Part 13

"That is not the way at all," said Magnus (approving it highly, all the same). "You must put your head on the other side now and say: 'Really, Mr. Kindred--he! he!--I'm awfully sorry--but I've given all my walks away.' Then I shall answer fiercely: 'Tell me one of the men, and I'll go fight him and get it back.' Now, Cherry, clasp your hands and say pleadingly: 'Oh, no! Please don't, Mr. Kindred! I remember now--there is one walk just before breakfast. Would that be too early for you?' And I answer practically: 'Nothing is too early for me, Miss Reserve, after you have opened your eyes.' And then you must give me an admiring glance and say: 'Oh, don't talk of _my_ eyes, Mr. Kindred!' Then the drum-beats, and I double-time it into camp."

"You need not say 'you'--I should never say such things," Cherry declared; this vision of other girls acting as a tonic, though she laughed with the rest.

"Of course not! You do not say anything to me," retorted Magnus.

"She is too polite to interrupt you," said Rose. "Do you mean to say that West Point girls talk like that?"

"Some of the girls. Cherry will when I have walked with her a few times."

Cherry glanced up in quick denial, meeting then the aforesaid eyes looking so handsome and competent and full of frolic and power that her own beat a hasty retreat.

"And you walk with such girls?" demanded Violet.

"Oh, yes--" Magnus said easily. "One cannot be uncivil just because they are complimentary."

"But before breakfast!" said Rose. "Is there no other half hour in the day that would do?"

"My dear girl, it's not _that_ half hour in particular; it is every half hour they can get. You wouldn't have them pink and white their cheeks for nothing."

"Pink their cheeks?"

"Why, yes," said Magnus. "Pink them--frost them. I'm sure I don't know how it's done."

"You are telling traveller's tales," said Mrs. Kindred gravely.

"Well, I like that!" said Magnus. "Why, mammy, they _all_ do it. Clinker says so. At least not all, I suppose. Of course, there are exceptions."

"Charlemagne"--began Mrs. Kindred. But at this word Magnus turned to her and "stood attention," bracing up to the fullest extent, and saluting with such profound gravity and respect that the rest all shouted, and the mother's face gave way.

"There is no doing anything with you," she said. "You must give them no end of trouble at West Point. Go upstairs and take off that toggery, and see if you can be a reasonable boy."

"I've got to give Cherry her walk first," said Magnus. "She has never walked with a real live cadet; and she may as well practise on me before she undertakes the rest of the Corps next summer."

"I look like that," said Cherry, with some scorn.

"Very much like it, I should say," responded Magnus. "I know how it will be. 'Say, Kindred, who's that awfully nice girl you've got on hand? Introduce me, won't you? Your sister, aint she? Well, don't let her promise all her walks to those spoony fellows. You want her to have a good time, you know.'"

Magnus hit it off with excellent mimicry, and the room was in a buzz of amusement.

"Then I shall say," he went on, "that my sisters are in quite another package, and that to ensure her having a good time, she has promised all her walks to me."

"She hasn't at all," said Violet.

"She will--by that time," said Magnus confidently; enjoying the pulsating colour in Cherry's face, and comparing it with the unmoved tinting of poppy leaves. "Why, even to-night she'll not walk home with anybody but Cadet Kindred, in full canonicals."

"Magnus!" said his mother, "I think you are absolutely beside yourself."

"Do cadets all talk in that style?" demanded Rose.

"Not all so brilliantly as I do, by any means, but in the same general way."

"Then I think they need a professor of common sense at West Point."

"And I think you had better go to bed and to sleep," said Violet. "We'll walk home with Cherry. Your brain is getting overexcited."

"Silence and solitude will calm it down," said Magnus. "If you all go, there will be a chatter, but Cherry and I know each other so well that there is no need to speak. She will not try to keep me, mammy; I'll be right back."

There is no doubt but Cherry was laughing when they set out, partly for nervousness, but also in part for the mere infectious atmosphere of frolic. She gave no sign, however, being much under the spell of the tall, erect figure at her side. Whenever she looked up and tried to throw off the glamour, one glint of the bell buttons brought it on worse than before.

"Aren't we walking very fast?" said Magnus mildly.

"But you told your mother you would be right back," said Cherry.

"From your front door--not from ours." The laugh rippled out at that, as Cherry moderated her pace.

"No use, you see," said Magnus, falling into an easy saunter. "I can do the double faster than you can. I knew you meant to scoot away by yourself, the minute I went to change myself into a cit."

"Who told you?" said Cherry.

"You."

Silence fell upon this; then Magnus began again:

"You see, I really wanted to have you alone awhile--I wanted to ask tidings of an old friend of mine. I thought perhaps you could tell me where to find her; girls always seem to know about girls."

"Oh, I do not!" said Cherry hastily, running over in her mind all the girls she had ever heard of. "You should ask Rose."

"Rose doesn't know everything. I dare say you can tell me if she has moved off. I thought so much of her!" said Magnus pensively, gazing up at the stars. "We used to be very intimate. I left my heart in her keeping--whatever she did with it. Why--you will hardly believe me--but she used to live here, in your house. And when I was going away to West Point she kissed me right at this very gate."

"She didn't!" cried Cherry hotly, and then hung her head.

"Oh, you do know her then?" said Magnus. "Why didn't you say so before? And where do you suppose she probably is now?"

Cherry resolutely stopped and faced him; what though the full moonlight effect well nigh swept off her self-possession.

"Magnus," she said, "you are talking great nonsense. It may be the West Point fashionable way of talking sense, but we are plain folks out here and have not had your advantages."

And here Magnus made a bow so profound that it sent Cherry's words to the right-about.

"What next?" said Magnus. "That is all more or less true, so far, but well begun is only half done."

"Oh, it is no use to talk to you!" said Cherry. "And it never was, for that matter."

"_My_ talking is of some use, however," said Magnus. "I have quite succeeded in bringing myself back to your recollection. What more did you want to say, pretty girl?"

"That you are extremely silly," said Cherry, with the laugh getting into her voice.

"There is no contenting these women of sense!" said Magnus. "If I fib, she scolds: if I tell truth, she flouts me. If Derby drill will only handle this line of approaches, I shall learn how, in time. Don't walk so fast, wise damsel."

"Will you come in and see papa to-night?" said Cherry, not slackening her pace in the least.

"Well, hardly," said Magnus. "I like to make it all safe with the daughter before I rush into the paternal presence."

If Cherry had been that sort of a girl, I think she would have lent him a very earnest and hearty little cuff. As it was, she gave him one hopeless glance and slipped through the little gate, as her next neighbour would have said, "spryer'n an eel."

But quick steps were play to Magnus, and before Cherry's foot had touched the doorstone he was beside her. His hands met round but not touching her, putting the girl in a charmed circle of space; and the strong, clear voice chanted out an old playtime couplet:

"Open the ring and let her in, And kiss her when you get her in."

"Oh, Magnus! do hush!" Cherry said desperately. "You are altogether wild to-night. And everybody will find it out!" she added, as if that doubled the case. She made a quick motion to dive under "the ring" and get away, which was quite fruitless.

"Stand still," Magnus admonished her. "Unless you want the prison walls to converge, as in that old tale of the Inquisition. I am going to put you straight through the catechism. First of all, will you confess that you are a humbug and a fraud?"

"I am only myself," Cherry faltered, but standing so still now that she hardly dared breathe.

"Only yourself--a very good answer. Well, I never want you to be anything else, more or less. Do you understand?"

"The words are tolerably plain," said Cherry.

"Then if you are 'only yourself,' why didn't you welcome me home?"

"What did you want me to say?" said Cherry, with again a little break in her voice.

"Say?" repeated Magnus. "You should have thrown up your hands and eyes, and then taken down the dictionary and used every word there was in it."

But now Cherry laughed.

"You would have had a pretty mixed dose, if I had," she said.

"Well, that is past," said Magnus; "you can't do it now. So you must have the catechism. Are you glad to see me?"

"Very."

"You are delighted?"

"Yes"--a little slower.

"Out of your wits with joy?"

"No," said Cherry; "you are the only person out of his wits."

"Ready to do anything I ask you?"

"In reason"--again slowly.

"Out of reason?"

"No."

"You will dream of me to-night?"

"I hope not."

"You will go wherever I want you to while I am here?"

"I--think so."

"And you will walk with me three times a day at West Point and with nobody else?"

"I shall not be at West Point. Magnus, do stop fooling and let me go."

"Bid me good-night, then."

"Good-night."

"I mean the way we said good-bye."

"That is the way I said good-bye," Cherry answered.

"It wasn't the way _I_ said good-bye," said Magnus. "_This_ was the way. And this is the way I say good-night. Cherry, you are a transparent fraud."

"But you must go," Cherry urged, very grave and quiet now. "If you do not go, you never can come again!" she added, as a last argument.

"What a wise girl! I believe she could tackle warped surfaces."

"Are they any harder to manage than you are?" said Cherry. "You know"--but she checked herself. It would not do to mention her father again, even to save his being waked up by all this talking under his window.

"Know what?"

"Less than you think," said Cherry coolly.

"The professors have been trying to din that into me for the last two years," said Magnus, "but I never thought to have you take it up. What were you going to say?"

"I shall not tell you."

"Sugar and spice," quoted Magnus. "Shows what I have to expect at my first wild frontier post."

"I can tell you what to expect before that," said Cherry. "If you stay here moonshining any longer, you 'will be pale to-morrow,' like your namesake in Dickens."

"Then you can hand over some of your pinks," said Magnus. "Besides, my dear, I must inform you of a well-known West Point fact: truth misapplied ceases to be useful. Mr. Peter Magnus was storing his good looks to propound a certain question next day. Whereas I, having settled it to-night----"

But just there Cherry made a quick movement of her pretty head, stooped under the enclosing arms, and was out of sight in a second.

Magnus ran down the hill, whistling at the top of his power. I am not sure that Cherry knew what he whistled; and I doubt if he knew himself; but I think it was "The Girl I Left behind Me."

"My dear boy," said Mrs. Kindred, as her cadet came in, "you forget that it is night in these Western regions. Have you been round the neighbourhood whistling people up?"

Magnus threw himself down on the floor at her feet.

"Mammy, if you'd not been allowed to whistle for two years, you would know how good it feels."

"Not allowed to whistle? What could comfort you?" said the mother, laying her hand caressingly on his head. "Well, I suppose if three hundred boys got to whistling, the effect might be rather powerful."

"What kept you so long, boy?" said Rose.

"Cherry. She is a rather slow girl, sometimes."

"She isn't!" cried Violet. "_Never!_ She is just the quickest girl going."

"Cherry--as I have found her," said Magnus gravely.

"Do all cadets tell fibs?" inquired Rose.

"Unless I am a shining exception, they do."

"Well, do they all look like you?" said Violet.

"Making allowance for the difference of men," said Magnus, with easy assurance.

"What are those things on your arm for?"

"Rank, power, and responsibility. They are not 'things,' they are chevrons."

"What's the sense of cutting your hair so short?"

"So as to see better how to skin us for 'too much shirt collar,'" replied Mr. Kindred.

"Girls," said the mother, "you must really let him go to bed. I do not think he half knows what he is about."

"Don't I, though!" cried Magnus, springing up. "Just one hour and a half ago tattoo beat, and I wasn't there to hear it."

And once more the cap did duty in the air, as Magnus gave a tolerably quiet version of the class yell.

"Go, child," his mother repeated, smiling at him.

"Yes, I must," said Magnus. "Cherry said I should be pale to-morrow. It is worth while going to sleep, with no reveille gun ahead."

XXVII

OFF LIMITS

Forgotten the sounds of drum and fife, Forgotten the winter days so drear; But all was keen with the glad new life That throbs in the veins in the furlough year.

--_Howitzer of 1891._

It was just like the cross grain of human nature that without a sound but the singing of birds to rouse him, our young soldier should wake up at precisely reveille gun time. In fact he did it for three days, to his great disgust; and then, as he said of himself, learned to know how happy he was.

Of course, this first morning at home, with everything before him except drills and regulations, going to sleep again was impossible.

So with the sublime unconsciousness of other people's slumbers which marks young men of his age, Magnus lay still and began to whistle. And with that other line of forgetfulness which shows the inferiority of the feminine mind, there was not a woman in the house but would have given her best sleep to hear him.

They were not asleep, however, but up and stirring; and it was perhaps some closing door or opening window, or the long unheard voice of the coffee mill, which reminded Cadet Kindred that in these regions there was no preparatory drum; and that such a noise as he had been making would quite rule out the thought of any private suggestions at his door. Wherefore, he had better get up. But what fun--to dress as he liked, in what he liked, and be as long as he liked about it.

With these thoughts came another to hasten his motions: would Cherry come to breakfast? And if she did, then just when would she come? And here Magnus paused before a piquant illustration of the young lady herself, drawn from memory--or, as the _real_ novelists put it, "which had been photographed on his heart in one brief moment." And thus it seemed:

A tall, delicately formed girl, with dark hair, which did not crinkle and curl like his own, but parted in shining waves and rings; a complexion colourless in general, but where the rosy tints came and went like a pink cloud, in swift pulsations. The eyes--no, Mr. Kindred thought he had not a fair look at her eyes last night, and that was one thing to do to-day. Also her hand was a soft and fresh thing to touch. And at this point Magnus opened his door and passed out.

On the way downstairs he peeped into his mother's room, but no one was there, and he went straight on to a small room on the first floor which was a sort of offshoot from the house, and hardly bigger than a good-sized bay window.

But the picture he found there Magnus never forgot.

The room had been his father's summer study. Too cold for winter use, but in June perfection, with every window open to the air. Roses and honeysuckles climbed up and ran across and strayed in; amid the tangle birds sang and twittered and builded. Further off were cattle and chickens, with an old drum major of a turkey cock strutting before the barnyard throng. The scent of hayfields was mingled with the yet rarer fragrance of new-mown grass.

If the room had been larger, the minister's old library would have made small show; but as it was, the strips of wall between the windows were quite well covered. It was a very old affair in every way; leather covers much worn with handling, shutting in truths that were but the brighter for much believing. Very old-fashioned books. You could not find a copy of "Why I am a Doubter"; nor a single treatise on "The Eternal Equilibrium of Things." The glad toiler in Christ's vineyard had had no use for "The Trammels of Faith, and how I Got beyond Them"; and as little for "The Proper Sphere and Limit of the Bible, Set Forth and Defined."

But there was Baxter's "Call to the Unconverted," which the minister himself had also preached; with Bunyan's "Holy War between Diabolus and the Town of Mansoul," the which he himself had also waged; there was "The Saint's Everlasting Rest," upon which he now had entered. There was also old Matthew Henry's "Commentary" in its six volumes, which gave people so much to do on the plane of the lower criticism, that they had small chance to wish for the higher; with Fox's "Book of Martyrs," and "Lives of the Port Royalists," and Doddridge's "Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul."

Only two chairs were in the room: one, where inquirers had so often sat and troubled hearts found peace, was pushed back now, its service done; but the minister's chair still stood by the minister's table where lay the minister's Book of books; and in the chair sat the minister's widow.

She was not reading at the moment: I think she had been listening to the gay sounds upstairs; and a tender, happy smile was on her lips, in perfect keeping with the words on which her eyes had been. But everything in that room was in keeping, to Magnus: his mother's cap looked to him not a whit purer than her face; nor was the shine outside the windows more gladsome than the look she turned to him. The young cadet was at her side in an instant, down on his knees with his head on her shoulder.

"What waked you up so early, child?"

"The echo of that reveille gun came clear across the Continent for the express purpose."

"Hardly. I heard you whistling some time ago."

"Did I disturb you?"

"You could not do that," said the mother.

"But you were reading."

"Thoughts of you are never far away from the Bible, nor the Bible from thoughts of you. Where have you been reading this morning, Magnus?"

"I've not been reading anywhere. Mother, do you think I had better run up for Cherry? or will she be here all right on time?"

"Time for what?" said Mrs. Kindred, rather opening her eyes at this very rapid transit.

"Breakfast."

"Did she say she would come?"

"Why--no," said Magnus. "I took it for granted."

"Never take anything for granted about Cherry, except that she will do just what is right. She never goes anywhere, Magnus, until she has given her father his breakfast and seen to his morning comfort in every way."

"I should think she might come," Magnus said discontentedly. "It's my first morning home. He could get along for once."

The mother smiled a little at the wide space demanded by the young people in these days, and the side corner deemed enough for the elder; but the usurpers are too lovely and beloved to be resisted. And besides, there is a sort of "while they can"--that checks many a word; the tender, pathetic force of Dr. Bonar's thought:

"Take thou my place, and be thy feast Sweeter than mine has been!"

"Cherry will not come, Magnus," she said. "She never gets free before ten or eleven o'clock. So tell me why you have done no reading to-day."

"Out of the habit," said Magnus. "I never do it in the morning."

"What is your Bible time?"

"Well, if I can be said to have one, it is more apt to be at night," said Magnus. "I don't always read then, but most generally I do."

"At night?" said the mother, carefully hiding all signs of the underground shock that made her heart tremble. "I like to read at night, too. But then, dear, if you do not read in the morning as well, you have no fresh heartful of the blessed words to live by through the day." And she looked round at Magnus with such eager, anxious, pleading eyes as went straight to his heart. Which truly was not far to seek, that morning. He jumped up and put himself in the other chair, drawing it up to her.

"Mammy," he said, "let me tell you about it. It's this way. The gun wakes me up. And I tumble downstairs half dressed, and declare at the top of my voice that I am myself, and nobody else. That is, the first sergeant calls 'Kindred!' and I yell back 'Here!' Then I rush in again, and tumble into bed, clothes and all, and get the very best nap you ever dreamed of."

"Another nap? For how long?"

"Two minutes and a quarter, drum time. Then I finish dressing and go to breakfast. And after breakfast, we don't have very much time before recitation."

"Cannot you read then?"

"Once in a while I do," said Magnus. "Not always. Maybe I do a little boning in math. Maybe I take a walk with the nicest girl there is round."

His mother could not help smiling.

"Can you always get the nicest?" she said.

"Oh, yes!" Magnus answered easily; "unless she happens to be somebody else's best. Sometimes then. You see, so long as she doesn't look me in the face, she can fancy I am her 'best' man."

"Why, Magnus!" his mother said, half laughing now, but really anxious; "how do you behave, to make that possible?"

Magnus laughed too, with great delight.

"Sure enough," he said, "how do I? Maybe I go through the motions."

And now it was Mrs. Kindred who, after a moment's pause, changed the subject.

"Look, dear," she said, laying her hand on the open Bible, "I was reading just here: the parable of the sower. And my thoughts had been going back and forth from the seed which the fowls of the air were let pick up, to that other which fell in an honest and good heart, and 'with patience,' brought forth an hundred-fold."

Magnus ran his eyes over the passage.

"There are lots of fowls of the air at the Academy," he said.

"Maybe no more than elsewhere. But they have no business in _your_ life, Magnus."

"No, mammy, they haven't," he said, hesitating a little with the difficulty of making his case plain. "All the same, they come in. I'll go to a right down good prayer-meeting Sunday night, and come back meaning to be the joy of your heart from that time on. Think I'll go straight to bed, so as to be sure and keep good till morning. Well, the moon is coming up as I get back to camp, and there is Randolph with pink and white gowns in tow; and I stop to speak, and they all say: 'Oh, come for a little walk!' I don't want to, and I half turn away--and then I go. The prayer-meeting isn't all gone by the time I get back, but there has been more of it picked up than you'd like."

"Yes," the mother answered, thinking in her heart that she had not prayed half enough for her boy in his hard places.

"Why, I've seen a man stay to Communion," Magnus went on, "and when we came out, there was Pretty Newcomb waiting for him in the rain, at the foot of the Chapel steps. Just walked him off alongside of her umbrella--or under it. And what are you going to do?"

"I see. But, Magnus, you said 'Sunday' night. What sort of girls are at the Camp Sunday night?"

"Summer girls," said Magnus briefly.

"Well, dear," said the mother, the cheerful tone coming back to her voice, "the Lord is 'able to keep you from falling,' even in the most difficult places; and to make you 'fruitful to every good work,' in spite of all the fowls of the air that ever fluttered down. But remember, that on your part the word is: 'Hold fast that which thou hast, that no man take thy crown.'"

"I know." But then Magnus remembered something else, and was suddenly silent.

And now came a soft, imperative call to breakfast.