Another night, hours later, the wires flashed a message to the widowed mother, bidding her come to the bedside of her only son.
CHAPTER XVII
January examinations passed by without material change in the standing of those in whom we are most interested, except in the case of Benny Frazier—too ill to appear before the Board. For weeks he had been "running down," and the assault at the hands of Jennings proved but the climax that brought on a violent and dangerous siege of fever. For days the devoted mother, aided by skilled nurses, was ever at the side of her stricken boy. Volunteers from his class, too, were always in readiness as night-watchers; but almost from the first the one for whom he called and of whom he moaned in his delirium was Geordie Graham. No one saw the meeting between the heart-sick, almost hopeless woman and her son's earliest friend and room-mate, but that she had been deeply agitated was plain. From their interview she came forth clinging to his arm, leaning on his strength, and from that time she was never content to have him far away. Each day, between retreat parade and evening call to quarters, there were hours he could spend at Frazier's bedside, and they were the only hours in all the twenty-four that the feeble, childlike patient looked forward to with anything but apathy. For days his life hung in the balance; but when at last the crisis came and went and left him pitiably weak in body and spirit, the one thing he seemed to cling to in life was Graham's brown and muscular hand.
"I wonder I am not jealous," said Mrs. Frazier to the doctor's kindly wife; "but I thank God my poor boy has such a friend left to him, after all his trouble—all the misery into which that—that awful person has led and held him."
And the awful person was Jennings, who, shunned like a pariah by the corps, was again awaiting trial by court-martial as soon as Frazier should be able to testify. For days it looked as though Benny never could appear before an earthly court, and that this case, like the other, must go by default. So long as it appeared that the fever would prove fatal, Jennings kept up his air of bravado and confidence. The evidence of Graham and Ames, the first to reach the scene of the assault, would be sufficient to convict him of that offence, but even they could prove nothing beyond a personal row, said he. It was fully understood, however, that back of all this trouble was the old case of Benny's plebe camp, and that the assault on Graham when a sentry, the stealing of Graham's rifle, and the desertion of Musician Doyle were all matters in which Jennings was a prime mover; and though now "outlawed by the statute"—more than two years having passed since the occurrence of these offences, during which time the alleged offender had in no wise sought to secrete himself from military justice, and therefore a case no longer triable by court-martial—there is no two-year limit to the contempt of the corps of cadets. They could send him to Coventry at any time, and even though he were graduated it might be impossible to obtain a commission.
But when it was noised about the battalion that Benny was on the mend, and that, day after day, he looked forward to nothing as he did to Geordie's visit, it became known that he had made a full and frank confession, and that Jennings was deeply implicated. Interviewed on this subject, Graham refused to say a word; but Mrs. Frazier had been less cautious. It seemed as though she could not do enough to undo her coldness and injustice to Geordie in the past, or to express her affection and regard for him now. In the overflow of her gratitude and joy, when at last her son was declared out of danger, she told the story to sympathetic lady friends, wives of officers stationed at the post, almost as it had been told to her by Benny, and it was not long in leaking through to the corps. The pent-up wrath of the battalion is not a thing to see and forget. The story flew from lip to lip. "Tar-and-feather him!" "Kick him out!" "Turn him loose and let him run the gantlet!" were some of the mad suggestions, but Bend and cooler counsels prevailed. Realizing his peril, Jennings implored the protection of the commandant, and was given a room in the officers' angle. Then the commandant and adjutant went with Dr. Brett to the convalescent's bedside, and Benny's statement was reduced to writing.
A few days later the police of Jersey City laid hands on a precious pair. One of them bore the name of Peter Peterson, the other was Doyle, ex-drummer, both wanted for blackmail and other offences, and Doyle for desertion. The news of this capture reached the corps late in the afternoon, and was the talk of the whole mess-hall at supper. Next morning at breakfast came sensation still bigger:
Jennings had fled.