ALONG A "DANGEROUS" ROAD
"Oh, yes," smiled Laura. "Mr. Cameron is a frequent visitor."
This information had the effect of making Prescott almost feel
that he would enjoy kicking that other young man.
"You are old friends, then?" he asked lightly, as he tucked the
thin carriage robe about Laura, then picked up the lines.
"No; quite recent acquaintances. We met about four months ago,
I think it was."
Though she spoke with apparent indifference, Prescott covertly
caught sight of a slight flush rising to the girl's face.
"After all," muttered Dick inwardly, "why not? Laura isn't a
schoolgirl any longer, and it certainly most be difficult for
any young man who has the chance to call to keep away from her!"
So Cadet Prescott tried to persuade himself that it was all very
natural for Mr. Cameron to call and for Laura to be glad to see
Mr. Cameron. Dick even tried to feel glad that Laura was receiving
attentions---but the effort ended in secret failure.
Then Dick, as he drove along, tried to tell himself that he didn't
care, and that he hadn't any right to care---but in this also he
fell short of success with himself.
So he fell silent, without intending to. Laura, on her part,
tried to make up for his silence by chatting pleasantly, but after
a while she, too, found herself out of words.
Then, for a mile, they drove along almost in complete silence.
Yet Cadet Prescott found plenty of chance to eye her covertly.
What he saw was a beautiful girl, so sweet and wholesome looking
that he had hard work, indeed, to keep ardent words from rushing
to his lips.
"She grows sweeter and finer all the time," he muttered to himself.
"Why shouldn't men be eager to call, often and long?"
At last the mare stumbled slightly, and Prescott jerked the animal
so quickly and almost savagely on the lines that Miss Bentley
looked at him with something of a start.
"Dick," spoke Laura at last, turning and looking him frankly,
sweetly in the eyes, "have I done anything to offend you?"
"You, Laura?"
"I wondered," she continued. "You have been so very silent."
"I am afraid I was thinking," muttered Dick. "And that's a very
rude thing to do when it makes one seem to ignore the lady who
is with him," he added, forcing a smile. "I beg your pardon,
Laura, ten times over."
"Oh, I don't mind your being abstracted," she answered simply,
"so long as I am not the cause of it."
"You-----"
Dick checked himself quickly.
He had been right on the point of admitting that she had been
the cause of his abstraction, and such a statement as that would
have called for an abundance of further explanation.
So he forced himself into a peal of laughter that sounded nearly
natural.
"If I were to tell you what a ridiculous thing I was thinking about,
Laura!" he chuckled.
Then his West Point training against all forms of deceit led him
to wondering, at once, whether Mr. Cameron could truthfully be
defined as "a ridiculous thing."
"Tell me," smiled the girl patiently.
"Not I," defied Prescott gayly. "Then you would find me more
ridiculous than the thing about which I was thinking."
"Oh!" she replied, and the cadet fancied that his companion spoke
in a tone of more or less hurt.
But, at least, Dick could look straight into her face now, as they
talked, and every instant he realized more and more keenly how
lovely Miss Bentley was growing to be.
They were driving down sweet-scented country lanes now. The whole
scene fitted romance. The cadet remembered Flirtation Walk, at
West Point, and it struck him that there was danger, at the present
moment, of Flirtation Drive.
"I wonder what the dear girl is thinking about at this present
moment?" pondered Dick.
"I wonder what it was that made him so abstracted, and then so
suddenly merry?" was the thought in Miss Bentley's mind.
"That was a very pretty road we came through before we turned into
this one," commented Dick at a hazard.
"I didn't notice it," replied Laura. "Where are we now? Oh,
yes! I know the locality now."
"You have driven out here before---with Mr. Cameron?"
The words were out ere Cadet Prescott could recall them. He felt
indescribably angry with himself. In the first place, the question
he had asked was really none of his business. In the second place,
his inquiry, under the circumstances, was a rude one.
"Mr. Cameron was in the party," Laura replied readily. "There
was quite a number of us; it was a 'bus ride one May afternoon.
We came out to gather wild flowers."
"If I had the right," flamed up within the cadet, "I'd soon make
Mr. Cameron my business, or else I'd be some of his. But it wouldn't
be fair. I'm not through West Point yet, and I may never be.
Until my future is fairly assured I'm not going to ask the sweetest
girl on earth to commit her future to my hands. Even if I felt
that I could, a cadet is forbidden to marry and a two years' engagement
is a fearfully long one to ask of a girl. And a girl like Laura
has a chance to meet hundreds of more satisfactory fellows than I
in two years."
It required all the young soldier's will power to keep silent
on the one subject uppermost in his mind. And even Dick realized
that some very trivial circumstance was likely to unseat his firm
resolve.
What he was trying to act up to was his sense of fairness. Hard
as it was under the circumstances, he was more anxious to be fair
to this girl than to any other living being.
"I mustn't spoil her afternoon, just because my own mind is so
dizzy!" he thought reproachfully.
So, a moment later, he became merrier than ever---on the surface.
It was Laura's turn to take a covert look at his face. She wondered,
for she felt that Prescott's assumed gayety had an almost feverish
note.
"How much further are you going to drive?" she asked presently.
"The only pleasure I recognize in the matter, Laura, is yours.
So I am wholly at your command."
He tried to answer lightly and gallantly, yet felt, an instant
later, that his words had had a strained sound.
The same thought had struck the girl.
Yet, instead of asking him to turn the horse's head about, Laura
ventured:
"Gridley must be pleasant, as your home town, yet I fancy you are
already looking forward to getting back to your ideals at West Point?"
"Is she tired of having me around?" wondered Cadet Prescott, wincing
within, as though he had been stabbed.
"I'm keener for West Point, every day, Laura," he answered quietly.
"Yet, even in the case of such a grand old place as the Military
Academy, it is worth while to get away once in a while. If it
were not for this long furlough, midway in the four years' course,
many of us might go mad with the incessant grind."
"Oh, you poor Dick!" cried Laura Bentley, in quick, genuine sympathy.
"Yes; I think I can quite understand what you say."
And then a new light came into her eyes, as she added, very softly:
"We in Gridley, who hope for you with your own intensity of longings,
must take every pains to make this furlough of yours restful enough
and full enough of happiness to send you back to West Point with
redoubled strength for the grind."
"The same Laura as of yesterday!" cried Dick with sincere enthusiasm.
"Always wondering how to make life a little sweeter for others!"
"Thank you," she half bowed quietly. "Yes; I want to see your
strength proven among strong men."
Again she looked frankly into Prescott's eyes, and he, at the
same moment, into hers. His pulses were bounding. What was to
become, now, of his resolution to hold back the surging words for
at least two more years?
Yet resolutely he stifled the feelings that surged within him.
He was a boy, though the training at West Point was swiftly making
him over into a man.
"I may lose her," groaned Cadet Prescott. "I may have lost her
already---if I ever had any chance. But a soldier has at least
his honor to think of, and no honorable man can ask a woman to
give herself to him, and to wait for years, when he isn't reasonably
certain he is going to be able to meet the responsibility that
he seeks."
Never had Prescott been more earnest, more serious, nor more attentive
than during the remainder of that drive. Yet he studiously refrained
from giving the girl any hint of the thoughts that were surging
within him.
Was he foolish?
Dick felt, anyway, that he was not, for he was waging a mighty fight
to stand by his best sense of honor.