“It is too late. I am sorry. But I have decided. I must go.”
Lowell stepped out of the shadow, and faced me with the same strange
look, partly of wonder, and partly of indignation.
“Nonsense, Royal,” he said, “let _me_ talk to you. We’ve been shipmates,
or comrades, and all that sort of thing, and you’ve got to listen to me.
Think, man, think what you’re losing. Think of all the things you are
giving up. Don’t be a weak child. This will affect your whole life. You
have no right to decide it in a minute.”
I stepped to its hiding-place, and took out the sword my grandfather had
carried in the Civil War; the sword I had worn in Honduras. I had hidden
it away, that it might not remind me that once I, too, was a soldier. It
acted on me like a potion. The instant my fingers touched its hilt, the
blood, which had grown chilled, leaped through my body. In answer I held
the sword toward Lowell. It was very hard to speak. They did not know
how hard. They did not know how cruelly it hurt me to differ from
them, and to part from them. The very thought of it turned me sick and
miserable. But it was written. It had to be.
“You ask me to think of what I am giving up,” I said, gently. “I gave up
this. I shall never surrender it again. I am not deciding in a minute.
It was decided for me long ago. It’s a tradition. It’s handed down to
me. My grandfather was Hamilton, of Cerro Gordo, of the City of Mexico,
of Gettysburg. My father was ‘Fighting’ Macklin. He was killed at the
head of his soldiers. All my people have been soldiers. One fought at
the battle of Princeton, one died fighting the king at Culloden. It’s
bred in me. It’s in the blood. It’s the blood of the Macklins that has
decided this. And I--I am the last of the Macklins, and I must live and
die like one.”
The house is quiet now. They have all left me to my packing, and are
asleep. Lowell went early and bade me good-by at the gate. He was very
sad and solemn. “God bless you, Royal,” he said, “and keep you safe,
and bring you back to us.” And I watched him swinging down the silent,
moon-lit road, knocking the icicles from the hedges with his stick. I
stood there some time looking after him, for I love him very dearly, and
then a strange thing happened. After he had walked quite a distance from
the house, he suddenly raised his head and began to whistle a jolly,
rollicking sea-song. I could hear him for some minutes. I was glad to
think he took it so light-heartedly. It is good to know that he is not
jealous of my great fortune.
To-night we spared each other the parting words. But to-morrow they must
be spoken, when Aunt Mary and Beatrice come to see me sail away on the
French liner. The ship leaves at noon, and ten days later I shall be in
Havre. Ye gods, to think that in ten days I shall see Paris! And then,
the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, the Indian Ocean, Singapore, and, at
last, the yellow flags and black dragons of the enemy. It cannot last
long, this row. I shall be coming home again in six months, unless the
Mahdi makes trouble. Laguerre was three years in the Khedive’s service,
and with his influence an ex-captain of the French army should have
little difficulty in getting a commission in Egypt.
Then, after that, I really will come home. But not as an ex-soldier.
This time I shall come home on furlough. I shall come home a real
officer, and play the prodigal again to the two noblest and sweetest and
best women in God’s world. All women are good, but they are the best.
All women are so good, that when one of them thinks one of us is worthy
to marry her, she pays a compliment to our entire sex. But as they are
all good and all beautiful, Beatrice being the best and most beautiful,
I was right not to think of marrying only one of them. With the world
full of good women, and with a fight always going on somewhere, I am
very wise not to “settle down.” I know I shall be very happy.
In a year I certainly must come back, a foreign officer on leave, and
I shall go to West Point and pay my respects to the Commandant. The men
who saw me turned out will have to present arms to me, and the older
men will say to the plebs, “That distinguished-looking officer with the
French mustache, and the red ribbon of the Legion of Honor, is Captain
Macklin. He was turned out of here. Now he’s only a soldier of fortune.
He belongs to no country.”
But when the battalion is drawn up at retreat and the shadows stretch
across the grass, I shall take up my stand once more on the old parade
ground, with all the future Grants and Lees around me, and when the flag
comes down, I shall raise my hand with theirs, and show them that I have
a country, too, and that the flag we salute together is my flag still.