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Still she did not go. I realized her predicament, and was childish enough to enjoy it, for Blakely's mother could not bear to accept a favor from a social inferior. Had I been a child, she would have patted me on the head and presented me with a sugar plum. As matters stood she was quite at sea; she wished to do something gracious she didn't know how.
And still, despite the growing hours, neither shot nor sign came from the accustomed haunts of the surrounding foe. Six o'clock was marked by Blakely's watch.
"Beginning the ev'ning after the command left?" he said. "Let me see. Why, I ain't crossed since the Colonel left." "Account for your time," repeated Oliver. "I messed at Blakely's that night. Afterward, me and Kippis had a little game." "What game?" "Cards." "Ah!" At once, Oliver sent for the sutler and the sergeant, and, waiting for them, tramped up and down.
Truman and the little Trumans slumbered peacefully aloft. After reading an hour or so the lieutenant fell into a doze from which he awoke with a start. Mrs. Truman was bending over him. Mrs. Truman had been aroused by hearing voices in cautious, yet excited, colloquy in the shadows of Blakely's back porch.
And the major held forth an object that gleamed in the last rays of the slanting sunshine. It was Blakely's beautiful watch. The dawn of another cloudless day was breaking and the dim lights at the guard-house and the hospital burned red and bleary across the sandy level of the parade.
One after another, Truman and Todd, Wren and Mullins, told their stories, bringing forth little that was new beyond the fact that Todd was sure it was Elise he heard that night "jabbering with Downs" on Blakely's porch. Todd felt sure that it was she who brought him whisky, and Byrne let him prattle on. It was not evidence, yet it might lead the way to light.
I never was so sorry for anybody in my whole life as I was for Blakely; I would have done anything to have saved him the bitterness and humiliation of that moment. As for Dad, he couldn't understand it at all. That Blakely's mother should refuse to meet his Elizabeth was quite beyond his comprehension. "This is very strange," he said, "very strange. There must be some mistake.
Ahorah and his swarthy partner were already gone, "started even before six," said the acting sergeant major, and Blakely was fuming with impatience and sense of something much amiss. Doty was obviously dodging him, there could be no doubt of that, for the youngster was between two fires, the post commander's positive orders on one hand and Blakely's urgent pleadings on the other.
He had Blakely's last letter to himself, written just before the lonely start in quest of Angela, but that letter made no reference to the contents of the box or to anything concerning their past. He had heard that Wales Arnold had been intrusted with letters for Blakely to Clarice, his wife, and to Captain, or Miss Janet Wren. Arnold had not been entirely silent on the subject.
Plume had stared hard at his adjutant a moment, then, whipping up the sun hat that he had dropped on his desk, and merely saying, "I'll return shortly," had sped to his darkened quarters and not for an hour had he reappeared. Then the first thing he asked for was that letter of Mr. Blakely's, which, this time, he read with lips compressed and twitching a bit at the corners.
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