Those Dale Girls Part 28

"Well, you certainly were right in it, Jack," commented Hester.

"Should say I was! And pretty soon out came Mr. Landor-Lieutenant Landor," corrected Jack with great emphasis, "and an orderly was standing alongside the curb with his horse and before he mounted he saw me sitting in the wagon on the corner of the street and he came down and saluted as though I was his superior officer," Jack's eyes were fairly dancing out of his head, "and said good-by all over again. I wish you could have seen the crowd! They just gaped! and the boys nearly had a fit seeing me talking to an officer. And when he went off one of them said, 'Gee! he's a corker-he'll knock the spots out of the Spaniards,'

and I said, 'You bet!' That's awful slang, Miss Julie," apologetically, "but it's the truth."

Julie smiled. "We are getting our first glimpse of war, Jack, and it is pretty exciting for all of us."

"I'm crazy to go-I bet they'd take me for a drummer-boy if I could get rid of these," with a disgusted glance at his crutches. "I told Mr.

Landor so and he said of course I wanted to go-every boy wanted to serve his country-but sometimes there was just as much to do for those who stayed at home as those who went. That the women and children must be looked after" (the air of protection which the superiority of his s.e.x gave him would have been funny had he not been in such deadly earnest), "and," he continued, "he appointed me a guard of honor. I'm to take care of you!" He made this announcement with positive triumph.

"How splendid!" said Julie, realizing how much this feeling of importance meant to the restless boy who was longing to be off for the front.

"I'm to go and see his father too, and print a weekly bulletin full of what we're all doing and anything I can make up-just like the one I do for your father and he's going to write me from camp. Think of that! And I'm to get well as fast as I can and study very hard and try to be a man when he gets back. And what do you suppose? No more office for me!"

"Jack, you are inventing!"

"Nope," delighted at her incredulity, "he had a talk with mother last week and I'm to go to school and then to college."

"That is the best news I've heard for many a day," said Julie, affectionately regarding the happy boy. "If you work hard and go to college I prophesy great things for you."

"If the war's still on, though, when I'm old enough and well enough, maybe I'd get to be a drummer-boy." In his present state of military ardor life held the promise of nothing greater than that.

When they had left him and were nearly at their own door they were stopped by the sound of his crutches on the stairs below. Hester ran back to see what he wanted.

"Don't come up, Jack," she called, running down to meet him. "Did we leave something behind?"

"It's this, Miss Hester," reaching out a note. "He gave it to me-I nearly forgot. Please forgive me," penitently.

"Of course, Jack," taking it from him and turning again she went upstairs.

It was only a thin sheet of paper, folded three-cornered, on which in pencil was scrawled her name. But she opened it on the stairs with a mixture of curiosity and tenderness which she would have been at a loss to define had any a.n.a.lysis of her feelings been required of her.

"I had hoped to see you," it said, without any other beginning, "but that failing, I have stolen a moment here at the Armory to say good-bye. It was not a friend but I, myself, to whom you were such a help and inspiration that evening. When I come back will you let me thank you for that and-more? The bit of gold you gave me I am carrying with me as a mascot. Do you mind? And if I prove as fearless and brave a soldier as you I shall thank G.o.d for making me of the right stuff. Will you pray that it may be so? Good-bye."

She stood quite still for a moment when she had finished reading, then brushed her hand quickly over her eyes and went on into their apartment.

Finding Julie she handed her the bit of paper and said gayly, though Julie thought there was a suspicious huskiness in her voice, "See, Julie dear, a note from a really, truly soldier." And before Julie could speak she whisked out of the room and until Bridget called her to dinner, was seen no more.

A month pa.s.sed, during which, in spite of the excitement over war and the subsequent depression along certain lines of business, their work increased from day to day. And in the midst of all this bustle and rush when each hour exacted of them the very limit of their endurance, Mr.

Dale died. He went to sleep with G.o.d as peacefully as a little child. At first the girls could not believe it. They had grown so used to the long hours in which he slept, so accustomed to the paralysis which kept his mind and body apathetic, that they could not conceive that he would not wake again and turn his eyes fondly on them as before. When finally he was carried out of the little home and laid in his last resting place they began to realize that G.o.d had released him from his earthly thraldom and given them another saint in heaven. With characteristic courage they lived through those first days when the awful loneliness pressed so heavily upon them, and with characteristic determination took up their work struggling to go on as if nothing had happened. But it was hard-harder than any other sorrow which had come to them-for the whole incentive of their work was gone. It was as if the very mainspring of their lives had snapped and broken.

In the long solemn talks the girls had together at this time Julie urged that they must be as faithful to their father's precepts as they had tried to be while he was with them. And she dwelt very much on the fact that he was still with them, guiding and loving them as much as during all those years before he was stricken down. And Hester believed this too for they had been taught the beauty of the inner, spiritual life that counts for immortality and makes all separation merely a transitory thing bridged over by love. So they felt their beloved father still with them, though Hester often brokenly whispered that working was robbed of its incentive now that they were no longer "making a home for Dad."

It must not be supposed that they were left alone in their affliction.

On the contrary, friends sprang up in every direction. Women whom hitherto they had only regarded as customers and known most formally, now came forward with kindest words and thoughtful suggestions, while expressions of sympathy in the form of cards and flowers threatened to well-nigh deluge them. It was evident to the most casual observer that "those Dale girls" were persons of considerable importance. Unique as it was, they had made their place in Radnor, and the fact was given wide recognition. They themselves were fairly bewildered and overcome by so much demonstration from people from whom they expected nothing. That they were not insensible to its meaning was shown in their grateful appreciation of every word and act. Even the haughty Miss Davis, desiring to make reparation, chose this time to come and see them, and Hester out of the fullness of her sorrowful heart accepted her repentant kiss and fell to talking of childish days.

Next to Dr. Ware there was no one so keenly conscious of or who so rejoiced over this capitulation of exclusive Radnor as the Lennoxes. As Mrs. Lennox wrote Kenneth Landor, most girls were what their position made them, but they had made their own position, winning the respect and admiration and at last the friendship of every one who knew them. He, hard at work drilling raw recruits in Virginia (for his troop had been ordered into a Southern camp) found time to write how glad of this he was and to the girls he sent a joint note of deepest sympathy.

The Driscoes wrote, of course, each in their own way. The girls half smiled over Cousin Nancy's letter-it was such a mixture of a belief in the retribution that overtakes the willful and an evident grief that the Major was no more. Colonel Driscoe wrote little but did much which developed later through Dr. Ware who unwarily let the cat out of the bag. And Dr. Ware, as might have been expected, did everything. This time the girls allowed him to plan and arrange and perform with them and for them the last loving offices for their father, feeling that it was his right.

Miss Ware was at this time in England and as the Doctor was living at his club, his time was more than ever at their disposal. Miss Ware had taken flight at this first note of war, indeed before the bugle sounded, for she had a very indifferent regard for her country and at all times preferred England. So the Doctor came and went without comment, and a month after Mr. Dale's death he was summoned hastily one morning by Bridget.

Julie lay ill. He could not find that she was in any great pain and he had not expected that she would be. He knew immediately that the thing he had been so long dreading had taken place. Her tired nerves refused to do their work at last-the delicate mechanism of her body had stopped.

Hester hovered about, wide-eyed and solicitous and then it was that more than ever Dr. Ware took things into his own hands and said a few things to Hester which caused that young woman to gasp with astonishment and fling her arms about his neck in her usual impetuous fashion.

CHAPTER XXI

Under the most favorable auspices a military camp entails labor, but to the volunteers who a.s.sembled in Virginia that spring and broke ground for what afterward became known as Camp Alger, it was a tremendous undertaking. The hewing of wood and clearing of underbrush which it entailed was scarcely bargained for by the enlisted man fresh from civilian life, who, nevertheless, went at it with the energy characteristic of Uncle Sam's boys the country over, as a result of which, by the end of May, many of the regiments were as well quartered as if they were enjoying the customary summer outing at their State camp-grounds at home. These, of course, were the militia now mustered into the United States service and awaiting orders to follow the regulars into Spanish territory.

Troop D of Kenneth Landor's squadron had unquestionably the finest site on the reservation; a wooded knoll stretching down into a field of gra.s.s-green when the troopers came but worn down to bare earth in the first month of their encampment. Beneath the shade trees on the hillside the officers pitched their conical tents, the men stretching out through the field below in two troop streets, back of which on either side were picketed their horses.

It was a warm June afternoon, but a little breeze stirred the branches of the trees and blew with delicious freshness over the knoll, on which, stretched out at full length, lay Kenneth Landor. It was an off hour in camp and, barring the sentries who were tramping up and down their posts, every man was taking advantage of it, some comfortably lounging like Kenneth on the gra.s.s, others laboriously writing home letters filled with their latest exploit. For they were just back from a three days' practice march along the Potomac, during which they had spent their time in fighting the infantry they met on the road and swimming their horses in the river; and this first bit of mimic warfare could not fail to be of interest to the home people.

Kenneth had enjoyed the march hugely. He liked action and chafed, as did all the men, under the monotony of their enforced encampment, although realizing full well that the troop would be sent to the front as soon as was deemed expedient. He was thinking, as he lay on his back gazing skyward, of what he had once heard a veteran say,-that war was largely made up of soldier housekeeping. That might be true, but he hoped he should come in for some stiff fighting before he got through. These interesting speculations so engrossed him that he scarcely noticed the mail orderly going the rounds until turning suddenly on his elbow he saw the man coming toward him. This trooper, detailed as mail orderly, was no other than Charley Bemis, whom we last saw at the Earle-Truxton wedding, but so strictly was the etiquette of military life maintained in camp that the man on approaching, saluted his superior officer, received an acknowledging salute, delivered a letter and turned away without a word.

The envelope was addressed in Jack's round sprawling hand and Kenneth prepared himself for a comfortable perusal of the weekly bulletin which the boy wrote, edited and printed with faithful regularity and which never failed to be of absorbing interest to the man who received it.

This time, however, there was no printed sheet, but a letter written apparently at fever heat.

"Dear Lieutenant," (it began, with military terseness), "I'm too upset to do the paper, though I'll try to soon, but you won't wonder when I tell you. _They're gone!_ I can't realize it myself and I wish I didn't have to-it's all so sudden and so lonesome I just want to go off and die!

"Dr. Ware did it. He and Bridget packed them off before they could say Jack Robinson. She's gone, too, so has he-down to Wavertree Hall, their cousin's plantation in Virginia. You see, Miss Julie broke down, though she wouldn't let any of us say she was ill, and Mrs. Driscoe urged them to come there and Colonel Driscoe wrote Dr. Ware and sent him the money to buy their tickets and said he mustn't tell and he should rely upon him to get them off. Miss Hester told me all that. She laughed, the way she always does, you know, and said their cousin Driscoe and Dr. Ware together were too much for them. She said they meant to have a good rest and get Miss Julie strong and then come back to their work again but Gee! I wish they didn't have to-it's such a fearful grind.

"It's awful without them, and Peter Snooks gone too! Lieutenant Landor, what's a guard of honor to do with nothing to guard? There's mother, of course, and Mr. Landor, but they don't like me bothering around the way those girls did. They never minded. I've left off my crutches and I'm digging at my books, but I'm going to be a drummer boy yet, you bet!

"Please send me the latest news from the front. I think it's _great_ to be a soldier!

"Jack."

"P.S.-Mother says it's a girl's trick to add a postscript, but they're down there near you somewhere. Wouldn't you love to see them, just! They went to Dunn Loring the way you did and had to drive a ways into the country. Thought you'd like to know."

The varied sensations which surged through Kenneth as he finished reading are difficult to describe. Paramount was the joyful surprise that Hester was somewhere in the vicinity, followed by the overwhelming desire to see her without loss of time. This he knew as he came to think it over quietly, was impossible. He could not take the initiative or seem to thrust himself upon her uninvited. She, of course, must know that his troop was still at Camp Alger and if she cared to see him-but did she care?

That baffling question haunted him a week. Then came one day a note brought by a small darky who was inclined to ride rough-shod over the sentries because, as he condescended to explain to them, he had a note from the young missis to deliver right into the Lieutenant's own hand. A formal, brief little note Hester had written, but it was enough, for it told him where they were and that their cousin Mrs. Driscoe would be most happy to have him ride over and call.

He went that evening, inquiring the way in Dunn Loring and soon found himself riding up a long avenue between rows of locust trees, at the end of which he could just distinguish a large brick mansion with a square portico and broad verandahs at either end. When he drew up at the house he discovered a small cavalcade ahead of him. At least half a dozen horses were standing hitched in various parts of the driveway, and following the custom of the place he tied his own with the rest. Then he rapped vigorously at the knocker to announce his arrival. By that general factotum George Washington he was ushered immediately across a huge square hall and out onto a verandah where a gay group of people were laughing and chatting together. His first impression was a vivid effect of blue uniforms and white muslin gowns while from out of this medley a dignified, matronly figure came forward with his card in her hand and said in hearty Southern fashion:

"How do you do, Mr. Landor? It is a pleasure to welcome you to Wavertree Hall. Hester, my dear, here is one of your Radnor friends."

Hester slipped down from the railing where she had been sitting and shyly gave him her hand. Somehow, for a moment he scarcely knew her with that strange light in her eyes. Then there was a general interchange of greetings, for Julie called him over to the hammock where she was half reclining and Dr. Ware rose up from his seat beside her and nearly shook the arm off him; and there was dear little Nannie waiting to have him presented and the Colonel, who laughingly consented to wait his turn, and all the guests who enviously regarded this brother officer upon whom, for the moment, all interest centered.

He saw very little of Hester that night. She was the gayest of the gay and seemed to evade him with the old elusiveness which had been so marked in the first days of their acquaintance. So he turned for comfort to Julie, whose convalescence kept her a little apart from the lively group and whose genuine interest in him seemed to the distracted fellow almost the sweetest thing in the world.

He rode off rather early, in company with the other officers, whom he found belonged to a Virginia regiment encamped at Alger, and when the gay little cavalcade had waved their hands in parting and were lost to sight Dr. Ware said to Julie: