hung a raw fog. Some of the officers who stood with bared heads by the
heap of earth and the hole in the ground shivered a little. The young
Chaplain read, solemnly, the solemn and grand words of the service, and
the evenness of his voice was unnatural enough to show deep feeling. He
remembered how, a year before, he had seen the hero of this scene
playing football on just such a day, tumbling about and shouting, his
hair wild and matted and his face filled with fresh color. Such a mere
boy he was, concerned over the question as to where he could hide his
contraband dress boots, excited by an invitation to dine out Saturday
night. The dear young chap! There were tears in the Chaplain's eyes as
he thought of little courtesies to himself, of little generosities to
other cadets, of a manly and honest heart shown everywhere that
character may show in the guarded life of the nation's schoolboys.
The sympathetic, ringing voice stopped, and he watched the quick,
dreadful, necessary work of the men at the grave, and then his sad eyes
wandered pitifully over the rows of boyish faces where the cadets stood.
Just such a child as those, thought the Chaplain--himself but a few
years older--no history; no life, as we know life; no love, and what was
life without--you may see that the Chaplain was young; the poor boy was
taken from these quiet ways and sent direct on the fire-lit stage of
history, and in the turn, behold! he was a hero. The white-robed
Chaplain thrilled and his dark eyes flashed. He seemed to see that day;
he would give half his life to have seen it--this boy had given all of
his. The boy was wounded early, and as the bullets poured death down the
hill he crept up it, on hands and knees, leading his men. The strong
life in him lasted till he reached the top, and then the last of it
pulled him to his feet and he stood and waved and cheered--and fell. But
he went up San Juan Hill. After all, he lived. He missed fifty years,
perhaps, but he had Santiago. The flag wrapped him, he was the honored
dead of the nation. God keep him! The Chaplain turned with a swing and
raised his prayer-book to read the committal. The long black box--the
boy was very tall--was being lowered gently, tenderly. Suddenly the
heroic vision of Santiago vanished and he seemed to see again the
rumpled head and the alert, eager, rosy face of the boy playing
football--the head that lay there! An iron grip caught his throat, and
if a sound had come it would have been a sob. Poor little boy! Poor
little hero! To exchange all life's sweetness for that fiery glory! Not
to have known the meaning of living--of loving--of being loved!
The beautiful, tender voice rang out again so that each one heard it to
the farthest limit of the great crowd--"We therefore commit his body to
the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; looking for
the general resurrection in the last day, and the life of the world to
come."
* * * * *
An hour later the boy's mother sat in her room at the hotel and opened
a tin box of letters, found with his traps, and given her with the rest.
She had planned it for this time and had left the box unopened.
To-morrow she must take up life and try to carry it, with the boy gone,
but to-day she must and would be what is called morbid. She looked over
the bend in the river to the white-dotted cemetery--she could tell where
lay the new mound, flower-covered, above his yellow head. She looked
away quickly and bent over the box in her lap and turned the key. Her
own handwriting met her eyes first; all her letters for six months back
were there, scattered loosely about the box. She gathered them up,
slipping them through her fingers to be sure of the writing. Letter
after letter, all hers.
"They were his love-letters," she said to herself. "He never had any
others, dear little boy--my dear little boy!"
Underneath were more letters, a package first; quite a lot of them,
thirty, fifty--it was hard to guess--held together by a rubber strap.
The strap broke as she drew out the first envelope and they fell all
about her, some on the floor, but she did not notice it, for the address
was in a feminine writing that had a vague familiarity. She stopped a
moment, with the envelope in one hand and the fingers of the other hand
on the folded paper inside. It felt like a dishonorable thing to
do--like prying into the boy's secrets, forcing his confidence; and she
had never done that. Yet some one must know whether these papers of his
should be burned or kept, and who was there but herself? She drew out
the letter. It began "My dearest." The boy's mother stopped short and
drew a trembling breath, with a sharp, jealous pain. She had not known.
Then she lifted her head and saw the dots of white on the green earth
across the bay and her heart grew soft for that other woman to whom he
had been "dearest" too, who must suffer this sorrow of losing him too.
But she could not read her letters, she must send them, take them to
her, and tell her that his mother had held them sacred. She turned to
the signature.
"And so you must believe, darling, that I am and always will
be--always, always, with love and kisses, your own dear, little 'Good
Queen Bess.'"
It was not the sort of an ending to a letter she would have expected
from the girl he loved, for the boy, though most undemonstrative, had
been intense and taken his affections seriously always. But one can
never tell, and the girl was probably quite young. But who was she? The
signature gave no clew; the date was two years before, and from New
York--sufficiently vague! She would have to read until she found the
thread, and as she read the wonder grew that so flimsy a personality
could have held her boy. One letter, two, three, six, and yet no sign to
identify the writer. She wrote first from New York on the point of
starting for a long stay abroad, and the other letters were all from
different places on the other side. Once in awhile a familiar name
cropped up, but never to give any clew. There were plenty of people whom
she called by their Christian names, but that helped nothing. And often
she referred to their engagement--to their marriage to come. It was hard
for the boy's mother, who believed she had had his confidence. But
there was one letter from Vienna that made her lighter-hearted as to
that.
"My dear sweet darling," it began, "I haven't written you very often
from here, but then I don't believe you know the difference, for you
never scold at all, even if I'm ever so long in writing. And as for you,
you rascal, you write less and less, and shorter and shorter. If I
didn't know for certain--but then, of course, you love me? Don't you,
you dearest boy? Of course you do, and who wouldn't? Now don't think I'm
really so conceited as that, for I only mean it in joke, but in earnest,
I might think it if I let myself, for they make such a fuss over me
here--you never saw anything like it! The Prince von H---- told Mamma
yesterday I was the prettiest girl who had been here in ten years--what
do you think of that, sir? The officers are as thick as bees wherever I
go, and I ride with them and dance with them and am having just the
loveliest time! You don't mind that, do you, darling, even if we are
engaged? Oh, about telling your mother--no, sir, you just cannot! You've
begged me all along to do that, but you might as well stop, for I
won't. You write more about that than anything else, it seems to me, and
I'll believe soon you are more in love with your mother than with me. So
take care! Remember, you promised that night at the hop at West
Point--what centuries ago it seems, and it was a year and a half!--that
you would not tell a living soul, not even your mother, until I said so.
You see, it might get out and--oh, what's the use of fussing? It might
spoil all my good time, and though I'm just as devoted as ever, and as
much in love, you big, handsome thing--yes, just exactly!--still, I want
to have a good time. Why shouldn't I? As the Prince would say, I'm
pretty enough--but that's nonsense, of course."
The letter was signed like all the others "Good Queen Bess," a foolish
enough name for a girl to call herself, the boy's mother thought, a
touch contemptuously. She sat several minutes with that letter in her
hand.
"I'll believe soon that you are more in love with your mother than you
are with me"--that soothed the sore spot in her heart wonderfully.
Wasn't it so, perhaps. It seemed to her that the boy had fallen into
this affair suddenly, impulsively, without realizing its meaning, and
that his loyalty had held him fast, after the glamour was gone. And
perhaps the girl, too. For the boy had much besides himself, and there
were girls who might think of that.
The next letter went far to confirm this theory.
"Of course I don't want to break our engagement," the girl wrote. "What
makes you ask such a question? I fully expect to marry you some day, of
course, when I have had my little 'fling,' and I should just go crazy if
I thought you didn't love me as much as always. You would if you saw me,
for they all say I'm prettier than ever. You don't want to break the
engagement, do you? Please, please, don't say so, for I couldn't bear
it."
And in the next few lines she mentioned herself by name. It was a
well-known name to the boy's mother, that of the daughter of a cousin
with whom she had never been over-intimate. She had had notes from the
girl a few times, once or twice from abroad, which accounted for the
familiarity of the writing. So she gathered the letters together, the
last one dated only a month before, and put them one side to send back.
"She will soon get over it," she said, and sighed as she turned to the
papers still left in the bottom of the box. There were only a few, a
thin packet of six or eight, and one lying separate. She slipped the
rubber band from the packet and looked hard at the irregular, strong
writing, woman's or man's, it was hard to say which. Then she spread out
the envelopes and took them in order by the postmarks. The first was a
little note, thanking him for a book, a few lines of clever nothing
signed by a woman's name which she had never heard.
* * * * *
"My dear Mr. ----," it ran. "Indeed you did get ahead of 'all the others'
in sending me 'The Gentleman from Indiana,' So far ahead that the next
man in the procession is not even in sight yet. I hate to tell you that,
but honesty demands it. I have taken just one sidewise peep at 'The
Gentleman'--and like his looks immensely--but to-morrow night I am
going to pretend I have a headache and stay home from the concert where
the family are going, and turn cannibal and devour him. I hope nothing
will interrupt me. Unless--I wonder if you are conceited enough to
imagine what is one of the very few things I would like to have
interrupt me? After that bit of boldness I think I must stop writing to
you. I mean it just the same. And thanking you a thousand times again, I
am,
"Sincerely yours."
There were four or five more of this sort, sometimes only a day or two,
sometimes a month apart; always with some definite reason for the
writing, flowers or books to thank him for, a walk to arrange, an
invitation to dinner. Charming, bright, friendly notes, with the happy
atmosphere of a perfect understanding between them, of mutual interests
and common enthusiasms.
"She was very different from the other," the boy's mother sighed, as she
took up an unread letter--there were but two more. There was no harm in
reading such letters as these, she thought with relief, and noticed as
she drew the paper from the envelope that the postmark was two months
later.
"You want me to write once that I love you"--that is the way it began.
The woman who read dropped it suddenly as if it had burned her. Was it
possible? Her light-hearted boy, whose short life she had been so sure
had held nothing but a boy's, almost a child's, joys and sorrows! The
other affair was surprise enough, and a sad surprise, yet after all it
had not touched him deeply, she felt certain of that; but this was
another question. She knew instinctively that if love had grown from
such a solid foundation as this sweet and happy and reasonable
friendship with this girl, whose warm heart and deep soul shone through
her clear and simple words, it would be a different love from anything
that other poor, flimsy child could inspire. "L'amitié, c'est l'amour
sans ailes." But sometimes when men and women have let the quiet, safe
god Friendship fold his arms gently around them, he spreads suddenly a
pair of sinning wings and carries them off--to heaven--wherever he
wills it, and only then they see that he is not Friendship, but Love.
She picked up the letter again and read on:
"You want me to write once that I love you, so that you may read it with
your eyes, if you may not hear it with your ears. Is that it--is that
what you want, dear? Which question is a foolish sort of way for me to
waste several drops of ink, considering that your letter is open before
me. And your picture just back of it, your brown eyes looking over the
edge so eagerly, so actually alive that it seems very foolish to be
making signs to you on paper at all. How much simpler just to say half a
word and then--then! Only we two can fill up that dash, but we can fill
it full, can't we? However, I'm not doing what you want, and--will you
not tell yourself, if I tell you something? To do what you want is just
the one thing on earth I like most to do. I think you have magnetized me
into a jelly-fish, for at times I seem to have no will at all. I believe
if you asked me to do the Chinese kotow, and bend to the earth before
you, I'd secretly be dying to do it. But I wouldn't, you know, I
promise you that. I give you credit for liking a live woman, with a will
of her own, better than a jelly-fish. And anyway I wouldn't--if you
liked me for it or not--so you see it's no use urging me. And still I
haven't done what you want--what was it now? Oh, to tell you that--but
the words frighten me, they are so big. That I--I--I--love you. Is it
that? I haven't said it yet, remember. I'm only asking a question. Do
you know I have an objection to sitting here in cold blood and writing
that down in cold ink? If it were only a little dark now, and your
shoulder--and I could hide my head--you can't get off for a minute? Ah,
I am scribbling along light-heartedly, when all the time the sword of
Damocles is hanging over us both, when my next letter may have to be
good-by for always. If that fate comes you will find me steady to stand
by you, to help you. I will say those three little words, so little and
so big, to you once again, and then I will live them by giving up what
is dearest to me--that's you, dear--that your 'conduct' may not be
'unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.' You must keep your word. If
the worst comes, will you always remember that as an American woman's
patriotism. There could be none truer. I could send you marching off to
Cuba--and how about that, is it war surely?--with a light heart, knowing
that you were giving yourself for a holy cause and going to honor and
fame, though perhaps, dear, to a soldier's death. And I would pray for
you and remember your splendid strength, and think always of seeing you
march home again, and then only your mother could be more proud than I.
That would be easy, in comparison. Write me about the war--but, of
course, you would not be sent.
"Now here is the very end of my letter, and I haven't yet said it--what
you wanted. But here it Is, bend your head, from away up there, and
listen. Now--do you hear--I love you. Good-by, good-by, I love you."
The papers rustled softly in the silent room, and the boy's mother, as
she put the letter back, kissed it, and it was as if ghostly lips
touched hers, for the boy had kissed those words, she knew.
The next was only a note, written just before his sailing to Cuba.
"A fair voyage and a short one, a good fight and a quick one," the note
said. "It is my country as well as yours you are going to fight for, and
I give you with all my heart. All of it will be with you and all my
thoughts, too, every minute of every day, so you need never wonder if
I'm thinking of you. And soon the Spaniards will be beaten and you'll be
coming home again 'crowned with glory and honor,' and the bands will
play fighting music, and the flag will be flying over you, for you, and
in all proud America there will be no prouder soul than I--unless it is
your mother. Good-by, good-by--God be with you, my very dearest."
He had come home "crowned with glory and honor." And the bands had
played martial music for him. But his horse stood riderless by his
grave, and the empty cavalry boots hung, top down, from the saddle.
Loose in the bottom of the box lay a folded sheet of paper, and, hidden
under it, an envelope, the face side down. When the boy's mother opened
the paper, it was his own crabbed, uneven writing that met her eye.
"They say there will be a fight to-morrow," he wrote, "and we're likely
to be in it. If I come out right, you will not see this, and I hope I
shall, for the world is sweet with you in it. But if I'm hit, then this
will go to you. I'm leaving a line for my mother and will enclose this
and ask her to send it to you. You must find her and be good to her, if
that happens. I want you to know that if I die, my last thought will
have been of you, and if I have the chance to do anything worth while,
it will be for your sake. I could die happy if I might do even a small
thing that would make you proud of me."
The sorrowful woman drew a long, shivering breath as she thought of the
magnificent courage of that painful passing up San Juan Hill, wounded,
crawling on, with a pluck that the shades of death could not dim. Would
she be proud of him?
The line for herself he had never written. There was only the empty
envelope lying alone in the box. She turned it in her hand and saw it
was addressed to the girl to whom he had been engaged. Slowly it dawned
on her that to every appearance this envelope belonged to the letter she
had just read, his letter of the night before the battle. She recoiled
at the thought--those last sacred words of his, to go to that
empty-souled girl! All that she would find in them would be a little
fuel for her vanity, while the other--she put her fingers on the
irregular, back writing, and felt as if a strong young hand held hers
again. She would understand, that other; she had thought of his mother
in the stress of her own strongest feeling; she had loved him for
himself, not for vanity. This letter was hers, the mother knew it. And
yet the envelope, with the other address, had lain just under it, and
she had been his promised wife. She could not face her boy in heaven if
this last earthly wish of his should go wrong through her. How could she
read the boy's mind now? What was right to do?
The twilight fell over Crow Nest, and over the river and the heaped-up
mountains that lie about West Point, and in the quiet room the boy's
mother sat perplexed, uncertain, his letter in her hands; yet with a
vague sense of coming comfort in her heart as she thought of the girl
who would surely "find her and be good to her," But across the water, on
the hillside, the boy lay quiet.
A MESSENGER
How oft do they their silver bowers leave,
To come to succour us that succour want!
How oft do they with golden pineons cleave
The flitting skyes, like flying Pursuivant,
Against fowle feendes to ayd us militant!
They for us fight, they watch and dewly ward,
And their bright Squadrons round about us plant;
And all for love, and nothing for reward.
O! Why should heavenly God to men have such
regard?
--_Spenser's "Faerie Queene."_
That the other world of our hope rests on no distant, shining star, but
lies about us as an atmosphere, unseen yet near, is the belief of many.
The veil of material life shades earthly eyes, they say, from the
glories in which we ever are. But sometimes when the veil wears thin in
mortal stress, or is caught away by a rushing, mighty wind of
inspiration, the trembling human soul, so bared, so purified, may look
down unimagined heavenly vistas, and messengers may steal across the
shifting boundary, breathing hope and the air of a brighter world. And
of him who speaks his vision, men say "He is mad," or "He has dreamed."
* * * * *
The group of officers in the tent was silent for a long half minute
after Colonel Wilson's voice had stopped. Then the General spoke.
"There is but one thing to do," he said. "We must get word to Captain
Thornton at once."
The Colonel thought deeply a moment, and glanced at the orderly outside
the tent. "Flannigan!" The man, wheeling swiftly, saluted. "Present my
compliments to Lieutenant Morgan and say that I should like to see him
here at once," and the soldier went off, with the quick military
precision in which there is no haste and no delay.
"You have some fine, powerful young officers, Colonel," said the General
casually. "I suppose we shall see in Lieutenant Morgan one of the best.
It will take strength and brains both, perhaps, for this message."
A shadow of a smile touched the Colonel's lips. "I think I have chosen
a capable man, General," was all he said.
Against the doorway of the tent the breeze blew the flap lazily back and
forth. A light rain fell with muffled gentle insistence on the canvas
over their heads, and out through the opening the landscape was
blurred--the wide stretch of monotonous, billowy prairie, the sluggish,
shining river, bending in the distance about the base of Black Wind
Mountain--Black Wind Mountain, whose high top lifted, though it was
almost June, a white point of snow above dark pine ridges of the hills
below. The five officers talked a little as they waited, but
spasmodically, absent-mindedly. A shadow blocked the light of the
entrance, and in the doorway stood a young man, undersized, slight,
blond. He looked inquiringly at the Colonel.
"You sent for me, sir?" and the General and his aide, and the grizzled
old Captain, and the big, fresh-faced young one, all watched him.
In direct, quiet words--words whose bareness made them dramatic for the
weight of possibility they carried--the Colonel explained. Black Wolf
and his band were out on the war-path. A soldier coming in wounded,
escaped from the massacre of the post at Devil's Hoof Gap, had reported
it. With the large command known to be here camped on Sweetstream Fork,
they would not come this way; they would swerve up the Gunpowder River
twenty miles away, destroying the settlement and Little Fort Slade, and
would sweep on, probably for a general massacre, up the Great Horn as
far as Fort Doncaster. He himself, with the regiment, would try to save
Fort Slade, but in the meantime, Captain Thornton's troop, coming to
join him, ignorant that Black Wolf had taken the war-path, would be
directly in their track. Some one must be sent to warn them, and of
course the fewer the quicker. Lieutenant Morgan would take a sergeant,
the Colonel ordered quietly, and start at once.
In the misty light inside the tent, the young officer looked hardly more
than seventeen years old as he stood listening. His small figure was
light, fragile; his hair was blond to an extreme, a thick thatch of
pale gold; and there was about him, among these tanned, stalwart men in
uniform, a presence, an effect of something unusual, a simplicity out of
place yet harmonious, which might have come with a little child into a
scene like this. His large blue eyes were fixed on the Colonel as he
talked, and in them was just such a look of innocent, pleased wonder, as
might be in a child's eyes, who had been told to leave studying and go
pick violets. But as the Colonel ended he spoke, and the few words he
said, the few questions he asked, were full of poise, of crisp
directness. As the General volunteered a word or two, he turned to him
and answered with a very charming deference, a respect that was yet full
of gracious ease, the unconscious air of a man to whom generals are
first as men, and then as generals. The slight figure in its dark
uniform was already beyond the tent doorway when the Colonel spoke
again, with a shade of hesitation in his manner.
"Mr. Morgan!" and the young officer turned quickly. "I think it may be
right to warn you that there is likely to be more than usual danger in
your ride."
"Yes, sir." The fresh, young voice had a note of inquiry.
"You will--you will"--what was it the Colonel wanted to say? He finished
abruptly. "Choose the man carefully who goes with you."
"Thank you, Colonel," Morgan responded heartily, but with a hint of
bewilderment. "I shall take Sergeant O'Hara," and he was gone.