Betty at Fort Blizzard Part 14

There was a joyous dinner. Beverley, like Colonel Fortescue, was surprised to find that Anita was grown up, like other girls of eighteen.

Also, that his father was almost as young and handsome as his mother.

"I say, Colonel," said Beverley, "you're the handsomest Colonel in the army."

The Colonel smiled.

"For your age, that is."

The Colonel scowled.

"Your father's touchy about his age," Mrs. Fortescue explained, "and so am I, so please, Beverley, keep away from the unpleasant subject."

Beverley Fortescue had three months' leave before taking up his duties as an officer at the post and it was a halcyon time at the Commandant's house. In spite of the torrid heat, there were parties of pleasure and little dances, and all the round of gaieties that prevail at army posts.

The Colonel was proud of his well-set-up stripling, although, of course, a boy could never be of so much value in a family as a girl, according to Colonel Fortescue's philosophy. With Mrs. Fortescue it was the other way. Dear as was Anita to her, the mother's heart was triumphant over her soldier son. As for the After-Clap, he frankly repudiated his whole domestic circle, except Kettle, for Beverley, who was as tall and strong as his father and could do many more things amusing to a two-and-half-year-old than a stern and dignified Colonel. Anita and Beverley were as intimate and pa.s.sionately fond of each other as when they were little playmates. Beverley asked some questions of his mother concerning Anita.

"All the fellows like to dance with her and ride with her, but she treats them all as she does old Conway."

"Old Conway," Colonel Fortescue's aide, was barely turned thirty; but to the twenty-one-year-old Beverley, Conway seemed an aged veteran.

"I can't understand it," plaintively responded Mrs. Fortescue.

"Sometimes I think Anita has no coquetry in her. Again I think she is the worst type of coquette--she treats all men alike. You remember my writing you about Anita being thrown at the music ride last Christmas Eve, and Broussard jumping his horse over her?"

"I should think so," answered Beverley. "I wish you could have seen the letter the Colonel wrote me about it. I felt more sorry for what the poor old chap must have suffered than for you, mother."

"Don't call your father 'the poor old chap,'" said Mrs. Fortescue positively. "And don't make jokes about the After-Clap being the child of his old age. Your father doesn't like it. It's perfectly disgusting the way young people now speak of their elders, who are barely middle-aged, as if they were centenarians. Well, I think, and your father thinks, that Anita had a fancy for Broussard. He was a very attractive man. Your father thought him a prodigal with his money, but, of course, some fault must be found with every man who looks at Anita."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Don't call your father 'the poor old chap,'" said Mrs.

Fortescue positively.]

"But Anita is so young--a chit, a child."

"She is not quite three years younger than you," replied Mrs. Fortescue.

"This notion that Anita is a child and must be treated as such is ridiculous. Why, when I was Anita's age, I had had a dozen love affairs."

"Did no one ever tell you, mother, that you are a born coquette, and you will be coquettish at ninety, if you live to bless us so long?"

Mrs. Fortescue laughed the soft, musical laugh that was a part of her armory of charms, and made no reply.

At dinner that night Beverley suddenly began to ask questions about Broussard, praising his horsemanship, but wanting to know what kind of a fellow he was. The Colonel spoke guardedly and d.a.m.ned Broussard with faint praise, as he would any man whom he thought likely to rob him of his one ewe lamb; yet the Colonel thought himself a just man.

The eloquent blood leaped into Anita's cheeks, and there was something like resentment in her eyes at the Colonel's cool commendation. After dinner she took Beverley into the garden, and the brother and sister walked up and down in the moonlight, and Anita, thinking she was keeping her secret, revealed everything to Beverley. Broussard was the finest young officer, the most beautiful horseman, he could sing Korner's Battle Hymn as no one else could, and when she played a violin obligato to his songs of love----

Anita stopped short, and turned her long-lashed eyes full on Beverley.

"Daddy doesn't do justice to Mr. Broussard," she said, "but you ought to have seen the way he grasped Mr. Broussard's hands after the music ride."

Colonel and Mrs. Fortescue, sitting in the cool, dim drawing-room, heard Beverley's laughter floating in from the garden. Beverley saw the case at a glance.

The torrid summer slipped by, and in November it was winter again, and the earth was s...o...b..und once more. In all those months Mrs. Lawrence remained, feeble and nerveless, in the two little rooms she was still permitted to occupy. By that time she was a shadow. Mrs. McGillicuddy was more kind than ever to her, and Sergeant McGillicuddy grew more sombre every day, thinking that his words had brought Lawrence to ruin and his unfortunate wife close to the boundaries of the far country. The chaplain took the Sergeant in hand, and so did the Colonel, but the Sergeant, who had a tender heart under his well-fitting uniform, was not a happy man. Anita went regularly to see Mrs. Lawrence, and as the young are appalled at the thought of life going out, she watched with palpitating fear what seemed a steady journey toward the land where spirits dwell. But always on those visits to the woman who seemed slipping from life into the great ocean of forgetfulness, there was a thrill of joy for Anita; she could see Broussard's picture. Young and imaginative souls live and thrive on very little.

The introspective life that Anita led was strongly expressed in her music. Never had Neroda a pupil who was willing to work so hard as Anita, and the result charmed him. On this afternoon Anita was at her lesson in the great drawing-room, the red sunset pouring in through the long windows and flooding the room with crimson lights and purple shadows. Anita, wearing a little, nun-like black gown that outlined her slim figure, played, with wonderful fire and finish, a wild and gorgeous Hungarian dance by Brahms.

There was a delicate melody winding through all of the rich harmonies, as it ran up the scale, like a bird soaring into the blue sky, and then descended with splendid double notes, into the sombre and pa.s.sionate G string, the string that touches the soul. It grew more of a miracle to Neroda than ever to watch Anita's slender bow-arm flashing back and forth, drawing out, with amazing force, the soul of the violin, her slender figure erect and poised high, vibrating with the strings, and her eyes darkening and lightening as the music grew deeply pa.s.sionate or brilliantly gay. When she finished, and stood, smiling and triumphant, still holding the violin and bow, Neroda said to her:

"Are you not tired, Signorina?"

"Not a bit," cried Anita. "I feel that I could play as long as you did, in the days of which you told me when you first came to America and would play the violin all night long for dancers on the East Side in New York."

"I believe you could, almost," replied Neroda, smiling. "I, who had been a concert master in Italy, was only too glad to get three dollars for fiddling from eight in the evening until three in the morning; but they were happy nights, because I was young and strong and full of hope and loved my fiddle. Sometimes, when I am leading the band in my fine uniform, I long to take the instrument away from one of the bandsmen and play it as I did in those days, without any baton to hold me back; but the violin is a man's instrument and requires much strength. Now, where, Signorina, in your girlish arms and little hands, did you get such strength?"

"It is here," said Anita, smiling and tapping her breast. "I have a strong heart, my blood circulates well, and I am not afraid of the violin, like most girls. I am its master, and it shall do my will."

At that she tapped her violin sharply with the bow, saying to it:

"Do you hear me? You are my slave, and I shall make you do what I wish you to do. If I wish you to talk Brahms, you shall talk Brahms; if I wish you to be sad, I will make you sad with funeral marches. You shall speak Italian, German, French or English, as I tell you."

Neroda laughed with delight. He loved the imaginative nature of the girl, who treated her violin as if it were a living thing, and whispered her secrets into the ear of her riding horse, and told love stories to her birds.

"In Italy," said Neroda, "a fiddler, if he really knows how to play dance music, can dance as well as play. In those nights on the East Side, in New York, when I played for the workmen and working girls in their cheap finery, I went among the dancers myself while I played, and they always gave me a round of applause and danced harder themselves."

Anita suddenly swept the strings with her bow and dashed into another Hungarian dance of Brahms, herself taking pretty dancing steps and pirouetting as she played, sinking upon one knee and then rising, the toe of her little slipper pointing skyward. She felt an unaccountable gaiety of heart that day. Why, she knew not, only that some strong current of emotion inspired her arms, her hands, her little, twinkling feet, as she danced the length of the drawing-room and back again. Suddenly the music stopped with a crash. She looked up and saw Broussard standing in the door.

"Thank you, thank you!" said Broussard, advancing and bowing and smiling.

"I have seen it all. When you dance and play at the same time, you can master the heart of a man, as well as that of a violin."

Anita stood still for a moment, thrilled with the shock of joy at seeing Broussard. She laid her violin and bow down on the piano, and gave him her hand, which trembled in his. Broussard's first thought was that Anita was grown into a woman. Anita's first glance at Broussard showed her that he was thin and sallow, and that his clothes hung loosely upon him, and that, in spite of his smile and playful words, his mind was not at ease.

Neroda, standing near, saw the glow in the eyes of Anita and Broussard, and as they had evidently forgotten his existence, he slipped, without a word, out of the room. The next moment Colonel Fortescue walked in.

All at once, Anita and Broussard a.s.sumed strictly conventional att.i.tudes; poetry became prose, music became silence. Broussard hastened to explain his presence, after exchanging greetings with Colonel Fortescue.

"I came on private business, sir," he said, "very important. Not finding you at the headquarters building, I ventured to come to your house, as I wished to see you immediately."

"Will you come into my office?" said the Colonel, in a business-like voice, which seemed to reduce Anita to the age of the After-Clap, and cla.s.sify Broussard with the poker that stood by the fireplace.

The two men crossed the hall and entered the private office and sat down.

Then Colonel Fortescue noticed that Broussard looked haggard and worn, and his dark skin had turned darker. His face and manner a.s.sumed a gravity which made Colonel Fortescue feel that Broussard's errand was not one of pleasure.

"I am on sick leave," said Broussard. "We were in the jungles eight months and every one of us had fever. I was the last to come down, and I had a bad case. The doctors sent me home for three months, and when I go back--for I didn't mean to let the infernal climate out there get the better of me--I shall be in Guam. That's paradise compared with the interior."

"So I know," answered the Colonel, remembering the snakes and mosquitoes and the flies and the beetles and the hideous swamps and sickening forests, the slime, the mud, the marshes and all the horrors of the tropics.

"I should like to spend my leave at Fort Blizzard," Broussard continued, "I thought the climate here was what I needed."

Colonel Fortescue nodded courteously; n.o.body could stay at Fort Blizzard without the permission of the C. O. But Broussard felt that the Colonel saw through him and beyond him. As Colonel Fortescue would not encourage him by so much as a word, Broussard kept on:

"In the Philippines, I heard some news that was enough to kill a well man, much less a man just out of jungle fever. You perhaps remember, sir, the man Lawrence, who, I heard in the Philippines, had deserted?"

"He was supposed to have deserted," corrected the Colonel, who was always the soul of accuracy.