Chapter 6

"Very well. That means, he proposes to be guided by the colonel, or nothing at all; and Captain Gregg is simply doing what the others will do. They say to us, in so many words, 'We prefer the society of your _bête noire_ to your own.' That's the way I look at it," said Mrs. Rayner, in deep excitement.

It was evident that, though none were prepared to endorse so extreme a view, there was a strong feeling that the colonel had put an affront upon the Riflers by his open welcome to Mr. Hayne. He had been exacting before, and had caused a good deal of growling among the officers and comment among the women. They were ready to find fault, and here was strong provocation. Mr. Foster was a youth of unfortunate and unpopular propensities. He should have held his tongue, instead of striving to stem the tide.

"I don't uphold Hayne any more than you do, Mrs. Rayner, but it seems to me this is a case where the colonel has to make some acknowledgment of Mr. Hayne's conduct--"

"Very good. Let him write him a letter, then, thanking him in the name of the regiment, but don't pick him up like this in the face of ours," interrupted one of the juniors, who was seated near Miss Travers (a wise stroke of policy: Mrs. Rayner invited him to breakfast); and there was a chorus of approbation.

"Well, hold on a moment," said Foster. "Hasn't the colonel had every one of us to dinner more or less frequently?"

"Admitted. But what's that to do with it?"

"Hasn't he invariably invited each officer to dine with him in every case where an officer has arrived?"

"Granted. But what then?"

"If he broke the rule or precedent in Mr. Hayne's case would he not practically be saying that he endorsed the views of the court-martial as opposed to those of the department commander, General Sherman, the Secretary of War, the President of the United--"

"Oh, make out your transfer papers, Foster. You ought to be in the cavalry or some other disputatious branch of the service," burst in Mr. Graham.

"I declare, Mr. Foster, I never thought you would abandon your colors," said Mrs. Rayner.

"I haven't, madame, and you've no right to say so," said Foster, indignantly. "I simply hold that any attempt to work up a regimental row out of this thing will make bad infinitely worse, and I deprecate the whole business."

"I suppose you mean to intimate that Captain Rayner's position and that of the regiment is bad,--all wrong,--that Mr. Hayne has been persecuted," said Mrs. Rayner, with trembling lips and cheeks aflame.

"Mrs. Rayner, you are unjust," said poor Foster. "I ought not to have undertaken to explain or defend the colonel's act, perhaps, but I am not disloyal to my regiment or my colors. What I want is to prevent further trouble; and I know that anything like a concerted resentment of the colonel's invitation will lead to infinite harm."

"_You_ may cringe and bow and bear it if you choose; you may humble yourself to such a piece of insolence; but rest assured there are plenty of men and women in the Riflers who won't bear it, Mr. Foster; and for one _I_ won't." She had risen to her full height now, and her eyes were blazing. "For his own sake I trust the colonel will omit our names from the next entertainment he gives. Nellie shan't--"

"Oh, think, Mrs. Rayner!" interrupted one of the ladies; "they _must_ give her a dinner or a reception."

"Indeed they shall not! I refuse to enter the door of people who have insulted my husband as they have."

"Hush! Listen!" said Mr. Graham, springing towards the door.

There was wondering silence an instant.

"It is nothing but the trumpet sounding taps," said Mrs. Rayner, hurriedly.

But even as she spoke they rose to their feet. Muffled cries were heard, borne in on the night wind,--a shot, then another, down in the valley,--the quick peal of the cavalry trumpet.

"It isn't taps. It's fire!" shouted Graham from the door-way. "Come on!"

V.

Down in the valley south of the post a broad glare was already shooting upward and illumining the sky. One among a dozen little shanties and log houses, the homes of the laundresses of the garrison and collectively known as Sudsville, was a mass of flames. There was a rush of officers across the parade, and the men, answering the alarum of the trumpet and the shots and shouts of the sentries, came tearing from their quarters and plunging down the hill. Among the first on the spot came the young men who were of the party at Captain Rayner's, and Mr. Graham was ahead of them all. It was plain to the most inexperienced eye that there was hardly anything left to save in or about the burning shanty. All efforts must be directed towards preventing the spread of the flames to those adjoining. Half-clad women and children were rushing about, shrieking with fright and excitement, and a few men were engaged in dragging household goods and furniture from those tenements not yet reached by the flames. Fire-apparatus there seemed to be none, though squads of men speedily appeared with ladders, axes, and buckets, brought from the different company quarters, and the arriving officers quickly formed the bucket-lines and water dipped up from the icy creek began to fly from hand to hand. Before anything like this was fairly under way, a scene of semi-tragic, semi-comic intensity had been enacted in the presence of a rapidly gathering audience. "It was worth more than the price of admission to hear Blake tell it afterwards," said the officers, later.

A tall, angular woman, frantic with excitement and terror, was dancing about in the broad glare of the burning hut, tearing her hair, making wild rushes at the flames from time to time as though intent on dragging out some prized object that was being consumed before her eyes, and all the time keeping up a volley of maledictions and abuse in lavish Hibernian, apparently directed at a cowering object who sat in limp helplessness upon a little heap of fire-wood, swaying from side to side and moaning stupidly through the scorched and grimy hands in which his face was hidden. His clothing was still smoking in places; his hair and beard were singed to the roots; he was evidently seriously injured, and the sympathizing soldiers who had gathered around him after deluging him with snow and water were striving to get him to arise and go with them to the hospital. A little girl, not ten years old, knelt sobbing and terrified by his side. She, too, was scorched and singed, and the soldiers had thrown rough blankets about her; but it was for her father, not herself, she seemed worried to distraction. Some of the women were striving to reassure and comfort her in their homely fashion, bidding her cheer up,--the father was only stupid from drink, and would be all right as soon as "the liquor was off of him." But the little one was beyond consolation so long as he could not or would not speak in answer to her entreaties.

All this time, never pausing for breath, shrieking anathemas on her drunken spouse, reproaches on her frightened child, and invocations to all the blessed saints in heaven to reward the gintleman who had saved her hoarded money,--a smoking packet that she hugged to her breast,--Mrs. Clancy, "the saynior laundress of Company B," as she had long styled herself, was prancing up and down through the gathering crowd, her shrill voice overmastering all other clamor. The vigorous efforts of the men, directed by cool-headed officers, soon beat back the flames that were threatening the neighboring shanties, and levelled to the ground what remained of Private Clancy's home. The fire was extinguished almost as rapidly as it began, but the torrent of Mrs. Clancy's eloquence was still unstemmed. The adjurations of sympathetic sisters to "Howld yer whist," the authoritative admonition of some old sergeant to "Stop your infernal noise," and the half-maudlin yet appealing glances of her suffering lord were all insufficient to check her. It was not until the quiet tones of the colonel were heard that she began to cool down: "We've had enough of this, Mrs. Clancy: be still, now, or we'll have to send you to the hospital in the coal-cart." Mrs. Clancy knew that the colonel was a man of few words, and believed him to be one of less sentiment. She was afraid of him, and concluded it time to cease threats and abuse and come down to the more effective _rôle_ of wronged and suffering womanhood,--a feat which she accomplished with the consummate ease of long practice, for the rows in the Clancy household were matters of garrison notoriety. The surgeon, too, had come, and, after quick examination of Clancy's condition, had directed him to be taken at once to the hospital; and thither his little daughter insisted on following him, despite the efforts of some of the women to detain her and dress her properly.

Before returning to his quarters the colonel desired to know something of the origin of the fire. There was testimony enough and to spare. Every woman in Sudsville had a theory to express, and was eager to be heard at once and to the exclusion of all others. It was not until he had summarily ordered them to go to their homes and not come near him that the colonel managed to get a clear statement from some of the men.

Clancy had been away all the evening, drinking as usual, and Mrs. Clancy was searching about Sudsville as much for sympathy and listeners as for him. Little Kate, who knew her father's haunts, had guided him home, and was striving to get him to his little sleeping-corner before her mother's return, when in his drunken helplessness he fell against the table, overturning the kerosene lamp, and the curtains were all aflame in an instant. It was just after taps--or ten o'clock--when Kate's shrieks aroused the inmates of Sudsville and started the cry of "Fire." The flimsy structure of pine boards burned like so much tinder, and the child and her stupefied father had been dragged forth only in time to save their lives. The little one, after giving the alarm, had rushed again into the house and was tugging at his senseless form when rescue came for both,--none too soon. As for Mrs. Clancy, at the first note of danger she had rushed screaming to the spot, but only in time to see the whole interior ablaze and to howl frantically for some man to save her money,--it was all in the green box under the bed. For husband and child she had for the moment no thought. They were safely out of the fire by the time she got there, and she screamed and fought like a fury against the men who held her back when she would have plunged into the midst of it. It took but a minute for one or two men to burst through the flimsy wall with axes, to rescue the burning box and knock off the lid. It was a sight to see when the contents were handed to her. She knelt, wept, prayed, counted over bill after bill of smoking, steaming greenbacks, until suddenly recalled to her senses by the eager curiosity and the remarks of some of her fellow-women. That she kept money and a good deal of it in her quarters had long been suspected and as fiercely denied; but no one had dreamed of such a sum as was revealed. In her frenzy she had shrieked that the savings of her lifetime were burning,--that there was over three thousand dollars in the box; but she hid her treasure and gasped and stammered and swore she was talking "wild-like." "They was nothing but twos and wans," she vowed; yet there were women there who declared that they had seen tens and twenties as she hurried them through her trembling fingers, and Sudsville gossiped and talked for two hours after she was led away, still moaning and shivering, to the bedside of poor Clancy, who was the miserable cause of it all. The colonel listened to the stories with such patience as could be accorded to witnesses who desired to give prominence to their personal exploits in subduing the flames and rescuing life and property. It was not until he and the group of officers with him had been engaged some moments in taking testimony that something was elicited which caused a new sensation.

It was not by the united efforts of Sudsville that Clancy and Kate had been dragged from the flames, but by the individual dash and determination of a single man: there was no discrepancy here, for the ten or a dozen who were wildly rushing about the house made no effort to burst into it until a young soldier leaped through their midst into the blazing door-way, was seen to throw a blanket over some object within, and the next minute appeared again, dragging a body through the flames. Then they had sprung to his aid, and between them Kate and "the ould man" were lifted into the open air. A moment later he had handed Mrs. Clancy her packet of money, and--they hadn't seen him since. He was an officer, said they,--a new one. They thought it must be the new lieutenant of Company B; and the colonel looked quickly around and said a few words to his adjutant, who started up the hill forthwith. A group of officers and ladies were standing at the brow of the plateau east of the guard-house, gazing down upon the scene below, and other ladies, with their escorts, had gathered on a little knoll close by the road that led to Prairie Avenue. It was past these that the adjutant walked rapidly away, swinging his hurricane-lamp in his hand.

"Which way now, Billings?" called one of the cavalry officers in the group.

"Over to Mr. Hayne's quarters," he shouted back, never stopping at all.

A silence fell upon the group at mention of the name. They were the ladies from Captain Rayner's and a few of their immediate friends. All eyes followed the twinkling light as it danced away eastward towards the gloomy coal-sheds. Then there was sudden and intense interest. The lamp had come to a stand-still, was deposited on the ground, and by its dim ray the adjutant could be seen bending over a dark object that was half sitting, half reclining at the platform of the shed. Then came a shout, "Come here, some of you." And most of the men ran to the spot.

For a moment not one word was spoken in the watching group: then Miss Travers's voice was heard:

"What can it be? Why do they stop there?"

She felt a sudden hand upon her wrist, and her sister's lips at her ear:

"Come away, Nellie. I want to go home. Come!"

"But, Kate, I must see what it means."

"No: come! It's--it's only some other drunken man, probably. Come!" And she strove to lead her.

But the other ladies were curious too, and all, insensibly, were edging over to the east as though eager to get in sight of the group. The recumbent object had been raised, and was seen to be the dark figure of a man whom the others began slowly to lead away. One of the group came running back to them: it was Mr. Foster.

"Come, ladies: I will escort you home, as the others are busy."

"What is the matter, Mr. Foster?" was asked by half a dozen voices.

"It was Mr. Hayne,--badly burned, I fear. He was trying to get home after having saved poor Clancy."

"You don't say so! Oh, isn't there something we can do? Can't we go that way and be of some help?" was the eager petition of more than one of the ladies.

"Not now. They will have the doctor in a minute. He has not inhaled flame; it is all external; but he was partly blinded and could not find his way. He called to Billings when he heard him coming. I will get you all home and then go back to him. Come!" And, offering his arm to Mrs. Rayner, who was foremost in the direction he wanted to go,--the pathway across the parade,--Mr. Foster led them on. Of course there was eager talk and voluble sympathy; but Mrs. Rayner spoke not a word. The others crowded around him with questions, and her silence passed unnoted except by one.

The moment they were inside the door and alone, Miss Travers turned to her sister: "Kate, what was this man's crime?"

VI.

An unusual state of affairs existed at the big hospital for several days: Mrs. Clancy had refused to leave the bedside of her beloved Mike, and was permitted to remain. For a woman who was notorious as a virago and bully, who had beaten little Kate from her babyhood and abused and hammered her Michael until, between her and drink, he was but the wreck of a stalwart manhood, Mrs. Clancy had developed a degree of devotion that was utterly unexpected. In all the dozen years of their marital relations no such trait could be recalled; and yet there had been many an occasion within the past few years when Clancy's condition demanded gentle nursing and close attention,--and never would have got it but for faithful little Kate. The child idolized the broken-down man, and loved him with a tenderness that his weakness seemed but to augment a thousandfold, while it but served to infuriate her mother. In former years, when he was Sergeant Clancy and a fine soldier, many was the time he had intervened to save her from an undeserved thrashing; many a time had he seized her in his strong arms and confronted the furious woman with stern reproof. Between him and the child there had been the tenderest love, for she was all that was left to him of four. In the old days Mrs. Clancy had been the belle of the soldiers' balls, a fine-looking woman, with indomitable powers as a dancer and conversationalist and an envied reputation for outshining all her rivals in dress and adornment. "She would ruin Clancy, that she would," was the unanimous opinion of the soldiers' wives; but he seemed to minister to her extravagance with unfailing good nature for two or three years. He had been prudent, careful of his money, was a war-soldier with big arrears of bounty and, tradition had it, a consummate skill in poker. He was the moneyed man among the sergeants when the dashing relict of a brother non-commissioned officer set her widow's cap for him and won. It did not take many years for her to wheedle most of his money away; but there was no cessation to the demand, no apparent limit to the supply. Both were growing older, and now it became evident that Mrs. Clancy was the elder of the two, and that the artificiality of her charms could not stand the test of frontier life. No longer sought as the belle of the soldiers' ball-rooms, she aspired to leadership among their wives and families, and was accorded that pre-eminence rather than the fierce battle which was sure to follow any revolt. She became avaricious,--some said miserly,--and Clancy miserable. Then began the downward course. He took to drink soon after his return from a long, hard summer's campaign with the Indians. He lost his sergeant's stripes and went into the ranks. There came a time when the new colonel forbade his re-enlistment in the cavalry regiment in which he had served so many a long year. He had been a brave and devoted soldier. He had a good friend in the infantry, he said, who wouldn't go back on a poor fellow who took a drop too much at times, and, to the surprise of many soldiers,--officers and men,--he was brought to the recruiting officer one day, sober, soldierly, and trimly dressed, and Captain Rayner expressed his desire to have him enlisted for his company; and it was done. Mrs. Clancy was accorded the quarters and rations of a laundress, as was then the custom, and for a time--a very short time--Clancy seemed on the road to promotion to his old grade. The enemy tripped him, aided by the scoldings and abuse of his wife, and he never rallied. Some work was found for him around the quartermaster's shops which saved him from guard-duty or the guard-house. The infantry--officers and men--seemed to feel for the poor, broken-down old fellow and to lay much of his woe to the door of his wife. There was charity for his faults and sympathy for his sorrows, but at last it had come to this. He was lying, sorely injured, in the hospital, and there were times when he was apparently delirious. At such times, said Mrs. Clancy, she alone could manage him; and she urged that no other nurse could do more than excite or irritate him. To the unspeakable grief of little Kate, she, too, was driven from the sufferer's bedside and forbidden to come into the room except when her mother gave permission. Clancy had originally been carried into the general ward with the other patients, but the hospital steward two days afterwards told the surgeon that the patient moaned and cried so at night that the other sick men could not sleep, and offered to give up a little room in his own part of the building. The burly doctor looked surprised at this concession on the part of the steward, who was a man tenacious of every perquisite and one who had made much complaint about the crowded condition of the hospital wards and small rooms ever since the frozen soldiers had come in. All the same the doctor asked for no explanation, but gladly availed himself of the steward's offer. Clancy was moved to this little room adjoining the steward's quarters forthwith, and Mrs. Clancy was satisfied.

Another thing had happened to excite remark and a good deal of it. Nothing short of eternal damnation was Mrs. Clancy's frantic sentence on the head of her unlucky spouse the night of the fire, when she was the central figure of the picture and when hundreds of witnesses to her words were grouped around. Correspondingly had she called down the blessings of the Holy Virgin and all the saints upon the man who rescued and returned to her that precious packet of money. Everybody heard her, and it was out of the question for her to retract. Nevertheless, from within an hour after Clancy's admission to the hospital not another word of the kind escaped her lips. She was all patience and pity with the injured man, and she shunned all allusion to his preserver and her benefactor. The surgeon had been called away, after doing all in his power to make Clancy comfortable,--he was needed elsewhere,--and only two or three soldiers and a hospital nurse still remained by his bedside, where Mrs. Clancy and little Kate were drying their tears and receiving consolation from the steward's wife. The doctor had mentioned a name as he went away, and it was seen that Clancy was striving to ask a question. Sergeant Nolan bent down:

"Lie quiet, Clancy, me boy: you _must_ be quiet, or you'll move the bandages."

"Who did he say was burned? who was he going to see?" gasped the sufferer.

"The new lieutenant, Clancy,--him that pulled ye out. He's a good one, and it's Mrs. Clancy that'll tell ye the same."

"Tell him what?" said she, turning about in sudden interest.

"About the lieutenant's pulling him out of the fire and saving your money."

"Indeed yes! The blessings of all the saints be upon his beautiful head, and--"

"But _who_ was it? What was his name, I say?" vehemently interrupted Clancy, half raising himself upon his elbow, and groaning with the effort. "What was his name? I didn't see him."

"Lieutenant Hayne, man."

"Oh, my God!" gasped Clancy, and fell back as though struck a sudden blow.

She sprang to his side: "It's faint he is. Don't answer his questions, sergeant! He's beside himself! Oh, will ye never stop talking to him and lave him in pace? Go away, all of ye's,--go away, I say, or ye'll dhrive him crazy wid yer--Be quiet, Mike! don't ye spake agin." And she laid a broad red hand upon his face. He only groaned again, and threw his one unbandaged arm across his darkened eyes, as though to hide from sight of all.

From that time on she made no mention of the name that so strangely excited her stricken husband; but the watchers in the hospital the next night declared that in his ravings Clancy kept calling for Lieutenant Hayne.