West Point Colors

by Anna Bartlett Warner

But so far, you could charge things pretty fairly upon fun, and the delightful exercise of skill. If, as was alleged, they carried off two pounds of sugar for every lemon they got hold of, still, one must do something; and as they said, "the sugar was all paid for out of their own allowance."

A much graver thing—perhaps the worst in the whole business—was the bribing enlisted men. Some free lances, indeed, were much too fond of "chancing" it, to do their frisky deeds by proxy. They fetched for themselves what they wanted, with a daring of which I may not tell. But others would get the sentry at the gate to pass things in; or a bandsman to bring all sorts of contraband goods from the Falls. Other people helped, but a mess-hall waiter could only lose his place and run away, while the sentinels were in trust.

Now Magnus Kindred had not been so brought up, and the sight and hearing of certain things at first made him indignant. But they looked lighter coloured the fifteenth time than the first. The memory of Mr. Upright's words also faded out, and when springtime came, and days grew long and nights were bright, he had fallen back into much the old way, and was training with (or training) the wrong crowd. And he was so agile and wary that he never got caught, which was perhaps his loss.

"I don't see how you work it, Kin," Rig complained one day. "You do everything you have a mind to, and yet even Towser will swear you in for sweet cream every time. But as for me, if both my shoe toes aren't blacked exactly alike, I'm skinned to a certainty."

I am not sure that Magnus relished the compliment,—one has a choice about praise,—but he made no answer, and did not change his too successful ways.

And thus that pleb winter did much work for him in more lines than one. For you cannot keep hard at hard studies, as he did, without a swift and increasing rate of progress; the Hill Difficulty of West Point, as Mrs. Gresham had called it, yielded better and better footing, week by week. But alas, it is also true that you cannot constantly fling even small stones at the law, without that fine pillar of strength's being chipped and frayed, and in a sort defaced. Magnus Kindred did not call his doings by any such dignified name, but all the same, freedom and lawlessness were getting very much mixed in his mind. While the right of the authorities to command, and his own right to disobey, were in a worse tangle still. The wise, dignified, and wholesome rule of "Honour to whom honour, fear to whom fear," was much dethroned in those days.

So the course of the days and the drift of the ways went on. Winter slid early into spring. Company drills began, and the full tide of everything set in, especially walks. Bright parasols appeared on the sidewalk, and the old seat at Gee's Point once more received its guests.

A general stir of preparation was in the air; grass was dressed, branches trimmed, and rubbish burned. Cleaning house was on hand, and dressmakers; and always drills, drills, drills. To the Post in general, these signs meant the coming of the Board of Visitors, and all the whirl of examination week: but to the cadets, chiefly June.

All that spring, in spite of much work, Magnus Kindred wrote home very regularly; long, amusing letters. Telling less of his inner life than the hearts at home would have liked; but the strangeness of what he said of the outer partly covered this up. And I doubt whether Magnus knew how little he told.

Of one thing, however, he was dimly conscious. At first, his mother's expressions of trust and hope, given in Bible words or her own, had been a comfort and help to him; they seemed to bring her nearer and to make him stronger. But of late he had been often inclined to slur over those parts of her letters, and to hurry on "to get the news first"—as he put it to himself. He never stopped to ask why; and it was again Mr. Upright who opened his eyes, and showed him how quietly they had been closing and falling asleep.