“Whatever my work is to be,” I repeated. “That was decided for me, Beatrice, when I was a little boy.”
She returned my look for a moment in some doubt, and then leaned eagerly forward. “You mean to enlist?” she asked.
“To enlist? Not I!” I answered hotly. “If I’m not fit to be an officer now, I never shall be, at least not by that road. Do you know what it means? It’s the bitterest life a man can follow. He is neither the one thing nor the other. The enlisted men suspect him, and the officers may not speak with him. I know one officer who got his commission that way. He swears now he would rather have served the time in jail. The officers at the post pointed him out to visitors, as the man who had failed at West Point, and who was working his way up from the ranks, and the men of his company thought that he thought, God help him, that he was too good for them, and made his life hell. Do you suppose I’d show my musket to men of my old mess, and have the girls I’ve danced with see me marching up and down a board walk with a gun on my shoulder? Do you see me going on errands for the men I’ve hazed, and showing them my socks and shirts at inspection so they can give me a good mark for being a clean and tidy soldier? No! I’ll not enlist. If I’m not good enough to carry a sword I’m not good enough to carry a gun, and the United States Army can struggle along without me.”
Beatrice shook her head.
“Don’t say anything you’ll be sorry for, Royal,” she warned me.
“You don’t understand,” I interrupted. “I’m not saying anything against my own country or our army—how can I? I’ve proved clearly enough that I’m not fit for it. I’m only too grateful, I’ve had three years in the best military school in the world, at my country’s expense, and I’m grateful. Yes, and I’m miserable, too, that I have failed to deserve it.”
I stood up and straightened my shoulders. “But perhaps there are other countries less difficult to please,” I said, “where I can lose myself and be forgotten, and where I can see service. After all, a soldier’s business is to fight, not to sit at a post all day or to do a clerk’s work at Washington.”
Even as I spoke these chance words I seemed to feel the cloud of failure and disgrace passing from me. I saw vaguely a way to redeem myself, and, though I had spoken with bravado and at random, the words stuck in my mind, and my despondency fell from me like a heavy knapsack.
“Come,” I said, cheerfully, “there can be no talk of a holiday for me until I have earned it. You know I would love to stay here now with you and Aunt in the old house, but I have no time to mope and be petted. If you fall down, you must not lie in the road and cry over your bruised shins; you must pick yourself up and go on again, even if you are a bit sore and dirty.”
We said nothing more, but my mind was made up, and when we reached the house I went at once to my room and repacked my trunk for a long journey. It was a leather trunk in which my grandfather used to carry his sword and uniform, and in it I now proudly placed the presentation sword he had bequeathed to me in his will, and my scanty wardrobe and $500 of the money he had left to me. All the rest of his fortune, with the exception of the $2,000 a year he had settled upon me, he had, I am glad to say, bequeathed with the house to Aunt Mary and Beatrice. When I had finished my packing I joined them at supper, and such was my elation at the prospect of at once setting forth to redeem myself, and to seek my fortune, that to me the meal passed most cheerfully. When it was finished, I found the paper of that morning, and spreading it out upon the table began a careful search in the foreign news for what tidings there might be of war.