The Militants Part 7

"What?" His tone was incredulous.

"Oh; don't take me so seriously," said the girl, impatiently. "It's only that I can't sympathize with your multimillionaire, who loses a little of his heaps of money, against some poor soul to whom that little may mean life or death--life or death, maybe, for his nearest and dearest.

Mr. Litterny has had a small loss, which he won't feel in a year from now. The thief, the rascal, the scoundrel, as you call him so fluently, has escaped for now, perhaps, with his ill-gotten gains, but he is a hunted thing, living with a black terror of being found out--a terror which clutches him when he prays and when he dances. It's the thief I'm sorry for--I'm sorry for him--I'm sorry for him." Her voice was agitated and uneven beyond what seemed reasonable.

"'The way of the transgressor is hard,'" Norman North said, slowly, and looked across the shifting sand-stretch to the inevitable sea, and spoke the words pitilessly, as if an inevitable law spoke through him.

They cut into the girl's soul. A quick gasp of pain broke from her, and the man turned and saw her face and sprang to his feet.

"Come," he said,--"come home," and held out his hands.

She let him take hers, and he lifted her lightly, and did not let her hands go. For a second they stood, and into the silence a deep boom of the water against the beach thundered and died away. He drew the hands slowly toward him till he held them against him. There seemed not to be any need for words.

Half an hour later, as they walked back through the sweet loneliness of Springfield Avenue, North said: "You've forgotten something. You've forgotten that this is the day you were to tell me why you had the bad manners to laugh at me before you knew me. Now that we are engaged it's your duty to tell me if I'm ridiculous."

There was none of the responsive, soft laughter he expected. "We're not engaged--we can't be engaged," she threw back, impetuously, and as he looked at her there was suffering in her face.

"What do you mean? You told me you loved me." His voice was full of its curious mixture of gentleness and sternness, and she shrank visibly from the sternness.

"Don't be hard on me," she begged, like a frightened child, and he caught her hand with a quick exclamation. "I'll tell you--everything.

Not only that little thing about my laughing, but--but more--everything.

Why I cannot be engaged to you. I must tell you--I know it--but, oh! not to-day--not for a little while! Let me have this little time to be happy. You sail a week from to-day. I'll write it all for you, and you can read it on the way to New York. That will do--won't that do?" she pleaded.

North took both her hands in a hard grasp and searched her face and her eyes--eyes clear and sweet, though filled with misery. "Yes, that will do," he said. "It's all nonsense that you can't be engaged to me. You are engaged to me, and you are going to marry me. If you love me--and you say you do,--there's nothing I'll let interfere. Nothing--absolutely nothing." There was little of the saint in his look now; it was filled with human love and masterful determination, and in his eyes smouldered a recklessness, a will to have his way, that was no angel, but all man.

A week later Norman North sailed to New York, and in his pocket was a letter which was not to be read till Bermuda was out of sight. When the coral reef was pa.s.sed, when the fairy blue of the island waters had changed to the dark swell of the Atlantic, he slipped the bolt in the door of his cabin and took out the letter.

"I laughed because you were so wonderfully two men in one," it began, "I was in the church at St. George's the day when you sent the verger away and went into the pulpit and said parts of the service. I could not tell you this before because it came so close to the other thing which I must tell you now; because I sat trembling before you that day, hidden in the shadow of a gallery, knowing myself a criminal, while you stood above me like a pitiless judge and rolled out sentences that were bolts of fire emptied on my soul. The next morning I heard you reciting Limericks. Are you surprised that I laughed when the contrast struck me? Even then I wondered which was the real of you, the saint or the man,--which would win if it came to a desperate fight. The fight is coming, Norman.

"That's all a preamble. Here is what you must know: I am the thief who stole Mr. Litterny's diamonds."

The letter fell, and the man caught at it as it fell. His hand shook, but he laughed aloud.

"It is a joke," he said, in a queer, dry voice. "A wretched joke. How can she?" And he read on:

"You won't believe this at first; you will think I am making a poor joke; but you will have to believe it in the end. I will try to put the case before you as an outside person would put it, without softening or condoning. My mother was very ill; the specialist, to pay whom we had sold her last jewel, said that she would die if she were not taken south; we had no money to take her south. That night my brother lost his self-control and raved about breaking into a shop and stealing diamonds, to get money to save her life. That put the thought into my mind, and I made a plan. Randolph, my brother, is a clever amateur actor, and the rich Burr Claflin is our distant cousin. We both know him fairly well, and it was easy enough for Randolph to copy his mannerisms.

We knew also, of course, more or less, his way of living, and that it would not be out of drawing that he should send up diamonds to his wife unexpectedly. I planned it all, and I made Randolph do it. I have always been able to influence him to what I pleased. The sin is all mine, not his. We had been selling my mother's jewels little by little for several years, so we had no difficulty in getting rid of the stones, which Randolph took from their settings and sold to different dealers. My mother knows nothing of where the money came from. We are living in Bermuda now, in comfort and luxury, I as well as she, on the profits of my thievery. I am not sorry. It has wrecked life, perhaps eternity, for me, but I would do it again to save my mother.

"I put this confession into your hands to do with, as far as I am concerned, what you like. If the saint in you believes that I ought to be sent to jail, take this to Mr. Litterny and have him send me to jail. But you shan't touch Randolph--you are not free there. It was I who did it--he was my tool,--any one will tell you I have the stronger will. You shall not hurt Randolph--that is barred.

"You see now why I couldn't be engaged to you--you wouldn't want to marry a thief, would you, Norman? I can never make rest.i.tution, you know, for the money will be mostly gone before we get home, and there is no more to come. You could not, either, for you said that you had little beyond your salary. We could never make it good to Mr. Litterny, even if you wanted to marry me after this. Mr. Litterny is your best friend; you are bound to him by a thousand ties of grat.i.tude and affection. You can't marry a thief who has robbed him of five thousand dollars, and never tell him, and go on taking his gifts. That is the way the saint will look at it--the saint who thundered awful warnings at me in the little church at St. George's. But even that day there was something gentler than the dreadful holiness of you. Do you remember how you pleaded, begged as if of your father, for your brothers and sisters?

'Deal not with us according to our sins, neither reward us according to our iniquities,' you said. Do you remember? As you said that to G.o.d, I say it to you, I love you. I leave my fate at your mercy. But don't forget that you yourself begged that, with your hands stretched out to heaven, as I stretch my hands to you, Norman, Norman--'Deal not with me according to my sins, neither reward me according to my iniquities.'"

The noises of a ship moving across a quiet ocean went on steadily. Many feet tramped back and forth on the deck, and cheerful voices and laughter floated through the skylight, and down below a man knelt in a narrow cabin with his head buried in his arms, motionless.

CROWNED WITH GLORY AND HONOR

Mists blew about the mountains across the river, and over West Point hung a raw fog. Some of the officers who stood with bared heads by the heap of earth and the hole in the ground shivered a little. The young Chaplain read, solemnly, the solemn and grand words of the service, and the evenness of his voice was unnatural enough to show deep feeling. He remembered how, a year before, he had seen the hero of this scene playing football on just such a day, tumbling about and shouting, his hair wild and matted and his face filled with fresh color. Such a mere boy he was, concerned over the question as to where he could hide his contraband dress boots, excited by an invitation to dine out Sat.u.r.day night. The dear young chap! There were tears in the Chaplain's eyes as he thought of little courtesies to himself, of little generosities to other cadets, of a manly and honest heart shown everywhere that character may show in the guarded life of the nation's schoolboys.

The sympathetic, ringing voice stopped, and he watched the quick, dreadful, necessary work of the men at the grave, and then his sad eyes wandered pitifully over the rows of boyish faces where the cadets stood.

Just such a child as those, thought the Chaplain--himself but a few years older--no history; no life, as we know life; no love, and what was life without--you may see that the Chaplain was young; the poor boy was taken from these quiet ways and sent direct on the fire-lit stage of history, and in the turn, behold! he was a hero. The white-robed Chaplain thrilled and his dark eyes flashed. He seemed to see that day; he would give half his life to have seen it--this boy had given all of his. The boy was wounded early, and as the bullets poured death down the hill he crept up it, on hands and knees, leading his men. The strong life in him lasted till he reached the top, and then the last of it pulled him to his feet and he stood and waved and cheered--and fell. But he went up San Juan Hill. After all, he lived. He missed fifty years, perhaps, but he had Santiago. The flag wrapped him, he was the honored dead of the nation. G.o.d keep him! The Chaplain turned with a swing and raised his prayer-book to read the committal. The long black box--the boy was very tall--was being lowered gently, tenderly. Suddenly the heroic vision of Santiago vanished and he seemed to see again the rumpled head and the alert, eager, rosy face of the boy playing football--the head that lay there! An iron grip caught his throat, and if a sound had come it would have been a sob. Poor little boy! Poor little hero! To exchange all life's sweetness for that fiery glory! Not to have known the meaning of living--of loving--of being loved!

The beautiful, tender voice rang out again so that each one heard it to the farthest limit of the great crowd--"We therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; looking for the general resurrection in the last day, and the life of the world to come."

An hour later the boy's mother sat in her room at the hotel and opened a tin box of letters, found with his traps, and given her with the rest.

She had planned it for this time and had left the box unopened.

To-morrow she must take up life and try to carry it, with the boy gone, but to-day she must and would be what is called morbid. She looked over the bend in the river to the white-dotted cemetery--she could tell where lay the new mound, flower-covered, above his yellow head. She looked away quickly and bent over the box in her lap and turned the key. Her own handwriting met her eyes first; all her letters for six months back were there, scattered loosely about the box. She gathered them up, slipping them through her fingers to be sure of the writing. Letter after letter, all hers.

"They were his love-letters," she said to herself. "He never had any others, dear little boy--my dear little boy!"

Underneath were more letters, a package first; quite a lot of them, thirty, fifty--it was hard to guess--held together by a rubber strap.

The strap broke as she drew out the first envelope and they fell all about her, some on the floor, but she did not notice it, for the address was in a feminine writing that had a vague familiarity. She stopped a moment, with the envelope in one hand and the fingers of the other hand on the folded paper inside. It felt like a dishonorable thing to do--like prying into the boy's secrets, forcing his confidence; and she had never done that. Yet some one must know whether these papers of his should be burned or kept, and who was there but herself? She drew out the letter. It began "My dearest." The boy's mother stopped short and drew a trembling breath, with a sharp, jealous pain. She had not known.

Then she lifted her head and saw the dots of white on the green earth across the bay and her heart grew soft for that other woman to whom he had been "dearest" too, who must suffer this sorrow of losing him too.

But she could not read her letters, she must send them, take them to her, and tell her that his mother had held them sacred. She turned to the signature.

"And so you must believe, darling, that I am and always will be--always, always, with love and kisses, your own dear, little 'Good Queen Bess.'"

It was not the sort of an ending to a letter she would have expected from the girl he loved, for the boy, though most undemonstrative, had been intense and taken his affections seriously always. But one can never tell, and the girl was probably quite young. But who was she? The signature gave no clew; the date was two years before, and from New York--sufficiently vague! She would have to read until she found the thread, and as she read the wonder grew that so flimsy a personality could have held her boy. One letter, two, three, six, and yet no sign to identify the writer. She wrote first from New York on the point of starting for a long stay abroad, and the other letters were all from different places on the other side. Once in awhile a familiar name cropped up, but never to give any clew. There were plenty of people whom she called by their Christian names, but that helped nothing. And often she referred to their engagement--to their marriage to come. It was hard for the boy's mother, who believed she had had his confidence. But there was one letter from Vienna that made her lighter-hearted as to that.

"My dear sweet darling," it began, "I haven't written you very often from here, but then I don't believe you know the difference, for you never scold at all, even if I'm ever so long in writing. And as for you, you rascal, you write less and less, and shorter and shorter. If I didn't know for certain--but then, of course, you love me? Don't you, you dearest boy? Of course you do, and who wouldn't? Now don't think I'm really so conceited as that, for I only mean it in joke, but in earnest, I might think it if I let myself, for they make such a fuss over me here--you never saw anything like it! The Prince von H---- told Mamma yesterday I was the prettiest girl who had been here in ten years--what do you think of that, sir? The officers are as thick as bees wherever I go, and I ride with them and dance with them and am having just the loveliest time! You don't mind that, do you, darling, even if we are engaged? Oh, about telling your mother--no, sir, you just cannot! You've begged me all along to do that, but you might as well stop, for I won't. You write more about that than anything else, it seems to me, and I'll believe soon you are more in love with your mother than with me. So take care! Remember, you promised that night at the hop at West Point--what centuries ago it seems, and it was a year and a half!--that you would not tell a living soul, not even your mother, until I said so.

You see, it might get out and--oh, what's the use of fussing? It might spoil all my good time, and though I'm just as devoted as ever, and as much in love, you big, handsome thing--yes, just exactly!--still, I want to have a good time. Why shouldn't I? As the Prince would say, I'm pretty enough--but that's nonsense, of course."

The letter was signed like all the others "Good Queen Bess," a foolish enough name for a girl to call herself, the boy's mother thought, a touch contemptuously. She sat several minutes with that letter in her hand.

"I'll believe soon that you are more in love with your mother than you are with me"--that soothed the sore spot in her heart wonderfully.

Wasn't it so, perhaps. It seemed to her that the boy had fallen into this affair suddenly, impulsively, without realizing its meaning, and that his loyalty had held him fast, after the glamour was gone. And perhaps the girl, too. For the boy had much besides himself, and there were girls who might think of that.

The next letter went far to confirm this theory.

"Of course I don't want to break our engagement," the girl wrote. "What makes you ask such a question? I fully expect to marry you some day, of course, when I have had my little 'fling,' and I should just go crazy if I thought you didn't love me as much as always. You would if you saw me, for they all say I'm prettier than ever. You don't want to break the engagement, do you? Please, please, don't say so, for I couldn't bear it."

And in the next few lines she mentioned herself by name. It was a well-known name to the boy's mother, that of the daughter of a cousin with whom she had never been over-intimate. She had had notes from the girl a few times, once or twice from abroad, which accounted for the familiarity of the writing. So she gathered the letters together, the last one dated only a month before, and put them one side to send back.

"She will soon get over it," she said, and sighed as she turned to the papers still left in the bottom of the box. There were only a few, a thin packet of six or eight, and one lying separate. She slipped the rubber band from the packet and looked hard at the irregular, strong writing, woman's or man's, it was hard to say which. Then she spread out the envelopes and took them in order by the postmarks. The first was a little note, thanking him for a book, a few lines of clever nothing signed by a woman's name which she had never heard.

"My dear Mr. ----," it ran. "Indeed you did get ahead of 'all the others'

in sending me 'The Gentleman from Indiana,' So far ahead that the next man in the procession is not even in sight yet. I hate to tell you that, but honesty demands it. I have taken just one sidewise peep at 'The Gentleman'--and like his looks immensely--but to-morrow night I am going to pretend I have a headache and stay home from the concert where the family are going, and turn cannibal and devour him. I hope nothing will interrupt me. Unless--I wonder if you are conceited enough to imagine what is one of the very few things I would like to have interrupt me? After that bit of boldness I think I must stop writing to you. I mean it just the same. And thanking you a thousand times again, I am,

"Sincerely yours."

There were four or five more of this sort, sometimes only a day or two, sometimes a month apart; always with some definite reason for the writing, flowers or books to thank him for, a walk to arrange, an invitation to dinner. Charming, bright, friendly notes, with the happy atmosphere of a perfect understanding between them, of mutual interests and common enthusiasms.