THE AMULET

THE AMULET

A Novel

BY CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK AUTHOR OF “THE STORM CENTRE,” “THE STORY OF OLD FORT LOUDON,” “A SPECTRE OF POWER,” “THE FRONTIERSMEN,” “THE PROPHET OF THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS,” ETC., ETC.

New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 1906 All rights reserved

Copyright, 1906, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1906. Norwood Press J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

THE AMULET

THE AMULET

CHAPTER I

The aspect of the lonely moon in this bleak night sky exerted a strange fascination upon the English girl. She often paused to draw the improvised red curtain at the tiny window of the log house that served as the commandant’s quarters and gaze upon the translucent sphere as it swung westering above the spurs of the Great Smoky Mountains, which towered in the icy air on the horizon. Beneath it the forests gleamed fitfully with frost; the long snowy vistas of the shadowy valleys showed variant tones of white in its pearly lustre. So dominant was the sense of isolation, of the infinite loneliness of the wilderness, that to her the moon was like this nowhere else. A suspended consciousness seemed to characterize it, almost an abeyance of animation, yet this still serene splendor did not suggest death. She had long ago been taught, indeed, that it was an extinct and burnt-out world. But in this strange new existence old theories were blunted and she was ready for fresh impressions. This majestic tranquillity seemed as of deep and dreamless slumber, and the picturesque

fancy of the Indians that the moon is but the sun[2] asleep took strong hold on her imagination. She first heard the superstition one evening at dusk, as she stood at the window with one end of the curtain in her hand, and asked her father what was the word for “moon” in the Cherokee language.

“Don’t know! The moon in English is bright enough for me!” exclaimed Captain Howard, as he sat in his easy-chair before the fire with his glass of wine. A decanter was on the table beside him, and with venison and wild-fowl for the solid business of dinner, earlier in the afternoon, and chocolate-and-cocoanut custard, concocted by his daughter, for the “trifle,” he had fared well enough.

Very joyous he was in these days. The Seven Years’ War was fairly over, the treaty of peace concluded, and the surrender of the French forts on the American frontier already imminent, even thus early in the spring of 1763. His own difficult tour of service, here at Fort Prince George, the British stronghold on the eastern edge of the Cherokee country, was nearing its close. He, himself, was to be transferred to a post of ease and comfort at Charlestown, where he would enjoy the benignities of social courtesies and metropolitan association, and where his family, who had come out from England for the purpose, could join him for a time. Indeed, on his recent return from South Carolina, where he had spent a short leave of absence, he had brought thence with him his eldest daughter, an intelligent girl of eighteen years, who was opening great eyes at the wonders of this new world, and who had specially[3] besought the privilege of a peep into the wilderness, now that the frontier was quiet and safe.

George Mervyn, a captain-lieutenant of the garrison, a youth whom her father greatly approved,—the grandson of his nearest neighbor at home in Kent, Sir George Mervyn,—was inclined to pose as a picturesque incident himself of the frontier, the soldier who had fought its battles and at last pacified it. Now he suddenly developed unsuspected linguistic accomplishments. He was tall, blond, and bland, conventional of address, the model of decorous youth. He seemed quiet, steady, trustworthy. His was evidently the material of a valuable future. He rose and joined her at the window.

“There is no more moon,” he said with a somewhat affected but gentlemanly drawl. “You must realize that, Miss Howard. This is ‘the sleeping sun,’ You must not expect to see the moon on the frontier.”

“Only a stray moonling, now and then,” another subaltern struck in with a laugh.

There was something distinctly sub-acid in the quick clear-clipped tones, and Captain Howard lifted his head with a slightly corrugated brow. He looked fixedly into his glass as if he discerned dregs of bitterness lurking therein. He was experiencing a sentiment of surprise and annoyance that had earlier harassed him, to be dismissed as absurd; but now, recurring, it seemed to have gathered force. These two young men were friends of the Damon-and-Pythias type. Their one-ness of heart and unanimity of thought had been of infinite service[4] to him in the many difficult details of his command at Fort Prince George,—a flimsy earth-work with a block-house or two, garrisoned by a mere handful of troops, in a remote wilderness surrounded by a strong and savage foe. These officers had been zealous to smooth each other’s way; they had vied to undertake onerous duties, to encounter danger, to palliate short-comings. They were always companions when off duty; they hunted and fished together; they were on terms of intimate confidence, even privileged to read each other’s letters. They

were sworn comrades, and yet to-day (Captain Howard did not know how to account for it—he was growing old, surely) neither had addressed a kindly word to the other; nay, Ensign Raymond was sharply and apparently intentionally sarcastic.

Captain Howard wondered that Arabella did not notice it, but there she stood by the window, the curtain in her hand, the light of the great flaring fire on the hair, a little paler than gold, which she had inherited from her Scotch mother, and the large, sincere, hazel English eyes which were like Captain Howard’s own. The delicate rose tint of her cheek did not even fluctuate; she looked calmly at the young men as they glared furiously at each other. But for her presence Captain Howard would have ordered them to their respective quarters to avoid a collision. Fort Prince George was not usually the scene of internecine strife. He resented the suggestion as an indignity to himself. It impaired the flavor of the dinner he had enjoyed, and jeopardized[5] digestion. It was a disrespect to the formality with which he had complimented the occasion of his daughter’s arrival, inviting his old neighbor’s grandson, with his especial friend, and wearing his powdered wig, his punctilious dress uniform, pumps, and silk hose. It had been long since his table was

graced by a woman arrayed ceremoniously for dinner, and the sight of his daughter in her rose-hued tabby gown, with shining arms and shoulders and a string of pearls around her throat, was a pleasant reminder to him, in this bleak exile, of the customs of old times, soon to be renewed, the more appreciated for compulsory disuse. Captain Howard, watching the group as the young men glowered at each other, was amazed to think that she looked as if she enjoyed it, the image of demure placidity.

“The Cherokees call the moon Neusse anantoge, ‘the sleeping sun,’” said the captain-lieutenant, making no rejoinder to Raymond.

“La! How well you speak their language, Mr. Mervyn, to be sure. Oh-h, how musical! As lovely as Italian! Oh-h-h—how I wish I could learn it before I go back to England! Sure, ’twould be monstrous genteel to know Cherokee in London. Neusse anantoge. I’ll remember that. ‘The sleeping sun.’ I’ll say that again. Neusse anantoge. Neusse anantoge.”

“Neusse anantoge!” cried Raymond, with a fleering laugh. “Gad, Mervyn, you are moon-struck.”

His bright dark eyes were angry, although laughing. They seemed to hold a light like coals of fire, sometimes[6] all a-smoulder, and again vivid with caloric or choler. With his florid complexion and dark hair and eyes the powder had a decorative emphasis which the appearance of neither of the other men attained. The lace cravat about his throat was of fine texture and delicately adjusted, but it was frayed along the edge in more than one place and the lapels of his red coat hardly concealed this. Woman-like she was quick to discern the insignia of genteel poverty, and she pitied him with a sympathy which she would not have felt for a rent of the skin or a broken bone. These were but the natural incidents of a soldier’s life; blows and bruises must needs be cogeners. She divined that his education and his commission were all of value at his command,—the younger son of a good family, but poor and proud,—and it was hard to live in a world of lace and powder on so slender an endowment. She began to hate the precise and priggish George Mervyn who roused him so, although

the provocation came from Raymond, and she was already wondering at her father that this dashing man, who had a thousand appeals to a poetic imagination, stood no higher in favor. She did not realize that a long command at Fort Prince George was no promoter of a poetic imagination.

As Raymond spoke Miss Howard turned eagerly toward him, the dark red curtain still in her hand, showing a section of the bleak, moonlit, wintry scene in the distance, and in the foreground the stockaded ramparts, the guard-house, its open door emitting an orange-tinted flare of fire, the blue-and-black shadows[7] lurking about the block-house and the hard-trodden snow of the deserted parade.

“What do you say it should be, then?” she demanded peremptorily, as if she were determined not to be brought to confusion by venturing incorrect Cherokee in London,—as if there a slip of the tongue would be easily detected!

“How much Cherokee does he know?” interposed Mervyn, satirically. “We keep an interpreter in constant employ,—expressly for him.”

Raymond was spurred on to assert himself.

“Neusse anantoge!” he jeered. “Then what do you make of Nu-da-su-na-ye-hi? That is ‘the sun sleeping in the night.’ And see here, Nu-da-ige-hi. That is ‘the sun living in the day.’”

“That?—why, that is the Lower town dialect.”

“Oh, the Lower town dialect!” Raymond, in derision, whirled about on the heels of his pumps, for he too was displaying all the glory of silk hose. “The Lower town dialect,—save the mark! It is Overhill Cherokee.”

“Oh,—oh,—are there two dialects of the Cherokee language?” cried Arabella. “How wonderful! And of the different towns! Oh-h—which are the lower towns? and oh,—Mr. Raymond, how prodigiously clever to know both the dialects!”

Captain Howard lifted his head with a brusque challenge in his eye. He tolerated none but national quarrels. He did not understand the interests in conflict. But he thought to end them summarily. The words “moonling,” “moon-struck,” and the tone[8] of the whole conversation were not conducive to the conservation of the peace. Raymond had conducted himself in a very surly and nettling manner all through the day toward his quondam friend, who, so far as Captain Howard could see, had given him no cause of offence.

He was obviously about to strike into the conversation, and all three faces turned toward him, alert, expectant. The suave inscrutable countenance of the young lady merely intimated attention, but it was difficult for the two young men to doff readily their half scoffing expressions of anger and defiance and assume the facial indicia of respect and deference and bland subservience due to their host, their senior, and their superior officer.

His sister, however, quickly forestalled his acrid comments. Mrs. Annandale ostensibly played the part of duenna to her niece and of acquiescent chorus to her brother’s dictatorial opinions. But in her secret heart she controverted his every prelection, and she countermarched his intentions with an unsuspected skill that was the very climax of strategy, for she brought him to the conviction that they were his own plans she had furthered and his own orders she had executed. Her outer aspect aided her designs—it was marvellously incongruous with the character of tactician. She had a scanty little visage, pale and wrinkled, with small pursed-up lips, closely drawn in meek assent, and small bright eyes that twinkled timorously out from gray lashes. A modish head-dress surmounted and concealed her thin[9] gray locks, and an elaborately embroidered kerchief, crossed over the bosom of her puce-colored satin gown, conforming in the décolleté cut to the universal fashion of the day, hid the bones of her wasted little figure. She was very prim, and mild, and

upright, as she sat in the primitive arm-chair, wrought by the post-carpenter and covered with a buffalo-skin. In a word she turned the trend of the discourse.

“M—m—m,” she hesitated. “Sure, ’twould seem one dialect might express all the ideas of the Indians—they have a monstrous talent for silence.”

She looked directly at Raymond from out her weak, blinking little eyes.

“They talk more among themselves, madam, and when at home,” responded Raymond, turning away from the young people at the window, and leaning against the high mantel-piece, one hand on the shelf as he stood on the opposite side of the fire from Mrs. Annandale. “They are ill at ease here at the fort,—the presence of the soldiers abashes and depresses them; they are much embittered by their late defeat.”

Mrs. Annandale shuddered. She was afraid of wind and lightning; of waters and ghosts; of signs and omens; of savages and mice; of the dark and of the woods; of gun-powder and a sword-blade.

“And are you not frightened of them, Mr. Raymond?” she quavered.

He stared in amazement, and Captain Howard, restored to good temper, cocked up his eyes humorously[10] at the young soldier. The vivid red and white of Raymond’s complexion, his powdered side-curls, and his bold, bright hazel eyes, were heightened by the delicacy of his lace cravat, and his red uniform was brought out in fine effect by the flaring light of the deep chimney-place, but Mrs. Annandale’s heart was obdurate to all such appeals, even vicariously. A side glance had shown her that the young people at the window had drawn closer together and a low-toned and earnest conversation was in progress there,—the captain-lieutenant was talking fast and eagerly, while the girl, holding the curtain, looked out at the dreary wintry aspect of the sheeted wilderness, the frontier fort, and the “sleeping sun” resting softly in the pale azure sky, high, high above the Great Smoky Mountains. The duenna pressed her lips together in serene satisfaction.

“M—m—m. I should imagine you would be so frightened of the Indians, Mr. Raymond,” she said.

“Ha—ha—ha—!” laughed Captain Howard, outright.

Mrs. Annandale claimed no sense of humor, but she was a very efficient mirth-maker, nevertheless.

“I am beholden to you, madam,” said the young soldier, out of countenance. He could not vaunt his courage in the presence of his commander, nor would he admit fear even in fun. He was at a loss for a moment.

“It is contrary to the rules of the service to be afraid of the Indians,” he said after a pause; “Captain Howard does not permit it.”

[11]“Oh,—but how can anyone help it!—and they are so monstrous ugly!”

“They are considered very fine men, physically,” said Raymond.

“But they will never make soldiers,” interpolated Captain Howard. The English government had done its utmost with the American Indians, as with other subdued peoples of its dependencies, both earlier and later, to incorporate their martial strength into the British armies, but the aborigines seemed incapable of being moulded by the discipline of the drill and the regulations of the camp, and deserted as readily as they were enlisted, rewards and penalties alike of no effect.

“Oh, Mr. Raymond, no one could think them handsome!—they are—greasy!”

“The grease is to afford a surface for their paint, you must understand. But it is a horribly unclean and savage custom.”

He never could account for a shade of offence on the lady’s expressionless, limited face and a flush other than that of the rouge on her delicate, little flabby cheek. How should he know that that embellishment was laid on a gentle coating of pomade after the decrees of fashion. He was not versed in the methods of cosmetics. He had been on the frontier for the last three years—since his boyhood, in fact, and that grace and gentlemanliness which so commended his address were rather the results of early training and tradition than the influence of association with cultured circles of society. He knew that[12] he had said something much amiss and he chafed at the realization.

“I am fitter for an atmosphere of gun-powder than attar of roses,” he said to himself with a half glance over his shoulder at the window, the pale moonlight making the face of the girl poetic, ethereal, and shimmering on her golden hair.

The next moment, however, Mrs. Annandale claimed his attention, annulling the idea that there had been aught displeasing in his remark.

“But sure, Mr. Raymond, there were never towns, called towns, such as theirs—la!—what a disappointment, to be sure!”

“Ha! ha! ha!” exclaimed Captain Howard, mightily amused. “So you are looking for the like of Bond Street and Charing Cross and the Strand—eh!—in Estatoe, and Kulsage, and Seneca,—ha! ha! ha!”

Raymond winced a trifle lest the fragile little lady should find this soldier-like pleasantry too bluff for a sensitive nature, but she laughed with a subdued, deprecating suggestion of merriment. He could not imagine, as she lent herself to this ridicule, that she construed it as humoring the folly of the commandant, of whom indeed she always spoke behind his back in a commiserating way as “poor dear Brother.” She had so often outwitted the tough old soldier that she looked upon his prowess as a vain thing, his fierce encounters with the national foe mere figments of war compared with those subtle campaigns in which she so invariably worsted him. She laughed at herself. She could afford it.

[13]“Dear Brother,” she said, “Charlestown is not London, to be sure, but we found it vastly genteel for its size. There is everything a person of taste requires for life—on a scale, to be sure—on a minute scale. But there is a theatre, and a library of books, so learning is not neglected, and a race-course, and a society of tone. Lord, sir, strangers, well introduced, have nothing to complain of. I’m sure Arabella and I were taken about till we could have dropped with fatigue, Mr. Raymond—what with Whisk and Piquet for me and a minuet for her, night after night, everywhere we went, we might well have thought ourselves in London. And Lord, sir, the British officers there are so content they seem to think they have achieved Paradise.”

“I’ll warrant ’em,” and Captain Howard wagged his head scoffingly, meditating on the contrast with his past hardships in the frontier service.

“And being mightily charmed with what I had seen of the province I was struck with a cold chill by the time I’d crossed Ashley Ferry—the woods half dark by day and a cavern by night; and such howlings of owls, and lions, and tigers, I presume—”

“Oh, ho—ho—ho!” exclaimed Captain Howard. “I’ll detail you, Ensign Raymond, to drill the awkward squad in natural history.”

Raymond, responsive to the spirit of the jest, stood at attention and saluted, as if receiving a serious assignment to duty.