Part 5

"Why, it must be a flag that flies in all weathers!" cried Cherry. "So strong that the wind cannot tear it, and so deep-coloured that the rain cannot wash it out."

Well for them all that she did not know enough to add, "And so small that it can hardly be seen."

But no such thought cast its dark shadow. Mrs. Kindred looked at the sweet eyes, all aglow with the spirit of the martyrs; the lips in a quiver, the cheeks in a flush; then took Cherry in her arms and kissed her.

"You are never anything but a blessing," she said, and went away to pour out tears and petitions in her own private room; with a heart-aching sense all the while that she wished some other boy had the glory and the brass buttons, and that her own Magnus was safe at home.

Meanwhile the girls in the porch talked on.

"I dare say you are right about the flag, Cherry," said Rose, "but there are other things I cannot understand."

"It is dreadful about his clothes," put in Violet.

"I do not mind _that_ so much," said Rose. "Mother always said Magnus was a fidget to fit. But what _can_ he mean by B. J.? Oh, girls, do you think it could possibly be some dreadful expression he has learned, and didn't like to write out to us?" And Rose put her head down, in great distress.

"It _could_ not be!" said Violet, with a scared look. "Why, you are talking about Magnus! Rose, I believe you are crazy."

"I think I must be," said Rose, lifting her head and brushing off the tears. "Of course, it is all my nonsense. Cherry, where are you going?"

"Home," said the girl, pulling on her deep sun-bonnet. "I have something to do. I'll be down again soon."

No one noticed how white the young face had grown while the other girls wept; no one guessed the cause of this sudden home-going; but as she went, Cherry clenched her hands for very anguish of heart. _Magnus_ change like that? _Magnus_ learn words so bad that he would not write them home? No indeed!--it could not be; she knew it could not. All the same, that vision of possibility had come into her heart, and come to stay; and nothing stilled the aching until she had carried her burden to the feet of Him, "Who is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory."

Cherry did not cry: she was not given to tears: but from that day on, two Bible verses answered to each other in her heart like a sweet chime:

"Thou hast a few names, even in Sardis, that have not defiled their garments," and "He is able to save to the uttermost."

VIII

RUBS THE WRONG WAY

Now don't go off half cock; folks never gains By usin' pepper sarce instead o' brains.

--_Biglow Papers._

If Cadet Magnus Kindred knew in a general sort of way that all the simple, loving women folk at home were praying for him morning, noon, and night, "and watching thereunto with all perseverance," it was with a very easy remembrance of the fact, and not the faintest idea that anything but pleasure touched the case. And he would have simply shouted at Rose's panic over the unexplained "B. J." In fact, if anybody knows the origin of those two cabalistic letters, Magnus certainly did not.

Indeed, he had scant time for running down questions. Drills began as soon as examination was over, and were pushed on "fiercely" (as Randolph declared), hot sun or no sun, rested or tired. Though Magnus had been used to such an active open-air life that all this came easier to him than to some others. As to the rest, he got along pretty well for a "pleb," having a certain sensible nature which made light of hardships, and was not quick to take offence. So when he was jeered and pointed at, chin poked in and toes pushed out, he rarely said anything stronger, even to himself, than, "Just you wait!" Good common sense everywhere befriended him, even when the drill masters abused their power, or first classmen showed their prowess by "jumping" plebs.

So he brought in water and cleaned guns; stood attention, and stood his ground; and when the time came for that amusement, "advanced ghosts" in the most correct terms, but kept his musket against all attempts of Cadet Devlin and his compeers. Nay, on one such occasion, he gave the marauder the most accurate measure of himself upon the ground that the young man had ever had. Of course Magnus was reported, but he gave too straight answers for the charge to stand, and the upshot was that Mr. Devlin lost his chevrons "for hazing plebs." The whole account caused great consternation at home, only lulled by the assurance Magnus gave that if he had let anyone take his gun, he himself might have been put in "light prison" or sent home in disgrace. For to the bewildered mind of a pleb in those early days, anything might happen.

Devlin swore vengeance, and in a small way carried it out. But young Kindred laughed off some things, ignored others, and now and then gave Mr. Devlin a blaze out of his honest eyes before which that gentleman rather shrivelled up. Nobody liked to exactly try to handle Charlemagne Kindred: there was about him "a look of unknown quantities"--as Mr. Upright remarked one day. Cadet Upright was a staunch friend; and it was a blessing to all the plebs in Camp Hard that year that he was head man over them.

"Come and clean my gun, Mr. Kindred," he would say, adding, when Magnus was in the tent, "The gun is not very dirty, and there is no hurry about it, but you must be doing something, and in here is better than out there."

A fact which Magnus realised when from the cool recesses of the tent he saw other plebs fetching water in the sun, or standing attention for a lecture from Mr. Devlin: teased and worried and laughed at by Mr. Prank.

It was during the fervid days of that July that Rig ("poor Rig," as Magnus generally termed him in the letters home) went through a small bit of experience which, by his own account, made him "a sadder, if not a wiser, man."

The morning was intensely hot. The plebs had been out at their early drill and now in the canvas shade were enjoying a few minutes' rest. Guard-mounting was just over, and for a brief space no one had anything special to do. The visitors' seats were nearly deserted, with only a few sentimentals from either side the colour-line still lounging there. The sentries paced up and down in full fatigue dress: the row of stacked arms shimmered in the heat.

In his tent Magnus was devouring over again the last night's letter from home, and so did not notice what was going on, until the shadow of Cadet Prank in the tent door made him look up in time to see Rig (alias McLean) start to his feet and stand very stiff indeed.

"Good-day, Mr. McLean," said the man with chevrons. "Don't disturb yourself, I'll not come in. I know you've been hard at it this morning, and I really hate to ask you to go out again,--but in such a case,"--and Mr. Prank gazed into the glowing sunshine in deep perplexity.

Magnus, watching from the depths of the tent, saw the gleam which no effort of Prank's could keep out of his eyes, with the dangerously solemn lines about the mouth. But poor Rig at such honeyed words from an upper classman, lost what little everyday perception belonged to him. "He's just got to learn for himself, though," thought Magnus, looking on with intense amusement.

Mr. Prank suddenly turned and glanced suspiciously down towards the listener; but Magnus was all quiet, behind his letter.

"You see, Mr. McLean," Prank went on, dropping his voice a little, "I want a man I can trust, to do me a small service. If you are not too much fatigued--it would not take long."

Visions of Mr. Prank for his bosom friend, and Camp Hard suddenly transformed into Elysium, floated before Rig's eyes.

"Yes, sir,--no, sir," he answered, gathering up the points.

"It is really but a minute's work," said Prank with another glance over Rig's head towards Magnus; "but a particular friend of mine has gone on guard without his gloves. Most absent-minded man alive! And if the Com. comes along, he's ruined. So I thought if you would just take them to him--you see _I_ should have to report him. He's on post No. 6."

Mr. Prank held out a pair of immaculate white gloves. But now Rig drew back. To waylay a sentinel on his beat, was something so clearly beyond pleb limits that he took fright.

"Yes, sir," he began; "certainly, sir. But you know, sir, it's against orders, I believe----"

Mr. Prank drew himself up to all his inches.

"That will do," he said. "Of course, I don't know much about regulations and never heard the orders. Very kind of you to instruct me, I am sure; I shall not forget it! Sorry to have disturbed your toilette, Mr. McLean, but I thought such a trifle could not seriously put you out. Someone else, probably, will be kind enough--whose hair curls easier than yours."

And tucking the white gloves into the cadet pocket (his sleeve), Mr. Prank strode haughtily away.

Rig felt miserable. He did not see that Magnus in his dark corner was shaking from head to foot. But to lose his character for obligingness! With a bound he was after the retreating chevrons.

"Oh, Mr. Prank!" he said. "Of course I didn't mean that you didn't know, sir; and I have just thought of a way, if you think it will do. I can hang the gloves on one of the bayonets where the arms are stacked, you know, sir, and then he can get them for himself."

"The very thing!" said Prank, with a well-kept face. "I see you are bright, Mr. McLean, as well as obliging. Take the gloves, my dear fellow, and be quick. And count upon me hereafter."

With a swelling heart Rig stepped briskly up to the shining row of guns, where not an inch nor a line was out of the most spick-and-span state of military precision, and hung the white pendant on a glittering point of steel. And as he turned--alas! he was tapped on the shoulder and marched off to the guard tent "for tampering with the arms."

"I shouldn't have minded that so much," he said afterwards to Magnus, "if I hadn't been such a double-distilled fool. And I'm not a fool really, you know,--but I'm not 'a gem of purest ray serene,' either. And I just lost my head with being told I was."

Plenty of that sort of sport (to give it its common name) went on in Camp Hard, and even the most patient men grew tired of it, and the most good-natured got cross. It is monotonous when all the fun goes to somebody else. Even the straight shoulders sometimes rebelled against the perpetual bracing up; and many a poor fourth classman wished that his grey trousers had no side seam which could serve as a landmark to his weary thumbs: for in those days "finning out" was in full force.

But indeed it was sometimes hard to take even what the law allowed.

A strict order had been published that no cadet should ask a pleb to perform any menial service, but when Corporal Main remarked, "Mr. Stone, there are some very dusty shoes in my tent,"--no more was needed. Stone was just come in from drill, and ached in every inch; but he went at the shoes, and cleaned and rubbed and polished for dear life, while Corporal Main strolled off with Miss Flyaway, and told her the story.

Again, another humane order was read out one day in the Mess Hall, to the effect that in that place of supposed relaxation plebs need not "brace," but might sit and stand "at will." But the minute the reader's back was turned Cadet Prank drawled out:

"Boys, hadn't you all a great deal _rather_ brace up?"

And so many hurriedly answered, "Yes, sir!" that the contrary noes were never counted.

That was the way of it; and by dint of being laughed at and pointed at; drilled, straightened, pulled into shape, and called "beasts," the fourth classmen began to feel as if in truth the name fitted. They huddled together in corners, talked in whispers, and told endless stories of home.

IX

CAMP HARD

_Marcus Antonius._ Cæsar dear, is there no way this troubling my dear little plebeian sentinels can be stopped?

_Cæsar._ There probably is, but we have not found it yet.

--_Colour Line Tragedy of 1890._

Nor yet. And so, year by year, for a time, the new fourth classmen worked out pretty fairly Lowell's lines:

"Mis'ble as roosters in a rain, Heads down, and tails half-mast."

Magnus Kindred was speeding along through camp one morning, thinking of home, when he was hailed by an upper classman.

"See here, beast, what's your name?"

Magnus made answer, with what composure of face and voice he could call up at such short notice.

"Where did you come from?" And again the reply came with fair coolness.

"Got so few men out there, they give 'em long names to stretch out and cover the country. Who was your pred.?"

"Mr. Dunn, sir. He resigned, sir."

"Good example for you to follow in November," said Mr. Seaton, "but you've got to be taken care of in the mean time. Wipe that smile off, sir! What's your technical name?"

"Haven't got any, sir."

"Well, if anyone asks you that again, tell 'em it's Lorenzo Monkey," said Seaton, and walked away.

Magnus shook his fist at him (mentally), but what can a pleb do? And so to the next inquirer he answered (pretty ungraciously, it must be owned):

"Somebody said it was Lorenzo Monkey, sir."

"Can't have a monkey without a tail," said Mr. Danby. "Now remember, beast, you are technically called: 'Lorenzo Monkey; and the name is not fame.' Take your eyes off me, sir!"

Well, the tail grew--naturally; and every time the name was called for, to amuse one man or a dozen, somebody would add on a word, and then Magnus was bid to rattle the whole thing off, amid shouts of laughter. He was required also to write out his technical name in full, and hand the paper in under the guise of an official document: a half sheet of paper duly folded, and inscribed as follows:

Camp Hard, West Point, N. Y., July --, 18--.

Kindred, C,

Cadet Private. Co. "A." 4th Class.

Subscribed Copy of "Technical Name."

Within, it ran thus:

Camp Hard, West Point, N. Y., July --, 18--.

To Cadet Lieut. Crabapple. (Through the proper channels.)

_Sir_: I have the honour to submit the following,--my technical name for the summer encampment, U. S. M. A. To wit:

I am Lorenzo Monkey; and the name is not fame. It is tame: it is lame: it is shame: it is blame: it is game. Yet I claim, a Colonial dame was my flame, when I came. Same at same.

Very respectfully, Your obedient servant, Charlemagne Kindred, Cadet Private, Co. "A." Fourth Class.

To Cadet Lieut. Crabapple, Commanding Battalion of Crabs.

Magnus chafed at all this stuff; growled over it, almost resisted; and yet it was wise to pass things by as quietly as he could. All the same, his feeling towards some of the upper classmen was getting to be a very fixed fact, indeed.

Mr. Prank, for instance, was much given to hops,--also to prinking for the same: and it was in his heart to combine all the good things he could, and "crawling" plebs came in among the rest. So on hop nights, after supper, when Mr. Prank was shaving, dressing, and vainly endeavouring to curl his short hair, Magnus Kindred was frequently detailed as valet. The work being to follow Mr. Prank about the tent and fan him during these fatigues, and also to soothe and attune his feelings by singing "Annie Laurie" or some other lovelorn ditty. How Magnus did hate it!--and how he did secretly vow vengeance, if ever he himself should have half a chance with Mr. Prank's best girl! But then! Mr. Prank had a relay of "best girls," and could spare one or two just as well as not.

On the other hand, the two men who "tented" with Magnus thought he had an easy time.

"If you had to black Mr. Mean's shoes!" said Randolph.

"Or clear up after old Seaton," said Rig.

Rig's technical name taxed all his powers of memory and patience. It began:

"I am the distilled quintessence of stuff, the double-dyed result of being dipped in the Styx,"--and so on, _ad infinitum_, and to Rig, certainly, _ad nauseam_.

Homesickness had broken loose in the fourth class, of late, and become epidemic. These boys were but boys, and the manliest of them all would--many a day--have given up his hopes of being a brigadier just to lay his head down on his mother's apron, and have her pet him and comfort him, and make him feel that he was not a "beast."

"But she'd not find any hair to stroke, now," said Magnus Kindred, in one of these spasms. And then he caught hold of himself again, set his teeth in his favourite fashion, and announced to himself that he meant to be adjutant.

"And I'll not look like you, either," he went on, apostrophising Mr. Larkin, who just then came strolling by between two admiring girls, turning from one to the other with much the air of the exquisite who said:

"Really, now, you know--won't somebody come and share me?"

The young adjutant's buttons were very bright, and his waist was very small; and the red and white (brown) of his complexion left nothing to be desired. If he had been a girl, you might have called his walk "willowy," but I know not the masculine of that. And the barber had plainly been open to persuasion in his case, and had left almost a lovelock or two on the tall head.

Magnus Kindred watched the party go by, but they did not see him. In one of the rocky, shady nooks on Flirtation, where the green leaves rustle and the river whispers softly to the shore, there he had hidden himself away with his sweet and bitter fancies. Hard, literal facts they were just then, for Magnus.

The footsteps died away, and more came, quicker and brisker than the first; and two cadets went by his hiding place. Then another with his best girl (for the time being); and Magnus watched them all. As the silence fell again a wood thrush in the shadows behind him rang its liquid chime.

Then a tall cadet with chevrons, and the dainty air and manner which had earned him the soubriquet of "Gentleman Joe," passed slowly by with his mother on his arm; he bending down to her, and she looking up to him, while a little white fidget of ten years old flitted about the two.

But when these were out of sight, then Magnus Kindred threw himself face down among the moss and ferns, and gave no further heed to outside things.

"Oh, mother!--and Cherry, and Violet, and Rose--and home!" It was very bitter for a while. And when at last, in answer to a distant drum-call, Magnus roused himself, and got on his feet, he knew that he hated that drum, and all it betokened, just as hard as he could.

Gentler thoughts came, as he mounted the hill. The clear notes of the thrushes were all around him, but in their grave sweetness there were no faltering tones; and while it pierced the boy's heart it strengthened it, too. Yes, one day _he_ would be the tall man with chevrons, leading his mother along Flirtation; and she should be as proud of him as Mrs. Gresham was of her son. And, instead of that child in white, there would be--but here the drum became imperative, and Magnus stowed away all the rest of his thoughts, and double-timed every remaining step up to Camp Hard.

X

BAND CONCERT

I cannot bear it any longer, said the pewter soldier as he sat on the drawers; it is so lonely and melancholy here.

--HANS ANDERSEN.

It was the evening for band concert at the camp: a warm first of August. A red glow lingered over Crownest, the stars came out slowly, hazy with the heat; the katydids were publishing their arrival in the usual contradictory way. As the twilight deepened, the camp began to light up, and in front of the colour-line one especial burner shone full upon the concert programme, which was posted on a stick. Beyond this a small circle of lights marked the standing place of the band.

Cadets were everywhere--half in a tent, or half out; walking, sauntering, standing, in twos and threes and half-dozens; some down on the grass where the lights shone full, and some hid away in the shadows towards Fort Clinton.

Other figures were coming up, too, and dresses of every hue flitted across the plain. The dew lay sweet and fresh upon every grass-blade, but then the grass was short, and nobody minded dew when going to band concert.

Often some grey uniform was escorting some dainty lady: these coming straight from the houses, and those others pausing, after a delightful tryst at Trophy Point, or a saunter along the upper bends of Flirtation. For, in those days, the concert night limits were--so far as you could hear and distinguish the music.

The plebs kept together, and away from the gay throng; unless where some especially happy boy had a cousin on hand. But a great event had marked that day in Camp Hard; for the obnoxious "grey bags" had disappeared, giving place to the full uniform, bell buttons and all complete; and at last the plebs looked like cadets.

Magnus Kindred had been as jubilant as anyone over the change, and nobody had given a heartier parting kick to the grey bag. But "a competency is what a man has, and a little more"--and so, then, the young man wanted someone to look at him. How his mother and sisters would have stroked the sleeve of that wonderful dress coat, and admired the buttons: how they would have studied out every turn of braid and quirl of adornment. And Cherry--no, they were not her little hands he seemed to feel on his arm: her hands were just folded in their pretty way, and she stood a few steps off, laughing at the others, and secretly admiring him. She never said so, but what innocent, true-hearted girl can quite keep it out of her eyes, when her hero stands before her? Or, if the eyes sometimes grew shy and turned away, the lips laughed, and told it still.

"Bless her dear heart!" Magnus said, almost aloud, his own lips parting in a smile at the sweet vision. But then they closed again firmer than ever. Two thousand miles away (it seemed five thousand to Magnus), and two whole years before he could go there. And a weary sigh measured off both time and space, and found them endless.

"Joseph," whispered Mrs. Gresham to her son (they were just opposite Magnus), "who is that boy?"

"Kindred--fourth class."

"He looks like a first-class fellow," said Mrs. Gresham, watching him, as he suddenly moved off and joined the grey circle around the band. "What a fine face he has! I noticed him yesterday before parade."

"Good fellow enough," assented Mr. Gresham, who was just then "noticing" the arrival of Miss Saucy. "But he's so awfully homesick. Blue as Cat's eyes."

"Well, you're not obliged to call me 'Cat,' sir, if you _are_ a captain," said the little girl, trying hard to make a pinch tell through the thick cadet cloth. "He's the one that was up among the rocks, Aunt Effie. I told you, and you wouldn't look."

"Certainly not," said Mrs. Gresham. "Never try to see anybody who does not wish to be seen, Catty."

Miss Catty pouted.

"I knew he was a cadet," she said, "for I saw the bell buttons. And I thought cadets _always_ want to be looked at. They act so."

There was a burst of laughter from the group that had gathered round Mrs. Gresham.

"Oh, what a pity she's not a little older!" cried Miss Flyaway. "Your mainstay ought not to graduate for six years to come, Mrs. Gresham, that Catty might be up to the situation. But then, we poor damsels would have lost him. So it's best as it is. Things are generally best as they are."

"Some few things might be improved," said Mrs. Gresham quietly. "Joseph, I wish you would bring up Mr. Kindred, and introduce him."

"Now, ma'am?"

"Yes, now. We can spare you so long as that."

"Oh, with the greatest pleasure!" cried Miss Flirt, making a profound courtesy; while Miss Flyaway called after him: "Don't hurry yourself, we'll wait."

"Tell him you wouldn't go away for _anything_," said the irrepressible Catty.

"You saucy monkey!" said Miss Flirt. "You ought to be in bed and asleep."

"I don't believe you were, at my age," said Catty, with better logic than she knew.

"Hush, Catty!" said her aunt. "Mr. Carr, who is that officer talking with Mrs. Seaton?"