CHAPTER V
AT FORT SAM HOUSTON
PROMPTLY at the time agreed upon, Mary took her station by the glovecounter, almost sure that Gay would be late. It was one of the WarwickHall traditions that something tragic always happened to Gay's clothesat the last moment, to delay her departure. But she had scarcely seatedherself and deposited her suit-case on the floor beside her when thedoor opened and Gay came breezily into the store. Her hat was awry andher hair disheveled.
"On time for once," she exclaimed triumphantly with a glance at theclock. "But I couldn't have been if Roberta hadn't come to the rescue.She brought me down in their carriage. It's Roberta Mayrell," sheexplained, as they made their way as rapidly as possible down thecrowded aisle.
"She isn't really one of the Army girls, but she lives just outside thePost and has always been counted in everything there, since she was oldenough to talk. I've been telling her all about you on the way down."
"Well, I hope she'll find me as interesting as the alligators," beganMary, remembering the speech she had overheard from the hotel balcony.But Gay was stopping to apologize to an old lady whom she had bumpedinto, and did not hear the remark. The next moment they were outside andat the curbstone, where a carriage drawn by two Kentucky horses was inwaiting, and Roberta was stepping down with outstretched hands towelcome her.
Roberta at close range was even more fascinating than when seen from ahotel balcony, and Mary, sitting between the two girls as they drovealong towards Government Hill, had much the same feeling that a thirstyBedouin has when after miles of desert journeying he finds himselfbeside the well of a green oasis.
They were fairly bubbling over with high spirits, and it was impossibleto be with them and not share their exhilaration. Before they had gonetwo blocks the weight of care and anxiety that had been resting onMary's shoulders ever since Jack's accident, began to slip off. Italmost gave her a sense of having wings, to be so light and care free.
The last eight months with their constant association with suffering andanxiety about finances had been like a hard march through the sands. Nowthe sudden substitution of something frivolous and young was sorefreshing that she giggled almost hysterically in her enjoyment of it.
"Oh, we forgot to tell you," exclaimed Gay as they came in sight of theparade grounds. "There's to be a hop at the gymnasium to-night for thevisiting polo team. They got it up on short notice. Lieutenant Boglintold me about it when I invited him to come to dinner. He asked if hemight take you, and I said he might, for of course you won't want tomiss it, and old Bogey is quite the nicest officer in the bunch when itcomes to giving a girl a good time."
Mary's face wore such a comical expression of blended delight and dismaythat Roberta laughed, and Gay stopped the refusal that Mary wasbeginning to stammer out by putting both hands over her ears.
"No, I won't listen," she declared. "Of course you didn't expect to doanything like this, and didn't bring the proper clothes, but it is suchan informal affair that it doesn't make any difference. Roberta and Ican rig you out in something of mine. It will be all the more fun."
"Oh, it's just the larkiest lark that ever was!" exclaimed Mary soexcited over the prospect that her cheeks were growing redder andredder, and her eyes shining with happy anticipation.
"This day has been full of thrills, and--oo, oo! There goes another!"she added with a little shiver of delight as the band began to play. Thecarriage had stopped at the end of the parade ground, where the usualcrowd of spectators was gathered.
"Martial music always sends cold shivers up and down my back," she saidgravely. "It makes me want to cheer and march right off to do somethingbig and brave--'storm the heights,' or bleed and die for my country, orsomething of that sort. I've always thought that I'd have been a soldierif I hadn't been born a girl."
She laughed as she said it, but there was a quiver of earnestness in hervoice. Parade was a matter-of-course affair to Gay and Roberta, a partof the weekly routine of Post life, which familiarity made ordinary.They exchanged amused glances which Mary did not see, and made remarksand criticisms on the manoeuvres which she did not hear. Whollyabsorbed, she leaned forward in the carriage, watching every movement ofthe drill.
It is always an inspiring sight, even to one who looks no farther thanthe outward show, admiring the clock-like precision which makes abattalion move as one man; but to Mary every khaki coat in the regimentclothed a hero. Lexington and Valley Forge, Gettysburg and Chickamaugacalled to her through every drum-beat and bugle note.
She had loved her old dog-eared copy of the History of the UnitedStates, and many a time had spread it out on her desk to re-read, whenshe should have been studying other things. She had pored over itsstories of war till the black and white of its printed pages hadtransformed her into a little fire-ball of a patriot. Now as she saw forthe first time these men who stood as the guardians of "Old Glory,"everything she had ever read of heroism and blood-stained battle-fieldsand glorious dying, came back to her in a flood of enthusiasm whichnearly lifted her to her feet. When at last the band struck into "TheStar-spangled Banner" and the guns fired the signal which heralded thelowering of the colors, her plain little face was almost transfiguredwith the exalted emotions of the moment.
"Aye, call it holy ground, The soil that they have trod,"
she was repeating to herself, when she became aware that Roberta wastrying to attract her attention, and was holding out a box of candy.
"Come down to earth!" she exclaimed laughingly. "I tried to get you totake some earlier in the action, but you hadn't eyes for anything butthe brass buttons. I don't believe you would have heard thunder!"
"It wasn't brass buttons I was seeing," began Mary. "It was--" Thenrealizing the utter hopelessness of trying to explain what soul-stirringvisions had been hers for that little space of time that the band playedand the heroes of the past as well as the present passed before her, shedid as Roberta advised, came down to earth and took a caramel.
When they reached Major Melville's house in the officers' quarters,Roberta dismissed the carriage and went in with Gay and Mary. She haddecided not to change her dress for the hop, she said as she threw offher long cloak in the hall, revealing the pretty frock of pink and grayfoulard which she had worn at the luncheon.
Mrs. Melville came out to meet them, a large sandy-haired woman with acertain faded fairness and enough of a resemblance to Gay to suggestwhat she might have looked like in her teens. Her cordial welcome putMary at ease at once, and she followed the girls up the broad staircase,feeling that this visit was quite the most delightful thing which hadhappened to her since she left Warwick Hall.
While Gay rummaged through trunks and wardrobes to find party raimentfor her guest, Mary walked about the room, experiencing more thrills atevery turn; for on each wall and book-shelf and bracket was some pictureor souvenir of Warwick Hall or Lloydsboro Valley.
"Oh, there's Lloyd and Betty and the Walton girls!" she cried. "I havethis same picture at home, and one like this of Madam Chartley too, inher high-back chair with the carved griffins on it.
"What a splendid picture this is of Dr. Alex Shelby," she called amoment later. Then catching sight of a larger one on the mantel in asilver frame, she exclaimed in surprise, "Why, you have two of DoctorAlex."
Gay was deep in a closet, her head between rows of dress-skirts, and shemade no answer; but Roberta, perching in the window-seat, cleared herthroat to attract Mary's attention, and then with an impish smile heldup seven fingers and pointed in different directions to five otherphotographs that Mary had not yet discovered.
"One for each day in the week," she said in a low tone. "I'd give a gooddeal to see that man. He was here last spring, but I was down on thecoast and missed him. I intend to make a point of staying at home nexttime he comes. I want to see for myself what's up. Gay pretends thereisn't anything, but I have my own ideas."
"Oh, is he coming again?" cried Mary.
Roberta's only answer was a significant nod, for Gay
emerged from thecloset just then.
"There's nothing in there," she announced, "but I've just thought of onethat Lucy left here this spring. I'll ask mother where it is."
"You see," said Roberta as the door closed behind Gay, "I wouldn't teaseher if she'd confess anything, but she won't. Kitty Walton thinks I'veguessed right too. She said that from the moment she heard about theirromantic meeting she was sure something would come of it."
"Oh, tell me about it," urged Mary. "I know Doctor Alex so well that Ican't help being interested."
"And do you know a place in Lloydsboro Valley called the Log Cabin?"asked Roberta. "A fine country home built of logs and furnished withbeautiful old heirlooms? Gay's sister, Mrs. Harcourt, rented it onesummer."
"Indeed I do know it," assented Mary. "It is a fascinating place, with abig outside fire-place on the porch, and the front is covered with aclimbing rose. We used to pass it often."
"Well, Kitty says that the day after the Harcourts took possession, Gayput a ladder against the front of the house and climbed up on it to hanga mirror on the outside of her window-sill, the way they do in Holland.It was one she had brought all the way from Amsterdam. And while she wasup on the ladder, looking like a picture, of course, with the roses allabout her and the sunshine turning her hair to gold, Dr. Shelby came byon horseback. She saw him in the mirror and the girls teased her aboutit--called it her Lady of Shalott mirror and him her Knight of theLooking-glass. Kitty says he was devotion itself to her all summer."
What more she might have revealed was interrupted by Gay's return. Shetossed an armful of dainty muslin and lace on the bed, and for a fewmoments all three gave their undivided attention to the trying-onprocess.
"I must confess it doesn't look as if it were fitted to you in perfecthealth," confessed Roberta, "but it's one of those soft clinging thingsthat doesn't have to fit like a glove. I can pin it up on you to make itlook all right, and it's so pretty with all that fine lace andembroidery that it'll pass muster anywhere."
Gay sat down to make some slight alteration in the girdle, while Robertainvited Mary to a seat in front of the dressing-table, proposing to tryher skill on her as a hair-dresser. It was all so delightfully intimateand friendly, just such a situation as Mary had longed for in herdream-castle building, that she even felt at liberty to grow a littlepersonal with Roberta. She peeped out through the hair which now hungover her face, to watch Roberta's face reflected in the mirror opposite.
"Do you know," she remarked with a mischievous glance, like a skyeterrier peeping through its bangs, "that I've actually lain awakenights, wondering if you'd been persuaded yet to give up that 'adorablelittle curl.'"
Roberta's mouth opened wide in astonishment, and she dropped the combwith which she was parting Mary's hair.
"How spooky!" she cried. "I was just thinking about that myself. Who inthe world told you anything about that?"
"Oh, I overheard the remark," confessed Mary. "I was on one of thosehotel balconies all hidden by moon-vines when you and Gay and Mr. Wadeand the officer you call Bogey came out into the court. I was solonesome for some young person to talk to, and so close to you all thatI could see the comb slipping out of Gay's hair. I didn't know who shewas then. If I had I should have leaned over the railing and called toher. Wouldn't it have made a sensation?
"I'll never forget how either of you looked. She was in white with whiteviolets, and you were in pale lemon yellow with a scarf over yourshoulders that looked like a white moonbeam spangled with dewdrops. Itslipped down as you started to go and see the alligators, and that Mr.Wade drew it up for you and said what he did about the curl."
"That was the first time he ever mentioned it," explained Roberta. "Ithought when you spoke that you meant last night. I was going to tellGay about it, and as long as you're so interested I don't mind tellingyou, too. You know Mr. Wade has been very nice to me, and I thought hewas great fun until he began to get sentimental. My brother Williamknew him at college, and he told me what I might expect. He said 'thatchap always gets sentimental with every girl he goes with.' It's a greatthing to have plenty of brothers to put you wise.
"When Mr. Wade began that nonsense about wanting one of those littlecurls and its being the most fetching thing he had ever seen I laughedat him. But it only made him the more determined. He wrote some poetryabout wearing it over his heart forever and all that sort of thing. Ifhe only could have known how Billy and I shrieked over it! Of course Ihadn't given him the slightest encouragement, or it would have beendifferent--"
"Roberta," interrupted Gay sternly, "how can you say that? You know youlooked at him. I saw you do it. And when you look out at anybody fromunder those lashes, whether you mean it or not you _do_ lookflirtatious, and you know it."
"I don't!" contradicted Roberta hotly, with boyish directness. "I can'thelp the way my lashes are kinked, and I'm very sure I'm not going topull them out to keep people from getting a wrong impression. Anyhowthere's no kink in my tongue! I told him straight enough what I thoughtof his silly speeches. I put a stop to them last night, all right."
"How?" demanded Gay.
"Well," began Roberta, plaiting Mary's hair so energetically that itpulled dreadfully. "He went over the same performance again, begging mefor that little curl in token that I'd be his'n forevermore, etc. Andafter he'd spun it out into a most romantic proposal I said verysweetly, 'Really, Mr. Wade, to be honest with you, I can't afford togive away a seventy-five cent curl to every man who asks for one. Yousee I'm always financially embarrassed, for papa won't let me borrowafter I've spent my monthly allowance, and I never by any chance have acent left over after the second of the month. But if you must have acurl I'll give you Madame Main's address on Houston Street, where youcan get an exact duplicate. I'm sure it will be just as good to wearover your heart as mine would.'"
"Roberta, you little beast!" laughed Gay. "How could you give him theimpression they were false, when you know very well they grow tight onyour own scalp?"
"I wanted to see if he would say 'with all thy faults I love theestill.' But he didn't. He got very stiff and red and walked away, andspent the rest of the evening flirting with Louie Rowan to show that hedidn't care."
Gay continuing to shake her head in a shocked and disapproving way,Roberta cried out, "I don't care! It's no worse than what you said to acertain freshman who proposed to you."
"I don't call that a proposal," calmly disagreed Gay. "He didn't askanything. He simply took it for granted that I'd fall all over myself toaccept him. Mary, what would you say to a boy, one whom you'd alwaysknown but who'd never been particularly nice to you, who would march upto you some day and say: 'You suit me better than any girl I know, andI'd like to talk over arrangements with you now. Of course we couldn'tmarry till a year after my graduation, but I want to have it settledbefore I go away, so that I'll know what to depend on. My family alltell me that it's risky business, choosing a wife with red hair, but I'mwilling to take the chances.'"
"Now, Gay, you know it wasn't as bald as that," protested Roberta. "Heput in all sorts of 'long and short sweetenin'.'"
"It amounted to the same thing," persisted Gay, and in answer to Mary'sgasping question, "What _did_ you say?" she replied:
"I couldn't speak at first, I was so furious at his speech about redhair. But I managed to tell him several things before I finished, andnothing can be frostier and snippier than a sixteen year old girl whenshe tries to appear very dignified. That was my age then. The thing thatmade him maddest however, was that I told him that even the 'frog whowould a-wooing go' knew how to go about such a matter in a much betterway than he did. That he'd better wait till he was older, and amountedto something more than a mere silly boy. My snubbing almost gave himapoplexy, but it did him good in the long run."
"A proposal, and she was a year younger than I am now," thought Mary,wishing with a queer little throb of envy that she had some suchexperience to confess. Roberta was only nineteen now, and to judge byGay's teasing remarks had had any numbe
r of romantic affairs. Lloyd wasonly fourteen when Phil first began to care so much for her.
Roberta was putting the finishing touches to her hair now, and as Mary'seyes met their wistful reflection in the mirror, she wondered if therewould ever be a time when any one would care enough for her to come toher with the momentous question. She wouldn't mind so much being an oldmaid if she could only have some such experience to lay away in hermemory, as people lay away treasures in rose-leaves and lavender. But sofar she couldn't count even a susceptible youth like young Mr. Wade, ora conceited freshman like Gay's early admirer. She wanted to ask how itfelt to be proposed to, and thus keep the conversation rolling along inthe same interesting groove. But Roberta suddenly switched off tosaddles. She was about to buy a new one, and saddles, as Robertapresented the topic, became so vastly important that Mary did not havethe courage to attempt to turn the talk back to the subject of mere men.
It was one of Roberta's chief characteristics that she swept everythingbefore her by the sheer force of her personality. She dominated whatevercompany she was in, and the most frivolous things she said carriedweight and made people listen because of the way she said them. She madestatements in the same manner she was now thrusting the safety-pins intoMary's skirt-bands, in a direct, forcible way that made people feel thatthey might be depended upon.
"Roberta's pins always stay where they are put," Gay remarkedadmiringly, as she watched the capable way in which Mary was beingfastened into her borrowed gown. "There's no danger of your coming topieces, when she fixes you. Sometimes I think that she must hypnotizethings. It's a gift with her. There! You look perfectly fine. Come ondown stairs and let's try that piece of new music before dinner."
Mary had her doubts about looking perfectly fine. She was uncomfortablyconscious that the dress was not a good fit. It was too tight in thearm-holes and too short in the waist. But the girls seemed proud of thecostume they had evolved for her, the parting glance in the mirrorshowed that the general effect was becoming, and their compliments weremost reassuring. So she followed them down stairs in a very elated and"partified" state of mind.
The old Major's affable greeting as she entered the living-room was ascordial as his wife's had been, and seemed to place her at once on thefooting of an old friend. She sank into the comfortable chair he pushedforward for her with the sensation that she was coming back to afamiliar hearthstone, where she had been a guest many times. It was veryqueer, but it was decidedly pleasant to have it all seem so homelikeand familiar.
With such surroundings Mary ought to have appeared at her best, butRoberta's dominating presence made her silent and shy. It had not hadthat effect when they were up-stairs together, but now in the presenceof older people Roberta gave the effect of a lamp that has suddenly beenturned up to a brighter flame. She was positively brilliant, Marythought, and made everybody else in the room seem of secondary interest.Roberta, who ran in and out every day, felt the same freedom that adaughter of the house would have. She laughingly pushed Mrs. Melvilleinto a chair and ordered her to sit still while _she_ ran up-stairs forthe forgotten spectacles. She joked with the Major about numberlessthings which were meaningless to Mary because she had not shared theirbeginnings, and when she sat down at the piano and played with strongmasterful touches, it really seemed that what Gay had jokingly saidabout her having hypnotic powers was true.
Mary felt as if she had been thrust into a corner and deprived of powerto come out. At first she was so absorbed in her enjoyment of the musicthat she was not conscious of that sensation, but it oppressed her whenLieutenant Boglin and the Captain of the polo team, a Mr. Mills, camein. They were strangers to her but old friends of all the others, andshe suddenly felt herself as self-conscious and shy as the bashfullittle country mouse of the fable. She began to contrast herself withthe other girls, and try to find a reason for the difference which shefelt existed.
"It's partly because they've always lived in the heart of things," shethought, a trifle enviously. "They're used to meeting strangers, andthey're pretty and gifted and accomplished; a very different thing frombeing just 'plain little Mary Ware,' with no talents or _anything_. Ican't even play Yankee Doodle with one finger, as Norman does."
When they went out to dinner the uneven number and the small size of thecompany made the conversation general around the table. If it had been alarger party with only her immediate neighbors to give ear, Mary wassure that she could have found plenty to say to the Major on one side,or to Lieutenant Boglin on the other. But Roberta kept theconversational ball rolling, and always in directions that Mary couldnot follow. She knew nothing of polo or golf or the people of the Post,and the funny stories and quick-witted replies which circled around thetable gave her no opportunity to rise to the occasion as the others did.
"MARY WARE in TEXAS"
"He seated himself beside her, coffee-cup in hand"]
They were all so vastly entertained and entertaining themselves that noone seemed to notice Mary's silence. She was angry with herself becauseshe could not chime in with the others, and thought with flaming cheeksthat they must think her dreadfully stupid and unresponsive; just abread-and-butter miss, not yet out of the nursery. Once there came aplace where an anecdote about Hawkins and a new school-girl would havefitted in beautifully if she could only have mustered up courage to tellit. She had a conundrum too, when the others were propounding them, andhad opened her mouth to tell it--in fact had said "Did you ever hear--"when somebody else who had not heard her tremulous beginning capturedthe attention of the table with one of his own. The sound of her voicethus suddenly stopped made her blush, choke, take a drink of water andsubside into silence again.
It was not until coffee was being served afterward in the living-room,that Mary found her tongue. Roberta did not take coffee, and at theMajor's request had gone to the piano to play a dashing fantasie that healways called for on such occasions. The lieutenant, who, as Mary hadfeared, had classed her as a callow little school-girl who couldn't talkexcept in embarrassed monosyllables, had been wondering why Gay had madesuch a point of his meeting her. Now as he looked across the room at heranimated face, responsive to every chord of the brilliantly executedmusic, he decided that there might be some reason for Gay's interest inher which he had not yet fathomed, and he at once proceeded to find out.
He started towards her, stopping to say in an aside to Gay, "What's thelittle girl's name? I've forgotten. Oh, thank you." Then he deliberatelypulled up a chair, tete-a-tete wise, and seated himself beside her,coffee-cup in hand.
"Miss Ware," he began in a flatteringly confidential tone, "it is an oldsaying that the 'shallows murmur, but the deeps are dumb.' Is that whyyou are so silent this evening?"
It was easy now, under cover of the music, and in response to suchdeferential attention to make a reply, and Mary began at a rate thatmade Bogey "sit up and take notice," as he expressed it afterward.
"No, I was only like the fox in Aesop's fables, the one that went to dinewith the stork, you know. Don't you remember, the stork put the soupinto such a slender-necked deep vase that only a long-beaked bird likehimself could reach it. You see the people you talked about to-nightwere utter strangers to me, and I never saw a polo game, so I couldn'tvery well dip into the conversation."
"By George!" exclaimed Bogey. "That wasn't very considerate of us, _was_it?"
"Oh, I enjoyed it!" Mary hastened to add. "Only I was afraid you'd thinkI was dreadfully stupid. It made me think of the time I used that samefable to get rid of an unwelcome caller when I was at a house-party inKentucky. I wanted to be with the older girls who were to bebridesmaids, and watch their preparations for the wedding, and thischild tagged after me so persistently that I lay awake nights trying toplan some way to get rid of her. It was the fable that finally suggestedit. I had lots of fun playing the stork, but I never realized beforejust how _she_ must have felt, till I took the part of fox to-night."
"Tell me how you did it," insisted the lieutenant. He liked the wayMary's face l
ighted up when she talked, and the way her dimples flashedin and out as she chattered on. Gay looked over approvingly a littlelater when his hearty laugh showed that he was thoroughly amused bysomething that she had said.
The tete-a-tete was ended by the stopping of the music and the arrivalof the man who was to be Gay's escort, and almost immediately after itseemed, although in fact it was half an hour, the 'bus whistle soundedoutside, and Mary was being hurried into her borrowed party cloak andhelped into the waiting 'bus.
"It always goes around the Post collecting passengers on such occasionsas this," Bogey told her. "You can imagine we sometimes have a jollycrowd."
It was an old story to the other passengers, but as they passed thesally port where the sentinel stood attention, Mary nearly fell out inher eagerness to see all the novel sights. The lieutenant smiled at herenthusiasm. Visiting girls always exhibited it in some degree, but neverin quite such a precipitate manner as Mary.
"She's a funny little piece," he thought as the whole 'bus load laughedat her naive comment on the sentinel, "but there is something genuineand likeable about her. She shall have the time of her life to-night ifI can give it to her."