Wise men always
Affirm and say,
That best is for a man
Diligently
For to apply,
All business that he can.
--SIR T. MORE.
The Red House had been set very near the branch road by which he came
up, and in front there was only a short path and a bit of greensward,
but at the back lay a big old-fashioned garden, sloping gaily down
towards a bit of woodland and a talkative brook.
Overlooking all this was a very wide porch with sashes on all sides
which could be shut, but which on this warm still morning were all slid
back. The porch within was full of flowers, with various rustic holders
to hang and to stand and to rest on the sills, a wonderful basket of
lilies of the valley being the centre piece on the breakfast table.
There were traces in the house of other days and more Eastern regions,
and the little spider-legged table was dark with long years of service,
the spoons were slim-stemmed and delicate, the dishes of exquisite blue
and white.
But the dishes held very simple viands: bread, milk, wheat, with fruit
and flowers, were about the whole, for some hurts or injuries dating
back to the war time had slowly brought Mr. Erskine to a semi-invalid
state, and Cherry wanted nothing but what her father had.
I have told you nothing about Mr. Erskine--and yet he was a very
noticeable man. Hair whitened more with sorrow than years (it had
changed suddenly upon the death of his wife), cheeks where the native
red still lingered, setting off the look of extremely delicate health,
with features refined and above-board in every line. The eyes were both
soft and flashing, the smile--once the merriest in the world--now never
lost its shade of pathos. Everything about the man was refined, the
daintily cared-for hand, the plain, scrupulously neat dress. Across one
edge of the placid brow a red scar swept down and hid itself among the
thick locks of frosted hair, and now, as you looked further, you could
see that the right hand had lost its mate, and the left sleeve hung
empty.
With one hand resting lightly on that shoulder and kneeling at her
father's side, Cherry read to him from a book laid open on the table,
while Mr. Erskine was slowly finishing his plate of strawberries,
dipping them, one by one, in the white sugar. Now and then a word of
question, of comment, of explanation, passed between the two, with
heads lifted and eyes meeting each other, then the reading went on
again.
This was what Magnus saw; and though he made out no words, the mere
tones of Cherry's voice seemed to him as sweet as any bird or brook
or leaf-stir in the whole morning concert; and I know not how long he
might have stood there in the shadows of the hall, if little Snip, the
terrier, being officer in charge and scenting mischief, had not rushed
in from the garden on a tour of keen inspection coupled with much
comment. Cherry rose quickly to her feet, Magnus stepped out upon the
porch, and catching hold of her hand, as he went by, dropped down upon
one knee by Mr. Erskine, in laughing glee at his astonishment.
"Magnus!" he cried. "My dear boy, is this you? Can it be possible!" The
one arm came round the boy and drew him close.
"So this is what made you stumble over your report of last night," Mr.
Erskine went on, turning to Cherry; "you were hiding a secret." Cherry
blushed scarlet.
"Did I stumble, papa?" she said, carrying off the dishes.
"Very much, for you. Well, my boy, there is no need to ask you how you
are. Stand off there, and let me have a good look."
"I didn't mean to come in war paint, sir," said Magnus, as he obeyed;
"but they said at home you would want to see it."
"Of course I do. Well, they certainly turn out--showy fellows over
there." Mr. Erskine hesitated over his adjective, as if to choose a
safe one. Cherry bit her lips, Magnus laughed and coloured too.
"They try for it," he said; "but we hope to be useful also, some day,
Mr. Erskine."
"Of all the 'some days' for being useful, I have ever found to-day the
very best. Sit down and give an account of yourself. Let the cloth
wait, Cherry. I suppose you want to hear it all, too. Unless you heard
it last night."
"No, indeed, sir," said Magnus. "I did not have a chance to tell her
half." This with a glance at Cherry, which she did not mean to see.
"Papa," she said, "it will take but a minute to finish the table, and
then we can listen so much better."
"Have your own way, love," her father answered, smiling. "My dear
love!" he said under his breath, watching her. Then he turned to Magnus.
"Of course we know a good deal about you," he said, "for we have read
and reread your letters, but I think I can understand them better now.
And so these are the famous bell buttons?"
"Yes, sir, the regulation sort."
"Truly, they are pretty bright," said Mr. Erskine, with an amused
smile. "Are the coats still pocketless?"
Cadet Kindred disclosed the hiding place of his handkerchief.
"I should call that hard lines," said Mr. Erskine. "Your mother gave us
a description when she came home, and I rather think Cherry cried over
it. 'What _will_ Magnus do without pockets?' she said. 'Because, you
know, papa, if there was ever anything he did _not_ have in his pocket,
it was only what he could not find.' Do you remember, love?"
"Papa," said Cherry, much abashed at both the story and the laugh it
brought, "I think it is enough to have said silly things without having
them repeated."
She fetched her work basket, and placing herself at the other side of
her father, took out some bit of white stuff, and began to fold and
hem with great speed and dexterity. Magnus watched her, wishing it
were something for him. He had now and then seen a girl with a crochet
needle in these two years, or straining her eyes over a piece of mussed
unhappy looking drawnwork, but everything about Cherry and her basket
was as fresh as the morning. Her strip of muslin might have just come
from the shop, and have gone straight back there again, for all the
disturbance it had from her neat handling.
"Yes, she's a busy child," said Mr. Erskine fondly, noting where the
eyes were bent; "busy and sweet as the day is long. But come, Magnus,
draw up your chair, and let us have the story. Of course, as I said,
we have heard a great deal, but we want the whole thing now, don't we,
love? Do you wear all that finery every day?"
"Yes sir, except when nobody is supposed to see us. We have an ugly,
comfortable blouse for study, and meals, and recitations. With fatigue
suits, of course, for drills."
"Look your worst at recitations, hey? I should think it good policy to
look your best."
"Wouldn't make any difference with those old buffers," said Magnus.
"They don't care if you fess perfectly frigid. They'd just as soon give
you zero as anything else."
Mr. Erskine's mouth took on a quizzical look.
"Sounds like cold weather, doesn't it, love?" he said. "But let us go
on regularly. Suppose it was term-time, how would your day begin?"
"With the gun, always, sir. Unless I am boning math. and have waked
myself up for early study. I'm too much of a sleepyhead to do it often."
"Best not; you need the sleep."
"Yes, but when you want to max it, and have been getting two-nine for
three days running, you see that will not do," said Magnus. "And I will
not bugle; and I can't fudge worth a cent."
The comical look passed into a laugh this time, low and very pleasant,
Cherry joining in, after a vain attempt to keep herself quiet.
"Next in prominence to the gun comes breakfast, I suppose," said Mr.
Erskine.
"Yes, breakfast--slumgudgeon stew, and the rest of it," said Magnus.
"But the bread and butter and milk are always good. They've taken
to calling the roll after breakfast, as well as before, in case
slumgudgeon should have laid some slain man under the table. Then comes
a bit of release from quarters. If I've been fizzling lately, maybe I
put in the time on French; but I am more apt to take a walk."
"That is well," said Mr. Erskine. "A brisk walk puts the brain in good
order."
"It's not always a brisk walk, though," said Magnus. "Most often I go
dawdling along with some girl."
And now Cherry was so still that only the swift-flying needle seemed to
move. Mr. Erskine looked amused.
"I should think that a poor preparing for the section room," he
said. "Can't be helped if it is," said Magnus. "There's such a lot
of girls--and summer girls--about, it takes every minute you can get.
Chappy comes up and says: 'Kin, just give my sister a walk, will you?
Awfully nice girl, but if I don't bone a little I'll be found in
French, sure guns. And besides, my best girl is here.' So I go. Then
Miss Beguile says: 'Oh, Mr. Kindred! I've _never_ seen Fort Putnam.
Please take me!'"
How they both laugh at him--Cherry holding back a little, then letting
her merry notes ring in.
"That sounds stringent," said Mr. Erskine. "Do you notice, love, his
fine distinction between 'girls' and 'summer girls'? That is something
we simple people know nothing of. By the way, I suppose _you_ must be a
summer girl--as he never sees you in the winter."
"If anyone ever dares call her a summer girl," said Mr. Kindred
promptly, "I'll knock him down quicker than he ever had it done before."
"Hands off! I'll not call her so," said Mr. Erskine, laughing. "She is
an everyday girl, and better each time. But Magnus, suppose _your_ best
girl happens to be also on hand?"
"She never is, sir. She has not been at the Point since I went there."
"Hard on you, if she went there before; you speak as if she were a
fixed fact. Do you know, Magnus, I am rather sorry to hear that."
"Why, sir?" demanded Magnus, noting the pulsating colour in the fair
face bent over the needlework.
"Well, when I thought of it, I hoped you would keep clear of all such
entanglements till you knew what you wanted."
"I did, sir."
"Oh, of course! I beg pardon; I should have said till you had seen a
little more of the world."
"Do you think the world is the place to choose, sir?"
Mr. Erskine smiled, half sorrowfully.
"I have only an old matchlock," he said, "and cannot cope with you
young sharpshooters. But my boy, what I meant was this. When the boy
goes off to college and grows into new mental strength and riches,
and the girl stays at home and gets not half a chance, poor child, to
do anything but wash dishes or (now do not glower at me) perhaps does
not wish for higher things, then the man comes home raised to a plane
where she is not fitted to stand by his side, and she can never be the
helpmeet for him that she should."
Magnus listened respectfully; watching that lovely, flitting colour, it
was not hard to sit still.
"You think," he said, "that some girls wouldn't amount to much at a
one-company post. When a man was hard up for comrades?"
"Not unless they were 'best girls' in truth."
"Oh, well, mine is," said Magnus confidently, "the very bestest sort.
I don't know how much she knows--but if I stay at the Academy two
years longer I shall have a stuffed head, full enough to lend on every
occasion. Besides, it's not needful for a man's peace of mind that his
wife should understand wave motion, is it, sir?"
Mr. Erskine laughed at him, and Cherry laughed too, though now
colouring furiously.
"I suppose it is not needful," her father said, not noticing her,
"unless in practice. Well, I hope it will turn out all right for you.
I had a friend, Magnus, who got entangled, as I call it, very early,
went away to college, and when he came back with all his honours, his
mother forbade the bans on that distinct plea; she said the girl was
too ignorant. I think my friend would have gone straight on through it
all, but the girl was not of that sort. She refused to enter any family
by the side door. So they waited, the engagement was virtually broken,
and years went by. Then the mother died, the man sought his old love
and married her. But Magnus, the girl had spent those years not in
lamenting, not in flirting, but in solid, hard study. So that when at
last they went forth in life together she had passed him, and was the
better educated of the two."
What was Cherry laughing at? For while the cheeks had not all cooled
down, the lips had parted in but half-controlled curls of fun.
"Well, if she was proficient in warped surfaces, I hope they enjoyed
talking it over in their play-spells," said Magnus. "I've no use for
some of those things, they sift out too many good men. We all felt bad
to have Chuck go."
"Finished his course?" said Mr. Erskine.
"At West Point, sir; graduated at the wrong end, dropped. He did
everything to stay; ran a light after taps, cut society, and sat night
after night with his feet in cold water and his hands in his hair
(what there was of it)," Magnus added in parenthesis. "But nothing did
any good; he'd go next day and fess on a clean board. 'Mr. Simpkins,'
the instructor asked him one day, 'are you as stupid at drill as you
are in the section room?' And Chuck turned with the blandest face and
answered: 'Nigh on to it, Lieutenant!' And he was."
How the listeners laughed again.
"But that was Simpkins," Cherry remarked. "You said 'Chuck.'"
"'Chuck' was his cadet name."
"Do they name everyone?" asked Mr. Erskine.
"Very generally. But some names go with the office. The fattest man in
the class is 'Tubs,' and the oldest 'Daddy'; while the cleanest-face
man in all the Corps may be 'mud,' because his pred. or his resemblance
owned the name. 'Deacon' and 'Squire', 'Mile-High' and 'Shorty',
'Pretty Jones' and 'Lady Crane.'"
"What is yours?" said Cherry.
"Only 'Kin'; sometimes with the 'Kith' added. Do you see?"
"I see that you are a very wide-awake set of boys," said Mr. Erskine.
Cherry slowly pulled off her thimble.
"Papa," she said, "I sent word that they must all come here to dinner,
and it is time for me to go and see to things."
"I will come and help," said Magnus.
"Thank you, no," Cherry answered him gaily. "Housekeeping is one of the
few things you have _not_ studied. Stay and talk to your mother, she is
just here."
So while the two girls followed Cherry, the other three people sat
talking over many things, the two elders closely scanning the young
cadet; and he, all unconscious of their scrutiny, showing himself
just as he was in truth. Certainly the stories and pranks he rattled
off were full of mischief, and as surely they gave small token of a
reverent respect for regulations. But there was no taint of anything
mean or low, no word that savoured of "conduct unbecoming an officer
and a gentleman." The mother breathed freer with every new light thrown
upon his West Point life, and felt that her boy had come back to her
pure as he had gone away. The eyes of the two old friends met in
joyful sympathy time and again, as Magnus talked and told, and their
laughter had no reserve of anxious questioning. And when at last Magnus
detailed himself to go and look after the girls and dinner, Mr. Erskine
stretched out his hand to the happy mother.
"He is a splendid fellow," he said; "a grand boy! I congratulate you
with all my heart."