Part 2

"It does not matter why, you know, so long as I am going," said wise Cherry, and so she put on her sun-bonnet, and went back with steady steps toward her own gate, so soon as tea was over. To be sure, Magnus did see her and come bounding after; and, to be sure, she found out then that she was not really in such haste as she had thought: but still Magnus would never have got the sort of farewell he did, if he had not been saucy and taken it. Though, alas! I am afraid his after-memory of the parting was for a time less tender and true than hers.

So there were only the three home faces about the boy that last morning, and only the three sore hearts to plan and prepare his breakfast and every other possible sort of ministration. And magnate as he was, Charlemagne found those three as much as he could bear.

III

THE NIGHT EXPRESS

Just in the grey of the dawn, as the mists uprose from the meadow, There was a stir and a sound in the slumbering village of Plymouth; Clanging and clicking of arms, and the order imperative, "Forward!"

--LONGFELLOW.

I do not see why the march of improvement should tread down sentiment and tread out romance; but such seems to be the fact. Beauty and feeling, like very birds of the wildwood, take wing and flee at the shriek of the steam-whistle. Your public conveyance is no longer a kindly, easy-going personality, the "Highflyer" or the "Dashaway" mail-coach; it is only the 6.30 train. You could turn and wave a good-bye, in the olden time; gazing back at the dear home outlines until, in the pathetic words of David Copperfield, "the sky was empty." But now, even if the railway does not graze your front dooryard, and you must walk or drive to the station, yet you hardly dare glance round you as you go, lest you should miss the train. For that distant dark line with its trail of silver smoke, which comes snaking along across the country, makes no account of you as an individual, and is equally ready to run you down or to pick you up; and will sooner do either than wait.

Magnus was to report at West Point on a certain specified day, and his setting out had been timed accordingly: and now the terror of being late, and so belated, was upon them all. They hurried him off after the five-o'clock breakfast; kissing him, crying over him indeed, but pushing him out of the house. And Mrs. Kindred would not go with him to the station nor let the girls; Magnus could walk so much faster alone, or even run, if need be; and they might make him loiter.

So the boy went forth alone; turning round at the last corner, and waving his hat with an air of triumph which was very make-believe indeed. His heart was as heavy as lead, and he called himself the greatest ninny in existence; leaving such a home, and such a mother, and three such girls. For in that last look back Magnus had not failed to see the curling smoke that floated away from the chimney of Cherry's house, high up upon the hill. What a silly he was, sure enough. Why, the mere old lilac bushes in the dooryard were better than all West Point. Nevertheless, he went on--

"For men must work and women must weep."

Happily for the women, their life is generally more real and prosaic than the poet thought; and they also have to work on, through their tears.

The train came rushing up on time; Magnus swung himself in; and with a derisive snort the locomotive tore him away from home, and mother, and the three girls.

As a rule, the inmates of a railway car are extremely unsympathetic to look at. What face or figure do you ever see there to which you would like to appeal in case of need? When the need comes, indeed, there is generally someone to take it up, a comforting thought, worth remembering; but for the most part people hold themselves visibly aloof, except in the way of growling over open windows, or of striving for seats.

Charlemagne Kindred looked up and down the car, scanning briefly the faces as he took his seat; and the width of the world, and its exceeding low temperature, settled down upon his heart as a new fact.

The first day and the first night went by wearily enough. Magnus had decided to save money by not taking a sleeper; assuring his anxious mother and sisters that he could sleep anyhow and anywhere. And so he could, at home, as they well knew. But it seemed to him in that long first night, as if the boards of their barn floor at home were softer (as they were certainly far sweeter) than all the cushions of the night express. What fumes the men brought in from the smoking car! What gruff voices and hollow laughs and idle words were all about him. Disgust, fatigue, and strangeness took the boy in their hard hands, until, as the second night drew on, Magnus did not know himself. He wondered what was the matter with him: wondered if he was going to be ill: and never guessed for a while that he was growing deathly, deadly homesick.

The knowledge came. Just at nightfall the train slowed up at a little country station, and a woman and child got out. They had been sitting far behind Magnus, and, as the child never cried, she had called forth no special notice; though once or twice when the rush and roar ceased for a moment, Magnus had caught the sweet canary-bird notes of the little voice. Now, she passed him in her mother's arms; and in the moment's pause at the door, the little creature turned and looked down the dingy car, where what light there was seemed just to show up the darkness. The sweet, serious eyes gazed along the lines of her late fellow-passengers--then as the way opened, and the mother moved on, the child waved her little innocent hand in farewell greeting to that small, unknown world.

"Dood-night, folks!" she said--and was gone.

I can fancy that many hearts stirred at the sound; but poor Magnus quite gave way. Oh, for one word from the dear home voices, one touch of the dear home hands. He remembered Violet, when she was no bigger than that little thing, nestled in her mother's arms just so. What was he doing here, away from them all? What was West Point to him? If indeed he ever got there. Magnus felt now as if he should die by the way.

He was alone in the seat just then; and the boy pulled his hat down over his eyes, leaned head and arms against the dingy red cushion, and let the tears come. The train ran on, past several other small stations; then drew up before a ten-minutes-for-refreshment place, where to many people the minutes and the refreshment would be equally brief and unsatisfactory. Yet the glow and light and counter full of viands looked tempting enough to a weary passenger; and many got out. Magnus never stirred. He was not hungry, naturally enough; and besides had some of the home sandwiches and cookies still in his bag. But touch _them_--look at them even--in his present mood, he could not.

The car was almost empty: and in the relief of the sudden stillness and space, Magnus got up and walked to and fro between the open doors. It was a comfort to do anything, and the ten minutes were far too short for him as for the rest. He dropped into his seat again, as the passengers came hurrying back; watching them with languid interest, and wondering which one would come and sit by him. Last night he had had a man so redolent of unpleasant things that only a very tired boy could have managed to sleep at all. Last night, and part of to-day. A somewhat different set were coming in now; new faces taking the place of others left behind at the station.

Magnus eyed them one by one, desiring none of them in his seat, and only hoping they would leave it and him alone, until just as the train began to pull out of the station. There came in then a man of a different type of citizenship. Of good height and sturdy build; close shaven, close cropped: a dress and outfit scrupulously neat and in order, but evidently bought at the shop of Comfort and Use, and not from that tailor to all the crowned heads, High Style. Over the whole man was that look of absolute cleanness--mental, moral, and physical--which a smooth face always sets off to the best advantage. Step firm and businesslike, eyes quick and kind. A man "at leisure from himself," for all the work his Master might set before him. Was there, perhaps, work here?

The car had thinned out a good deal by this time; people dropping off at one and another station, getting to their homes as the night drew on, and there were many vacant seats: here two together, and there one by somebody else. Mr. Wayne paused a moment, looking down the car, and from under his straw hat Magnus watched him, with a vague longing that he would come and sit by _him_.

That is a wonderfully lovely glimpse of unseen things, in one of the chapters of the book of Daniel, where one angel says to another, "Run, speak to that young man." I suppose Mr. Wayne was conscious of no audible monition; but after that moment's pause, he stepped down the car, past one and another tempting "whole" seat, and took his place by young Charlemagne Kindred.

IV

READY FOR DUTY

The man that wants me is the man I want.

--DR. EDWARD PAYSON.

"This seat is not engaged? You are not expecting a companion?" the stranger said as he sat down.

"No, sir, I have nobody to expect," said Magnus, his tone making the answer broader than the question.

"Nobody to expect?" Mr. Wayne repeated the words, then went on softly to himself, yet just so that Magnus caught the sound, "'My soul, wait thou upon God, for my expectation is from him.'"

"Where does this train stop for supper?" he said abruptly, after a minute or two.

"They had supper at Beaver Junction."

"So, so! Just where I got in. Have you had yours?"

"No, sir. I didn't want any."

"Well, you and I wear our family likeness with a difference," said Mr. Wayne. "I have had no supper either, but I want it. They _used_ to stop at Edenton. Been a change, I suppose, since the extension of the road."

He rose up and went to the further end of the car, where the conductor was taking a minute's rest; coming back with the word that another chance for refreshments would be at Centerville Junction, where they had to wait for the train from Combination.

"Then you and I will go and sup together," he said.

"I don't want any supper," the boy repeated.

"What's the matter? You're not sick?" and the keen eyes made a closer survey.

"No, indeed, sir."

"The home station is close at hand, then, is it?"

"No, sir. It will not be near _me_ for two years," said Magnus, trying to speak with the proper pride of a young man off on his travels, and far from home, but the boyish voice betraying itself and him.

"Two years!" Mr. Wayne repeated; adding with a breath that was almost a groan, "Two years out of sight of home! You are going to West Point?" he said the next minute in his quick way.

"Yes, sir. But how did you know?" said the boy, rousing up in his surprise.

"Yankees aren't worth a red cent if they can't guess," said Mr. Wayne, smiling. "Well, that settles the question of supper. If you get to West Point in a die-away condition, they'll not take you in; and you will see the home station quicker than you care about, maybe. The first thing they'll tell you at West Point will be to 'brace up,' so you'd better do a little at it before you get there."

If Magnus was half ready to resent the words he could not, for the merry glance that went with them.

"Were you ever at West Point, sir?"

"Often."

"Well, what sort of a place is it?" said Magnus, sitting straight up in his interest.

"One of the very loveliest places on this fair earth," said Mr. Wayne. "With hills and woods and river that you will lose your heart to, and never get it back."

"Nice people, too?" questioned Magnus.

"All sorts of people. As in every other bit of the world. All sorts."

"There is only one sort at home," said Magnus proudly.

"Ah, true! But home is the only exception. And so,

"Be it ever so homely, There is no place like home."

"But even in the home neighbourhood, I think, you can remember varieties?"

"Yes, indeed," said Magnus, smiling. "Chaff Pointer said it was waste time for me to go to West Point, for he knew I'd never get through."

"Well, I'd prove that man a false prophet, if he does belong near home," said Mr. Wayne. "How did 'Chaff' get his name?"

"All the rest of the family are sound and good for something, and so everybody calls him 'Chaff,'" said Magnus.

Mr. Wayne laughed heartily. "All sorts there, too," he said. "But here is our ten-minute station. Come along. I invite you to be my guest, and when you are invited out to supper, you must go when you don't want to go, and eat when you are not hungry."

And Magnus laughed and followed. But to hurry into that brilliantly lighted room after a cheerful companion, and to eat all sorts of queer railway providings at railway speed, was a very different thing from munching his dry sandwich alone in the dusky car, and all the time seeing nothing but the dear fingers that put it up. Appetite came back, and spirits, with somewhat of the joyous sense of enterprise and novelty; confidence and liking for his new friend sprang up into life-size proportions, and it did not take long to tell over the whole little home story. It was such a comfort to speak to somebody.

And Mr. Wayne listened with deepest interest. He had meant to take a sleeper as soon as they left the Junction, but changed his purpose, and sat by the boy through all the hours of the night. Ready for words when Magnus roused up to speak them; and when the young eyes closed, and the young head sought intervals of rest against the hard, swaying back of the seat, then studying the boy with a face from which the laugh had vanished, and a grave, almost solemn, look came up to take its place.

"Good blood," so he muttered to himself, as he noted the clear skin and pure colour, "and well brought up"--for unmistakable lines of truth and intelligence marked the face. "Warm-hearted--almost--as a woman, and wilful enough for two! What will he do at West Point? and what will West Point do to him?"

The grave eyes were shielded, and from the kindly heart went up that longing petition of the Lord himself:

"I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil."

So the night wore on, with alternate snatches of talk and sleep, until the early dawn of the June day came swiftly up over the outside world.

"To-night I shall be at West Point," said Magnus, as the two new-made friends went back to their car after breakfast.

"Ordered to report to-day?"

"No, sir, not until Friday."

"Where will you stay to-night?"

"Oh, I cannot tell," said Magnus. "I don't know anybody nor anything at West Point. Oh, I suppose I'll find some place!"

"'Some place' is not always a good place. You had better stay in town with me to-night, and take an early morning train up river."

"Do you live in town, sir?"

"Not I! But I shall be there to-night."

Hotels and hotel bills were as yet unknown things to Magnus Kindred, and he entered into this plan with great alacrity; nor ever guessed, till he went home on furlough and put up at the same hotel, how large a part of his fare that night was paid by Mr. Wayne himself.

It was very late when the train ran into the big city, at least according to the standard at Barren Heights, but those weird old hands on the church steeples of New York count nothing "late" until it is two o'clock in the morning, and so in truth early once more.

Magnus felt quite sure that the rumble and roar would not let him sleep a wink, but after he had once closed his eyes, they never opened again until broad daylight.

The two friends roomed together. A big room, it seemed to Magnus, the two sides of which had each quite a retired privacy of its own. Mr. Wayne, writing letters under the gaslight, noted the boy's neat, orderly ways in all his preparations for bed. Magnus had sat reading his own private chapter first, not with haste, but with interest, and then they had had prayers together. Now, the boy knelt quietly by his own special bed, his face upon his arms, and once or twice there came a sound that brought the quick drops to Mr. Wayne's own eyes. But then Magnus called out his "Good-night, sir!" in a cheerful, resolved tone, which was all that could be wished.

In the morning the two walked up to the Grand Central together. There their ways parted, Mr. Wayne going off on the New Haven road, while Magnus checked his trunk for Garrisons and West Point.

"Magnus, what is going to be your dependence at West Point?" said Mr. Wayne, as they stepped along.

"Hard work, sir."

"Good," said Mr. Wayne. "And what for your hard work? How do you expect to keep yourself at it?"

"My own will, sir."

"Good again," said his friend. "And how is that will to be kept to its duty?"

"Mother says I'm self-willed enough for anything," said Magnus.

"Truly. But self-will and will-power are very different forces, and often come in sharp collision. Misguided steam is quite likely to blow up the whole concern."

"Well, sir, what can I do with my will but use it?" said the boy with some quickness.

"You can abuse it quite easily," said Mr. Wayne. "Turn it on the wrong things, fire it up in the wrong place. A soldier needs to have the 'governor' of his own private engine in excellent working order."

"I'm not a soldier yet," said Magnus, laughing, "and shall not be for four years."

"You will be one, to all intents, as soon as you are admitted at West Point. From that moment you are counted in the service of the United States, and under her orders. Bound to do her bidding, whether you like it or not, whether you understand it or not."

"Even if someone has blundered?" said Magnus with a half laugh.

"Even if someone has blundered. With that question you have nothing to do. Men will blunder now and then, at West Point as elsewhere, but that is no concern of yours. Uncle Sam's orders are to be obeyed, and neither the quality nor the quantity of them affects the thing in the least."

"That sounds hard," said Magnus.

"It _is_ hard."

"And rather impossible to carry out, I should say," remarked Magnus with a boy's air of competent criticism.

"Nothing is impossible which ought to be done," said Mr. Wayne. "If the authorities at West Point did not disapprove of decorations, I would have that written up over your door in gilt letters."

"Disapprove!" Magnus repeated.

"Disapprove. A soldier's life has small time and place but for the absolute needs-be."

"Did you ever go through West Point, sir?" said Magnus with a wondering look at his new-found friend.

"No indeed. But I have been through Chattanooga, and Fair Oaks, and a few other places, and so I know what all this play-soldiering may come to."

Magnus stopped short and gazed at him.

"Chattanooga! Fair Oaks! You have been _there_?" he said.

"Why, yes," said Mr. Wayne, pulling him round again, "and I'm glad I am not there now. Come on; we must catch our train. Never mind all that to-day. So you thought you would be your own master till you got shoulder-straps, hey? Not a bit of it. You belong to Uncle Sam just as much in grey as you ever will in blue."

"Body and soul!" said Magnus with a rather unmirthful laugh.

"Not soul," said Mr. Wayne. "The only power that traffics in souls is the devil, and his vice-gerent the World. But about everything else, from the minute you enter West Point, you are under orders--sworn in to obey. How are you going to bring yourself up to that point?"

"Why, I have always been taught to obey, at home," said Magnus.

"Yes, and when you didn't do it, it was always, 'Oh, Magnus must have forgotten. He never _means_ to disobey.'"

"How do you know, sir?" said the boy, laughing and colouring, too.

"I have had a mother," said Mr. Wayne. "And if there is anything on this earth at the antipodes of the being that owns that blessed name, it is a West Point tactical officer."

"Who is he?" said Magnus.

"The tactical officer? Oh, he is one of a small force in blue, specially detailed to look after the cadets in grey."

"They must be the ones that our Congressman says come round to see if you've washed your face," said Magnus. "They'd better not try that on me!"

Mr. Wayne laughed a little.

"Well, I'd be ready for them," he said. "Fighting for rights that you haven't got does not pay at West Point."

"Why, what sort of a queer place is it?" said young Charlemagne with growing distaste.

"It is a place where you are under orders," said Mr. Wayne, "and that often makes wild work with one's own private notions. You swear to obey orders when you go in, and you are under them till you come out. From the time you get up till the time you go to bed,--and after."

"Not while I am asleep, I suppose," said the boy with an expressive lift of the brows.

"Yes you are. If you fail to hear the reveille gun, your being asleep will not excuse you. It is your business to wake up. Nobody will come round and tap softly at your door and say, 'Now, Magnus, dear, if you are not _too_ tired, I think you had better get up.'"

It was so exactly what his mother had said but four days ago that the boy's eyes flushed, and his throat choked up.

"What will they do to me?" he said, making a brave fight for his self-control, "if I do not hear the gun?"

"Oh, you will figure in the report as a 'late,' or an 'absent,' with corresponding small penalties, that is all. Nothing very terrible if it comes but once, but piling up trouble if it comes often."

"They might call a fellow," said Magnus, who never liked to do that kind office for himself.

"Armies are seldom large enough for each man to have another man detailed to look after him," said Mr. Wayne drily.

Magnus made no answer. He paced up and down the long station house by his friend's side, swinging his little handbag with an air that was not all of enjoyment.

"It's a hard place, then, isn't it?"

"There are no easy places in this world, so far as I know," answered Mr. Wayne. "Not for men who wish to get on. There are a few where you can stand still. West Point is not one of those. Back or forward you must go, there. But there is no hardest place on earth that 'work and pray' will not carry a man gloriously through."

"Well, mother has taught me the one, and I guess I'll soon pick up the other," said Magnus. "I'm not afraid of work, if I _am_ rather lazy."

"Magnus," said his friend suddenly, "when you get to West Point I want you to make friends with the flag."

"All right," said the boy, laughing. "Do they fly the flag all the time? That is glorious!"

"They fly it all the time, in all weathers; from the small storm flag in a gale, to the bunting thirty-six feet long, on a holiday. What would you think, if they hauled the flag down every time someone came by who did not like it?"

"I should say, 'Shoot the man who touched the halyards'!" said Magnus.

"Suppose the passerby was from a powerful nation that we feared to offend?"

"There is no such nation!" said the boy, drawing himself up.

"But Young America can _suppose_, for the argument's sake," said Mr. Wayne, smiling.

"Hard thing to do, sir," laughed Magnus. "However, I'll suppose, as you say. And I say, the man would come down, a long sight ahead of the Stars and Stripes. I'd risk offending anybody, for the flag."

Mr. Wayne paused and faced him.

"Magnus," he said, "I have just three words for you at West Point. Work, pray, and keep your colours flying! Good-bye; the doors are open."

So they parted, and soon the cry was, "All aboard!" and the train moved slowly out of the Grand Central.

V

THE FLAG

What is that which the breeze o'er the towering steep, As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses? Now it catches the gleam Of the morning's first beam; In full glory reflected now shines on the stream.

--FRANCIS KEY.