"AMANTIUM IRAE."
Lovely as is West Point in May, it is hardly the best time for a visit
there if one's object be to see the cadets. From early morn until late
at night every hour is taken up with duties, academic or military.
Mothers, sisters, and sweethearts, whose eyes so eagerly follow the
evolutions of the gray ranks, can only hope for a few words between
drill and dress parade, or else in the shortest half-hour in all the
world,--that which intervenes 'twixt supper and evening "call to
quarters." That Miss Nannie McKay should make frequent and unfavorable
comment on this state of affairs goes without saying; yet, had she been
enabled to see her beloved brother but once a month and her cadet
friends at intervals almost as rare, that incomprehensible young damsel
would have preferred the Point to any other place in the world.
It was now ten days since her arrival, and she had had perhaps three
chats with Willy, who, luckily for him, though he could not realize it,
was spending most of his time "confined to quarters," and consequently
out of much of the temptation he would otherwise have been in. Mrs.
McKay had been able to see very little more of the young man, but she
had the prayerful consolation that if he could only be kept out of
mischief a few days longer he would then be through with it all, out of
danger of dismissal, actually graduated, and once more her own boy to
monopolize as she chose.
It takes most mothers a long, long time to become reconciled to the
complete usurpation of all their former rights by this new parent whom
their boys are bound to serve,--this anything but _Alma_ Mater,--the war
school of the nation. As for Miss Nan, though she made it a point to
declaim vigorously at the fates that prevented her seeing more of her
brother, it was wonderful how well she looked and in what blithe spirits
she spent her days. Regularly as the sun came around, before guard-mount
in the morning and right after supper in the evening, she was sure to be
on the south piazza of the old hotel, and when presently the cadet
uniforms began to appear at the hedge, she, and others, would go
tripping lightly down the path to meet the wearers, and then would
follow the half-hour's walk and chat in which she found such infinite
delight. So, too, could Mr. Stanley, had he been able to appear as her
escort on all occasions; but despite his strong personal inclination and
effort, this was by no means the case. The little lady was singularly
impartial in the distribution of her time, and only by being first
applicant had he secured to himself the one long afternoon that had yet
been vouchsafed them,--the cadet half-holiday of Saturday.
But if Miss Nan found time hanging heavily on her hands at other hours
of the day, there was one young lady at the hotel who did not,--a young
lady whom, by this time, she regarded with constantly deepening
interest,--Miriam Stanley.
Other girls, younger girls, who had found their ideals in the cadet
gray, were compelled to spend hours of the twenty-four in waiting for
the too brief _half_-hour in which it was possible to meet them; but
Miss Stanley was very differently situated. It was her first visit to
the Point. She met, and was glad to meet, all Philip's friends and
comrades; but it was plainly to be seen, said all the girls at Craney's,
that between her and the tall cavalry officer whom they best knew
through cadet descriptions, there existed what they termed an
"understanding," if not an engagement. Every day, when not prevented by
duties, Mr. Lee would come stalking up from barracks, and presently away
they would stroll together,--a singularly handsome pair, as every one
admitted. One morning soon after the Stanleys' arrival he appeared in
saddle on his stylish bay, accompanied by an orderly leading another
horse, side-saddled; and then, as by common impulse, all the girls
promenading the piazzas, as was their wont, with arms entwining each
other's waists, came flocking about the south steps. When Miss Stanley
appeared in her riding-habit and was quickly swung up into saddle by her
cavalier, and then, with a bright nod and smile for the entire group,
she gathered the reins in her practised hand and rode briskly away, the
sentiments of the fair spectators were best expressed, perhaps, in the
remark of Miss McKay,--
"What a shame it is that the cadets can't ride! I mean can't
ride--_that_ way," she explained, with suggestive nod of her curly head
towards the pair just trotting out upon the road around the Plain. "They
ride--lots of them--better than most of the officers."
"Mr. Stanley for instance," suggests a mischievous little minx with
hazel eyes and laughter-loving mouth.
"Yes, Mr. Stanley, or Mr. Pennock, or Mr. Burton, or a dozen others I
could name, not excepting my brother," answers Miss Nan, stoutly,
although those readily flushing cheeks of hers promptly throw out their
signals of perturbation. "Fancy Mr. Lee vaulting over his horse at the
gallop as they do."
"And yet Mr. Lee has taught them so much more than other instructors.
Several cadets have told me so. He always does, first, everything he
requires them to do; so he must be able to make that vault."
"Will doesn't say so by any means," retorts Nannie, with something very
like a pout; and as Will is a prime favorite with the entire party and
the centre of a wide circle of interest, sympathy, and anxiety in those
girlish hearts, their loyalty is proof against opinions that may not
coincide with his. "Miss Mischief" reads temporary defeat in the circle
of bright faces and is stung to new effort,--
"Well! there are cadets whose opinions you value quite as much as you do
your brother's, Nannie, and they have told me."
"Who?" challenges Miss Nan, yet with averted face. Thrice of late she
has disagreed with Mr. Stanley about Willy's troubles; has said things
to him which she wishes she had left unsaid; and for two days now he has
not sought her side as heretofore, though she knows he has been at the
hotel to see his sister, and a little bird has told her he had a long
talk with this same hazel-eyed girl. She wants to know more about
it,--yet does not want to ask.
"Phil Stanley, for one," is the not unexpected answer.
Somebody who appears to know all about it has written that when a girl
is beginning to feel deep interest in a man she will say things
decidedly detrimental to his character solely for the purpose of having
them denied and for the pleasure of hearing him defended. Is it this
that prompts Miss McKay to retort?--
"Mr. Stanley cares too little what his classmates think, and too much of
what Mr. Lee may say or do."
"Mr. Stanley isn't the only one who thinks a deal of Lieutenant Lee," is
the spirited answer. "Mr. Burton says he is the most popular tactical
officer here, and many a cadet--good friends of your brother's,
Nannie--has said the same thing. You don't like him because Will
doesn't."
"I wouldn't like or respect any officer who reports cadets on
suspicion," is the stout reply. "If he did that to any one else I would
despise it as much as I do because Willy is the victim."
The discussion is waxing hot. "Miss Mischief's" blood is up. She likes
Phil Stanley; she likes Mr. Lee; she has hosts of friends in the corps,
and she is just as loyal and quite as pronounced in her views as her
little adversary. They are fond of each other, too, and were great chums
all through the previous summer; but there is danger of a quarrel
to-day.
"I don't think you are just in that matter at all, Nannie. I have heard
cadets say that if they had been in Mr. Lee's place or on
officer-of-the-day duty they would have had to give Will that report you
take so much to heart. Everybody knows his voice. Half the corps heard
him call out to Mr. Pennock."
"I don't believe a single cadet who's a friend of Will's would say such
a thing," bursts in Miss Nan, her eyes blazing.
"He is a friend, and a warm friend, too."
"You said there were several, Kitty, and I don't believe it possible."
"Well. There were two or three. If you don't believe it, you can ask Mr.
Stanley. _He_ said it, and the others agreed."
Fancy the mood in which she meets him this particular evening, when his
card was brought to her door. Twice has "Miss Mischief" essayed to enter
the room and "make up." Conscience has been telling her savagely that in
the impulse and sting of the moment she has given an unfair coloring to
the whole matter. Mr. Stanley had volunteered no such remark as that she
so vehemently quoted. Asked point blank whether he considered as given
"on suspicion" the report which Mrs. McKay and Nannie so resented, he
replied that he did not; and, when further pressed, he said that Will
alone was blamable in the matter: Mr. Lee had no alternative, if it was
Mr. Lee who gave the report, and any other officer would have been
compelled to do the same. All this "Miss Mischief" would gladly have
explained to Nannie could she have gained admission, but the latter "had
a splitting headache," and begged to be excused.
It has been such a lovely afternoon. The halls were filled with cadets
"on permit," when she came out from the dining-room, but nothing but
ill-luck seemed to attend her. The young gentleman who had invited her
to walk to Fort Putnam, most provokingly twisted an ankle at cavalry
drill that very morning, and was sent to hospital. _Now_, if Mr. Stanley
were all devotion, he would promptly tender his services as substitute.
Then she could take him to task and punish him for his disloyalty to
Will. But Mr. Stanley was not to be seen: "Gone off with another girl,"
was the announcement made to her by Mr. Werrick, a youth who dearly
loved a joke, and who saw no need of explaining that the other girl was
his own sister. Sorely disappointed, yet hardly knowing why, she
accepted her mother's invitation to go with her to the barracks where
Will was promenading the area on what Mr. Werrick called "one of his
perennial punishment tours." She went, of course; but the distant sight
of poor Will, duly equipped as a sentry, dismally tramping up and down
the asphalt, added fuel to the inward fire that consumed her. The
mother's heart, too, yearned over her boy,--a victim to cruel
regulations and crueler task-masters. "What was the use of the
government's enticing young men away from their comfortable homes," Mrs.
McKay had once indignantly written, "unless it could make them happy?"
It was a question the "tactical department" could not answer, but it
thought volumes.
But now evening had come, and with it Mr. Stanley's card. Nan's heart
gave a bound, but she went down-stairs with due deliberation. She had
his card in her hand as she reached the hall, and was twisting it in her
fingers. Yes. There he stood on the north piazza, Pennock with him, and
one or two others of the graduating class. They were chatting laughingly
with Miss Stanley, "Miss Mischief," a bevy of girls, and a matron or
two, but she knew well his eyes would be on watch for her. They were. He
saw her instantly; bowed, smiled, but, to her surprise, continued his
conversation with a lady seated near the door. What could it mean?
Irresolute she stood there a moment, waiting for him to come forward;
but though she saw that twice his eyes sought hers, he was still bending
courteously and listening to the voluble words of the somewhat elderly
dame who claimed his attention. Nan began to rebel against that woman
from the bottom of her heart. What was she to do? Here was his card. In
response she had come down to receive him. She meant to be very cool
from the first moment; to provoke him to inquiry as to the cause of such
unusual conduct, and then to upbraid him for his disloyalty to her
brother. She certainly meant that he should feel the weight of her
displeasure; but then--then--after he had been made to suffer, if he was
properly contrite, and said so, and looked it, and begged to be
forgiven, why then, perhaps she might be brought to condone it in a
measure and be good friends again. It was clearly his duty, however, to
come and greet her, not hers to go to the laughing group. The old lady
was the only one among them whom she did not know,--a new arrival. Just
then Miss Stanley looked round, saw her, and signalled smilingly to her
to come and join them. Slowly she walked towards the little party, still
twirling the card in her taper fingers.
"Looking for anybody, Nan?" blithely hails "Miss Mischief." "Who is it?
I see you have his card."
For once Nannie's voice fails her, and she knows not what to say. Before
she can frame an answer there is a rustle of skirts and a light
foot-fall behind her, and she hears the voice of a girl whom she never
has liked one bit.
"Oh! You're here, are you, Mr. Stanley! Why, I've been waiting at least
a quarter of an hour. Did you send up your card?"
"I did; full ten minutes ago. Was it not brought to your room?"
"No, indeed! I've been sitting there writing, and only came down because
I had promised Mr. Fearn that he should have ten minutes, and it is
nearly his time now. Where do you suppose they could have sent it?"
Poor little Nan! It has been a hard day for her, but this is just too
much. She turns quickly, and, hardly knowing whither she goes, dodges
past the party of cadets and girls now blocking the stairway and
preventing flight to her room, hurries out the south door and around to
the west piazza, and there, leaning against a pillar, is striving to
hide her blazing cheeks,--all in less than a minute.
Stanley sees through the entire situation with the quick intuition of a
lover. She has not treated him kindly of late. She has been capricious
and unjust on several occasions, but there is no time to think of that
now. She is in distress, and that is more than enough for him.
"Here comes Mr. Fearn himself to claim his walk, so I will go and find
out about the card," he says, and blesses that little rat of a bell-boy
as he hastens away.
Out on the piazza he finds her alone, yet with half a dozen people
hovering nigh. The hush of twilight is over the beautiful old Point. The
moist breath of the coming night, cool and sweet, floats down upon them
from the deep gorges on the rugged flank of Cro' Nest, and rises from
the thickly lacing branches of the cedars on the river-bank below. A
flawless mirror in its grand and reflected framework of cliff and crag
and beetling precipice, the Hudson stretches away northward unruffled by
the faintest cat's-paw of a breeze. Far beyond the huge black
battlements of Storm King and the purpled scaur of Breakneck the night
lights of the distant city are twinkling through the gathering darkness,
and tiny dots of silvery flame down in the cool depths beneath them
reflect the faint glimmer from the cloudless heaven where--
"The sentinel stars set their watch in the sky."
The hush of the sacred hour has fallen on every lip save those of the
merry party in the hall, where laugh and chatter and flaring gas-light
bid defiance to influences such as hold their sway over souls brought
face to face with Nature in this, her loveliest haunt on earth.
Phil Stanley's heart is throbbing as he steps quickly to her side. Well,
indeed, she knows his foot-fall; knows he is coming; almost knows _why_
he comes. She is burning with a sense of humiliation, wounded pride,
maidenly wrath, and displeasure. All day long everything has gone agley.
Could she but flee to her room and hide her flaming cheeks and cry her
heart out, it would be relief inexpressible, but her retreat is cut off.
She cannot escape. She cannot face those keen-eyed watchers in the
hall-ways. Oh! it is almost maddening that she should have been so--so
fooled! Every one must know she came down to meet Phil Stanley when his
card was meant for another girl,--that girl of all others! All aflame
with indignation as she is, she yet means to freeze him if she can only
control herself.
"Miss Nannie," he murmurs, quick and low, "I see that a blunder has been
made, but I don't believe the others saw it. Give me just a few minutes.
Come down the walk with me. I cannot talk with you here--now, and there
is so much I want to say." He bends over her pleadingly, but her eyes
are fixed far away up the dark wooded valley beyond the white shafts of
the cemetery, gleaming in the first beams of the rising moon. She makes
no reply for a moment. She does not withdraw them when finally she
answers, impressively,--
"Thank you, Mr. Stanley, but I must be excused from interfering with
your engagements."
"There is no engagement now," he promptly replies; "and I greatly want
to speak with you. Have you been quite kind to me of late? Have I not a
right to know what has brought about the change?"
"You do not seem to have sought opportunity to inquire,"--very cool and
dignified now.
"Pardon me. Three times this week I have asked for a walk, and you have
had previous engagements."
She has torn to bits and thrown away the card that was in her hand. Now
she is tugging at the bunch of bell buttons, each graven with the
monogram of some cadet friend, that hangs as usual by its tiny golden
chain. She wants to say that he has found speedy consolation in the
society of "that other girl" of whom Mr. Werrick spoke, but not for the
world would she seem jealous.
"You could have seen me this afternoon, had there been any matters you
wished explained," she says. "I presume you were more agreeably
occupied."
"I find no delight in formal visits," he answers, quietly; "but my
sister wished to return calls and asked me to show her about the post."
Then it was his sister. Not "that other girl!" Still she must not let
him see it makes her glad. She needs a pretext for her wrath. She must
make him feel it in some way. This is not at all in accordance with the
mental private rehearsals she has been having. There is still that
direful matter of Will's report for "shouting from window of barracks,"
and "Miss Mischief's" equally direful report of Mr. Stanley's remarks
thereon.
"I thought you were a loyal friend of Willy's," she says, turning
suddenly upon him.
"I was--and am," he answers simply.
"And yet I'm told you said it was all his own fault, and that you
yourself would have given him the report that so nearly 'found him on
demerit.' A report on suspicion, too," she adds, with scorn in her tone.
Mr. Stanley is silent a moment.
"You have heard a very unfair account of my words," he says at last. "I
have volunteered no opinions on the subject. In answer to direct
question I have said that it was not justifiable to call that a report
on suspicion."
"But you said you would have given it yourself."
"I said that, as officer of the day, I would have been compelled to do
so. I could not have signed my certificate otherwise."
She turns away in speechless indignation. What makes it all well-nigh
intolerable is that he is by no means on the defensive. He is patient,
gentle, but decidedly superior. Not at all what she wanted. Not at all
eager to explain, argue, or implore. Not at all the tearful penitent she
has pictured in her plans. She must bring him to a realizing sense of
the enormity of his conduct. Disloyalty to Will is treason to her.
"And yet--you say you have kept, and that you value, that knot of blue
ribbon that I gave you--or that you took--last summer. I did not suppose
that you would so soon prove to be--no friend to Willy, or----"
"Or what, Miss Nannie?" he asks. His face is growing white, but he
controls the tremor in his voice. She does not see. Her eyes are
downcast and her face averted now, but she goes on desperately.
"Well, never mind _that_ now; but it seems to me that such friendship
is--simply worthless."
She has taken the plunge and said her say, but the last words are spoken
with sinking inflection, followed instantly by a sinking heart. He makes
no answer whatever. She dares not look up into his face to see the
effect of her stab. He stands there silent only an instant; then raises
his cap, turns, and leaves her.
Sunday comes and goes without a sight of him except in the line of
officers at parade. That night she goes early to her room, and on the
bureau finds a little box securely tied, sealed, and addressed to her in
his well-known hand. It contains a note and some soft object carefully
wrapped in tissue-paper. The note is brief enough:
"It is not easy to part with this, for it is all I have that was yours
to give, but even this must be returned to you after what you said last
night.
"Miss Nannie, you may some time think more highly of my friendship for
your brother than you do now, and then, perhaps, will realize that you
were very unjust. Should that time come I shall be glad to have this
again."
It was hardly necessary to open the little packet as she did. She knew
well enough it could contain only that
"Knot of ribbon blue."