CHAPTER XIII

THE ALARM

Dad received the weapon from her hands as reverently as she had tendered it. His fingers closed about the fretted ivory hilt, and he read in the fading light the inscription on its blue-steel blade.

Then he handed it back.

“A beautiful sword,” he said, a catch in his voice, “and one that any soldier might rejoice to wear at his side. The sword of a brave man, I am sure. Such a man as would to-day be striking gallantly for our dear country if he were still living. I am honored past words at your gift. But--I cannot accept it.”

“What?” she asked, her eyes big with wondering disappointment. “Why not? I don’t grudge it to you, a mite. Nor Ehud wouldn’t either.”

“You don’t understand,” he explained, feeling as though he had brutally rejected the love-offering of a child. “I cannot wear this splendid sword because I am not entitled to. Such a weapon is worn by none but commissioned officers. I am only a sergeant. And a sergeant is not permitted to carry a sword of this kind. Any more than he is allowed to wear epaulets.”

“But--”

“I should treasure this gift above any other I have ever had,” he went on, “if the laws of warfare would let me take it. I shall never forget that you offered it to me--an utter stranger--out of the generous bounty of your heart. Please don’t think I don’t appreciate it.”

Reluctantly she restored the sword to its hook on the raftered ceiling.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “If Ehud’s sword could go on fighting, I’d feel happier.”

“If I could carry it to victory, madam, I’d feel prouder than I can tell you.”

“Well, maybe you’ll be able to wear a sword at your side some of these days. If you’re a sergeant now and if you had the pluck to ride alone into this nest of hornets--By the way, _did_ you come alone or were you separated from your regiment?”

“I came alone. I am carrying dispatches. To General Hooker.”

“Fighting Joe, eh? That’s a man after my own heart. Where is he?”

Dad told her.

“Sakes alive!” she ejaculated. “That’s the best part of twenty miles from here. And all the district just abuzzing with Confeds. You must be brave!”

“No one in our war is brave,” he corrected. “Some are cowardly. Some are foolhardy. But the bulk of us on both sides of the quarrel just plod along and do our duty, as I’ve tried to do mine to-day. It isn’t bravery. It’s duty.”

“I’ve an idea,” she suggested, “that bravery and duty add up to pretty much the same thing; whether it’s in storming a fort or selling a yard of calico. Anyhow, mister--mister--”

“Dadd,” he answered glibly. “James Dadd.”

“Anyhow, Sergeant Dadd,” she continued, smiling ever so faintly at the odd name, “I know men pretty well. And I believe you’d do your duty, squarely and honestly, whether it was in war or in a shop.”

“Madam,” said Dad, miserably, “I didn’t do my duty in either. And, as for honesty, I have been even more remiss. Why, I have just told a lie that shames me to the soul. I have told it to the ministering angel who saved me from death or capture and who has since played Good Samaritan to me. The only woman in years who has shown me her sex’s divine pity.

“I have lied to you about my name. It is not James Dadd. It is James Brinton.”

He dared not look at her, but spoke rapidly, his eyes downcast, his fingers foolishly busy with the torn fringe of the chair in which he sat.

“I--I call myself James Dadd,” he blundered on. “And I suppose I have a right to. For it doesn’t harm anyone, and it gives me a chance to be in the army. They wouldn’t take me under my own name. But, oh, I love the old name, and it makes me ashamed every time I have to use the other one. Still, I’ve always figured--till now--that it’s nobody’s business. But--somehow I can’t lie to a woman that’s got eyes like yours.”

“Unless I’m very wrong,” she said, after a little breathless silence, “you aren’t given to telling lies to anyone at all, man or woman, Mr.--Brinton. As for going to the war under another name, I can’t see anything very terrible in that. I take it you didn’t enlist with the idea of cheating folks out of anything?”

“No!” he declared, almost fiercely. “No!”

And again silence fell, there in the dusty, lavender-scented garret.

Dusk was pushing the shadows forward from the mysterious corners and shoving them farther and farther into the little window-lit space where sat the man and woman.

At last Mrs. Sessions said:

“I s’pose all women are inquisitive.”

“They must have one drawback to keep them mortal,” he countered, with a brave attempt at his earlier tone of gallantry.

“But,” she went on impersonally, “why a fine, upstanding man like you should go to war under a silly name like Dadd, when he’s got such a fine name as Brinton, certainly does make me curious. Not,” she added, in polite haste, “not that it’s any of my business--as maybe you were going to say.”

“I was going to say,” he contradicted, “that any of my affairs are also your affairs. As far as you honor me, ma’am, by making them so.”

“You say pretty things,” she laughed in pleased embarrassment. “I wonder if a woman ever gets too old to love to hear them. Pretty speeches wasn’t Ehud’s way. But he always liked to hear other menfolk make them to me. It flattered his judgment, he used to say.”

“I fancy his judgment used to get flattered tolerably often,” ventured Dad.

But she did not hear. Her brows were puckered, and she was murmuring his name in perplexity.

“Brinton,” she mused. “Brinton. It’s queer how natural that name seems to me. Because it isn’t such a common name either. Wait a second and I can tell you where I heard it. My brain’s all full of little scraps of things I’ve heard and tucked away there. I’m rummaging there now, like fury. Presently I’ll find it. Oh, I know!” she broke off.

Then she stopped, ashamed.

“You remember?” he asked miserably.

“No,” she denied. “That is, I can’t remember but one man of that name. Ehud told me about him. Long ago. And it made an impression on me at the time.”

“Tell me about him,” urged Dad.

“Oh, ’tisn’t a nice story. Besides there’s just a bare chance that maybe he was some kin of yours--the name being so uncommon--and I’d hate to hurt your feelings.”

“Go ahead!” he begged, in the same perverse spirit that had prompted him, since his turn of the conversation, to pursue it toward the bitter end. “There are many Brintons. I--I believe a man named Brinton was down in Mexico during the war there. Perhaps that’s where Captain Sessions heard the name?”

“That was the place and that was the man,” she said. “Ehud was in General Scott’s army, you know. A captain of infantry. His regiment was on duty one day at a celebration--for some victory or other--and up rides this Brinton man disgustingly drunk and spoils the whole celebration.

“He insulted General Scott something terrible, Ehud said. Then he fell off his horse asleep, and they lugged him to the guard-house; and that’s the last Ehud was ever able to find out about him. They never courtmartialed the man or anything. Ehud said he guessed Brinton escaped in the night; the wicked old sot! What’s the matter, sir? Is the wound hurting you so bad?”

“Yes!” panted Dad. “But not the silly scratch on my arm. It is a thousand times deeper.”

“And you never told me!” she cried in genuine alarm. “Here I’ve been chatting so selfishly with you and never doing a thing to help you! Wait till I fetch you some brandy.”

“I--I don’t need it, thank you,” he replied, “and I never touch it any more. I’ve sworn I never will. The wound I spoke of is on my soul; not my body. I--”

“I thought all army men drank once in a while. Shall I get--”

“No, thank you. I’m all right again. I don’t know that the majority of army men drink. Though a drink is a consoler after a long day’s march, and it helps drown the memory of the comrade who was shot to pieces at one’s side. But it is a consolation that’s not for me. It consoled me too often--till nothing else worth while would trouble to console me.

“Mrs. Sessions, you have been very good to me. I haven’t the words to tell you how good; and--

“And because of that, as well as because no man could lie to eyes like yours, I wanted to tell you something. Something that may make you sorry you’ve done so much for a worthless old derelict. Something that will surely make you ashamed that you honored him with the offer of your husband’s sword. I--I am the James Brinton whose story Captain Sessions told you.”

“Land’s sake! You never are!”

“And the reason he heard no more of me was because I was ‘dismissed from the service I had degraded,’ and was secretly kicked out of the army. And because I was forever kicked out of it, I had to sneak back into the service under a false name.”

“Is that all?” she asked, quietly.

“That is all--except to say good-by and get out of the house where I’ve let myself be entertained under false pretenses.”

He rose as he spoke; sick at heart, and all at once feeling very, very old and wretched.

He realized with a queer pang that the last hour had somehow been the happiest he had ever known. And by contrast the future seemed to stretch away before him dreary and barren as a rainy sea.

Dad took an uncertain step toward the head of the attic stairs. A small and determined figure barred his way.

“Go back!” came the imperious command. “Go right back where you were, and sit down there. You may have said all _you’ve_ got to say. But _I_ haven’t, by a long shot.”

Dully he obeyed her. His flesh shrank from the thought of listening to the merited tongue-lashing that he felt was his due. Yet, like a scared schoolboy, he recognized and meekly obeyed the note of authority in his hostess’s voice.

“Now, then!” she said, planting herself squarely in front of him. “Aren’t you ashamed, Sergeant James Brinton? Aren’t you _ashamed_? Tolling me on like that to say scand’lous things about a poor man whose story I only half-knew. Oh, I’m a cruel, shrewish old woman to go on like I did about Brinton--about you.

“Who am I to sit in judgment on a poor, weak man whose love for drink overcomes him sometimes? Why, I’m just every mite as bad myself. Without my morning cup of tea, I’m no good at all. I lean on it as men lean on whisky.”

“But, madam--” he stammered.

“I want to tell you how sorry I am for talking like that,” she rushed on, unheeding. “And to tell you that no man who looks and talks the way you do was ever a sot or a scoundrel. Weak, maybe. Yes, we all are. But never bad.”

“Would--would you let me tell you?” he faltered, gripped by a sudden, overwhelming impulse to make this wonderful little woman his mother confessor--to tell her what he had never clearly told himself.

She nodded eager, kindly assent.

In a voice at first incoherent, almost broken, but that soon steadied into narrative force, Dad told the whole pitiful tale.

He did not strive for effect. He spared no needful detail. He spoke as though of a third person; calmly, impartially.

When the story of his Mexican disgrace was done, he went on to tell her of his homecoming, his futile life for the past fourteen years, his continued degradation, the sordid surroundings, the unworthy hopelessness of it all.

Only when he spoke of Jimmie did an unconscious softness and a thrill of pride come into the deep voice.

He told of his son’s departure for the front, the bedside talk with Jimmie in the moonlight, the escape from Ideala, the kneeling vigil on the hill-top where he had forever shaken off his dead self. Of his later army achievements he said little.

It was twilight now, all over the battle world. The long twilight of early summer. And in the attic darkness left the faces of the man and woman visible only as dim white rifts in the gloom.

Presently Dad’s deep voice ceased. There was a hush; through which the far-off throb of a complaining whippoorwill, from down in the bottom-lands, by the river, came to their ears.

Mrs. Sessions had drawn insensibly closer to the speaker as the story progressed. But she had not once interrupted. Nor, now that the tale was done, did she speak.

“Now you know it all,” he said, breaking the long silence. “And I suppose you’re as disgusted with me as I am with myself. As General Scott was when I--”

He caught his breath with a gasp. Something in falling had touched the back of his outflung hand.

Something tiny, and stingingly hot--a tear!

“Mrs. Sessions!” he exclaimed in wonder.

“I--I’m not given to blubbering,” she answered, choking back her sobs. “I didn’t know I was doing it. Oh, you poor, _poor_ dear!”

“You don’t despise me, after all I’ve told you about--”

“Despise you?” she echoed, almost shrilly. “_Despise_ you? Listen to me, sergeant! Any man can strut around, pompouslike, on the top of the mountain if he was born up there or boosted up there. But the man who can _climb_ there--as you’ve done--who can climb there out of the mire and muck that he’s been shoved down into; that man’s a--a _man_! And the mud on his garments comes pretty close to looking like royal ermine.

“I’m talking like a schoolgirl that reads novels. But it’s all true. Sergeant Brinton, I’d like to shake you by the hand, please. I wish Ehud was here to do it, too!”

Dad, even as he groped for and found the warm and slender little hand in the darkness, could not bring himself to give mental endorsement to the last half of her wish. He was quite satisfied that the late Captain Ehud should remain in Paradise, instead of invading his earthly home’s attic just then.

The two hands met in a clasp that each sought to make frank and hearty. But hands are less docile than faces in masking their heart’s mandates. And the fingers that met so formally forgot somehow to unclasp. Dad found the little woman’s hand nestling quite comfortably and contentedly in the big grip of his own. And if she struggled to withdraw it, the struggle was so very faint as to escape the notice of either of them.

Dad had risen to his feet. Through the gloom he was looking down at the half-seen figure whose hand he held. And something long, long dead was stirring strangely in his heart and his soul.

Very reverently he lifted the little hand and laid it against his lips; holding it there a moment while the tender sweetness of the contact mounted like music to his brain. Reluctantly he unclasped his fingers from about their precious burden. And for a space he and his hostess stood staring wide-eyed into each other’s half-invisible faces.

Then--

“If my daughter could see me now,” said Mrs. Sessions, a little break in the laugh she forced to her lips, “she’d say I was an old fool.”

“If my son could see me now,” answered Dad, “he’d say I was not only an old fool, but an old scoundrel as well. But Jimmie wouldn’t. Jimmie would understand. Jimmie always understands. Oh, you must meet Jimmie!”

“I’d love to. I’d love to be just like a mother to the boy who’s done so much for--”

“If you don’t mind,” ventured Dad bashfully, “I’d a lot rather you’d be just like a--a grandmother to him.”

Then in the dark there--very simply, like two little children, they kissed.

And on the instant, the quaint old-world stillness of the attic was split by the noise of many pounding hoof-beats.