Under Fire. Charles King
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 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 coming again. He couldn't have been drinking to any extent since enlistment or he could not be where she said he was, and knew he was, on daily duty as clerk in the office of the adjutant at the barracks. So far from its indicating downfall, degradation, it was the one ray of hope of better days. She looked at him, joy and incredulity mingling in her swimming eyes. "Then why does everybody I've consulted, even our rector, urge me to leave no stone unturned to get him out of it, even if we have to buy him a place at West Point?" was her query. And again Cranston found it hard to control his muscles—and his temper. Had it come to this?—that here in his old home the accepted idea of the regular soldier was that of something lower than the refuse of the prisons and reformatories? He could only tell her that it was because they knew no better. Up to the time of her boy's determination to enter the army had there been one single moment in the last five years when he had been free from his habits of drinking? asked Cranston. No, not one. And yet that step was her conception of final degradation. What had occurred, he asked, to make her feel renewed anxiety, to cause her to seek a cadetship for him? Because the boy had written that recruits were soon to be sent to cavalry regiments out on the plains, and he had asked to go. The thought was terror. And Mrs. Barnard had learned that a congressman from the interior of the State had a cadetship to dispose of, but he lived at Urbana, the very place where poor Harry had spent his two months in the retreat, and then had disbehaved so afterwards. And Mr. Goss, the congressman, wanted references—wanted him to pass examination, which he could not do, because he's only been a little while at school. Harry wrote a beautiful hand, and had read everything—everything, but he hated anything like arithmetic as a study, and Cranston had to smile and tell her that that in itself put West Point out of the question. But, said he, if he has ambition and ability, why not encourage him to persevere where he is and win commission from the ranks as many another boy had done? Bless the mother heart! That, too, had occurred to her, but they had told her it would take two years at least, whereas Harry was a born leader, a born commander. That boy could step right out now and command an army if need be, she said, and no doubt believed it; but when she wrote to Mr. Cooper about it (and Mr. Cooper it seems was Colonel Cooper, the boy's commanding officer), that gentleman replied that while the young soldier had certainly conducted himself in a most exemplary way and had given promise of being an ornament to the service—"He used those very words," said she, producing the colonel's letter. "See, 'an ornament to the service,'"—still, the colonel could hardly promise that the boy could rise above the grade of sergeant inside of two years.
Cranston recognized the handwriting, and took the letter. "I know Colonel Cooper," he said, "and he means just exactly what he writes. Mrs. Barnard, I am glad you came. I am glad to take a weight off your mind. I wish your friends and advisers were here that I might say this in their presence, especially our good rector, but I say to you with all my heart, I congratulate you on the step your boy has taken. I honestly believe he has done better for himself than you could do for him, and I advise you to let him go and learn campaigning on the frontier. It will make a man of him if anything will," and he added under his breath, "or kill him."
"And if you meet my boy, you'll help him? You'll be a friend to him?" she smiled through her tears. "God bless you for so helping me."
"I'll