West Point Colors

by Anna Bartlett Warner

"Just that. You are good little girls to look me up. Come, let us go."

And with a sort of bitter-sweet sense of holding fast what he had, Magnus put his arm round each, and so led them down the hill, their young voices making merry, the girlish arms locked round him, fast and true.

This did not lay his thoughts, however. Should he ever mar the joy of these gay tones? ever make the innocent eyes look down in shame, for him? Thoughts, questions, purposes, surged through the young cadet's head as he walked along, and Magnus would fain have gone straight to the silence of his own room. But they had waited prayers for him, and of course he must take his place.

There are moods, however, in which no prayers but one's own will do; and though Magnus did hear his mother's voice, and the chapter she read, he could never have told a word of it afterwards. He got away as soon as he could, and went upstairs; went to his own room and locked the door, and fell on his knees; it seemed to him as if only so could he even think out anything clearly.

How had it all come about? The wild transport of the last few days had confused everything.

He remembered now that one and another had counselled him not to go, to cut the class supper, and so save money, risk, and name. "I'll have nothing to do with the whole thing," Twinkle had said. And he could see the staunch, quiet face of some who were there and yet stood to their vote. Why had not he?

It was not real cowardice, Magnus said to himself. He had thought the word, and yet the bravery called for had not been so much that of standing a taunt or refusing a persuasion; the men had not said so very much to him. Perhaps, indeed, more open attack might have roused more open resistance. But he had lacked that utterly "valiant for the truth" heart, which for love of the cause, and seeing the fight at hand, flings out the unpopular banner and stands beside it.

As in those dreadful days of the New York riots, when all the servants in a certain house declared their sympathy with the rioters and against the flag. And the dear mistress of the house, alone there, and with no one to back her, ran out the biggest "Old Glory" she could find, from her very most conspicuous window, and kept it floating.

Just there, Magnus felt, had been his fault, ever since he went to the Academy; his religion had been too little an open, positive thing; had not gone forth enough from its own intrenchments. He had rarely ever tried to make himself a power for good. There had been back and forth progress and impulses (if I may so put it), but not steady, daily growth; not joyful, burning zeal for Christ and his cause. So, in the wild excitement of that day and night, he had forgotten everything but that he was off on furlough. Now it had come to this.

Had he lost Cherry? He could not tell. But he would be worthy of her, whether or not. If the joy of his life was gone, and sometimes Magnus felt that it was, yet honour and truth remained. "What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"