Captain Macklin: His Memoirs Part 23

I can remember my bewilderment that first evening as I was relating the story of the duel, and she corrected me.

"Weren't you much nearer?" she asked. "You fired at twenty paces."

"So we did," I cried, "but how could you know that?"

"Mr. Lowell told us," she said.

"Lowell!" I shouted. "Has Lowell been here?"

"Yes, he brought us your sword," Beatrice answered. "Didn't you see where we placed it?" and she rose rather quickly, and stood with her face toward the fireplace, where, sure enough, my sword was hanging above the mantel.

"Oh yes," said Aunt Mary, "Mr. Lowell has been very kind. He has come out often to ask for news of you. He is at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. We like him so much," she added.

"Like him!" I echoed. "I should think you would! Isn't that bully,"

I cried, "to think of his being so near me, and that he's a friend of yours already. We must have him out to-morrow. Isn't he fine, Beatrice?"

She had taken down the sword, and was standing holding it out to me.

"Yes, he is," she said, "and he is very fond of you, too, Royal. I don't believe you've got a better friend."

Attractive as the prodigal son may seem at first, he soon becomes a nuisance. Even Oth.e.l.lo when he began to tell over his stories for the second time must have been something of a bore. And when Aunt Mary gave me roast beef for dinner two nights in succession, and after dinner Beatrice picked up "Lorna Doone" and retired to a corner, I knew that I had had my day.

The next morning at breakfast, in a tone of gentle reproach, I announced that I was going out into the cold world, as represented by New York City, to look for a job. I had no idea of doing anything of the sort.

I only threw out the suggestion tentatively, and I was exceedingly disgusted when they caught up my plan with such enthusiasm and alacrity, that I was forced to go on with it. I could not see why it was necessary for me to work. I had two thousand dollars a year my grandfather had left me, and my idea of seeking for a job, was to look for it leisurely, and with caution. But the family seemed to think that, before the winter set in, I should take any chance that offered, and, as they expressed it, settle down.

None of us had any very definite ideas as to what I ought to do, or even that there was anything I could do. Lowell, who is so much with us now, that I treat him like one of the family, argued that to business men my strongest recommendation would be my knowledge of languages. He said I ought to try for a clerkship in some firm where I could handle the foreign correspondence. His even suggesting such work annoyed me extremely. I told him that, on the contrary, my strongest card was my experience in active campaigning, backed by my thorough military education, and my ability to command men. He said unfeelingly, that you must first catch your men, and that in down-town business circles a military education counted for no more than a college-course in football.

"You good people don't seem to understand," I explained (we were holding a family council on my case at the time); "I have no desire to move in down-town business circles. I hate business circles."

"Well, you must live, Royal," Aunt Mary said. "You have not enough money to be a gentleman of leisure."

"Royal wouldn't be content without some kind of work," said Beatrice.

"No, he can't persuade us he's not ambitious!" Lowell added. "You mean to make something of yourself, you know you do, and you can't begin too early."

Since Lowell has been promoted to the ward-room, he talks just like a grandfather.

"Young man," I said, "I've seen the day when you were an ensign, and I was a Minister of War, and you had to click your heels if you came within thirty feet of my distinguished person. Of course, I'm ambitious, and the best proof of it is, that I don't want to sit in a bird-cage all my life, counting other people's money."

Aunt Mary looked troubled, and shook her head at me.

"Well, Royal," she remonstrated, "you've got very little of your own to count, and some day you'll want to marry, and then you'll be sorry."

I don't know why Aunt Mary's remark should have affected anyone except myself, but it seemed to take all the life out of the discussion, and Beatrice remembered she had some letters to write, and Lowell said he must go back to the Navy Yard, although when he arrived he told us he had fixed it with another man to stand his watch. The reason I was disturbed was because, when Aunt Mary spoke, it made me wonder if she were not thinking of Beatrice. One day just after I arrived from Panama, when we were alone, she said that while I was gone she had been in fear she might die before I came back, and that Beatrice would be left alone.

I laughed at her and told her she would live a hundred years, and added, not meaning anything in particular, "And she'll not be alone. I'll be here."

Then Aunt Mary looked at me very sadly, and said: "Royal, I could die so contentedly if I thought you two were happy." She waited, as though she expected me to make some reply, but I couldn't think of anything to say, and so just looked solemn, then she changed the subject by asking: "Royal, have you noticed that Lieutenant Lowell admires Beatrice very much?" And I said, "Of course he does. If he didn't, I'd punch his head." At which she again looked at me in such a wistful, pained way, smiling so sadly, as though for some reason she were sorry for me.

They all seemed to agree that I had had my fling, and should, as they persisted in calling it, "settle down." A most odious phrase. They were two to one against me, and when one finished another took it up. So that at last I ceased arguing and allowed myself to be bullied into looking for a position.

But before surrendering myself to the downtown business circles I made one last effort to remain free.

In Honduras, Laguerre had told me that a letter to the Credit Lyonnais in Paris would always find him. I knew that since his arrival at San Francisco he had had plenty of time to reach Paris, and that if he were there now he must know whether there is anything in this talk of a French expedition against the Chinese in Tonkin. Also whether the Mahdi really means to make trouble for the Khedive in the Soudan. Laguerre was in the Egyptian army for three years, and knows Baker Pasha well. I was sure that if there was going to be trouble, either in China or Egypt, he could not keep out of it.

So I cabled him to the Credit Lyonnais, "Are you well? If going any more campaigns, please take me." I waited three restless weeks for an answer, and then, as no answer came, I put it all behind me, and hung my old, torn uniform where I would not see it, and hid the presentation-sword behind the eight-day clock in the library.

Beatrice raised her eyes from her book and watched me.

"Why?" she asked.

"It hurts me," I said.

She put down her book, and for a long time looked at me without speaking.

"I did not know you disliked it as much as that," she said. "I wonder if we are wrong. And yet," she added, smiling, "it does not seem a great sacrifice; to have work to do, to live at home, and in such a dear, old home as this, near a big city, and with the river in front and the country all about you. It seems better than dying of wounds in a swamp, or of fever in a hospital."

"I haven't complained. I'm taking my medicine," I answered. "I know you all wouldn't ask it of me, if you didn't think it was for my good."

I had seated myself in front of the wood fire opposite her, and was turning the chain she gave me round and round my wrist. I slipped it off, and showed it to her as it hung from my fingers, shining in the firelight.

"And yet," I said, "it was fine being your Knight-Errant, and taking risks for your sake, and having only this to keep me straight." I cannot see why saying just that should have disturbed her, but certainly my words, or the sight of the chain, had a most curious effect. It is absurd, but I could almost swear that she looked frightened. She flushed, and her eyes were suddenly filled with tears. I was greatly embarra.s.sed. Why should she be afraid of me? I was too much upset to ask her what was wrong, so I went on hastily: "But now I'll have you always with me, to keep me straight," I said.

She laughed at that, a tremulous little laugh, and said: "And so you won't want it any more, will you?"

"Won't want it," I protested gallantly. "I'd like to see anyone make me give it up."

"You'd give it up to me, wouldn't you?" she asked gently. "It looks--"

she added, and stopped.

"I see," I exclaimed. "Looks like a pose, sort of effeminate, a man's wearing a bracelet. Is that what you think?"

She laughed again, but this time quite differently. She seemed greatly relieved.

"Perhaps that's it," she said. "Give it me, Royal. You'll never need any woman's trinkets to keep you straight."

I weighed the gold links in the hollow of my palm.

"Do you really want it?" I asked. She raised her eyes eagerly. "If you don't mind," she said.

I dropped the chain into her hand, but as I turned toward the fire, I could not help a little sigh. She heard me, and leaned forward. I could just see her sweet, troubled face in the firelight. "But I mean to return it you, Royal," she said, "some day, when--when you go out again to fight wind-mills."

"That's safe!" I returned, roughly. "You know that time will never come. The three of you together have fixed that. I'm no longer a knight-errant. I'm a business-man now. I'm not to remember I ever was a knight-errant. I must even give up my Order of the Golden Chain, because it's too romantic, because it might remind me that somewhere in this world there is romance, and adventure, and fighting. And it wouldn't do.

You can't have romance around a business office. Some day, when I was trying to add up my sums, I might see it on my wrist, and forget where I was. I might remember the days when it shone in the light of a camp-fire, when I used to sleep on the ground with my arm under my head, and it was the last thing I saw, when it seemed like your fingers on my wrist holding me back, or urging me forward. Business circles would not allow that. They'd put up a sign, 'Canva.s.sers, pedlers, and Romance not admitted.'"

The first time I applied for a job I was unsuccessful. The man I went to see had been an instructor at Harvard when my uncle was professor there, and Aunt Mary said he had been a great friend of Professor Endicott's.

One day in the laboratory the man discovered something, and had it patented. It brought him a fortune, and he was now president of a company which manufactured it, and with branches all over the world.

Aunt Mary wrote him a personal letter about me, in the hope that he might put me in charge of the foreign correspondence.

He kept me waiting outside his office-door for one full hour. During the first half-hour I was angry, but the second half-hour I enjoyed exceedingly. By that time the situation appealed to my sense of humor.