Aunt Janet, therefore, had some reason for doubting the report of Mrs.
Bridger. It was so unlike Angela to be so very late returning,
although, now that Mrs. Bridger had mentioned it, she, too, remembered
hearing the rapid thud of Punch's galloping hoofs homeward bound, as
was she, at 5.45. Yet, barely five minutes thereafter, Angela, who
usually spent half an hour splashing in her tub, appeared full
panoplied, apparently, at the head of the stairs upon her aunt's
arrival, and was even now somewhere down the row, hobnobbing with Kate
Sanders. That Lieutenant Blakely should have missed retreat roll-call
was in itself no very serious matter. "Slept through at his quarters,
perhaps," said Plume. "He'll turn up in time for dinner." In fine the
major's indifference struck the captain as an evidence of official
weakness, reprehensible in a commander charged with the discipline of
a force on hostile soil. What Wren intended was that Plume should be
impressed by his formal word and manner, and direct the adjutant to
look up the derelict instanter. As no such action was taken, however,
he felt it due to himself to speak again. A just man was Wren, and
faithful to the core in his own discharge of duty. What he could not
abide was negligence on part of officer or man, on part of superior or
inferior, and he sought to "stiffen" Plume forthwith.
"If he isn't in his quarters, shall I send a party out in search,
sir?"
"Who? Blakely? Dear, no, Wren! What for?" returned the post commander,
obviously nettled. "I fancy he'll not thank you for even searching his
quarters. You may stumble over his big museum in the dark and smash
things. No, let him alone. If he isn't here for dinner, I'll 'tend to
it myself."
And so, rebuffed, as it happened, by an officer much his inferior in
point of experience and somewhat in years, Wren silently and stiffly
saluted and turned away. Virtually he had been given to understand
that his suggestion was impertinent. He reached his quarters,
therefore, in no pleasant mood, and found his sister waiting for him
with Duty in her clear and shining eyes.
A woman of many a noble trait was Janet Wren,--a woman who had done a
world of good to those in sickness, sorrow, or other adversity, a
woman of boundless faith in herself and her opinions, but not too much
hope or charity for others. The blood of the Scotch Covenanters was
in her veins, for her mother had been born and bred in the shadow of
the kirk and lived and died in the shadow of the cross. A woman with a
mission was Janet, and one who went at it unflinchingly. She had loved
her brother always, yet disapproved his marriage to so young and
unformed a woman as was his wife. Later, she had deprecated from the
start the soldier spirit, fierce in his Highland blood, that tore him
from the teachings of their gentle mother and her beloved meenister,
took him from his fair young wife when most she needed him and sent
him straightway into the ranks of the one Highland regiment in the
Union Army at the outbreak of the Civil War. His gallant colonel fell
at First Bull Run, and Sergeant Wren fought over his body to the
fervent admiration of the Southerners who captured both. The first War
Secretary, mourning a beloved brother and grateful to his defender,
commissioned the latter in the regulars at once and, on his return
from Libby, Wren joined the army as a first lieutenant. With genuine
Scottish thrift, his slender pay had been hoarded for him, and his now
motherless little one, by that devoted sister, and when, a captain at
the close of the war, he came to clasp his daughter to his heart, he
found himself possessed of a few hundreds more than fell to the lot of
most of his associates. It was then that Janet, motherless herself,
had stepped into the management of her brother's army home, and sought
to dominate in that as she had in everything else from early girlhood.
Wren loved her fondly, but he, too, had a will. They had many a
clash. It was this, indeed, that led to Angela's going so early to an
Eastern school. We are all paragons of wisdom in the management of
other people's children. It is in dealing with our own our limitations
are so obvious. Fond as she had become of Angela's sweet young mother,
it must be owned that whom Janet loved in this way she often
chastened. Neighbors swore it was not grief, nor illness, half so much
as sister-in-law, that wore the gentle spirit to the snapping-point.
The great strong heart of the soldier was well-nigh broken at his
loss, and Janet, who had never seen him shed a tear since early
boyhood, stood for once, at least, in awe and trembling at sight of
his awful grief. Time and nature played their part and brought him,
gradually, resignation, but never genuine solace. He turned to little
Angela with almost passionate love and tenderness. He would, mayhap,
have spoiled her had not frontier service kept him so much afield that
it was Janet who really reared her,--but not according to the strict
letter of her law. Wren knew well what that was and forbade.