The Captain of the Gray-Horse Troop Part 53

"I wish it were true. Women like you--you know what I mean; there are no women like you, of course--come into my life too seldom. I dread the empty futility of to-morrow. As an Indian agent, I must expect to live without companionship with such as you. I have a premonition that Jennie is going to leave me--as she ought."

"You will be very lonely then; what will you do?"

"Work harder; do more good, and so cheat myself into forgetfulness that time is flying."

"You are bitter to-night."

"Why shouldn't I be when you are going away? It wouldn't be decent of me to be gay."

"Your methods of flattery are always effective. At one moment you discuss the weightiest matters with me--which argues I have brains--and then you grow gloomy over my going and would seem to mean that I am charming, which I don't think is quite true."

"If I weren't a poor devil of an army officer I'd convince you of my sincerity by asking you not to go away at all."

"That _would_ be convincing," she said, laughingly. "Please don't do it!"

His tone became suddenly serious. "You are right, I can't ask you to share a life like mine. It is too uncertain. I may be ordered back to my regiment next winter, and then nothing remains but garrison duty. I think I will then resign. But I am unfitted for business, or for any money-getting, and so I've decided that as an honorable man I must not imperil the happiness of a woman. I claim to be a person of taste, and the girl I admired would have other chances in life. I can't afford to say to her, 'Give up all your comfort and security and come with me to the frontier.' She would be foolish to listen--no woman of the stamp I have in mind could do it." They were nearing "the parsonage" gate, and he ended in a low voice: "Don't you think I am right?"

"The theory is that nothing really counts in a woman's life but love,"

she replied, enigmatically.

"Yes, but theory aside--"

"Well, then, I can conceive of a girl--a very _young_ girl--leaving wealth and friends, and even her art, for the man she loved, but--"

He waited a moment as a culprit listens to his judge. "But then--but in case--"

"If the girl were grown up and loved luxurious living, and shared an enthusiasm--say for art--then--" She broke off and said, wearily, "Then she might palter and measure values and weigh chances, and take account of the future and end by not marrying at all."

They had reached the gate and he spoke with perceivable effort: "I've no right to ask it, of course, but if you take pity on my loneliness at any time and write to me, your letters will be more welcome than it is seemly in me to say, and I'll promise not to bore you with further details of my 'Injines.' Will you be kind to me?"

"I will be glad to write," she replied, but in her voice was something he did not understand. As they entered the house Elsie said: "Captain Maynard, Captain Curtis is going out to-morrow morning to arrest that crazy Indian. Do you think he ought to go alone?"

"Certainly not! It would be too dangerous. He shall have an escort,"

replied Maynard, emphatically.

"No, no!" said Curtis, decisively. "I am safer to go unarmed and alone."

"George!" protested Jennie, "you shall not go out there alone. Why don't you send the police?"

Maynard here interposed. "Don't take on worry; I'll go with him myself."

This last hour in Elsie's company was a mingled pain and pleasure to Curtis, for she was most charming. She laid aside all hauteur, all perversity, and gave herself unreservedly to her good friends. They were all at high tension, and the talk leaped from jest to protest, and back to laughter again, agile and inconsequent. The time and the place, the past and the future, counted for little to these four, for they were young and they were lovers.

At last Jennie rose. "If you people are to rise at dawn you must go to sleep now. Good-night! Come, Elsie Bee Bee."

Maynard followed Jennie into the hall with some jest, and Curtis seized the opportunity to delay Elsie. He offered his hand, and she laid hers therein with a motion of half-surrender.

"Good-night, Captain. I appreciate your kindness more than I can say."

"Don't try. I feel now that I have done nothing--nothing of what I should have done; but I didn't think you were to leave so soon. If I had known--"

"You have done more than you realize. Once more, good-night!"

"Good-night!" he said, in an unsteady voice; "and remember, you promised to write!"

"I will keep my promise." She turned at the door. "Don't try to write around your red people. I believe I'd like to hear how you get on with them."

"Defend me from mine enemies within the gates, and I'll work out my problem."

"I'll do my best. Good-bye!"

"No, not good-bye--just good-night!"

For a moment he stood meditating a further word, then stepped into the hall. Elsie, midway on the stairs, had turned and was looking down at him with a face wherein the eyes were wistful and brows perplexed. She guiltily lowered her lashes and turned away, but that momentary pause--that subtle interplay of doubt and dream--had given the soldier a pleasure deeper than words.

Jennie was waiting at the door of the tiny room in which Elsie was to sleep, her face glowing with admiration and love. "Oh, you queenly girl!" she cried, with a convulsive clasp of her strong arms. "I can't get over the wonder of your being here in our little house. You ought to live always in a castle."

Elsie smiled, but with tears in her eyes. "You're a dear, good girl. I never had a truer friend."

"I wish you were poor!" said Jennie, as they entered the plain little room; "then you could come here as a missionary or something, and we could have you with us all the time. I hate to think of your going away to-morrow."

"You must come and see me in Washington."

"Oh no! That wouldn't do!" said Jennie, half alarmed. "It might spoil me for life out here. You must visit us again."

There was a note of honest, almost boyish suffering in Jennie's entreaties which moved the daughter of wealth very deeply, and she went to her bed with a feeling of loss, as though she were taking leave of something very sweet and elementally comforting.

She thought of her first lover, and her cheeks burned with disgust of her folly. She thought of two or three good, manly suitors whose protestations of love had left her cold and humorously critical. On Lawson's suit she lingered, for he was still a possibility should she decide to put her soldier-lover away. "But I _have_ done so--definitely," she said to some pleading within herself. "I can't marry him; our lives are ordered on divergent lines. I can't come here to live."

"Happiness is not dependent on material things," argued her newly awakened self. "He loves you--he is handsome and true and good."

"But I don't love him."

"Yes, you do. When you returned Osborne Lawson's ring you quite plainly said so."

She burned with a new flame with this confession; but she protested, "Let us be sensible! Let us argue!"

"You cannot argue with love."

"I am not a child to be carried away by a momentary gust of emotion. See how impossible it is for me to share his work--his austere life."

And here entered the far-reaching question of the life and death of a race. In a most disturbing measure this obscure young soldier represented a view of life--of civilization antagonistic to her faith, and in stern opposition to the teachings of her father. In a subtle fashion he had warped the word _duty_ from its martial significance to a place in a lofty philosophy whose tenets were only just beginning to unfold their inner meaning to her.

Was it not true that she was less sympathetic with the poor brown peoples of the earth than with the animals? "How can you be contemptuous of G.o.d's children, whom the physical universe has colored brown or black or yellow--you, who are indignant when a beast is overburdened? If we repudiate and condemn to death those who do not please us, who will live?"

She felt in herself some singular commotion. Conceptions, hitherto mere sh.e.l.ls of thought, became infilled with pa.s.sion; and pity, hitherto a feeble sentiment with her, expanded into an emotion which shook her, filled her throat with sobs, discrediting her old self with her new self till the thought of her mean and selfish art brought shame. How small it all was, how trivial, beside the consciousness of duty well done, measured against a life of self-sacrifice, such as that suggested by this man, whose eyes sought her in worship!