Under Fire | Page 5

remembered how once, some years before, when his father's affairs were straitened and his own were cramped, when Meg and the baby actually and sorely needed change, but she sturdily refused to leave him and go East because of the expense, he had bethought him of Tom Barnard, the rising railway man, and wrote him a personal note explaining the situation and asking through his influence if such a thing as a pass for himself and wife could be obtained over certain roads east of the Missouri, and the answer came, written by a secretary, brief and to the point. Mr. Barnard enclosed pass over the Q. R. & X. for Mr. Cranston and wife, but did not feel in a position to ask favors of any other road. And now Tom Barnard's wife had come almost at the last moment of his stay and begged that he would not refuse to see her. What on earth could she want?
A boy with a telegram had just entered and was at the open door as the captain reached the hall. Under the gas lamp without Cranston saw the carriage standing by the curb--a livery team, not the beautiful roans that had caught his trooper eye the first Sunday of his leave when he went to church with mother and Meg. The message was sharp and clear enough in all conscience:
"We march at once. You can catch us at Fetterman.
GRAY, Adjutant."
"So old Winthrop goes in command and Bob Gray as adjutant," he mused. "Then I've no minute to waste."
His step was quicker, his bearing unconsciously more erect and soldierly, as he entered the parlor and found himself facing the lady.
"I ask your pardon for keeping you waiting, Mrs. Barnard. I was in the midst of packing when you came, as I must go West at once."
She had not risen from the easy-chair,--a comfortable old family relic which stood opposite the old-fashioned piano. She leaned forward, however, so that the sealskin mantle, which the warmth of the room and the length of her wait had prompted her to throw back, settled down from her shoulders in rich and luxurious folds. She gave him, half extended, a hand, which he lifted and lowered once after the fashion of the day and then released. He remembered her now perfectly,--the Almira Prendergast the big boys used to say was by long odds the prettiest girl in the days when half a dozen big brick ward schools were all the town afforded, but he did not say so, nor did she care to have him.
"Perhaps I ought to begin by apologizing for taking up your time," she said, as though not knowing how to begin; and then he saw that heavy lines of grief and anxiety had eaten their way underneath her dark and luminous eyes,--ravages that no tinsel could cover or wealth dislodge. "Was it the driver you spoke to at the door? I heard you say wait. I had already told him; but it isn't my carriage," she went on deprecatingly. "Our horses cannot stand night work, the coachman says, and there's always something the matter with them when they are most needed."
She was looking at him appealingly, as though she hoped he might suggest some way of helping her to say what had brought her thither--besides a livery carriage; but Cranston had taken a seat and was waiting, the telegram crushed in his hand. At last she spoke again.
"You--went to West Point, didn't you?"
"I? Yes."
"Well, then, you could tell me, couldn't you, how to get my boy there?"
"You mean by-and-by when he is old enough?"
"No. I mean now,--at once,--this week in fact."
"W--ell. That is hardly possible, Mrs. Barnard. Cadets are admitted only in June or September, and only then when there's a vacancy in their congressional district. But, pardon me. How old is your boy?"
"He is twenty-one,--my eldest,--my first husband's."
"And you wanted to make a soldier of him?" asked Cranston, smilingly.
"Indeed, no! It's the last thing on earth I'd have chosen, nor would he, I am sure, if he were in his right mind."
"Oh, well, then I shouldn't worry about it, Mrs. Barnard. In this country, you know, no one has to be a soldier unless he very much wants to, and very often then he can't. And no boy who isn't in his right mind could get into the Point even if given a cadetship. What made you think of it?"
"Why, it seemed--at least I was told--it was the only way out of the trouble he is in. He--is already in the army, but I'm told it isn't so bad if one is an officer."
Cranston kept his face with admirable gravity.
"Then I assume that he has enlisted. If he is only just twenty-one and enlisted without your consent before his birthday, you can