Part 16

"Magnificent, are they not?" said Mr. Erskine. "But the English version holds its own," he added musingly.

"'And I saw, as it were, a sea of glass mingled with fire; and them that had gotten the victory over the beast, and over his image, and over his mark, and over the number of his name, stand on the sea of glass, having the harps of God.'"

"Yes, that was it. You see, my boy, if you had indeed gotten the victory, and passed on into the exceeding glory and the joy, it did not so much matter if, for a little space, we broke our hearts down here."

It was a strange, wholesome ten minutes for Cadet Kindred; and I think as he stood there looking down at Cherry, he took the measure of his smallest storm flag more accurately than he had ever done before. In fact he could hardly find it to measure, but seemed to hear the empty halyards whipping against the staff. And that girl had been staying her heart with the thought of his victory and crown!

"That was the first hard day," said Mr. Erskine; "and the letters did not come for a week. What was our next reading, love? Magnus would like to hear them all."

But now Cherry's answer burst forth:

"Papa--I cannot!"

The father's hand came tenderly on her head.

"That is too much to ask," he said. "Those days are better out of sight. Go and get your hat, love, and we will try to reach our dear friends down the hill. Poor little girl!" he said, as Cherry sprang away; "it was a very hard time for her. And everybody looked to her for comfort. Violet would come up and cry on her shoulder, and Rose would beg her to go down and talk to your mother; and Cherry went and came, and reasoned and hunted up possible causes, and cheered everybody but herself. With a smile always ready, but pale as the winter sunshine. You see the lines were down, so that we could not telegraph, and when the first train broke through, even then there was no letter. She is a brave heart."

"She is the very dearest girl in all the world!" Magnus said eagerly.

"About that," her father answered--"well, love, here you are. Now we shall see what this brave young shoulder that is so ready to be useful, can do."

"Then, as you will not need me, papa, I will run on ahead," and Cherry slipped in among the trees, and was out of sight directly.

XXXI

THE SUMMER GIRL

No man has complained that you have discoursed too long on any subject, for you leave us in an eagerness of hearing more.

--DRYDEN.

The other two walked slowly on. They had always been cronies, as a man and even a small boy can be; and now Magnus found his old friend full of the keenest interest in all the new life and varying work of which the young cadet had so much to tell. Slowly down the pretty hill they went; Mr. Erskine taking from Magnus what help he could for his lame side, and the cadet trying to make the regulation step know its place. And it was so pleasant to see, so like the dear old times, that the four at the cottage dropped everything to watch them as they came. Then Mrs. Kindred hurried out to welcome her guest, the two sisters got hold of Magnus, and Cherry went quietly back to finish setting the table.

I doubt she was not minding her business too closely, smiling to herself over the words and laughter that came past the half-open door of the closet where she was sorting out spoons; for she never heard what stealthy steps drew near, and her first warning of danger was the sudden darkening of the closet by the shutting of the door. Cherry sprang towards it just in time to hear the bolt shot and the key withdrawn. Then came a struggle outside.

"Oh, Magnus, stop! Cherry is in there!"

"Safe as possible."

"Give me the key! She wants to be out here."

"Then why did she go in?"

"She went for the spoons, you intolerable boy," said Violet.

"Do to talk of," said Magnus coolly. "No, my dear; she went because this intolerable boy was around. So you perceive it is very kind of me to keep her where she cannot see him. Come, chicks; let's get the old banjo, and I'll sing you the 'Song of the Summer Girl.'"

"If you sing one single note when Cherry is not by to hear, we will stop our ears," said Rose.

"Then you will not be able to tell her about it afterwards," said Magnus. "Come along."

"Well, you cannot have your dinner till we get the spoons," said Violet.

"At West Point we eat with forks--when we have them," said Magnus. "When we do not, we take our fingers. Where is that banjo?"

The girls followed him, talking and scolding and threatening to tell Mr. Erskine, but Cherry had no idea of waiting for outside help. She was a girl of resources, and the case in hand was not very hard. For this was an outside lock, simply screwed on; an old knife made a fair screwdriver; and, when Magnus had just reached the next room, a soft chink made him look round, and there was Cherry, calmly putting the spoons in place.

"Where did you come from?" he said, turning back.

"The spoon drawer. Do I understand that West Point cadets scorn both spoons and forks?"

"I'll teach you something about West Point cadets, before I go," Magnus asserted, stepping towards her.

"How good of you!" said Cherry mockingly, as she slipped round the table. "We're such an ignorant set out here. Magnus, if you would announce a lecture on warped surfaces, I really think it would draw."

What Magnus would have said or done, and how Cherry might have suffered for her temerity, does not appear. Rose came in, bearing a dish of such chicken pot-pie as Magnus declared never grew on a reservation; Violet followed with potatoes and peas and beets--the pretty red, white, and green of the summer garden; and they all sat down to dinner. Then Magnus found that he had neither spoon nor fork.

"Why, Violet, how careless," the mother said, as he made known the fact.

"No, mamma, not I."

"Mrs. Kindred," said Cherry, "Magnus said that West Point cadets could eat with their fingers, so I thought if he enjoyed it, we should like to see how it was done. And it would be one less to wash. And the chickens are cut up," she added gravely. Mrs. Kindred laughed.

"If you two are having a fight, I'll keep out," she said. "Go and help yourself, Magnus." And this he would have done from Cherry's plate, if that young damsel had not laid fast hold of her property; so he took Violet's instead.

But it was a delightful dinner: what though the courses were few and simple, and the trained waiters only the three girls. Then the two elders carried Magnus off to the porch for another talk while the girls cleared the table, and then they also came out, bringing the banjo.

"Now for the summer girl!" they cried, and Magnus left his place for one on the steps at Cherry's feet.

"_She_ has been called 'a summer girl,'" he said, "and I want to see how she likes her portrait. This lay is named: 'The Idle of the Summer Girl.'"

"Your writing?" said Rose.

"If you admire it, yes."

"Dear me, child," said Mrs. Kindred, "do they waste your time out there writing poetry?"

"They don't waste any of my time they get hold of, you'd better believe," said Magnus. "I should forget what time means if I didn't filch a little for my own use, now and then. This is: 'The Idle of the Summer Girl. By Two Who Idled With Her,' Cadet Rig being the other party. All the weak lines are his. There's another touching ditty on the same theme, much sung in camp at the time of full moon, but it takes two to do it justice, as you can judge from a specimen verse."

Magnus twanged the banjo lugubriously, and began his song, changing voice for the supposed two singers, and giving the words of comment in his own:

_1st Cadet_: "O the Summer Girl has come to town."

_2d Cadet_: "Alas, my heart!"

_1st Cadet_: "In a sky-scraper hat, and a trail--ing gown."

_2d Cadet_: "Alas, my heart!"

_3d Cadet_: "Steady on that, you haven't got any."

At least four voices cried:

"Go on! Go on!"

"Can't," said Magnus; "it exhausts my feelings. Too spoony."

"Is that the way you talk to each other?" said Violet.

"Very much the way."

"And does nobody take up the cudgels for the poor summer girl?" inquired Mr. Erskine.

"Oh, I'll take them up, if you wish," said Magnus. "My Idle does her justice," and he dashed off into a tune crazy enough for a patchwork quilt:

"I sing the song of the Summer Girl; She feels for the lonely cadet. Her chocolate creams, in my very dreams I seem to taste them yet."

("N. B.--The last ones weren't fresh. Bought at the station probably.")

"The peaches she threw at my head at drill, The apples she dropped at my feet; The little pound cake that she made me take, First biting, to make it sweet."

"Magnus--she didn't!"

"Rose--she did!"

"And you eat it?"

"Tossed it over my shoulder while she bestowed one on Chappy. Robins aren't fetched up particular, as I was. Why, that's nothing!"

"Nothing?"

"No," said Magnus. "When a girl puts a lump of sugar between her teeth and comes round offering everybody a bite, that is rather steep."

"And yet, long life to the Summer Girl! Far be it from me to flout her. She's made in the shop, and she's not tip-top, But what could we do without her?

There were two spoons and a single dish, Two hearts that beat as one; When we sat by the wall before recall, Eating ice cream in the sun."

A general shout of derision greeted this, except from Cherry, who had grown rather quiet over these extraordinary "idles."

"Well, you must have been homesick, I should say," remarked Rose.

"Why, Magnus, I did not know you had it in you to flirt," said his mother.

"Don't think I have, mammy, to any dangerous extent. What's the row? Can't a man sing a song o' sixpence without being immediately spotted for one of the blackbirds?"

"But eating out of the same dish!" said Violet.

"If you had been a year at West Point, you'd eat ice cream out of anything," said Magnus, "and almost with anybody. I am generally careful to keep far away on my own side, and to grow more modest as the partition wall grows thin."

"But you had no money," said Mrs. Kindred. "I cannot see where you got ice cream."

"Summer girl stands treat. When you see a group of fainting cadets gathered round Delmonico's, you may take your affidavit there's a summer girl inside. Why, the amount of boodle that fair creature smuggles into camp and throws around generally would set a country store up in business."

"Boodle?" queried Mr. Erskine.

"Contraband sweets of life, sir."

"But Magnus, you said 'smuggled,'" said his mother.

"Had to be smuggled, mammy, or it could never get in. Tacs would confiscate and eat it up. And it might disagree with some of 'em. Better let any number of cadets suffer from indigestion and go to the hospital than have Towser off duty for a single day."

"My dear," said Mrs. Kindred, trying hard to keep a grave face, "I do not like to have you breaking rules."

"Don't like it myself," said Magnus virtuously. "They should not make 'em so fragile."

"If they are fragile, keep off."

"Just can't, mammy. Here we've had breakfast at half past six. Then we go head over heels into math. and heels over head into tan bark; and not another regulation mouthful to be had till one o'clock. Flesh and blood can't stand it, you know. We just _have_ to have a barrel of apples handy, and a box of crackers; and any other trifles we can pick up."

"A barrel of apples!" said Rose. "And 'smuggled' in! Wherever in the world do you keep them?"

"You are going to be such a favourite with the Tacs next summer, I think I will not tell," said Magnus.

"Poor starved boy!" said Rose. "And he has been home two whole days, and not even half a dish of ice cream, yet."

"I have had all the ice I want, thank you," said Cadet Kindred, looking up at Cherry, who as I said, had been very silent while all these other girls filled the air. "_Cream_ has been scarce. Perhaps if you two would stir up some sort of stuff to-morrow, Cherry would come down and freeze it."

"You shall freeze it yourself," said Violet.

"Agreed--with her to help me." And laughing up at her with mischievous eyes, Magnus finished his song:

"But never you trust the Summer Girl,-- Or you will find to your sorrow, That just as she smiled on Tubs to-day, She'll smile on Daddy to-morrow."

XXXII

LAYING FOUNDATIONS

There are three short and simple words, the hardest of all to pronounce in any language, but which no man or nation that cannot utter, can claim to have arrived at manhood. Those words are, I was wrong.

--JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

The early tea was over, and long shadows were falling as the little party broke up. The three girls were still debating what sort of ice cream they should make, when just beyond the gate a neighbour, driving by, offered Mr. Erskine a seat in his buggy. Then Magnus turned to his sisters.

"Stay here, you girls," he said. "I have to speak to Cherry very seriously; and I doubt if she likes to be lectured before people. Run in."

The girls laughed and obeyed; but perhaps Cherry did not choose to wait for lectures, nor mean to have them, for she spoke first. They were going slowly up the hill, Magnus falling into the West Point saunter, to which Cherry rather unwillingly conformed.

"We are walking very slow," she ventured. "And you used to walk so fast."

"West Point style. The very first day they impressed it upon my mind that fast walkers want to get somewhere. And, Cerise, just now I do not."

"Magnus," she said suddenly, "what did you really mean by a 'storm flag'?"

"Ah!" said Cadet Kindred, in a tone of deep satisfaction, "now I have got it. I thought it could not be long before Cherry would take me in hand."

"But whatever did you mean?"

"Come over here and sit down," he said, drawing her away from the path to a rock among the trees, and laying himself at her feet. "Now what was it I said in that unfortunate letter?"

"It was not unfortunate," said Cherry, "for we were very glad to get it; only that puzzled us. You said you kept some sort of a storm flag flying. And we did not know what a storm flag might be."

Magnus looked down for a moment in silence.

"No wonder," he said, "for the idea is something that never came into your true heart. You know what it means to strike your colours?"

"Yes--oh, yes!"

"And what it is to keep them flying,--for you do it every day."

"And I thought that must be what you meant," said Cherry. "You did not like to call your flag a big one, but it was always bravely flying."

"I meant more than that--or less," said Magnus. "Cerise, a storm flag is a sort of between thing. It may blow pretty hard, you think, and so you haul down your beautiful fair-weather banner and run up another that costs less; a little, little strip of bunting that hardly shows it is there. You know it is; and once in a while, in a good light, you can see the colours; but that is about all. It does not encourage the world much, and tells of hard weather more than of victory and joy. Do you understand now, dear girl?"

Cherry was looking at him with the keenest attention; the pulsations of colour came and went.

"But, Magnus," she began.

"Yes, Chérie. Say whatever comes into your heart to say."

"Then there is a little short time every now and then when the colours are really down?"

"Yes. And the harder the gale, the longer it takes to get them up again. It is often slow work, anyhow," said Magnus, with some bitterness at himself.

Cherry sat silent, looking down.

"What would happen to the other flag--the big one--if you left it flying?" she said.

"In a gale? Go to ribands, probably--the real one."

"Yes, the real one. But that is just what the bullets do to it!" said Cherry, her eyes glowing and deepening. "And everybody only loves such a flag the better."

"And you love me the less."

The girl started slightly, with the sudden transfer of the subject to herself, but she made no answer.

"Speak!" Magnus said, getting hold of her hand and giving it a little shake. "Cherry, you've _got_ to speak. Do you?"

"No," she answered slowly; "you know that could not be. We have been friends too long. I was a little disappointed, that is all."

I suppose there are few wholesomer views a man can get of himself than through the eyes of the right sort of woman; but the wholesome is not always the sweet. Cadet Kindred said to himself just then that it was extremely bitter. He had been disappointed in himself, of course, more than once, but that was another matter. One gives little softening touches to one's own private lectures; excusing and explaining. Now, this true heart, which he well believed would never flinch in the direst extremity, had counted the minutes when the colours were down, measured the storm flag, and been "disappointed."

If she had said sharper things, he could have borne it better. Was this weak girl going to sail away from him on every tack? This morning she had read pages where he knew not a word; this afternoon she was ready for the forefront of that life battle where he had at least _thought_ of dodging behind a tree.

He sat looking down, slowly swinging her hand back and forth, thinking of the days and times when he had trained with the wrong crowd, giving countenance to what at heart he disapproved. Nothing so dreadfully bad, perhaps, but very small work for him, a servant of the Great King; not loyal, not dauntless.

True, he had afterwards called himself to order; had "braced up" spiritually, and even for a time won the title of "saint"; but "steadfast, immovable," he had not been. And in that swift way in which thoughts work, there flashed upon him the story of one of the battles of the Wilderness, when, as the young colour-bearer was shot down, another caught the banner from his hand--and another from his, until for a few minutes the colours just fell and rose, fell and rose--but never allowed to touch the ground; not once.

"Magnus----"

"What?" he said.

"Will you please to look up and speak?" The tone was deprecating, the dark eyes wistful and grave.

"There does not anything please me just now, except holding your hand. No, you cannot get it away. You see, Cherry, this is how it is: there's a strong tide there, setting the way you shouldn't go."

"Everywhere," put in Cherry.

"So mother says; but I speak of what I know. When you first get to the Academy, you are so homesick that you'd like to pray and read the Bible all the time; it seems more like home than anything else. Then you are plagued, and get provoked. Then upper classmen drive you to prayer-meeting, and of course you don't want to go. Then you get so tangled up in the work and the hazing that you'd give your own dog two cents to tell you who you are. You can't keep Sunday,--at least, you think you can't,--with guard-mounting in the morning and dress parade at night, and in barracks a lesson a mile long for eight o'clock Monday morning."

"But Magnus, you do not study on Sunday?" Cherry said anxiously.

"I did once--and maxed it straight through, had a splendid week, and saw visions of Willet's Point. So I thought I'd try it again. And that week I just went down; got the worst marks I ever had, and, instead of the doughty Engineer Corps, had the Immortals in full view. So I concluded to get back into the good old ways and stay there."

Cherry laughed, but her eyes glistened. "That was one of the Lord's gentle rebukes," she said.

"Well, it lasted," said Magnus. "I haven't done that thing again."

"And they make no allowance for the day before's being Sunday?"

"Not a bit. Why, one of the instructors advised us to have our prayer-meeting early Sunday night, that there might be more hours for study."

"But if you told them, Magnus?"

"They would just think I was shirking. You see we could not ask in numbers enough to be a power, for many of the men do not care. That's another thing in one's way; see a first classman as meek as Moses at prayer-meeting, and then in camp have him just as hateful as Pharaoh and all the Egyptians."

"To you yourself, Magnus?"

"I was a pleb once, you know. And nothing was too bad to do to a pleb, for the best of men. No, I take that back; we had--and we have--some splendid upper classmen; men who dose you with good counsel. It is not always pleasant to take, Chérie, but it did me lots of good, for they lived up to it themselves. They help, too, in other ways. Get a pleb in out of the sun, and give him some play work in a tent, and so keep him away from the hazing parties and give him time to breathe. Mr. Upright was always doing such things."

"I should think everyone would love him very much."

"Yes, but you mustn't," said Magnus, giving her hand a little swing. "You are not to love anybody but me. However, Upright isn't there now; graduated, and gone to make enlisted men good and happy, wherever he's stationed. Trueman is such another; and Starr, in our class. Ugliest little man you ever saw, and the best."

"Then I do not believe he is the ugliest," said Cherry decidedly. "But it was not like that last year, Magnus?"

"Oh, no! Yearlings have leave to step out and show themselves. Get invited to picnics, some of them, and go to the hops, most of them, and are wild for fun, all of them."

"Well, Magnus?"

"Well, Chérie, you see how it was. I have not been as bad as I might, nor anything like as good. They think me a pretty reliable fellow over there, but I'm not by any means what you would call a shining light. Six in studies, and one in discipline, and a double-first at all sorts of mischief."

Cherry could not help smiling.

"The very same boy you always were," she said.

"Pretty much. Only this is mischief that tells. Chocolate parties in rooms after lights are out."

"After lights are out?"

"Supposed to be. Explosions on the area coming from nowhere and nothing; and post dogs, painted to admiration."

"But, Magnus!"

"What, my lady?"

"_You_ do not do such things?"

"I drank the chocolate--should have got skinned for it, too, only I stood behind something when Towser came in. And I looked at the dog. And I did not go out of my wits with astonishment at the explosions. Queer, too; for when you get together a bell button, a match, a white feather, a little powder, and a second classman, they make more noise than you would suppose possible."

"I thought they kept such watch of you," Cherry said. "We have wasted a great deal of sympathy."

"No you haven't, and yes, they do; that's the fun. Some of the men will tell you that breaking regulations is all the fun they have."

"Not you, Magnus?"

"No, not I exactly. I never can quite get rid of a certain respect for law and order. But you would laugh yourself; you couldn't help it, to see a solemn-looking Tac inspecting for apples, and know that they were within an inch of his nose, where he couldn't find them."

"And you all kept grave?"

"Stood attention, like the sweet boys we were, till he was gone,--and stood on our heads afterwards."

Cherry did laugh, but rather doubtfully. "I suppose it must be fun," she said, "but I wish you would let the other boys have it."

"That is not the only sort, by any means," said Magnus. "One day Miss Flirt had brought Crinkem a basket of pears. Well, he stored them skilfully in parts unknown, till friendly darkness should come to help; had to go to drill, and told Carr (who hadn't) to keep an eye on the basket. Which Carr did. Wasn't a pear there when Crinkem got back."

"Who is Crinkem?"

"First classman, then."

"And who is Miss Flirt?"

"A summer girl who stays all the time, and flirts with everybody."

"With you?"

"No, because she can't. She jeered me when I was a poor candidate, and I vowed revenge."

"I should say revenge lay in the other direction," remarked Cherry.

"Not for her. She's been on tiptoe to rope me in, ever since I wore chevrons. I did half think I would teach her a lesson when I got to be first captain."

"Oh, Magnus, don't!"

"Why not?"