Daisy
very often to go alone down the little path to the guard tents among
the crowd that twice a day poured out there from our hotel and met the
crowd that came up from Cozzens's hotel below.
So it was, one morning that I remember. Guardmounting was always late
enough to let one feel the sun's power; and it was a sultry morning,
this. We were in July now, and misty, vaporous clouds moved slowly
over the blue sky, seeming to intensify the heat of the unclouded
intervals. But wonderful sweet it was; and I under the shade of my
flat hat, with a little help from the foliage of a young tree, did not
mind it at all. Every bit of the scene was a pleasure to me; I missed
none of the details. The files of cadets in the camp alleys getting
their arms inspected; the white tents themselves, with curtains
tightly done up; here and there an officer crossing the camp ground
and stopping to speak to an orderly; then the coming up of the band,
the music, the marching out of the companies; the leisurely walk from
the camp of the officer in charge, drawing on his white gloves; his
stand and his attitude; and then the pretty business of the parade.
All under that July sky; all under that flicker of cloud and sun, and
the soft sweet breath of air that sometimes stole to us to relieve the
hot stillness; and all with that setting and background of cedars and
young foliage and bordering hills over which the cloud shadows swept.
Then came the mounting-guard business. By and by Preston came to me.
"Awfully hot, Daisy!" he said.
"Yes, you are out in it," I said, compassionately.
"What are _you_ out in it for?"
"Why, I like it," I said. "How come you to be one of the red sashes
this morning?"
"I have been an officer of the guard this last twenty-four hours."
"Since yesterday morning?"
"Yes."
"Do you like it, Preston?"
"_Like_ it!" he said. "Like guard duty! Why, Daisy, when a fellow has
left his shoe-string untied, or something or other like that, they put
him on extra guard duty to punish him."
"Did you ever do so, Preston?"
"Did I ever do so?" he repeated savagely. "Do you think I have been
raised like a Yankee, to take care of my shoes? That Blunt is just fit
to stand behind a counter and measure inches!"
I was very near laughing, but Preston was not in a mood to bear
laughing at.
"I don't think it is beneath a gentleman to keep his shoe-strings
tied," I said.
"A gentleman can't always think of everything!" he replied.
"Then you are glad you have only one year more at the Academy?"
"Of course I am glad! I'll never be under Yankee rule again; not if I
know it."
"Suppose they elect a Yankee President?" I said; but Preston's look
was so eager and so sharp at me that I was glad to cover my rash
suggestion under another subject as soon as possible.
"Are you going to be busy this afternoon?" I asked him.
"No, I reckon not."
"Suppose you come and go up to the fort with me?"
"What fort?"
"Fort Putnam. I have never been there yet."
"There is nothing on earth to go there for," said Preston, shrugging
his shoulders. "Just broil yourself in the sun, and get nothing for
it. It's an awful pull uphill; rough, and all that; and nothing at the
top but an old stone wall."
"But there is the view!" I said.
"You have got it down here--just as good. Just climb up the hotel
stairs fifty times without stopping, and then look out of the thing at
the top--and you have been to Fort Putnam."
"Why, I want you to go to the top of Crow's Nest," I said.
"Yes! I was ass enough to try that once," said Preston, "when I was
just come, and thought I must do everything; but if anybody wants to
insult me, let him just ask me to do it again!"
Preston's mood was unmanageable. I had never seen him so in old times.
I thought West Point did not agree with him. I listened to the band,
just then playing a fine air, and lamented privately to myself that
brass instruments should be so much more harmonious than human
tempers. Then the music ceased and the military movements drew my
attention again.
"They all walk like you," I observed carelessly, as I noticed a
measured step crossing the camp ground.
"Do they?" said Preston sneeringly. "I flatter myself I do not walk
like _all_ of them. If you notice more closely, Daisy, you will see a
difference. You can tell a Southerner, on foot or on horseback, from
the sons of tailors and farmers--strange if you couldn't!"
"I think you are unjust, Preston," I said. "You should not talk so.
Major Blunt walks as well and stands much better than any officer I
have seen; and he is from Vermont; and Capt. Percival is from South
Carolina, and Mr. Hunter is from Virginia, and Col. Forsyth is from
Georgia. They are all of them less graceful than Major Blunt."
"What do you think of Dr. Sandford?" said Preston in the same tone; but
before I could answer I heard a call of "Gary!--Gary!" I looked round.
In the midst of the ranks of spectators to our left stood a cadet, my
friend of the omnibus. He was looking impatiently our way, and again
exclaimed in a sort of suppressed shout--"Gary!" Preston heard him that
time; started from my side, and placed himself immediately beside his
summoner, in front of the guard tents and spectators. The two were in
line, two or three yards separating them, and both facing towards a party
drawn up at some little distance on the camp ground, which I believe were
the relieving guard. I moved my own position to a place immediately
behind them, where I spied an empty camp-stool, and watched the two with
curious eyes. Uniforms, and military conformities generally, are queer
things if you take the right point of view. Here were these two, a pair,
and not a pair. The grey coat and the white pantaloons (they had all gone
into white now), the little soldier's cap, were a counterpart in each of
the other; the two even stood on the ground as if they were bound to be
patterns each of the other; and when my acquaintance raised his arms and
folded them after the most approved fashion, to my great amusement
Preston's arms copied the movement: and they stood like two brother
statues still, from their heels to their cap rims. Except when once the
right arm of my unknown friend was unbent to give a military sign, in
answer to some demand or address from somebody in front of him which I
did not hear. Yet as I watched, I began to discern how individual my two
statues really were. I could not see faces, of course. But the grey coat
on the one looked as if its shoulders had been more carefully brushed
than had been the case with the other; the spotless pantaloons, which
seemed to be just out of the laundress's basket, as I suppose they were,
sat with a trimmer perfection in one case than in the other. Preston's
pocket gaped, and was, I noticed, a little bit ripped; and when my eye
got down to the shoes, his had not the black gloss of his companion's.
With that one there was not, I think, a thread awry. And then, there was
a certain relaxation in the lines of Preston's figure impossible to
describe, stiff and motionless though he was; something which prepared
one for a lax and careless movement when he moved. Perhaps this was fancy
and only arose from my knowledge of the fact; but with the other no such
fancy was possible. Still, but alert; motionless, but full of vigour; I
expected what came; firm, quick, and easy action, as soon as he should
cease to be a statue.
So much to a back view of character; which engrossed me till my two
statues went away.
A little while after Preston came. "Are you here yet?" he said.
"Don't you like to have me here?"
"It's hot. And it is very stupid for you, I should think. Where is
Mrs. Sandford?"
"She thinks as you do, that it is stupid."
"You ought not to be here without some one."
"Why not? What cadet was that who called you, Preston?"
"Called me? Nobody called me."
"Yes he did. When you were sitting with me. Who was it?"
"I don't know!" said Preston. "Good-bye. I shall be busy for a day or
two."
"Then you cannot go to Fort Putnam this afternoon?"
"Fort Putnam? I should think not. It will be broiling to-day."
And he left me. Things had gone wrong with Preston lately, I thought.
Before I had made up my mind to move, two other cadets came before me.
One of them Mrs. Sandford knew, and I slightly.
"Miss Randolph, my friend Mr. Thorold has begged me to introduce him
to you."
It was _my_ friend of the omnibus. I think we liked each other at this
very first moment. I looked up at a manly, well-featured face, just
then lighted with a little smile of deference and recognition; but
permanently lighted with the brightest and quickest hazel eyes that I
ever saw. Something about the face pleased me on the instant. I
believe it was the frankness.
"I have to apologize for my rudeness, in calling a gentleman away from
you, Miss Randolph, in a very unceremonious manner, a little while
ago."
"Oh, I know," I said. "I saw what you did with him."
"Did I do anything with him?"
"Only called him to his duty, I suppose."
"Precisely. He was very excusable for forgetting it; but it might have
been inconvenient."
"Do you think it is ever excusable to forget duty?" I asked; and I was
rewarded with a swift flash of fun in the hazel eyes, that came and
went like forked lightning.
"It is not easily pardoned here," he answered.
"People don't make allowances?"
"Not officers," he said, with a smile. "Soldiers lose the character of
men, when on duty; they are only reckoned machines."
"You do not mean that exactly, I suppose."
"Indeed I do!" he said, with another slighter coruscation.
"Intelligent machines, of course, and with no more latitude of action.
You would not like that life?"
"I should think you would not."
"Ah, but we hope to rise to the management of the machines, some day."
I thought I saw in his face that he did. I remarked that I thought the
management of machines could not be very pleasant.
"Why not?"
"It is degrading to the machines--and so, I should think, it would not
be very elevating to those that make them machines."
"That is exactly the use they propose them to serve, though," he said,
looking amused; "the elevation of themselves."
"I know," I said, thinking that the end was ignoble too.
"You do not approve it?" he said.
I felt those brilliant eyes dancing all over me and, I fancied, over
my thoughts too. I felt a little shy of going on to explain myself to
one whom I knew so little. He turned the conversation, by asking me if
I had seen all the lions yet.
I said I supposed not.
"Have you been up to the old fort?"
"I want to go there," I said; "but somebody told me to-day, there was
nothing worth going for."
"Has his report taken away your desire to make the trial?"
"No, for I do not believe he is right."
"Might I offer myself as a guide? I can be disengaged this afternoon;
and I know all the ways to the fort. It would give me great pleasure."
I felt it would give me great pleasure too, and so I told him. We
arranged for the hour, and Mr. Thorold hastened away.
CHAPTER XV.
FORT PUTNAM.
"I am going to Fort Putnam this afternoon, with Mr. Thorold," I
announced to Mrs. Sandford, after dinner.
"Who is Mr. Thorold?"
"One of the cadets."
"One of the cadets! So it has got hold of you at last, Daisy!"
"What, Mrs. Sandford?"
"But Fort Putnam? My dearest child, it is very hot!"
"Oh, yes, ma'am--I don't mind it."
"Well, I am very glad, if you don't," said Mrs. Sandford. "And I am
very glad Grant has taken himself off to the White Lakes. He gave
nobody else any chance. It will do you a world of good."
"What will?" I asked, wondering.
"Amusement, dear--amusement. Something a great deal better than