Betty at Fort Blizzard Part 10

McGillicuddy's kindness, and so it came about that the McGillicuddys took care of Lawrence's boy, whose face grew round and rosy with the generous McGillicuddy fare. A part of Mrs. McGillicuddy's good will to him was that she instructed Ignatius and Aloysius McGillicuddy, both excellent fist fighters for their age, that they were to lick any boy, no matter what his age or size, who dared to taunt little Ronald about his father or anything else. These orders were extremely agreeable to the McGillicuddy boys, who loved fighting for fighting's sake, and who sought occasions to practise the manly art.

Colonel Fortescue sent word to Mrs. Lawrence that she could occupy her quarters until she was able to make some plan for the future. It seemed, however, utterly indefinite when Mrs. Lawrence would be able to plan anything. She lay in her bed or sat in her chair, silent, pale, and as weak as a child. The blow of her husband's desertion seemed to have stopped all the springs of action. Neither the chaplain, the post-surgeon, nor Mrs. McGillicuddy, singly or united, could rouse Mrs.

Lawrence from the deadly la.s.situde of a broken heart. Both the chaplain and the surgeon had seen such cases, and nothing in the pharmacopoeia could cure them.

Mrs. Fortescue, whose heart was not less tender from long dwelling on the airy heights of happiness and perfect love, was full of sympathy for Lawrence's unfortunate wife, and would have gone to see her, but Mrs. McGillicuddy, who delivered the message, brought back a discouraging reply.

"She says, mum, as she don't need nothin' at all, and I think, mum, she kinder shrinks from the orficers' wives more than from the soldiers'

wives."

Anita, who was sitting by, went to her mother and, putting her arms around Mrs. Fortescue's neck, whispered:

"Mother, let me go to see Mrs. Lawrence. I don't think she will mind seeing me. You and daddy are always telling me that I am only a child."

Mrs. Fortescue took Anita in her lap, as if the girl were indeed the age of the After-Clap.

"Do what you like, dear child," she said. "Girls like you can do some things that women can't, because you have the enormous advantage of not knowing anything."

CHAPTER VI

SOME LETTERS AND KETTLE'S ENLISTMENT

Anita, who could plan things quite as well as if she were forty instead of eighteen, bided her time until the hour when Mrs. McGillicuddy was putting the After-Clap to bed. Then the girl slipped away and took the road to the long street of the married men's quarters. An icy fog swept from the Arctic Circle, enveloped the world, hiding both moon and stars, and made the great arc lamps look like little points of light in the great ocean of white mist. Every step of the way Anita's heart and will battled fiercely together. Broussard knew Mrs. Lawrence in some mysterious way. Perhaps he had loved her once; Anita was all a woman, and at seventeen was learned in the affairs of the heart.

This woman, however, between whom and Broussard some strong link was forged, Anita knew not when, nor how, nor where, was ill and poor and suffering, and Anita's natural inclinations were merciful. Besides, she had been taught by her father and mother the great lessons of life in kindness and tenderness. She had seen her father give up a party of pleasure to walk behind the pine coffin of a private soldier, and her mother had robbed her greenhouse of its choicest blossoms to lay a wreath on a soldier's grave.

By instinct, rather than sight, Anita stopped in front of the right door and met the chaplain coming out.

"Glad to see you, Anita," said the chaplain, who was m.u.f.fled up to his eyes. "Go in and talk to that poor lady. We all want to help her, but we find it hard, for she will tell nothing of herself, of her family, or anything, except that she knows Lawrence didn't mean to desert, and will yet report himself."

In the plain little bedroom Mrs. Lawrence lay on her bed, the shaded electric light by her bedside showing her thin face, made more pallid by the great braids of l.u.s.trous black hair that fell about her. A look of faint surprise came into her languid eyes as Anita drew a chair to her bed and took her hand.

"My mother sent me," Anita said, gently, "to ask if I could do anything for you."

Mrs. Lawrence murmured her thanks, and then hesitated for a moment, the words trembling upon her lips.

"Yes," she said, "you can do something for me. Something I haven't asked anybody to do. I tried to ask the chaplain just now--he is a kind man, and tries to help me but for some reason my courage failed; I don't know why, but I didn't ask him. It is, to write a letter for me."

"Certainly I will write a letter for you," said Anita.

"It is to Mr. Broussard," answered Mrs. Lawrence.

The thought of writing to Broussard startled and overwhelmed Anita.

She glanced about her nervously, fearing Mrs. Lawrence's words had been overheard, and stammered and blushed. But the woman, lying wan and weak in the bed, did not notice this.

"I am not strong enough to dictate it exactly as I want," said Mrs.

Lawrence, "and you will have to write it at your own home. But I am very anxious for you to write to Mr. Broussard for me and tell him that my husband is missing and will soon be posted as a deserter; that I don't know where he is, but I am sure he will return. Don't tell Mr.

Broussard how ill I am, but just say that the Colonel has let me stay on here, and the boy is well. Mr. Broussard is my husband's best friend; they were playmates in boyhood."

A dead silence fell between the woman and the girl and lasted for some minutes. Anita was already composing the letter in her mind.

"Perhaps before I go I can do something else for you," she said presently.

"No, everything has been done for me, and Mrs. McGillicuddy brings the boy over every night to tell me good-night. What you can do for me is to write the letter, as I asked you, and post it to-night. It can't reach Mr. Broussard in less than a month, perhaps two months. The last letter I received from him he was in some wild place a long distance from Guam, but he will get the letter eventually, if he lives."

Anita rose and walked back home through the icy mist. Mrs. Fortescue was in the shaded drawing-room seated at her harp, playing soft chords and arpeggios, with Colonel Fortescue leaning over her chair. If was a picture Anita had often seen, and at those times, from her childhood and from Beverley's, they were made to feel that they were secondary, and even the After-Clap was superfluous. Nevertheless, Anita walked into the room. The Colonel and Mrs. Fortescue started apart like young lovers.

"I have been to see Mrs. Lawrence," said Anita, "and she asked me if I would write a letter for her. She didn't, of course, tell me not to say anything about it to you, mother and daddy, but I would rather not tell you to whom the letter is to be written. You must trust me, my own dear daddy. It is a very simple letter, just to say that Lawrence has disappeared and Mrs. Lawrence and the little boy are in kind hands."

"Of course we trust you," answered Colonel Fortescue, smiling. "You are a very trusty person, Anita."

"Like my father and mother," answered Anita, and ran out of the room.

As they heard her light step tripping up the stairs, the father and mother looked at each other with troubled eyes.

"It is to Broussard," said the Colonel, remembering his last interview with him. "I think Broussard steadily befriended Lawrence and his wife."

Mrs. Fortescue's candid eyes grew clouded.

"It is a strange intimacy," she said.

"It's all right," unhesitatingly replied the Colonel.

"Oh, well," said Mrs. Fortescue, touching the harpstrings, "If you are fomenting a love affair between Anita at Fort Blizzard and Broussard in the tropics, it is your affair."

"Elizabeth," said the Colonel, "I am not a person to foment love affairs, or any other private and personal affairs."

"I said _if_ you were fomenting a love affair, John," replied Mrs.

Fortescue; and then there was no more music from the harp, the Colonel going into his office and Mrs. Fortescue to the After-Clap's nursery.

In her own little room Anita was already hard at work on her letter to Broussard. It was a very short and simple letter, telling exactly, and only, what Mrs. Lawrence had asked, and it was signed "Sincerely Yours." But when it was to be sealed Anita's insurgent heart cried out to be heard, and she added a little postscript, which read:

"Gamechick is very well and sends his love. I ride him nearly every day."

Anita would not trust her precious letter to the mail orderly, or even Sergeant McGillicuddy or Kettle, but throwing her crimson mantle around her, she slipped out, in the cold mist, to the letter box. For one moment she held the letter poised in her hand before it took its flight toward the tropics; Anita's tender heart went with the letter.

A fortnight later, the March sun having come in place of the February snows, Mrs. McGillicuddy succeeded in dragging Mrs. Lawrence out of doors, one day about noon, and after placing her on a bench in the glow of the light, went off to look after the eight McGillicuddys, the little Lawrence boy, and the After-Clap, none of whom could have got on without her. Colonel Fortescue, coming out of the headquarters building, and going to his own house, pa.s.sed Mrs. Lawrence, sitting on the bench. The Colonel, who knew her well enough by sight, raised his cap and, stopping a moment, asked courteously after her health.

"I am better," replied Mrs. Lawrence, "and I want to thank you for your kindness in letting me stay in the quarters. I will not trespa.s.s any longer than I can help."

"May I ask," said the Colonel, kindly, "if you have any friends with whom I could help you to communicate?"

Mrs. Lawrence smiled as she answered:

"I have relatives, if that is what you mean. But I do not care to communicate with them. Please understand me that I do not, for a moment, admit that my husband is a deserter."

"I wish I could think he was not," said Colonel Fortescue, "but unfortunately, his misconduct----"