's death, of an independence. Go to him she would, and on wings of the wind, and go she did. The cab released her at the gate to her home, and went back with a double fare that set the driver to thinking. She sped through the house, and out the rear doors, much to the amaze of cook and others who were in consultation in the kitchen. She flew down a winding flight of stairs to the level below, and her fairy feet went tripping over the pavement of a plebeian street. A quick turn, and she was at a little second-rate stable, whose proprietor knew her and started from his chair.

"What's wrong to-day, Miss Nina?"

"I want the roan mare and light buggy again,--quick as you can. Your own price at the old terms, Mr. Graves,--silence."

He nodded, called to a subordinate, and in five minutes handed her into the frail vehicle. An impatient chirrup and flap of the reins, and the roan shot forth into the dusty road, leaving old Graves shaking his head at the door.

"I've known her ever since she was weaned," he muttered, "and she's a wild bird, if ever there was one, but she's never been the like o' this till last month."

And the roan mare was covered with foam and sweat when Nina Beaubien drove into the bustling fort, barely an hour after her receipt of Jerrold's telegram. A few officers were gathered in front of head-quarters, and there were curious looks from face to face as she was recognized. Mr. Rollins was on the walk, giving some instructions to a sergeant of his company, and never saw her until the buggy reined up close behind him and, turning suddenly, he met her face to face as she sprang lightly to the ground. The young fellow reddened to his eyes, and would have recoiled, but she was mistress of the situation. She well knew she had but to command and he would obey, or, at the most, if she could no longer command she had only to implore, and he would be powerless to withstand her entreaty.

"I am glad _you_ are here, Mr. Rollins. You can help me.--Sergeant, will you kindly hitch my horse at that post?--Now," she added, in low, hurried tone, "come with me to Mr. Jerrold's."

Rollins was too stupefied to answer. Silently he placed himself by her side, and together they pa.s.sed the group at the office. Miss Beaubien nodded with something of her old archness and coquetry to the cap-raising party, but never hesitated. Together they pa.s.sed along the narrow board walk, followed by curious eyes, and as they reached the angle and stepped beneath the shelter of the piazza in front of the long, low, green-blinded Bachelors' Row, there was sudden sensation in the group. Mr. Jerrold appeared at the door of his quarters; Rollins halted some fifty feet away, raised his cap, and left her; and, all alone, with the eyes of Fort Sibley upon her, Nina Beaubien stepped bravely forward to meet her lover.

They saw him greet her at the door. Some of them turned away, unwilling to look, and yet unwilling to go and not understand this new phase of the mystery. Rollins, looking neither to right nor left, repa.s.sed them and walked off with a set, savage look on his young face, and then, as one or two still gazed, fascinated by this strange and daring proceeding, others, too, turned back and, half ashamed of themselves for such a yielding to curiosity, glanced furtively over at Jerrold's door.

There they stood,--he, restrained by his arrest, unable to come forth; she, restrained more by his barring form than by any consideration of maidenly reserve, for, had he bidden, she would have gone within. She had fully made up her mind that wherever he was, even were it behind the sentinels and bars of the guard-house, she would demand that she be taken to his side. He had handed out a chair, but she would not sit.

They saw her looking up into his face as he talked, and noted the eager gesticulation, so characteristic of his Creole blood, that seemed to accompany his rapid words. They saw her bending towards him, looking eagerly up in his eyes, and occasionally casting indignant glances over towards the group at the office, as though she would annihilate with her wrath the persecutors of her hero. Then they saw her stretch forth both her hands with a quick impulsive movement, and grasp his one instant, looking so faithfully, steadfastly, loyally, into his clouded and anxious face. Then she turned, and with quick, eager steps came tripping towards them. They stood irresolute. Every man felt that it was somebody's duty to step forward, meet her, and be her escort though the party, but no one advanced. There was, if anything, a tendency to sidle towards the office door, as though to leave the sidewalk unimpeded. But she never sought to pa.s.s them by. With flas.h.i.+ng eyes and crimson cheeks, she bore straight upon them, and, with indignant emphasis upon every word, accosted them:

"Captain Wilton, Major Sloat, I wish to see Captain Chester at once. Is he in the office?"

"Certainly, Miss Beaubien. Shall I call him? or will you walk in?" And both men were at her side in a moment.

"Thanks. I will go right in,--if you will kindly show me to him."

Another moment, and Armitage and Chester, deep in the midst of their duties and surrounded by clerks and orderlies and a.s.sailed by half a dozen questions in one and the same instant, looked up astonished as Wilton stepped in and announced Miss Beaubien desiring to see Captain Chester on immediate business. There was no time for conference. There she stood in the door-way, and all tongues were hushed on the instant.

Chester rose and stepped forward with anxious courtesy. She did not choose to see the extended hand.

"It is you, alone, I wish to see, captain. Is it impossible here?"

"I fear it is, Miss Beaubien; but we can walk out in the open air. I feel that I know what it is you wish to say to me," he added, in a low tone, took his cap from the peg on which it hung, and led the way. Again she pa.s.sed through the curious, but respectful group, and Jerrold, watching furtively from his window, saw them come forth.

The captain turned to her as soon as they were out of earshot:

"I have no daughter of my own, my dear young lady, but if I had I could not more thoroughly feel for you than I do. How can I help you?"

The reply was unexpectedly spirited. He had thought to encourage and sustain her, be sympathetic and paternal, but, as he afterwards ruefully admitted, he "never did seem to get the hang of a woman's temperament."

Apparently sympathy was not the thing she needed.

"It is late in the day to ask such a question, Captain Chester. You have done great wrong and injustice. The question is now, will you undo it?"

He was too surprised to speak for a moment. When his tongue was unloosed he said,--

"I shall be glad to be convinced I was wrong."

"I know little of army justice or army laws, Captain Chester, but when a girl is compelled to take this step to rescue a friend there is something brutal about them,--or the men who enforce them. Mr. Jerrold tells me that he is arrested. I knew that last night, but not until this morning did he consent to let me know that he would be court-martialled unless he could prove where he was the night you were officer of the day two weeks ago, and last Sat.u.r.day night. He is too n.o.ble and good to defend himself when by doing so he might harm me. But I am here to free him from the cruel suspicion you have formed." She had quickened her step, and in her impulsiveness and agitation they were almost at the end of the walk. He hesitated, as though reluctant to go along under the piazza, but she was imperious, and he yielded. "No, come!" she said. "I mean that you shall hear the whole truth, and that at once. I do not expect you to understand or condone my conduct, but you must acquit him.

We are engaged; and--I love him. He has enemies here, as I see all too plainly, and they have prejudiced mother against him, and she has forbidden my seeing him. I came out to the fort without her knowledge one day, and it angered her. From that time she would not let me see him alone. She watched every movement, and came with me wherever I drove.

She gave orders that I should never have any of our horses to drive or ride alone,--I, whom father had indulged to the utmost and who had ridden and driven at will from my babyhood. She came out to the fort with me that evening for parade, and never even agreed to let me go out to see some neighbors until she learned he was to escort Miss Renwick.

She had ordered me to be ready to go with her to Chequamagon the next day, and I would not go until I had seen him. There had been a misunderstanding. I got the Suttons to drive me out while mother supposed me at the Laurents', and Mr. Jerrold promised to meet me east of the bridge and drive in town with us, and I was to send him back in Graves's buggy. He had been refused permission to leave the post, he said, and could not cross the bridge, where the sentries would be sure to recognize him, but, as it was our last chance of meeting, he risked the discovery of his absence, never dreaming of such a thing as his private rooms being inspected. He had a little skiff down in the willows that he had used before, and by leaving the party at midnight he could get home, change his dress, run down the bank and row down-stream to the Point, there leave his skiff and climb up to the road. He met us there at one o'clock, and the Suttons would never betray either of us, though they did not know we were engaged. We sat in their parlor a quarter of an hour after we got to town, and then 'twas time to go, and there was only a little ten minutes' walk down to the stable. I had seen him such a very short time, and I had so much to tell him." (Chester could have burst into rapturous applause had she been an actress. Her cheeks were aflame, her eyes full of fire and spirit, her bosom heaving, her little foot tapping the ground, as she stood there leaning on the colonel's fence and looking straight up in the perturbed veteran's face. She was magnificent, he said to himself; and, in her bravery, self-sacrifice, and indignation, she _was_.) "It was then after two, and I could just as well go with him,--somebody had to bring the buggy back,--and Graves himself hitched in his roan mare for me, and I drove out, picked up Mr.

Jerrold at the corner, and we came out here again through the darkness together. Even when we got to the Point I did not let him go at once. It was over an hour's drive. It was fully half-past three before we parted.

He sprang down the path to reach the river-side; and before he was fairly in his boat and pulling up against the stream, I heard, far over here somewhere, those two faint shots. That was the shooting he spoke of in his letter to me,--not to her; and what business Colonel Maynard had to read and exhibit to his officers a letter never intended for him I cannot understand. Mr. Jerrold says it was not what he wanted it to be at all, as he wrote hastily, so he wrote another, and sent that to me by Merrick that morning after his absence was discovered. It probably blew out of the window, as these other things did this morning. See for yourself, captain." And she pointed to the two or three bills and sc.r.a.ps that had evidently only recently fluttered in among the now neglected roses. "Then when he was aroused at reveille and you threatened him with punishment and held over his head the startling accusation that you knew of our meeting and our secret, he was naturally infinitely distressed, and could only write to warn me, and he managed to get in and say good-by to me at the station. As for me, I was back home by five o'clock, let myself noiselessly up to my room, and no one knew it but the Suttons and old Graves, neither of whom would betray me. I had no fear of the long dark road: I had ridden and driven as a child all over these bluffs and prairies before there was any town worth mentioning, and in days when my father and I found only friends--not enemies--here at Sibley."

"Miss Beaubien, let me protest against your accusation. It is not for me to reprove your grave imprudence or recklessness; nor have I the right to disapprove your choice of Mr. Jerrold. Let me say at once that you have none but friends here; and if it ever should be known to what lengths you went to save him, it will only make him more envied and you more genuinely admired. I question your wisdom, but, upon my soul, I admire your bravery and spirit. You have cleared him of a terrible charge."

A most disdainful and impatient shrug of her shapely shoulders was Miss Beaubien's only answer to that allusion. The possibility of Mr.

Jerrold's being suspected of another entanglement was something she would not tolerate:

"I know nothing of other people's affairs. I simply speak of my own. Let us end this as quickly as possible, captain. Now about Sat.u.r.day night.

Mother had consented to our coming back for the german,--she enjoys seeing me lead, it seems,--and she decided to pay a short visit to relations at St. Croix, staying there Sat.u.r.day night and over Sunday.

This would give us a chance to meet again, as he could spend the evening in St. Croix and return by late train, and I wrote and asked him. He came; we had a long talk in the summer-house in the garden, for mother never dreamed of his being there, and unluckily he just missed the night train and did not get back until inspection. It was impossible for him to have been at Sablon; and he can furnish other proof, but would do nothing until he had seen me."

"Miss Beaubien, you have cleared him. I only wish that you could clear--every one."

"I am in no wise concerned in that other matter to which you have alluded; neither is Mr. Jerrold. May I say to him at once that this ends his persecution?"

The captain smiled: "You certainly deserve to be the bearer of good tidings. I wish he may appreciate it."

Another moment, and she had left him and sped back to Jerrold's door-way. He was there to meet her, and Chester looked with grim and uncertain emotion at the radiance in her face. He had to get back to the office and to pa.s.s them: so, as civilly as he could, considering the weight of wrath and contempt he felt for the man, he stopped and spoke:

"Your fair advocate has been all-powerful, Mr. Jerrold. I congratulate you; and your arrest is at an end. Captain Armitage will require no duty of you until we are aboard; but we've only half an hour. The train is coming sharp at noon."

"Train! What train! Where are you going?" she asked, a wild anxiety in her eyes, a sudden pallor on her face.

"We are ordered post-haste to Colorado, Nina, to rescue what is left of Thornton's men. But for you I should have been left behind."

"But for me!--left behind!" she cried. "Oh, Howard, Howard! have I only--only won you to send you into danger? Oh, my darling! Oh, G.o.d!

Don't--don't go! They will kill you! It will kill me! Oh, what have I done? what have I done?"

"Nina, hus.h.!.+ My honor is with the regiment. I _must_ go, child. We'll be back in a few weeks. Indeed, I fear 'twill all be over before we get there. _Nina_, don't look so! Don't act so! Think where you are!"

But she had borne too much, and the blow came all too soon,--too heavy.

She was wellnigh senseless when the Beaubien carriage came whirling into the fort and old Maman rushed forth in voluble and rabid charge upon her daughter. All too late! it was useless now. Her darling's heart was weaned away, and her love lavished on that tall, objectionable young soldier so soon to go forth to battle. Reproaches, tears, wrath, were all in order, but were abandoned at sight of poor Nina's agony of grief.

Noon came, and the train, and with buoyant tread the gallant command marched down the winding road and filed aboard the cars, and Howard Jerrold, shame-stricken, humbled at the contemplation of his own unworthiness, slowly unclasped her arms from about his neck, laid one long kiss upon her white and quivering lips, took one brief look in the great, dark, haunting, despairing eyes, and carried her wail of anguish ringing in his ears as he sprang aboard and was whirled away.

But there were women who deemed themselves worse off than Nina Beaubien,--the wives and daughters and sweethearts whom she met that morn in town; for when they got back to Sibley the regiment was miles away. For them there was not even a kiss from the lips of those they loved. Time and train waited for no woman. There were comrades battling for life in the Colorado Rockies, and aid could not come too soon.

XVII.