“Let me have that paper!” demanded Greg, darting forward.
There was fire in Cadet Holmes's eyes and purpose in his heart as he reached forward to snatch the sheet from the desk.
Yet Dick Prescott stepped before him, thrusting him quietly aside with a manner that was not to be overridden.
“Don't touch it, Greg!” he ordered in a low voice that was none the less compelling.
“But you shan't send that resignation in!” quivered Greg.
“My dear boy, you know very well that I shall!”
“Have you no thought for me?” Cadet Holmes demanded.
“My going may put you in a blue streak for a week, old fellow, but it will put me in a blue streak for a lifetime. Yet there's no other way for me. What's the use of being an ostracized officer in the service? With you, Greg, old chum, it is different. You will, after a little, be very happy in the Army.”
“Happy in the—-nothing!” exploded Greg. “I told you, weeks ago, that if you quit the service, I would do the same thing.”
“But you won't,” urged Dick. “In these weeks you have had time to reflect and turn sensible.”
“Do you suppose I care to go on, old chum, if you don't?”
“Yes,” answered Dick quietly. “And if the case were reversed, and you were resigning, I should go on just the same and stick in the service. Why, Greg, if we both went on into the Army, and under the happiest conditions, we wouldn't be together, anyway. You might be in one regiment, down in Florida, and I in another out in the Philippines. When I was serving in Cuba, you'd be in Alaska. Don't be foolish, Greg. I've got to leave, but there's no earthly reason why you should. Your resigning would be mistaken loyalty to me, and would cast no rebuke or regret over the cadet corps or the Army. The fellows who are going to stick would simply feel that one weak-kneed chap had dropped by the wayside. They'd merely march on and forget you.”
“There goes the first call for dinner formation,” cried Holmes, wheeling and beginning his hasty preparations.
“That's better,” laughed Dick, as he shoved his resignation into the drawer of the table.
Then Dick, too, made his hurried preparations. Second call found them ready to watch the forming of A company. At the command Dick gave his own company order:
“Fours right! Forward—-march!”
Away went A company, at the head of the corps, the whole long line giving forth the rhythmic sound of marching feet.
No outsider could have guessed that the young senior cadet captain was utterly discredited by the majority of his class, and that he was about to drop hopelessly out of this stirring life.
On the return from dinner Dick went at once to his room.
“What are you going to do?” demanded Greg impatiently, as Prescott seated himself at the study table.
“I am going to address an envelope to hold the sheet of paper of which you so much disapprove.”
Greg knew it was useless to expostulate. Instead, he hurried out, found Anstey, and called the Virginian so that both could stand in the place where they would be sure to see Prescott if he attempted to come out.
Feverishly, in undertones, Greg confided the news to Anstey.
“I don't just see what we can do, suh,” answered the southerner with a puzzled look.
“Prescott is doing, suh, just what I reckon I'd do myself, suh, if I were in his place.”
“But we can't lose him,” urged Greg.
“I know we'll hate like thunder to, suh. But what can we do? Can we beg Prescott to stay, and face the cold shoulder, suh, all the time he is here, and in the Army afterwards?”
“I'm not getting much comfort out of you, Anstey,” muttered Greg grimly.
“And that, suh, is because I don't see where the comfort comes in. Holmesy, don't think I'm not suffering, suh. It'll break my heart to see old ramrod drop out of the corps.”
“Then you don't think we can stop Prescott?”
“I reckon I don't Holmesy. This is the kind of matter, suh, that every man must settle for himself. If I were a much older man, Holmesy, with much more experience in the Army, I reckon I might be able to give him some very sound advice. But as it is, suh, I know I can't.”
When Greg returned to the room he found Dick preparing books and papers to march to the next section recitation.
“What have you done with that resignation of yours?” growled Greg.
“It's in that drawer,” replied Dick, with a weary smile, “and I rely on you, old fellow, not to do anything to it. It would only give me all the pain over again if I had to rewrite it.”
“Dick, can nothing change your mind?”
“I have thought it all over, old friend.”
The call for section formation sounded, and both hurried away.
Later, Dick's section returned a full minute and a half ahead of the one to which Holmes belonged.
“Now's the time!” muttered Dick, opening the drawer and slipping the envelope into the breast of his blouse.
Then he hurried out, crossing the quadrangle to the cadet guard house. Cadet Holmes, in section ranks, marched into the quadrangle in time just to catch a glimpse of Prescott's disappearing back.
Going up the stairs, Dick knocked on the door of the office of the O.C.
“Come in!” called the officer in charge, who proved to be none other than Lieutenant Denton again.
“What is it, Mr. Prescott?” inquired the Army officer, as Prescott, saluting, advanced to the officer's desk, then halted, standing at attention.
“Sir, I have come to ask for some information.”
“Sir, I have a paper, addressed to the superintendent. I do not know whether I should take it to the adjutant's office, or whether I should forward it through this office.”
“I thought you understood your company paper work, Mr. Prescott,” smiled Lieutenant Denton.
“I think I do, sir; but this kind of paper I have never had to put in before.”
“My resignation, sir,” replied Dick quietly. Lieutenant Denton looked almost as much astonished as he felt.
“What?” he choked. Then a slight smile came into his face.
“Oh, I think I begin to understand, Mr. Prescott. You wish more time for your studies, and so you are resigning your post as captain of A company.”
“This is my resignation, sir, from the corps of cadets.”
Lieutenant Denton looked utterly nonplussed.
“Oh, very good, Mr. Prescott. If you are bent on leaving the Military Academy, I presume I have no right to demand your reasons. But—-won't you sit down?”
The lieutenant pointed to a chair near his own.
“Thank you, sir,” nodded Prescott. Taking off his fatigue cap, he dropped into the chair, though he sat very erect.
“Now,” smiled Mr. Denton, “perhaps we can drop, briefly, some of the relation between officer and cadet. We may be able to talk as friends—-real friends. I trust so. May I feel at liberty to ask you, Mr. Prescott, whether there are any urgent family reasons behind this sudden move of yours?”
“Then is it—-but I don't wish to be intrusive.”
“I certainly don't consider you intrusive, Mr. Denton, and I appreciate your sympathy and friendship. But I am resigning from the corps for the best of good reasons.”
“May I question you, Mr. Prescott?”
“I do wish it, very much,” rejoined Lieutenant Denton, “though I have asked your consent because, in what I am now seeking to do, I am going rather beyond my place as a tactical officer of the Military Academy. If you are sure, however, that you do not find me intrusive, and if you would like to talk this matter over—-not as officer and cadet, but as between a young man and a somewhat older one, and as friends above all, then I am going to ask you a few questions.”
“Although I am certain that you cannot help me, Mr. Denton, I am very grateful for every sign of interest that you may show in me. It is something of balm to me to feel that I shall leave behind some who will regret my going.”
“Prescott,” asked the officer abruptly, “you have been sent to Coventry, haven't you? You needn't answer unless you wish.”
“Twice it has happened, when I have been on duty, that you have had to report classmates to me. Now, I'm not going to step over the line by asking you whether those reports were the basis of your being sent to Coventry. But, to please myself, I'm going to assume that such is the case.”
To this Dick made no reply. It was an instance in which a cadet could not, with propriety, discuss class action with an officer on duty at the Military Academy.
“Now, Prescott, I'm not going to ask you whether my surmise is a correct one, but I'm going to ask you another question, as a friend only, and in no official way. Of course, in a friendly matter you may suit yourself about answering it. Have you done anything else that could excuse the class in punishing you?”
“Mr. Prescott, aren't you wholly satisfied with your conduct?”
“I don't quite know how to answer that, Mr. Denton,”
“Have you done anything that you wouldn't repeat if the need arose?”
“I have not, sir,” replied Dick with great earnestness.
“Do you feel, in your own soul, that you have done anything to discredit the splendid old gray uniform that you wear?”
“Answer this, or not, as you please. Don't you feel wholly convinced that your class has done you an injustice which it would reverse instantly if it knew all the circumstances?”
“I feel certain that my classmates would restore me at once to their favor, if they knew the full circumstances.”
“Have you felt obliged to refuse them any information for which a class committee had asked, Prescott?”
“Let me do some hard thinking, my lad. Ah, now, as I look back to the night when you were obliged to report Mr. Jordan for being outside the guard lines, I had myself that night assigned you to official duty near the guard lines. You were to intercept plebes who might try to run the guard, and to send them back to their tents.”
“That was special duty,” resumed Lieutenant Denton. “Now, if you had been asked, by a class committee, to explain how you happened to be out there at the right time to catch Mr. Jordan, you would have felt bound to refuse to reveal your orders from me?”
“I certainly would have felt so bound, Mr. Denton.”
“Ah! Now I think I understand a good deal, Prescott. Then, at another time, very recently, you forgot, until late, to turn in an official report to me. You started to hurry over here, and, in so doing, you must have accidentally encountered a certain cadet returning in “cit.” clothes. As his company commander, you surely felt bound to report him for so flagrant a breach of discipline. Yet, if your class did not fully understand or credit the fact that only an oversight of yours had thrown you in that cadet's way, it would make the class feel that you had deliberately trapped the man, after having spied on his actions earlier in the evening.”
Dick remained silent, but Lieutenant Denton was a clear headed and logical guesser.
“In my cadet days,” smiled the lieutenant, “such a suspicion against a cadet officer would certainly have resulted in ostracism for him.”
“Now, Prescott,” asked the officer in charge, leaning over and resting a friendly hand on the cadet's arm, “you feel that you have been, throughout, a gentleman and a good soldier, and that you have not done anything sneaky?”
“That is my opinion of myself, Mr. Denton.”
“And yet, feeling that your course has been wholly honorable, you are going to throw up your career in the Army, and waste some twenty thousand dollars of the nation's money that has been expended in giving you your training here?”
“It sounds like a fearful thing to do, Mr. Denton, but I can see no way out of it, sir. If I am to go on into the Army, and be an ostracized officer, I should be of no value to myself or to the service. Wherever I should go, my usefulness would be gone and my presence demoralizing.”
“Now, if that ostracism continued, your usefulness would be gone, Prescott, beyond a doubt, and the Army would be better off without you. But if justice should triumph, later, you would be restored to your full usefulness, and to the full enjoyment of your career. Now, Prescott, my boy”—-here the officer's voice became tender, friendly, earnest—-"you have been attending chapel every Sunday?”
“You have listened to the chaplain's discourses, and I take it that you have had earlier religious instruction, also. Prescott, do you or do you not believe that there is a God above who sees all, loves all and rights all injustice in His own good time?”
“Assuredly I believe it, sir.”
“And yet, in your own case, you have so little faith in that justice that, though you feel your course has been honorable, you cannot wait for justice to be done. Prescott, isn't that kind of faith almost blasphemy?”
Dick felt staggered. Although his lot had been cast with Army officers for more than three years, he had never heard any of them, save the chaplain, discuss matters of Christian faith. Yet he knew that Denton, who sat beside him, smiling with friendly eyes, was talking from full conviction.
“You've made me see my present predicament in a somewhat different light, sir,” Dick stammered.
“Prescott, I have knocked about in a good deal of rough life since I was graduated from here, but I have full faith that every upright and honorable man is ultimately safe under Heaven's justice. So have you, or I am mistaken in you. Why not buck up, and make up your mind to go through your hard rub here firm in the conviction that this is only a passing cloud that is certain to be dispelled? Why not stick, like a man of faith and honor? Now, as officer in charge, I will inform you that you should take a letter of resignation to the adjutant's office, and hand it to that officer in person.”
As your friend, I suggest that you give me your letter, with your permission to destroy it.”
“Here is the letter, Mr. Denton.”
“Thank you, my boy. You may see what I do with it.”
Rising, Lieutenant Denton crossed to an open fire that was burning low. He laid the envelope across the embers.
Prescott, too, rose, feeling that the interview was at an end.
“Just a moment more of friendly conversation, Prescott,” continued the lieutenant, coming forward and taking the cadet's hand. “I want you to remember that you are not to write or send in any other letter of resignation until you have first talked it over with me. And I want you to remember that a soldier should be a man of faith as well as of honor. Further, Prescott, you may feel yourself wholly at liberty to explain, at any time, what your orders from me were that led to your catching and reporting Mr. Jordan.”
“Thank you, sir; but I'm afraid I shan't be asked for any further explanations.”
“Seek me, at any time, if there is anything you wish to ask me, or anything that puzzles you.”
Dick had again placed his fatigue cap on his head, and was standing rigidly at attention. They were once more tactical officer and cadet.
“That is all, Mr. Prescott, and I am very glad that you came to see me,” continued the officer in charge.
Prescott saluted, received the officer's acknowledging salute, turned and left the office.
A minute later he was allowing good old Greg to pump the details of that interview out of him.
“Say,” muttered Cadet Holmes, staring soberly at his chum, “an officer like Lieutenant Denton can put a different look on things, can't be?”
“I'm not going to be fresh, while I'm a cadet,” continued Holmes. “But when I'm an officer I'm going to seek Mr. Denton and ask him to be my friend, too!”
