Forgotten the sounds of drum and fife,
Forgotten the winter days so drear;
But all was keen with the glad new life
That throbs in the veins in the furlough year.
--_Howitzer of 1891._
It was just like the cross grain of human nature that without a sound
but the singing of birds to rouse him, our young soldier should wake up
at precisely reveille gun time. In fact he did it for three days, to
his great disgust; and then, as he said of himself, learned to know how
happy he was.
Of course, this first morning at home, with everything before him
except drills and regulations, going to sleep again was impossible.
So with the sublime unconsciousness of other people's slumbers which
marks young men of his age, Magnus lay still and began to whistle. And
with that other line of forgetfulness which shows the inferiority of
the feminine mind, there was not a woman in the house but would have
given her best sleep to hear him.
They were not asleep, however, but up and stirring; and it was perhaps
some closing door or opening window, or the long unheard voice of the
coffee mill, which reminded Cadet Kindred that in these regions there
was no preparatory drum; and that such a noise as he had been making
would quite rule out the thought of any private suggestions at his
door. Wherefore, he had better get up. But what fun--to dress as he
liked, in what he liked, and be as long as he liked about it.
With these thoughts came another to hasten his motions: would Cherry
come to breakfast? And if she did, then just when would she come? And
here Magnus paused before a piquant illustration of the young lady
herself, drawn from memory--or, as the _real_ novelists put it, "which
had been photographed on his heart in one brief moment." And thus it
seemed:
A tall, delicately formed girl, with dark hair, which did not crinkle
and curl like his own, but parted in shining waves and rings; a
complexion colourless in general, but where the rosy tints came and
went like a pink cloud, in swift pulsations. The eyes--no, Mr. Kindred
thought he had not a fair look at her eyes last night, and that was one
thing to do to-day. Also her hand was a soft and fresh thing to touch.
And at this point Magnus opened his door and passed out.
On the way downstairs he peeped into his mother's room, but no one
was there, and he went straight on to a small room on the first floor
which was a sort of offshoot from the house, and hardly bigger than a
good-sized bay window.
But the picture he found there Magnus never forgot.
The room had been his father's summer study. Too cold for winter use,
but in June perfection, with every window open to the air. Roses and
honeysuckles climbed up and ran across and strayed in; amid the tangle
birds sang and twittered and builded. Further off were cattle and
chickens, with an old drum major of a turkey cock strutting before the
barnyard throng. The scent of hayfields was mingled with the yet rarer
fragrance of new-mown grass.
If the room had been larger, the minister's old library would have made
small show; but as it was, the strips of wall between the windows were
quite well covered. It was a very old affair in every way; leather
covers much worn with handling, shutting in truths that were but the
brighter for much believing. Very old-fashioned books. You could not
find a copy of "Why I am a Doubter"; nor a single treatise on "The
Eternal Equilibrium of Things." The glad toiler in Christ's vineyard
had had no use for "The Trammels of Faith, and how I Got beyond Them";
and as little for "The Proper Sphere and Limit of the Bible, Set Forth
and Defined."
But there was Baxter's "Call to the Unconverted," which the minister
himself had also preached; with Bunyan's "Holy War between Diabolus
and the Town of Mansoul," the which he himself had also waged; there
was "The Saint's Everlasting Rest," upon which he now had entered.
There was also old Matthew Henry's "Commentary" in its six volumes,
which gave people so much to do on the plane of the lower criticism,
that they had small chance to wish for the higher; with Fox's "Book of
Martyrs," and "Lives of the Port Royalists," and Doddridge's "Rise and
Progress of Religion in the Soul."
Only two chairs were in the room: one, where inquirers had so often sat
and troubled hearts found peace, was pushed back now, its service done;
but the minister's chair still stood by the minister's table where lay
the minister's Book of books; and in the chair sat the minister's widow.
She was not reading at the moment: I think she had been listening to
the gay sounds upstairs; and a tender, happy smile was on her lips,
in perfect keeping with the words on which her eyes had been. But
everything in that room was in keeping, to Magnus: his mother's cap
looked to him not a whit purer than her face; nor was the shine outside
the windows more gladsome than the look she turned to him. The young
cadet was at her side in an instant, down on his knees with his head on
her shoulder.
"What waked you up so early, child?"
"The echo of that reveille gun came clear across the Continent for the
express purpose."
"Hardly. I heard you whistling some time ago."
"Did I disturb you?"
"You could not do that," said the mother.
"But you were reading."
"Thoughts of you are never far away from the Bible, nor the Bible from
thoughts of you. Where have you been reading this morning, Magnus?"
"I've not been reading anywhere. Mother, do you think I had better run
up for Cherry? or will she be here all right on time?"
"Time for what?" said Mrs. Kindred, rather opening her eyes at this
very rapid transit.
"Breakfast."
"Did she say she would come?"
"Why--no," said Magnus. "I took it for granted."
"Never take anything for granted about Cherry, except that she will
do just what is right. She never goes anywhere, Magnus, until she has
given her father his breakfast and seen to his morning comfort in every
way."
"I should think she might come," Magnus said discontentedly. "It's my
first morning home. He could get along for once."
The mother smiled a little at the wide space demanded by the young
people in these days, and the side corner deemed enough for the elder;
but the usurpers are too lovely and beloved to be resisted. And
besides, there is a sort of "while they can"--that checks many a word;
the tender, pathetic force of Dr. Bonar's thought:
"Take thou my place, and be thy feast
Sweeter than mine has been!"
"Cherry will not come, Magnus," she said. "She never gets free before
ten or eleven o'clock. So tell me why you have done no reading to-day."
"Out of the habit," said Magnus. "I never do it in the morning."
"What is your Bible time?"
"Well, if I can be said to have one, it is more apt to be at night,"
said Magnus. "I don't always read then, but most generally I do."
"At night?" said the mother, carefully hiding all signs of the
underground shock that made her heart tremble. "I like to read at
night, too. But then, dear, if you do not read in the morning as well,
you have no fresh heartful of the blessed words to live by through the
day." And she looked round at Magnus with such eager, anxious, pleading
eyes as went straight to his heart. Which truly was not far to seek,
that morning. He jumped up and put himself in the other chair, drawing
it up to her.
"Mammy," he said, "let me tell you about it. It's this way. The gun
wakes me up. And I tumble downstairs half dressed, and declare at the
top of my voice that I am myself, and nobody else. That is, the first
sergeant calls 'Kindred!' and I yell back 'Here!' Then I rush in again,
and tumble into bed, clothes and all, and get the very best nap you
ever dreamed of."
"Another nap? For how long?"
"Two minutes and a quarter, drum time. Then I finish dressing and go
to breakfast. And after breakfast, we don't have very much time before
recitation."
"Cannot you read then?"
"Once in a while I do," said Magnus. "Not always. Maybe I do a little
boning in math. Maybe I take a walk with the nicest girl there is
round."
His mother could not help smiling.
"Can you always get the nicest?" she said.
"Oh, yes!" Magnus answered easily; "unless she happens to be somebody
else's best. Sometimes then. You see, so long as she doesn't look me in
the face, she can fancy I am her 'best' man."
"Why, Magnus!" his mother said, half laughing now, but really anxious;
"how do you behave, to make that possible?"
Magnus laughed too, with great delight.
"Sure enough," he said, "how do I? Maybe I go through the motions."
And now it was Mrs. Kindred who, after a moment's pause, changed the
subject.
"Look, dear," she said, laying her hand on the open Bible, "I was
reading just here: the parable of the sower. And my thoughts had been
going back and forth from the seed which the fowls of the air were let
pick up, to that other which fell in an honest and good heart, and
'with patience,' brought forth an hundred-fold."
Magnus ran his eyes over the passage.
"There are lots of fowls of the air at the Academy," he said.
"Maybe no more than elsewhere. But they have no business in _your_
life, Magnus."
"No, mammy, they haven't," he said, hesitating a little with the
difficulty of making his case plain. "All the same, they come in. I'll
go to a right down good prayer-meeting Sunday night, and come back
meaning to be the joy of your heart from that time on. Think I'll go
straight to bed, so as to be sure and keep good till morning. Well,
the moon is coming up as I get back to camp, and there is Randolph
with pink and white gowns in tow; and I stop to speak, and they all
say: 'Oh, come for a little walk!' I don't want to, and I half turn
away--and then I go. The prayer-meeting isn't all gone by the time I
get back, but there has been more of it picked up than you'd like."
"Yes," the mother answered, thinking in her heart that she had not
prayed half enough for her boy in his hard places.
"Why, I've seen a man stay to Communion," Magnus went on, "and when
we came out, there was Pretty Newcomb waiting for him in the rain, at
the foot of the Chapel steps. Just walked him off alongside of her
umbrella--or under it. And what are you going to do?"
"I see. But, Magnus, you said 'Sunday' night. What sort of girls are at
the Camp Sunday night?"
"Summer girls," said Magnus briefly.
"Well, dear," said the mother, the cheerful tone coming back to her
voice, "the Lord is 'able to keep you from falling,' even in the most
difficult places; and to make you 'fruitful to every good work,'
in spite of all the fowls of the air that ever fluttered down. But
remember, that on your part the word is: 'Hold fast that which thou
hast, that no man take thy crown.'"
"I know." But then Magnus remembered something else, and was suddenly
silent.
And now came a soft, imperative call to breakfast.
"Waffles!" cried Rose in the distance, and the talk ended. Only as the
mother went out with her boy's arm round her waist, she looked up at
him with her true eyes.
"Magnus, _never_ 'go through the motions,' as you call it, with the
wrong woman. _Never_, as a sham. It dishonours the woman and degrades
the man, and robs the other woman--the right one--of somewhat that
belongs to her alone."
"Well, I never really have, mammy," said Magnus gravely; "so make your
mind easy. And I never shall--unless the right one throws me over. I
don't know what I'll do then."
And in spite of all previous warning Magnus looked round the breakfast
room for Cherry, and not finding her, felt very much aggrieved.
There was no lack of talk and laughter, however; the joy of those four
people in being together was extreme, and of course, the others did not
miss Cherry, not having expected her, but Magnus did. The reserved,
dainty girl had taken him by storm. They had always been inseparable
as children, and as true boy and girl, though never with any freedom
on her part, even then, that passed the prettiest bounds. Now she had
stepped off a little, regarding him from a safer grown-up distance,
and Magnus was wild to annihilate both time and space, and whatever
else came in his way. She had bloomed out into something much rarer
than he knew could be in the world, and Cadet Kindred surrendered at
discretion, and without a summons. I believe he found that last fact
the crowning charm. If Cherry had held forth her little finger to draw
him on, or had in any way shortened that new indefinable distance
between him and her, I think Magnus would have struck off a percentage
from her perfections. It vexed and bewitched him equally.
So the young man sat opposite the open window, where the smoke from the
other house curled softly into view, and thought himself ill-used and
happy in about half and half mixture. He watched the winding path, but
it remained empty. Then he looked at his sisters; how handsome they
were, too! Splendid girls, both of them; and wouldn't they make a stir
in first-class camp? Of course his mother had always been perfection.
And here his eyes came round to her, with a smile of such joyful love
and content that poor Mrs. Kindred was very near making a goose of
herself, as she would have phrased it. What it was to have her boy home
again!
"But I cannot see why they don't move down here!" Magnus broke forth
irrelevantly. "Living on there all by themselves in that stupid old
house."
"Stupid?" cried Violet. "Why, it's the very prettiest house in all the
State."
"You had best not let Cherry hear you say such things," remarked Rose.
"She loves that house with all her heart."
"Stuff!" said Magnus. "She'll have to leave it some time."
"She will not while her father lives," said Mrs. Kindred.
"Why, mother, girls do it every day."
"Girls--but not Cherry," the mother answered; and Magnus was so charmed
with the saying, and the fair little pedestal on which it placed his
heart's delight, that he adopted it for a private phrase of his own;
used many times afterwards, it may be said, when "girls--but not
Cherry," were around.
"Then, when she will not come, you go to her?" he asked.
"Oh, she always comes," said Violet; "some time in the day."
"Some time in the day!"
"According to what she has to do. Only letter days she always came
early, and left the work till she got back."
"Some of it," corrected Rose. "But there's no letter due from Magnus
to-day, you know, so we cannot tell when she will be here."
"Now that is too bad!" said Mr. Kindred, pushing back his chair.
"Coming to hear my letters, and not coming to see me!"
"Well, the letters were very interesting, you know----" Violet began,
and then thought it prudent to vanish.
"But, my dear," said Mrs. Kindred, "as you must of course go up there
this morning yourself before you pay any other visits, I do not see how
it really matters."
"No, of course," said Magnus briskly. "Oh, mammy, I wish you'd pick out
a lot of such easy duties for me."
"We cannot go with you," said Rose, "because we also have something to
do; but we will come after you. You must wear your cadet clothes for
Mr. Erskine."
So Magnus put himself in trim, and charging his sisters not to hurry on
his account, and promising faithfully to wait till they came, began to
mount the hill. Good for him the girls were busy--and yet, suppose that
other girl were hid away in some part of the house to which Rose and
Violet could go, while he could not?
Magnus whistled his thoughts down the wind, as he went on, and then,
with a sudden fancy to approach unnoticed, hushed his tones and even
his steps, and went in, seeing nobody. Through the hall to the back
door--and there got another picture to think of in barracks.