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Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point, a novel by H. Irving Hancock |
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Chapter 9. Spoony Femme---Flirtation Walk |
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_ CHAPTER IX. SPOONY FEMME---FLIRTATION WALK "So this is Flirtation Walk?" asked Belle Meade. The four young people---Anstey was one of them---had just turned into the famous path, which begins not far to the eastward of the hotel. It was between one and two o'clock on Sunday afternoon. "This is Flirtation Walk," replied Mr. Anstey. "But is one compelled to flirt, on this stroll?" asked Belle, with a comical pout. "By no means," Anstey hastened to assure her. "Yet the surroundings often bring out all there may be of slumbering inclination to flirt." "Where did the walk ever get such a name?" pursued Belle. "Really, you have to see the first half of it before you can quite comprehend," the Virginian told her. "I suppose you have been over this way times innumerable?" teased Miss Meade. "Hardly," replied Anstey seriously. "I have been a yearling only a few days." "But is a plebe forbidden to stroll here?" "If a plebe did have the brass to try it," replied Anstey slowly, "I reckon he would have to fight the whole yearling class in turn." Laura caught some of the conversation, and turned to Dick. "Haven't plebes any rights or privileges?" she asked. "Oh, yes, indeed," replied Prescott gravely. "A plebe is fed three meals a day, like anyone else. If he gets hurt he has a right to medical and surgical attendance. He is allowed to attend chapel on Sunday, just like an upper classman, and he may receive and write letters. But he mustn't butt into upper-class privileges." "Poor plebe!" sighed sympathetic Laura. "Lucky plebe!" amended Dick. "Weren't you fearfully glum and homesick last year? "Some of the time, desperately so." "Yet you believe it is right to ignore a plebe, and to make him so wretched?" "The upper classmen don't make the plebe wretched. The plebe is just on probation while he's in the fourth class---that's all. The plebe is required to prove that he's a man before he's accepted as one." "It all seems dreadfully hard," contended Laura. "It is hard, but necessary, if the West Point man is to be graduated as anything but a snob with an enlarged cranium. Laura, you remember what a fuss the 'Blade' made over me when I won my appointment? Now, almost every new man come to West Point with some such splurge made about him at home. He reaches here thinking he's one of the smartest fellows in creation. In a good many cases, too, the fellow has been spoiled ever since he was a baby, by being the son of wealthy parents, or by being from a family distinguished in some petty local social circles. The first move here, on the part of the upper classmen, is to take all of that swelling out of the new man's head. Then, most likely, the new man has never had any home training in being really manly. Here, he must be a man or get out. It takes some training, some probation, some hard knocks and other things to make a man out of the fellow. He has to be a man, if he's going to be fit to command troops." Anstey, who had been walking close behind his comrade, added: "The new man, if he has been spoiled at home, usually comes here with a more or less bad temper. He can't talk ugly here, or double his fists, or give anyone black looks---except with one invariable result." "What?" asked both girls eagerly. "He must fight, as soon as the meeting can be arranged," replied Anstey. "That sounds rather horrible!" shuddered Laura. "Does it?" asked Dick dryly. "We're being trained here for fighting men." "But what do they fight about?" inquired Belle. "Well, one man, who probably will never be thought of highly again," replied Anstey, "spoke slightingly of a girl at the hop last night. The cadet who heard him didn't even know the girl, but he called the cadet a 'dog' for speaking that way of a woman." "What happened?" inquired Laura. "The man who was called a 'dog' was, according to our code, compelled to call his insulter out." "Are they going to fight?" asked Belle eagerly. "The 'dog' was whipped at the first streak of daylight this morning," the Virginian answered. "That particular 'dog' is now in a special little kennel at the hospital. Hasn't he learned anything? He knows more about practical chivalry than he did last night." "This talk is getting a bit savage," laughed Dick. "Let me call your attention to the beauty of the view here." The view was, indeed, a striking one. The two couples had halted at a rock-strewn point on the walk. The beauty of the woods was all about them. Through the trees to the east they could see the Hudson, almost at their feet, yet far below them. Looking northward, they saw a noble sweep of the same grand river, above the bend. "Come forward a bit" urged Anstey of Belle. "I want to show you a beautiful effect across the river." As they passed on, just out of sight, Greg Holmes came along, talking animatedly with Miss Griffin. At sight of Laura, Greg halted, and the four young people chatted. At last Holmes and Miss Griffin passed on to speak to Belle. "I feel as if I could spend an entire day on this beautiful spot," murmured Laura contentedly. "Let me fix a seat for you," begged Dick, spreading his handkerchief on a flat rock. Laura thanked him and sat down. Dick threw himself on the grass beside the rock. Then Laura told him a lot of the home-town news, and they talked over the High School days to their hearts' content. "I don't know that I've ever seen such a beautiful spot as it is right at this part of the walk," spoke Laura presently, after a few couples had strolled above them. "And such beautiful wild flowers! Look at the honeysuckle up there. I really wish I could get some of that to take back to the hotel. I could press it before it withered." "It is easily enough obtained," smiled Dick, rising quickly. "O-o-o-h! Don't, please!" called Miss Bentley uneasily, for Dick, after examining the face of the little cliff for footing, had begun to scale up toward the honeysuckle. "Hold your parasol---open," he directed, looking down with a smile. In another moment he was tossing down the beautiful blossoms into the open parasol that Miss Bentley held upside down. "How would you like some of these ferns?" Dick called down, pulling out a sample by the roots and holding it out to view. "Oh, if you please!" Several ferns fell into the upturned parasol. Then Dick scrambled down, resuming his lounging seat on the grass, while Laura examined her treasures and chatted. "What a splendid, thoroughbred girl she has become!" kept running through Prescott's mind. Every detail, from the tip of her small, dainty boot, peeping out from under the hem of the skirt, up to the beautiful coloring of her face and the purity of her low, white feminine brow Dick noted in turn. He had never seen Laura look so attractive, not even in her dainty ball finery of the night before. He had never felt so strongly drawn toward her as he did now. He longed to tell her so, and not lightly, either, but with direct, manly force and meaning. Though Cadet Prescott's face showed none of his temptation, he found himself repeatedly on the dangerous brink of sentimentality. Since coming to West Point he had seen many charming girls, yet not one who appealed to him as did this dainty one from his own home town and the old, bygone school days. But Dick tried to hold himself back. He had, yet, nothing to offer the woman whom he should tell of his love. He was by no means certain that he would finally graduate from the Military Academy. Without a place in life, what had he to offer? Would it be fair or honorable to seek to capture the love of this girl when his own future was yet so uncertain? Yet caution and prudence seemed more likely to fly away every time he glanced at this dear girl. In desperation Dick rose quickly. "Laura," he said softly, "if we remain here all afternoon there is a lot that we shall fail to see. Are you for going on with our walk?" Laura Bentley looked up at him with something of a little start. Perhaps she, too, had been thinking, but a girl may not speak all that passes in her mind. "Yes," she answered; "let us keep on." Dick, as he walked beside her, was tortured with the feeling that Laura Bentley might not wait long before making her choice of men in the world. Some other fellow, more enterprising than he, might----- "But it wouldn't be fair!" muttered Prescott to himself. "I have no right to ask her to tie herself for years, and then perhaps fail myself." Laura thought her cadet companion appeared a bit absent minded during the rest of the walk. Who shall know what passes in a girl's innermost mind? Perhaps she divined what was moving in his mind. As they passed by the coast battery, then came up by Battle Monument, and so to the hotel, they found Greg and Anstey leaning against the veranda railing, chatting with Belle and Miss Griffin. These latest arrivals joined the others. Mrs. Bentley at last came down and joined them. Thrice, in duty bound, Dick glanced at his watch. The third time a sigh full of bitterness escaped him. "This is the meanest minute in my life," he declared. "It is time to say good-bye, for we must get back to camp and into full-dress uniform for parade." "But shall we not see you after parade? asked Laura, looking up quickly, an odd look flitting over her face. "No; we are soldiers, and move by schedule," signed Dick. "After parade there will be other duties, then supper. And you are going at the end of parade!" Bravely Prescott faced the farewells, though he knew more of the wrench than even Laura could have guessed. "But you will come again in winter?" he murmured in a low voice to Laura. "If mother permits," she answered, looking down at her boot tip, then up again, smiling, into his face. "Mrs Bentley, you'll bring the girls here again, this winter, won't you?" appealed Dick. "If Dr. Bentley and Belle's parents approve, I'll try to," answered the matron. Then came the leave-takings, brief and open. With a final lifting of their caps Dick and the others turned and strode down the path. Laura and Belle gazed after them until the young men had disappeared into the encampment. But you may be sure the girls were over on the parade ground by the time that the good old gray battalion had turned out and marched over, forming in battalion front. It was a beautiful sight. Mrs. Bentley wasn't martial, but as she looked on at that straight, inflexible wall of gray and steel, as the band played the colors up to the right of line, the good matron was thinking to herself: "What a pity that the country hasn't a thousand such battalions of the flower of young American manhood! Then what fear could we know in time of war?" The girls looked on almost breathlessly, starting at the boom of the sunset gun, then thrilling with a new realization of what their country meant when the band crashed out in the exultant strains of the "Star Spangled Banner" and the Stars and Stripes fluttered down at West Point, to rise on another day of the nation's life. It was over, and the visitors took the stage to the railway station. What a fearfully dull evening it seemed in camp! Dick had never known the time to hang so heavily. He would almost have welcomed guard duty. Over in another tent near by a "soiree" was in full but very quiet blast, for that bumptious plebe, Mr. Briggs, had been caught in more mischief, and was being "instructed" by his superiors in length of service. Prescott, however, didn't even look in to see what was happening. * * * * * * * * "Isn't West Point life glorious, Belle?" asked Laura eagerly as the West Shore train carried them toward New York. "Fine!" replied Belle enthusiastically. "But still---wait until we have seen Annapolis." At ten o'clock the next morning the young ladies and Mrs. Bentley were traveling in a Pullman car, on another stage of their journey. "I wonder what our young cadets are doing?" Laura wondered aloud, as she leaned forward. "Enjoying themselves, you may be sure," Mrs. Bentley replied promptly, with a smile. "That summer encampment seems like one long, huge lark," put in Belle Meade. "It must be great for young men to be able to enjoy themselves so thoroughly." "I wonder just what our young men are doing at this moment?" persisted Laura. "Well, if they're not dressing for something," calculated Mrs. Bentley, "you may be sure they're moving about looking as elegant as ever and making themselves highly agreeable in a social way." Ye gods of war! At that very moment Dick, in field uniform, and dripping profusely under the hot sun, was carrying a long succession of planks, each nearly as long and heavy as he could manage, to other cadets who waited to nail them in place on a pontoon bridge out over an arm of the Hudson. Greg Holmes was one of four young men toiling at the rope by which they were endeavoring to drag a mountain howitzer into position up a steep slope near Crow's Nest, while Anstey, studying field fortification, was digging in a trench with all his might and main. _ |
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