Читать книгу West Point Colors - Anna Bartlett Warner - Страница 5

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The nightingale flew away, and time flew also.

—Hans Andersen.

Charlemagne got his appointment. In a very commonplace way, after all, like most other boys; in spite of his long name and his longer list of qualifications. Some relative knew the Congressman of the district, had done business with him in the pre-official days, and in one of the intervals of home rest after Washington fatigues, young Kindred was taken over to the dignitary's whereabouts, and presented as one who was eager to serve his country in another line. There was nothing heroic about the whole proceeding, and the man was not an ideal Congressman; but he answered the purpose.

The interview would have made a fine subject for a picture. The boy, on his dignity every inch of him, making believe that he did not care a continental about the matter; but too unskilled in dissembling to prove the fact, and keep down the quick flashes of eye and flushes of cheek. The introducer, the childless uncle to whom his sister's son was the one boy of all the world. Opposite them the old Congressman, with chair at an uncertain angle and hat ditto; tilting back in the cool shady porch, and listening with a scarce hid smile to the tale of Charlemagne's attainments.

"Has he room in his head for anything more?" he demanded, when Mr. Thorn paused. "He'll want a little, over there."

"I am ready to learn all they teach, sir!" said young Magnus, firing up. "You think I don't know anything now—and maybe I don't."

"Maybe—" said the Congressman drily. "How about the outside of your head? You'll get it rough and ready, at West Point."

"I've got hands!" said Magnus with another flush.

"True," said the Honourable Miles Ironwood. "Well, take good care of them."

"And I have understood," put in Mr. Thorn, "that hazing is quite stamped out at West Point."

Mr. Ironwood skilfully rocked his chair upon its two hind legs, a mocking smile upon his lips.

"Ever see a bit of woodland that was half trees and two-thirds rocks?" he said.

"I was brought up on just such a place," said Mr. Thorn.

"Ever fight a fire there?"

"Many a time."

"H'm—I thought perhaps you hadn't," said the Congressman. "Well, Mr. Thorn, this district is not represented at West Point just now; last appointment resigned some months ago, and I suppose it had better be filled. And this young man doesn't look as if he would give the Tacs more trouble than common. And if they go for him, that is his lookout and not mine."

"Who are the Tacs, sir?" inquired Magnus.

"Men who come round every morning to see if you have washed your face," said Mr. Ironwood, without moving a muscle of his own. "And every night, to tuck you up and bring away the light."

Magnus coloured indignantly; but a certain twinkle in Mr. Ironwood's eye kept him silent.

"What do they teach there, chiefly?" said Mr. Thorn. "What had Magnus better learn before he goes?"

"Learn everything you can, when you are going anywhere," said Mr. Ironwood impressively. "They teach riding—a little—at West Point. And mathematics—some."

"Charlemagne can ride," said his uncle proudly.

"On his head?"

"Why no!" said Mr. Thorn. "Will that be required?"

"I've seen 'em on their heads, in that riding-hall," said the Congressman with an easy change of position.

"They teach the classics, of course?"

"He'll hear something about Achilles, like as not," said Mr. Ironwood. "Hector, too. Not so much of either as he will of Charlemagne."

Again the suggestive gleam of the eye acted upon the boy as both spur and check.

"And you have no general advice to give him, Mr. Ironwood, as to what he had best do to prepare himself?"

"Prepare himself?" Mr. Ironwood brought his chair down on all-fours with considerable force. "If that boy wants to get ready for West Point, let him do every blessed thing he don't want to do and not one that he does, between now and next June. Good-morning: I'll attend to it."

"He's an old buzzard!" said Magnus as they walked away.

"A little sudden, sometimes," said his mild uncle. "But he's a smart man—a very smart man. And now I think of it, he was there once himself, and didn't get through. That's what makes him so down on the place."

"Must have been a very smart man if he couldn't get through West Point," Magnus said, with a boy's easy contempt.

But smart or not, Mr. Ironwood was as good as his word. And so in due course it was set forth in the Army and Navy Journal, that among the candidates for the Military Academy the following June would be found one Charlemagne Kindred. And the local paper of Barren Heights (albeit not generally concerning itself with West Point) got hold of the item and copied it out in full. And so astonishing was it to see Charlemagne's name in print that the family copy of said paper would have been quite worn out with much study and handling, if Mrs. Kindred had not rescued it, and laid it safe away among the family archives.

As for Cherry, after first privately breaking her heart because Magnus was going away, she then plucked up courage and common sense, and became the proudest little maiden that could be found among all the patient readers of the Barren Heights View.

It is safe to say that Magnus reversed Mr. Ironwood's wise counsel at every point and every time. Having himself been a failure at West Point, the Congressman's opinion was counted a failure too; would have been, anyhow, I fancy; and Charlemagne Kindred got ready for West Point by doing every possible thing he wanted to do, and letting the things he did not want to do, alone. Even when the rainy days of May went weeping by, and the fateful June was close at hand, what that boy did—and was allowed to do—would not bear telling. "He is going away," hushed every reproof; and "when I am gone," forestalled criticism. Refuse him? scold him?—the three gentle hearts at home were quite beyond all that.

To be sure, he ought to have studied hard, the whole time; but then Magnus was so quick and bright it could not be really needful. And if Mrs. Kindred now and then sighed, and wondered what the end would be, if the beginning was so lawless, and what her husband the minister would have said to his only son becoming a soldier—the girls had the answer ready.

"Why mother, it is to defend the Country! My father went to the war once, himself."

"Yes, in time of need," said Mrs. Kindred.

"But Magnus says that when there is no danger is the time to prepare," said Rose.

"Yes," Mrs. Kindred said again with a smile and a sigh, pleased at such wisdom in her boy; although it was a principle of sound business which Magnus had never been known to act upon, in any one single case.

But even he sobered down a little, as the last home day drew on. When the new trunk was packed, and Magnus had said good-bye to all the neighbourhood, and taken his last walk with Cherry; cheering up her forebodings in various efficacious ways best known to himself and to her; when there was nothing left but the good-night, and the early breakfast, and the parting—then, indeed, things began to look serious, and the boy too.

He sat that evening, taking the clearest sort of mental photographs. He saw the grief that lay back of his mother's brave words and tender smiles: saw it, as it were, on that other background of the older and deeper sorrow which never left her face. He noticed the white lines that marked the brown hair above her temples. He studied her hands: slender, white, but with that unmistakable character of use and usefulness which some hands have.

He looked at his sisters: fair, innocent slips of girls as you could find, East or West: their tears coming and going, their smiles playing hide and seek. Who ever had three such blessed bits of womankind entrusted to him? and who would take care of them when he, tall Charlemagne Kindred, should be far away? Magnus registered in his heart some vows that night, which to his honour he kept.

Then his eyes went down again to his mother's hands. They were quietly folded in her lap; but as Magnus looked, he seemed to see them busy in a hundred different ways, and always for him. Steadying his baby steps, cooling his aching head; binding up scratches and cuts; sewing on buttons, knitting socks, mending gloves. Now laid tenderly on his shoulder in some time of persuasion or entreaty—and now held out, both of them, to receive the penitent.

But here Magnus jumped up and fled away, out of the room, out of the house; and poured forth his agony of tears in the old orchard, under the quiet stars.

At his age, however, such showers are brief, and often end in a highly exalted state of mind. Magnus came back to the house protector of his mother, defender of his sisters, and knight-errant for all womankind in general—especially Cherry.

Cherry would have given what coppers she had in the world, and some silver to boot, to spend that last evening and morning at the Kindred house, and the girls had entreated her to stay, but she was a very self-contained little damsel and said no. "Little" is not descriptive, however, for Cherry was growing up tall and straight as a plumed reed by the river side; with a wealth of dark brown hair, and large serious eyes, and delicate brows that, when they laughed, went into curves as lovely and mischievous as the proverbial bow of Cupid. The whole of the demure face laughed then, with dimples here and dimples there.

Brought up until six years old with a frail, invalid mother, and since then by a student father, the child had early learned to keep herself to herself with severe decision. And keep herself hid according to her own ideas, Cherry feared she could not, if she was at hand to see Magnus Kindred go. Besides—Magnus himself had not asked her!

"But why will you not stay, Cherry?" the girls persisted.

"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.