John Cameron lifted his eyes from the paper at last and looked up at the
sky. Had it ever been so blue before? At the trees. What whispering
wonders of living green! Was that only a bird that was singing that
heavenly song--a meadow lark, not an angel? Why had he never appreciated
meadow larks before?
He rested his head back against a big oak and his soldier's hat fell off
on the ground. He closed his eyes and the burden of loneliness that had
borne down upon him all these weeks in the camp lifted from his heart.
Then he tried to realize what had come to him. Ruth Macdonald, the wonder
and admiration of his childhood days, the admired and envied of the home
town, the petted beauty at whose feet every man fell, the girl who had
everything that wealth could purchase! She had remembered the little old
rose he had dared to throw on her desk, and had bridged the years with
this letter!
He was carried back in spirit to the day he left for camp. To the look in
her eyes as he moved away on the train. The look had been real then, and
not just a fleeting glance helped out by his fevered imagination. There
had been true friendliness in her eyes. She had intended to say good-bye
to him! She had put him on a level with her own beautiful self. She had
knighted him, as it were, and sent him forth! Even the war had become
different since she chose to think he was going forth to fight her
battles. What a sacred trust!
Afar in the distance a bugle sounded that called to duty. He had no idea
how the time had flown. He glanced at his wrist watch and was amazed. He
sprang to his feet and strode over the ground, but the way no longer
seemed dusty and blinded with sunshine. It shone like a path of glory
before his willing feet, and he went to his afternoon round of duties
like a new man. He had a friend, a real friend, one that he had known a
long time. There was no fear that she was just writing to him to get one
more soldier at her feet as some girls would have done. Her letter was
too frank and sincere to leave a single doubt about what she meant. He
would take her at her word.
Sometime during the course of the afternoon it occurred to him to look at
the date of the letter, and he found to his dismay that it had been
written nearly four weeks before and had been travelling around through
various departments in search of him, because it had not the correct
address. He readily guessed that she had not wanted to ask for his
company and barracks; she would not have known who to ask. She did not
know his mother, and who else was there? His old companions were mostly
gone to France or camp somewhere.
And now, since all this time had elapsed she would think he had not
cared, had scorned her letter or thought it unmaidenly! He was filled
with dismay and anxiety lest he had hurt her frankness by his seeming
indifference. And the knitted things, the wonderful things that she had
made with her fair hands! Would she have given them to some one else by
this time? Of course, it meant little to her save as a kind of
acknowledgment for something she thought he had done for her as a child,
but they meant so much to him! Much more than they ought to do, he knew,
for he was in no position to allow himself to become deeply attached to
even the handiwork of any girl in her position. However, nobody need ever
know how much he cared, had always cared, for the lovely little girl with
her blue eyes, her long curls, her shy sweet smile and modest ways, who
had seemed to him like an angel from heaven when he was a boy. She had
said he did not know that he was helping her when he burst through the
hedge on the cowering Chuck Woodcock; and he would likely never dare to
tell her that it was because he saw her fright and saw her hide behind
that tree that he went to investigate and so was able to administer a
just punishment. He had picked that rose from the extreme west corner of
a great petted rose bush on the Wainwright lawn, reaching through an
elaborate iron fence to get it as he went cross-lots back to school. He
would call it stealing now to do that same, but then it had been in the
nature of a holy rite offered to a vestal virgin. Yet he must have cast
it down with the grin of an imp, boorish urchin that he was; and he
remembered blushing hotly in the dark afterwards at his presumption, as
he thought of it alone at night. And all the time she had been liking it.
The little girl--the little sweet girl! She had kept it in her heart and
remembered it!
His heart was light as air as he went back to the barracks for retreat. A
miracle had been wrought for him which changed everything. No, he was not
presuming on a friendly letter. Maybe there would be fellows who would
think there wasn't much in just a friendly letter to a lonely soldier,
and a sweater or two more or less. But then they would never have known
what it was to be so lonely for friendship, real friendship, as he was.
He would hurry through supper and get to the Y.M.C.A. hut to write her an
answer. He would explain how the letter had been delayed and say he hoped
she had not given the things away to someone else. He began planning
sentences as he stood at attention during the captain's inspection at
retreat. Somehow the captain was tiresomely particular about the buttons
and pocket flaps and little details to-night. He waited impatiently for
the command to break ranks, and was one of the first at the door of the
mess hall waiting for supper, his face alight, still planning what he
would say in that letter and wishing he could get some fine stationery to
write upon; wondering if there was any to be had with his caduces on it.
At supper he bubbled with merriment. An old schoolmate might have thought
him rejuvenated. He wore his schoolboy grin and rattled off puns and
jokes, keeping the mess hall in a perfect roar.
At last he was out in the cool of the evening with the wonderful sunset
off in the west, on his way to the Y.M.C.A. hut. He turned a corner
swinging into the main road and there, coming toward him, not twenty feet
away, he saw Lieutenant Wainwright!