That, as long as I choose, I am perfectly free.
For this is a sort of engagement, you see,
That is binding on you, but not binding on me. —Nothing to Wear.
It is impossible to put in words what furlough means to a two-years-from-home boy. For "boy" he is still, to the dear home group, as well as in West Point pranks and frolics. But from the time the Hundredth Night is over there is a steadily growing pressure of excitement. It is not long till, for themselves, the men begin to count the hours.
A great deal of outdoor work comes with the softening skies and freshening earth. Company drills, dress parades, make the Point all alive again, and the cadets full of growls. Not all the prospective laurels for perfect marching can make the means to that end a pleasure. They have no time for it, they say; time is so precious, when you do not want to spend it in some particular way. But rides on the road are good, after the winter drills in the Hall; and Saturday afternoons just perfect—except on the area. Springing grass, opening flowers, scented air, and in the distance—June.
For at West Point June has a gift for everyone. In the first class, graduation; to the old second class, first-class camp and privileges; for the old third class, furlough. While the plebs become yearlings, and call themselves the happiest of all.
As the time comes on, all sorts of tradesmen invade the Point; men with samples of cloth for uniforms and for "cits"; with sashes, swords, hats, gloves, helmets, and handbags; with trunks, class albums, studs, canes, and umbrellas. Each Saturday afternoon is weighted with the most perplexed sort of shopping. For when you have lived two years, or four years, in a forage cap, it takes a good deal of study to know whether you will be most Adonis-like in a stove-pipe, or a wide-awake, or a plain straw hat. The cut of coats, the colour of trousers, cause deep debate, as also the probable worth of one tradesman's word as against another's.
With first-class questions Magnus had nothing this year to do, but over one furlough point he had a sharp fight with himself. The "cit" clothes in which he had come as a candidate were odious to him on that very account. All the same, one way to save money was to wear them home. So Cadet Kindred braced up mentally, and said that was just what he would do. And then, to put an extra touch to his goodness, he thought he would try them on and see how ugly they were; break it to himself gently, and by degrees, before he walked out through the sallyport in open day.
It was a splendid plan. For lo and behold! under the hard, despised West Point training, Mr. Kindred had grown and filled out and developed until he could not possibly wear those old clothes.
Magnus tossed the coat up to the ceiling, regardless of what might happen to the plaster, and joined the shopping band that very day.
It was delightful now, in the soft spring weather, to go out at every release from quarters, for a stroll round the plain, or down by the river. How lovely Flirtation was! An army of "Dutchman's breeches" held all the best posts among the rocks by the wayside, scaling the cliffs even down by the landing. And in the deeper shade north of Battery Knox, whole beds of dog-tooth violets filled the spots of damper ground, lifting their elegant heads like the highbred beauties that they are.
Among the tougher growths, iron wood and black birch were charming with their tresses, and the young tufts of maple and oak and hickory leaves were a joy to see. Shad blossoms and dogwood "picked out" the green; from some far-down hidden corner the spice bush spiced the air. Saxifrage spread whole sheets of bloom; and Lowell's "dear common flower" gleamed everywhere.
And then the girls came. Some "opening buds" that had come fresh from Paris; and some early birds, besides robins and song sparrows. The company drills had lookers-on; the walks round Flirtation were not always games of solitaire.
Among the visitors who appeared thus early, was a certain Mrs. Granton, with two girls of her own, and two belonging to other people—Miss Bee and Miss Clive. The Granton girls were just average damsels, but, of course, having a gay brother in the first class, they went everywhere, and knew everybody. Miss Clive was an heiress and played ditto, ditto upon yet stronger ground.
In the wake of these triumphant young ladies came Miss Bee with just funds enough to pay her own bills, but no particular store of either wealth or beauty.
She was a sensible girl, had a sensible little face, with pleasant eyes and a merry mouth, but had not knowledge to make the most of herself in the way some others did; nor, it may be, the inclination. No poppy leaves stained her cheeks, no powder whitened her forehead, no foreign coils of hair swelled out the moderate portion which was of home growth. And no extra-high heels put her further up in the world than she was by nature. Her shoes were "common sense"; her gloves were large enough to button all the way; her parasol was brown, and she had a trick of saying nothing she did not mean.
No girl who behaves herself will ever be slighted at West Point; cadets are too courteous and too chivalrous as well. But in view of all I have told of Miss Bee, you will easily guess that her place in the public interest was small. Everyone was polite to her, but no one missed her, or looked for her, or wondered where she was. Cadets never scowled at each other for her sake; and pretty girls never cared what she had on. Yet perhaps among them all there was not one who tasted every crumb of pleasure with such keen relish as Miss Bee. She had had so little of it in her life, poor child! This was her first real outing. No wonder West Point was fairyland, and every cadet a born prince in disguise.
At first, indeed, she was terribly afraid of them; conscious, perhaps, of her own lack of "fetching" qualities, but by degrees that changed a little. The innocent colour started to her cheeks as readily as ever, when some grey uniform came up with:
"Good-evening, Miss Bee. How did you enjoy the Light Battery this morning?"
But when none of them came, when they were all swept away in the gay whirl of beauty and fashion, and she sat solitary with Mrs. Granton, this was not quite so easy to bear, Mabel found, as at first. And many a brave struggle for victory went on under the old trees before parade, and Saturday afternoons at the Hotel, and in her own room. Nobody guessed it, and she never told.
It was no great wonder if, to this rather dull young life, thus suddenly set down at the edge of the bright whirl, the hero of all romance, past, present, and future, should array himself in bell buttons and grey dress coat. It was also quite natural that this hazy individual should develop into the face and figure of Cadet Charlemagne Kindred, with no fault on his part, and no special folly on hers. In truth, it was some time before the child picked up a dictionary of herself, with definitions.
But Magnus was undoubtedly one of the handsomest men there, with keen eyes that could be wondrously soft upon occasion, a winning smile, and a laugh that was refined and pure as well as gay. And then, as may happen, his good intentions led him perilously far. He thought the girl rather neglected by her own party, and so took special pains to see and to speak to her whenever she was about. He asked her for a walk, when there was danger of her being left behind; asked her opinion, right over the head of Miss Dashaway, and (I shall have to confess it) enjoyed the quick flutter of colour that lit up her face whenever he came near. For Magnus had no thought of risk in the matter; he was far too much of a gentleman—too much of a man—to try to draw her on for his own amusement. He just meant to be kind to her, though he did pick up a little pleasure for himself as he went along. Now and then he took refuge with her when other girls bored him; made her a "previous" against Miss Flirt's advances, and never noticed that all the while he was drinking in silent flattery by the cupful; getting his own mind so befogged, indeed, that he could not see how swiftly and surely one poor little craft was heading for a very dangerous coast.
Cadet Kindred was not a vain fellow, but what man does not feel the bewitchment of having eyes watch for him and look up to him, even though he be too careless of them to know their colour? What man does not like to have his words counted and treasured as if they held the distilled wisdom of the sages and the ages? And Magnus was also minus a dictionary, and did not know how to spell things one bit. The girl must have a good time, he told himself, she could not be left riding at anchor while all the rest set sail, and what might happen if he too often played pilot, to that he never gave a thought. All that was in the realm of impossibility, in this connection. Wise men and poor girls.
It looked so impossible to other eyes, and the girl kept her own counsel so well that it drew little notice. Rig did once or twice ask Magnus if he was getting rattled with that little Bee girl, and some others remarked that Kin was practising how to flirt when the time came; but such words were empty air to Magnus. It was well for all parties that June stepped in, with its absorbing demands.
There were plenty of men who did more flirting and frolicking now than ever, but not so Magnus Kindred. Everything dropped out of his life but home and furlough. Each night he wrote to his mother about three lines, telling her what the "Exam" had done with him that day, and in all the other between-times he was either freshening up his knowledge of some hard points of study, or he was taking long walks with June, and June only, to clear his brain. If he heard voices, or caught a glimpse of grey coats or red parasols, Magnus sheered off, scaling the rocks or scrambling down the cliffs to some breakneck spot, quite beyond reach for any cadet who had girls in tow. There he would lie on the moss and listen to the river, or the bell notes of the thrush; listen without hearing, as he planned his journey home. He would take such a train, and make such a connection, and jump off at the old station at just such a time. He would not tell them quite when to expect him, because they would be sure to come to meet him, and some of them would cry—right there before everybody. And it was a bother to attend to your luggage with three girls round your neck. But then Magnus laughed and coloured too. There could hardly be three—yet somehow two seemed even more objectionable. And still if he sent no word, and they did not meet him, there was a good half hour lost from that end of his furlough.
So he argued it, back and forth. And all the while, poor little Miss Bee was weeping secret tears over the seeming defection of her knight. She must have displeased him somehow.
"My sisters can hardly wait until I get home!" said Mr. Randolph one night.
"There's another man's sister can hardly wait until I do," said Clive.