“Whatever my work is to be,” I repeated. “That was decided for me,
Beatrice, when I was a little boy.”
She returned my look for a moment in some doubt, and then leaned eagerly
forward. “You mean to enlist?” she asked.
“To enlist? Not I!” I answered hotly. “If I’m not fit to be an officer
now, I never shall be, at least not by that road. Do you know what it
means? It’s the bitterest life a man can follow. He is neither the one
thing nor the other. The enlisted men suspect him, and the officers may
not speak with him. I know one officer who got his commission that way.
He swears now he would rather have served the time in jail. The officers
at the post pointed him out to visitors, as the man who had failed at
West Point, and who was working his way up from the ranks, and the men
of his company thought that _he_ thought, God help him, that he was too
good for them, and made his life hell. Do you suppose I’d show my
musket to men of my old mess, and have the girls I’ve danced with see me
marching up and down a board walk with a gun on my shoulder? Do you see
me going on errands for the men I’ve hazed, and showing them my socks
and shirts at inspection so they can give me a good mark for being a
clean and tidy soldier? No! I’ll not enlist. If I’m not good enough to
carry a sword I’m not good enough to carry a gun, and the United States
Army can struggle along without me.”
Beatrice shook her head.
“Don’t say anything you’ll be sorry for, Royal,” she warned me.
“You don’t understand,” I interrupted. “I’m not saying anything against
my own country or our army--how can I? I’ve proved clearly enough that
I’m not fit for it. I’m only too grateful, I’ve had three years in the
best military school in the world, at my country’s expense, and I’m
grateful. Yes, and I’m miserable, too, that I have failed to deserve
it.”
I stood up and straightened my shoulders. “But perhaps there are other
countries less difficult to please,” I said, “where I can lose myself
and be forgotten, and where I can see service. After all, a soldier’s
business is to fight, not to sit at a post all day or to do a clerk’s
work at Washington.”
Even as I spoke these chance words I seemed to feel the cloud of failure
and disgrace passing from me. I saw vaguely a way to redeem myself, and,
though I had spoken with bravado and at random, the words stuck in my
mind, and my despondency fell from me like a heavy knapsack.
“Come,” I said, cheerfully, “there can be no talk of a holiday for me
until I have earned it. You know I would love to stay here now with you
and Aunt in the old house, but I have no time to mope and be petted. If
you fall down, you must not lie in the road and cry over your bruised
shins; you must pick yourself up and go on again, even if you are a bit
sore and dirty.”
We said nothing more, but my mind was made up, and when we reached
the house I went at once to my room and repacked my trunk for a long
journey. It was a leather trunk in which my grandfather used to carry
his sword and uniform, and in it I now proudly placed the presentation
sword he had bequeathed to me in his will, and my scanty wardrobe and
$500 of the money he had left to me. All the rest of his fortune, with
the exception of the $2,000 a year he had settled upon me, he had, I am
glad to say, bequeathed with the house to Aunt Mary and Beatrice. When I
had finished my packing I joined them at supper, and such was my elation
at the prospect of at once setting forth to redeem myself, and to seek
my fortune, that to me the meal passed most cheerfully. When it was
finished, I found the paper of that morning, and spreading it out upon
the table began a careful search in the foreign news for what tidings
there might be of war.
I told Beatrice what I was doing, and without a word she brought out my
old school atlas, and together under the light of the student-lamp we
sought out the places mentioned in the foreign despatches, and discussed
them, and the chances they might offer me.
There were, I remember, at the time that paper was printed, strained
relations existing between France and China over the copper mines in
Tonkin; there was a tribal war in Upper Burmah with native troops; there
was a threat of complications in the Balkans, but the Balkans, as I have
since learned, are always with us and always threatening. Nothing in
the paper seemed to offer me the chance I sought, and apparently peace
smiled on every other portion of the globe.
“There is always the mounted police in Canada,” I said, tentatively.
“No,” Beatrice answered, quietly, and without asking her reasons I
accepted her decision and turned again to the paper. And then my eyes
fell on a paragraph which at first I had overlooked--a modest, brief
despatch tucked away in a corner, and unremarkable, except for its
strange date-line. It was headed, “The Revolt in Honduras.” I pointed
to it with my finger, and Beatrice leaned forward with her head close to
mine, and we read it together. “Tegucigalpa, June 17th,” it read. “The
revolution here has assumed serious proportions. President Alvarez has
proclaimed martial law over all provinces, and leaves tomorrow for Santa
Barbara, where the Liberal forces under the rebel leader, ex-President
Louis Garcia, were last in camp. General Laguerre is coming from
Nicaragua to assist Garcia with his foreign legion of 200 men. He has
seized the Nancy Miller, belonging to the Isthmian Line, and has fitted
her with two Gatling guns. He is reported to be bombarding the towns
on his way along the coast, and a detachment of Government troops is
marching to Porto Cortez to prevent his landing. His force is chiefly
composed of American and other aliens, who believe the overthrow of the
present government will be beneficial to foreign residents.”
“General Laguerre!” I cried, eagerly, “that is not a Spanish name.
General Laguerre must be a Frenchman. And it says that the men with
him are Americans, and that the present government is against all
foreigners.”
I drew back from the table with a laugh, and stood smiling at Beatrice,
but she shook her head, even though she smiled, too.
“Oh, not that,” she said.
“My dear Beatrice,” I expostulated, “it certainly isn’t right that
American interests in--what’s the name of the place--in Honduras, should
be jeopardized, is it? And by an ignorant half-breed like this President
What’s-his-name? Certainly not. It must be stopped, even if we have to
requisition every steamer the Isthmian Line has afloat.”
“Oh, Royal,” Beatrice cried, “you are not serious. No, you wouldn’t,
you couldn’t be so foolish. That’s no affair of yours. That’s not
your country. Besides, that is not war; it is speculation. You are a
gentleman, not a pirate and a filibuster.”
“William Walker was a filibuster,” I answered. “He took Nicaragua
with 200 men and held it for two years against 20,000. I must begin
somewhere,” I cried, “why not there? A girl can’t understand these
things--at least, some girls can’t--but I would have thought you would.
What does it matter what I do or where I go?” I broke out, bitterly. “I
have made a failure of my life at the very start. I am sick and sore and
desperate. I don’t care where I go or what---”
I would have ranted on for some time, no doubt, but that a look from
Beatrice stopped me in mid-air, and I stood silent, feeling somewhat
foolish.
“I can understand this much,” she said, “that you are a foolish boy. How
dare you talk of having made a failure of your life? Your life has not
yet begun. You have yet to make it, and to show yourself something
more than a boy.” She paused, and then her manner changed, and she came
toward me, looking up at me with eyes that were moist and softened with
a sweet and troubled tenderness, and she took my hand and held it close
in both of hers.
I had never seen her look more beautiful than she did at that moment.
If it had been any other woman in the world but her, I would have caught
her in my arms and kissed her again and again, but because it was she
I could not touch her, but drew back and looked down into her eyes with
the sudden great feeling I had for her. And so we stood for a moment,
seeing each other as we had never seen each other before. And then she
caught her breath quickly and drew away. But she turned her face toward
me at once, and looked up at me steadily.
“I am so fond of you, Royal,” she said, bravely, “you know, that--that
I cannot bear to think of you doing anything in this world that is not
fine and for the best. But if you will be a knight errant, and seek out
dangers and fight windmills, promise me to be a true knight and that
you will fight only when you must and only on the side that is just, and
then you will come back bringing your sheaves with you.”
I did not dare to look at her, but I raised her hand and held the
tips of her fingers against my lips, and I promised, but I would have
promised anything at that moment.
“If I am to be a knight,” I said, and my voice sounded very hoarse and
boyish, so that I hardly recognized it as my own, “you must give me your
colors to wear on my lance, and if any other knight thinks his colors
fairer, or the lady who gave them more lovely than you, I shall kill
him.”
She laughed softly and moved away.
“Of course,” she said, “of course, you must kill him.” She stepped a few
feet from me, and, raising her hands to her throat, unfastened a little
gold chain which she wore around her neck. She took it off and held it
toward me. “Would you like this?” she said. I did not answer, nor
did she wait for me to do so, but wound the chain around my wrist and
fastened it, and I raised it and kissed it, and neither of us spoke.
She went out to the veranda to warn her mother of my departure, and I to
tell the servants to bring the carriage to the door.
A few minutes later, the suburban train drew out of the station at
Dobbs Ferry, and I waved my hand to Beatrice as she sat in the carriage
looking after me. The night was warm and she wore a white dress and
her head was uncovered. In the smoky glare of the station lamps I could
still see the soft tints of her hair; and as the train bumped itself
together and pulled forward, I felt a sudden panic of doubt, a piercing
stab at my heart, and something called on me to leap off the car that
was bearing me away, and go back to the white figure sitting motionless
in the carriage. As I gripped the iron railing to restrain myself, I
felt the cold sweat springing to the palm of my hand. For a moment I
forgot the end of my long journey. I saw it as something foolish, mad,
fantastic. I was snatching at a flash of powder, when I could warm my
hands at an open fire. I was deserting the one thing which counted and
of which I was certain; the one thing I loved. And then the train turned
a curve, the lamps of the station and the white ghostly figure were shut
from me, and I entered the glaring car filled with close air and smoke
and smelling lamps. I seated myself beside a window and leaned far out
into the night, so that the wind of the rushing train beat in my face.
And in a little time the clanking car-wheels seemed to speak to me,
beating out the words brazenly so that I thought everyone in the car
must hear them.
“Turn again, turn again, Royal Macklin,” they seemed to say to me. “She
loves you, Royal Macklin, she loves you, she loves you.”
And I thought of Dick Whittington when the Bow bells called to him, as
he paused in the country lane to look lack at the smoky roof of London,
and they had offered him so little, while for me the words seemed to
promise the proudest place a man could hold. And I imagined myself still
at home, working by day in some New York office and coming back by night
to find Beatrice at the station waiting for me, always in a white
dress, and with her brown hair glowing in the light of the lamps. And
I pictured us taking long walks together above the Hudson, and quiet,
happy evenings by the fire-side. But the rhythm of the car-wheels
altered, and from “She loves you, she loves you,” the refrain now came
brokenly and fiercely, like the reports of muskets fired in hate and
fear, and mixed with their roar and rattle I seemed to distinguish words
of command in a foreign tongue, and the groans of men wounded and
dying. And I saw, rising above great jungles and noisome swamps, a
long mountain-range piercing a burning, naked sky; and in a pass in the
mountains a group of my own countrymen, ragged and worn and with eyes
lit with fever, waving a strange flag, and beset on every side by
dark-faced soldiers, and I saw my own face among them, hollow-cheeked
and tanned, with my head bandaged in a scarf; I felt the hot barrel of
a rifle burning my palm, I smelt the pungent odor of spent powder, my
throat and nostrils were assailed with smoke. I suffered all the fierce
joy and agony of battle, and the picture of the white figure of Beatrice
grew dim and receded from me, and as it faded the eyes regarded me
wistfully and reproached me, but I would not heed them, but turned my
own eyes away. And again I saw the menacing negro faces and the burning
sunlight and the strange flag that tossed and whimpered in the air above
my head, the strange flag of unknown, tawdry colors, like the painted
face of a woman in the street, but a flag at which I cheered and shouted
as though it were my own, as though I loved it; a flag for which I would
fight and die.
The train twisted its length into the great station, the men about me
rose and crowded down the aisle, and I heard the cries of newsboys and
hackmen and jangling car-bells, and all the roar and tumult of a great
city at night.
But I had already made my choice. Within an hour I had crossed to the
Jersey side, and was speeding south, south toward New Orleans, toward
the Gulf of Mexico, toward Honduras, to Colonel Laguerre and his foreign
legion.