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Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point, a fiction by H. Irving Hancock |
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Chapter 5. Along A "Dangerous" Road |
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_ CHAPTER V. ALONG A "DANGEROUS" ROAD
This information had the effect of making Prescott almost feel that he would enjoy kicking that other young man. "You are old friends, then?" he asked lightly, as he tucked the thin carriage robe about Laura, then picked up the lines. "No; quite recent acquaintances. We met about four months ago, I think it was." Though she spoke with apparent indifference, Prescott covertly caught sight of a slight flush rising to the girl's face. "After all," muttered Dick inwardly, "why not? Laura isn't a schoolgirl any longer, and it certainly most be difficult for any young man who has the chance to call to keep away from her!" So Cadet Prescott tried to persuade himself that it was all very natural for Mr. Cameron to call and for Laura to be glad to see Mr. Cameron. Dick even tried to feel glad that Laura was receiving attentions---but the effort ended in secret failure. Then Dick, as he drove along, tried to tell himself that he didn't care, and that he hadn't any right to care---but in this also he fell short of success with himself. So he fell silent, without intending to. Laura, on her part, tried to make up for his silence by chatting pleasantly, but after a while she, too, found herself out of words. Then, for a mile, they drove along almost in complete silence. Yet Cadet Prescott found plenty of chance to eye her covertly. What he saw was a beautiful girl, so sweet and wholesome looking that he had hard work, indeed, to keep ardent words from rushing to his lips. "She grows sweeter and finer all the time," he muttered to himself. "Why shouldn't men be eager to call, often and long?" At last the mare stumbled slightly, and Prescott jerked the animal so quickly and almost savagely on the lines that Miss Bentley looked at him with something of a start. "Dick," spoke Laura at last, turning and looking him frankly, sweetly in the eyes, "have I done anything to offend you?" "You, Laura?" "I wondered," she continued. "You have been so very silent." "I am afraid I was thinking," muttered Dick. "And that's a very rude thing to do when it makes one seem to ignore the lady who is with him," he added, forcing a smile. "I beg your pardon, Laura, ten times over." "Oh, I don't mind your being abstracted," she answered simply, "so long as I am not the cause of it." "You-----" Dick checked himself quickly. He had been right on the point of admitting that she had been the cause of his abstraction, and such a statement as that would have called for an abundance of further explanation. So he forced himself into a peal of laughter that sounded nearly natural. "If I were to tell you what a ridiculous thing I was thinking about, Laura!" he chuckled. Then his West Point training against all forms of deceit led him to wondering, at once, whether Mr. Cameron could truthfully be defined as "a ridiculous thing." "Tell me," smiled the girl patiently. "Not I," defied Prescott gayly. "Then you would find me more ridiculous than the thing about which I was thinking." "Oh!" she replied, and the cadet fancied that his companion spoke in a tone of more or less hurt. But, at least, Dick could look straight into her face now, as they talked, and every instant he realized more and more keenly how lovely Miss Bentley was growing to be. They were driving down sweet-scented country lanes now. The whole scene fitted romance. The cadet remembered Flirtation Walk, at West Point, and it struck him that there was danger, at the present moment, of Flirtation Drive. "I wonder what the dear girl is thinking about at this present moment?" pondered Dick. "I wonder what it was that made him so abstracted, and then so suddenly merry?" was the thought in Miss Bentley's mind. "That was a very pretty road we came through before we turned into this one," commented Dick at a hazard. "I didn't notice it," replied Laura. "Where are we now? Oh, yes! I know the locality now." "You have driven out here before---with Mr. Cameron?" The words were out ere Cadet Prescott could recall them. He felt indescribably angry with himself. In the first place, the question he had asked was really none of his business. In the second place, his inquiry, under the circumstances, was a rude one. "Mr. Cameron was in the party," Laura replied readily. "There was quite a number of us; it was a 'bus ride one May afternoon. We came out to gather wild flowers." "If I had the right," flamed up within the cadet, "I'd soon make Mr. Cameron my business, or else I'd be some of his. But it wouldn't be fair. I'm not through West Point yet, and I may never be. Until my future is fairly assured I'm not going to ask the sweetest girl on earth to commit her future to my hands. Even if I felt that I could, a cadet is forbidden to marry and a two years' engagement is a fearfully long one to ask of a girl. And a girl like Laura has a chance to meet hundreds of more satisfactory fellows than I in two years." It required all the young soldier's will power to keep silent on the one subject uppermost in his mind. And even Dick realized that some very trivial circumstance was likely to unseat his firm resolve. What he was trying to act up to was his sense of fairness. Hard as it was under the circumstances, he was more anxious to be fair to this girl than to any other living being. "I mustn't spoil her afternoon, just because my own mind is so dizzy!" he thought reproachfully. So, a moment later, he became merrier than ever---on the surface. It was Laura's turn to take a covert look at his face. She wondered, for she felt that Prescott's assumed gayety had an almost feverish note. "How much further are you going to drive?" she asked presently. "The only pleasure I recognize in the matter, Laura, is yours. So I am wholly at your command." He tried to answer lightly and gallantly, yet felt, an instant later, that his words had had a strained sound. The same thought had struck the girl. Yet, instead of asking him to turn the horse's head about, Laura ventured: "Gridley must be pleasant, as your home town, yet I fancy you are already looking forward to getting back to your ideals at West Point?" "Is she tired of having me around?" wondered Cadet Prescott, wincing within, as though he had been stabbed. "I'm keener for West Point, every day, Laura," he answered quietly. "Yet, even in the case of such a grand old place as the Military Academy, it is worth while to get away once in a while. If it were not for this long furlough, midway in the four years' course, many of us might go mad with the incessant grind." "Oh, you poor Dick!" cried Laura Bentley, in quick, genuine sympathy. "Yes; I think I can quite understand what you say." And then a new light came into her eyes, as she added, very softly: "We in Gridley, who hope for you with your own intensity of longings, must take every pains to make this furlough of yours restful enough and full enough of happiness to send you back to West Point with redoubled strength for the grind." "The same Laura as of yesterday!" cried Dick with sincere enthusiasm. "Always wondering how to make life a little sweeter for others!" "Thank you," she half bowed quietly. "Yes; I want to see your strength proven among strong men." Again she looked frankly into Prescott's eyes, and he, at the same moment, into hers. His pulses were bounding. What was to become, now, of his resolution to hold back the surging words for at least two more years? Yet resolutely he stifled the feelings that surged within him. He was a boy, though the training at West Point was swiftly making him over into a man. "I may lose her," groaned Cadet Prescott. "I may have lost her already---if I ever had any chance. But a soldier has at least his honor to think of, and no honorable man can ask a woman to give herself to him, and to wait for years, when he isn't reasonably certain he is going to be able to meet the responsibility that he seeks." Never had Prescott been more earnest, more serious, nor more attentive than during the remainder of that drive. Yet he studiously refrained from giving the girl any hint of the thoughts that were surging within him. Was he foolish? Dick felt, anyway, that he was not, for he was waging a mighty fight to stand by his best sense of honor. _ |
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