Corporal Cameron did not soon return to his native town. An epidemic of
measles broke out in camp just before Thanksgiving and pursued its
tantalizing course through his special barracks with strenuous vigor.
Quarantine was put on for three weeks, and was but lifted for a few hours
when a new batch of cases came down. Seven weeks more of isolation
followed, when the men were not allowed away from the barracks except for
long lonely walks, or gallops across camp. Even the mild excitements of
the Y.M.C.A. huts were not for them in these days. They were much shut up
to themselves, and latent tendencies broke loose and ran riot. Shooting
crap became a passion. They gambled as long as they had a dollar left or
could get credit on the next month's pay day. Then they gambled for their
shirts and their bayonets. All day long whenever they were in the
barracks, you could hear the rattle of the dice, and the familiar call of
"Phoebe," "Big Dick," "Big Nick," and "Little Joe." When they were not on
drill the men would infest the barracks for hours at a time, gathered in
crouching groups about the dice, the air thick and blue with cigarette
smoke; while others had nothing better to do than to sprawl on their cots
and talk; and from their talk Cameron often turned away nauseated. The
low ideals, the open boasting of shame, the matter-of-course conviction
that all men and most women were as bad as themselves, filled him with a
deep boiling rage, and he would close his book or throw down the paper
with which he was trying to while the hour, and fling forth into the cold
air for a solitary ride or walk.
He was sitting thus a cold cheerless December day with a French book he
had recently sent for, trying to study a little and prepare himself for
the new country to which he was soon going.
The door of the barracks opened letting in a rush of cold air, and closed
again quickly. A tall man in uniform with the red triangle on his arm
stood pulling off his woolen gloves and looking about him. Nobody paid
any attention to him. Cameron was deep in his book and did not even
notice him. Off at his left a new crap game was just starting. The
phraseology beat upon his accustomed ears like the buzz of bees or
mosquitos.
"I'll shoot a buck!"
"You're faded!"
"Come on now there, dice! Remember the baby's shoes!"
Cameron had ceased to hear the voices. He was struggling with a difficult
French idiom.
The stranger took his bearings deliberately and walked over to Cameron,
sitting down with a friendly air on the nearest cot.
"Would you be interested in having one of my little books?" he asked, and
his voice had a clear ring that brought Cameron's thoughts back to the
barracks again. He looked up for a curt refusal. He did not wish to be
bothered now, but something in the young man's earnest face held him.
Y.M.C.A. men in general were well enough, but Cameron wasn't crazy about
them, especially when they were young. But this one had a look about him
that proclaimed him neither a slacker nor a sissy. Cameron hesitated:
"What kind of a book?" he asked in a somewhat curt manner.
The boy, for he was only a boy though he was tall as a man, did not hedge
but went straight to the point, looking eagerly at the soldier:
"A pocket Testament," he said earnestly, and laid in Cameron's hand a
little book with limp leather covers. Cameron took it up half curiously,
and then looked into the other's face almost coldly.
"You selling them?" There was a covert sneer in his tone.
"No, no!" said the other quickly, "I'm giving them away for a promise.
You see, I had an accident and one of my eyes was put out a while ago. Of
course, they wouldn't take me for a soldier, and the next best thing was
to be all the help I could to the fellows that are going to fight. I
figure that book is the best thing I can bring you."
The manly simplicity of the boy held Cameron's gaze firmly fixed.
"H'm! In what way?" Cameron was turning the leaves curiously, enjoying
the silky fineness and the clear-cut print and soft leather binding. Life
in the barracks was so much in the rough that any bit of refinement was
doubly appreciated. He liked the feel of the little book and had a
curious longing to be its possessor.
"Why, it gives you a pretty straight line on where we're all going, what
is expected of us, and how we're to be looked out for. It shows one how
to know God and be ready to meet death if we have to."
"What makes you think anyone can know God on this earth?" asked Cameron
sharply.
"Because _I_ have," said the astonishing young man quite as if he were
saying he were related to the President or something like that.
"You have! How did you get to know Him?"
"Through that little book and by following its teachings."
Cameron turned over the pages again, catching familiar phrases here and
there as he had heard them sometimes in Sunday school years ago.
"You said something about a promise. What was it?"
"That you'll carry the book with you always, and read at least a verse in
it every day."
"Well, that doesn't sound hard," mused Cameron. "I guess I could stand
for that."
"The book is yours, then. Would you like to put your name to that
acceptance card in the front of the book?"
"What's that?" asked Cameron sharply as if he had discovered the fly in
the ointment for which he had all along been suspicious.
"Well, I call it the first step in knowing God. It's your act of
acceptance of the way God has planned for you to be forgiven and saved
from sin. If you sign that you say you will accept Christ as your
Saviour."
"But suppose you don't believe in Christ? I can't commit myself to
anything like that till I know about it?"
"Well, you see, that's the first move in getting to know God," said the
stranger with a smile. "God says he wants you to believe in his Son. He
asks that much of you if you want to get to know Him."
Cameron looked at him with bewildered interest. Was here a possible
answer to the questions of his heart. Why did this curious boy have a
light in his face that never came from earth or air? What was there about
his simple earnestness that was so convincing?
Another crap game had started up on the other side of them. A musically
inclined private was playing ragtime on the piano, and another was trying
to accompany him on the banjo. The air was hazier than ever. It seemed
strange to be talking of such things in these surroundings:
"Let's get out of here and walk!" said Cameron, "I'd like to understand
what you mean."
For two hours they tramped across the frozen ground and talked, arguing
this way and that, much drawn toward one another. At last in the solemn
background of a wall of whispering pines that shut them away from the
stark gray rows of barracks, Cameron took out his fountain pen and with
his foot on a prone log, opened the little book on his knee and wrote his
name and the date. Then he put it in his breast pocket with the solemn
feeling that he had taken some kind of a great step toward what his soul
had been longing to find. They knelt on the frozen ground beside that log
and the stranger prayed simply as if he were talking to a friend.
Thereafter that spot was hallowed ground to Cameron, to which he came
often to think and to read his little book.
That night he wrote to Ruth, telling in a shy way of his meeting with the
Testament man and about the little book. After he had mailed the letter
he walked back again to the spot among the pines and standing there
looked up to the stars and somehow committed himself again to the
covenant he had signed in the little book. It was then that he decided
that if he got home again after quarantine before he went over, he would
unite with the church. Somehow the stranger's talk that afternoon had
cleared away his objections. On his way back to the barracks across the
open field, up through the woods and over the crest of the hill toward
the road as he walked thinking deeply, suddenly from down below on the
road a familiar voice floated up to him. He parted the branches of oak
underbrush that made a screen between him and the road and glanced down
to get his bearings the better to avoid an unwelcome meeting. It was
inevitable when one came near Lieutenant Wainwright that he would
overhear some part of a conversation for he had a carrying voice which he
never sought to restrain.
"You're sure she's a girl with pep, are you? I don't want to bother with
any other kind. All right. Tell her to wait for me in the Washington
station to-morrow evening at eight. I'll look for her at the right of the
information booth. Tell her to wear a red carnation so I'll know her.
I'll show her a good time, all right, if she's the right sort. I'll trust
you that she's a good looker!"
Cameron could not hear the response, but the two were standing
silhouetted against a distant light, and something in the attitude of the
other man held his attention. For a moment he could not place him, then
it flashed across his mind that this was the soldier Chambers, who had
been the means of his missing the train at Chester on the memorable
occasion when Ruth Macdonald had saved the day. It struck him as a
strange thing that these two enemies of his whom he would have supposed
to be strangers to one another should be talking thus intimately. To make
sure of the man's identity he waited until the two parted and Wainwright
went his way, and then at a distance followed the other one until he was
quite certain. He walked back thoughtfully trying to make it out. Had
Wainwright then been at the bottom of his trouble that day? It began to
seem quite possible. And how had Ruth Macdonald happened to be so
opportunely present at the right moment? How had she happened to turn
down that road, a road that was seldom used by people going to Baltimore?
It was all very strange and had never been satisfactorily explained. Ruth
had evaded the question most plausibly every time he had brought it up.
Could it be that Wainwright had told her of a plot against him and she
had reached out to help him? His heart leaped at the thought. Then at
once he was sure that Wainwright had never told her, unless perhaps he
had told some tale against him, and made him the butt of a great joke.
Well, if he had she had cared enough to defend him and help him out
without ever giving away the fact that she knew. But here, too, lay a
thorn to disturb him. Why had Ruth Macdonald not told him the plain truth
if she knew? Was she trying to shield Harry Wainwright? Could she really
care for that contemptible scoundrel?
The thought in all its phases tore his mind and kept him awake for hours,
for the crux of the whole matter was that he was afraid that Ruth
Macdonald was going to marry Lieutenant Wainwright, and he knew that it
was not only for her sake, but for his also that he did not want
this--that it was agony even to contemplate.
He told himself, of course, that his interest was utterly unselfish. That
she was nothing to him but a friend and never would be, and that while it
might be hard to see her belong to some fine man and know he never might
be more than a passing friend, still it would not be like seeing her tied
to a rotten unprincipled fellow like Wainwright. The queer part of it was
that the word "rotten" in connection with his enemy played a great part
in his thoughts that night.
Somewhere in the watches of the night a memory came to him of the
covenant he had made that day and a vague wistful reaching of his heart
after the Christ to whom he was supposed to have surrendered his life. He
wondered if a Christ such as the stranger had claimed He had, would take
an interest in the affairs of Ruth Macdonald. Surely, such a flower of a
girl would be protected if there was protection for anyone! And somehow
he managed a queer little prayer for her, the first he had tried to put
up. It helped him a little, and toward morning he fell asleep.
A few days later in glancing through his newly acquired Testament he came
upon a verse which greatly troubled him for a time. His eye had caught it
at random and somehow it lodged in his mind:
"Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a
quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye."
Somehow the principle of that verse did not fit with his proud spirit. He
thought instantly of Wainwright's distasteful face and form. It seemed to
loom before him with a smug triumphal sneer. His enmity toward the fellow
had been of years standing, and had been deepened many times by
unforgetable acts. There was nothing about Wainwright to make one forgive
him. There was everything about him to make one want to punish him. When
the verse first confronted Cameron he felt a rising indignation that
there had been so much as a connection in his thoughts with his quarrel
with Wainwright. Why, anybody that knew him knew Wainwright was wrong.
God must think so, too. That verse might apply to little quarrels but not
to his feeling about the way Wainwright had treated him ever since they
were children. That was not to be borne, of course. Those words he had
called Cameron's father! How they made his blood boil even now! No, he
would not forbear nor forgive Wainwright. God would not want him to do
so. It was right he should be against him forever! Thus he dismissed the
suggestion and turned to the beginning of his testament, having
determined to find the Christ of whom the stranger had set him in search.
On the flyleaf of the little book the stranger had written a few words:
"And ye shall find me, when ye shall search for me with all your
heart."--Jeremiah xxix: 13.
That meant no half-way business. He could understand that. Well, he was
willing to put himself into the search fully. He understood that it was
worth a whole-hearted search if one were really to find a God as a
reward.
That night he wrote a letter to the minister in Bryne Haven asking for an
interview when next he was able to get leave from camp. In the meantime
he kept out of the way of Wainwright most adroitly, and found many ways
to avoid a meeting.
There had been three awful days when his "peach of a captain" about whom
he had spoken to Ruth, had been called away on some military errand and
Wainwright had been the commanding officer. They had been days of gall
and wormwood to Cameron, for his proud spirit could not bend to salute
the man whom he considered a scoundrel, and Wainwright took a fine
delight in using his power over his enemy to the limit. If it had not
been for the unexpected return of the captain a day earlier than planned,
Cameron might have had to suffer humiliations far greater than he did.
The bitterness between the two grew stronger, and Cameron went about with
his soul boiling with rage and rebellion. It was only when Ruth's letters
came that he forgot it all for a few minutes and lifted his thoughts to
higher things.