and made flying leaps over his horse galloping down the tan-bark. It
was the vision of a slim figure in a tailor-gown, a glory of red-gold
hair gleaming under the black of her hat. That was all he had seen
as she talked to Wipes, but he knew the details, the laughing
face, the brilliant white, small teeth almost always showing, and
the mischievous eyes with tawny lashes. A fascinating face, full
of charm; and the drowsy voice, with a reedy note, like a child’s
voice just awakened, the quick wit, and innocently naughty ways—he
remembered all that, too.
In and out through the strenuous mazes of cavalry-drill went the
glint of red hair and the shine of white teeth, and the echo of her
laugh. The evening was his own till nine o’clock, and “a spirit in
his feet” led him to the house where she stayed, Colonel Emerson’s
house, looking up the river.
“What were you talking to Wipes about, on the Parade this afternoon?”
“Who is Wipes?” demanded the laughing, slow voice, and Fitzhugh
thought how pleasant a thing it was to realize a vision and an echo.
“Why, Wipes—our policeman. You oughtn’t to talk to the men; they’re
not allowed luxuries reserved for the corps.”
“Oh, you mean that bright-red soldier, Weiber—I forgot Jack called
him Wipes. Why, I know him. Fascinating man! I know his wife, too.
She’s not just fascinating; she’s always scrubbing the children, and
I’m sure she’s right, for they never look finished. I go to see her
sometimes. That is, I went yesterday.” And Fitzhugh reflected how
nice it was in girls to go to see poor soldiers’ families. It flashed
across him that perhaps he would stroll down to visit the Wipeses
some day himself, when he knew she was to be there.
Nine o’clock was removed from eight by about five minutes that
evening, and his dreams afterward were empty of little Marcus and
filled with a bewitching, mischievous personality. But a shock was in
store for him. The next day when Wipes appeared, his vermilion face
seemed longer. Fitzhugh had waited for him feverishly.
“Is it all right, Wipesy? Did you get him off without trouble? How
much do I owe you?”
“F’r me to sind in th’ bill whin th’ job’s done,” gulped Wipes.
“Isn’t it done? What do you mean? Why isn’t it done?”
Wipes, in throaty gurgles, told his tale. The attendant had thrust
the child into the soldier’s arms and jumped back on the train,
refusing to listen to reason. She was not going back to New York, she
was going up the river to visit her cousin—she had no further concern
with the baby than to deliver him at West Point. She laughed at the
idea of taking him back to the city. The train went on, and Wipes was
left standing with little Marcus howling in his arms.
Such was the tale. Fitzhugh stared in horror. He gasped before he
could speak.
“Wipes,” he whispered, “where is it? Here?”
“Yis, sorr—me wife’s got it.”
Fitzhugh breathed again—how good, how thoughtful of Wipes—and he had
never dreamed of this obvious plan, either. Mrs. Wipes—of course—what
more natural?
“Wipes, you’re a fine fellow—you’re glorious, old Wipesy!” he
exploded. “Tell your wife I’ll pay anything she wants—anything. Only
keep it. Will she keep it? It’s only a week. She will, won’t she? You
tell her to keep it, Wipesy.”
“Very good, sorr. I’ll tell ’r. She’ll keep ’t,” the soldier answered
in vocal shorthand, and Fitzhugh, trembling still, shaken with
emotion, was yet relieved and grateful. Wipes turned to go, then
wheeled. “Miss Duncan, sorr.”
Fitzhugh opened startled eyes at him. “What about Miss Duncan?” he
demanded, with dignity.
“Oi met ’r with th’ kid ’n me arrms.”
“Well? She knows you have children, doesn’t she?”
Wipes shook his head. “’Twas tagged.”
“Tagged?”
“‘To Cadet The’dore Fitz’ugh.’” The name sounded like a sneeze.
“Oh!” The boy fell back in his chair. “And she read it, of course.
What did you tell her?”
“Oi said ’twas yer pa’s coachman’s kid, sorr, th’t’d need of air.”
Fitzhugh’s people lived in New York. It was far-fetched, but yet the
gods were good, for they might have lived in San Francisco. Fitzhugh
blessed the soldier again. “Wipes, you’re a lot brighter than you
look. What did she say?”
“She said how good ’twas ’f ye, sorr, t’ remimber th’ poor.”
Fitzhugh smiled placidly and was aware of a warm feeling around his
heart.
“Oi told ’r ye’d not like ut mintioned outside, sorr.”
“Wipes,” said Fitzhugh, “you’re a born gentleman, you certainly are.
Your tact is remarkable. I’ll make this up to you somehow, Wipesy.”
“F’r me to sind in th’ bill whin th’ job’s done,” repeated Wipes
oracularly, and went.
To the nervous and lonely cadet it was a godsend that he could even
partly discuss his dilemma with Julia Duncan. He longed to tell her
the whole situation, but feared her teasing spirit. She would worry
him unmercifully, and it might make him ridiculous in her eyes—he
dared not risk that. It was not so bad to pose as a philanthropist,
unintentionally of course. He chuckled with satisfaction at the
accidental air of the discovery—of how he appeared not to let his
right hand know the good his left was doing. But he must see her and
talk to her about it.
The next day was Sunday, and when the cadets had formed and marched
away after service, a gallant and soldierly sight, he dashed back
from his quarters to the chapel door, and walked home with her. He
blessed Colonel Emerson for living far around the turn, beyond the
Parade—a quarter of a mile more with her was worth while.
She began talking about the leaves that were coming on the trees, the
spring in the air, the misty look over the piled hills beyond the
river, and Fitzhugh fairly jumped with nervousness. It would seem
like ostentation to lug in the coachman’s baby before she spoke of
it; but here they were half-way around the square, and she was still
going on about springtime! And her eyes were dancing as if it were
the best joke in the world. He wrenched the conversation off by main
force.
“How is Jack, Miss Julia? Does he write you at all?”
“Every day.” She glanced up at him. “Every morning I get a nasty
letter that smells like a drug-store, and every afternoon I send him
a nice, clean one. I shall write him something about you to-day.”
“About me?” Fitzhugh tried to be careless. “Is there anything
interesting enough about me to put in writing?”
The girl’s glancing eyes seemed to watch him. “Yes, indeed. I’m going
to tell him how good you are.” The cadet felt a dash of discomfort,
and the drawling, soft voice went on. “I think he’ll be surprised.
Isn’t it a new thing, this Coachman’s Babies’ Fresh Air Society of
yours and Mr. Wipes?”
The cadet stammered. “I—it was an accident—I—I didn’t mean any one to
know about it.”
“That makes it twice as good. It’s wonderful that a young man
should take such an interest in the poor and in children, but that
you should go to the trouble of getting one up here and keeping it
for—a week, didn’t Weiber say? And then to be so modest about any
one’s knowing it! Really, that’s perfectly fine of you! Shows so
much generosity and thoughtfulness, and at the same time such an
unostentatious sort of character!”
Fitzhugh wondered afterward if there was a touch of mockery in the
grave interest of her tone, but at the moment he felt that he was all
of that and more, and the feeling was agreeable.
“Don’t,” he said. “You praise me too much.” And he almost forgot, in
his satisfaction, the true history of that baby.
“Not a bit. I’d enjoy praising you more.” Fitzhugh jumped, for a
laugh came running over the edge of the sentence. “It’s nothing—only
a joke I thought of,” she went on quickly, and so easy was her
laughter always that he only smiled in approval. “I called on little
Marcus yesterday afternoon, and found him a cunning rat. Don’t you
want Mrs. Weiber to bring him up to see you some day?”
“No—Heavens, no!” said Fitzhugh promptly, in alarm, and again the
laughter bubbled over.
“You’re not half properly interested in him; you ought to be
trundling him about the Parade in the Weibers’s baby-carriage every
afternoon. You know you’re responsible for that child every minute he
is here—do you know that? You are. If he gets health and strength
out of his visit, it’s to your credit; but if he falls ill and
dies—that’s your fault, just the same.”
“Oh, don’t,” groaned Fitzhugh. “What a thing to say! Don’t say it.”
“Oh, I have to—it’s true,” Miss Duncan responded firmly. “He doesn’t
look strong. But it was very good of you to have him up, and I’m sure
I hope he won’t die or anything.”
Dancing eyes and white teeth joined in the smile that softened this
ominous last speech, and Fitzhugh swung away down the shaded country
street with a cold dislike of the innocent little Marcus in the
bottom of his heart, but a very warm feeling for the innocent-seeming
Miss Duncan filling all other space.
Neither Miss Duncan nor Wipes could persuade the cadet to see his
charge. There he drew the line. But the horrid fact of its presence
in the post weighed less and less upon him, and the daily accounts
from the girl and the soldier began even to amuse him. He was
planning how he could boast to the three lads of his skilfulness in
putting the affair through by his unaided intellect. It grew to be a
habit to expect, as the carpentered visage of Wipes appeared in his
doorway, the report of:
“F’r me to say from th’ missis, sorr, ’s how’s the kid’s hearty.”
A habit of a few days, for one morning there was silence, and Wipes’s
head wobbled solemnly. Fitzhugh did not pay much attention. Wipes’s
manner was not dramatic enough in its shading to convey a very
instant impression.
“Kid all right?” asked the boy cheerfully.
“F’r me to say from th’ missis, sorr, as how’s the kid’s awful sick.”
Fitzhugh dropped his book on the floor, and the front legs of his
chair came down with a crash.
“What the deuce do you mean, Wipes?”
“Croup, sorr. Crowed awful all last night. Throat’s all full up.
Ain’t no better th’s mornin’.”
“Have you had a doctor?” asked Fitzhugh, with the solicitude of a
fond parent.
And all that day as he went about his regulated succession of duties,
the thought went with him like a weight of cold lead of little
Marcus crowing mirthlessly on a sick-bed, and of Julia Duncan’s firm
dictum: “If he falls ill and dies that’s your fault.”
He had an engagement to walk with the girl in the afternoon, and he
kept the appointment with eagerness, but for the first time failed
to forget everything else in the charm of her presence. There was an
impressiveness about her manner.
“He’s a pretty ill baby.” Her lips closed tight and the bright head
nodded. “I was there this afternoon.”
But she would not discuss the situation with the miserable cadet, who
went back again and again from her sunshine to the cloud that hung
over him.
“Don’t talk any more about that wretched young coachman,” she
pleaded. “There are so many jolly things; what is the use of dwelling
on the bad ones?”
And Fitzhugh, for all his admiration, could not help wondering if she
were a little heartless. He had the latest Wipes’s bulletin before
he went to bed, and it was unfavorable. Little Marcus was distinctly
worse. The young man lay awake with pangs of remorse and fear of
retribution gnawing at him. When he slept, the haggard face of an
unknown child and its ghastly, hoarse crowing—Wipes’s word had taken
disagreeable hold on his imagination—haunted him. He waited for the
soldier with sick impatience, and the first glimpse of the man’s face
was enough.
“Wipes! Don’t tell me—” His voice failed.
“Kid’s dead, sorr,” was Wipes’s terse response, and Fitzhugh fell in
his chair as if struck there by a blow.
The worst had come, probably exposure, expulsion from the academy,
the shame and disappointment of his people, his career ruined before
its beginning, and, worst of all, a life lost by his silly play.
There seemed to be no crack in the blackness that descended upon him.
Wipes was vague and unsatisfactory about arrangements.
“F’r me t’ look afther th’ job to-day, sorr. Don’t think of ut till
t’morr’r,” was all he would say, and the boy was too sick at heart to
press the point.
It was all he could do to crawl about from one recitation, one drill
to another, and as to not thinking of it “till to-morrow,” as Wipes
suggested—he thought of nothing else. It was a Wednesday, and that
night he was to dine at the Emersons with Miss Duncan. Only one other
cadet was there, and while he sang rag-time songs with Mrs. Emerson,
Fitzhugh and the girl went outside, where the spring twilight was
dying across river and hills and filtering through the sweeping elms
which stand, like stately old officers, all along the gravelled
driveways.
Little Julia Duncan looked up at the tall cadet, his white face
towering above her grim and miserable in the dull light. “What is it?
You look desperately ill. You hardly spoke at the table. Is anything
wrong?”
“Wrong?” His voice was full of reproach. “Don’t you know that child
is dead—little Marcus?”
The girl dropped into a chair and put her head on her hands against
the piazza-railing. Her shoulders were shaking a little. That was
too much for Fitzhugh in his overwrought condition. He put his
hand tremblingly against the ribbons and lace on her shoulder and
it slipped down, past the short sleeve, over the warm arm, to her
fingers.
“Dear—don’t cry,” he said. “Are you crying for me?”
Swiftly her face lifted and a shock caught the boy as he saw the
blue-green eyes full of the well-known laughter. His hand left hers
with a start, and he drew himself up.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I made a great mistake. I thought you
were gentle—” The rush of his feelings drowned the sentence that
tried to be restrained. “I didn’t know before how cold-blooded a
girl could be,” he cried roughly. “I thought you everything that was
womanly. I gave you credit for being sorry for a chap in trouble.
But I was wrong. You’re no friend to me; you’re amused because
I’m wretched; you think it’s a joke that a poor little child has
died from my fault; I don’t believe you have any heart.” The boy’s
bitterly wounded feeling was in his shaking voice.
Then looking down at her, she lifted her face to his and he saw an
astonishing sight. The bright eyes, their mischievous dancing all
quiet, were filling slowly with tears.
“I’m sorry you think so badly of me,” she said, and her voice broke
in the words. Then: “I’m going to tell you—Jack may kill me, but
it has gone on long enough. I won’t have you tortured for Jack or
anybody. It’s all—one—big—lie!”
Fitzhugh gasped, shivered with hope. “Lie! Little Marcus isn’t dead?”
Then the laughter broke through the tears softly for a moment, and
her voice was sweet as a child’s as it trembled between the two.
“Dead, no! Nor alive either! He’s just as dead as he is alive. There
isn’t any little Marcus—there never was. It’s all a joke of those
wretched boys in the infirmary. They cooked it up among them there,
and Mr. Carruthers did the letter. Jack wrote me, and I coached
Wipes, and kept them posted every day. I thought it was so good
for Jack to be amused. But I didn’t know it would make you really
unhappy. They were going further, they were going to have a mock
funeral and make you come, but I told them I wouldn’t help in that.
And Jack said then I must keep still and not tell you. It was to be
to-morrow. Will you forgive me? Will you take back those bad names?”
I think Fitzhugh, the cadet, must have interrupted Miss Duncan
rudely then, for Captain Fitzhugh, the officer, stopped and laughed
and would not tell me what happened next.
The Empire State Express, leaving the shining Hudson forgotten in the
background, rolled into Albany as he finished the tale. He stood up
to put on his overcoat, but bent from his erect six feet in air to
stare outside, as the train stopped slowly.
“I should think you’d have gotten even with that girl,” I reflected
aloud, my mind still on the story.
Captain Fitzhugh smiled and nodded at a charming woman with beautiful
bright hair who looked up eagerly at the car windows.
“I did,” he said as he held out his hand to me for good-by. “I did. I
married her.”
Transcriber’s Notes
pg 67 Changed: You! Hoorray! Glory has come upon us
to: You! Hooray! Glory has come upon us
pg 261 Changed: though I can’t imgine
to: though I can’t imagine