The Tempering Part 24

"Count," he said almost curtly, "before we talk at all, you must be candid with me. If I choose to live in solitude, any intrusion upon that privacy should be with my consent. May I inquire how the name of Victor McCalloway has chanced to become known and of interest to the Government of j.a.pan?"

The diplomatic agent bowed.

"The question is in point, Excellency. Unhappily I am unable to answer it. What is known to my government I cannot say. I can only relate what has been delegated to me."

"I take it you can, at least, do that."

"We have been told that a gentleman who for reasons of his own prefers to use the name of Victor McCalloway, had formerly a t.i.tle more widely known."

This time McCalloway's voice was sharply edged.

"However that may be, I have now only one name, Victor McCalloway."

"That we entirely understand. Some few years back my government, in an effort to encourage Europeanizing the Chinese army, attempted to enlist your honourable services. Is that not true?"

McCalloway nodded but, as he did so, anger blazed hotly in his eyes.

"To know more about a gentleman, in private life, than he cares to state, const.i.tutes a grave discourtesy, sirs. Whatever activities my soldiering has included, I have never been a mercenary. I have fought only under my own flag and my sword is not for hire!"

The Orientals rose and again they bowed, but this time the voice of the Count Oku dropped away its soft sheath of diplomatic suavity and, though it remained low of pitch, it carried now a ring of purpose and positiveness.

"The officer who fights for a cause is not a soldier of fortune, Excellency. The flag of the Rising Sun has a cause."

"j.a.pan is at peace with the world. Military service can be for a cause only when it is active."

"Yes, j.a.pan is at peace with the world--now!" The voice came sharply, almost sibilantly, with the aspirates of the race. "I am authorized to state to you that service with our high command will none the less be active--and before many months have pa.s.sed. I am further authorized to state to you that the foe will be a traditional enemy of Great Britain: that our interests will run parallel with those of the British Empire--If you take service under the Sun flag, Excellency, it will be against foes of the Cross of St. George."

The two j.a.panese stood very erect, their beady eyes keenly agleam.

Slowly, and subconsciously, Victor McCalloway too drew his shoulders back, as though he were reviewing a division. He was hearing the Russo-j.a.panese War forecast weeks before it burst like shrapnel on an astonished world.

"Gentlemen," he said gravely, "you must grant me leisure for thought.

This is a most serious matter."

A half hour later, with cigars glowing, the guests from j.a.pan and the guests from Louisville sat about the hearth, but on none of the faces was there any trace of the unusual or of a knowledge of great secrets.

In all truth, Mahomet had come to the mountain.

Boone had not long returned from his Christmas vacation. So when he came into his dormitory room from his cla.s.ses one afternoon and found his patron awaiting him there with a grave face, he was somewhat mystified, until with a soldier's precision McCalloway came to his point.

"My boy," he said, "I have come here to have a very serious talk with you."

Boone's face, which had flushed into pleasurable surprise at the sight of his visitor, fell at the gravity of the voice. He guessed at once that this was the preface to such an announcement as he always dreaded in secret, and his own words came heavily.

"I reckon you mean--that you aim to--go away."

"I aim to talk to you about going away."

Boone rallied his sinking spirits as he announced with a creditable counterfeit of cheerfulness, "All right, sir; I'm listening."

For a while the older man talked on. He was sitting in the plain room of the dormitory--and his gaze was fixed off across the snow-patched grounds, and the scattered buildings of the university.

He did not often look at the boy, who had grown into his heart so deeply that the idea of a parting carried a barb for both. He thought that Boone could discuss this matter with greater ease if the eyes of another did not lay upon him the necessity of maintaining a stoical self-repression.

McCalloway for the first time traced out in full detail the plan that he had conceived for Boone: the fantastic dream of his pilgrimage in one generation along the transitional road his youthful nation had travelled since its birth. As he listened, the young man's eyes kindled with imagination and grat.i.tude difficult to express. He had been, he thought, ambitious to a fault, but for him his preceptor had been far more ambitious. The horizons of his aspiration widened under such confidence, but he could only say brokenly, "You're setting me a mighty big task, sir. If I can do any part of it, I'll owe it all to you."

"We aren't here to compliment each other, my boy," replied McCalloway bluntly. "But if I've made a mistake in my judgment, I am not yet prepared to admit it. You owe me nothing. I was alone, without family, without ties. I was here with a broken life--and you gave me renewed interest. But that couldn't have gone on, I think, if you hadn't been in the main what I thought you--if you hadn't had in you the makings of a man and a gentleman."

He broke off and cleared his throat loudly.

Boone, too, found the moment a trying one, and he thrust his hands deep in his trousers pockets and said nothing. The uprights that supported his life's structure seemed, just then, withdrawn without warning.

"You know, when I was offered service in China, I declined--and you know why," McCalloway reminded him. "I should do the same thing today, except that now I think you can stand on your own legs. I take it you no longer need me in the same sense that you did then--and the call that comes to me is not an unworthy one."

"I reckon, sir--it's military?"

"It's at least advisory, in the military sense. My boy, it pains me not to be able to take you into my full confidence--but I can't. I can't even tell you where I am going."

"You--" the question hung a moment on the next words--"you aim to come back--sometime?"

"G.o.d granting me a safe conclusion, I shall come back ... and the thought of you will be with me in my absence ... the confidence in you ... the hope for you."

There was again a long silence, then McCalloway said:

"I came here to discuss it with you. I have declined to give a positive answer until we could do that."

Boone wheeled, and his head came up. He felt suddenly promoted to the responsible status of a counsellor. There was now no tremor in his voice, except the thrill of his young and straightforward courage.

"You say it's not unworthy work, sir. There can't be any question.

You've _got_ to go. If you hesitated, I'd know full well I was spoiling your life."

Later, side by side, they tramped the muddy turnpikes between the rich acres of farms where thoroughbreds were foaled and trained.

"I have talked with Colonel Wallifarro," announced the soldier at length. "Next fall he wants you to come to Louisville and finish reading law in his office."

But the boy shook his head. Here, confronting a great loneliness, he was feeling the contrast between the land, whose children called it G.o.d's country, and his own meagre hills, where the creeks bore such names as Pestilence and h.e.l.l-fer-sartain.

"I _couldn't_ go to Louisville, sir. I couldn't pay my board or buy decent clothes there. I've got that little patch of ground up there and the cabin on it, though. I'd aimed to go back there--I'll soon be of age, now--and seek to get elected clerk of the court."

"Why clerk of the court? Why not the legislature?"

The boy grinned.

"The legislature was what I aimed at--until I read the const.i.tution.

About the only job I'm not too young for is the clerks.h.i.+p."

McCalloway nodded.