From the Improvement Era, February 1917 –

The Coat of Mail

By Ida Stewart Peay

” — On the 5:30, tomorrow afternoon, all the bunch will be at the train — can’t go? — have to bid you good-by, now, then — ”

These fragmentary bits of conversation floated in to the old doctor, as he sat in his little study adjoining the library. He remembered having observed from his window two young men coming up the front path, about a half an hour earlier. Though the door between the two rooms had been ajar all the time, the professional man had been so engrossed in his paper he had not heard a word of the lively conversation in the next room until this moment. While he was selecting with rapid glance a second all-absorbing telegram, another detached portion of youthful chatter bore in upon him:

“— Won’t see you again for — oh, ages — you’ll kiss me good-by, won’t you, Alice? — Pshaw! —” astonished, pettish, coaxing tone — “Why, all the missionaries kiss the girls good-by!”

The unintentional eavesdropper struck an alert, tense attitude.

“But all the girls don’t kiss the missionaries!” was the laughing, resisting rejoinder he heard from his seventeen-year-old daughter, her rippling merriment being reinforced by a spontaneous burst of hilarity from at least one of the visiting gentlemen.

The unseen auditor relaxed instantly and shook with inward glee, his eyes fairly moistening with relief and delight. “Little thoroughbred!” he chuckled to himself, “might have known it was in her — just like Allie — she’s a chip off the old block — deserves the best there is!”

A book fell noisily, there was a professional throat-clearing, a past-middle-aged tread, and Dr. Maury appeared in the library door.

“Hello, Daddy, come in,” cheerily welcomed a slightly built young miss who possessed a mass of silky, auburn hair, an animated, piquant face, with skin of extreme fairness and delicacy of texture, and a smile of rare brightness. “Will you meet my friends, Mr. Dunbar and Mr. Clark,” she said.

This particular parent made it a point, whenever possible, to become acquainted with his daughter’s associates, so he entered, and in his easy, gentlemanly way shook hands warmly with both young men. After an exchange of the usual courtesies on such occasions, looking from one to the other of the boys with small, keen eyes, he enquired, “Going on missions?”

“I’m going on a mission.” As Mr. Clark spoke only for himself the doctor’s eyes traveled to the other questioningly.

“East to college,” reported Mr. Dunbar, modestly, considering the tremendous satisfaction the announcement gave him.

“Oh, ho.” The concerned father lifted his eyebrows and steadily overlooked clean, athletic, intelligent, handsome Dan Dunbar — surely he had not been mistaken in fancying a note of partiality in the girl’s voice as she pronounced this fine young fellow’s name — “Eh hum,” he muttered at last, “studying —?”

“Law,” the boy informed him, holding his own manfully under the elder person’s scrutiny.

“Well, and where?”

The youth disclosed his destination, and while he and the doctor with mutual interest briefly exploited the subject of professional education, the other caller, chatting and shaking hands with the young lady in a last good-by, had gained the door.

“Coming, now, Dan?” Mr. Clark asked of his friend.

“Er — a — I’m in no hurry,” confessed Dunbar, a teasing laugh in his eyes which said plainly enough — I didn’t make any break — “If Miss Maury will permit — if she is not engaged for the next hour — ” he turned with a smiling appeal to the girl who laughingly professed herself free to entertain her caller longer, so Mr. Clark took himself off arranging to meet his traveling companion next day at the station.

As Alice Maury came back into the room and settled herself with a happy little sigh in one of the big rockers, the observing parent imagined there was the least sign of relief in her manner, also, that the usual faint pink of her cheeks was more vivid, and that a new and pleasurable excitement smoldered in her luminous grey eyes. Then, too, he observed the fact that the admiring gaze of the young man had gotten over in the vicinity of the rocker containing the girl and was not, except for the briefest intervals, getting away. Without more deliberation he asked the visitor to stay to dinner and the invitation was accepted with alacrity. When dinner was over and a small portion of the evening, in which Alice sang several songs in her sweet, girlish voice, the host gracefully retired to his study, after first bidding the boy good-by and God-speed.

Thus left alone, Dan Dunbar’s amused gaze, without further pretense of wandering, rested whimsically upon the lady in the big chair. An insuppressible smile enlivened his brown eyes and twitched the corners of his pleasant mouth. He was thinking of Clark’s rebuff. Nearly all the girls whom the departing youths visited that day, had succumbed to Mr. Clark’s cajolery for the frivolous familiarity he begged of Alice Maury; young Dunbar had looked on with amused indifference, save upon the present occasion, and had not known just how strongly he had hoped Clark should not win the favor from her until this joyous relief and exultation, at her refusal, took possession of him. Not that it was any of Dan Dunbar’s business how Miss Maury conducted herself — he was just pleased, any way. But as he sat there with the glad smile very unsatisfactorily covered, the subject of his thoughts looked up quickly, asking, “What are you laughing at, all to yourself?”

“Why, — er — ,” hesitated Daniel caught red-handed, “just because — a — I’m happy,” he prevaricated.

“Dear me, and I was feeling quite miserable,” declared Alice, her tone half chiding but the grey eyes twinkling and her rosy lips parting in a comical smile.

“Why miserable?” marveled the slow-witted boy, rising to find a more comfortable seat which chanced to be one within a foot of the big rocker.

“Because you are going away so soon,” said Alice, not at all broken heartedly. She looked at him one sober moment, then her whole face broke into merriment. It was a way of hers — reminding one of a dark day on which the sun suddenly burst, filling the whole world with brightness. Dunbar felt an instant, pleasant glow much like a million sunbeams had enveloped him. A little at sea, he laved in the thrill of this new emotion and looked quizzically into the artlessly coquettish face of the girl. For a few seconds an impulse to reach out and lay his hand over hers, as it idly smoothed the rocker arm, consumed him, but remembering Clark he resisted it. He was somehow glad that he felt obliged to do so. In a pulse-throb of happy assurance he told himself no man could be familiar with this girl until he had a right. The thought was a solace, though he scarcely knew why. These reflections kept him silent so long Miss Maury feared they were getting dull. She ran to the piano and played lively airs, sang snatches of popular songs, and finally they fell into easy, sparkling conversation.

When it was time to leave, and he was saying a last good-by, the strange desire to get nearer to her came over Dunbar, he thought he would give worlds to kiss those smooth, sensitive lips, but, to be sure, he had no right — no more than Clark had. He contented himself with taking a mental impression of her for future use. After one long, eager look he knew he would always be able to close his eyes and see in memory the silky, red-brown hair, the exquisitely fair and faintly tinted skin, the grey eyes, so dark and deep at night, the rosy mouth always breaking into smiles.

“Gee!” he ejaculated all at once, and with considerable vehemence, “I hate to go.”

“Oh, I thought you were crazy about it,” emotionalized the bonny miss.

“I was till tonight,” the boy disclosed innocently — not knowing that many a person has come face to face with a hitherto unknown passion on the eve of an extended journey. “It seems like tomorrow night I’ll want to see you like — like everything.”

“0, you will find plenty of girls where you are going,” laughed the little lady, but her merriment was a soft, little gurgle like the distant babble of a brook, and her eyes, darker and deeper than ever, seemed also to be taking a picture that was to serve in the absence of the original.

There was a warm, lingering hand clasp of good-by, the looking of wordless vows into each other’s eyes, queer little catches in their soft laughter, and in this first awakening to the deep, hidden glories of life, they parted.

II

The train was just pulling out of Thistle. It had been several hours late, and darkness had settled down over the everlasting hills through which the great steam monster was slowly rumbling. The dimly lighted car had but few occupants. Dunbar had one side almost to himself, Mr. Clark and his missionary companions were sprawled out in chairs on the other. The young men were too full of thoughts for conversation. All felt the strange excitement, the undercurrent of soliloquy and wonderment that grips the hearts of those leaving the old life behind. Dunbar felt as lonely and dejected as he had anticipated.

An odd, little sigh escaped him now and then, as he looked back over the past, and then forward into the mystery of the future. After an extended and heart-filling reverie, he glanced up to find his associates all fast asleep, and he stretched himself out to follow their lead. The dull rumble of the serpentine train, and its rocking motion, soon sent him into that queer state that just borders slumberland but is not really within its domain. In this transitory strip where the mind begins to wander from the known, he began humming to himself an old, old tune — the words ran, “0, don’t you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt” — oddly enough, and at the peril of the rhythm he substituted Dunbar for Ben Bolt —

“Sweet Alice whose hair was so brown,
She laughed with delight when you gave her a smile” —

At this point he was dimly conscious of the car door being opened and closed, and he dragged up his eyelids to look straight into the smiling face of “sweet Alice’s” dear old daddy.

“Dr. Maury! Er — a — am I dreaming?” he gasped, completely taken by surprise.

“Not at all, not at all,” professionally ahemmed the good doctor. “I had a business call to Denver and just remembered, or rather put this and that together, and decided you were on this train” — he arranged his grips with elaborate and characteristic care — “I thought I’d look you up so we could have a little talk. I rightly surmised. I see, that you, like myself, judged it not worth while to take a sleeper when we have to change cars at 1:30.”

“That was it. Mighty glad you happened to be traveling my way,” truthfully avowed the homesick boy, gathering his feet into more compact space and straightening himself into a conversational attitude.

“Yes, lucky, wasn’t it?” smiled the genial doctor settling himself comfortably beside his daughter’s admirer.

They were soon chatting with familiar ease. The topics of conversation darting around, as topics have a way of doing, first in one channel then another, but always the two seemed very appreciative of each other’s views. Respectfully as the younger man received the elder’s opinions, it was not with a whit more deference than the older man contemplated the boy’s. Dunbar mentally acknowledged his fellow traveler a thorough gentleman, ripe with intellectual development, wisdom and discrimination. On the other hand the professional man knew the timber in the boy to be sound, and his big heart went out to him, — besides, he had not seen the look on his daughter’s face after last night’s parting for nothing.

Their talk naturally drifted into the discussion of college life, and the young man’s prospective change of surroundings, but now Dr. Maury became thoughtful; his eyes kept fastening on some unimportant object in a pensive, unseeing stare, he ran his smooth not overly large hand with a perturbed gesture through the abundant grey hair, and crossed and uncrossed his well shod feet restlessly. At last he turned to his companion with a bright, open smile, which, like his daughter’s, recalled the sunshine, “Would you take a little counsel, a sort of warning you know, from an old warrior, one who has seen the greater part of the battles of life?” he asked engagingly.

“I would be more than glad,” declared the youth with sincere enthusiasm. “I haven’t a father you know,” his voice sank low.

“I know,” sympathized the doctor gently, “I know. Well, I was fortunate enough to have one when I started east to school, and just before leaving, I remember, we talked nearly all night. I recollect particularly that he said to me, ‘My son, if you come back home as clean and pure as you are now you will have to wear a coat of mail.'”

“A coat of mail?” Dunbar quoted interestingly, as the doctor lapsed into a thoughtful pause.

“Yes, my boy,” reiterated the gentleman, “and I proved the truth of his words — a coat of mail that will not permit anything or anybody to break down your habits of life or your ideals or standards.”

“Ah, yes,” murmured Dan understandingly, “of course.”

“You see, it is this way,” went on the older man, “east in the big colleges they don’t seem to have the same standard of manhood that our schools uphold. There, if a man is bright, honest and ambitious, he is considered available for the highest honors, no matter what his personal indulgences may be, provided he doesn’t carry them to excess, which is not apt to be the case with students — it takes years for bad habits to bring results. But unclean or destructive indulgences without excess are considered legitimate. There is not a saving sentiment against them — as laying the foundation of distress — like there is in our schools. Of course, you know what I mean — tobacco, wine, women —?”

The listener nodded, sensing the drift of the talk. “I don’t worry about those things. I have never taken stock in any of them,” he said.

“No,” admitted the counselor, “at our schools that is comparatively easy, for these things are under a ban; there, you will find it quite the other way. Your friend, Clark, will have less to contend with, for he will still be under the influence of religious instruction, but where you are going, religion is put entirely aside. The indulgences that are reprehensible here are the generally accepted mode of up-to-date life, there. Here you have been under the one influence and, as you have admitted yourself, you have been governed by it; there you will be under the other, and if you do not allow it to change you, you will have to wear a coat of mail,” the old doctor smiled whimsically. “Influence,” he went on, “is like a fragrance, one can not help but breathe it; if it is not to affect you, you must wear an armor of iron and forever fight it out.”

“I know what you say must be true,” owned Dunbar, not knowing in the least but finding out later. “But just how can one be sure of the protection you speak of?”

“You have probably heard,” mused the medicine man, “that the strongest man is one who sees the worst of life and still resists all evil. There may be a few in that class. But I believe, rather, that the strongest man is one who admits the frail, human side of him, and keeps as far from temptation as possible. I am like the old fellow who advertised for a teamster. ‘Why,’ bragged one applicant, ‘such is my skill that I can drive within an inch of the precipice and be in no danger.’ But he was turned away for a driver who owned he kept as far away from the edge as he could, so if the unforeseen occurred he would be reasonably safe.

“It is fine to go away and prepare yourself to be useful to the world, and care creditably for a wife and family, but if you corrupt yourself in so doing, you’d better stay at home. There is nothing to be gained better than untainted manhood. To make up your mind, now, never once to give in to any of those corrupting habits is to wear the coat of mail.”

The train came to a stop with a lurch and rattle and Dr. Maury fussily gathered his grips together, seized the boy in a vigorous hand shake and was off.

“This is where we change trains,” he called back, as he hurried through the door and disappeared in the darkness.

III

Back in the famed university, Daniel Dunbar plunged into the big undertaking of his professional training. He got into the work with dispatch and enthusiasm, being bound to win out, excel, if possible, he studied and worked with all his power. But as all work and no play would make him a dull boy, he must have recreation. Being naturally a mixer, he soon found a circle of acquaintances and was gradually drawn into some of their amusements. From the calm way in which Dr. Maury referred to his having refused to take up with the vices of his classmates, Dan supposed it would be easy enough. In that he was mistaken. For the very reason he had followed the ruling sentiment in his home school, he would have partaken of the life here. In fact, the hardest thing he ever did was to say on never ending occasions — “I never smoke, I never drink, too busy to go — .” It took all his moral courage, and then, half the time he hated himself for a narrow-minded idiot and a prude, missing all the fun of youth and college life and making a laughing stock of himself. But always in the end before he had really succumbed to the feelings, he would remember the coat of mail. Thus the first two school seasons passed.

It was in the third year of his work, when he was sometimes homesick and most always hungry to starvation for the close companionship of a woman, that he met Mazie Thome. How he became a regular caller at her home, is a matter of small moment — unless it were confessed that Miss Thome’s clever maneuvering helped most — it came about naturally enough, and the fact that the young lady was a niece of one of the esteemed professors of the college proved her, to say the least, a reliable acquaintance.

Tonight when he arrived at the palatial Thome residence he encountered, as usual, other members of the family and was again slightly awed, by the aristocratic haughtiness of their manners and the multiplied evidences of wealth and exclusiveness. He was to have dinner with them this evening, for the first time, and he vaguely wondered if he would have the temerity to go against any of their customs. He speculated with a shiver what would become of him if in doing so he should receive one supercilious, withering glance from the grand dame, Madame 1 home. However, the formal banquet — so it seemed to the westerner — was gotten through without his refusal of liquors and cigars being, apparently, noticed; but he doubted if, when they were more familiar and pressed or jeered him, he would be able to endure their “high-browed” sarcasm.

The boy had been visiting here, always by special invitation, many weeks, but, now, as he was taking his leave, after a most delightfully entrancing evening, the fairy queen of the household who had been the lure of the calls, bade him, emphatically, to drop in during the week at his earliest convenience. For seven days he resisted the desire to go back and then sent a telephone message that he was coming.

As soon as he arrived, he discovered that he and Miss Thome had the great drawing room all to themselves. The young lady was more exquisitely gowned than he had ever seen her, her costume being a filmy little creation of art that revealed to perfection the grace and charm of her remarkable beauty. In fact, with her great, innocent, blue eyes and yellow hair, so wonderfully fluffed all over the small head, with her wine-red lips and dazzlingly white neck and arms, she was lovely enough to fascinate any mere man.

“You’re late,” she told him with a playful pout, “I’ve been sitting here all dolled up for ages, listening for your footsteps like a jailbird harks for the turnkey. There was a fetching abandon in her manner that surprised Dan Dunbar and roused his curiosity.

“Why were you anxious to have me get here?” Dan smiled, boyishly eager to hear some appreciation of himself. There was that in the lonely youth’s heart which cried out for the attention of a woman, and he was all athrill for her answer, his eyes reviewing her loveliness with intense interest.

“Why, how do I know, you simple boy,” the girl cooed softly, seating herself beside him on a divan. “It was just a — just a time old feeling, I s’pose,” she shrugged her shoulders with a movement of emotion and looked down, her long lashes quite hiding from view the innocent blue eyes. Soon she glanced up out of the tail of her eye and held him in a long look that was fraught with meaning. Then she turned her gaze full upon him with the same little gesture of abandon.

“I don’t believe you have any heart at all,” her purring tone chided, but the wine-red lips curved into a witching smile, and the conflict of coquetry and seriousness in her eyes both baffled and fascinated. “Why, if I had been the one to come to you instead of you to me, you’d seen me long ago.” She still gazed at him. Dan silently studied her baffling eyes but closed his lips over the avowal of his own restless desire.

Half vexed she flitted away from him, chatted indifferently and sang love songs and played soft minor strains on the piano. Presently, bringing in refreshments, she offered him wine and cigarettes, these were not so hard to refuse after his long practice, but he realized she had not pressed him and was keeping them conveniently near for later indulgence. Again she sat beside him and though the hour grew late he could not seem to want to go, besides, if he even made as if to rise she detained him with some compelling little posture of disappointment. He began to talk more freely and gave himself up to the enjoyment of her deliciously, flattering ways, still something deep down in him was trying to assert itself. At last when the baffling lure of her eyes and the coaxing curves of her lips were making him forget everything except her nearness, he asked himself whether or not she was a perfectly true, pure, womanly woman. At the question the something deep down in him broke through his consciousness. It was the thought of the coat of mail, the old doctor’s kindly face, and the memory of Alice, her chastity and reserve. All at once he knew that he was driving too near the precipice.

It was not, however, until after he was away from her that he fully realized she was trying her wiles on him, and her methods from the first had not been innocent but only clever. She telephoned and sent perfumed notes and invitations for sometime, but the armored student saw her no more.

IV

In dear old Utah once again! Back to the familiar town of his birth. Penniless but knowledge-laden, Daniel Dunbar put out his shingle and undertook the duties of a full fledged attorney. But before he did so, his eager footsteps led him to the beautiful Maury home.

To be sure, Miss Alice was there and welcomed the young lawyer in her prettiest manner.

The young judge-to-be was not long in observing that “sweet Alice” was possessed of the same piquant attractiveness, greatly added upon, the memory of which had caused him so many homesick hours.

He enquired anxiously for the old doctor.

“He’s in his study, I’ll call him.”

“No, no,” denied the barrister with twinkling eyes, “I’ll steal in and surprise him.”

The man of years was not so engrossed in his paper this time but that he heard the lifted door latch and rose to meet the intruder.

“Ah, Dunbar,” he cried with real pleasure in his welcome, as vigorously shaking the man’s hand he searched the open, young face. His look was nothing short of divining, and he nodded his head approvingly the moisture starting in his kind old eyes.

“Yes,” whispered the boy proudly but humbly, “I believe I successfully wore the armor, and thank you from the bottom of my heart for the knowledge of it.”

The old man continued to shake his hand too overcome to speak, but the praise in his eyes made the struggle seem a thousand times worth while to the returned wanderer.

When they were both back in the library and the old doctor saw the heightened color of his precious Alice, and noted the suppressed excitement and the frequent meeting of the brown and the grey eyes, he was more than glad he had told the traveler of the “coat of mail.”