Part 7 (1/2)
XIV
The strain was finished; softly as the night Her voice died from the window, yet e'en then Fluttered and fell likewise a kerchief white; But that no doubt was accident, for when She sought her couch she deemed her conduct quite Beyond the reach of scandalous commenter,-- Was.h.i.+ng her hands of either gallant wight, Knowing the moralist might compliment her,-- Thus voicing Siren with the words of Mentor.
XV
She little knew the youths below, who straight Dived for her kerchief, and quite overlooked The pregnant moral she would inculcate; Nor dreamed the less how little Winthrop brooked Her right to doubt his soul's maturer state.
Brown--who was Western, amiable, and new-- Might take the moral and accept his fate; The which he did, but, being stronger too, Took the white kerchief, also, as his due.
XVI
They did not quarrel, which no doubt seemed queer To those who knew not how their friends.h.i.+p blended; Each was opposed, and each the other's peer, Yet each the other in some things transcended.
Where Brown lacked culture, brains,--and oft, I fear, Cash in his pocket,--Grey of course supplied him; Where Grey lacked frankness, force, and faith sincere, Brown of his manhood suffered none to chide him, But in his faults stood manfully beside him.
XVII
In academic walks and studies grave, In the camp drill and martial occupation, They helped each other: but just here I crave s.p.a.ce for the reader's full imagination,-- The fact is patent, Grey became a slave!
A tool, a f.a.g, a ”pleb”! To state it plainer, All that blue blood and ancestry e'er gave Cleaned guns, brought water!--was, in fact, retainer To Jones, whose uncle was a paper-stainer!
XVIII
How they bore this at home I cannot say: I only know so runs the gossip's tale.
It chanced one day that the paternal Grey Came to West Point that he himself might hail The future hero in some proper way Consistent with his lineage. With him came A judge, a poet, and a brave array Of aunts and uncles, bearing each a name, Eyegla.s.s and respirator with the same.
XIX
”Observe!” quoth Grey the elder to his friends, ”Not in these giddy youths at baseball playing You'll notice Winthrop Adams! Greater ends Than these absorb HIS leisure. No doubt straying With Caesar's Commentaries, he attends Some Roman council. Let us ask, however, Yon grimy urchin, who my soul offends By wheeling offal, if he will endeavor To find-- What! heaven! Winthrop! Oh! no! never!”
XX
Alas! too true! The last of all the Greys Was ”doing police detail,”--it had come To this; in vain the rare historic bays That crowned the pictured Puritans at home!
And yet 'twas certain that in grosser ways Of health and physique he was quite improving.
Straighter he stood, and had achieved some praise In other exercise, much more behooving A soldier's taste than merely dirt removing.
XXI
But to resume: we left the youthful pair, Some stanzas back, before a lady's bower; 'Tis to be hoped they were no longer there, For stars were pointing to the morning hour.
Their escapade discovered, ill 'twould fare With our two heroes, derelict of orders; But, like the ghost, they ”scent the morning air,”
And back again they steal across the borders, Unseen, unheeded, by their martial warders.
XXII
They got to bed with speed: young Grey to dream Of some vague future with a general's star, And Mistress Kitty basking in its gleam; While Brown, content to wors.h.i.+p her afar, Dreamed himself dying by some lonely stream, Having s.n.a.t.c.hed Kitty from eighteen Nez Perces, Till a far bugle, with the morning beam, In his dull ear its fateful song rehea.r.s.es, Which Winthrop Adams after put to verses.
XXIII
So pa.s.sed three years of their novitiate, The first real boyhood Grey had ever known.
His youth ran clear,--not choked like his Cochituate, In civic pipes, but free and pure alone; Yet knew repression, could himself habituate To having mind and body well rubbed down, Could read himself in others, and could situate Themselves in him,--except, I grieve to own, He couldn't see what Kitty saw in Brown!
XXIV