Marion's Faith Part 2

"Is Mr.--Captain Truscott rich?"

"If my individual experiences are indicative, I should say he was boundless in wealth and prodigality."

"Why?"

"He lent me a hundred dollars when I was East on leave, and I know he never expects to see it again."

"I declare, Mr. Blake, you are as bad as Mr. Ray!"

"They are scoundrels and substractors that say so of me. Mrs. Turner, you--you make me blush. Ray, come hither and bear me consolation. Friend of my youth, Merrill calls me Jenkins; Mrs. Turner calls me bad as you; and you--called me with a pair of kings when mine was a bobtail. The world is hollow, Ray."

"_Mr._ Blake! Will you stop your everlasting nonsense and tell us about Truscott? When were you there?"

"Mrs. Turner, you aggrieve me, but I was there in April."

"And _are_ they so delightfully situated?"

"Yea, verily,--blissfully."

"Was Miss Sanford there?"

"She came, alas! the very eve I hied me hence. I saw her but a moment; 'twas----"

"You saw her? Tell us what she's like. Is she pretty? is she sweet-mannered as they say?"

"Sweet? She's sweet, aye, _dix-huit_; at least she was a year agone.

Pretty? Ah me!" And Blake sighed profoundly, and straddled the rail a picture of dejection. His auditors groaned in chorus, the customary recognition of one of Blake's puns, but gathered about him in manifest interest. With all his rattling nonsense he was a regimental pet.

"But where is she from? What connection of the New Jersey Sanford?"

"The Autocrat of the Preakness Stable, mean you? Marry, I know not. She is a Sanford and has a Sanford's wealth, but 'twas not for me. She adores a horse and wors.h.i.+ps a horseman. This I gathered from our too brief converse. I strove to win her ear with poesie, but she bade me cease. Her soul is not attuned to melody,--she'd none of mine. She preferred my Lady Truscott and b.u.t.tered m.u.f.fins."

"What did Truscott say about Crook's fight with Crazy Horse?" asked Ray, who looked blank enough at Blake's jargon, and wanted facts.

"I don't think Jack liked the looks of things," said Blake, relapsing into sudden gravity. "He told me that he thought it more than likely we'd all be in the field again in less than a month."

"We?" said Merrill. "It isn't a matter that affects Truscott one way or another. He has his four years' detail at the Point. What difference does it make to him whether we're ordered up to reinforce Crook?"

"Just this difference, my bully rook: that Truscott would catch us before we got to Laramie--unless we went by rail."

"Why, Blake, you're addled!" replied the captain, in that uncomplimentary directness which sometimes manifests itself among old comrades of the frontier, even in the presence of the gentler s.e.x. "Why, Mr. Blake, you don't suppose he is going to give up his young wife, his lovely home, his pleasant duties, to join for a mere Indian campaign, do you?" asked more than one present, and a general murmur of dissent went round. "What do _you_ say, major?" said one voice, in direct appeal to the senior officer of the group.

"It depends on what you consider a 'mere Indian campaign,'" was the cool response.

"But as to Truscott's going, what do you think, Ray?"

"I don't think anything about it. I _know_."

CHAPTER III.

HEROINES.

"What is so rare as a day in June?" sings the poet, and where can a day in June be more beautiful than at this Highland Gate of the peerless Hudson? It is June of the Centennial year, and all the land is ablaze with patriotic fervor. From North, from South, from East and West, the products of a nation's ingenuity or a nation's toil have been garnered in one vast exhibition at the Quaker City; and thither flock the thousands of our people. It is June of a presidential nomination, and the eyes of statesmen and politicians are fixed on Cincinnati. It is the celebration of the first century of a nation's life that engrosses the thoughts of millions of hearts, and between that great jubilee and that quadrennial tempest-in-a-teapot, the nomination, who but a few lonely wives and children have time to think of those three columns far, far out in the broad Northwest,--those three columns of regulars, cavalry and infantry, rough-garbed, bronzed and bearded, steadily closing in towards the wild and beautiful region along the northern water-shed of the Big Horn Range, where ten thousand hostile Indians are uneasily watching their coming? On the Atlantic seaboard comrades in full-dress uniform, with polished arms, are standing guard over government treasures on exhibition, and thoughtless thousands wonder at the ease and luxury of the soldier's life. Out on the frontier, in buckskin and flannel, slouch hats and leggings, and bristling prairie-belts, the little army is concentrating upon an outnumbering foe, whose signal-fires light the way by night, whose trail is red with blood by day. From the northeast, up the Yellowstone, Terry of Fort Fisher fame, the genial, the warm-hearted general, whose thoughts are ever with his officers and men, leads his few hundred footmen, while Custer, whose division has flashed through battery after battery, charge after charge, in the great Rebellion, now rides at the head of a single regiment. From the northwest, down the Yellowstone, with but a handful of tried soldiery, comes Gibbon; he who led a corps at Gettysburg and Appomattox.

From the south, feeling his way along the eastern base of the Big Horn, with less than two thousand troopers and footmen, marches the "Gray Fox," the general under whom our friends of the --th so long and so successfully battled with the Apaches of Arizona. He has met his match this time. Cheyenne, Ogallalla, Brule, Uncapapa, Minneconjou, Sans Arc, and Blackfoot, all swarm over the broad and breezy uplands in his front, or lurk in the deep shade of the lovely valleys. Twice have they sprung upon him and checked his advance. Once only has he been forced to hesitate, but now, as the longest days of the year approach and the glistening dome of Snow Peak is yet warm with the flush of the setting sun, when "morn, in russet mantle clad," tinges the eastern slopes with glowing light; now, at last, the long-dreaded leaders of the border warfare are being hemmed in between the encircling advance. Now may we look for stirring work along the bluffs and boulders of the Big Horn.

And June, Centennial June, has come to West Point. Examinations are going briskly on, four buoyant cla.s.ses are all excitement with the joyous prospects of the season: the seniors look forward to the speedy coming of the longed-for diploma and the prized commission, for relief from the restraint of academic life and for the broader field of the army; the second, the juniors, to reaching the dignity of "first-cla.s.s camp," with the highest offices and honors to be achieved so long as they shall wear the gray; the third, ah! they are the furloughmen, so soon to be restored for two brief months to home and kindred after the two years of rigid discipline and ceaseless duty; the fourth, to step at once and for all from the meekness of "plebedom" and become the envied "old cadet." June brings bliss for all,--for all but those who fail.

And June brings joy to sisters and sweethearts by the dozen, to fond mammas, to proud paternals, who throng the hostelries of the Point and the neighborhood, and swarm in lively interest all over the historic spot, listening with uncomprehending but tireless patience to examinations on fortification or grand tactics, mechanics or calculus; gasping with excitement over das.h.i.+ng charges on the "cavalry plain,"

shuddering over the reckless daring in the riding-hall, stopping their ears against the thunder of the great guns at the batteries, and beating time with head and foot to the spirited quicksteps of the band.

Dress-parade, the closing ceremony of each day, concentrates the entire a.s.semblage along the shaded walk that borders on the west the beautiful green carpet of the "infantry plain," and, at last, as the four gray and white companies go dancing off in double-time through the grim sally-port beneath the barracks, and the carriages and stages whirl away the watching throngs, and the plumed cadet officers scurry off to supper, and, group after group, the spectators saunter homewards, the band disappears below the crest of the plain towards "b.u.mtown," and little by little the light turns to violet on the wooded heights across the swirling Hudson, and silence settles down upon the scene.

Gazing out from under the foliage of the great elms, watching these very changes, two ladies are seated upon the piazza of the officers' quarters opposite the southern half of the plain. One is a young matron, whose eyes once seen are not soon forgotten,--so soft, so deep, so brown, so truthful are they under the long curling lashes, under the low-arched, heavy brows. Beautiful eyes were they when, in all their girlish fearlessness and innocence, they first beamed upon our old friends of the --th in the days of exile in Arizona. Lovelier still are they now in that consummation of a woman's happiness,--a wors.h.i.+pped wifehood. It was early in the previous winter when Captain Truscott brought his fair bride to make her home among the scenes so dear to both, and her life has been one song of unutterable gladness. If earth contained a thing to wish for in those six months, Grace Truscott could not name it. Her pretty army house is the gem of the military community, the envy of many a wife. Her husband is a man whom all men honor and hold in deep esteem.

In strength, in dignity, in soldierly ability, and in his devotion to her he is all her heart could ask. If she loved him dearly when they were married, her love has developed into almost an idolatry,--"Jack" is her world. Not that she talks or writes very much of that matter, however; for quite a wise little head is that which is perched on Mrs.

Truscott's white shoulders. Once in a while in some letter to an old and trusted friend she finds it more than she can do to utterly repress her overwhelming sense of bliss, and then she lets slip some little confession of which Jack is the subject. She never dreamed a man could be so lovely, so delicate, so thoughtful, so considerate, so _everything_ that was simply perfect, is the way she has once or twice found herself constrained to clinch the matter in default of adjectives sufficiently descriptive. "Every day he develops some new, lovely, and unsuspected trait," she once confided to her friend Mrs. Tanner (with whom she has corresponded quite regularly since her marriage, and to whom we are indebted for some of these interesting details), and as Jack Truscott was confessedly a man of many admirable qualities before his matrimonial alliance, it may be conjectured that ere the waning of her honeymoon Mrs. Jack's enumeration table was beginning to prove inadequate. And bliss has been, and is, becoming to Grace. She has lost none of the girlish delicacy of expression which was so marked a characteristic of her youthful beauty a year before, still she has rounded somewhat, and both mentally and physically has developed. The slender white hand that rests upon the volume of Carlyle in her lap looks less fragile than it did that day at old Camp Sandy when, in Tanner's library searching for the children's books among the shelves, it showed itself to Truscott's eyes without a certain ring. Mrs. Jack does not fancy Carlyle. He is too crabbed by far, she thinks, and she wonders how and where people get such distorted views of life, but the captain has been reading him a great deal during the past two months, and anything that interests him is food for her. Happy she is beyond all question, happy as woman ever becomes in this world where happiness is never perfect. If it were, where would be the use of heaven hereafter?

And as she sits here gazing out upon the soft lights and shadows settling upon the distant hills, her sweet, mobile face is fit subject for the brush of some inspired painter who seeks a model for an ideal picture,--"I Ask No More."

It is twilight, too, the hour of all others when the faintest sorrow is apt to a.s.sert itself upon reposeful features,--the hour when it takes a very happy woman to look happy; yet Grace Truscott's eyes tell of only one story,--love, peace, tranquillity; and at last the silence is broken by the remark, which is naturally the result of a woman's undisturbed contemplation of such a face,--

"I declare, Grace, it is enough to make one want to marry just to look at you!"

Mrs. Truscott returns to earth with sudden bound, dropping her blissful day-dream with a merry laugh and a blush that refuses to down at her bidding. She holds forth her hand appealingly, leaning forward in the great wicker rocking-chair in which, till now, she has been lazily inclining.

"How absurd, to be sure! I wish you would seize me and shake me, Marion, whenever you see me going off into dreamland like that. It is simply detestable. Yet, I can't help it. Oh!" with sudden impulse, "wait till you marry some one the least like Jack, and then see for yourself."

"But I never shall marry any one the least like Jack," replies Miss Sanford. "To begin with, you would not be apt to admit any such man could exist. Now, don't bristle all over, Grace; you are not in the least absurd,--to ordinary people that is; you really behave very creditably for so young a wife, but you are quite warranted in betraying your admiration to me. I like it. It was simply mean of me to interrupt your revery as I did, but the exclamation was involuntary. I had been watching your face for several minutes, and thinking how few, how very few women are blessed as you are."

Mrs. Truscott's eyes filled with tears, and her hand sought and clasped that of her friend. A most unusual caress for her.

"Sometimes I fear I'm growing very selfish in it all, Marion, and I blame myself more than I can tell you when these spells come over me. We had planned to make your visit lovely,--Jack and I,--and here, the moment we are alone together, I go mooning off and leaving you to be entertained by the sight of my imbecility." Mrs. Truscott gave herself a vigorous shake. "There! Now tell me about your walk. Was Mr. Ferris pleasant?"

"Pleasant? Very! They all are for that matter, and I hate to think how much I've lost in being away all May. Father insisted though, and so those six weeks had to be spent at ---- with them. It is mockery to call it home." And a deep trouble seemed to settle on her beautiful face.

Mrs. Truscott leaned nearer to her friend, an eager tremor in her voice.

"Listen, Marion dear," she spoke; "I cannot allude to the subject except when you do; but, much as your father loves you, he must see now that it is next to impossible for you to live at home, and after her conduct this spring,--first demanding that you should come instead of spending May with us as was arranged, and then making it so wretched for you, and finally almost driving you from the house,--it is useless to think of going back this summer. _Do_ spend it with us. We both ask it, Jack and I. It was such a disappointment to lose you in May, and now that we've got you again,--though you said 'twas only for a week,--we talked it all over last night, Maid Marion,"--and here Mrs. Truscott has recourse to one of the pet names of their school-days,--"we talked it all over, Jack and I, and that was one of the things he went to the city for to-day. He had determined to ask your father to let you spend the summer here. I want it so much, so does Jack, for he may have to go to Kentucky to buy horses for the cavalry stables. Marion, _do_ stay if he will let you."

And both Mrs. Truscott's white hands now seized and clasped the unresisting, pa.s.sive members that lay, still gloved, in her companion's lap.

For a moment there was no move. Two big tears were starting from Miss Sanford's eyes; her sweet, sensitive lips were twitching nervously. She glanced hurriedly up and down the broad road in front of the quarters,--they were un.o.bserved and alone,--and, leaning back in her chair, she gently withdrew one hand and held her handkerchief to her face. Mrs. Truscott quickly rose and bent over her, pressed her lips one instant upon the luxuriant hair that fell thickly over the girl's forehead; then, twining her arm around her head, nestled her own soft cheek where she had pressed her lips. And there she hovered, saying nothing more, waiting until the little rain-cloud had pa.s.sed away.

Presently there came the sound of quick, springy footsteps along the asphalt from the direction of the barracks. Mrs. Truscott raised her head.

"It is Sergeant Wolf, Marion. I think he is coming here."

Miss Sanford started up, wiped her eyes and half turned her back, as a young soldier in the undress uniform of a cavalry sergeant entered the gateway, and, halting at the foot of the steps, respectfully raised hand to his cap, and stood there as though addressing an officer.