Part 18

I could see the four soldierly lads, in their gray uniforms, as Captain Fitzhugh talked, in the bare, orderly room, and I could imagine how their jaws dropped as the inspired one brought out “the great idea”; for young Machiavelli, searching for a deed of daring, had suggested that they should keep a baby in their rooms for a week. The grotesqueness of the thought made it the more appealing, and at once they planned a beginning. Carruthers was singled out to correspond with an orphan asylum. His aunt in New York was interested in one and he had been there with her and remembered the address. On the instant he wrote, and his letter ran:

“MATRON ST. WINIFRED’S ORPHAN ASYLUM.

“DEAR MADAM: My sister and I, being maiden ladies of thirty and seventy years of age—”

“Gosh!” remarked Hill. “Sisters! Why didn’t you make them grandmother and grandchild?”

“What?” Carruthers looked up annoyed. “What’s the trouble? Oh—well, that is far apart. I’ll join the dames.” He scratched a figure. “Fifty and fifty-one—that’s safe, isn’t it?”

“Go ahead,” was the consensus of opinion.

“Of fifty and fifty-one years of age, and being very lonely alone together, as we have neither of us ever succeeded in getting married—”

“Or seldom,” murmured Hill.

Carruthers glanced sternly at him.

“Desire to purchase or obtain by gift a sound, kind, and well-broken child, of about one year, light-colored preferred, with good wind and good eyes, and, if possible, no vices.”

“Send that to a horse exchange,” advised Jack Duncan.

“Tommy-rot!” said Carruthers politely, and went on.

“We would like to have such child sent to us for a week on approval, and guarantee to treat it with perfect kindness and hygiene. As reference for the integrity and spotlessness of our characters we are happy to name—”

“Who the deuce are we happy to name?” inquired Carruthers despondently. “That queers it.”

There was deep thought. “Here’s a name,” suggested Duncan. “It sounds like those two nice old ladies, the Misses Bellingham, who live down near Highland Falls. Just sign it their name and give the chaplain for reference.”

“The chaplain!” The boys gasped.

“Just the thing,” said Duncan confidently. “He’ll give them a rattling recommend, and he’s too much of a gentleman to tell them their characters are questioned. Besides, he’ll never think of it again after he mails the letter. I know the chaplain. He’s a good sort—he doesn’t fuss.”

“Proceed!” ordered the chorus.

Carruthers read aloud as he wrote:

“we are—happy to—name—that noble and uplifting—leader of—religious thought—”

“The chaplain would swat you if he heard you call him that.”

“Hill,” said Carruthers, with irritation, “you’ve done nothing but criticise and kick. If you can write better, do it. As far as I can see there’s not a fault in this letter, so far. Now let me finish. Where was I? Oh—‘leader of religious thought.’ That’s enough about the chaplain.

“Anticipating news of our sweet charge, who will become, we hope, the support of our declining years, we remain,

“Sincerely yours in hope,

“THE MISSES BELLINGHAM.

“Now, Hill, any more criticism?”

“If the asylum people think the old ladies are going to make the child support them, they won’t send it,” objected Hill gloomily. “And it’s not etiquettical to sign your name ‘The Misses Bellingham.’ Ought to sign it their front names and no title.”

“But I don’t know their front names,” complained Carruthers.

“Might be Letitia and Mary,” suggested Duncan. “Make ’em that and have the letter sent in charge of Fitzhugh, else it will go straight to Letitia.”

“Why in charge of me?” Fitzhugh straightened suspiciously.

“Because you’ve been sitting there asleep, and haven’t helped a hair, and it’s time we made you,” his wife answered, with severity. “Georgy, put in a P. S., and say it’s more convenient, owing to the storms, to have an answer sent in charge of Letitia’s and Mary’s nephew, Cadet Theodore Fitzhugh,” he directed the author.

Carruthers scribbled obediently.

“Why the storms?” Hill ventured. “There aren’t any storms.”

“Oh, don’t be such a fuss!” said Duncan. “Of course there aren’t, but it prevents suspicion to give reasons, and they won’t investigate our weather.”

There was silence for a moment while the boys stood over Carruthers, an erect and stately young trio in their gray and gold, and contemplated his finished labors. Duncan and Fitzhugh, leaning on each other’s shoulders, nodded with satisfaction, and Carruthers grinned with modest pride.

“Good work, lad!” said Fitzhugh, and slapped the scribe.

But Hill put his lips together. “Now look here!” he said; “that letter’s no good.”

“No good!” echoed Duncan and Fitzhugh, and Carruthers asked frowning:

“What do you mean?”

“Why, this”—Hill sat on the edge of the chair and put his elbows on the table aggressively—“it’s not businesslike. It’s drivel, and it’s too long. You ought to talk to the point and not put on frills.”

Carruthers threw down his pencil. “All right then—you do it.”

Duncan, the conservative, was wary. “Your letter’s a good one, _I_ think, Georgy,” he said; “but we want the best possible. Hill might have something still better up his sleeve, and we’ll need the devil and all his works to worry us through this. Take some paper, Mountain-tops, and see if you can beat Georgy.”

Hill pulled the pad toward him, helped himself to the pencil, and wrote fiercely. Then, running his fingers through his thick black locks with an air, he read:

“MATRON ST. WINIFRED’S ORPHAN ASYLUM.

“DEAR MADAM: Please notify if you can send to address below, on approval for one week, one white child, nine months old, weight thirty pounds, no teeth, blue eyes. Adoption to follow if satisfactory. Refer to Reverend Edgar Stuyvesant, Chaplain.

“Very truly,

“(MISSES) LETITIA AND MARY BELLINGHAM.

“Care CADET THEODORE FITZHUGH,

“U. S. Military Academy,

“West Point, N. Y.”

“There!” Hill looked at his colleagues to mark the effect.

Duncan voiced the sentiments of the three.

“Won’t do, Topsy.” He shook his head gently but firmly. “You’d never get one to order exactly like that. What do you think they’d do if they hadn’t it in stock—whittle the kid to thirty pounds? And pull its teeth? It’s all right, you know, if you were ordering chickens, but Georgy’s has more feeling, more what you’d expect from old ladies with a kid in their eye. I think we’ll send Georgy’s letter, won’t we, boys? Here, you—copy it.”

And Carruthers was planted with pen and ink while the others discussed ways and means.

“It’ll need peculiar things to drink,” said Hill, undiscouraged by his lack of success. “My sister has one that size, little Jimmie, and it drinks—let’s see—something you see advertised. I don’t know but it’s some sort of whiskey.”

“Oh, no,” said Duncan decidedly. “I’m sure it couldn’t. Awful way to begin to raise a kid. I’m against that.”

“Well, perhaps I’ve got it twisted,” acknowledged Hill. “But it’s one of those things.”

“Little Jimmie has naps,” went on Hill. “They sing him to sleep.”

“Holy Moses!” groaned Fitzhugh, who was the musician. “I see myself singing this thing to sleep!”

“And they change little Jimmie’s dresses afternoons, and put on clean ones—why, sometimes he’s dressed as much as four times a day.” Hill’s face was rapt with reminiscent pride.

“Look here, Topsy,” said Fitzhugh nervously; “you’d better not get the idea that this kid is to be modelled on your little Jimmie. Not much. If it comes out alive from its outing to the country, it’s all we ask. Most of the time we’ve got to keep it up the chimney.”

“Let’s turn Wipes on the case,” suggested Jack Duncan, the fruitful thinker. “He has kids of his own, and he can get points from his wife. He’ll keep it dark, too.”

For Wipes was an old collaborator in crime. He was what the cadets call a “policeman,” an orderly detailed to take care of cadets’ quarters.

“Little Jimmie has a crib, white iron and brass,” Hill struck in, quite carried away by poetic possibilities. “We’ll have to have something for our young one to sleep in. And toys, you know. I could write my sister for some of little Jimmie’s—”

“Hill,” broke in Fitzhugh, “cut it out. You’re losing your mind. Thought you wanted to be businesslike. This infant isn’t going to live in luxury. It’s going to live, we _hope_, but that’s all. Leave your sister’s kid lay.”

Duncan, tactful as always, put in his word. “Anyway, there’s no use settling things till we hear from Mrs. St. Winifred. First, we’ll mail Georgy’s letter. Then, if they’ll let us have the kid, we’ll call in Wipes and plan our campaign with that breadth of foresight which has before led our banners to victory.”

* * * * *

Five days later saw Fitzhugh a widowed sojourner in his room, with silence across the hall where Hill’s and Carruthers’s steps were wont to echo. Scarlet fever had broken out in the academy, and the three, Jack Duncan, Carruthers, and Hill, were among the first to be sent to the infirmary. The cases were light, but the disease broke up the gay partnership, and Fitzhugh was low-spirited.

As he came into his room there were letters on his table. He took them up half-heartedly and slipped them through his hands. Two bills, a letter from his mother and—he glanced at the printed words in the corner of the other envelope. “St. Winifred’s Orphan Asylum.” His blood ran cold. In the worry of his friends’ illness he had entirely forgotten that letter of Georgy Carruthers’s, mailed the morning after the council of war. He held the long envelope by two fingers, and stared at it as if afraid to open it. Then he took courage, cut the flap, and drew out a page or more of handwriting. This is what he read:

“MISSES LETITIA AND MARY BELLINGHAM.

“DEAR MADAMS: Your letter of the seventh was received and we are happy to look forward to placing one of our little ones in your care. We wrote to the chaplain, as suggested, and the response was gratifying. Therefore, as we are satisfied with the home offered, we shall not wait to hear further from you, but send by four o’clock train on Friday, in charge of an attendant, little Marcus.”

The paper dropped from the boy’s hand as if a bullet had struck it, and his lips moved in wordless anathema. He sat for a moment stunned by the blow, then picked up the letter and read on.

“We send him, as advised, to your nephew, Cadet Theodore Fitzhugh.”

The lad groaned.

“He is a fine child of ten months. Feed him condensed milk. It should be prepared in the following way.”

Fitzhugh skipped four lines.

“This should be fed to him every—”

He skipped again. His eyes wandered down the page, and he read aloud, in a gasping voice, bits of sentences:

“His bath should be tested with a thermometer.” “Must have four hours a day of fresh air.” “Sleeps every morning from ten to—”

He sprang to his feet, dashing the letter to the floor, and marched back and forth across his room, muttering. Then he rubbed his eyes as if to see better. “What under the canopy _am_ I going to do?” he groaned.

A subdued but firm knock rat-a-tat-tatted at the door. “Come in,” moaned the cadet, too lost in misery to try to pull himself together, and in the open doorway Wipes stood saluting.

Wipes was a tall, ugly soldier with a large nose, a red complexion, and a wooden expression. Fitzhugh greeted him like a messenger from heaven.

“Wipes! Oh, Wipes!” he cried in a bleat of joy. “I’d rather see you than any one on earth.”

“Very good, sorr,” said Wipes, and saluted again. Under his stolidity was a heart much like hominy served for breakfast—as warm, as soft, as steaming with fragrant kindliness. In spite of experience, such a greeting flattered him to its depths. It was five minutes before the boy’s nervous statement made apparent impression on the slaty surface of Wipes’s intellect. Then a smile expanded slowly over the hatchet face, as if a mountainside had cracked.

“Wipes, if you grin like that I’ll kill you,” said Fitzhugh, exasperated, and Wipes answered respectfully:

“Very good, sorr.”

Fitzhugh went on. “It’s up to you to get me out of this hole. It’s the worst one yet, but you’ve never failed me, Wipesy. Now tell me what can be done? The kid’s due”—he took out his watch—“oh, momma! In an hour. Something’s got to be done, and quick.”

“If ye’d excuse me, sorr,” said Wipes, “Oi’ve ’n idea.”

“I’ll excuse you this time,” Fitzhugh agreed. “Get it out of your system.”

“F’r me to meet th’ kid, sorr, and sind him back.”

For one moment of exquisite relief Fitzhugh felt almost sentimental toward Wipes. Of course! Why had he not thought of it? He wrung the soldier’s hand till the cracked-rock smile split his face again, and then he rushed into arrangements. Wipes’s words were few and direct, and what he said he seemed to swallow back half-way out, as if with regret at the outlay. But Fitzhugh was equal to the talking. Wipes was to say that the Misses Bellingham had suddenly decided to go abroad for a year, and had given up the idea of adopting a child; that they were on the point of so writing the matron when her promptness forestalled them; the trip of attendant and child was to be paid for, so that there should be no discussion. The young man brought out some bills.

“Wipes, I’m broke, but it’s cheap at bankruptcy.”

But the soldier refused the money. “F’r me to sind in th’ bill, sorr, whin th’ job’s done,” he remarked half-way down his throat.

Wipes went off, and Fitzhugh watched him from his window as the ship that bore the cargo of his safety or destruction. His figure, fine and erect, swung with vigorous strides along the diagonal path that crosses the Parade, and the boy, his eyes glued on that one dark-blue spot, did not see another figure advancing to meet it, till the man stopped sharply. Then, with a jump of his pulse, he saw who it was. But why should Julia Duncan be talking to Wipes? However, there was no time to meditate over that—it wouldn’t help to be late to cavalry-drill.

But a vision haunted him as he took hurdles with his arms crossed, and made flying leaps over his horse galloping down the tan-bark. It was the vision of a slim figure in a tailor-gown, a glory of red-gold hair gleaming under the black of her hat. That was all he had seen as she talked to Wipes, but he knew the details, the laughing face, the brilliant white, small teeth almost always showing, and the mischievous eyes with tawny lashes. A fascinating face, full of charm; and the drowsy voice, with a reedy note, like a child’s voice just awakened, the quick wit, and innocently naughty ways—he remembered all that, too.

In and out through the strenuous mazes of cavalry-drill went the glint of red hair and the shine of white teeth, and the echo of her laugh. The evening was his own till nine o’clock, and “a spirit in his feet” led him to the house where she stayed, Colonel Emerson’s house, looking up the river.

“What were you talking to Wipes about, on the Parade this afternoon?”

“Who is Wipes?” demanded the laughing, slow voice, and Fitzhugh thought how pleasant a thing it was to realize a vision and an echo.

“Why, Wipes—our policeman. You oughtn’t to talk to the men; they’re not allowed luxuries reserved for the corps.”

“Oh, you mean that bright-red soldier, Weiber—I forgot Jack called him Wipes. Why, I know him. Fascinating man! I know his wife, too. She’s not just fascinating; she’s always scrubbing the children, and I’m sure she’s right, for they never look finished. I go to see her sometimes. That is, I went yesterday.” And Fitzhugh reflected how nice it was in girls to go to see poor soldiers’ families. It flashed across him that perhaps he would stroll down to visit the Wipeses some day himself, when he knew she was to be there.

Nine o’clock was removed from eight by about five minutes that evening, and his dreams afterward were empty of little Marcus and filled with a bewitching, mischievous personality. But a shock was in store for him. The next day when Wipes appeared, his vermilion face seemed longer. Fitzhugh had waited for him feverishly.

“Is it all right, Wipesy? Did you get him off without trouble? How much do I owe you?”

“F’r me to sind in th’ bill whin th’ job’s done,” gulped Wipes.

“Isn’t it done? What do you mean? Why isn’t it done?”

Wipes, in throaty gurgles, told his tale. The attendant had thrust the child into the soldier’s arms and jumped back on the train, refusing to listen to reason. She was not going back to New York, she was going up the river to visit her cousin—she had no further concern with the baby than to deliver him at West Point. She laughed at the idea of taking him back to the city. The train went on, and Wipes was left standing with little Marcus howling in his arms.

Such was the tale. Fitzhugh stared in horror. He gasped before he could speak.

“Wipes,” he whispered, “where is it? Here?”

“Yis, sorr—me wife’s got it.”

Fitzhugh breathed again—how good, how thoughtful of Wipes—and he had never dreamed of this obvious plan, either. Mrs. Wipes—of course—what more natural?

“Wipes, you’re a fine fellow—you’re glorious, old Wipesy!” he exploded. “Tell your wife I’ll pay anything she wants—anything. Only keep it. Will she keep it? It’s only a week. She will, won’t she? You tell her to keep it, Wipesy.”

“Very good, sorr. I’ll tell ’r. She’ll keep ’t,” the soldier answered in vocal shorthand, and Fitzhugh, trembling still, shaken with emotion, was yet relieved and grateful. Wipes turned to go, then wheeled. “Miss Duncan, sorr.”

Fitzhugh opened startled eyes at him. “What about Miss Duncan?” he demanded, with dignity.

“Oi met ’r with th’ kid ’n me arrms.”

“Well? She knows you have children, doesn’t she?”

Wipes shook his head. “’Twas tagged.”

“Tagged?”

“‘To Cadet The’dore Fitz’ugh.’” The name sounded like a sneeze.

“Oh!” The boy fell back in his chair. “And she read it, of course. What did you tell her?”

“Oi said ’twas yer pa’s coachman’s kid, sorr, th’t’d need of air.”

Fitzhugh’s people lived in New York. It was far-fetched, but yet the gods were good, for they might have lived in San Francisco. Fitzhugh blessed the soldier again. “Wipes, you’re a lot brighter than you look. What did she say?”

“She said how good ’twas ’f ye, sorr, t’ remimber th’ poor.”

Fitzhugh smiled placidly and was aware of a warm feeling around his heart.

“Oi told ’r ye’d not like ut mintioned outside, sorr.”

“Wipes,” said Fitzhugh, “you’re a born gentleman, you certainly are. Your tact is remarkable. I’ll make this up to you somehow, Wipesy.”

“F’r me to sind in th’ bill whin th’ job’s done,” repeated Wipes oracularly, and went.

To the nervous and lonely cadet it was a godsend that he could even partly discuss his dilemma with Julia Duncan. He longed to tell her the whole situation, but feared her teasing spirit. She would worry him unmercifully, and it might make him ridiculous in her eyes—he dared not risk that. It was not so bad to pose as a philanthropist, unintentionally of course. He chuckled with satisfaction at the accidental air of the discovery—of how he appeared not to let his right hand know the good his left was doing. But he must see her and talk to her about it.

The next day was Sunday, and when the cadets had formed and marched away after service, a gallant and soldierly sight, he dashed back from his quarters to the chapel door, and walked home with her. He blessed Colonel Emerson for living far around the turn, beyond the Parade—a quarter of a mile more with her was worth while.

She began talking about the leaves that were coming on the trees, the spring in the air, the misty look over the piled hills beyond the river, and Fitzhugh fairly jumped with nervousness. It would seem like ostentation to lug in the coachman’s baby before she spoke of it; but here they were half-way around the square, and she was still going on about springtime! And her eyes were dancing as if it were the best joke in the world. He wrenched the conversation off by main force.

“How is Jack, Miss Julia? Does he write you at all?”

“Every day.” She glanced up at him. “Every morning I get a nasty letter that smells like a drug-store, and every afternoon I send him a nice, clean one. I shall write him something about you to-day.”

“About me?” Fitzhugh tried to be careless. “Is there anything interesting enough about me to put in writing?”

The girl’s glancing eyes seemed to watch him. “Yes, indeed. I’m going to tell him how good you are.” The cadet felt a dash of discomfort, and the drawling, soft voice went on. “I think he’ll be surprised. Isn’t it a new thing, this Coachman’s Babies’ Fresh Air Society of yours and Mr. Wipes?”

The cadet stammered. “I—it was an accident—I—I didn’t mean any one to know about it.”

“That makes it twice as good. It’s wonderful that a young man should take such an interest in the poor and in children, but that you should go to the trouble of getting one up here and keeping it for—a week, didn’t Weiber say? And then to be so modest about any one’s knowing it! Really, that’s perfectly fine of you! Shows so much generosity and thoughtfulness, and at the same time such an unostentatious sort of character!”

Fitzhugh wondered afterward if there was a touch of mockery in the grave interest of her tone, but at the moment he felt that he was all of that and more, and the feeling was agreeable.

“Don’t,” he said. “You praise me too much.” And he almost forgot, in his satisfaction, the true history of that baby.

“Not a bit. I’d enjoy praising you more.” Fitzhugh jumped, for a laugh came running over the edge of the sentence. “It’s nothing—only a joke I thought of,” she went on quickly, and so easy was her laughter always that he only smiled in approval. “I called on little Marcus yesterday afternoon, and found him a cunning rat. Don’t you want Mrs. Weiber to bring him up to see you some day?”

“No—Heavens, no!” said Fitzhugh promptly, in alarm, and again the laughter bubbled over.

“You’re not half properly interested in him; you ought to be trundling him about the Parade in the Weibers’s baby-carriage every afternoon. You know you’re responsible for that child every minute he is here—do you know that? You are. If he gets health and strength out of his visit, it’s to your credit; but if he falls ill and dies—that’s your fault, just the same.”

“Oh, don’t,” groaned Fitzhugh. “What a thing to say! Don’t say it.”

“Oh, I have to—it’s true,” Miss Duncan responded firmly. “He doesn’t look strong. But it was very good of you to have him up, and I’m sure I hope he won’t die or anything.”

Dancing eyes and white teeth joined in the smile that softened this ominous last speech, and Fitzhugh swung away down the shaded country street with a cold dislike of the innocent little Marcus in the bottom of his heart, but a very warm feeling for the innocent-seeming Miss Duncan filling all other space.

Neither Miss Duncan nor Wipes could persuade the cadet to see his charge. There he drew the line. But the horrid fact of its presence in the post weighed less and less upon him, and the daily accounts from the girl and the soldier began even to amuse him. He was planning how he could boast to the three lads of his skilfulness in putting the affair through by his unaided intellect. It grew to be a habit to expect, as the carpentered visage of Wipes appeared in his doorway, the report of:

“F’r me to say from th’ missis, sorr, ’s how’s the kid’s hearty.”

A habit of a few days, for one morning there was silence, and Wipes’s head wobbled solemnly. Fitzhugh did not pay much attention. Wipes’s manner was not dramatic enough in its shading to convey a very instant impression.

“Kid all right?” asked the boy cheerfully.

“F’r me to say from th’ missis, sorr, as how’s the kid’s awful sick.”

Fitzhugh dropped his book on the floor, and the front legs of his chair came down with a crash.

“What the deuce do you mean, Wipes?”