Under Fire | Page 6

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 still have
him out."
"Oh, we've tried that," said Mrs. Barnard, gravely, "but he had tried
twice before he was twenty-one, and they refused him until he brought
papers to prove his age. Then when he did enlist and we attempted to
have it annulled, they confronted us with these. They refused to believe
our lawyer."
"Well, pardon me, which was right, the papers or the lawyer?"
"The paper. It was my own letter; but I didn't suppose they had it
when--when we sought to have him released as not of legal age."
Cranston smiled. "Was it Mr. Barnard's proposition or the lawyer's?"
"Well, the lawyer said at first there was no other way that he knew of,
we'd have to do that. Of course you understand I wouldn't ordinarily
authorize an untruth, but--consider the degradation."
"The degradation of--having to--authorize the untruth?"
"No; of his enlisting,--becoming a soldier. I thought I'd had to suffer a
good deal, but I never looked for that."
And then Cranston saw her eyes were full of tears.
She had tried lawyers. She had used money. She had invoked the
influence of powerful friends. Each and everyone consulted assured her
that the case could be settled in a twinkling. They would get the boy
discharged at once. Then one after another all had failed, and then some
one suggested to see him, Cranston; he was a regular, perhaps he could

help. It was hard to think of her son as a soldier, but, said she, if he had
to be, for a time at least, why not get him out of where he was and put
him at West Point? She had come, she said, to tell Cranston the whole
story, and then he could have kicked himself for the momentary
amusement she had caused him.
Ah, what an old, time-worn story of mother love, mother spoiling,
mother sorrow! Her bonny boy, her first-born, wild, impulsive,
self-indulgent, overindulged as was his father before him, he had gone
the pace from early youth; had been sent to and sent from one school
after another; had filled and forfeited half a dozen clerkships; tampered
with cards and drink and bad company. Mr. Barnard had been willing
to do anything--everything for him, but he had dishonored every effort,
broken every compact, failed in every trial, forfeited every trust. At last
there had been hot and furious words, expulsion from the house and
home, a life of recklessness, gambling and drinking on moneys wrung
from her until her patience and supplies both had given out. Then some
darker shadow,--arrest and incarceration, one more appeal to mother,
one more, on her knees, from mother to husband, a compromised case,
a quashed indictment, temporary residence at a resort for cure of
inebriates--the one condition exacted by Barnard--and prompt relapse,
when discharged, into his former habits,--disgraceful arrest because of
some trouble into which he had been led while drinking. This, all this
she had borne, but never dreamed, said she, that worse still could
follow,--that he could sink so low as to become a soldier.
What Captain Cranston would have said to a man who had come to him
with such a tale, and with such unflattering conception of the
profession he was proud of, need not here be recorded. It was a mother,
helpless, sorrowing, and honest at least in her impression of the step
taken by her recreant boy. She had come craving help and counsel, not
instruction in the injustice of her estimates. Quivering, trembling,
weeping, the heart-sick woman in her magnificent robes had opened the
flood-gates of her soul and poured out to this comparative stranger the
story of her son's depravity. Aloft, two women listened awe-stricken to
her sobs. Cranston brought her water, made her drink a little wine, and
bade her take comfort, and amazed her by saying that at last her boy

had shown a gleam of manhood, a promise of redemption. She looked
up through her tears in sudden amaze. How was that possible? He must
have been drunk when he did it, and couldn't have been anything but
drunk ever since. Cranston patiently explained that so far from being
drunk, the boy must have been perfectly sober or they couldn't have
taken him. He had been frequently to the recruiting office, according to
her account, and must have been sober at such times, or they would
have discouraged his