Читать книгу West Point Colors - Anna Bartlett Warner - Страница 10

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With this hand work, and with the other pray,

And God will bless them both from day to day. —Old Vierlander Motto.

Some little time after the foregoing events, the following letter was sent from the West Point Post Office:

"Camp Hard, June —, 18—.

"My Dear Folks at Home:

"Well, I am in for it. Uncle Sam has me, body and soul. At least the body is self-evident, and as I don't get time to say my soul's my own, I suppose he claims that, too,—Mr. Wayne to the contrary. Bought and paid for and sworn in; and earmarks enough for a drove of pigs. Do you want to know what I look like, you girls? Just at present I am a compound of grey and green in about equal mixture. No, I guess the green has it. Hair cut short, army shoes, and a brand new prison dress which might fit anybody else as well as it does me, and better. I get up by a gun, and go to bed by a drum, and have a bugle to tell me when to go to sleep, and as we are young and tender in the ways of the world, at every meal the first captain informs us when to stop eating. (He's nothing special to look at, Cherry. Don't open your eyes too wide. But he's such an old spoon that he's always in a hurry to get out and walk with some girl or other)."

"We study straight lines in the morning, and play leap-frog in the afternoon; and have girls come and make fun of us while we're at it. Yesterday they enjoyed it more than was good for themselves, and one of the officers ordered them off."

"There are two special prigs in chevrons, who have charge of our thumbs and shoulderblades; and when you girls come to see me, one of 'em won't get an introduction, that's all. What do you think he did yesterday? It was hot enough to melt down your ideas, if you had any—hot as the middle line of the equator; and he had been drilling us as if he had never been drilled himself, and didn't know how it felt. So, when drill was over, he stood a lot of us round his tent door in the sun, and then made iced lemonade, and sat there drinking it with us looking on. Give us some? Not quite. Go to the store and buy our own lemons, Rose? Why, we can't get a shoestring without a special order. Corporal Mean smuggled in his sugar from the Mess Hall; and I guess Miss Flyaway brought him the lemons. If you want to know about Miss Flyaway, she's one of the girls; a summer girl, as they say here, and we plebs could spare her till winter just as well as not. She's as bad as a third-class corporal—only we can laugh at her and we can't at him. If we did, we'd be skinned in a minute. This is what I should hear read out after parade:

"'Kindred—disrespect to superior officer, at about 4.30 P. M.'—demerits according. Oh, well! we'll wear through somehow; it takes a good deal to kill a man. And they're not all like that. Cadet Captain Steady called me into his tent to-day and gave me a whole lot of good advice that would have gone to mother's heart. There's another Captain, too, Mr. Upright, who's as nice as he can be; and some of the Tacs aren't very bad to take. But we've got one in our company! I just wish you could see him. We call him Towser—because he's always nosing round, and sniffing about everywhere, to see what sort of a dry bone he can find to pick. He hasn't hived any of mine yet, but he spied a whole square inch of paper in front of Randolph's tent and reported him for disorder. You have to polish your shoestrings to go down A Company street, when he's in charge. So whoever sees him coming fires off a volley, and then we all know. Bow—wow—wow—wow—wow—wow!"

"You'll like my tentmate, Rig. That's not his name, of course, but we call him so because he's so B. J. about his dress. They don't leave him much hair to brush, but what he has takes up half his spare time."

"Now I know mother is aching to put in her questions—just waiting till I get through writing stuff. Well, ma'am, you see, we just have to praise ourselves a little bit here, because if we don't do it, it don't get done; and so I call myself a pretty good boy. Whether I'd suit you exactly, I'll not say. I go to prayer-meeting twice a week and once to Chapel (have to go there, so you needn't give me a credit), and I've not missed reading my chapter one day yet. Mr. Upright came by the other day when I was at it, and he stopped and walked in."

"'Keep straight on with your good home habits, Mr. Kindred,' he said, 'no matter what anybody says or does. Read the Bible just as much as you like; the more, the better. Remember:

"'He always wins, who sides with God.'"

"So I read every day. And I'm not likely to stop praying as long as I have you four to pray about. I guess I shall keep my colours flying—a storm flag, anyway. But it does blow pretty hard here sometimes, that is sure. Train says I can't do it. No use, he declares: says he's tried it and it won't work. (He was turned back, and so he has been here a year and thinks he knows.) He says there's no place in the course for religion; just as well give it up first as last."

"So I told him my mother had no 'give up' in her dictionary and never taught me how to spell the words."

"Poor Train! His mother went to heaven three years ago; though how she can enjoy herself up there, with him going on as he does down here, I can't see. Maybe she doesn't know."

"There goes the first drum! Good-bye. Kiss each other all round for me, beginning anywhere."

"Magnus Kindred,

U. S. Corps of Cadets."

"You mustn't think hard of Rig; he's a real good fellow. But you see he's a pinky-white creation: and it hurts his feelings to look like an acorn."

This letter was duly addressed, sealed, and stamped; went on the orderly's back to the post-office, and thence, in due course, across the continent to the far-off simple home at Barren Heights. There it alighted with the force and precision of a bombshell. That is, if force may be measured by commotion.

The strange phrases, the new ideas, the dim, vague vision of most unwonted doings—there is no telling what a stir-up it all was. The three girls had gone to the post office together in the course of their afternoon walk, and had taken turns at bringing the precious missive home. Now they sat about on the front steps, while Mrs. Kindred, in the porch rocking chair, opened and read the letter aloud.

I think she never even thought of a hidden meaning in "Camp Hard," passing it by as a mere name; but as she read on, even where the words themselves were perplexing, their intent was unmistakable. At the end of almost the very first sentence Mrs. Kindred took off her glasses, laid them down on the letter, and looked about her.

"No time to say his soul is his own," she said. "Why, what does this mean?"

Everybody else had felt the shock, but as usual they all crowded in to the rescue.

"It must be just his way of talking," said Violet. "Don't you know, mother, that when Magnus gets excited he always goes on stilts?"

"And of course, he is very busy," said Rose, "with so many new things to do."

"And you can see he is talking in the air, Mrs. Kindred," said Cherry's sweet voice, "because he instances something for which he does not want time. Magnus has never called his soul his own, since he gave it to Christ to save and keep."

"Dear boy!" said the mother. "Thank you, Cherry, for reminding me. Yes, I will not doubt,"—and she read on.

"I cannot see why he says 'skinned,'" said Violet. "It's a very queer way to talk."

"But just like him," said Rose. "Magnus always did talk wild—just a little bit," the sisterly censure softening down. "And you see they play games for exercise—so that is very good."

"I suppose studying straight lines must mean drawing," said Cherry, looking down at the open letter. "Magnus will not care what they do, if they will only let him draw."

"I am not so anxious about all that," said the mother thoughtfully. "Boys at school must have some hardships and do many things they do not like. And you see he does go to prayer-meeting and read the Bible."

"But he says such strange things," said Violet, studying the letter from her side. "Do all people in the East have names like that? 'Rig,' and 'Mean,' and 'Upright'—it sounds like the Pilgrim's Progress."

"And so it is," said the mother, smiling faintly, through two big teardrops, "and Magnus is going over a part of the road where we have never been. That must be, girls. But the Lord is as strong there as here in Barren Heights; and Magnus is no weaker than he was at home—bless his dear heart! He never could bear that word 'weak.' I wish he had told us what he means by 'a storm flag.'"

"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."