Gaily bedight,A gallant knightIn sunshine and shadowJourneyed long,Singing a song,In search of El Dorado.
Or from “The Mole of Marimolena”
I was turning fifty-odd when the everlasting GodSmote a path of molten gold across the blue,Says, “There’s many million men would have done the like again,But you didn’t, and, my man, there’s hope for you.“Start sheets and sail for the Mole—For the old rotten Mole of Marimolena;There’s maybe some one thereThat you’re longing to treat fair,On the dismal, woeful Mole of Marimolena.”
And other deep-sea chanteys,—the one in which the pirate found the Lady in the C-a-a-bin and slivered off her head, or back to Red Renard, or further to his own campaign song, and furthest of all to the bad, bad young dog of a crow. Then he got quite out of breath, and pausing for a moment to catch it, noted for the first time the extreme bitterness of the cold. It stung the face like insects. “Woof!” he said. “And now for lost time.”
Again he stepped out, but with each step the snow became deeper, and presently he floundered in to his waist. “Must be a ditch!” he said, turning a little to the right and exclaiming, “Thought so!” as the wading got shallower. Whereupon he stepped into a deep hole and fell. After plunging and plowing about, it was brought home to him that he had lost the path. Even at that the difficulty remained one of hard walking alone, for he had been familiar with that country since childhood, and knew the precise direction in which it was necessary for him to locomote. It was a pity that the only structure in the vicinity was an ancient and deserted house,—it lay just off there,—as he should have liked to have warmed himself by a good fire before going farther. He remembered that there were a partly preserved stove in the deserted house, broken laths, and naily boards, and swathes of curious old wall-papers, layer upon layer, which, dampening and rotting from the wall, hung raggedly down. He had once explored the house with Margaret, and it seemed almost wise to go to the place and make a fire. But on account of the delay involved and the approach of darkness, he discarded the notion, and, a little impatient at being badly used by a neighborhood he knew so well, struggled on.
“Troubles,” he said, “what sort of a storm is this anyway? Did you ever see anything quite like it round here? Because I never did. It must be like those things they have out West, when millions of poor little baa-sheeps and horses and cattles freeze to death. I’d hate to be a horse out in this, but I wish I had one. I—”
If, as a child, you have ever slipped, though only an inch, while climbing over roofs, you will know that sudden, stabbing, sinking feeling that came to Aladdin and stopped the beating of his heart by the hairbreadth of a second. He had been proceeding chin on breast, and head bent against the wind, or he would have seen it before, for it was a notable landmark in that part of the world, and showed him that he had been making way, not toward his destination, but toward the wilderness.
He gazed up at the great black blasted pine, its waist the height of a tall tree, and its two lonely lightning-scathed and white arms stretched out like a malediction; and for a moment he had to take himself in hand. After a little he mastered the fear that had seized him.
“It’s only a poor old lonely vegetable out in the cold,” he said. “And it shows us exactly where we are and exactly which way we have to go.”
He set himself right, and, with head lowered and hands clenched, again started on. But he was beginning to be very much bored, and sensible that his legs were not accustomed to being used so hard. Furthermore, there was a little difficulty—not by any means an insurmountable one—in steering straight, because of the constantly varying point of the compass in which the wind blew. He went on for a long time....
He began to look for the high ground to decline, as it should, about now, if it was the high ground he took it for. “I ought to be getting somewhere,” he said.
And, God help him! tired out, half frozen and very foot-sore, he was getting somewhere, for, glancing up, he again beheld the gigantic and demoniac shape of the blasted pine.
It is on prairies and among mountains, far from the habitations of men, that man is most readily terrified before nature, and not on the three-mile primrose way from a railway accident to a house-party. But for a moment cold terror struck at Aladdin like a serpent, and the marrow in his bones froze. Before he could succeed in reducing this awful feeling to one of acute anxiety alone, he had to talk to himself and explain things as to a child.
“Then it is true, Troubles, old man,” he said, “about a person’s tendency to go to the left. That’s interesting, isn’t it? But what do we care? Being gifted with a certain (flighty, it is true) intelligence, we will simply take pains, and every step pull a little to the right; and that will make us go straight. Come now-keep thinking about it-every step!”
As the end of the day approached, a lull came in the gale, and the snow fell less freely. The consequently widened horizon of vision was eminently comforting, and Aladdin’s unpleasant feeling of anxiety almost disappeared.
Suddenly he was aware of a red horse.
It was standing almost leg-clear, in an angle of what seemed a drifted-over snake-fence. Its ugly, Roman-nosed head was thrown up and out, as if about to neigh.
“Poor beastie,” said Aladdin, after a start. “You must be direfful cold, but we’ll ride you, and that will make you warm, and us cold, and we’ll all get along faster.”
Drawing near, he began to gentle the horse and call it pet names. It was a huge brute, over seventeen hands high, and Aladdin, aided only by a rickety fence, and a pair of legs that would hardly support him, was appalled by the idea of having to climb to that lofty eminence, its back. Without doubt he was dreadfully tired.
“The fence will help, old man” he said. “Here, you, pay attention and get over.” He tried to insinuate himself between the horse and the fence, but the horse did not seem inclined to move.
“Get over, you!” he said, and gave a shove. The horse moved a little, very unwillingly. “Farther yet,” said Aladdin: “Get over, you, get over.” Again he shoved; this time harder. He slapped the great shoulder with his open hand. And again the horse moved, but very slowly. “You’re an unwilling brute, aren’t you?” he said angrily.
For answer the thing tottered, and, to his horror, began to fall, at first slowly, but ever with accelerating speed, until, in the exact attitude in which it had stood by the fence,—the great Roman-nosed head thrown up and out, as if to neigh,—he beheld the horse stretched before him on the ground, and noted for the first time the awful death-like glint of the yellow teeth through the parting of the lips.
He went very gravely from that place, for he had been looking upon death by freezing, and he himself was terribly cold, terribly tired, and—he admitted it now—completely lost.
But he went on for a long time—four or five hundred years. And it grew darker and colder.
He began to talk to himself, to try and steady himself, as he had done ever since childhood at forsaken times.
“Troubles,” he said, “You’re full of troubles, aren’t you, old man? You always were. But this is the worst. You can’t walk very much farther, can you? I can’t. And if you don’t get helped by some one pretty soon, you’re going to come to the end of your troubles. And, Troubles, do you know, I think that’s what’s going to happen to you and me, and I want you to stand up to it if it comes [gulp] and face it like a man. Now let’s rest a little, Troubles, will we?”
Troubles and Aladdin rested a little. When the rest was over they could hardly move, and they began to see the end of a young man that they had hoped would live a long time and be very happy. They went on.
“Troubles,” said Aladdin, “do you suppose she knows that we are out here, perhaps dying? We would know if she were, wouldn’t we? And do you think she cares? Liar, you know she cares, and a lot. She wouldn’t be she if she didn’t care. But we didn’t think that all the years of waiting and hoping and loving and trying to be something would end like this, did we, Troubles? We thought that it might end with the godlike Manners (whom we wouldn’t help if he were freezing to death, would we?), but not like this—O Lord God, not like this!... And we weren’t sure it would end with Manners; we were going to fight it out to a mighty good finish, weren’t we, Troubles? But now it’s going to end in a mighty good storm, and you’re going to die for all your troubles, Troubles... And I’m talking to you so that we won’t lose our sand, even if we are afraid to die, and there’s no one looking on.”
Though Aladdin stopped making talk in his head, the talk kept going on by itself; and he suddenly shouted aloud for it to stop. Then he began to whimper and shiver, for he thought that his mind was going.
Presently he shook himself.
“Troubles,” he said, “we’ve only a little farther to go—just as far as our feet will carry us, and no farther. That’s the proper way to finish. And for God’s sake keep sane. We won’t give her up yet!”
Ten steps and years passed.
“Troubles,” said Aladdin, “we’re going to call for help, and if it don’t come, which it won’t, we’re going to try and be calm. It seems simplest and looks best to be calm.”
Aladdin stood there crying aloud for the help of man, but it did not come. And then he cried for the help of God. And he stood there waiting—waiting for it to come.
“We must help ourselves, Troubles,” he said, with a desperate effort to be calm. “We’ve got ten steps left in us. Now, then, one—two—”
During the taking of those ten steps the snow ceased entirely to fall, and black night enveloped the earth.
Aladdin was all numb, and he wished to sleep, but he made the ten steps into eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, before his limbs refused to act, and he fell forward in the snow. He managed to raise himself and crawl a little way. He saw a light afar off, and guessing that it must be an angel, held out his hands to it—and one of them encountered a something in the dark.
Even through his thick mitten it felt round and smooth and colder than his fingers, like a ball of ice. Then Aladdin laughed aloud, for he knew that his last walk upon earth had been in the form of a silly circle. He had returned to the dead horse, and his gloved hand was resting upon its frozen eye. He shrieked with laughter and became heavy with a desire to sleep.
He sank deliciously down, and began to see showers of roses, when it flashed upon him that this was not sleep, but death.
It was like lifting prodigious dumb-bells to get his eyes to open, and a return to consciousness was like the stabbing of knives. But he opened his eyes and roused himself.
“I won’t give her up yet,” he cried.
And then, by the help of God Almighty, he crawled the whole length of the horse.
And fell asleep.
It was a miserable, undressed thing wrapped in a horse-blanket and a buffalo-robe that woke up in front of a red-hot stove and remembered that it used to be Aladdin O’Brien. It had a dreadful headache, and could smell whisky and feel warm, and that for a long time was about all. Then it noticed that the wall opposite was ragged with loosened wall-paper and in places stripped of plaster, so that the lathing showed through, and that in its own head—no, in the room beyond the wall—an impatient stamping noise of iron on wood was occurring at intervals. Then it managed to turn its head, and it saw a big, beautiful man sitting on the end of an old soapbox and smoking a pipe. Then it was seized with a wrenching sickness, and the big man came quickly and held its head and was very good to it, and it felt better and went to sleep. After a while it descended into the Red Sea, with the avowed intention of calling Neptune Red Renard to his face, and when it got to the bottom, which was of red brick sprinkled with white door-knobs that people kept diving for, it became frightened and ran and ran until it came to the bottom of an iceberg, that had roots like a hyacinth bulb and was looking for a place to plant itself, and it climbed up to the top of the iceberg, which was all bulrushes, and said, “I beg your pardon, but I forgot; I must go back and make my apologies.” Then it woke up and spoke in a weak voice.
“Peter Manners,” said Aladdin, “come here.”
Manners came and sat on the floor beside him.
“Feel better now?” he said.
“Tell me—” said Aladdin.
“Oh, stuff!” said Manners.
“Manners,” said Aladdin, “you don’t look as if you hated me any more.”
“You sleep,” said Manners. “That’s what you need.”
Aladdin thought for a long time and tried to remember what he wanted to say, and shutting his eyes, to think better, fell asleep.
For the third time he awoke. Manners was back on the soap-box, still as a sphinx, and smoking his pipe.
“Please come and talk some more,” said Aladdin.
Again Manners came.
“Tell me about it,” said Aladdin.
“You be good and go to sleep,” said Manners.
“What time is it?”
“Nearly morning.”
“Still storming?”
“No; stars out and warmer.”
Aladdin thought a moment.
“Manners,” he said, “please talk to me. How did you find me?”
“Simply enough,” said Manners. “I took the senator’s cutter out for a little drive, and got lost. Then I heard somebody laughing, and I stumbled over you and your horse; that’s all. How the devil did you manage to lose your saddle and bridle?”
“It was a dead horse,” said Aladdin, and he shivered at the recollection.
“Quite so,” said Manners.
“It was the funniest thing,” said Aladdin, and again he shuddered with a kind of reminiscent revolt. “I pushed it, and it fell over frozen to death.” He was conscious of talking nonsense.
“Wait a minute, Manners,” he said. “I’ll be sensible in a minute.”
Presently he told Manners about the horse.
“I saw alight just then,” he said, “and I thought it was an angel.”
“It was I,” said Manners, naively.
“Yes, Manners, it was you,” said Aladdin.
He thought about an angel turning out to be Manners for a long time. Then a terrible recollection came to him, and, in a voice shaking with remorse and self-incrimination, he cried:
“God help me, Manners, I would have let you freeze.”
Manners pulled at his pipe.
“Manners,” said Aladdin, “it’s true I know it’s true, because, for all I knew, I was dying when I said it.”
Manners shook his head.
“Oh, no,” said Manners.
“Make me think that,” said Aladdin, with a quaver. “Please make me think that if you can, for, God help me, I think I would have let you freeze.”
“When I found you,” said Manners, “I—I was sorry that the Lord hadn’t sent somebody else to you, and me to somebody else. That was because you always hated me with no very good reason, and a man hates to be hated, and so, to be quite honest, I hated you back.”
“Right,” said Aladdin, “right.”
Light began to come in through the windows, whose broken panes Manners had stopped with crumpled wall-paper.
“But when I got you here,” said Manners, “and began to work over you, you stopped being Aladdin O’Brien, and were just a man in trouble.”
“Yes,” said Aladdin, “it must be like that. It’s got to be like that.”
“At first,” said Manners, “I worked because it seemed the proper thing to do, and then I got interested, and then it became terrible to think that you might die.”
“Yes,” said Aladdin. His face was ghastly in the pre-sunrise light.
“You wouldn’t get warm for hours,” said Manners, “and I got so tired that I couldn’t rub any more, and so I stripped and got into the blankets with you, and tried to keep you as warm as I could that way.”
He paused to relight his pipe.
Aladdin stared up at the tattered ceiling with wide, wondering eyes.
“When you got warm,” said Manners, “I gave you all the rest of the whisky, and I’m sorry it made you sick, and now you’re as fit as a fiddle.”
“Fit-as-a-fiddle,” said Aladdin, slowly, as the wonder grew. And then he began to cry like a little child. Manners waited till he had done, and then wiped his face for him.
“So you see,” said Manners, simply, though with difficulty,—for he was a man shy, to terror, of discussing his own feelings,—“I can’t help liking you now, and—and I hope you won’t feel so hard toward me any more.”
“I feel hard toward you!” said Aladdin. “Oh, Manners!” he cried. “I thought all along that you were just a man that knew about horses and dogs, but I see, I see; and I’m not going to worship anybody any more except you and God, I’m not!”
Then he had another great long, hot cry. Manners waited patiently till it was over.
“Manners,” said Aladdin, in a choky, hoarse voice, “I think you’re different from what you used to be. You look as if—as if you ‘d got the love of mankind in you.”
Manners did not answer. He appeared to be thinking of something wonderful.
“Do you think that’s it?” cried Aladdin.
Manners did not answer.
“Can’t I get it, too?” Aladdin cried. “Have I got to be little and mean always? So help me, Manners, I don’t love any one but you and her.”
“You ‘re not fit to talk,” said Manners, with great gentleness. “You go to sleep.” He arose, and going to the door of the house, opened it a little way and looked out.
“It’s warm as toast out, Aladdin,” he called. “There’s going to be a big thaw.” He closed the door and went into the next room, and Aladdin could hear him talking to the horse. After a little he came back.
“Greener says that she never was better stalled,” he said.
“Manners,” said Aladdin, “have I been raving?”
“Not been riding quite straight,” said Manners.
“How soon are we going to start?” said Aladdin.
“We’ve got to wait till the snow’s pretty well melted,” said Manners. “About noon, I think.”
Then, because he was very tired and sick and weak, and perhaps a trifle delirious, Aladdin asked Manners if he would mind holding his hand. Manners took the hand in his, and a thrill ran up Aladdin’s arm and all over him, till it settled deliciously about his heart, and he slept.
The sun rose, and dazzling beams of light filled the room.
“In this combat no man can imagine, unless he had seen and heard as I did, what yelling and hideous roaring Apollyon made all the time of the fight, he spake like a Dragon; and on the other side, what sighs and groans burst from Christian’s heart. I never saw him all the while give so much as one pleasant look, till he perceived he had wounded Apollyon with his two-edged sword: then indeed he did smile and look upward.”
Senator St. John, attended by Margaret, her maid, and a physician, had made the arduous journey from Washington to Portland without too much fatigue, and it seemed reasonable to suppose that a long rest in his comfortable house, far from the turmoil of public affairs, would do much to reinstate his body after the savage attack of gout with complications to which it had been subjected during six long weeks. Arrived at Portland, he was driven to the house of his old friend Mr. Blankinship, and helped to bed. Next morning he was seized with acute pains in the region of the heart, and though his valiant mind refused for a single moment to tolerate the thought that the end might be near, was persuaded to send for his daughter and his sons.
Margaret was in the parlor with Aladdin. It was April, and the whole land dripped. Through the open window, for the day was warm, the moisture of the soaked ground and trees was almost audible. Margaret had much to say to Aladdin, and he to her; they had not met for several months.
“I want to hear about Peter,” said Aladdin—“all about him. He met you, of course, and got you across the city?”
“Yes, and his father came, too,” said Margaret. “Such an old dear—you never saw him, did you? He’s taller than Peter, but much thinner, and a great aristocrat. He’s the only man I ever saw that has more presence than papa. He looks like a fine old bird, and you can see his skull very plainly—especially when he laughs, if you know what I mean. And he’s really witty. He knows all about you and wants you to go and stay with them sometime.” Aladdin sighed for the pure delight of hearing Margaret’s voice running on and on. He was busy looking at her, and did not pay the slightest attention to what she said. “And the girl came to lunch, Aladdin, and she is so pretty, but not a bit serene like Peter, and the men are all wild about her, but she doesn’t care that—”
“Doesn’t she?” said Aladdin, annoyingly.
“No, she doesn’t!” said Margaret, tartly. “She says she’s going to be a horse-breaker or a nurse, and all the while she kept making eyes at brother John, and he lost his poise entirely and smirked and blushed, and I shouldn’t wonder a bit if he’d made up his mind to marry her, and if he has he will—”
Aladdin caught at the gist of the last sentence. “Is that all that’s necessary?” he said. “Has a man only got to make up his mind to marry a certain girl?”
“It’s all brother John would have to do,” said Margaret, provokingly.
“Admitting that,” said Aladdin, “how about the other men?”
“Why,” said Margaret, “I suppose that if a man really and truly makes up his mind to get the girl he wants, he’ll get her.”
She looked at him with a grand innocence. Aladdin’s heart leaped a little.
“But suppose two men made up their minds,” said Aladdin, “to get the same girl.”
“That would just prove the rule,” said Margaret, refusing to see any personal application, “because one of them would get her, and the other would be the exception.”
“Would the one who spoke first have an advantage?” said Aladdin. “Suppose he’d wanted her ever so long, and had tried to succeed because of her, and”—he was warming to the subject, which meant much to him—“had never known that there was any other girl in the world, and had pinned all his faith and hope on her, would he have any advantage?”
“I don’t know,” said Margaret, rather dreamily.
“Because if he would—” Aladdin reached forward and took one of her hands in his two.
She let it lie there, and for a moment they looked into each other’s eyes. Margaret withdrew her hand.
“I know—I know,” she said. “But you mustn’t say it, ‘Laddin dear, because—somehow I feel that there are heaps of things to be considered before either of us ought to think of that. And how can we be quite sure? Anyway, if it’s going to happen—it will happen. And that’s all I’m going to say, ‘Laddin.”
“Tell me,” he said gently, “what the trouble is, dear. Is it this: do you think you care for me, and aren’t sure? Is that it?”
She nodded gravely. Aladdin took a long breath.
“Well,” he said finally, “I believe I love you well enough, Margaret, to hope that you get the man who will make you happiest. I don’t know,” he went on rather gloomily, “that I’m exactly calculated to make anybody happy, but,” he concluded, with a quavering smile, “I’d like to try.” They shook hands like the two very old friends they were.
“We’ll always be that, anyway,” said Margaret.
“Always,” said Aladdin.
“Mademoiselle!” Eugenie opened the parlor door and looked cautiously in, after the manner of the French domestic.
“What is it?” said Margaret in French.
Aladdin listened with intense admiration, for he did not understand a word.
“Monsieur does not carry himself so well,” said Eugenie, “and he asks if mademoiselle will have the goodness to mount a moment to his room.”
“I’ll go at once.” Margaret rose. “Papa’s worse,” she said to Aladdin. “Will you wait?”
“I am so sorry,” said Aladdin. “No, I can’t wait; I have to get out the paper. I”—he smiled—“am announcing to an eager public what general, in my expert opinion, is best fitted to command the armies of the United States.”
“Of course there’ll be fighting.”
“Of course—and in a day or two. Good-by.”
“Good-by.”
“I’ll come round later and inquire about your father. Give him my love.”
Margaret ran up-stairs to her father’s room. He was in great pain, but perfectly calm and collected. As Margaret entered, the doctor went out, and she was alone with her father.
“Are you feeling badly, dear?” she said.
“I am feeling more easy than a moment ago,” said the senator. “Bring a chair over here, Peggy; we must have a little talk.”
She brought a little upright chair and sat down facing him, her right hand nestling over one of his.
“The doctor,” said the senator, “considers that my condition is critical.”
“Papa”
“I disagree with him. I shall, I believe, live to see the end of this civil riot, but I cannot be sure. So it behooves me to ask my dear daughter a question.” St. John asked it with eagerness. “Which is it to be, Peggy?”
She blushed deeply.
“You are interested in Aladdin O’Brien?”
Her head drooped a little.
“Yes, papa.”
The senator sighed.
“Thank you, dear,” he said. “That is all I wanted to know. I had hoped that it would be otherwise. Peggy,” he said, “I love that other young man like a son.”
“Peter?”
“I have always hoped that you would see him as I have seen him. I would be happy if I thought that I could leave you in such strong young hands. I trust him absolutely.”
“Papa.”
“Well, dear?”
“You don’t like Aladdin?”
“He is not steady, Margaret.” The simple word was pregnant with meaning as it fell from the senator.
“You don’t mean that he—that he’s like—”
“Yes, dear; I should not wish my youngest son to marry.”
“Poor boy,” said Margaret, softly.
“It’s the Irish in him,” said the senator. “He must do all things to extremes. There, in a word, lies all his strength and all his weakness.”
“You would be sorry if I married Aladdin?”
“I should be afraid for your happiness. Do you love him?”
“I am not sure, papa.”
“You are fond of Peter, aren’t you?”
She leaned forward till her cheek touched his.
“Next to you and ‘Laddin.”
The senator patted her shoulder, and thus they remained for some time.
A great shouting arose in the neighborhood.
The senator sat bolt upright in bed. His nostrils began to quiver. He was like an old war-horse that hears bugles.
“Sumter?” he cried. “Sumter? Do I hear Sumter?”
The shouting became louder.
“Sumter?” he cried. “Have they fired upon Sumter?”
Margaret flew to the window and threw it open. It acted upon the shouting like the big swell of an organ, and the cries of excitement filled the room to bursting. South Carolina had clenched her hand and struck the flag in the face.
The doctor rushed in. He paused flabbergasted at sight of the man whom he had supposed to be dying.
“Great God, man!” cried the senator, “can’t you get my clothes?”
When he was dressed they brought him his whalebone stick.
“Damn it, I can walk!” said he, and he broke the faithful old thing over a knee that had not been bent for a month.
New fervor of enlistment took place, and among the first to enlist was Aladdin, and when his regiment met for organization he was unanimously elected major. He had many friends.
At first he thought that his duty did not lie where his heart lay, because of his brother Jack, now fourteen, whom he had to support. And then, the old promises coming to mind, he presented himself one morning before Senator St. John.
“Senator,” he said, “you promised to do me a favor if I should ever ask it.”
The senator thought of Margaret and trembled.
“I have come to ask it.”
“Well, sir?”
“I want to enlist, sir, but if I do there’s nobody to look after Jack.”
Again the senator thought of Margaret, and his heart warmed.
“He shall live in my house, sir,” said the senator, “as a member of my family, sir.”
“God bless you, sir!” cried Aladdin.
In a state of dancing glee he darted off to the “Spy” office to see his chief.
Mr. Blankinship was leaning against the post of the street door, reading his own editorial in the morning issue.
“Hallo, Mr. Blankinship!” cried Aladdin.
“Hallo, Aladdin!” cried Mr. Blankinship, grinning at his favorite. “Late as usual.”
“And for the last time, sir.”
“I know of only one good reason for such a statement.”
“It’s it, sir!”
Mr. Blankinship folded his paper carefully. His eyes were red, for he had been up late the night before.
“I’d go, too,” he said simply, “if it wasn’t for the mother.”
The firm of John St. John & Brothers sat in its office. The head of the firm was gorgeous in a new uniform; he had hurried up from New York (where he had been paying vigorous court to Ellen Manners, whom he had made up his mind to marry) in order, as oldest, biggest, and strongest, to enlist for the family in one of the home regiments. There lingered on his lips the thrill of a kiss half stolen, half yielded, while in his pockets were a number of telegrams since received, and the usually grave and stern young man was jocular and bantering. The two younger members of the firm were correspondingly savage.
“For God’s sake, clear out of here,” said Hamilton. “Your shingle’s down. Bul and I are running this office now.”
“Well, it’s the chance of your lives, boys,” said the frisky colonel. “I’ll have forgotten the law by the time I come back.”
“Hope you may choke, John,” said Hannibal, sweetly.
“Don’t allow smoking in here, do you, boys?” He got no answer. It was a hard-and-fast rule which he himself had instituted.
“Well, here goes.” He lighted a huge cigar and puffed it insolently about the office. He surveyed himself in the cracked mirror.
“Cursed if a uniform isn’t becoming to a man!” he said.
“Chicken!” said Hamilton.
“Puppy!” said Hannibal.
“Titmouse!” said Hamilton.
“Ant!” said Hannibal.
John’s grin widened.
“Boys,” he said, “you’ve got one swell looker in the family, anyway, and you ought to be glad of that.”
The boys exchanged glances.
Hannibal had upon his desk a pen-wiper which consisted of a small sponge heavy with the ink of wiped pens. Hamilton had beneath his desk an odd rubber boot which served him as a scrap-basket. These ornamental missiles took John St. John in the back of the head at about the same moment, the weight and impetus of the boot knocking the cigar clean out of his mouth, so that it dashed itself against the mirror.
The gallant colonel turned, still grinning. “Which threw the boot?” said he.
“I did,” said Hamilton.
“Then you get the first licking.”
Hamilton met his brother’s hostile if grinning advance with the hardest blow that he could strike him over the left eye. Then they clenched, and Hannibal joined the fray. The three brothers, roaring with laughter, proceeded to inflict as much damage to each other and the office as they jointly could. Over and under they squirmed and contorted, hitting, tripping, falling and rising. Desks went over, lawbooks strewed the floor, ink ran, and finally the bust of George Washington, which had stood over the inner door since the foundation of the firm, came down with a crash.
By this time the three brothers were helpless with laughter. The combat ceased, and they sat upon the floor to survey the damage.
“You can’t handle the old man yet, boys,” said the colonel. His left eye was closed, and his new uniform looked like the ribbons hung on a May-pole.
Hamilton was bleeding at the nose. Hannibal’s lip was split. The three looked at each other and shook with laughter.
“I’m inclined to think we’ve had a healthy bringing-up,” said Hamilton between gasps.
“Better move, colonel,” said Hannibal; “you’re sitting in a pool of ink.”
“So I am,” said the colonel, as the cold struck through his new trousers.
The laughter broke out afresh.
Beau Larch, in the uniform of a private, appeared at the door.
“Hallo, Beau!”
“Come in.”
“Take a hand?”
“Thank you, no,” said Beau. “I just dropped in to tell you fellows that we’ve just had a hell of a licking at Bull Run.”
“Us!” said the colonel, rising.
“Us!” said Hamilton. “Licked!”
“Us!” said Hannibal.
“And I’ve got other news, too,” said Beau, bashfully. “If I stop drinking till my year’s up, and don’t ever drink any more, Claire says she’ll marry me.”
Hannibal was the first to shake his hand.
“Boys,” said Beau, “I hope if any of you ever sees me touch a drop you’ll strike me dead.”
He went out.
“I’m going to find out about this,” said John; “what did he say the name of the licking was?”
“Bull Run.”
“Bull Run. And I’ll come back and tell you.”
He was starting to descend the steep stairs to the street, when he caught the sound of snickers and creeping footsteps behind him. He turned like a panther, but was not in time. The heavily driven toes of the right boots of the younger St. Johns lifted him clear of the stairs, and clean to the bottom of them. There he sat, his uniform a thing of the past, his left eye blackening and closed, and roars of laughter shaking him.
But Hamilton and Hannibal put the office more or less to rights, and sat down gloomily at their respective desks. Up till now they had faced being left behind, but this licking was too much. Each brooded over it, while pretending to be up to the ears in work. Hamilton wrote a letter, sealed it, addressed it, and presently rose.
“Bul,” he said, and to Hannibal the whole manoeuver smacked suspicious, “I’m going to run up and see the old man for a few minutes.”
“All right,” said Hannibal.
Hamilton reached the door and turned.
“By the way,” he said, “I left a letter on my desk; wish you’d put a stamp on it and mail it.”
He went out.
Hannibal felt very lonely and fidgety.
“I think I’ll just mail that letter and get it off my mind,” he said.
He put on his hat, licked a stamp, and crossed to his brother’s desk. The letter was there, right enough, but it did not require a stamp, for on it was written but one word, and that word was Hannibal.
Hannibal tore open the envelop and read:
DEAR OLD Bul: I can’t stand it any longer, but you’ll try and not be mad with me for running off and leaving you to keep up the old place alone, and damn it, Bul, two of us ought to go anyway....
The letter ran on for a little in the same strain. Hannibal put the letter in his pocket, and sat down at his brother’s desk.
“It will kill the old man if we all go,” he said. “And of all three I’m the one with the best rights to go and get shot.”
He took from somewhere in his clothes a little gold locket, flat and plain. Each of the St. John boys had carried one since their mother’s death. Facing her picture each had had engraved the motto which he had chosen for himself to be his watchword in life. In John’s locket was engraved, “In fortis vinces”; in Hamilton’s, “Deo volente”; and in Hannibal’s, “Carpe diem.” But in Hannibal’s locket there was another picture besides that of his mother. He opened the locket with his thumb-nails and laid it on the desk before him. Presently his eyes dimmed, and he looked beyond the locket.
Hamilton St. John’s ink-well was a globe of glass, with a hole like a thimble in the top to contain ink. Hannibal found himself looking at this, and noting the perfect miniature reproduction of the big calendar on the wall, as it was refracted by the glass. With his thoughts far away, his eyes continued to look at the neat little curly calendar in the ink-well. Presently it seemed to him that it was not a calendar at all, but just a patch of bright green color—a patch of bright green that became grass, an acre of it, a ten-acre field, a great field gay with trampled flowers, rolling hills, woods, meadows, fences, streams. Then he saw, lying thickly over a fair region, broken guns, exploded cannons, torn flags, horses and men contorted and sprung in death; everywhere death and demolition. He wandered over the field and came presently upon himself, scorched, mangled, and dead under the wheel of a cannon.
After a little it seemed to him that the field of battle shrank until it became again the calendar. But there was something odd about that calendar; the dates were queer. It read July, right enough; but this was the year 1861, whereas the calendar bore the date 1863. And why was there a cross to mark the third day of July? Hannibal came to with a shock; but he could have sworn that he had not been asleep.
“God is very—very good!” he said solemnly.
Then he opened his pen-knife, and scratched a deep line of erasure through the “Carpe diem” in his locket, and underneath, cutting with great pains, he inserted a date, “July 3, 1863,” and the words “Nunc dimittis.” Below that he cut “Te Deum laudamus.”
He looked once more at the picture of his mother and at the picture that was not of his mother, shut the little gold case, and put it back in his pocket.
Then he inked on the white inside of a paper-box cover, in large letters, these words:
This office will not be opened until the end of the war.
That office was never opened again.