Rodney Merriam’s efforts to manage Zelda had not thus far been wholly satisfactory. He might, under ordinary circumstances, have submitted to what seemed to be the inevitable, but he had never in his life tamely accepted defeat. He could not take the forts by storm; he would lay siege to them, and so he planned a long campaign. Zelda’s intractability was as annoying as it was charming. He scolded her, and she laughed at him; he gave orders and she disobeyed. He appealed to her pride by declaring that the town was gossiping about her, and she replied that being talked about was better than being ignored. She twitted him freely about his air of mystery and asked him questions so frankly impertinent that it was easy for him to parry them. There seemed to be an ill-defined line between the child and the woman; and he was never quite sure on which side of this faint boundary she stood.
Merriam liked to ride with her, and they explored many highways and byways in the bright fall days. She forgot the dull house and her strange father in the company of Rodney Merriam, whose own youth revived in her company.
They came one bright blue afternoon in late October to “the river road,” as it was called. It rose at one point to a considerable height for this flat country, and when they reached it to-day they drew up their horses as usual to enjoy the view. The soft wind that came out of the south and fanned their faces might have been a wind of May. The woodland back of them was glorious with autumn color,—deep red and gold dominant, but with a single tree standing forth here and there in unbroken green. A stake-and-rider fence inclosed the wood and crept on down the road. On the other side lay the bluff, and below it the river with its broad bed and sadly depleted channel. Across the stream stood a group of sycamores, and beyond them lay farms, at peace in the clear, still afternoon.
Zelda and her uncle reined in their horses and viewed the tranquil beauty of the scene with satisfaction. Farm hands were clearing a bit of land farther down-stream and their voices rose in the quiet air. Merriam suggested that the men were skirmishers and that an army lay behind them and would soon swing into view.
“What a place this is for a little artillery work,” he continued. “Those fellows are marching up the river—foolish too, to get caught in a place like that, with a bluff on one side and a river on the other.”
“But they could cross the river,—the gentlemen on horseback, whatever you call them.”
“Cavalry, my child.”
“Beg pardon, sir!” She lifted her hand to her riding hat. “It’s an awfully poor little stream. The foot soldiers could walk across.”
“There’s a courier now, just riding down to the water.”
Merriam pointed across the river. A horseman appeared there suddenly, glancing up and down the little valley. He had left the town road and followed a faint fisherman’s trail to the water.
“He’d be an easy mark for a sharp-shooter,” Merriam remarked.
“Too easy. There wouldn’t be anything very splendid in murdering a man that way. You have to slay them in bunches to make it glorious. He’s probably a farmer looking for his cows.”
“Wrong again. He’s in proper riding clothes, I should say.”
“He’s going to spoil them, I should say!”
The horseman had forced his reluctant mount to the water’s edge.
“He’s actually going to cross!”
Merriam looked down with a professional eye. The horse was acting badly, and the rider was urging it with voice and spur. In a moment the splashing of the water could be heard plainly by the spectators. The stream was of uneven depth, and the horse lost its footing for a few yards but swam boldly on.
“By Jove! That fellow knows his business,” ejaculated Merriam.
The rider had got out of the stirrups and was standing on his saddle crouching low over the horse, which for a minute was submerged.
“He must be a circus performer,” declared Zelda.
“No; the government has a school on the Hudson where they teach tricks like that.”
“Oh, a West Pointer! But what’s he doing here?”
“Let’s get out of this,” said the old gentleman, tightening the hold on his reins and ignoring her question.
He had been watching the horseman closely and his keen old eyes had recognized an acquaintance.
“Not run from the enemy! I am surprised at you, mon oncle!”
“Come on,” he said, over his shoulder.
But Zelda smiled at him.
“Maybe he’s good-looking,” she observed. “And then, we ought to help him find his cattle.”
Merriam rode on and she followed. The rider was now out of sight under the bluff, but they could hear his horse’s hoofs on the low sandy shore. Merriam knew the locality perfectly. There was no way of getting up the bluff at this point, he was sure; but he did not care to meet Captain Pollock, and he walked his horse smartly along the road.
“You might let me see him,” said Zelda, riding at his side. “I’d like to know a man who could ride like that.”
“Humph! I could do it myself.”
“I shan’t dare you; I really think you might try it,—such is the vanity of age.”
At the side of the road nearest the river was a thin low growth of bushes. Suddenly there was a crash in the scanty hedge just ahead of the two riders and a clatter of broken clods that rolled down with a lively thump.
Merriam drew up with an exclamation as Captain Pollock drove his horse over the edge of the bluff into the road directly in their path. The animal’s flanks still dripped and it was blowing hard from the climb.
“Pardon me!” said Captain Pollock, smiling. He backed his panting horse to the edge of the road and lifted his hat. His riding boots were wet from their contact with water, but he was calm and unruffled.
“Good afternoon,” Merriam replied curtly.
“I hope I didn’t startle you, Mr. Merriam. I didn’t know that there was any one up here. I was trying to find a new road home.”
He looked from Zelda to her uncle inquiringly.
“This pike leads directly into town,” said Merriam, pointing over his shoulder. “Good day, sir!”
He spurred his horse forward, Zelda following; and in a moment Captain Pollock was staring blankly at the blur of dust that enveloped them.
“Well, my dear uncle,” began Zelda, when they had turned a bend in the road, “I’d like an explanation of this very amazing conduct.”
She brought her horse to a walk and touched her uncle’s arm with her riding whip.
“What’s the matter?” asked Merriam.
“Don’t try to play the innocent! Why didn’t you introduce me to that courier? You hurried me off as though he were the basest of all earth’s creatures, instead of—”
“Instead of what?”
“Why, instead of an exceedingly handsome young man. He’s about the best I’ve seen.”
“He is, is he?”
“That’s what I said! Don’t compel me to be impertinent. He had very nice blue eyes; and when he took off his hat his head was very good. I quite liked the way he parted his hair. He was really stunning and I’d have liked to be introduced. But what is his name?”
Merriam was looking straight over his horse’s head and pretended that he did not hear.
“Well, sir?”
“I don’t know the fellow,” said the old gentleman, shortly.
“Oh! He seemed to know you.”
“Humph! It was very unnecessary.”
“He addressed you respectfully by your proper name. You were very impolite to him. He had all the marks of a gentleman.”
“I don’t know all the people that call me by name;” and Rodney Merriam ended the conversation by bringing his horse to a gallop.
When they parted presently at Zelda’s door, Rodney Merriam had forgotten the incident of the meeting on the river road, or he pretended that he had, when Zelda said with a fine air of inadvertence:
“Of course, I’ll meet him sometime, somewhere, as the song says.”
“What’s that?” demanded her uncle.
He had turned his horse to leave, and she stood on the sidewalk stroking Zan’s pretty nose.
“I said that I’d probably meet the chevalier sooner or later.”
“You shall do nothing of the kind,” declared the old gentleman, testily, and he rode off with considerable haste toward his own stable.
Frank Pollock was a good deal puzzled by Rodney Merriam’s action on the river road. He did not question that the old gentleman had recognized him; even if he had not, strangers passing on the highway in this part of the world usually saluted one another. Pollock was a fellow whose amiability had always made friends for him; he had been petted to the spoiling point by men and women in different parts of the republic, and as he watched Rodney Merriam and Zelda Dameron gallop away from him his face grew crimson. Pollock had not seen Zelda Dameron before, but he assumed that she was a relative of Rodney Merriam’s,—a fact which he deplored as the dust from their horses was driven back upon him.
It was, however, ordained by the powers that the meeting in the highway between Pollock and Zelda should not be their last. Mrs. Michael Carr had already discovered the young officer. She always discovered new people in town and was not happy until she had summoned them to her board. Her round table seated eight people comfortably, and she much preferred this small number to the twenty that were possible. Wishing to see Zelda at closer range, she made a small dinner—quite en famille—and bade Zelda and Pollock, the Copelands, Mrs. Forrest and Morris Leighton to her board. Michael Carr was fond of talk; to say that he was himself a conversationalist was not making too much of it. He even enjoyed the surprise of coming down to his drawing-room and finding utter strangers there,—often persons whom Mrs. Carr had met in the many clubs and societies of which she was a member.
“I am almost afraid to suggest that we may have met before,” said Pollock to Zelda, when they were seated at the table.
“I didn’t suppose a soldier was ever afraid,” replied Zelda, non-committally.
“I intimated,” repeated Pollock, “that I had seen you before. If you wish to ignore the fact—”
“Oh, I shouldn’t do that. I remember—the horse—perfectly!”
“Thank you!”
“And you ride pretty well!”
“Again thanks! I had a dim impression that you rode well yourself. But you and your escort seemed anxious to cast a cloud of dust upon your merits. My glimpse was only fleeting.”
“Let me see. We did go off rather hastily. Oh yes! You frightened our horses; I remember now! We had paused to admire the landscape when you burst upon us suddenly and put our steeds to flight.”
They laughed at this ingenuous explanation and paused to heed a bit of by-play between their hostess and Copeland on the labor question. Every one contributed to the talk until the hostess, who professed radical views, changed the subject.
“Colonel Merriam is your—”
“Mr. Merriam, please. He’s my uncle. He doesn’t allow any one to call him colonel.”
“I beg your pardon, and his! He’s unique if he doesn’t care for a title. He was an officer, wasn’t he, in the Civil War?”
“He was something; but he never mentions it.” Then brightly, with her frankest air: “You may have met him during the war.”
“Thank you, immensely! My enemies have always charged me with extreme youth. I am grateful beyond any words for the years you credit me with! But we were rebels. Please don’t be shocked; my people were all rebels.”
“How delightful! I don’t believe I ever saw one before. How did the war come out? Oh yes! We whipped you, didn’t we?”
“That’s conceded, I believe. I wasn’t born for a decade after it was all over, or I’d never have surrendered. But the government forgave us and let me go to West Point; so here we all are again, and I’m glad of it!”
Frank Pollock was undoubtedly a very agreeable young man, and Zelda Dameron liked him. When he said good night he asked if he might call on her, and Zelda said yes, certainly, though she remembered her uncle’s treatment of Captain Pollock on the river road very well. She knew of no reason why she should not be polite to Captain Pollock, whose manners and conversation were quite to her liking. If her uncle knew any real reason why Captain Pollock was not a proper person for her to know, he might say so.