Marions Faith | Page 6

two and three years had elapsed since these occurrences; the scattered condition of the regiment had prevented regimental notice of them at the time, and it was generally held that now it was too late for any such action. With any other man coldness, distance of manner, or at the least the pronounced snubs that greeted Gleason, would have long since had effect, but he was proof against such methods, and no sooner detected them than he found excuses to force himself upon the attention or conversation of the officer, and in so insidious a way as to disarm resistance. He would fairly beam with cordiality and respect upon the commanding officer who was short and gruff with him; he would invade old Stannard's quarters to ask his advice about the purchase of a horse or the proper method of dealing with some one of his men,--and the major had a soft side in looking after the rights of the rank and file; he would drop in to ask Mrs. Stannard the name of a new flower he had picked up out near the targets. He cared no more for flowers than she did for him, but it gave him temporary admission, generally when other ladies had called for a morning chat, and though she cordially disliked him, Mrs. Stannard was too thorough a lady to show the least discourtesy to an officer of her husband's regiment. Gleason well knew it, and laid his plans accordingly. For a long time, indeed, there were ladies who could not understand why Mr. Gleason should be so contemptuously spoken of by the officers. He was so thoughtful, so delicate, and then he was so lonely. Gleason was a widower, whose eyes would often overflow when he spoke of the little woman whom he had buried years ago down in Connecticut; but when Mrs. Turner once questioned Captain Baxter, who knew them when they were in the old infantry regiment in Louisiana, and referred to its being so sad and touching to hear Mr. Gleason talk of his dead wife and their happy days among the orange-groves near Jackson Barracks, the captain astonished her by an outburst of derisive laughter. "Happy, madam?" said he; "by gad! if ever a woman died of neglect, abuse, and ill-treatment Mrs. Gleason did, and next time he attempts to gull you with sentiment, just you refer him to me." But then, as Mrs. Turner said, poor Captain Baxter's finer sensibilities seemed to have been blunted by a lifetime in the quartermaster's department, and for quite a while Mr. Gleason was one of her favorites,--quite a devotee in fact, until the disastrous day when she discovered that so far from having been ill and unable to ride with her, as he claimed, he had been spending the afternoon in the fascinations of poker. One by one the ladies of the --th had learned to trust Mr. Gleason as little as did their lords, but there was no snubbing him. "Snubs," said the senior major, "are lost on such a pachydermatous ass as Gleason," and however tough might be his moral hide, and however deserved might have been the applied adjective, the major was in error in calling Gleason an ass. Intriguing, full of low malice and scheming, a "slanderer and substractor" he certainly was, but no fool. More's the pity, Mr. Gleason was far too smart for the direct methods and simple minds of his associates in the --th. He never in all his life failed to take full note of every slight or coldness, and though it was his r?le to hide the sting, and "smile and smile and be a villain still," never was it his purpose to permit the faintest snub to go unpunished. Sooner or later, unrelentingly but secretly he would return that stab with interest ten times compounded. And sooner or later to the bitter end he meant to feed fat his ancient grudge on Ray.
Up to this time he had scant opportunity. For two or three years preceding their removal to the East Gleason had been stationed in Southern Arizona, while Ray, after months of lively service in the mountains, had been sent to regimental headquarters, and marched with them when they came into Kansas. Now once more six companies were gathered at the post of the standard,--two were tenting on the prairie just outside the garrison, the other four were regularly in barracks, and the concentration there boded a move or "business" of some kind. "Old Catnip," the colonel, was East, but the lieutenant-colonel was commanding, and the junior major was there. Drills were incessant, but scouts were few, and after the years of "go-as-you-please" work in Arizona the --th was getting rapidly back into soldierly shape. The little frontier fort was