The Shadow of Victory: A Romance of Fort Dearborn

"Kit," she cried, "can you ever forgive me?"

"What did you think?" retorted Katherine, fiercely. "Would he have sent a note to me if he had meant it for my husband? Why didn't he come over instead of writing?"

"I don't know," murmured Mrs. Franklin. For the moment she was afraid, and as the inevitable surmise forced itself into her consciousness, she gazed at Katherine, horror-stricken and dumb.

"I know what you're thinking," said Mrs. Howard, with forced calmness. "It's very charitable of you, but I'm glad to be able to tell you that you're mistaken."

"You poor child!" exclaimed the Captain's wife. She slipped a friendly hand into Katherine's cold one and was not surprised when the overwrought nerves sought relief in tears.

Little by little, Katherine made a full explanation. "It's too small and too silly to talk about," she sighed, "but I haven't been well lately and the slightest thing will worry me almost past endurance. I don't know what's the matter with Ralph – he is not at all like himself, and that troubles me, too."

"Funny," observed Mrs. Franklin, irrelevantly.

"What's funny?"

"Men in general and husbands in particular. Wallace isn't inclined to be jealous, so I've never had that to bother me, but he's as stubborn as a mule, and I guess that's just as bad. Anyhow, I'd like to trade his stubbornness for something else. I'd appreciate the change for a little while, no matter what it was."

"I wouldn't mind that," said Katherine, with the ghost of a smile hovering around her white lips. "I think I could get along better with a stubborn man than I can with a savage."

"Be careful what you say about savages," put in the other, lightly; "you know my aunt is a full-blooded Indian."

"I've often wondered about that. How do you suppose it happened?"

"It is rather queer on the face of it, but it's natural enough, when you think it over. You know Captain Wells was stolen by the Indians when he was a child and he was brought up like one of them. Even after his people found him, he refused to go home, until his two sisters came to plead with him. Then he consented to make them a visit, but he didn't stay long, and went back to the Indians at the first opportunity. Their ways were as impossible to him as his were to them. I'm glad he married the chief's daughter, instead of a common squaw. He and Little Turtle are great friends."

There was a long silence, then Katherine reverted to the original topic. "I never thought of Captain Franklin as stubborn," she said.

"Didn't you? Well, I just wish you could talk to him a while after he gets his mind made up. Before that, there's hope, but not afterward; and you might just as well go out and speak to the stockade around the Fort. He's contrary, too. Yesterday, for instance, he told me he thought he'd have drill, as the men hadn't been out for a long time. I asked him if some of them weren't sick, and he said they were, but it wouldn't hurt the others any. Just then your husband came in and suggested drill. 'Haven't thought about it,' says Wallace, turning away, and the Lieutenant talked ten minutes before he discovered nobody was listening to him. After he went away, George came in and asked about drill. 'We won't have it to-day,' said Wallace, and that was the end of it."

"Was he like that before you were married?"

"Yes, only not so bad. I mistook his determined siege for inability to live without me, but I see now that it was principally stubbornness. He made up his mind to get me, and here I am. He gets worse as he grows older – more 'sot' in his ways, as your mother would say. I don't see how anybody can be that way. He explained it to me once, when we were first married, but I couldn't understand it."

"How did he explain it?"

"Well, as nearly as I can remember, he said that he dreaded to have his mind begin making itself up. It's like a runaway horse that you can't stop. He said he might see that he was wrong and he might want to do differently, but something inside of him wouldn't let him. It seems that his mind suddenly crystallises, and then it's over. A crystal can be broken, but it can't be made liquid again."

"Is his mind liquid?" inquired Katherine, choked with laughter.

"No – I wish it was. I'm glad you're amused, but I'm too close to it to see the fun in it. Wasn't your husband ever stubborn?"

"No; I don't think so – at least, I don't remember. I suppose he can't help being jealous any more than the Captain can help being mulish. I guess they're just born so."

"Marked," suggested Mrs. Franklin.

"Yes – marked. I hadn't thought of that. Before we were married, Ralph was jealous of everybody who spoke to me – man, woman, or brute. I couldn't even pet the cat or talk to the dog."

"Matrimonial traits," observed the Captain's wife, sagely, "are the result of pre-nuptial tendencies. If you look carefully into the subject before you're married, you can see about what you're coming to."

"I guess that's right. I needn't have expected marriage to cure Ralph of jealousy, but, like you, I supposed it was love."

"My dear," said Mrs. Franklin, with feeling, "many a woman mistakes the flaws in a man's character for the ravages of the tender passion – before marriage."

"Well, I never!" said a soft voice behind them. "Kitty and Mamie talking scandal!"

Both women jumped.

"How did you get in?" demanded Mrs. Howard.

"Came in," replied Ronald, laconically.

"Don't you know enough to rap?" asked Mrs. Franklin, angrily. Like others who have been christened "Mary," she was irritated beyond measure at that meaningless perversion of her name.

"Did rap," answered George, selecting the most comfortable chair, "but nobody heard me, so I let myself in."

"How dare you call me 'Kitty'?" exclaimed Mrs. Howard.

"Soldiers aren't afraid of anything except the War Department."

"How long have you been here?" they asked simultaneously.

"Don't all speak at once. I've been here a long, long time – so long, in fact, that I'm hungry." He looked past them as he spoke and gazed pensively out of the window.

Mrs. Franklin's cheeks were blazing and her eyes snapped. "You're the very worst man I ever met," she said.

The Ensign sighed heavily. "And yet I've never been accused of mulishness," he remarked, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling, "nor of jealousy," he added. His mouth was twitching, and the women exchanged glances.

"I admit an enormous appetite," he continued. "Wonder if it's the ravages of the tender passion?"

Mrs. Howard brought in a plate of cookies and set it ostentatiously within his reach. "Lovely woman!" apostrophised George. "She feeds me! Radiant vision, will you be mine?"

There was a dead silence.

"Queer, isn't it," observed the guest, between mouthfuls, and apparently to himself, "that women should look so pretty when they're mad?"

"Your wife will be pretty all the time, then," said Mrs. Franklin.

"I trust so. She'll have to have a good start at it, or she won't get me, and with the additional stimulus which living with me will give her, she'll be nearly as lovely as the wives of the other officers at Fort Dearborn. I could give her no higher praise. These cookies are all gone."

"I know it," replied Mrs. Howard. "I gave you all I had left."

"If I might presume," said Ronald, "I'd like the prescription they were made by, to give to my wife, when I get one. I suppose it's more in the making than in the prescription, and though I'll undoubtedly like 'em, my native love of truth will oblige me to tell her that they don't come up to those Kitty – pardon me, Mrs. Howard – used to make for me. I always think of you by your first name," he went on. "I know it's wrong, but I can't help it. You're so good to me. Isn't there one more cooky?"

"No, there isn't."

"Your mother makes surpassing doughnuts. Did she ever teach you how?"

"Oh, yes," responded Mrs. Howard, coolly; "but I don't make them very often. I haven't made any for months."