FullReads

“Good-night,” she whispers. “I–know you must go.”

“I must. There is so much to be done.”

“I–thought”–another quick glance at the piazza–“that a soldier, on leaving, should–salute his commanding officer?”

And Romney Lee is again in shadow and–in sunshine.

* * * * *

Late that autumn, in one of his infrequent letters to his devoted mother, Mr. McKay finds time to allude to the news of Lieutenant Lee’s approaching marriage to Miss Stanley.

“Phil is, of course, immensely pleased,” he writes, “and from all I hear I suppose Mr. Lee is a very different fellow from what we thought six months ago. Pennock says I always had a wrong idea of him; but Pennock thinks all my ideas about the officers appointed over me are absurd. He likes old Pelican, our battery commander, who is just the crankiest, crabbedest, sore-headedest captain in all the artillery, and that is saying a good deal. I wish I’d got into the cavalry at the start; but there’s no use in trying now. The –th is the only regiment I wanted; but they have to go to reveille and stables before breakfast, which wouldn’t suit me at all.

“Hope Nan’s better. A winter in the Riviera will set her up again. Stanley asks after her when he writes, but he has rather dropped me of late. I suppose it’s because I was too busy to answer, though he ought to know that in New York harbor a fellow has no time for scribbling, whereas, out on the plains they have nothing else to do. He sent me his picture a while ago, and I tell you he has improved wonderfully. Such a swell moustache! I meant to have sent it over for you and Nan to see, but I’ve mislaid it somewhere.”

Poor little Nan! She would give many of her treasures for one peep at the coveted picture that Will holds so lightly. There had been temporary improvement in her health at the time Uncle Jack came with the joyous tidings that Stanley was safe after all; but even the Riviera fails to restore her wonted spirits. She droops visibly during the long winter. “She grows so much older away from Willy,” says the fond mamma, to whom proximity to that vivacious youth is the acme of earthly bliss. Uncle Jack grins and says nothing. It is dawning upon him that something is needed besides the air and sunshine of the Riviera to bring back the dancing light in those sweet blue eyes and joy to the wistful little face.

“The time to see the Yosemite and ‘the glorious climate of California’ is April, not October,” he suddenly declares, one balmy morning by the Mediterranean; “and the sooner we get back to Yankeedom the better ’twill suit me.”

And so it happens that, early in the month of meteorological smiles and tears, the trio are speeding westward far across the rolling prairies: Mrs. McKay deeply scandalized at the heartless conduct of the War Department in refusing Willy a two-months’ leave to go with them; Uncle Jack quizzically disposed to look upon that calamity as a not utterly irretrievable ill; and Nan, fluttering with hope, fear, joy, and dread, all intermingled; for is not he stationed at Cheyenne? All these long months has she cherished that little knot of senseless ribbon. If she had sent it to him within the week of his graduation, perhaps it would not have seemed amiss; but after that, after all he had been through in the campaign,–the long months of silence,–he might have changed, and, for very shame, she cannot bring herself to give a signal he would perhaps no longer wish to obey. Every hour her excitement and nervousness increase; but when the conductor of the Pullman comes to say that Cheyenne is really in sight, and the long whistle tells that they are nearing the dinner station of those days, Nan simply loses herself entirely. There will be half an hour, and Philip actually there to see, to hear, to answer. She hardly knows whether she is of this mortal earth when Uncle Jack comes bustling in with the gray-haired colonel, when she feels Miriam’s kiss upon her cheek, when Mr. Lee, handsomer and kindlier than ever, bends down to take her hand; but she looks beyond them all for the face she longs for,–and it is not there. The car seems whirling around when, from over her shoulder, she hears, in the old, well-remembered tones, a voice that redoubles the throb of her little heart.

“Miss Nannie!”

And there–bending over her, his face aglow, and looking marvellously well in his cavalry uniform–is Philip Stanley. She knows not what she says. She has prepared something proper and conventional, but it has all fled. She looks one instant up into his shining eyes, and there is no need to speak at all. Every one else is so busy that no one sees, no one knows, that he is firmly clinging to her hand, and that she shamelessly and passively submits.

A little later–just as the train is about to start–they are standing at the rear door of the sleeper. The band of the –th is playing some distance up the platform,–a thoughtful device of Mr. Lee’s to draw the crowd that way,–and they are actually alone. An exquisite happiness is in her eyes as she peers up into the love-light in his strong, steadfast face. Something must have been said; for he draws her close to his side and bends over her as though all the world were wrapped up in this dainty little morsel of womanhood. Suddenly the great train begins slowly to move. Part they must now, though it be only for a time. He folds her quickly, unresisting, to his breast. The sweet blue eyes begin to fill.

“My darling,–my little Nannie,” he whispers, as his lips kiss away the gathering tears. “There is just an instant. What is it you tell me you have kept for me?”

“This,” she answers, shyly placing in his hand a little packet wrapped in tissue-paper. “Don’t look at it yet! Wait!–But–I wanted to send it–the very next day, Philip.”

Slowly he turns her blushing face until he can look into her eyes. The glory in his proud, joyous gaze is a delight to see. “My own little girl,” he whispers, as his lips meet hers. “I know it is my love-knot.”