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CAPTAIN MACKLIN
HIS MEMOIRS
By Richard Harding Davis
Illustrated By Walter Appleton Clark
{Illustration: "Go, Royal!" he cried, "and--God bless you!"}
To MY MOTHER
ILLUSTRATIONS (not available in this file)
"Go, Royal!" he cried, "and--God bless you!" FRONTISPIECE
He made our meeting something of a ceremony
We walked out to the woods
I was sure life in Sagua la Grande would always suit me
The moon rose over the camp ... but still we sat
And the next instant I fell sprawling inside the barrack yard
I sprang back against the cabin
I
UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY, WEST POINT
It may seem presumptuous that so young a man as myself should proposeto write his life and memoirs, for, as a rule, one waits until he hasaccomplished something in the world, or until he has reached old age,before he ventures to tell of the times in which he has lived, and ofhis part in them. But the profession to which I belong, which is thatof a soldier, and which is the noblest profession a man can follow, is ahazardous one, and were I to delay until to-morrow to write down whatI have seen and done, these memoirs might never be written, for, suchbeing the fortune of war, to-morrow might not come.
So I propose to tell now of the little I have accomplished in the firsttwenty-three years of my life, and, from month to month, to add to thesememoirs in order that, should I be suddenly taken off, my debit andcredit pages may be found carefully written up to date and carriedforward. On the other hand, should I live to be an old man, thisrecord of my career will furnish me with material for a more completeautobiography, and will serve as a safeguard against a failing memory.
In writing a personal narrative I take it that the most important eventsto be chronicled in the life of a man are his choice of a wife and hischoice of a profession. As I am unmarried, the chief event in my lifeis my choice of a profession, and as to that, as a matter of fact, Iwas given no choice, but from my earliest childhood was destined to bea soldier. My education and my daily environment each pointed to thatcareer, and even if I had shown a remarkable aptitude for any othercalling, which I did not, I doubt if I would have pursued it. I amconfident that had my education been directed in an entirely differentchannel, I should have followed my destiny, and come out a soldier inthe end. For by inheritance as well as by instinct I was foreordainedto follow the fortunes of war, to delight in the clash of arms and thesmoke of battle; and I expect that when I do hear the clash of arms andsmell the smoke of battle, the last of the Macklins will prove himselfworthy of his ancestors.
I call myself the last of the Macklins for the reason that last year,on my twenty-second birthday, I determined I should never marry. Women Irespect and admire, several of them, especially two of the young ladiesat Miss Butler's Academy I have deeply loved, but a soldier cannotdevote himself both to a woman and to his country. As one of our youngprofessors said, "The flag is a jealous mistress."
The one who, in my earliest childhood, arranged that I should followthe profession of arms, was my mother's father, and my only survivinggrandparent. He was no less a personage than Major-General John M.Hamilton. I am not a writer; my sword, I fear and hope, will always beeasier in my hand than my pen, but I wish for a brief moment I couldhold it with such skill, that I might tell of my grandfather properlyand gratefully, and describe him as the gentle and brave man he was. Iknow he was gentle, for though I never had a woman to care for me as amother cares for a son, I never missed that care; and I know how bravehe was, for that is part of the history of my country. During many yearshe was my only parent or friend or companion; he taught me my lessons byday and my prayers by night, and, when I passed through all the absurdailments to which a child is heir, he sat beside my cot and lulled me tosleep, or told me stories of the war. There was a childlike and simplequality in his own nature, which made me reach out to him and confide inhim as I would have done to one of my own age. Later, I scoffed at thisvirtue in him as something old-fashioned and credulous. That was whenI had reached the age when I was older, I hope, than I shall ever beagain. There is no such certainty of knowledge on all subjects as oneholds at eighteen and at eighty, and at eighteen I found his care andsolicitude irritating and irksome. With the intolerance of youth, Icould not see the love that was back of his anxiety, and which shouldhave softened it for me with a halo and made me considerate andgrateful. Now I see it--I see it now that it is too late. But surely heunderstood, he knew how I looked up to him, how I loved him, and how Itried to copy him, and, because I could not, consoled myself inwardly bythinking that the reason I had failed was because his way was the wrongone, and that my way was the better. If he did not understand then,he understands now; I cannot bear to think he does not understand andforgive me.
Those were the best days of my life, the days I spent with him as achild in his own home on the Hudson. It stands at Dobbs Ferry, set ina grove of pines, with a garden about it, and a box hedge that shuts itfrom the road. The room I best remember is the one that overlooks theHudson and the Palisades. From its windows you can watch the greatvessels passing up and down the river, and the excursion steamers flyingmany flags, and tiny pleasure-boats and great barges. There is an openfireplace in this room, and in a corner formed by the book-case, andnext to the wood-box, was my favorite seat. My grandfather's place wasin a great leather chair beside the centre-table, and I used to sitcross-legged on a cushion at his feet, with my back against his kneesand my face to the open hearth. I can still see the pages of "CharlesO'Malley" and "Midshipman Easy," as I read them by the lifting lightof that wood fire, and I can hear the wind roaring down the chimney andamong the trees outside, and the steamers signalling to each other asthey pushed through the ice and fog to the great city that lay below us.I can feel the fire burning my face, and the cold shivers that ran downmy back, as my grandfather told me of the Indians who had once hunted inthe very woods back of our house, and of those he had fought with on theplains. With the imagination of a child, I could hear, mingled with theshrieks of the wind as it dashed the branches against the roof, theirhideous war-cries as they rushed to some night attack, or the howling ofthe wolves in the snow. When I think of myself as I was then I am veryfond of that little boy who sat shivering with excitement, and staringwith open eyes at the pictures he saw in the firelight, a little boy whohad made no enemies, no failures, who had harmed no one, and who knewnothing of the world outside the walls that sheltered him, save thebrave old soldier who was his law and his example, his friend introuble, and his playmate.
I knew nothing then, and I know very little now, either of my fatheror my mother. Whenever I asked my grandfather concerning them he alwaysanswered vaguely that he would tell me some day, "when you are of age,"but whether he meant when I was twenty-one or of an age when I was bestfitted to hear the truth, I shall never know. But I guessed the truthfrom what he let fall, and from what I have since heard from others,although that is but little, for I could not ask strangers to tell me ofmy own people. For some reason, soon after they were married my motherand father separated and she brought me to live with her father, and heentered the Southern army.
I like to think that I can remember my mother, and it seems I must,for very dimly I recollect a young girl who used to sit by the windowlooking out at the passing vessels. There is a daguerreotype of mymother, and it may be that my recollection of her is builded upon thatportrait. She died soon after we came to live with my grandfather, whenI was only three years old, but I am sure I remember her, for no
otherwoman was ever in the house, and the figure of the young girl lookingout across at the Palisades is very clear to me.
My father was an Irish officer and gentleman, who came to the Statesto better his fortunes. This was just before the war; and as soon as itbegan, although he lived in the North, in New York City, he joined theSouthern army and was killed. I believe, from what little I have learnedof him, that he was both wild and reckless, but the few who rememberhim all say that he had many noble qualities, and was much loved by men,and, I am afraid, by women. I do not know more than that, except the onestory of him, which my grandfather often told me.
"Whatever a man may say of your father," he would tell me, "you need notbelieve; for they may not have understood him, and all that you need toremember, until when you are of age I shall tell you the whole truth,is how he died." It is a brief story. My father was occupying a trenchwhich for some hours his company had held under a heavy fire. When theYankees charged with the bayonet he rose to meet them, but at the samemoment the bugle sounded the retreat, and half of his company broke andran. My father sprang to the top of the trench and called, "Come back,boys, we'll give them one more volley." It may have been that he hadmisunderstood the call of the bugle, and disobeyed through ignorance,or it may have been that in his education the signal to retreat had beenomitted, for he did not heed it, and stood outlined against the sky,looking back and waving his hand to his men. But they did not come tohim, and the advancing troop fired, and he fell upon the trench with hisbody stretched along its length. The Union officer was far in advance ofhis own company, and when he leaped upon the trench he found that it wasempty and that the Confederate troops were in retreat. He turned, andshouted, laughing: "Come on! there's only one man here--and he's dead!"
But my father reached up his hand, to where the officer stood above him,and pulled at his scabbard.
"Not dead, but dying, Captain," my father said. "And that's better thanretreating, isn't it?"
"And that is the story," my grandfather used to say to me, "you mustremember of your father, and whatever else he did does not count."
At the age of ten my grandfather sent me to a military academy nearDobbs Ferry, where boys were prepared for college and for West Point andAnnapolis. I was a very poor scholar, and, with the exception of whatI learned in the drill-hall and the gymnasium, the academy did me verylittle good, and I certainly did not, at that time at least, reflect anycredit on the academy. Had I been able to take half the interest in mystudies my grandfather showed in them, I would have won prizes in everybranch; but even my desire to please him could not make me understandthe simplest problems in long division; and later here at the Point, thehigher branches of mathematics, combined with other causes, have nearlydeprived the United States Army of a gallant officer. I believe I haveit in me to take a piece of field artillery by assault, but I know Ishall never be able to work out the formula necessary to adjust itselevation.
With the exception, perhaps, of Caesar's "Commentaries," I hated all ofmy studies, not only on their own account, but because they cut me outof the talks with which in the past my grandfather and I had been wontto close each day. These talks, which were made up on my part of demandsfor more stories, or for repetitions of those I already knew by heart,did more than any other thing to inspire me with a desire for militaryglory. My grandfather had served through the Mexican War, in the Indiancampaigns on the plains, and during the War of the Rebellion, and hismemory recalled the most wonderful and exciting of adventures. He wassingularly modest, which is a virtue I never could consider as a highone, for I find that the world takes you at your own valuation, andunless "the terrible trumpet of Fame" is sounded by yourself no one elsewill blow your trumpet for you. Of that you may be sure. But I can'trecall ever having heard my grandfather relate to people of his ownage any of the adventures which he told me, and once I even caught himrecounting a personal experience which redounded greatly to his creditas having happened to "a man in his regiment." When with childishdelight I at once accused him of this he was visibly annoyed, andblushed like a girl, and afterward corrected me for being so forward inthe presence of my elders. His modesty went even to the length of hiskeeping hidden in his bedroom the three presentation swords which hadbeen given him at different times for distinguished action on the field.One came from the men of his regiment, one from his townspeople afterhis return from the City of Mexico, and one from the people of the Stateof New York; and nothing I could say would induce him to bringthem downstairs to our sitting room, where visitors might see them.Personally, I cannot understand what a presentation sword is for exceptto show to your friends; for, as a rule, they are very badly balancedand of no use for fighting.
Had it not been for the colored prints of the different battles inMexico which hung in our sitting room, and some Indian war-bonnetsand bows and arrows, and a box of duelling pistols, no one would havesupposed that our house belonged to one of the most distinguishedgenerals of his day. You may be sure I always pointed these out toour visitors, and one of my chief pleasures was to dress one of myschoolmates in the Indian war bonnet, and then scalp him with a carvingknife. The duelling pistols were even a greater delight to me. They wereequipped with rifle barrels and hair triggers, and were inlaid richlywith silver, and more than once had been used on the field of honor.Whenever my grandfather went out for a walk, or to play whist at thehouse of a neighbor, I would get down these pistols and fight duels withmyself in front of the looking-glass. With my left hand I would hold thehandkerchief above my head, and with the other clutch the pistol at myside, and then, at the word, and as the handkerchief fluttered to thefloor, I would take careful aim and pull the trigger. Sometimes I diedand made speeches before I expired, and sometimes I killed my adversaryand stood smiling down at him.
My grandfather was a member of the Aztec Club, which was organizedduring the occupation of the City of Mexico by the American officerswho had stormed the capital; and on the occasion of one of its annualmeetings, which that year was held in Philadelphia, I was permitted toaccompany him to that city. It was the longest journey from home I hadever taken, and each incident of it is still clearly fixed in my mind.The event of the reunion was a dinner given at the house of GeneralPatterson, and on the morning before the dinner the members of the clubwere invited to assemble in the garden which surrounded his house. Tothis meeting my grandfather conducted me, and I found myself surroundedby the very men of whom he had so often spoken. I was very frightened,and I confess I was surprised and greatly disappointed also to findthat they were old and gray-haired men, and not the young and dashingwarriors he had described. General Patterson alone did not disappointme, for even at that late day he wore a blue coat with brass buttons anda buff waistcoat and high black stock. He had a strong, fine profile andwas smooth shaven. I remember I found him exactly my ideal of the Dukeof Wellington; for though I was only then ten or twelve years of age,I had my own ideas about every soldier from Alexander and Von Moltke toour own Captain Custer.
It was in the garden behind the Patterson house that we met the General,and he alarmed me very much by pulling my shoulders back and asking memy age, and whether or not I expected to be as brave a soldier as mygrandfather, to which latter question I said, "Yes, General," and thencould have cried with mortification, for all of the great soldierslaughed at me. One of them turned, and said to the only one who wasseated, "That is Hamilton's grandson." The man who was seated did notimpress me very much. He was younger than the others. He wore a blacksuit and a black tie, and the three upper buttons of his waistcoat wereunfastened. His beard was close-cropped, like a blacking-brush, andhe was chewing on a cigar that had burned so far down that I rememberwondering why it did not scorch his mustache. And then, as I stoodstaring up at him and he down at me, it came over me who he was, andI can recall even now how my heart seemed to jump, and I felt terriblyfrightened and as though I were going to cry. My grandfather bowedto the younger man in the courteous, old-fashioned manner he alwaysobserved, and said: "Gene
ral, this is my grandchild, Captain Macklin'sboy. When he grows up I want him to be able to say he has met you. I amgoing to send him to West Point."
The man in the chair nodded his head at my grandfather, and took hiscigar from his mouth and said, "When he's ready to enter, remind me,let me know," and closed his lips again on his cigar, as though he hadmissed it even during that short space if time. But had he made a longoration neither my grandfather nor I could have been more deeply moved.My grandfather said: "Thank you, General. It is very kind of you," andled me away smiling so proudly that it was beautiful to see him. Whenhe had entered the house he stopped, and bending over me, asked. "Do youknow who that was, Roy?" But with the awe of the moment still heavy uponme I could only nod and gasp at him.
"That was General Grant," my grandfather said.
"Yes, I know," I whispered.
I am not particularly proud of the years that preceded my entrance toWest Point, and of the years I have spent here I have still less reasonto be content. I was an active boy, and behaved as other young cubsof that age, no better and no worse. Dobbs Ferry was not a place wheretemptations beset one, and, though we were near New York, we were not ofit, and we seldom visited it. When we did, it was to go to a matineeat some theatre, returning the same afternoon in time for supper. Mygrandfather was very fond of the drama, and had been acquainted since hewas a young man with some of the most distinguished actors. With him Isaw Edwin Booth in "Macbeth," and Lester Wallack in "Rosedale," and JohnMcCullough in "Virginius," a tragedy which was to me so real and movingthat I wept all the way home in the train. Sometimes I was allowed tovisit the theatre alone, and on these afternoons I selected performancesof a lighter variety, such as that given by Harrigan & Hart in theirtheatre on Broadway. Every Thanksgiving Day I was allowed, afterwitnessing the annual football match between the students from Princetonand Yale universities, to remain in town all that night. On these greatoccasions I used to visit Koster & Bial's on Twenty-third Street, along, low building, very dark and very smoky, and which on those nightswas blocked with excited mobs of students, wearing different coloredribbons and shouting the cries of their different colleges. I enviedand admired these young gentlemen, and thought them very fine fellowsindeed. They wore in those days long green coats, which made them looklike coachmen, and high, bell-shaped hats, both of which, as I now cansee, were a queer survival of the fashions of 1830, and which now forthe second time have disappeared.
To me, with my country clothes and manners and scanty spending money,the way these young collegians wagered their money at the football matchand drank from their silver flasks, and smoked and swaggered in thehotel corridors, was something to be admired and copied. And althoughI knew none of them, and would have been ashamed had they seen me incompany with any of my boy friends from Dobbs Ferry, I followedthem from one hotel to another, pretending I was with them, and evenpenetrated at their heels into the cafe of Delmonico. I felt then for abrief moment that I was "seeing life," the life of a great metropolis,and in company with the young swells who made it the rushing, delightfulwhirlpool it appeared to be.
It seemed to me, then, that to wear a green coachman's coat, to rush thedoorkeeper at the Haymarket dance-hall, and to eat supper at the "SilverGrill" was to be "a man about town," and each year I returned to ourfireside at Dobbs Ferry with some discontent. The excursions made melook restlessly forward to the day when I would return from my Westernpost, a dashing young cavalry officer on leave, and would wake up thecafes and clubs of New York, and throw my money about as carelessly asthese older boys were doing then.
My appointment to West Point did not, after all, come from GeneralGrant, but from President Arthur, who was in office when I reached mynineteenth year. Had I depended upon my Congressman for the appointment,and had it been made after a competitive examination of candidates, Idoubt if I would have been chosen.
Perhaps my grandfather feared this and had it in his mind when he askedthe President to appoint me. It was the first favor he had ever askedof the Government he had served so well, and I felt more grateful to himfor having asked the favor, knowing what it cost him to do so, than Idid to the President for granting it.
I was accordingly entered upon the rolls of the Military Academy, and mycareer as a soldier began. I wish I could say it began brilliantly, butthe records of the Academy would not bear me out. Had it not been thatI was forced to study books I would not have been a bad student; for ineverything but books, in everything that bore directly on the trainingof a soldier and which depended upon myself, as, for example, drill,riding, marksmanship, and a knowledge of the manual, I did as well, orfar better, than any of my classmates. But I could not, or would not,study, and instead of passing high in my class at the end of the plebeyear, as my natural talents seemed to promise I would do, I barelyscraped through, and the outlook for the second year was notencouraging. The campaign in Mexico had given my grandfather a knowledgeof Spanish, and as a boy he had drilled this language into me, for itwas a fixed belief of his, that if the United States ever went to war,it would be with some of her Spanish-American neighbors, with Mexico,or Central America, or with Spain on account of Cuba. In consequencehe considered it most essential that every United States officer shouldspeak Spanish. He also argued that a knowledge of French was of evengreater importance to an officer and a gentleman, as it was, as I havesince found it to be, the most widely spoken of all languages. Iwas accordingly well drilled in these two tongues, and I have neverregretted time I spent on them, for my facility in them has often servedme well, has pulled me out of tight places, put money into my pocket,and gained me friends when but for them I might have remained anddeparted a stranger among strangers. My French accordingly helped memuch as a "yearling," and in camp I threw myself so earnestly into theskirmish, artillery, and cavalry drills that in spite of my low marksI still stood high in the opinion of the cadet officers and of myinstructors. With my classmates, for some reason, although in allout-of-door exercises I was the superior of most of them, I was notpopular. I would not see this at first, for I try to keep on friendlyterms with those around me, and I want to be liked even by people ofwhom I have no very high opinion and from whom I do not want anythingbesides. But I was not popular. There was no disguising that, and in thegymnasium or the riding-hall other men would win applause for performinga feat of horsemanship or a difficult trick on the parallel bars, whichsame feat, when I repeated it immediately after them, and even a littlebetter than they had done it, would be received in silence. I couldnot see the reason for this, and the fact itself hurt me much more thananyone guessed. Then as they would not signify by their approbation thatI was the best athlete in the class, I took to telling them that I was,which did not help matters. I find it is the same in the world as it isat the Academy--that if one wants recognition, he must pretend not tosee that he deserves it. If he shows he does see it, everyone else willgrow blind, holding, I suppose, that a conceited man carries his owncomfort with him, and is his own reward. I soon saw that the cadet whowas modest received more praise than the cadet who was his superior,but who, through repeated success, had acquired a self-confident, or, assome people call it, a conceited manner; and so, for a time, I pretendedto be modest, too, and I never spoke of my athletic successes. But I wasnever very good at pretending, and soon gave it up. Then I grew morbidover my inability to make friends, and moped by myself, having as littleto do with my classmates as possible. In my loneliness I began to thinkthat I was a much misunderstood individual. My solitary state bred in mea most unhealthy disgust for myself, and, as it always is with thosewho are at times exuberantly light-hearted and self-assertive, I hadterrible fits of depression and lack of self-confidence, during whichspells I hated myself and all of those about me. Once, during one ofthese moods, a First-Class man, who had been a sneak in his plebe yearand a bully ever since, asked me, sneeringly, how "Napoleon on the Isleof St. Helena" was feeling that morning, and I told him promptly to goto the devil, and added that if he addressed me again, except in
theline of his duty, I would thrash him until he could not stand or see. Ofcourse he sent me his second, and one of my classmates acted for me.We went out that same evening after supper behind Fort Clinton, and Ithrashed him so badly that he was laid up in the hospital for severaldays. After that I took a much more cheerful view of life, and asit seemed hardly fair to make one cadet bear the whole brunt of mydispleasure toward the entire battalion, I began picking quarrels withanyone who made pretensions of being a fighter, and who chanced to bebigger than myself.
Sometimes I got badly beaten, and sometimes I thrashed the other man,but whichever way it went, those battles in the soft twilight eveningsbehind the grass-grown ramparts of the old fort, in the shadow ofthe Kosciusko Monument, will always be the brightest and pleasantestmemories of my life at this place.
My grandfather had one other daughter besides my mother, my Aunt Mary,who had married a Harvard professor, Dr. Endicott, and who had lived inCambridge ever since they married.
In my second year here, Dr. Endicott died and my grandfather at oncewent to Cambridge to bring Aunt Mary and her daughter Beatrice backwith him, installing them in our little home, which thereafter was tobe theirs as well. He wrote me saying he knew I would not disapprove ofthis invasion of my place by my young cousin and assured me that no one,girl or boy, could ever take the place in his heart that I had held. Asa matter of fact I was secretly pleased to hear of this addition to ourlittle household. I knew that as soon as I was graduated I would be sentto some army post in the West, and that the occasional visit I was nowable to pay to Dobbs Ferry would be discontinued. I hated to think thatin his old age my grandfather would be quite alone. On the other hand,when, after the arrival of my cousin, I received his first letterand found it filled with enthusiastic descriptions of her, and of howanxious she was to make him happy, I felt a little thrill of jealousy.It gave me some sharp pangs of remorse, and I asked myself searchinglyif I had always done my utmost to please my grandfather and to give himpride and pleasure in me. I determined for the future I would think onlyof how to make him happy.
A few weeks later I was able to obtain a few hours' leave, and I wastedno time in running down from the Point to make the acquaintance of mycousin, and to see how the home looked under the new regime. I found itchanged, and, except that I felt then and afterward that I was a guest,it was changed for the better.
I found that my grandfather was much more comfortable in every way. Thenewcomers were both eager and loving, although no one could help butlove my grandfather, and they invented wants he had never felt before,and satisfied them, while at the same time they did not interfere withthe life he had formerly led. Aunt Mary is an unselfish soul, and mostcontent when she is by herself engaged in the affairs of the house andin doing something for those who live in it. Besides her unselfishness,which is to me the highest as it is the rarest of virtues, hers is asweet and noble character, and she is one of the gentlest souls that Ihave ever known.
I may say the same of my cousin Beatrice. When she came into the room,my first thought was how like she was to a statuette of a Dresdenshepherdess which had always stood at one end of our mantel-piece,coquetting with the shepherd lad on the other side of the clock. As aboy, the shepherdess had been my ideal of feminine loveliness. Sincethen my ideals had changed rapidly and often, but Beatrice reminded methat the shepherdess had once been my ideal. She wore a broad straw hat,with artificial roses which made it hang down on one side, and, asshe had been working in our garden, she wore huge gloves and carried atrowel in one hand. As she entered, my grandfather rose hastily from hischair and presented us with impressive courtesy. "Royal," he said, "thisis your cousin, Beatrice Endicott." If he had not been present, I thinkwe would have shaken hands without restraint. But he made our meetingsomething of a ceremony. I brought my heels together and bowed as Ihave been taught to do at the Academy, and seeing this she made a lowcourtesy. She did this apparently with great gravity, but as she kepther eyes on mine I saw that she was mocking me. If I am afraid ofanything it has certainly never proved to be a girl, but I confess I wasstrangely embarrassed. My cousin seemed somehow different from any ofthe other girls I had met. She was not at all like those with whom Ihad danced at the hotel hops, and to whom I gave my brass buttonsin Flirtation Walk. She was more fine, more illusive, and yet mostfascinating, with a quaint old-fashioned manner that at times made herseem quite a child, and the next moment changed her into a worldly andcharming young woman. She made you feel she was much older than yourselfin years and in experience and in knowledge. That is the way my cousinappeared to me the first time I saw her, when she stood in the middleof the room courtesying mockingly at me and looking like a picture onan old French fan. That is how she has since always seemed to me--onemoment a woman, and the next a child; one moment tender and kind andmerry, and the next disapproving, distant, and unapproachable.
{Illustration: He made our meeting something of a ceremony.}
Up to the time I met Beatrice I had never thought it possible toconsider a girl as a friend. For the matter of that, I had no friendseven among men, and I made love to girls. My attitude toward girls, ifone can say that a man of eighteen has an attitude, was always that ofthe devoted admirer. If they did not want me as a devoted admirer, I putthem down as being proud and haughty or "stuck up." It never occurred tome then that there might be a class of girl who, on meeting you, did notdesire that you should at once tell her exactly how you loved her, andwhy. The girls who came to Cranston's certainly seemed to expect you toset their minds at rest on that subject, and my point of view of girlswas taken entirely from them. I can remember very well my pause ofdawning doubt and surprise when a girl first informed me she thoughta man who told her she was pretty was impertinent. What bewilderedme still more on that occasion was that this particular girl was soextremely beautiful that to talk about anything else but her beauty wasa waste of time. It made all other topics trivial, and yet she seemedquite sincere in what she said, and refused to allow me to bring ourtalk to the personal basis of "what I am to you" and "what you are tome." It was in discussing that question that I considered myself anartist and a master. My classmates agreed with me in thinking as I did,and from the first moment I came here called me "Masher" Macklin, asobriquet of which I fear for a time I was rather proud. Certainly, Istrove to live up to it. I believe I dignified my conduct to myself bycalling it "flirtation." Flirtation, as I understood it, was a sort ofgame in which I honestly believed the entire world of men and women, ofevery class and age, were eagerly engaged. Indeed, I would have thoughtit rather ungallant, and conduct unworthy of an officer and a gentleman,had I not at once pretended to hold an ardent interest in every girl Imet. This seems strange now, but from the age of fourteen up to the ageof twenty that was my way of regarding the girls I met, and even today Ifear my attitude toward them has altered but slightly, for now, althoughI no longer tend to care when I do not, nor make love as a matter ofcourse, I find it is the easiest attitude to assume toward most women.It is the simplest to slip into, just as I have certainly found itthe one from which it is most difficult to escape, But I never seem toremember that until it is too late. A classmate of mine once said to me:"Royal, you remind me of a man walking along a road with garden gatesopening on each side of it. Instead of keeping to the road, you stop atevery gate, and say: 'Oh! what a pretty garden! I'll just slip in there,and find out where that path will take me.' And then--you're eitherthrown out, and the gate slammed after you, or you lose yourself ina maze and you can't get out--until you break out. But does that everteach you a lesson? No! Instead of going ahead along the straight andnarrow way, and keeping out of temptation, you halt at the very nextgate you come to, just as though you had never seen a gate before, andexclaim: 'Now, this _is_ a pretty garden, and _what_ a neat white fence!I really must vault in and take a look round.' And so the whole thing isgone over again."
I confess there may be some truth in what he said, but the trouble Ifind with the straight and narrow way is that there's n
ot room enoughin it for two. And, then, it is only fair to me to say that some of thegardens were really most beautiful, and the shade very deep and sweetthere, and the memories of the minutes I passed in them were veryrefreshing when I went back to the dust of the empty road. And no one,man or woman, can say that Royal Macklin ever trampled on the flowers,or broke the branches, or trespassed in another man's private grounds.
It was my cousin Beatrice who was responsible for the change of heartin me toward womankind. For very soon after she came to live with us, Inoticed that in regard to all other young women I was growing daily moreexacting. I did not admit this to myself, and still less to Beatrice,because she was most scornful of the girls I knew, and mocked at them.This was quite unfair of her, because she had no real acquaintance withthem, and knew them only from photographs and tintypes, of which I had amost remarkable collection, and of what I chose to tell her about them.I was a good deal annoyed to find that the stories which appealed to meas best illustrating the character of each of my friends, only seemed tofurnish Beatrice with fresh material for ridicule, and the girls of whomI said the least were the ones of whom she approved. The only girlsof my acquaintance who also were friends of hers, were two sisters wholived at Dobbs Ferry, and whose father owned the greater part of it, anda yacht, in which he went down to his office every morning. But Beatriceheld that my manner even to them was much too free and familiar, andthat she could not understand why I did not see that it was annoying tothem as well. I could not tell her in my own defence that their mannerto me, when she was with us and when she was not, varied in a remarkabledegree. It was not only girls who carried themselves differently beforeBeatrice: every man who met her seemed to try and show her the best inhim, or at least to suppress any thought or act which might displeaseher. It was not that she was a prig, or an angel, but she herself wasso fine and sincere, and treated all with such an impersonal and yetgracious manner that it became contagious, and everybody who met herimitated the model she unconsciously furnished. I was very much struckwith this when she visited the Academy. Men who before her coming hadseemed bold enough for any game, became dumb and embarrassed in herpresence, and eventually it was the officers and instructors whoescorted her over the grounds, while I and my acquaintances among thecadets formed a straggling rear-guard at her heels. On account of mygrandfather, both she and my aunt were made much of by the Commandantand all the older officers, and when they continued to visit the Academythey were honored and welcomed for themselves, and I found that on suchoccasions my own popularity was enormously increased. I have always beensusceptible to the opinion of others. Even when the reigning belle orthe popular man of the class was not to me personally attractive, thefact that she was the reigning belle and that he was the man of thehour made me seek out the society of each. This was even so, when, asa matter of fact, I should have much preferred to dance with some lessconspicuous beauty or talk with a more congenial companion. ConsequentlyI began to value my cousin, whom I already regarded with the mosttremendous admiration, for those lighter qualities which are commonto all attractive girls, but which in my awe of her I had failed torecognize. There were many times, even, when I took myself by theshoulders and faced the question if I were not in love with Beatrice. Imean truly in love, with that sort of love that one does not talk about,even to one's self, certainly not to the girl. As the young man of thefamily, I had assumed the position of the heir of the house, and treatedBeatrice like a younger sister, but secretly I considered her in no suchlight.
Many nights when on post I would halt to think of her, and of herloveliness and high sincerity, and forget my duty while I stood withmy arms crossed on the muzzle of my gun. In such moments the night,the silence, the moonlight piercing the summer leaves and falling at myfeet, made me forget my promise to myself that I would never marry.I used to imagine then it was not the unlicked cubs under the distanttents I was protecting, but that I was awake to watch over and guardBeatrice, or that I was a knight, standing his vigil so that he mightbe worthy to wear the Red Cross and enter her service. In those lonelywatches I saw littlenesses and meannesses in myself, which I could notsee in the brisk light of day, and my self-confidence slipped from meand left me naked and abashed. I saw myself as a vain, swaggering boy,who, if he ever hoped to be a man among men, such as Beatrice was awoman above all other women, must change his nature at once and forever.
I was glad that I owed these good resolutions to her. I was glad thatit was she who inspired them. Those nights, as I leaned on my gun, Idreamed even that it might end happily and beautifully in our marriage.I wondered if I could make her care, if I could ever be worthy of her,and I vowed hotly that I would love her as no other woman was everloved.
And then I would feel the cold barrel of my musket pressing against thepalm of my hand, or the bayonet would touch my cheek, and at the touchsomething would tighten in my throat, and I would shake the thoughtsfrom me and remember that I was sworn to love only my country and mycountry's flag.
In my third year here my grandfather died. As the winter closed inhe had daily grown more feeble, and sat hour after hour in his greatarmchair, dozing and dreaming, before the open fire. And one morningwhen he was alone in the room, Death, which had so often taken the manat his side, and stood at salute to let him live until his work wasdone, came to him and touched him gently. A few days later when his bodypassed through the streets of our little village, all the townspeopleleft their houses and shops, and stood in silent rows along thesidewalks, with their heads uncovered to the falling snow. Soldiers ofhis old regiments, now busy men of affairs in the great city belowus, came to march behind him for the last time. Officers of the LoyalLegion, veterans of the Mexican War, regulars from Governor's Island,with their guns reversed, societies, political clubs, and strangers whoknew him only by what he had done for his country, followed in the longprocession as it wound its way through the cold, gray winter day to theside of the open grave. Until then I had not fully understood what itmeant to me, for my head had been numbed and dulled; but as the bodydisappeared into the grave, and the slow notes of the bugle rose inthe final call of "Lights out," I put my head on my aunt's shoulder andcried like a child. And I felt as though I were a child again, as I didwhen he came and sat beside my bed, and heard me say my prayers, andthen closed the door behind him, leaving me in the darkness and alone.
But I was not entirely alone, for Beatrice was true and understanding;putting her own grief out of sight, caring for mine, and giving it thefirst place in her thoughts. For the next two days we walked for hoursthrough the autumn woods where the dead leaves rustled beneath our feet,thinking and talking of him. Or for hours we would sit in silence, untilthe sun sank a golden red behind the wall of the Palisades, and we wentback through the cold night to the open fireside and his empty chair.