No age, no race, no single soul,
By lofty tumbling wins the goal.
The steady pace it keeps between;
The little points it makes unseen;
By these, achieved in gathering might,
It moveth on, and out of sight:
And wins, through all that's overpast,
The city of its hopes at last.
--MRS. WHITNEY.
Of these true knights Charlemagne Kindred was one. Lessons, problems,
questions, went down before his fierce assault. He had never enjoyed
being headed off in what he chose to do; and had pledged it to himself
that if ever anything did that kind office for him, it should not be
West Point.
"_You_ stop me?" he would say to some particularly obnoxious book.
"_You_ get in my way?" and probably the hard-headed volume would then
and there find itself pitched to the furthest corner of the room. But
after that little expression of opinion, Magnus would pick the book up,
and bone with all his might. Smith's "Conic Sections" got quite used to
such short excursions, and Ketel's "French Grammar" grew old before its
time.
Rig's method was different.
"Kin, I'm growing grey," he said plaintively one morning.
"Grey as a goose."
"No, but really," said Rig, laying down the book. "This thing's too
hard, you know. Breaks a man all up."
"You'd best stick yourself together again before two o'clock," said
Magnus.
"No good," said Rig, taking up another study volume from the heap.
"I'll try this a while. Nobody ought to be expected to learn such
stuff."
"Put that book down!" Magnus thundered at him, from his own corner.
"Oh, I can put it down easy enough," Rig said rather sulkily. "But I
can't see what business it is of yours."
"Now fold your hands, and spell zero ten times backwards," said Magnus,
"and then take your Davies, and go to work. Unless you want to fess
solid for the rest of your life."
"Well--Say, Kin,--what a good fellow Mr. Upright is."
"Mr. Upright's a cold max. Mind your business."
Pushing and pulling did a good deal for Rig that winter. There was a
little stir about the holidays, when the happy upper classmen who had
won their Christmas leave went off for unlimited bliss in a limited
time, and those who had lost it abused "luck." And there was also the
mild interest of a better dinner than usual. But to the plebs, for whom
no getting away was possible, and to whom no Point festivities were
open, that first Christmas was a thing to live through as best they
might. I think some of them despised even the dinner, with the flavour
of their mother's cookery yet lingering and fresh.
How hard it was! "The most miserable day they ever spent," as many a
one has said since. And the letters and home trifles that arrived in
the mail-bag were not much help in the line of bracing up. Magnus put
Cherry's bookmark in his Bible, and his mother's picture up his sleeve;
while the toilet cushion and cover on which the two girls had bestowed
so many loving looks, as they wrought out the pretty devices, were hid
away in his clothes bag; no such decorations being allowed in barracks.
Then he wrote letters to them all, then he tried to study, but who can
study on a legal holiday?
So at last Cadet Kindred donned his grey fearnaught, wandered
down among the rocks and snow-drifts on Flirtation, and listened
to the grinding of the ice cakes in the dark river. The sky, blue
with an unearthly far-away depth of colour, was pushed back by the
whitened hills: all nature seemed locked up and unapproachable and
unsympathising.
"Those fair blue heavens so distant are,
Their very clearness seems to say
How far, how far!
They lie above man's stormy way."
And Magnus Kindred felt as desperately lonesome as he thought it was in
the power of man to be.
There were no loiterers now under the "Kissing Rock"; no echoing steps
within "First-class Cave"; all the old seats and trysting places were
snow capped and silent. Even the broad folds of the Post flag would
have been some company, a little cheer to his sad eyes as he once more
came out upon the plain. But the Post flag was safely folded away;
and only a wee, wintry looking storm flag, whipped out in many a past
gale, was abroad to brave the keen-edged airs that stirred round Trophy
Point. Could anything exceed the dreariness and length of that wretched
Christmas Day?
Then such cake for tea--though I doubt if Purcell's best would have
suited Magnus that night. He was glad when the drummers began their
noisy tattoo, that he might unroll his mattress, go to bed, and forget
his misery.
New Year's Day was not quite so bad, perhaps because the coming
examination lent at least a dash of red pepper to the monotony, and the
first evening of the new year was full of study and talk, questions,
fears, and surmisings. Blue letters home went off in troops, and many
a man arranged definitely just what he would do after he was "found,"
of which last fact he felt sure. With the great hop that graced this
week, or the gay damsels who graced the hop, the fourth class had
nothing to do.
It was natural enough that the strain and fatigue of the examination
should be followed by a certain dislike for work at all. The men who
were "found" had vanished; the men who had gone up a section were
quietly in place, while others had as quietly joined "the Immortals,"
a better name than its popular substitute. And from now on until June,
things would remain pretty much as they were.
No wonder, then, if the reaction set in strong. Snow blocked the
favourite cadet walks; permits for skating were cut. No parades, no
stirring drills, except in the riding-hall, and the plebs had no good
of them.
Then there were stormy days when even the officers' row was gloomy, and
things grew very tame indeed. The bent bows ached to spring back, and
the pent-up steam was ready to blow off in any direction; for mischief
at least makes a change, and to break regulations and not be found out,
gave life a certain flavour. It was a pity, but not at all strange.
And so, in some parts of the barracks, license, not liberty, was the
popular word. The great point of interest by day and by night being how
to defy the blue book, and not get caught.
The leaders were bright men, some of them; personable, pleasant to talk
to, fair mathematicians, and capital cooks over the gas-light. Several
had friends who sent them money, sweets, mince pies, and tobacco: all
smuggled in by unscrupulous outside hands. And these dainties were
freely dispensed by the happy owners.
As to the rest, they were light fingered enough for pick-pockets, and
could abstract and convey to barracks anything--except "Sammy"--from
the mess-hall table; and I have even been told that this one exception
lost its place that year.
But so far, you could charge things pretty fairly upon fun, and the
delightful exercise of skill. If, as was alleged, they carried off two
pounds of sugar for every lemon they got hold of, still, one must do
something; and as they said, "the sugar was all paid for out of their
own allowance."
A much graver thing--perhaps the worst in the whole business--was the
bribing enlisted men. Some free lances, indeed, were much too fond of
"chancing" it, to do their frisky deeds by proxy. They fetched for
themselves what they wanted, with a daring of which I may not tell.
But others would get the sentry at the gate to pass things in; or a
bandsman to bring all sorts of contraband goods from the Falls. Other
people helped, but a mess-hall waiter could only lose his place and run
away, while the sentinels were in trust.
Now Magnus Kindred had not been so brought up, and the sight and
hearing of certain things at first made him indignant. But they looked
lighter coloured the fifteenth time than the first. The memory of Mr.
Upright's words also faded out, and when springtime came, and days grew
long and nights were bright, he had fallen back into much the old way,
and was training with (or training) the wrong crowd. And he was so
agile and wary that he never got caught, which was perhaps his loss.
"I don't see how you work it, Kin," Rig complained one day. "You do
everything you have a mind to, and yet even Towser will swear you in
for sweet cream every time. But as for me, if both my shoe toes aren't
blacked exactly alike, I'm skinned to a certainty."
I am not sure that Magnus relished the compliment,--one has a choice
about praise,--but he made no answer, and did not change his too
successful ways.
And thus that pleb winter did much work for him in more lines than one.
For you cannot keep hard at hard studies, as he did, without a swift
and increasing rate of progress; the Hill Difficulty of West Point, as
Mrs. Gresham had called it, yielded better and better footing, week by
week. But alas, it is also true that you cannot constantly fling even
small stones at the law, without that fine pillar of strength's being
chipped and frayed, and in a sort defaced. Magnus Kindred did not call
his doings by any such dignified name, but all the same, freedom and
lawlessness were getting very much mixed in his mind. While the right
of the authorities to command, and his own right to disobey, were in a
worse tangle still. The wise, dignified, and wholesome rule of "Honour
to whom honour, fear to whom fear," was much dethroned in those days.
So the course of the days and the drift of the ways went on. Winter
slid early into spring. Company drills began, and the full tide of
everything set in, especially walks. Bright parasols appeared on the
sidewalk, and the old seat at Gee's Point once more received its guests.
A general stir of preparation was in the air; grass was dressed,
branches trimmed, and rubbish burned. Cleaning house was on hand, and
dressmakers; and always drills, drills, drills. To the Post in general,
these signs meant the coming of the Board of Visitors, and all the
whirl of examination week: but to the cadets, chiefly June.
All that spring, in spite of much work, Magnus Kindred wrote home very
regularly; long, amusing letters. Telling less of his inner life than
the hearts at home would have liked; but the strangeness of what he
said of the outer partly covered this up. And I doubt whether Magnus
knew how little he told.
Of one thing, however, he was dimly conscious. At first, his mother's
expressions of trust and hope, given in Bible words or her own, had
been a comfort and help to him; they seemed to bring her nearer and to
make him stronger. But of late he had been often inclined to slur over
those parts of her letters, and to hurry on "to get the news first"--as
he put it to himself. He never stopped to ask why; and it was again Mr.
Upright who opened his eyes, and showed him how quietly they had been
closing and falling asleep.
There are tears as well as smiles, on that fateful day in June. Here is
a mother, who, having had her son within easy reach for the last four
years, knows that now, after the short graduation leave, he will be
whirled away beyond her ken. To Barrancas, it may be, or Huachuca, or
Indian Territory. So the mother breaks down and cries visibly.
And here are roommates, who have stood shoulder to shoulder in all
sorts of hardships, now henceforth, until, they are grey-haired men,
to live as far apart as this broad country can put them; and it is a
sobering thought.
Then, this pretty, timid girl, who has ventured her heart on the
insecure ground of cadet soft speeches; or thought out her wedding
dress after one particular walk around Flirtation; or tried the class
ring on one of her own slender fingers, without being asked to keep it
there.
"Oh, it is too dreadful!" she cries, stamping her little foot, and with
the tears all ready, when that heartless band fall off into "The Girl I
Left Behind Me." "I can _not_ see what they find in that old tune."
It goes hard with her, sometimes, poor child, in matter of health.
And sometimes a like hope is laid down with the grey, and the
blue must seek another charmer; and earth is--henceforth and
comparatively--a desert. All sorts of things happen at graduation; and
when you hear an eager, "You will be sure to come back in August," it
does not follow that he will, or that she will wait for him if he does.
But there was no shallow sentiment about Mr. Upright. On the day of his
graduation, the young first captain, having put off his cadet honours
and come out in plain "cits," went down to the mess-hall dinner to look
round the old place once more, and to speak farewell words to his own
company and the Corps. Magnus Kindred caught his eye and smile, and
started a yell for Mr. Upright, which quite cut short that young man's
power to say much; but every word had the resonance of true metal.
"'Quit you like men! be strong.' 'Strong in the Lord, and in the power
of his might,'" he said; vainly trying to shake all the hands held out
to him. But if the tones faltered, the meaning was full strung, and
Magnus once more opened his eyes, and looked at himself and his doings.
And the more he looked, the less he liked it.
It was a good day for feeling blue. The sudden quiet, the cut-down
numbers; envy of the furlough men, and to a degree, of the graduates,
made men restless and dull. No drill, no parade, and not even "a plank"
left of the Board of Visitors. Not even many girls to look at; for half
the Post, and three-tenths of the visitors, had sailed away with the
gay throng on the down boat, and candidates swarmed everywhere.
Magnus Kindred strolled off by himself to the river edge, sat down and
looked himself over.
"Absolutely getting used to things!" he confided to his favourite oaks
and cedars. And then he began to see what was the character of those
things. Of course, a boy could not grow up anywhere, alas! in this
poor world, and not now and then hear men swear; but oaths from his
_comrades_ had at first shocked him exceedingly. There was one man, for
instance, who for a low mark in the section room, a bad ride, a rainy
Saturday, would have his mouth so full of cursing that it seemed hard
to get it all out. He lived near Magnus; and many a time had the boy
secretly stopped his ears to shut out the terrible words. Rig said the
air was "blue" with them.
But quick and keen it came to Magnus now, that he had long ceased to
take any such precautions. Ah! only last night, after the reading of
the black list, he had wondered idly to himself, whether Carr would
find something new to say.
Some hot, unwonted tears sprang up at that, with some very pricking
thoughts of the four pure hearts at home keeping watch for him. And the
thoughts grew and piled up, and sharpened their edges.
I should have said that when the new cadet officers were read out on
Graduation Day, Magnus found himself promoted to the rank of corporal.
Soon after this the Corps went into camp.