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