Lanier of the Cavalry | Page 5

the doorway opened out, as it were, and Bob
Lanier, officer-of-the-guard, came gracefully gliding and circling down
the room, Miriam Arnold's radiant, happy face looking up into his. It
was a joy to watch them dance together, but not to watch the colonel's
face when he caught sight of them. Except Lanier, every officer present
was in full uniform, without his sabre. Lanier was in the undress
uniform of the guard, but with the sabre--not the long, curved, clumsy,
steel-scabbarded weapon then used by the cavalry, but a light, Prussian
hussar sword that he had evidently borrowed for the occasion, for it
belonged to Barker, the adjutant, as everybody knew--as Barker
realized to his cost when in less than ten seconds the commander

summoned him.
"Mr. Barker, you will at once place Mr. Lanier in arrest for quitting his
guard and disobeying my orders."
"I shall have to--get my sabre, sir," stammered the adjutant, meaning
the regulation item over at his quarters.
"There it is, sir, before your eyes. Mr. Lanier, at least, can have no
further use for it until a court-martial acts on his case."
"Good Lord!" thought Barker, "how can I go up to Bob and tell him to
turn over that sword so that I can properly place him in arrest--and here,
too--and of all times----"
But the colonel would brook no delay. "Direct Mr. Lanier to report to
me in the anteroom," said he, marching thither forthwith, and that
message the luckless adjutant had to deliver at once.
Bob saw it coming in Barker's sombre visage. The girl on his arm
understood nothing (but noted the hush that had fallen, even though the
music went on; saw Barker coming, and something told her it meant
trouble, and turned her sweet face white).
"Miss Arnold, may I offer myself as a substitute for the rest of this
dance? Bob, the chief wants to see you a second," was the best that
Barker could think of. They praised him later for his "mendacity," yet
what he said was true to the letter. It took little more than a second for
the colonel to say:
"Mr. Lanier, go to your room in arrest," and Bob saluted, turned, and
went, unslinging the sword on the way.
[Illustration: "MR. LANIER, GO TO YOUR ROOM IN ARREST."]
Now, that was the first touch to spoil that memorable December night,
but it was only a feather to what followed. The waltz soon ceased, but
the colonel called for an extra, and led out a lady from town, the wife of

a future senator. "Keep this thing going," he cautioned his adjutant and
certain of his personal following, which was large, and loyally they
tried, but the piteous face of the girl he had left at the door of the ladies'
dressing-room and in the hands of Mrs. Sumter was too much for
Barker. Moreover, he much liked Lanier and bemoaned his fate.
Colonel Button was "hopping mad," as the quartermaster put it, and as
all men could see, yet at what? Lanier's offence, when fairly measured,
had not been so grave. It had happened half a dozen times that the
officer-of-the-guard, making his rounds and visiting sentries in the
course of a dance evening, would casually drop in by one door and out
by another, taking a turn or two on the floor, perhaps--"just waltzing in
and waltzing out," as they said--and no one the worse for it, even when
the colonel happened to be present. Nor could men now see what it was
that so angered the commander against Lanier.
"Disobeyed his orders flatly," suggested Captain Snaffle, who stood by
the colonel on every occasion when not himself the object of that
officer's satire or censure.
"Disobeyed no order," said Sumter, as stoutly. "Simply did what many
another has done, and nobody hurt. Nor would Lanier have been noted,
perhaps, if he had not first asked to turn over his sword to Trotter."
But even that could not fully account for the colonel's rancor, and,
though the music and dance went on, men and women both, with
clouded faces, found themselves asking the question: "What could have
angered him so at Lanier?" And in a corner of the ladies' dressing-room
two pretty girls, with difficulty soothed by Mrs. Sumter, were vainly
striving not to cry their eyes out--Kate Sumter dismayed at the almost
uncontrollable grief of her friend, who, strange to military measures,
imagined that Bob's arrest was but the prelude to his being shot at
sunrise, or something well nigh as terrible.
Not ten minutes after Lanier went out, and went silent but in
unspeakable wrath, Paymaster Scott came dawdling in, and though but
a casual visitor at the post, just back that day from a tour of the
northward camps and