Читать книгу From the Ranks - Charles King - Страница 4

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The night before had been unusually dark. A thick veil of clouds overspread the heavens and hid the stars. Moon there was none, for the faint silver crescent that gleamed for a moment through the swift-sailing wisps of vapor had dropped beneath the horizon soon after tattoo, and the mournful strains of "taps," borne on the rising wind, seemed to signal "extinguish lights" to the entire firmament as well as to Fort Sibley. There was a dance of some kind at the quarters of one of the staff-officers living far up the row on the southern terrace. Chester heard the laughter and chat as the young officers and their convoy of matrons and maids came tripping homeward after midnight. He was a crusty old bachelor, to use his own description, and rarely ventured into these scenes of social gayety, and, besides, he was officer of the day, and it was a theory he was fond of expounding to juniors that when on guard no soldier should permit himself to be drawn from the scene of his duties. With his books and his pipe Chester whiled away the lonely hours of the early night, and wondered if the wind would blow up a rain or disperse the clouds entirely. Towards one o'clock a light, bounding footstep approached his door, and the portal flew open as a trim-built young fellow with laughing eyes and an air of exuberant health and spirits came briskly in. It was Rollins, the junior second lieutenant of the regiment, and Chester's own and only pet—so said the envious others. He was barely a year out of leading-strings at the Point, and as full of hope and pluck and mischief as a colt. Moreover, he was frank and teachable, said Chester, and didn't come to him with the idea that he had nothing to learn and less to do. The boy won upon his gruff captain from the very start, and, to the incredulous delight of the whole regiment, within six months the old cynic had taken him into his heart and home, and Mr. Rollins occupied a pleasant room under Chester's roof-tree, and was the sole accredited sharer of the captain's mess. To a youngster just entering service, whose ambition it was to stick to business and make a record for zeal and efficiency, these were manifest advantages. There were men in the regiment to whom such close communion with a watchful senior would have been most embarrassing, and Mr. Rollins's predecessor as second lieutenant of Chester's company was one of these. Mr. Jerrold was a happy man when promotion took him from under the wing of "Crusty Jake" and landed him in Company B. More than that, it came just at a time when, after four years of loneliness and isolation at an up-river stockade, his new company and his old one, together with four others from the regiment, were ordered to join head-quarters and the band at the most delightful station in the Northwest. Here Mr. Rollins had reported for duty during the previous autumn, and here they were with troops of other arms of the service, enjoying the close proximity of all the good things of civilization.

Chester looked up with a quizzical smile as his "plebe" came in:

"Well, sir, how many dances had you with 'Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt'? Not many, I fancy, with Mr. Jerrold monopolizing everything, as usual. By gad! some good fellow could make a colossal fortune in buying that young man at my valuation and selling him at his own."

"Oh, come, now, captain," laughed Rollins, "Jerrold's no such slouch as you make him out. He's lazy, and he likes to spoon, and he puts up with a good deal of petting from the girls—who wouldn't, if he could get it?—but he is jolly and big-hearted, and don't put on any airs—with us, at least—and the mess like him first-rate. 'Tain't his fault that he's handsome and a regular lady-killer. You must admit that he had a pretty tough four years of it up there at that cussed old Indian graveyard, and it's only natural he should enjoy getting here, where there are theatres and concerts and operas and dances and dinners—"

"Yes, dances and dinners and daughters—all delightful, I know, but no excuse for a man's neglecting his manifest duty, as he is doing and has been ever since we got here. Any other time the colonel would have straightened him out; but no use trying it now, when both women in his household are as big fools about the man as anybody in town—bigger, unless I'm a born idiot." And Chester rose excitedly.

"I suppose he had Miss Renwick pretty much to himself to-night?" he presently demanded, looking angrily and searchingly at his junior, as though half expecting him to dodge the question.

"Oh, yes. Why not? It's pretty evident she would rather dance and be with him than with any one else: so what can a fellow do? Of course we ask her to dance, and all that, and I think he wants us to; but I cannot help feeling rather a bore to her, even if she is only eighteen, and there are plenty of pleasant girls in the garrison who don't get any too much attention, now we're so near a big city, and I like to be with them."

"Yes, and it's the right thing for you to do, youngster. That's one trait I despise in Jerrold. When we were up there at the stockade two winters ago, and Captain Gray's little girl was there, he hung around her from morning till night, and the poor little thing fairly beamed and blossomed with delight. Look at her now, man! He don't go near her. He hasn't had the decency to take her a walk, a drive, or anything, since we got here. He began, from the moment we came, with that gang in town. He was simply devoted to Miss Beaubien until Alice Renwick came; then he dropped her like a hot brick. By the Eternal, Rollins, he hasn't gotten off with that old love yet, you mark my words. There's Indian blood in her veins, and a look in her eye that makes me wriggle, sometimes. I watched her last night at parade when she drove out here with that copper-faced old squaw, her mother. For all her French and Italian education and her years in New York and Paris, that girl's got a wild streak in her somewhere. She sat there watching him as the officers marched to the front, and then her, as he went up and joined Miss Renwick; and there was a gleam of her white teeth and a flash in her black eyes that made me think of the leap of a knife from the sheath. Not but what 'twould serve him right if she did play him some devil's trick. It's his own doing. Were any people out from town?" he suddenly asked.

"Yes, half a dozen or so," answered Mr. Rollins, who was pulling off his boots and inserting his feet into easy slippers, while old "Crusty" tramped excitedly up and down the floor. "Most of them stayed out here, I think. Only one team went back across the bridge."

"Whose was that?"

"The Suttons', I believe. Young Cub Sutton was out with his sister and another girl."

"There's another damned fool!" growled Chester. "That boy has ten thousand a year of his own, a beautiful home that will be his, a doting mother and sister, and everything wealth can buy, and yet, by gad! he's unhappy because he can't be a poor devil of a lieutenant, with nothing but drills, debts, and rifle-practice to enliven him. That's what brings him out here all the time. He'd swap places with you in a minute. Isn't he very thick with Jerrold?"

"Oh, yes, rather. Jerrold entertains him a good deal."

"Which is returned with compound interest, I'll bet you. Mr. Jerrold simply makes a convenience of him. He won't make love to his sister, because the poor, rich, unsophisticated girl is as ugly as she is ubiquitous. His majesty is fastidious, you see, and seeks only the caress of beauty, and while he lives there at the Suttons' when he goes to town, and dines and sleeps and smokes and wines there, and uses their box at the opera-house, and is courted and flattered by the old lady because dear Cubby worships the ground he walks on and poor Fanny Sutton thinks him adorable, he turns his back on the girl at every dance because she can't dance, and leaves her to you fellows who have a conscience and some idea of decency. He gives all his devotions to Nina Beaubien, who dances like a coryphée, and drops her when Alice Renwick comes with her glowing Spanish beauty. Oh, damn it, I'm an old fool to get worked up over it as I do, but you young fellows don't see what I see. You haven't seen what I've seen; and pray God you never may! That's where the shoe pinches, Rollins. It is what he reminds me of—not so much what he is, I suppose—that I get rabid about. He is for all the world like a man we had in the old regiment when you were in swaddling-clothes; and I never look at Mamie Gray's sad, white face that it doesn't bring back a girl I knew just then whose heart was broken by just such a shallow, selfish, adorable scoun—No, I won't use that word in speaking of Jerrold; but it's what I fear. Rollins, you call him generous. Well, so he is—lavish, if you like, with his money and his hospitality here in the post. Money comes easily to him, and goes; but you boys misuse the term. I call him selfish to the core, because he can deny himself no luxury, no pleasure, though it may wring a woman's life—or, more than that, her honor—to give it him." The captain was tramping up and down the room now, as was his wont when excited; his face was flushed, and his hand clinched. He turned suddenly and faced the younger officer, who sat gazing uncomfortably at the rug in front of the fireplace.

"Rollins, some day I may tell you a story that I've kept to myself all these years. You won't wonder at my feeling as I do about these goings-on of your friend Jerrold when you hear it all, but it was just such a man as he who ruined one woman, broke the heart of another, and took the sunshine out of the life of two men from that day to this. One of them was your colonel, the other your captain. Now go to bed. I'm going out." And, throwing down his pipe, regardless of the scattering sparks and ashes, Captain Chester strode into the hall-way, picked up the first forage-cap he laid hands on, and banged himself out of the front door.

Mr. Rollins remained for some moments in the same attitude, still gazing abstractedly at the rug, and listening to the nervous tramp of his senior officer on the piazza without. Then he slowly and thoughtfully went to his room, where his perturbed spirit was soon soothed in sleep. His conscience being clear and his health perfect, there were no deep cares to keep him tossing on a restless pillow.

To Chester, however, sleep was impossible: he tramped the piazza a full hour before he felt placid enough to go and inspect his guard. The sentries were calling three o'clock, and the wind had died away, as he started on his round. Dark as was the night, he carried no lantern. The main garrison was well lighted by lamps, and the road circling the old fort was broad, smooth, and bordered by a stone coping wall where it skirted the precipitous descent into the river-bottom. As he passed down the plank walk west of the quadrangle wherein lay the old barracks and the stone quarters of the commanding officer and the low one-storied row of bachelor dens, he could not help noting the silence and peace of the night. Not a light was visible at any window as he strode down the line. The challenge of the sentry at the old stone tower sounded unnecessarily sharp and loud, and his response of "Officer of the day" was lower than usual, as though rebuking the unseemly outcry. The guard came scrambling out and formed hurriedly to receive him, but the captain's inspection was of the briefest kind. Barely glancing along the prison corridor to see that the bars were in place, he turned back into the night, and made for the line of posts along the river-bank. The sentry at the high bridge across the gorge, and the next one, well around to the southeast flank, were successively visited and briefly questioned as to their instructions, and then the captain plodded sturdily on until he came to the sharp bend around the outermost angle of the fort and found himself passing behind the quarters of the commanding officer, a substantial two-storied stone house with mansard roof and dormer-windows. The road in the rear was some ten feet below the level of the parade inside the quadrangle, and consequently, as the house faced the parade, what was the ground-floor from that front became the second story at the rear. The kitchen, store-room, and servants' rooms were on this lower stage, and opened upon the road; an outer stairway ran up to the centre door at the back, but at the east and west flanks of the house the stone walls stood without port or window except those above the eaves—the dormers. Light and air in abundance streamed through the broad Venetian windows north and south when light and air were needed. This night, as usual, all was tightly closed below, all darkness aloft as he glanced up at the dormers high above his head. As he did so, his foot struck a sudden and sturdy obstacle; he stumbled and pitched heavily forward, and found himself sprawling at full length upon a ladder lying on the ground almost in the middle of the roadway.

"Damn those painters!" he growled between his set teeth. "They leave their infernal man-traps around in the very hope of catching me, I believe. Now, who but a painter would have left a ladder in such a place as this?"

Rising ruefully and rubbing a bruised knee with his hand, he limped painfully ahead a few steps, until he came to the side-wall of the colonel's house. Here a plank walk passed from the roadway along the western wall until almost on a line with the front piazza, where by a flight of steps it was carried up to the level of the parade. Here he paused a moment to dust off his clothes and rearrange his belt and sword. He stood leaning against the wall and facing the gray stone gable end of the row of old-fashioned quarters that bounded the parade upon the southwest. All was still darkness and silence.

"Confound this sword!" he muttered again: "the thing made rattle and racket enough to wake the dead. Wonder if I disturbed anybody at the colonel's."

As though in answer to his suggestion, there suddenly appeared, high on the blank wall before him, the reflection of a faint light. Had a little night-lamp been turned on in the front room of the upper story? The gleam came from the north window on the side: he saw plainly the shadow of the pretty lace curtains, looped loosely back. Then the shade was gently raised, and there was for an instant the silhouette of a slender hand and wrist, the shadow of a lace-bordered sleeve. Then the light receded, as though carried back across the room, waned, as though slowly extinguished, and the last shadows showed the curtains still looped back, the rolling shade still raised.

"I thought so," he growled. "One tumble like that is enough to wake the Seven Sleepers, let alone a love-sick girl who is probably dreaming over Jerrold's parting words. She is spirited and blue-blooded enough to have more sense, too, that same superb brunette. Ah, Miss Alice, I wonder if you think that fellow's love worth having. It is two hours since he left you—more than that—and here you are awake yet—cannot sleep—want more air, and have to come and raise your shade. No such warm night, either." These were his reflections as he picked up his offending sword and, more slowly and cautiously now, groped his way along the western terrace. He passed the row of bachelor quarters, and was well out beyond the limits of the fort before he came upon the next sentry—"Number Five,"—and recognized, in the stern "Who comes there?" and the sharp rattle of the bayonet as it dropped to the charge, the well-known challenge of Private Leary, one of the oldest and most reliable soldiers in the regiment.

"All right on your post, Leary?" he asked, after having given the countersign.

"All right, I think, sor; though if the captain had asked me that half an hour ago I'd not have said so. It was so dark I couldn't see me hand afore me face, sor; but about half-past two I was walkin' very slow down back of the quarters, whin just close by Loot'nant Jerrold's back gate I seen somethin' movin', and as I come softly along it riz up, an' sure I thought 'twas the loot'nant himself, whin he seemed to catch sight o' me or hear me, and he backed inside the gate an' shut it. I was sure 'twas he, he was so tall and slim like, an' so I niver said a word until I got to thinkin' over it, and then I couldn't spake. Sure if it had been the loot'nant he wouldn't have backed away from a sintry; he'd 'a' come out bold and given the countersign; but I didn't think o' that. It looked like him in the dark, an' 'twas his quarters, an' I thought it was him, until I thought ag'in, and then, sor, I wint back and searched the yard; but there was no one there."

"Hm! Odd thing that, Leary! Why didn't you challenge at first?"

"Sure, sor, he lept inside the fince quick as iver we set eyes on each other. He was bendin' down, and I thought it was one of the hound pups when I first sighted him."

"And he hasn't been around since?"

"No, sor, nor nobody, till the officer of the day came along."

Chester walked away puzzled. Sibley was a most quiet and orderly garrison. Night prowlers had never been heard from, especially over here at the south and southwest fronts. The enlisted men going to or from town passed across the big, high bridge or went at once to their own quarters on the east and north. This southwestern terrace behind the bachelors' row was the most secluded spot on the whole post—so much so that when a fire broke out there among the fuel-heaps one sharp winter's night a year agone it had wellnigh enveloped the whole line before its existence was discovered. Indeed, not until after this occurrence was a sentry posted on that front at all; and, once ordered there, he had so little to do and was so comparatively sure to be undisturbed that the old soldiers eagerly sought the post in preference to any other, and were given it as a peace privilege. For months, relief after relief tramped around the fort and found the terrace post as humdrum and silent as an empty church; but this night "Number Five" leaped suddenly into notoriety.

Instead of going home, Chester kept on across the plateau and took a long walk on the northern side of the reservation, where the quarter-master's stables and corrals were placed. He was affected by a strange unrest. His talk with Rollins had roused the memories of years long gone by—of days when he, too, was young and full of hope and faith, ay, full of love—all lavished on one fair girl who knew it well, but gently, almost entreatingly, repelled him. Her heart was wrapped up in another, the Adonis of his day in the gay old seaboard garrison. She was a soldier's child, barrack-born, simply taught, knowing little of the vice and temptations, the follies and the frauds, of the whirling life of civilization. A good and gentle mother had reared her and been called hence. Her father, an officer whose sabre-arm was left at Molino del Rey, and whose heart was crushed when the loving wife was taken from him, turned to the child who so resembled her, and centred there all his remaining love and life. He welcomed Chester to his home, and tacitly favored his suit, but in his blindness never saw how a few moonlit strolls on the old moss-grown parapet, a few evening dances in the casemates with handsome, wooing, winning Will Forrester, had done their work. She gave him all the wild, enthusiastic, worshipping love of her girlish heart just about the time Captain and Mrs. Maynard came back from leave, and then he grew cold and negligent there, but lived at Maynard's fireside; and one day there came a sensation—a tragedy—and Mrs. Maynard went away, and died abroad, and a shocked and broken-hearted girl hid her face from all and pined at home, and Mr. Forrester's resignation was sent from—no one knew just where, and no one would have cared to know, except Maynard. He would have followed him, pistol in hand, but Forrester gave him no chance. Years afterwards Chester again sought her and offered her his love and his name. It was useless, she told him, sadly. She lived only for her father now, and would never leave him till he died, and then—she prayed she might go too. Memories like this will come up at such times in these same "still watches of the night." Chester was in a moody frame of mind when about half an hour later he came back past the guard-house. The sergeant was standing near the lighted entrance, and the captain called him:

"There's a ladder lying back of the colonel's quarters on the roadway. Some of those painters left it, I suppose. It's a wonder some of the reliefs have not broken their necks over it going around to-night. Let the next one pick it up and move it out of the way. Hasn't it been reported?"

"Not to me, sir. Corporal Schreiber has command of this relief, and he has said nothing about it. Here he is, sir."

"Didn't you see it or stumble over it when posting your relief, corporal?" asked Chester.

"No indeed, sir. I—I think the captain must have been mistaken in thinking it a ladder. We would surely have struck it if it had been."

"No mistake at all, corporal. I lifted it. It is a long, heavy ladder—over twenty feet, I should say."

"There is such a ladder back there, captain," said the sergeant, "but it always hangs on the fence just behind the young officers' quarters—Bachelors' Row, sir, I mean."

"And that ladder was there an hour ago when I went my rounds," said the corporal, earnestly. "I had my hurricane-lamp, sir, and saw it on the fence plainly. And there was nothing behind the colonel's at that hour."

Chester turned away, thoughtful and silent. Without a word he walked straight into the quadrangle, past the low line of stone buildings, the offices of the adjutant and quartermaster, the home of the sergeant-major, the club and billiard-room, past the long, piazza-shaded row of bachelor quarters, and came upon the plank walk at the corner of the colonel's fence. Ten more steps, and he stood stock-still at the head of the flight of wooden stairs.

There, dimly visible against the southern sky, its base on the plank walk below him, its top resting upon the eaves midway between the dormer-window and the roof of the piazza, so that one could step easily from it into the one or on to the other, was the very ladder that half an hour before was lying on the ground behind the house.

His heart stood still. He seemed powerless to move—even to think. Then a slight noise roused him, and with every nerve tingling he crouched ready for a spring. With quick, agile movements, noiseless as a cat, sinuous and stealthy as a serpent, the dark figure of a man issued from Alice Renwick's chamber window and came gliding down.

One second more, and, almost as noiselessly, he reached the ground, then quickly raised and turned the ladder, stepped with it to the edge of the roadway, and peered around the angle as though to see that no sentry was in sight, then vanished with his burden around the corner. Another second, and down the steps went Chester, three at a bound, tip-toeing it in pursuit. Ten seconds brought him close to the culprit—a tall, slender shadow.

"You villain! Halt!"

Down went the ladder on the dusty road. The hand that Chester had clinched upon the broad shoulder was hurled aside. There was a sudden whirl, a lightning blow that took the captain full in the chest and staggered him back upon the treacherous and entangling rungs, and, ere he could recover himself, the noiseless stranger had fairly whizzed into space and vanished in the darkness up the road. Chester sprang in pursuit. He heard the startled challenge of the sentry, and then Leary's excited "Halt, I say! Halt!" and then he shouted—

"Fire on him, Leary! Bring him down!"

Bang went the ready rifle with sharp, sullen roar that woke the echoes across the valley. Bang again, as Leary sent a second shot after the first. Then, as the captain came panting to the spot, they followed up the road. No sign of the runner. Attracted by the shots, the sergeant of the guard and one or two men, lantern-bearing, came running to the scene. Excitedly they searched up and down the road in mingled hope and dread of finding the body of the marauder, or some clue or trace. Nothing! Whoever he was, the fleet runner had vanished and made good his escape.

"Who could it have been, sir?" asked the sergeant of the officer of the day. "Surely none of the men ever come round this way."

"I don't know, sergeant; I don't know. Just take your lamp and see if there is anything visible down there among the rocks. He may have been hit and leaped the wall.—Do you think you hit him, Leary?"

"I can't say, sor. He came by me like a flash. I had just a second's look at him, and—Sure I niver saw such runnin'."

"Could you see his face?" asked Chester, in a low tone, as the other men moved away to search the rocks.

"Not his face, sor. 'Twas too dark."

"Was there—did he look like anybody you knew, or had seen?—anybody in the command?"

"Well, sor, not among the men, that is. There's none so tall and slim both, and so light. Sure he must 'a' worn gums, sor. You couldn't hear the whisper of a footfall."

"But whom did he seem to resemble?"

"Well, if the captain will forgive me, sor, it's unwillin' I am to say the worrd, but there's no one that tall and light and slim here, sor, but Loot'nant Jerrold. Sure it couldn't be him, sor."

"Leary, will you promise me something on your word as a man?"

"I will, sor."

"Say not one word of this matter to any one, except I tell you, or you have to, before a court."

"I promise, sor."

"And I believe you. Tell the sergeant I will soon be back."

With that he turned and walked down the road until once more he came to the plank crossing and the passage-way between the colonel's and Bachelors' Row. Here again he stopped short, and waited with bated breath and scarcely-beating heart. The faint light he had seen before again illumined the room and cast its gleam upon the old gray wall. Even as he gazed, there came silently to the window a tall, white-robed form, and a slender white hand seized and lowered the shade, noiselessly. Then, as before, the light faded away; but—she was awake.

Waiting one moment in silence, Captain Chester then sprang up the wooden steps and passed under the piazza which ran the length of the bachelor quarters. Half-way down the row he turned sharply to his left, opened the green-painted door, and stood in a little dark hall-way. Taking his match-box from his pocket, he struck a light, and by its glare quickly read the card upon the first door-way to his right:

"Mr. Howard F. Jerrold,

"——th Infantry, U.S.A."

Opening this door, he bolted straight through the little parlor to the bedroom in the rear. A dim light was burning on the mantel. The bed was unruffled, untouched, and Mr. Jerrold was not there.

Five minutes afterwards, Captain Chester, all alone, had laboriously and cautiously dragged the ladder from the side to the rear of the colonel's house, stretched it in the roadway where he had first stumbled upon it, then returned to the searching-party on "Number Five."

"Send two men to put that ladder back," he ordered. "It is where I told you—on the road behind the colonel's."