Part 18

Magnus had been watching her eagerly, but as she looked up, his eyes turned away, and Cherry again studied him. What a boy he was still, after all: the young head with its short, curling hair, already showing that West Point barbers were far away; the smooth cheek giving faint tokens of what soon would be. The very hands looked so young. They were not clasped nor folded, but lay absolutely still, with that air of intense waiting which the whole figure wore. Cherry gazed at them, one and another scene of her young life wherein those hands had played a part coming up before her. Played it so well and so kindly that she had every line of them by heart; sledding, strawberrying, nutting, riding; the broken toys they had mended, the strong help they had been in many a rough place. Always gentle and patient for her, always ready to do her bidding; the tenderest hands when she was hurt, the most untirable for her need.

Cherry almost cried out aloud, for the sudden stricture of heart, but she kept herself in hand, and now her look went up to the face again, and she found that Magnus was watching her, with the intensest, hungry, longing eagerness. He did not stir, but sat still in that attitude of waiting.

"Magnus--"

"What?"

"Why do not you speak?"

"I have nothing to say, Cherry."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing. I have said all I can. I might promise never to grieve you again; might promise all sorts of beautiful things; but you know--and I know--that something stronger than mere love of you, dear, must do the work, and that the work must be done, whether you ever love me again or not. I believe I did not know I could be tempted--and I have been left to find it out. If I tell you that I have sworn unto the Lord and will not go back, it is not to plead my cause with you, Cherry; but because I know that just for old-time's sake, your dear heart will always care that your old playmate should grow into a man and not a beast."

"Oh, Magnus!" she cried, in that same sudden way.

"Well, that is what it amounts to. That was what I called myself next morning. And then with the joy of getting home and among you all again--and the wonder of seeing what you had grown into--everything else went out of my head. I was so eager to have you that I took it for granted you would have me. Then I remembered that for two whole years you had seen nothing of me, and the more I loved you the more that thought kept coming up. So then I gave you the whole story, and lost all I care for in this world. But it had to be done--and I should do it again. You needn't look at me so, dear, and try to hide how you feel. You could not help being disgusted. I do not blame you in the least, Cherry."

"Oh, Magnus!" she cried again. "How can you use such words about me?"

"What words shall I use? You were disgusted, and you know it."

"No, oh, no!"

"What then? Choose your own words, and tell me."

"I thought my heart was breaking," the girl said, pressing both hands upon her breast. "That was all."

"Was that all?" Magnus said, with a sort of quiet rage at himself. "Had I done nothing but that? Only broken the truest heart that ever beat? Nothing more?"

"Please, please!" Cherry pleaded. "Magnus, I cannot talk to you if you say such things."

"Go on then, you, and do the talking. Didn't I tell you I had nothing more to say?"

Cherry hesitated a moment, and then she put out her hand and laid it softly on that other which had grown so brown with handling guns and pontoons. Magnus winced, as at the touch of sharp steel, but his own hand never stirred.

"What is it?" he said rather shortly.

"Magnus--does your mother know?"

"I am going to tell her."

"No, no, do not! There is no need," Cherry said earnestly.

"Not much use, perhaps," he answered in a gloomy tone. "She's bound to be my mother, through thick and thin."

"Promise!" Cherry said.

"What have you got to do with it?" Magnus asked her, looking up. "What business is it of yours, anyhow? You have washed your hands of me and my concerns."

"Magnus, you _know_ that is not true."

"I hope it will not take more tears to do the work," he went on in the same tone. "There have been enough shed now, to clear away fifteen years of memories."

"You do not think so, or you would not say it," poor Cherry protested. "You are just trying to make me contradict you."

"Am I?" said Magnus, with a half laugh. "Well, go ahead and do it, then. Say nothing could ever make you forget me."

"Nothing ever could."

"Say you did love me with all your heart when I went away."

"Yes."

"And all the time I was gone."

"All the time."

"And when I came home."

"Yes," the girl answered in her grave, sweet tones.

"So little while ago!" Magnus said, with a deep breath. "Cherry, you were very distant to me at first--have been, all along."

"You were a little bit of a stranger."

"And now you know me too well. So it goes. If I had not told you--but it is better so."

"Oh, yes; far better!" the girl said earnestly. "Secrets are terrible things between people who--care for each other."

"How cautiously she chooses her words," Magnus said, in the same hard way. "Has to stop and think whether she even cares."

"Magnus, that is not true."

"Didn't you stop to think what to say?"

"Yes."

"Well, then."

"People stop to think for different reasons."

"You were afraid of saying too much, and you know you were."

"If you are so very far-seeing, perhaps you can also tell me why."

"Because you are as true as the blue sky," said Magnus; "and as tender, and so you wanted to use the softest words you could, and hurt me the least."

"You would not 'make a max,' as you call it, on girls," said Cherry, her lips parting in a bit of a smile. "I did not choose my words so, at all."

"Why, then?"

"Because I am a girl, I think," she answered rather slowly.

"And so did not want to give more pain than you could help. That is just what I said."

"Do you ever play stupid at West Point?" Cherry said a little impatiently.

"No need to play it."

"Well, there is no need now," she said, springing up; "and I am going home till you come back to your common sense."

"No, don't go!" Magnus said, catching hold of her dress. "Sit down and lecture me, scold me, say what you will of me, only stay a while longer. Cherry, you do not know what it is to have the only girl in the world throw you off."

She turned then, and stood looking down at him; the fair face telling all he wanted to know; but, as Cherry had said, he was not well read in girls.

"Magnus," she said, "what makes you talk so? I am not 'the only girl in the world'--but I have not thrown you off. You know I could not do that. Unless----"

"Unless what?" he said eagerly.

"Unless I knew you had _chosen_ such ways," the girl said, growing very white. "And then it would be you that had thrown me off."

XXXIV

AMBUSHES

Soft silken hours, Open suns, shady bowers; 'Bove all, nothing within that lowers.

--CRASHAW.

Magnus was as good as his word, and stayed all day. What though Cherry was summarily sent off, after the early dinner, to sleep away the effects of her headache. Whether she slept or not I would not dare say; but certainly Magnus talked, and kept Mr. Erskine well amused, till she appeared again.

But he gave not a hint of the morning's work; about that, both parties most interested held their peace. I think they both craved silence for a while, and so kept in hiding; not ready yet to hear common tongues discuss the new-found wonder of the world. Cherry had been too shaken and bruised--there were too many sharp details still vividly in sight--for her to go straight to her father, as perhaps at another time she might have done; she needed to steady her own thoughts first. And for Magnus, too, the morning had been a hard one, even with its culmination of joy. Besides, counting Cherry his own from that time forward, the small ceremony of asking for her could well wait. Probably Mr. Erskine needed no telling how things stood. And if it were indeed a secret, what fun to keep it such! He wanted no words on the subject, just now, save from Cherry herself. Not yet.

All the family from the other house came up the hill to tea next day, but saw nothing new. If Cherry was more quiet than usual, that was not strange, after such a headache; and if Cadet Kindred, on the other hand, was as full of pranks as the veriest boy could be, it was not such an unheard-of thing as to draw any special attention. One thing they might have seen, that his mischief and frolic never came near Cherry; towards her his manner was a silent devotion of the most tender and serious sort, but he kept everyone else in such a breeze that no one gave heed.

Speeding back from the post-office with a handful of letters, Magnus announced that Messrs. Twinkle and Rig--alias Cadets Starr and McLean--were coming to make him a visit in the course of their furlough wanderings, and everybody at once went into committee on the proper and possible means of delighting them.

Magnus, indeed, turned off the matter very easily.

"It is done to your hand," he affirmed. "Mother's cake and pies and bread and butter--with two girls--would make the average cadet almost too happy to support life."

"Two girls!" Rose commented. "You seem to leave Cherry out."

"I did--that's a fact," Magnus said, with a queer gesture. "But then you also leave me out, and I am a third cadet; so it's all right. She'll not stand in the cold."

"I do not think she will, if the others have any sense," said Rose.

"The average cadet has not much, when there are girls around," said Magnus. "He has such hard rubs all day from the Profs and Tacs that their soft ways get the better of him."

"We have no soft ways, here," said Rose decidedly.

"Not for me, I know; but wait till Twinkle comes along."

"Twinkle--what a name!" said Violet.

"He couldn't miss it, being a small man called Starr," said Magnus. "And he's not a blazer, by any means; keeps down well near the horizon, and never even poses as a first-magnitude man. Sometimes when he fesses more than usually frigid, we sing him to sleep with:

"Twinkle! Twinkle! little Starr! How I wonder what you are."

"I think that is perfectly mean!" said Rose indignantly. "Making sport of each other's misfortunes."

"We should die if we didn't make sport of something," said Magnus. "And you laugh easier when you take another man's scalp, than when he takes yours."

"Well, of all the lingo that ever was heard, I think your cadet slang is the queerest," said Violet.

"Glad it meets your approval," Magnus said, with a bow. "Say, Cherry, just promise you'll walk with nobody but me, while those fellows are here. Have a previous every time. These girls are so keen-set for brotherly kindness that they'll be sacrificing themselves on me to let you have the strangers. You're too tall for Twinkle, and Rig will turn your head."

"Or she will turn his," said Violet.

"I suppose that is it. But it wouldn't do for Rig to get rattled. The poor boy has got to go back and bone for dear life. Rose will keep him up to his duty; talk geometry to him, and make his life a burden."

"Rose will?" said that young person, lifting her eyebrows. "Well, I wish Cherry would talk some sense into you."

"Nobody can do it half so well," said Magnus, with a change of tone. "And she is going to try; she is to give me a special private lecture every day I am here. So that it is really quite providential to have Twinkle and Rig on hand, for they'll keep you two girls amused and out of the way."

"Indeed! And who is to amuse mother?"

"Cherry and I."

And Magnus stooped down by his mother, with arms about her neck, and laid his face close to hers.

"Cherry and I, mammy," he said softly. "Do you understand? Cherry and I?"

Only Cherry saw the little start, the eager look at him, and the slight nod with which Magnus answered. But Mrs. Kindred was a wise woman, and said no word. Perhaps she prayed a little more for the two after that; though really I do not know whether she could. There sprang up an instant wish in Cherry's mind, however, that no word should be said to anybody else until the two strange cadets should have made their visit and gone. Magnus was quite wild enough, even with this slight check upon his proceedings. And an unconsciously deprecating look went over to him, which the young man caught, read, and answered with a profound bow.

"Yes, lady," he said; "your commands shall be obeyed. Even to the half of my fortune. Or, as I haven't any at all, perhaps the whole will not be too much."

"By the way," said Mr. Erskine, noting (and somehow resenting) the pink tints that came up in Cherry's cheeks; "what has become of that 'very best sort of a girl' you talked so fast about last week?"

"What has become of her?" Magnus repeated, standing involuntary "attention."

"Yes. Where is she?"

"At home, sir."

"I will not ask where that is, as I have not permission," said Mr. Erskine, smiling now; "but what does she say to your coming here first and staying so long?"

"She has made no objection as yet, sir. So I do not think she will."

"Well, she ought, if she cares enough for you," said Mr. Erskine. "Boy, I'm afraid you have got yourself tangled up in a foolish thing."

"What should you call 'enough,' sir?"

"Well--all she can," said Mr. Erskine.

"How much _could_ any first-best girl care for me, sir?" said Magnus, moving a step or two for a better view of Cherry.

"Oh, you need not try the modest game here," said Mr. Erskine, laughing at him. "It is too late in the day for that. If she only cares a little, let her go; and find one who will love all there is in you, and a good deal more that she thinks is there. I wouldn't give a counterfeit five cents for a tepid girl."

Mr. Erskine spoke with such disgustful energy that everybody laughed out.

"But what girl is this?" Rose demanded. "Someone you never told us of?"

"There are fifty girls I never told you of."

"And besides, Rose, he is only attitudinising," said Mr. Erskine. "I do not believe the girl is in existence that could get him away. He is just young man enough to like the part of an easy-minded lover."

Magnus remarked with some energy that it was better than the part of an _un_easy-minded lover, every time. But now the fun of the thing got hold of him, and sealed his lips in earnest. No, if really people could not see, they could wait.

Several other things came in to further and abet the silence.

First of all, the neighbourhood waked up to the fact that a prospective brigadier was among them, and the inroads to see Magnus, and to hear him tell his experience, were many--and "a nuisance." So he himself declared, making wry faces over his popularity.

Then, Mr. Erskine had one of his suffering weeks, when troubling him with questions was not to be thought of. Magnus detailed himself as head nurse, taking all the night work, sending Cherry off to bed, and gathering up the reins generally in his own hands, proving himself most tender and efficient as well as strong. Of course, things must be talked over before he went back; but even Cherry herself could not think this a good time.

On the back of all these hinderances, and just as Mr. Erskine began to be about again, came the other two cadets.

XXXV

OF COURSE

Admire my daughter! Sir, you're very good.

--_Tales of the Hall._

There followed such a round of teas on the hill and dinners at the cottage; of picnics, walks, drives, and berry-scouts, that the days gave up their ordinary rate of progress, and flew. June had long been out of sight; and now July was ending, and August close at hand. Magnus indeed closed his ears to the soft flutter, as the days winged by; but not so Mrs. Kindred, and not so Cherry. The girl began to look forward with absolute dismay to the drawing out from her daily life of this gold-twisted silken thread. What should she do, when Magnus was away again?

If I say that she was getting bound to him in deeper and finer trust and love, with every new day's experience, it is no more than the truth; and no more, I think, than he deserved. Love for the right sort of woman puts a man at his best, and brings him out wonderfully. Count the minutes? Ah, yes! two hearts at least did that. In just so many days more Magnus must leave them all.

Then suppose Mr. Erskine--no, it could not be; and yet, after every such decision, one always goes back to say the "suppose" over again.

"Magnus, I do wish you would have your talk with papa," Cherry ventured one day.

"You recommended that at first--twice, if I recollect right," remarked Cadet Kindred.

"I did nothing of the sort. But I should think you might have commended it to yourself by this time."

"It is such fun to puzzle him."

"But it will not be fun to grieve him," Cherry said.

"Is he going to be grieved? Then it will all come upon your hands. You know you can wheedle any bird off any bush at any time."

"'Wheedle' papa!" Cherry said with some energy. "Not I, I promise you."

"Well, I know you mean to keep all your promises to me," said Magnus. "But come along, and see me throw myself at his feet. Then he can save time, and give us his blessing together."

"No, I am not going," Cherry said, pulling her hand away and trying not to laugh.

"You are worse than Lord Ullin's daughter," said Magnus. "She plunged into all the danger there was around. Chérie, will you send me a letter every single day?"

"Oh, do not talk about letters yet!" Cherry said, in such a pitiful tone that Magnus forgot all about Mr. Erskine, and gave himself up to the task of comforting her. And it was the father himself who at last, unawares, brought on the talk.

"Only twenty days left," he said one morning, when Magnus came into his study and sat down, with an absent-minded air.

"Nineteen, sir."

"Then you settle down to hard work again."

"For two years, sir."

"And then?"

"Then I take my diploma and a three-months' leave, and come back here."

"Three months--till October."

"Yes, sir."

"That is better than nothing," said Mr. Erskine; "but we shall all think it very short."

"I cannot stay until quite October," said Magnus, "but towards that."

"And then?"

"Then I take Cherry and go to my post."

But now Mr. Erskine sat straight up, grasping the arm of his chair.

"Take Cherry!" he repeated. "My baby! It is _Cherry_ you want to take to San Carlos?"

"It may not be San Carlos, sir. Of course, I must take her wherever I go."

"Well, you need not get up before gunfire to bone assurance," said Mr. Erskine. "My Cherry! And what do you suppose she will say to this brilliant plan for her happiness?"

"I do not think she much cares where we go, sir," Magnus answered, with easy confidence.

It was an indescribable pang that shot through the father's heart. His one treasure, his pearl of all the world, already did not "much care" where she went, so long as she could be with this youngster--put her hand in his, and go!

"It may happen that I shall care," he said huskily. "What makes you think I will give her up to go anywhere?"

"But you can go, too, you know, sir," Cadet Kindred answered, with that same calm tone which ignores the hard and cuts through the impossible. "We have talked about it a great deal."

"It strikes me that a little of the talking should have come to me."

"Yes, sir; but then you are so seldom alone--always reading or something on hand--it was hard to find a chance. And then you were sick. And I thought you must see for yourself. And then, if you didn't, it was such fun to puzzle you," Magnus said honestly.

"So seldom alone," Mr. Erskine repeated rather bitterly. "I suppose it will be often enough in the future. No, do not say another word to me now. Take yourself off, young man, and get out of my sight, and give me a chance to draw my breath. My Cherry!"

It was perhaps just as well for everybody that the two guests were still there, and the fun and frolic at high-water mark; the best intentions thereto, or even the justest cause, could not make anybody look grave or stiff or anxious. Therefore Mr. Erskine had time to study up his hard question unnoticed.

"Question," indeed, it hardly was. Mr. Erskine knew, without thinking, that he loved Magnus Kindred like his own son; and it took very little awakened observation to show him that, on Cherry's part, the old childish affection had passed into the deepest and strongest that a woman can know. Reserved and self-contained as she always was, her father could see a hundred little tokens which he marvelled he had never noticed before. He watched Magnus, too, with very keen-set eyes, studied him, weighed him in all sorts of scales, and, on the whole, was well content. Just about as much of a boy as ever, only more of a man; gay, saucy, absurd, and sensible; but through it all now, in whatever touched Cherry, there was an indescribable tone of reverence which became him well, as it does any man who has won for himself the priceless trust of a true woman's love. His own love and devotion were patent enough. Magnus had certainly "taken it hard," as people say. The father noted it well, and judged it all of a quality that would wear.

Once making up his mind to the situation, it was amusing enough; and the two elders of the party had many a quiet laugh at the skill with which Messrs. Twinkle and Rig were headed off, and never allowed to improve their acquaintance with Cherry. It was always somebody else with whom they were fated to walk, and to whom they might make pretty speeches; and with all a man's recklessness about possible damage to other hearts, and lest his tactics should be found out, Magnus hunted up other girls--old acquaintances of the neighbourhood--to share the burden which at first Violet and Rose had borne alone.

"But, Magnus!" Mrs. Kindred protested one day, "you go on like crazy boys, you three. Girls about here aren't used to young fellows who say everything they do not mean. My dear, I fear you are sowing mischief. Jenny Mott went home last night with her head more than half turned."

"Easy job for Rig to finish, then," said Magnus. "Never mind, mammy; keep up your spirits. We're not so unlike other boys as you seem to think. It _is_ getting to be rather serious with Twinkle and Viola."

"Now, my dear!" Mrs. Kindred said, with her hand on his arm; "now, Magnus! you must not put any nonsense into that child's head!"

"Couldn't if I would," said Magnus; "not an inch of room. You couldn't get a grain in sideways after Twinkle's been talking to her. He's a right good fellow, mammy; don't drink, don't smoke, don't flirt--much; and if his light isn't of the very biggest, it's always there, which is better. She might do worse."

"But, Magnus, Violet is hardly grown up."

"Why don't you tell Twinkle so, and ask him to wait?" said Magnus, with a very grave face. But then he laughed.

"Oh, mammy!" he said, "when cadets are about, it's 'all luggage at the risk of the owners.' I _had_ picked out somebody else for Vio, if only he's not gone before she gets there. What a thing it is to have me well settled in life before your anxieties over the girls come on!" And then Magnus kissed her, and set his face towards the other house.

"But Magnus!" said Mrs. Kindred, calling him back, "you have not told me what Mr. Erskine says. Do you know yourself? He knits his brows so sometimes, when he is looking at you, that I never dare ask him. Is he willing, do you think?"

"He will be, before I get through with him," said Magnus confidently, and he went whistling up the hill, as though that small task were done to his hand.

XXXVI

SAN CARLOS

Mix up a barrel of sand and ashes and thorns, and jam scorpions and rattlesnakes along in, and dump the outfit on stones, and heat the stones red hot; and set the United States army loose over the place chasin' Apaches; and you've got San Carlos.

--U. S. SOLDIER, _in Harper's Magazine_.