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Found in the Philippines: The Story of a Woman's Letters, a novel by Charles King |
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Chapter 8 |
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_ CHAPTER VIII Social circles at West Point at long, rare intervals are shocked by a scandal, and at short ones, say every other summer--are stirred by some kind of a sensation, and the "Fairy Sisters" were the sensation of the year '97. They came in July; they went in September, and meanwhile they were "on the go," as they expressed it, from morn till late at night. Physically they were the lightest weights known to the hop room. Mentally, as their admirers in the corps expressed it, "either of them can take a fall out of any woman at the Point," and this was especially true of the elder--Mrs. Frank Garrison--whose husband was on staff duty in the far West. Both were slight, fragile, tiny blondes with light blue eyes, with lighter, fluffy hair, with exquisite little hands and feet, with oval, prettily shaped faces, and the younger--the maiden sister, had a bewitching mouth and regular, snowy dots of teeth of which she was justly proud. Yet, as has been previously said of Mrs. Frank, while the general effect was in the case of each that of an extremely pretty young girl, the elder had no really good features, the younger only that one. They generally dressed very much alike in light, flimsy gowns, and hats, gloves and summer shoes all of dazzling white--sometimes verging for a change to a creamy hue--but colors, except for sashes or summer shawls, seemed banished from their wardrobes. They danced divinely, said the corps, and preferred cadet partners, to the joy of the battalion. They rode fearlessly and well, and had stunning hats and habits, but few opportunities for display thereof. They came tripping down the path from the hotel every morning, fresh and fair as daisies, in time for guard mounting, and at any hour after that could be found chatting with cadet friends at the visitors' tent, strolling arm in arm about the shaded walks with some of their many admirers until time to dress for the evening hop, where they never missed a dance, and on rainy days, or on those evenings when there was neither hop nor band practice, they could be found, each in some dimly lighted, secluded nook about the north or west piazza or on the steps leading down to the "Chain Battery Walk," sometimes surrounded by a squad of cadet friends, but more frequently in murmured tete-a-tete with only one cavalier. In the case of Mrs. Frank no member of the corps seemed especially favored. She was just the same to every one. In the case of her younger sister--Miss Terriss--there presently developed a dashing young cadet captain who so scientifically conducted his campaign that he headed off almost all competitors and was presently accorded the lead under the universally accepted theory that he had won the little lady's heart. Observant women--and what women are not observant--of each other?--declared both sisters to be desperate flirts. Society at the Point frowned upon them and, after the first formal call or two, dropped them entirely--a thing they never seemed to resent in the least, or even to notice. They were never invited out to tea or dinner on the post--solemn functions nowhere near so palatable as the whispered homage of stalwart young manhood. "Nita is yet such a child she infinitely prefers cadet society, and I always did like boys," explained Mrs. Garrison. Some rather gay old boys used to run up Saturday afternoons on the Mary Powell and spend Sunday at the Point--Wall Street men of fifty years and much lucre. "Dear old friends of father's," Mrs. Frank used to say, "and I've simply got to entertain them." Entertained they certainly were, for her wit and vivacity were acknowledged on every side, and entertained not only collectively, but severally, for she always managed to give each his hour's confidential chat, and on the Sundays of their coming had no time to spare for cadet friends. Moreover, she always drove down in the big 'bus with them Monday morning when the Powell was sighted coming along that glorious reach from Polopel's Island, and stood at the edge of the wharf waving her tiny kerchief--even blowing fairy kisses to them as they steamed away. No wonder Nita Terriss was frivolous and flirtatious with such an example, said society, and its frowns grew blacker when the White Sisters, the Fairy Sisters--the "Sylphites," came in view. But frowns and fulminations both fell harmless from the armor of Mrs. Frank's gay insouciance. Nita winced at first, but soon rallied and bore the slights of the permanent and semi-permanent residents as laughingly as did her more experienced sister. Nita, it was explained, was only just out of school, and Mrs. Frank was giving her this summer at the Point as a great treat before taking her to the far West, where the elder sister must soon go to join her husband. Everybody knew Frank Garrison. He had long been stationed at the Academy, and was a man universally liked and respected--even very highly regarded. All of a sudden the news came back to the Point a few months after his return to his regiment that he was actually engaged to "Witchie" Terriss. Hot on the heels of the rumor came the wedding cards--Lieutenant-Colonel and Mrs. Terriss requested the honour of your presence at the marriage of their daughter Margaret to Lieutenant Francis Key Garrison, --th U. S. Cavalry, at the Post Chapel, Fort Riley, Kansas, November --, 1894--all in Tiffany's best style, as were the cards which accompanied the invitation. "What a good thing for old Bill Terriss!" said everybody who knew that his impecuniosity was due to the exactions and extravagancies of his wife and "Witchie."--"And what a bad thing for Frank Garrison!" was the echo. His intimates knew that he had "put by" through economy and self-denial about two thousand dollars, the extent of his fortune outside of his pay. "She'll make ducks and drakes of it in the six weeks' honeymoon," was the confident prophecy, and she probably did, for, despite the fact that he had so recently rejoined the regiment, "Witchie" insisted on a midwinter run to New Orleans, Savannah and Washington, and bore her lord, but not her master, over the course in triumph. To a student of human nature--and frailty--that union of a faded and somewhat shopworn maid of twenty-seven to an ardent and vigorous young soldier many moons her junior was easy to account for. One after another Witchie Terriss had had desperate affairs with half a dozen fellows, older or younger, in the army and was known to have been engaged to five different men at different times, and believed to have been engaged to two different men at one time. Asked as to this by one of her chums she was reported to have replied: "Do you know, I believe it true; I had totally forgotten about Ned Colston before Mr. Forman had been at the post a week. Of course the only thing to do was to break with both and let them start fresh." But this Mr. Colston, whose head had been somewhat cleared by a month of breezy, healthful scouting, accepted only in part--that part which included the break. Forman had the fresh start and a walk over and held the trophy just two months, when it dawned upon him that Margaret loved dancing far more than she did him--a clumsy performer, and that she would dance night after night, the lightest, daintiest creature in the hop room, and never have a word or a look for him who leaned in gloomy admiration against the wall and never took his eyes off her. He became jealous, moody, ugly-tempered and finally had the good luck to get his conge as the result of an attempt to assert himself and limit her dances. She was blithe and radiant and fancy free when Frank Garrison reached the post, a wee bit hipped, it was whispered, because of the failure of a somewhat half-hearted suit of his in the far East, and the Fairy bounded into the darkness of his life and fairly dazzled him. Somebody had said Frank Garrison had money. There is no need to tell of the disillusion that gradually came. Frank found his debts mounting up and his cares increasing. She was all sympathy and regret when he mentioned it, but--there were certain comforts, luxuries and things she had always been accustomed to, and couldn't live without. Surely he would not have her apply to papa. No, but--could she not manage with a little less? He was willing to give up his cigars (indeed, he had long since done so) and to make his uniforms last a year longer--he who was in his day the most carefully dressed man at the Point. Well--she thought perhaps he ought to do that--besides--men's fashions changed but slowly, whereas women's--"Well, I'd rather be dead than out of style, Frank!" And so it went. But if she did not love her husband there was one being in whom her frivolous heart was really bound up--Nita--her "baby sister," as she called her, and when Terriss, the colonel, went the way of all flesh, preceded only a few months by the wife of his bosom, the few thousands in life insurance he had managed to maintain went to the two daughters. Not one penny was ever laid out in payment of the debts of either the father or husband. Nita was sent to an extravagant finishing school in Gotham, and along in May of the young girl's graduating year, blithe little Mrs. Garrison arrived, fresh from the far West, and after a few weeks of sightseeing and shopping the sisters appeared at the Point, even half-mourning by this time discarded. Thirteen years' difference was there in the ages of the Fairy Sisters, and not a soul save those who knew them in former days on the frontier would have suspected it. Mrs. Frank in evening dress didn't look over twenty. One lovely evening early in August, just about the time that Cadet Captain Latrobe began to show well to the front in the run for the prize, the two sisters had gone to their room at the hotel to dress for the hop. It was their custom to disappear from public gaze about six o'clock and when they came floating down the stairs in filmy, diaphanous clouds of white, the halls were well filled with impatient cavaliers in the natty cadet uniform, and with women "waiting to see." Then the sisters would go into the dining room and have some light refreshment, with a glass of iced tea--and no matter how torrid the heat or how flushed and dragged other women might look, they were inviting pictures of all that was ever fresh, cool and fragrant. The two fluffy blonde heads would be huddled close together a minute as they studied the bill of fare, and virtuous matrons at other tables, fanning vigorously, would sniff and say: "All for effect. They know that supper bill by heart. It never changes." All the same, at the bottom of this public display of sisterly devotion and harmony and in spite of occasional tiffs and differences, there was genuine affection on both sides, for as a child Nita had adored Margaret, and there could be no doubting the elder's love for the child. Some regimental observers said that every bit of heart that eldest Terriss girl had was wrapped up in the little one. Neither girl, even after Margaret's marriage, would listen to a word in disparagement of the other, but in the sanctity of the sisterly retreat on the third floor of the old hotel there occurred sometimes spirited verbal tilts that were quite distinctly audible to passers-by in the corridor, provided they cared to listen, which some of them did. On this especial August evening Mrs. Frank was in an admonitory frame of mind. They had known Mr. Latrobe barely three weeks, and yet as Mrs. Frank was sauntering around a turn in Flirtation Walk, leaning on the arm of the cadet adjutant, there in the pathway right ahead stood Nita, a lovely little picture with downcast eyes, and "Pat" Latrobe bending over her with love and passion glowing in his handsome face, pleading eagerly, clinging fervently to both her tiny, white-gloved hands. Mrs. Garrison saw it all in the flash of a second, the adjutant not at all, for with merry laughter she repeated some words he had just spoken as though they were about the wittiest, funniest things in the world, and looked frankly up into his eyes as though he were the best and brightest man she had met in years--so his eyes were riveted, and the tableau had time to dissolve. All the same that sight gave Mrs. Garrison rather more than a bad quarter of an hour. She was infinitely worried. Not because Pat Latrobe had fallen desperately in love with her charming little sister--that was his lookout--but what--oh, what might not happen if the charming little sister were to fall in love with that handsome soldier boy. At all hazards, even if she had to whisk her away to-morrow, that had to be stopped, and this very evening when they went to their room Margaret spoke. "Nita, if it were only for Mr. Latrobe I should not care a snap of my finger, but it's you--you! I thought you had more sense. I thought you fully understood that you couldn't afford to lose yourself a moment, and yet if ever a girl looked like yielding you did this very afternoon. For my sake, for your own sake, Nita, don't let it go any further--don't fall in love--here--whatever you do." The younger sister stood at the dressing table at the moment, her face averted. The Mary Powell was just rounding the Point, and the mellow, melodious notes of her bell were still echoing through the Highlands. Nita was gazing out on the gorgeous effect of sunset light and shadow on the eastern cliffs and crags across the Hudson, a flush as vivid mantling her cheeks, her lip quivering. She was making valiant efforts to control herself before replying. "I'm not in love with him," she finally said. "Perhaps not--yet. Surely I hope not, but it looked awfully like it was coming--and Nita, you simply mustn't. You've got to marry money if I have to stand guard over you and see you do it--and you know you can this minute--if you'll only listen." The younger girl wheeled sharply, her eyes flashing. "Peggy, you promised me I shouldn't hear that hateful thing again--at least not until we left here--and you've broken your word--twice. You----" "It's because I must. I can't see you drifting--the way I did when, with your youth and--advantages you can pick and choose. Colonel Frost has mines and money all over the West, and he was your shadow at the seashore, and all broken up--he told me--so when we came here. Paddy Latrobe is a beautiful boy without a penny--" "His uncle--" began Nita feebly. "His uncle had a sister to support besides Paddy's mother. His pay as brigadier in the regular service is only fifty-five hundred. He can't have saved much of anything in the past, and he may last a dozen years yet--or more. Even if he does leave everything then to Latrobe, what'll you do meantime? Don't be a fool, Nita, because I was. I had to be. It was that or nothing, and father was getting tired. You heard how he talked." The younger sister was still at the dressing-table diligently brushing her shining, curly tresses. She had regained her composure and was taking occasional furtive peeps at Mrs. Frank, now seated at the foot of the bed, busy with a buttonhook and the adjustment of a pair of very dainty boots of white kid, whose buttons gleamed like pearls. The mates to them, half a size smaller, peeped from the tray of Nita's new trunk. There came a footstep and a rap at the door. "See what it is, Nita, there's a love--I don't want to hop." It was a card--a new arrival at the hotel. "Gentleman said he'd wait in the parlor 'm," said the bellboy, and vanished. Nita glanced at the card and instant trouble stood in her paling face. Silently Mrs. Garrison held out her hand, took the card, and one quick look. The buttonhook dropped from her relaxed fingers. The card read: "Mr. Gouverneur Prime." For a second or two the sisters gazed at each other in silence. At last the elder spoke: "In heaven's name, what brings that absurd boy back here? I thought him safe in Europe." _ |
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