An Apache Princess

Misfortunes came to Janet Wren while yet a comely woman of

thirty-five. She could have married, and married well, a comrade

captain in her brother's regiment; but him, at least, she held to be

her own, and, loving him with genuine fervor and devotion, she sought

to turn him in all things to her serious views of life, its manifold

duties and responsibilities. She had her ideal of what a man should

be--a monarch among other men, but one knowing no God but her God, no

creed but her creed, no master but Duty, no mistress but herself, and

no weakness whatsoever. A braver, simpler, kinder soul than her

captain there dwelt not in the service of his country, but he loved

his pipe, his song, his dogs, his horses, his troop, and certain

soldier ways that, during his convalescence from wounds, she had not

had opportunity to observe. She had nursed him back to life and love

and, unwittingly, to his former harmless habits. These all she would

have had him forswear, not for her sake so much, she said, but because

they were in themselves sinful and beneath him. She sought to train

him down too fine for the rugged metal of the veteran soldier, and the

fabric snapped in her hands. She had sent him forth sore-hearted over

her ceaseless importunity. She had told him he must not only give up

all his ways, but, if he would make her happy, he must put the words

of Ruth into his mouth, and that ended it. He transferred into another

corps when she broke with him; carried his sore heart to the Southern

plains, and fell in savage battle within another month.

Not long thereafter her little fortune, invested according to the

views of a spiritual rather than a temporal adviser,--and much against

her brother's wishes,--went the way of riches that have wings, and

now, dependent solely upon him, welcomed to his home and fireside, she

nevertheless strove to dominate as of yore. He had had to tell her

Angela could not and should not be subjected to such restraints as the

sister would have prescribed, but so long as he was the sole victim

he whimsically bore it without vehement protest. "Convert me all you

can, Janet, dear," he said, "but don't try to reform the whole

regiment. It's past praying for."

Now, when other women whispered to her that while Mrs. Plume had been

a belle in St. Louis and Mr. Blakely a young society beau, the

magnitude of their flirtation had well-nigh stopped her marriage, Miss

Wren saw opportunity for her good offices and, so far from avoiding,

she sought the society of the major's brooding wife. She even felt a

twinge of disappointment when the young officer appeared, and after

the initial thirty-six hours under the commander's roof, rarely went

thither at all. She knew her brother disapproved of him, and thought

it to be because of moral, not military, obliquity. She saw with

instant apprehension his quick interest in Angela and the child's

almost unconscious response. With the solemn conviction of the maiden

who, until past the meridian, had never loved, she looked on Angela as

far too young and immature to think of marrying, yet too shallow, vain

and frivolous, too corrupted, in fact, by that pernicious society

school--not to shrink from flirtations that might mean nothing to the

man but would be damnation to the girl. Even the name of this big,

blue-eyed, fair-skinned young votary of science had much about it that

made her fairly bristle, for she had once been described as an

"austere vestal" by Lieutenant Blake, of the regiment preceding them

at Sandy, the ----th Cavalry--and a mutual friend had told her all

about it--another handicap for Blakely. She had grown, it must be

admitted, somewhat gaunt and forbidding in these later years, a thing

that had stirred certain callow wits to differentiate between the

Misses Wren as Angela and Angular, which, hearing, some few women

reproved but all repeated. Miss Wren, the sister, was in fine a woman

widely honored but little sought. It was Angela that all Camp Sandy

would have met with open arms.