OF THE
SERVICE
IF*
FREDERICK PALMER
/ *+ % ' A*
THE WAYS OF THE
SERVICE
IHflf. OF CALIF. LIBRARY. LOS ANGCLE*
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THE WAYS
OF THE SERVICE
FREDERICK PALMER
Illustrated by
HOWARD CHANDLER CHRISTY
CHARLES SCRBNER'S SONS
NEW YORK s s i : s t t 1901
COPYRIGHT, 1900, 1901, BY
FREDERICK PALMER
A II rights reserved
The illustrations by Howard Chandler
Christy are copyrighted by P. F. Collier
& Son (Collier's Weekly) and are printed
by their permission.
TROW DIRECTORY
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
HEW YORK
"Never mind! Whatever they are,
they are our ways the ways of the Service
and dear to us." MRS. GERLISON.
2132122
CONTENTS
Page
Ballard ............. /
Romance of Private Sounders .... 101
As Man to Man ......... ijj
A Battle and a Barrel ....... 153
Against His Own People ....... /</
Marrying Out of the Army ...... 211
^ke Naming of the Captain ...... 237
Mrs. Gerlisoris Own Story ....... 271
ILLUSTRATIONS
" Pm going to quarters and give myself up,
now " Frontispiece
Pagt
" It is always that way with you white men" she
cried j8
He held to his determination . . . until he
looked into her eyes 108
" Save yourself! It's all right for me, I must
stay" 150
In his outburst of wrath he thrust at the screen . 232
" Go into the Sergeant's office ! You are under
arrest" 258
BALLARD
BALLARD
HIS usual luck ! Such was the conclusion of
the steerage mess of the flag-ship, assem-
bled at tiffin. They nodded toward the vacant
chair, while the uproar of their talk drowned the
whir of the electric fans which were officially sup-
posed to beat some life into the air of Manila Bay
in May. The Chinese steward, coming and going
with dishes, wondered if " Mlista Bailie-Bailie " had
been made " Plesiden' Lunitee Statee," or what
was much greater " Admilal."
" But how can he sail away and leave Margaret
Carson to all those army officers at this critical
juncture? " asked Byers.
" True," said Gilligan. " We'll have a rise out of
him about that."
As he spoke, Ballard himself entered the room.
" We know you've got the Avispa. We know
that you're a big man now," Gilligan continued.
" But the great thing is, have you got the girl? "
3
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
Ballard flushed and hesitated. It seemed, how-
ever, that his joy was too great to be concealed.
" Yes, I have," he said. " She spoke the word
last night and her mother is going to announce it
to-day. Congratulate me ! "
There was a glance of understanding followed by
a shout as he took his seat.
" The Army and Navy unite ! A single service !
Hooray!"
" We'll fight in rubber boots at sea and battle-
ships on land ! "
" Bubby and Margy ! It's hard to make a
rhyme ! "
" We'll give you six months to "
Ballard sprang to his feet.
" It isn't a thing to be bandied about in that
way ! " he retorted, angrily. " It isn't going to be
broken off ! I won't stand such talk I "
Whereupon the steerage, rising, repeated, in
deep voices, their well-known corrective :
" How sad ! How awful sad !
The little man is mad ! "
Ballard started to leave the room. Gilligan ar-
resting him with a word, hastened to his side.
" Oh, come," he said, " you didn't enter the navy
4
BALLARD
yesterday. Did you expect us to pass you in re-
view and bow solemnly when you've got the finest
girl in Manila and the Avispa in the same windfall?
Especially as you beat the army and " this with
a laugh and a slap " as you worked so hard for
her."
Ballard smiled dutifully and returned to that
compound frizzled beef and eggs by means of
which the navy maintains the influence of the
United States in tropical waters.
" Anyway," he said, grudgingly, " it's a long time
since you've had one on me."
For the ways of the mess entirely, and many of
the ways of the Service as a whole, are only the
natural evolution toward a minimum of friction
and a maximum of comfort for human beings of
varying ranks and dispositions who are rubbed to-
gether morning, noon, and night in a close com-
munity. Frizzled beef is dismal enough of itself.
If you would ride your hobby, whether it be torpe-
doing or golf, then you must dismount when others
can only choose between listening or going hun-
gry-
In the course of an hour after the meal every
member of the steerage found his way separately
to Ballard's room and there congratulated him in
5
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
the heartfelt and simple manner of friends who un-
derstand each other.
Gilligan, his classmate, was the last to come.
He, as Ballard knew, had had his heart set on
getting the Avispa. His only chance of a separate
command while he was yet young enough to enjoy
it was gone. But he held out his hand now as gen-
erously as he had when his rival had been made
captain of the football team at Annapolis.
Having regarded every one of his twenty-four
hours' leave as too precious to be wasted in sleep, it
was not surprising that, after Gilligan had gone,
Ballard found himself tired.
It was the hottest the siesta hour of the day.
He took off his blouse and dropped upon his bunk.
Here he was, smiling at his own thoughts, when
Surgeon Belvoir, of the senior mess, appeared at
the door. Belvoir also had been attentive to Mar-
garet Carson. He was a sallow, bent man, inordi-
nately fond of reading and study aboard ship and
of poker ashore.
" Congratulations," he said. " I'm sure she'll
settle down to be a fine woman."
Ballard thanked him, without noticing any sting
in his remark.
" Tired, eh? " added the surgeon. " You're not
6
BALLARD
looking very perky, that's a fact Um-m-m, your
heart is pounding against your shirt there like a
driving-rod."
" Yes," was the reply. " It's been doing that a
good deal the last few weeks. Late hours, per-
haps or love? "
The surgeon already had put his ear to the En-
sign's breast with as little ceremony as you would
shake hands.
" The late hours are cured," Ballard said, lightly;
" but there is no cure for the other thing."
" No, it's not that. Do you mind if I put a
stethoscope on you? I'm fond of studying hearts.
I want to satisfy myself about a little point."
The surgeon spoke in his usual querulous, ac-
ademical manner.
" Oh, go ahead. Anything in the name of
medical science except vivisection."
Belvoir brought his instrument from his cabin.
When he had held the cups to his ears for a moment
Ballard asked:
" Well, do you find that it's bifurcated, or triple
expansion, or in the wrong place? Which? "
" Nothing was said about your heart when you
were examined for your commission?" was the
gravely spoken question in reply.
7
" No, no. But what do you mean? "
The very thought of heart trouble that end of
everything is chilling to a man in the Service.
As Belvoir fell back, the rubber tubes of the
stethoscope wriggling in his hand, the Ensign
dropped from the bunk to his feet.
" If only it were congenital or of long-standing,
but too apparently it is fresh," Belvoir was saying,
mechanically. " Do you want to know, really? "
" I should not ask if I didn't. Come, speak out !
What are you waiting for? "
Belvoir turned his head to one side and averted
his eyes.
" You know about Farrand? " he said, slowly.
What member of the Service did not know what
the tropics had done for Farrand, a junior lieu-
tenant, promoted in February, who had died the
week after the Board passed him out in June?
" Well," Belvoir continued, " you have the same
kind of a lesion. It must be recent and of rapid
growth, else they couldn't have missed it at the ex-
amination for your commission."
" Impossible ! impossible ! " Ballard repeated,
with such vehemence that the little surgeon dodged
as if he expected a blow. " I, a lesion of the heart?
Why, I can swim two miles ! I have never felt an
8
BALLARD
ache or a pain! Impossible! impossible! You
can't fool me with talk like that."
" Alas, yes, but it's athletes who have lesions.
Your muscles are strong, and that only makes the
strain on a weak heart the worse."
The fire from an impregnable position to the
struggling, hunching line which finds that its
charge has failed can have none of the terror for
an officer of the few measured words of a surgeon.
Ballard gripped the railing of the bunk to steady
himself. Belvoir thought that he was going to fall.
But the manner of the Service soon returned to
him.
" And how long do you think that I shall last? "
he asked in a voice that was not breaking, though
taut as the string of a violin.
" Perhaps a year, perhaps two years if you were
to lie in a long chair at Pasadena. Otherwise, per-
haps a month, perhaps six months."
" No long chair at Pasadena for me," he said.
" I shall begin my cruise on the Avispa to-morrow
by your kindness. This examination was not
official. Promise me " he grasped the surgeon's
wrists " promise me that you will not report me !
That you'll not say a word to anybody ! "
Belvoir, almost in terror of the force of physique
9
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
and force of mind (an inheritance from ancestors
given to explicitness and command) which were
concentrated upon him, gave his word; and it is to
be recorded here that he kept it.
" Thank you, Belvoir. I am glad that it was you
rather than a stranger who examined me first. I'm
afraid I seemed in a deadly funk. One does not
get such news more than once in a lifetime."
" I I am sorry. You asked me," Belvoir stam-
mered as he left the room.
Of the two he was the more perturbed. As he
passed along the metal corridor of the ship his lips
were working and the muscles of his face were
twitching.
As for the Ensign, he pulled to the hangings of
his door. For an hour he sat looking steadily at a
corner of his washstand, seeing only Margaret. He
could have gone easily, with her kisses still moist
upon his cheek, into battle where certain death
awaited him; but what he faced now, in the glow
of seeming health and strength, required as much
the patience of the invalid as the simple courage of
the Service.
Yet no one was gayer than he at dinner, where
the current of " grinds " was turned toward the
freshest cadet from the Academy; for " Babe " Arm-
10
BALLARD
strong had been chosen that afternoon by the Ad-
miral as the executive officer of the Avispa.
At 2 A.M., instead of sleeping, Ballard was look-
ing at the photograph of Margaret, as he still was at
3 A.M., before he put it into his box. At 6 A.M.
his things had been passed over the side. At seven
for the older the sailor the earlier he rises the
Admiral sent for him to receive his final instruc-
tions. Ballard found the great commander taking
his constitutional on the after-deck.
" Here are your orders and there's your sugar-
scoop, yonder, my son," he said, passing the Ensign
a typewritten paper and nodding toward the Avispa,
which lay at anchor about a thousand yards away
in the direction of Cavite. " You've got a sepa-
rate command, and that's more than most men
who've been in the Service for twenty years have
had. It's a pity. Why, I had a gun-boat of my own
and was fighting her, too, when I was twenty-five.
It develops a sense of responsibility. You can't
ask any questions, now. You must go ahead on
your own judgment. And when you go ahead,
go."
" Yes, sir," replied Ballard. He supposed that
that was all, and saluted. Then the Admiral, who
had been looking the stalwart youngster up and
ii
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
down as if he were examining points in a thorough-
bred, added :
" How old are you, Mr. Ballard? "
" Twenty-three, sir."
" And where did you stand in your class? "
" Sixth, sir."
" Didn't work very hard, eh? Naturally couldn't
help learning? "
" I thought I worked pretty hard sometimes,
sir."
" Your father over again. You look just as he
did when we were at Mobile Bay together, except
you're a little taller. Get that from your mother, I
think."
The Admiral put his hand on Ballard's shoulder,
whereat the marine pacing the deck was more than
ever convinced that the Asiatic Squadron was
going to have an easy day of it.
" Sound as a dollar from head to foot," the Ad-
miral continued. " Keep your health. You must
have that as well as a good head in the navy. You're
sure of a star on your collar one day. Perhaps,
when your hair gets as white as mine, you may
have a constellation of them. Good-by, and good
luck."
" Good-by, sir. I thank you with all my heart."
12
BALLARD
"Healthy!" "Sound!" "A star on your
collar ! " The Admiral's words rang mockingly
in his ears, as he descended the gangway.
" I shall have my star soon," he thought. " In
the next month I'll pass through all the grades.
I'll be Navigator, Captain, Squadron and Fleet-
Commander, Vice-Admiral, Admiral, High Ad-
miral! It's my last fling. If there's any excite-
ment in the Avispa to make me forget the thump-
ing in my chest, I'll have it."
His own men in his own boat with his own
boatswain, Swanson, a thickset viking of a Swedish-
American rowed him over to the Avispa. Now
the Avispa was not a thing of beauty, but one of the
mosquito fleet for patrolling the shallow places of
the archipelago which we bought from the Span-
iards. Being larger than the others, which were in
charge of cadets, she had an ensign for her com-
mander and a cadet for her executive. In support
of the Admiral's description of her as a sugar-scoop
was Swanson's remark that he had to look under
water for her screw to make sure which end was
her stern.
As the anchor was being raised, one of the
launches which were going and coming in the bay
ran alongside. Ballard turned to see, first, that
13
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
there was a lady on board, and, then, to recognize
her as Mrs. Gerlison, who kept more secrets than
any woman in Manila.
" Is this the flag-ship of Vice- Admiral Ballard? "
she called.
"Ay, ay, Madam, and at your service," he re-
plied, cheerfully.
" I told the quartermaster," she said, as the
launch made fast to the Avispa, " that whoever
served me served the army. That's not down in
the regulations, but it's as patent as the unwritten
rules of decorum, don't you think? And I had to
have the launch so that you might depart with
proper honors."
" How's Margaret? " he asked.
" My ! How serious you are ! So far as I know
there is no change in her symptoms. I think her
pulse and her temperature are the same as they were
yesterday morning. Oh, yes, by the way there is
someone in the cabin of the launch who has seen
her since I have."
Mrs. Gerlison's characteristic little trick was ob-
vious. As he leaped aboard the launch he con-
cluded that he could not tell Margaret of what had
come between them over night at this time and in
this place. He forgot everything except the girl
BALLARD
whose lips met his when he assisted her up the step
from the little cabin of the launch.
" So this is your battle-ship? " She looked at the
Avispa fondly.
" No, no; my fleet, dear," passing her aboard.
" Mrs. Gerlison has just referred to me as Vice-Ad-
miral. I am surprised at her ignorance. The
Babe is Vice-Admiral. I am full Admiral yes,
High Admiral, with power on land and sea only
the Chinese tailor has not finished my stars. Every
man of my crew there is either an armored cruiser
or a battle-ship. The Spanish pilot is my scouting
service of fast cruisers, while our native engineer is
the torpedo flotilla. I regret to state, however,
that we are to patrol the coast of Mindanao. I had
hoped to chase pirates in the Sulu seas."
''' The flag-ship, and more particularly the pock-
marked torpedo flotilla are not things of beauty,
but I am sure that they must be terrors," she said.
" I hope you do get a good chance. Perhaps when
we're " and she gave the strong arm on which she
was leaning a hug " you'll get shore service in
Washington for the winter."
" If work and love can do anything, yes."
He showed her over the Avispa and operated the
guns for her as if this girl bred in the army was see-
15
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
ing so she thought she was six-pounders and
peppery Colt's automatics for the first time. Then
they talked; then they made promises as you have
made them as the Good Lord grant that you may
make them one day, if you have not until the Ad-
miral, who had been looking with his restless sailor's
eyes through his glasses at the army launch, sig-
nalled to know if anything was the matter.
After assisting Mrs. Gerlison aboard, Ballard
stepped on to the launch with Margaret, kissed her,
and jumped back on to the Avispa across the widen-
ing gulf between the two craft.
" Do be careful, dear ! Do promise, dear ! If
anything should happen to you there must not!
There must not ! "
And Mrs. Gerlison, wise in such things, was
touched at the soberness and strength of real love
that Margaret, a few days ago under the suspicion
of being something of a flirt, showed in those pas-
sionate words which Ballard barely heard for the
chugging of the engine.
As far as Mrs. Gerlison, in fear of the Quarter-
master's Department, dared to permit it, the launch
followed the Avispa on its course toward Corregi-
dor. Ballard watched the fluttering handkerchief
in its stern until, finally, even the white speck dis-
16
BALLARD
appeared. With it the light of the world went out
for him. All that remained, he thought, was to
clean up the ashes.
As he turned away the Babe said :
" She is fine ! You are lucky ! "
II
FOR three days and three nights the Avispa kept
on her course in and out among the islands of the
archipelago. By day the rays of the sun, fierce
with heat and glare, glancing from the leaden sur-
face of the calm sea, made a common triumph with
the heat of the engine and its odor of oil over the
wet undershirt stickily clinging to the white man's
back. At night there was relief, but not sleep, as
Ballard, lying on a mat on deck, watched the trail
of rippling phosphorescence in the gun-boat's wake,
or the sky, spangled with gold-dust and set with the
Southern Cross.
His greatest happiness lay in writing the chron-
icle of each day's events in a little red leather memo-
randum book, whose pages he was to tear out and
mail to Margaret at the first opportunity. He
described at length the weaknesses and the strong
points of the various members of his command.
Vice-Admiral Babe, " my Hardy," was developing
a fine sense of dignity and responsibility. His Span-
ish pilot, Rodriguez, on further acquaintance ap-
18
BALLARD
peared to have been chosen because he could speak
English rather than for his knowledge of harbors.
Swanson was a jewel of a boatswain. The torpedo
flotilla lacked initiative and could not exceed five
knots an hour.
He spoke of their marriage and their winter in
Washington as a settled programme. Perhaps he
was cheating her by keeping up this illusion, which
was bread, meat, and wine to him. He exculpated
himself with the reasoning that his deceit would
not be for long. Addressed to her and not to be
torn out, he had written upon the fly-leaf of the little
red book the story of Belvoir's diagnosis.
On the morning of the fourth day the Avispa
sighted the northeasterly point of the island of Min-
danao, which is second to Luzon in size and least
known of the archipelago. The task set for the
Avispa was to prevent the passage of insurgents,
arms, or ammunition between the northern coast of
Mindanao and the Visayas. When he had steamed
nearly a hundred miles without any incident except
the overhauling of a lorcha with nothing more
formidable than hemp aboard, he began to fear that
such commonplaces would make the sum of his
activity. He passed a number of fishing villages
and three places large enough to be called towns,
19
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
finding it hard not to exceed instructions on the
first day out and make a call on the third. How-
ever, he concluded that he could afford the discre-
tion and postpone this pleasure until he was on his
way back. At night he steamed slowly, barely
keeping land in sight. The breaking of light dis-
closed just ahead the largest town that he had yet
seen.
" Durinao ! " exclaimed the pilot. " The people
are rich in hemp, and so the insurgents are there in
great force."
" Are they? We'll run in a little closer than
we have elsewhere and see what Durinao is like."
Rodriguez was a man of peace.
" No, no, Capitan ! " he protested. " They have
rifles, five or six hundred rifles. They have cannon.
Oof ! They could blow our little Avispa to pieces."
Ballard became as light-hearted as he was when
he burst into the steerage with the news of his en-
gagement. He pointed the Avispa 's bow on to the
beach. Swanson was put in charge of the lead.
The Babe sent the men to their positions and had
the covers off the guns and extra ammunition in
place in a twinkling. He had never been under
fire. Electric needles were pricking every part of
his body and crickets were singing in his ears.
30
BALLARD
"That settles it! That's casus belli! They're
running up their flag ! Break out ours ! " called
Ballard, his glasses to his eyes.
" But, Captain," protested the pilot, wiping his
hat instead of his brow with his handkerchief in
his excitement, " they have rifles ! They have
cannon ! "
Then he saw that his suit was hopeless.
" The Avispa is so small," he went on, " so very
small, Captain. I think that I will go below to
make room for the crew to work the guns. Do I
have the Captain's permission? "
" Yes, yes, certainly," replied Ballard, who by this
time (the Avispa steaming ahead at full speed)
could see that in a long trench on the beach four
cannon, apparently smooth-bore, were mounted.
In the intervals between them the line of earth was
dotted with straw hats. In front of the hats were
rifles, and under them, unquestionably, were in-
surgents.
" I was trained for the merchant service," the
pilot added in self-defence.
Then he and all his dignity withdrew into the
cramped cabin. By a nice calculation he got his
head and body below the water-line. His legs were
above it. If they were hit, he would not die, he re-
21
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
fleeted; and a wounded Rodriguez would be a great
hero among his friends in the Cafe Vagabundo in
Manila.
Ballard fully expected that the insurgents would
open as soon as their bullets would carry to the
Avispa. He approached to within twelve hundred
yards and still the enemy was silent, apparently
stayed by wonder at the intentions of this diminutive
gun-boat which was dashing toward the trench as
if bent upon ramming it. With his own eye glanc-
ing along the barrel of the Colt, which is as re-
fractory as a violin unless played by an expert,
Ballard passed the word to the six-pounder, the
three-pounder and the two one-pounders that a
thousand yards was the range, at the same time as
an order to Swanson who was at the helm. As the
Avispa swung broadside on to the trench the guns
and the Colt spoke in chorus.
With fingers on their triggers, the manikins
were ready to make reply. Themselves under
cover, they had for their target an object thirty feet
over all and eight feet beam. They were sure that
the scrap-iron from their smooth-bores ought to
cut the enemy into mincemeat, if it hit him, and to
scare him into submission if it did not. As the
volley whistled by there came from the subcon-
22
BALLARD
sciousness of Swanson, who was strictly attentive
to his duties, this remark :
" Shooting windmills at us, b'shee ! "
Most of the bullets along with the scrap-iron had
passed overhead. For those which had splattered
against the hull or sung close to the deck it was
only to be said that they hit no one. In any action
of a trained service there are men who are, and men
who are not, hit. The men who are not hit are so
many automatons who go on with their work until
their gun is smashed, their ammunition is out or
they are told to cease firing. In three seconds
every gun had discharged another missile, while
the Colt was kicking up a succession of little bursts
of dust back and forth along the top of the trench
with the purring constancy of a nice old lady who
has settled down to an afternoon's knitting. The
six-pounder, whose first shot had been wide, recti-
fied its error with the second.
If there had been a white officer and white men
in the trench, the officer might have ripped out an
oath before his men showed themselves and fired
with accuracy until every member of the Avispa's
crew was dead or wounded or she had raised the
white flag. But it takes stomach for that, even if
it does not to fire upon the back of a khaki blouse
23
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
from the cover of bamboo; and the manikins have
not the stomach and are given to routine oaths
and not to oaths in emergencies or to being- gentle
to women and embarrassed if you praise their
deeds.
They returned the Avispa's fire with the poor
aim of the man who holds his rifle over his head in
fear. Then a white shirt attached to a stick ap-
peared above the line of the trench, and the guns
of the Avispa were silent. After the shirt came
cautiously a hand, then a head and finally a body,
until, at length, two manikins started from the
shore in a banca, still waving the emblem of truce.
One of them sat in the stern. He was a Filipino
lieutenant, who wore three or four yards of Spanish
gold braid. The other paddled in the leisurely
manner of a diplomatic mission. He was the lieu-
tenant's orderly. The lieutenant bore himself
grandly as he stepped aboard the gun-boat.
" My General, who is also the Presidente of the
town," he said, " has sent me to inquire why you
fired on us."
" If the Presidente has anything to say," was the
reply, which made the lieutenant believe that Bal-
lard was really a man of some importance, " let him
come to me in person. Otherwise, I shall begin
24
BALLARD
firing again as soon as I have allowed you reason-
able time to return to your trench."
" But his rank will not permit the General to
come out to the commander of the little gun-boat,"
said the lieutenant, playing the part in which the
half-breeds excel.
" Very well. Tell your Presidente that I am a
High Admiral, the commander of the fleet. More-
over, I have the range for shrapnel now to a T and
can drop them in on you like that " and Ballard
made a downward gesture to illustrate the move-
ment of the particles of a shell. " You might add,
too, with my compliments and my best wishes for
his health, that we shall probably catch him in per-
son with the first burst."
" I thank you. I think the Presidente will con-
descend to come."
There was something closely approaching rev-
erence in the lieutenant's bow. He was surprised.
He had heard that the Americans were not at all
a polite or a clever people.
While the banca was returning to shore the idea
which had been growing in Ballard's mind realized
form and maturity. It was nothing less than to
take and occupy the town. In this difficult task
there was certainly enough diversion to drown
25
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
thoughts of the pounding of his heart or of death
on a hospital cot. He announced it to Rodriguez,
who now emerged from the companionway as
tentatively as the shirt had been raised over the
trench.
" Oh, Sefior, oh, Capitan ! No, no ! That is im-
possible. There are armed insurgents in the in-
terior, hundreds of armed insurgents ! Oof ! The
garrison ! How would you garrison it? "
" With the crews of my fleet," was the reply.
" You can handle a rifle, too."
" Ah, no ! As I told you, I was trained for the
merchant service."
Rodriguez sat down on the cover of the com-
panionway to think.
The Presidente lost no time, when Ballard's
ultimatum was called to him as soon as the banco,
grounded on the beach, in joining his aide. He
was a fat half-breed, as most Presidentes are. He
wore two diamond rings and a heavy gold watch
chain, with three sovereigns and two Napoleons
for charms, and bore himself with grandly injured
dignity.
" Sefior Capitan," he said, " though we did not
fire on you, though we had no arrangement to fight,
you fired on us."
26
BALLARD
" And you didn't consider that fair? " Ballard
asked. " We ought to have set a day and made it
a function, eh? "
" Yes, in all politeness. Is it not usual? And
you ran too close as close as if you were a friend.
An enemy would not. It is too close for fair
fighting."
" Well, we fired on you because you were flying
the flag of an armed enemy in the territory of the
United States. That is our way. Now, how many
rifles have you in your garrison of Durinao? "
" Five hundred ! " The Presidente threw out
his chest.
" Five hundred ! Think of getting five hundred
rifles, Babe ! But, no fear ! He hasn't that many.
Then, Senor Presidente, I shall expect you to sur-
render five hundred rifles to me within the hour."
" Surely you jest," said the Presidente. " We
have not the five hundred in the trench. We have
great reinforcements in the interior. We can kill
all your crew and defend ourselves forever."
" Indeed. Those big houses in the square, yon-
der, are they yours? "
" One is."
" Very good. If you don't surrender we shall
blow your house to pieces."
27
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
The Presidente was disillusioned, not to say
shocked, by Ballard's candor. Apparently these
Americans were not the kind of men described in
the letters from the Hong-Kong and Paris Juntas.
America, he had understood, was a far distant land.
The inhabitants, he had understood, were a cow-
ardly, half-savage people, who had nothing of the
manners or the civilization of such mestizo Span-
iards as himself. But in America there was this
wonder which explained everything; namely, a
great mountain range of gold, the same being
called pork in their low tongue, that yielded wealth
to all who would chip it off and carry it away.
Therefore, it was the delight of the Americans to
buy things and think well of themselves. The
Spaniards, who were eminently the superior of the
Americans in mind and cunning, finding the Philip-
pines unprofitable because of the agitation and
belligerency of the rebels, had allowed the Amer-
icans to whip them in order that they might sell
the Philippines to the foolish victors for many
millions.
Si, and this was not the whole story of the Amer-
icans' guilelessness. You might lie behind a bush
and shoot at them and they would only take away
the rifle hot from your hand and let you go with a
28
BALLARD
warning not to do so again as if warnings counted
for anything! Si, a Filipino General in Luzon,
when he was tired of fighting, surrendered; and the
American Governor in Manila was so afraid of the
Filipino General that he let him go free in the
streets to plan uprisings. Si, and the American
Governor, who was so kind and so foolish that he
would not allow drivers to beat their horses, had
established a thing called Municipal Councils,
which allowed the common natives who go in and
out of the bamboo as much say in government as
the half-breeds; and in consequence of this the
half-breeds were at some pains to explain to the
common natives that the Governor did this to en-
slave them. Si, and there was a thing called Con-
gress, in America, which had many members who
thought that it was a mistake to cut pieces out
of the mountain of gold to send abroad, because
they foresaw that in this way the mountain would
not last forever. Si, these were the allies of rebel-
lion so very foolish were the Americans. All this,
with the news of many Filipino victories, came to
Mindanao in various ways. Indeed, at first sight
of the Avispa the Presidente had encouraged his
followers with the idea that the Americans, driven
out of Luzon, had come to Mindanao for refuge.
29
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
" But so civilized a nation as America does not
fire on women and children," said the Presidente, in
an excess of politeness.
" You should not build trenches in front of your
women and children. We will give you time to
get them out of the way. And now, as a matter of
fact, you don't care anything about women and
children. You wouldn't give up your gold watch
and chain to save the lives of a thousand. You
extort from them, you deceive them in order that
you may do well. You are a clever man, eh, Senor
Presidente? "
" Thank you," said the Presidente, thinking that
now he had matters on a practical basis. " Yes, I
am a clever man and you are a rich people. You
give me fifty thousand pesos and I surrender:
twenty thousand pesos a year, let me ' squeeze ' the
people and I will keep order in the province."
" We don't do things in that way," was the reply.
" I confess I do not like to destroy property or fire
on women and children, for I am sure you wouldn't
warn them. Oh, I know you half-breeds very
well!"
Ballard hesitated a moment, considering from
many points of view the suicidal plan which had
flashed through his mind.
30
BALLARD
" I have a proposition," he said, " which will save
the women and children and prevent the killing of
your soldiers. You will bring your men out of
the trench on to the beach. I will stand here on
the deck by the six-pounder quite exposed and
alone. They are to fire at me for five minutes.
If they don't hit me then, they are to surrender
their rifles. If they do hit me, the Avispa will sail
away and leave you in undisputed possession of
the town. Meanwhile, you will remain here as
hostage under cover. I will wave my handker-
chief as a signal for your men to begin firing, and
discharge a shell when the five minutes are up."
The Presidente fiddled with his watch-chain. He
mistrusted his own ears. Ballard repeated what he
had said.
" It is sure death, Senor Capitan. We have the
Mausers with the magazines. We can shoot thou-
sands of bullets," was the reply.
" Be it so. I will show you how helpless it is for
you to fight the Americans. You cannot hit me."
A light burst upon the Presidente. Now it was
explained why the Ensign was so different from
the Americans of his conception. The Ensign was
mad. And the Presidente consented to the ar-
rangement in grandiloquent terms which included
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
admiration for Ballard's courage and the hope that
he would have a magnificent funeral. For, whatever
the moral defects of Presidentes, you see, they have
a fine command of polite language.
" Finally," said Ballard, as the aide-de-camp of
the Presidente was stepping into the banco, to go
ashore to inform the manikins of the part they
were to play, " if I am not hit, and your men at-
tempt to run back to the trench, not half of them
will reach it and none will get out of it alive."
Rodriguez, who had overheard the conversation,
was too flustered for words. The Babe, who had
been aft, when Ballard announced his intentions as
if they were merely orders of the day, did not stop
to consider that the commanding officer's plans
were none of his business. Already the banca was
half way to the shore.
" I won't stand by and see you murdered ! " he
cried. " Of course they'll hit you. In five min-
utes they can easily fire two thousand rounds. You
might as well try to dodge snowflakes. Call that
boat back, or I will."
" Babe, I'm going to do it, and there's an end of
the matter. The crew will be in no danger. And,
Babe, wouldn't you go through with it if you had
gone as far as I have? "
32
BALLARD
" I wouldn't have started."
" Well, I have started."
" And Margaret? " Babe asked.
" And Margaret? " Ballard repeated.
He steadied himself by placing his hand on the
barrel of the six-pounder. For the moment he had
the illusion of many years of love and happiness
before him. Then he rallied himself for funking a
speedy death, the best of the inevitable. He told
the Babe to give Margaret his note-book. Then
he turned to the provision of safety for those around
him.
Rodriguez had just issued a fiat to the Presidente
that there was not room for two in the cabin.
Either Ballard's assurance that bullets could not
penetrate the plates of the hull, or their own fright,
sent them below. He then bade the crew to see
that every gun was charged with a shell, ready for
an emergency. By the time that this was done the
lieutenant had landed, and was leading the insur-
gents out of the trench down to the beach.
With the guns swung around so that no bullets
could enter the muzzles, the crew doggedly, at Bal-
lard's command, cleared decks for action in a
fashion unprecedented in the American navy.
They had merely to tread water or buoy themselves
33
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
with their hands on the gunwale, in order to have
two thicknesses of steel between them and the en-
emy. Though included in the order, Babe remained
on deck. His underlip was quivering a little. He
did not propose to take cover when his superior offi-
cer remained standing; and he told Ballard so.
" You mean to disobey orders? " Ballard asked.
" Yes. It is justifiable under the circumstances."
" Then I'll have to throw you overboard."
" If you try that I'll clinch and take you with
me."
Babe drew himself up a little for he lacked four
inches of Ballard's height to show that he was
equal to the task.
" You can't, Babe, and you know that you can't.
I'll only hold you on board, give the signal, and the
target for our friends on the beach will be so much
the larger. They'll shoot at us both, and both will
be in line of the scattering bullets. My only chance
is that every man jack will aim directly at me. Do
you want my death on your hands? Do you want
the Avispa to be without a commissioned officer?
Come! They are ready. It isn't polite to keep
them waiting. Let's have the suspense over! I
order you overboard ! "
" Well, if they kill you, all I've got to say is, that
34
BALLARD
I'll chuck the Presidente in and let him swim for it.
I'll run in close and I'll hammer those Gugus as
long as I've a shot left."
" No, you won't," called Ballard after him.
" You'll keep my promise and sail away. Say that
you will."
He received a dogged nod in reply and turned
toward the shore.
The insurgents had taken greedy advantage of
their privilege. Fully a hundred figures were at the
very water's edge, each at a knee-rest. The Presi-
dente's aide-de-camp stood at one end of the line,
coaching his men. There was only a ripple on the
stretch of a thousand yards of water which sepa-
rated them from their target. Ballard's white uni-
form stood out clearly against the background of
sea and sky.
He took out his watch, and, unconsciously throw-
ing one leg a little in front of the other, at ease, he
waved his handkerchief. There was a sound along
the shore as of the ripping of a lathe in two. The
crew behind the hull heard the bullets glancing on
the water, popping in the air, zipping close to their
ears, tearing through the smoke-stack, ringing
against the barrels of the guns, spatting against
the plates of the hull, in a storm of distinct sounds.
35
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
In the second's silence that followed, nine heads
appeared above the gunwale, nine pairs of eyes
expecting to see Ballard prostrate. He was still
standing in his careless position.
The insurgents hesitated a moment, scouting the
authority of their own vision. Then they began
firing rapidly at will, with the desperation of one
who feels that he is hopelessly lungeing his sword
through a phantom. Most of them, in their in-
creasing excitement, sent their bullets wider and
wider of the mark. But not all. A few were set-
tling down to careful aim, judging, with the fine in-
stinct that goes with it, whether or not the last shot
went too far to the right or the left, too high or too
low.
When the second-hand had wrenched its way
around to the fourth minute, Ballard realized that
upon them depended his fate. The deck was
splintered at his feet. The hisses in his ears be-
came more frequent. With the fifth minute he
found himself straining as if he were in shackles.
He felt the full swing of the natural passion to re-
turn blow for blow. Something stung his knuckles
and brought the blood. There came a z-s-s-p-p
and a rush of air so close to his cheek that he in-
voluntarily threw his head to one side. The bullet
36
BALLARD
which he had foolishly tried to dodge was a good
friend, for one close following it passed through his
collar when otherwise it would have gone through
his neck. And then the shoulder of his blouse was
clipped, the crown of his cap was cut, while the
hissing grew more and more savage, until the
second-hand pointed to the end of the allotted time
and he swung the six-pounder around and dis-
charged the shell which had been agreed upon as
a signal.
With its hurtle through the air the firing from
the beach ceased. He was alive because he had
been the bull's-eye of the target. As his little com-
mand came dripping on to the deck, he was enjoy-
ing the elation of having overcome an obstacle, the
keener foretaste of interesting events to come. He
grasped Babe's wet hands in his.
" We've taken a town and a hundred rifles with
a crew of eight. You'll be Presidente and I'll be
Governor of the province."
He was prevented from dragging Babe into a
war dance, first, by the attitude of Babe himself,
and then by that of the crew, whose joy and relief
were so deep that they were in a solemn mood of
wonder and thanksgiving for his deliverance. And
then Rodriguez and the Presidente, the crumpled
37
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
state of their garb plainly telling that self-preserva-
tion may be too awkward to be justly called an art,
appeared from the cabin.
" There ! You see I was as good as my word,
as I always shall be," Ballard said to the Presi-
dente.
" You possess some charm an arcing-anting,"
he replied, affably.
After the Avispa had been run alongside the few
weather-beaten boards and stringers which had
served as a landing-stage before insurrection closed
the port, and the crew had taken possession of the
rifles and organized the prisoners into columns of
fours to march them to the plaza, Ballard wrote a
brief official report of the taking of the town and
then a longer one for Margaret, without mentioning
in either of them its one distinguishing feature.
" Babe, I'll keep the Colt," he said. " You and
the engineer are to take the Avispa to Cebu and
return as fast as you can drive her. I am going to
hold the town until this message which you will
cable to the Admiral brings help. I shall expect you
back in four days. We may need you before that.
Eight is not a large garrison."
" Nine, if you please," said the pilot, who had
been silent all this time. " I was trained for the
38
BALLARD
merchant service, but I will follow you and your
charm anywhere now."
" Nine, then. Thank you, Rodriguez. And,
Babe, please don't mention that I made myself a
target. It sounds too theatrical."
39
Ill
WHEN the Admiral had read Ballard's cable-
gram, which was brought to him with his coffee
on the after-deck, he called his barge and started
straightway for Manila in a state of pride and
joyful anticipation. Here was a great " rise " on
the General, and he wanted to see how the Gen-
eral would take it.
" I thought that this might interest you," he said,
as he laid the message on the desk of the Patient
and Well-Abused One. " One of my young men
has captured as many rifles as your whole corps has
taken in a month."
" More of your mischief ! More trouble for me,"
said the General. " The insurgents have a thou-
sand Mausers in the Province of Durinao."
" Well, did you expect a boy with an oyster-shell
and a crew of eight, just because he was in the navy,
to get the whole thousand? "
" No. I expect the navy to patrol the coast, not
to tie up to the shore. If your ensigns want to en-
list in the army, our recruiting office is open. I
40
BALLARD
hadn't intended to put a single garrison in Northern
Mindanao till next year or to touch Durinao till I
could put ashore a regiment or at least a battalion.
I won't send a man, not a man ! I can't spare one.
It's as easy for you to get out as it was to get in."
" Very good. I'll cable home to the Depart-
ment that the navy having taken the place, we've
got to pull the flag down because you won't oc-
cupy it ! "
"Well?"
"Well!"
Father Walrus and Father Bear looked hard at
each other. They had fought in a war that lasted
through more than one summer. The giving and
the receiving of hard knocks was wine to the menu
of their routine work. Whenever they met they
wiped off their slates with an exchange of amenities
which were purely a family matter, not at all for
publication. You must not think, however, that
each did not have a high regard for the other as a
" good one " who stood up for his Service.
" Well? " repeated the Walrus.
" Oh, I suppose that I'll have to pull you out of
your scrape. But you must help yourself a little.
If you'll detach fifteen or twenty marines from
some of your ships around Cebu and send them
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
down on the Avispa, I'll despatch the Idaho (a trans-
port) in a week with a battalion."
The Admiral agreed to this; and he was conscious
of having spent a delightful morning.
Meanwhile, Ballard had had quite enough ex-
citement to keep his mind off his malady. In dis-
arming the prisoners and marching them up the
avenue, overhung with thick foliage of mango-trees,
which led to the square, Rodriguez and Swanson
acted as masters of ceremonies. It would be super-
fluous to mention that Swanson bore himself
proudly. His pride, however, could not approach
that of the portly Rodriguez, who had all the at-
tributes of his everyday grandeur as a basis to swell
upon.
When Ballard had dismissed the manikins with
a warning to go and sin no more, he sent Rodriguez
on a hunt for information among the natives. Then
came the problem of quarters for his men and of
storage for the captured rifles. He turned toward
a building, occupying one side of the plaza, which
was ridiculously large for the size of the town.
" That, I suppose, is the Presidencia," he said to
the Presidente, whom he had kept at his elbow.
" No. Pardon, the Presidencia is there."
42
BALLARD
" Then what is this grand house? " Ballard asked.
" Perhaps it will make even better quarters for the
men."
" Ah, as you will, Senor Capitan," was the reply.
" It is a private residence. I fear, Capitan, I fear
that it is not suitable. We will enter and you shall
see for yourself. You know best, Senor."
Ballard was, indeed, little prepared for what fol-
lowed. In answer to the Presidente's knock, a
Moro, wearing a red turban and an ivory-handled
kris thrust in his sash of yellow silk, admitted them
into a hall which was of the usual bare type of
houses of Spaniards or well-to-do Filipinos. He
led them up the stairs, where he drew back a hang-
ing for them to enter the main apartment which
was in darkness. There they waited a moment
while he pushed back the big sliding shutters.
As the aggressive tropical light burst in, Ballard
involuntarily started in surprise. Nor did his swift
first impression prepare him for the details of lux-
urious furnishings of a room whose dimensions
were at least forty by sixty. He was attracted by
a grand piano strewn with music, and then by a
dozen antique Chinese and Japanese vases stand-
ing in the corners and by the doorways which were
screened by hangings of mandarin silk. The floor
43
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
was of slabs of polished Molave, two feet in breadth.
On the broad arm of the long chair beside the cen-
tre-table was a little paper-knife of mother-of-pearl,
such as women use; and on the foot of the chair was
an open book, with the back up, as if to keep the
place where the reader had left off when called away.
Ballard picked it up. It was " Madame Chrysan-
theme." One of the two books on the table was
" The Seven Seas," the other a dictionary of Span-
ish and English. The education and catholicity of
taste thus suggested were even more surprising
than the furnishings.
"Who reads French and English?" he asked,
keen with curiosity.
" Oh, Sefiorita Varkoff, of course," was the reply.
" Who owns the house? "
" Sefiorita Varkoff, now that her father is
dead!"
"Where is she?"
" In the country, I believe, Senor Capitan."
"When did she go?"
" I cannot say. I think she went when she saw
your gun-boat coming."
" Then she is an insurrecto? "
" Her brother is. As for her, she is a woman,
Senor Capitan such a woman ! Such a woman ! "
44
BALLARD
While he was asking these questions Ballard had
been looking at the paintings on the walls. Some
bore French names with which he was familiar;
others Spanish names with which he was unfamiliar.
One in particular attracted his attention. The
scene was laid, clearly enough, in the tropics. It
represented a great bungalow, surrounded by
palms, on a rampart by the sea.
" La Nidada, the Varkoff country-place, about
fifteen miles out, painted by the Sefiorita herself,"
the Presidente explained.
" Painting ! French ! English ! Where did she
learn?"
" In Europe, in Paris," said the Presidente, as if
the two were much the same thing. " They went
to Japan, often. They have a house in the hills
there, too. She was in Europe four years."
" Why wouldn't he go back? Why did he come
to Mindanao? " Ballard demanded.
The Presidente shrugged his shoulders. Si, he
shrugged them twice, smiling with the second
shrug, which meant that there was mystery but not
all was mystery.
" The father, half Russian, half Spaniard, came
here with money oh, many years ago. He mar-
ried a Filipino lady a beautiful devil of a woman,
45
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
Senor Capitan! He came for a reason. What
reason? Only one man ever asked him. That was
the Spanish Governor. In a month after he had
asked he was recalled to Spain. Then Senor Varkoff
became ruler of Mindanao by appointment from
the crown, as he was already in fact. He owned
two-thirds of the hemp grown here; he had gold
mines in the interior, worked and guarded by his
own men. He owned sugar plantations in Negros
and pearl fisheries in the Sulus. Millions of pesos!
millions ! "
Ballard followed the Presidente through many
equally well-furnished chambers and back again to
the broad veranda at the rear of the house. At
this hour it was screened by heavy mattings, but it
was easy to see how cool and pleasant it would be
in the evening or the late afternoon, when the sun
was still fierce upon the plaza, to recline here look-
ing out over a setting-sun-lit or a moon-lit sea.
" No. I will not disturb this," Ballard remarked,
finally.
So the rifles were tied in lots of four and piled
in the Presidencia. The Presidente was told that
he might go to his residence, while Ballard pre-
pared to occupy a room in the Presidencia and his
men arranged their kits in the others. This was no
46
BALLARD
sooner accomplished than the pilot appeared, fairly
oozing information from his perspiring pores.
" I can make you very happy," he said, with the
sweeping gesture of a cook who in person places his
masterpiece upon the table. " I have news that
we shall be attacked before the day is over. The
insurgents outside know by runners by this time
that we have taken the town."
To Ballard the prospect was now serious. It in-
volved a great risk to his men, for which, in that he
had exceeded the spirit of his instructions, he held
himself directly responsible. He gave the pilot no
time for further words, but sent him (with the flag
which Swanson was about to raise) to the church
tower to report if the enemy was yet in sight. Two
jackies were told to bring back the Presidente.
The rest were set to carrying the rifles and supplies
into the plaza; for, whatever scheme of defence he
might devise, it was plain that he could not make a
stand in the Presidencia, whose walls were no
thicker than those of a dry-goods box. The Presi-
dente, fleeing from his own house, was detained by
a shot over his head. He came before Ballard,
carrying, in one trembling hand, a red cotton hand-
kerchief full of jewelry and trinkets, and in the
other, an ornate onyx clock of German make.
47
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
" Ah, Sefior Capitan," he said, " it was most fort-
unate that your men did not hit me, for now I can
explain. I was only in chase of a thieving ser-
vant."
" And these things in your hands? "
" Why, Senor Capitan, I caught the servant and
had not yet returned to the house when you
honored me with your message."
" Well, you may remain here under our protec-
tion and answer answer honestly, mind any
questions I ask you; or you may go your way."
" My friends will be so worried. I think I will
return to them."
" Very well."
Then, having learned already that the most strik-
ing of a white man's peculiarities is the honor of his
spoken word, he asked if he might leave his valu-
ables with the Ensign. Ballard nodded.
" I will come for them when we have done fight-
ing," he said.
He laid them at Ballard's feet and ran out of the
square.
By this time Rodriguez called from the church
tower that no enemy was in sight.
" But they'll come ! I know they'll come," he
added.
48
BALLARD
The Presidente's action assured this, Ballard
thought.
A Spanish force under such circumstances
would have taken to the church, as a matter of
course. A vigorous young people, however, in-
stinctively assumes the offensive. Ballard's first
idea was to go out to meet the insurgents. But
more than one road ran from Durinao into the in-
terior. If he put four men out as points he had a
reserve force of four. Without firing a shot, the
enemy could easily surround him and finish him
leisurely.
His next plan was to fall back upon a finger of
beach which was fortified by the sea on three sides.
He could mount the Colt in an embrasure of sand-
bags, and he could build an earthwork from shore
to shore. Thus his men would be under cover and
have a clear field for their fire upon the only side
by which the enemy could advance to the attack.
With the captured Mausers arranged in stationary
positions, ten rifles to each man, his crew could
open up with volleys before settling down to accu-
rate fire with their own pieces. However, this
and here he faltered as one who feels himself
tempted by sentiment was putting himself wholly
on the defensive; giving up the town entirely and
49
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
pulling down the flag which now floated over the
tower.
His decision was cast for him by a shout from
Rodriguez, who announced the approach of a
column of insurgents about two miles distant.
There was, then, no time to go to the beach. He
told the men to carry their arms and supplies into
the church. Then he ran around the great pile of
stone which was to be his fort. Connected with the
church in the rear was a monastery, lighted entirely
from the roof, except for numerous loopholes ten
feet above the ground and too narrow to admit of
the passage of a man's body. The wooden veran-
da where the friars sat in the cool of the evening
was only a counterfeit of peace and hospitality; for
the single great door was of heavy hard wood, iron
barred. A storming party must enter by the door
of the church itself. Returning to this, he called to
the pilot for the latest news.
" They are on both roads now, and spreading
out," was the reply. " The inhabitants are in the
long grass expecting a combat."
Inside the auditorium he saw shrines and images
once ornamented with silver and draped with silk,
stripped by the natives, whose glebe had bought
them, now become sceptics and vandals. They had
50
BALLARD
smashed the stained glass in places, allowing
streams of pure daylight to fall upon the stone
floor side by side with the tints in contorted shad-
ows. He passed on back of the altar, where a small
door, through a thick wall, led into the monastery.
Here, apparently, the priests had lived among
beautiful surroundings if not in luxury. Furniture
was smashed, paintings of the saints were torn in
strips and thrown on the floor.
Then, satisfied that he could be attacked by the
door alone, with his own hands he assisted the
jackies in building a barricade in front of it. They
were hastened in their labor by the occasional calls
of Rodriguez that the enemy, which he estimated
at four hundred, was slowly creeping in. Before
dusk, the last stone needed had been wrenched from
the floor and was in position.
Ballard feared an attack by night more than one
by day. He himself kept watch. There was a
scattering fire until midnight and then silence until
an hour before dawn, when from the windows, the
roofs and the corners of the houses, except the
Sefiorita's, and from all sides of the plaza burst
flashes of rifle fire, while bullets went whistling
through the open door and spat against the wall.
Ballard called to the men, who awakened with a
5*
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
start and sprang to their feet, not to expose them-
selves in getting to their positions and to keep down
until he gave the word.
" Let them come ! They bark before they bite !
If they weren't fools they would rush us in the
silence with the bayonet. Let them come ! They
are hungry ! We will feed them with lead ! "
It was the big voice of the same portly figure that
had hidden in the hold of the Avispa which spoke.
Rodriguez had stepped back three centuries. The
spirit of the Cafe Vagabundo had passed out of him.
In its place had come the spirit of the ancestors who
had landed upon unknown shores with the same
fearlessness that they set out upon unknown seas
in vessels far more frail than those which now hug
well-charted harbors in a coastwise trade.
If some of the insurgents gathered under the
eaves on either side of the door, prepared to pour in
at close quarters where numbers count, as soon
as the rifles of the others had opened the way,
Ballard knew that he could not hold them back.
Had they? He must know. In the face of the fire
which lighted the plaza, he jumped upon the barri-
cade, peered to right and left, and fell back without
having been hit and with his worst fears dispelled.
No answering shot to the continuing fusillade came
52
BALLARD
from the church. Ballard knelt behind his beloved
Colt, which was in the centre of the barricade. On
his right were Boatswain Swanson and a jacky; on
his left, two jackies all with bayonets fixed. Rod-
riguez and the rest of the crew were in the gallery
above, which ran all the way around the interior of
the church, their rifles resting in the loopholes
which the friars had designed for the specific need
now at hand.
Thus they waited, until, upon the sound of the
bugle, the firing stopped. Then they rose to the
task which they knew was before them. From the
cover of the houses on all sides of the square broke
a swarm of figures, indistinct in the moonlight. In
no danger of being hit, the problem was, whether
or not Ballard and his men could turn the flood of
humanity before it broke into the door and over-
whelmed them. Not one of the manikins had to
run over two hundred yards; some only a hundred.
Ballard let the Colt play to the limit of the risk of
jamming it. Many of the figures were falling.
Many kept on. Within twenty, within ten yards
they approached, until five or six in the van, with a
score directly behind them, were in the doorway.
One leaped upon the barricade. Swanson's bayonet
swung him over on to the floor in a half circle as if
53
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
he were on a spit. The second met the same fate.
Ballard was conscious only that others were mount-
ing on either side of him. The Colt alone con-
tinued firing. It must not stop, for it was the
thread upon which hung their lives. From side to
side he swung it as it breathed flashes into the dark-
ness in quick gasps. Those who were charging
heard no cries of triumph from inside the church,
or, indeed, the scuffle of hand-to-hand conflict.
Upon the point of winning, they gave up the
fight and ran to the cover of the walls of the
church.
Swanson, except for a slash in the cheek, was
quite whole. His first care, when resistance was
over, was to disarm the Filipinos who were still
alive. Two of the jackies were badly cut, but said
that with patching they could handle a rifle " all
right, all right." One of them, who had run away
from the farm to the sea, remarked :
" That was like mowing away hay in the far
corner of the loft when the forkfuls are coming too
fast."
From the balcony the big voice called down :
" We know how, don't we? "
Dawn showed forty or fifty dead and groaning
wounded in the square. There were fifteen in the
54
BALLARD
church. Ballard, with the instinct of the Service,
felt that he had taken part in a butchery, not in a
fight. Shortly after dawn two insurgents crept
fearfully out to one of the wounded who lay near
the Presidencia. When they had moved him with-
out being fired on, they went after another. Bal-
lard jumped upon the barricade and called to them
to go on. In the course of the forenoon they
carried away all their wounded, leaving on the field
a score of motionless figures who had dashed for-
ward with the certainty of triumph over an enemy
who had not even returned their fire, only to be
mowed down remorselessly by the invention of a
man in a shop in the North Temperate zone. Dur-
ing the afternoon these and the dead in the church
were carried away, white men and brown men
working in silence at the task.
Rodriguez was unusually quiet. He sat with his
head in his hands much of the time. Asked if he
was ill, he replied that he was not, but that he was
making a resolution. When, toward evening, he
went to Ballard, it was apparent that he had to re-
lieve his mind of a weighty decision.
" I love Spain," he began with a sigh. " I love
my own Catalonia even better. But oof! They
talk too much. They talk against the Govern-
55
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
ment; the Government talks back. They all shout
the politique in the cafes and build rotten ships.
You say d n the politique; let's look to the ships!
I have found it so easy to do things that yes, as
much as I love Catalonia I am going to be an
American citizen."
And thus another of one of the old peoples be-
came one of the young, vigorous people.
So confident was Ballard that the natives would
not attack again before the Avispa returned that
he made everyone lie down for the night. He bore
watch until twelve and then called a jacky to take
his place. After a fitful sleep he awakened at day-
light. When he stepped upon the barricade to
look around he had a vision of colored turbans and
sashes hugging the wall on either side of the door.
He fell back just in time to escape a knife which
was hurled at him by a strong and skilled hand.
With a shout to awaken the sleepers, he grasped a
rifle, fully expecting that in the next instant he and
his little force would be engaged in their last strug-
gle. His fears were mocked by absolute silence
on the outside. Evidently the Moros were not yet
ready for the onslaught and were unwittingly giv-
ing the defenders breathing space and time to for-
mulate new measures of defence.
56
BALLARD
" These are her people," said Rodriguez, " the
Senorita Varkoff's. Those we fought yesterday
were residents of the seaboard, who have emigrated
from the Visayas. These are natives of the interior,
Mohammedans. They did not shout. They crept
up softly like the savage and the wolf. They will
pour in on us in a flood, and are not afraid to die.
I do not want to be up in the gallery and killed like
a rat in a hole. I want to be here with you and
Swanson in the thick of it while it lasts."
" No. We don't propose to be massacred yet,"
Ballard replied. " We shall have merely to fall
back on our second line of defence. With the Colt
and the rifles in the rear of the gallery we can throw
a spray of bullets into the doorway, while Swanson,
who is a good shot, will pick off any who might get
on to the stair. The more that come the more
quickly will they be served."
" Of course, of course ! " Rodriguez exclaimed.
" Of course you would find a way ! I forgot for a
moment that I was no longer a Spaniard."
While the Colt was being transferred, the door
was covered by rifles from the rear of the gallery.
For an hour they waited, expecting every minute to
see flashing knives and struggling figures bulking
the doorway, and then the silence was broken by a
57
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
call from Rodriguez, who was peering through one
of the loopholes into the square.
" There's somebody coming with a white flag !
It's a woman! It must be the Senorita Var-
koff."
Ballard hastened along the gallery and down the
stairs. She reached the doorway just as he leaped
upon the barricade. He had expected to see a
mestizo,, but only the trained eye of one who had
lived long in the Philippines would have discerned
from her face that there was native blood in her
veins. Her beauty, if she were beautiful that re-
mained until the end a question with Ballard had
none of the languor of the full-blooded or of the
half-breed Spaniard. Charm, which is so different
from beauty, she possessed in every pose. She was
tall and slim, yet the native gown which she wore
revealed in the fine shoulders and neck the legacy
of an ancestry that carried burdens on their heads.
She did not make a deep courtesy of the mestizo,
kind, but nodded with the ease that is sure of itself.
" I have come to save your life," she said in
English.
" That is very kind of you if we needed your
assistance."
As he stepped down from the barricade he saw
58
BALLARD
that the Moros, who had been lying under the
eaves, had risen and stood deferentially facing her.
" Oh. Then you think you can defend your-
self? " she said, leaning forward, shading her eyes
with her hand and peering into the church.
" Certainly."
" So you have your gun in the gallery," she went
on. " I see ! That is very clever, quite worthy of
the man who made himself a target for a hundred
men. And it is also futile."
' You have come here to get information about
our defences Is that your mission? If it is "
" It is not," she replied, indignantly. " If you will
step around the church where we can see the roof
of the monastery you will find that I am your friend
and not your enemy."
She started, expecting him to follow her. He
hesitated to put himself so far in her power. Divin-
ing his thought she added, a little contemptuously :
" If you fear foul play you might cover me with
your revolver."
At this he laughed and accompanied her to the
road which ran in front of the Presidencia and past
the church. There were fifty Moros upon the roof
of the monastery. Even as he looked one dropped
on to it from the overhanging branches of a mango
59
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
tree, more in the fashion of a monkey than of a
man.
" This is why they delayed attacking ! " he ex-
claimed.
" Yes, and to-night at the same time that they
pour into the church door they will also break in
the monastery door and rush down the belfry."
" We shall be ready for them," he replied.
She threw back her head with a little laugh. His
assurance in the face of the inevitable pleased her.
" And now that you have shown me how strong
you are, I suppose you have in view some considera-
tion for which you will raise the siege? "
If he spoke nonchalantly, he none the less real-
ized that the life of his crew hung upon her reply.
With twenty men he might, but with eight he could
conceive of no disposition by which he could hold
the church until the Avispa returned.
" Yes, I have," she answered. " The only con-
sideration is that you will not fire on the besiegers
as they depart. Will you? "
" I will not," he replied earnestly.
She called to one of the Moros who seemed to be
a chief. He listened respectfully to an argument
of some length in his own tongue, and then, in turn,
harangued his followers. Without order and with-
60
BALLARD
out comment, as silently as they had come, they
moved out into the square and toward the country.
It was hard for Ballard to believe that he was not
witnessing a scene from the Arabian Nights.
" You see I didn't come to take advantage," said
the Senorita. " You will find no armed men in the
town now and the natives will return to their homes.
Good-afternoon."
Bowing, she turned and walked toward her
house, while Ballard, sauntering, in pace with his
mood, to the church door, reverted to the charac-
terization by the Presidente :
" Such a woman ! Such a woman 1 "
61
IV
As the Senorita had promised, the inhabitants
were soon returning to town. After a day chiefly
occupied in making rules for their government and
reading over the records in the Presidencia, Ballard
wrote for two hours in his journal to Margaret
about the events of the siege with all the enthusiasm
of the moments when his illusion, as he had come to
call it, was complete. He described the Senorita
and her palace and told what he knew of her history,
closing the account of the events of the morning
with his conviction that she had saved the lives of
himself and his garrison. For the first time since
he had left Cavite he slept soundly, making up for
the lost hours, recuperating from the strain of the
last two days with faculties lulled by reaction, until
at noon he was awakened by Swanson, who re-
ported that the Avispa, accompanied by another of
the mosquito fleet, was in sight.
" Well, you did drive her ! " he called to the Babe,
as the gun-boat, her decks crowded with marines,
ran alongside the pier.
62
BALLARD
" Drove, and threatened, and coaxed, and chas-
tised," was the reply. " In an hour after word came
we had the marines off the Memphis which was at
Cebu. The Admiral sent the Sulu along to bring
back news to the cable about how you are getting
on. There's an army transport due in a week. But
here's his message."
The instructions began with : " That's right. I
said not to ask questions, but to go ahead." As the
marines were marched up to the plaza, Ballard had
to relate to the Babe and his fellow-classman com-
manding the Sulu what had happened in the Babe's
absence. They looked as interested and as sad as
if they had missed the only opportunity that the
navy would have for a century. After settling the
marines in the Presidencia, Ballard wrote a message
to the Admiral, which occupied about two minutes,
and then a message to Margaret, which occupied a
half hour, with no foreboding of what was soon to
come between them.
When he had returned to the pier and had sent
the Sulu on her way, he saw the Seiiorita coming
down the avenue, a parasol over her shoulder. He
went to meet her.
" I came to look at the Avispa," she said. " May
I?"
63
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
She seemed almost to forget his presence in her
interest in the little gun-boat.
" Those are bullet marks? " she said, pointing to
the splatters above the water-line on the hull. " And
those holes through the smoke-stack, they were
made by bullets, too? "
" Every officer in Cebu came out in bancas to
look at her ! " exclaimed the Babe. " What they
couldn't understand was how none of us was hit."
"You didn't tell?" Ballard asked.
" No, on my word I didn't. I wanted to, though.
I did say that you had some bullets through your
clothes and your knuckles skinned."
" And why not? Why not tell? " demanded the
Senorita of Ballard, in the manner of one who is
accustomed to have her questions answered.
" Oh, personal eccentricity. That's all," he
replied.
She looked quickly, keenly into his eyes, her lumi-
nous black irises contracting.
" No. Because you are strong," she said im-
pulsively. " It was fine to do what you did; finer
to shrug your shoulders over it. And you stood
there? " she added, pointing to the stern. Without
waiting for reply she took up a position in front of
the six-pounder. " Like this? " she asked.
64
BALLARD
" Yes, as I remember."
She examined the guns for each abrasion of the
polish as if it were the clew to a mystery. Then she
looked at the splatters on the hull and the rents in
the smoke-stack again before she relieved his grow-
ing embarrassment by saying that she was ready to
go. He accompanied her along the avenue, tak-
ing the opportunity to make an apology for what
seemed, in the clearer view of the morning, his
brusqueness on the previous day.
" I want to thank you for saving the lives of my-
self and my men," he said. " For now I am con-
vinced that you really did save them."
" That is little to use my power to prevent you
from being massacred. Really, I am not all a
savage. I owe you reparation for what my brother
did. He sent the Moros to surround the church.
He was the lieutenant who conducted the firing
against you. The brute! To take such advan-
tage! If he had only met your suggestion with
one that the decision be made by a duel. No, not
he! He sent his poor men against you the other
morning in the square, but did he lead them? No.
Yet to that you may owe your safety. I told Koto,
the chief of the Moros, that. I asked him if he
would fight for a leader who did not lead. The
result you saw."
65
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
" I have certainly come into a strange land," he
said.
" And you regard me, I suppose, as one of its
strange features."
" Perhaps, if you look at the matter in one light.
You seem out of keeping with it."
" Both out of keeping and in keeping with it. I
am just half white. I am not so silly as to claim
more."
They were now at the door of her house. He
lifted his cap.
" This is the hour when we in the tropics live.
You are quite welcome if you care to come in."
So he entered with her. They were admitted by
the same Moro who had answered the Presidente's
knock on the day of Ballard's landing. He pre-
ceded them and raised the hangings which shut out
the sun from the veranda by day. When they were
seated there, looking out on the sea, she said :
" You have been in the house before. You were
a little surprised at its interior? "
" Yes."
" Only yes. That is good." She threw her head
to one side. " You make no compliment. If you
were a Spaniard "
" If it comes to that, I might add " he stam-
mered in embarrassment.
66
BALLARD
" No, don't. No ! You wouldn't mean it."
" Oh, yes, I should. I wondered why all these
furnishings were in Mindanao; why pardon me!
I didn't come to ask questions."
" You wondered why, having money to gratify
my wishes, I should not live abroad? Why I
should reside in Mindanao when there is no one
here whose tastes are the same? I may well wonder
myself, for you are the first white man I have seen,
and I have had no books and little news, since our
ports were closed by your war with Spain. Why
should I not regard you as something of a curiosity,
then? There are times when I feel as if I were in
a prison; when I long for the city, the opera, the
theatre, the Champs Elysees the white man's
realm. Times when I wish I had accepted the ad-
vice of my professor of music who wanted me to
become a professional. And then, how can I re-
turn alone? And if I went, then my other self
would put me in prison. I should long to be back
here. I should long to sit on the porch of La Ni-
dada my bungalow in the evening, knowing that
the plantations were mine; that the Moros obeyed
my orders; that I had here a power which no one
else can have. But my father has laid out the path
forme! My father!"
67
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
She hesitated a moment. Ballard's intense in-
terest, perhaps, spurred her on to tell the story
which had never been related before in Mindanao.
The writer reports it, though it may be a diversion
from the main current of the tale, because it throws
light on the character of Maria Varkoff and the
white outcasts who sojourn in the Far East for rea-
sons that they hold secret.
" My father," she repeated, " not he, but his
father, who married out of his race, was to blame.
My grandfather was an attache at the Russian Le-
gation in Madrid when he married a Spanish
woman, an opera singer. It is from her, yes, and
from my Filipino mother, too, that I get my love of
music. She did not live with him long after her
two children were born. At thirty-five my father, a
graduate of medicine, was still a student and a
brawler. I say that he was this at thirty-five, be-
cause then came the passion and the event which
changed everything for him. He fell in love, and
for him to fall in love, naturally, was to brook no
opposition. His rival for the lady's hand was a
Prince of great influence. If he had been the Czar
himself my father would have challenged him.
They met, and the Prince was killed. Then my
father went to the lady, as if he had rid her of a
68
BALLARD
nuisance, expecting his reward. He found that
she loved the Prince and not him. She told him
that there was only one thing he could do to please
her and that was to kill himself. If he wished, she
would furnish him with a pistol. You open your
eyes incredulously, Captain. It sounds lurid, but
you are an American. You live in a world where
men carry their feelings in their hearts and muffle
their hearts' beatings with the commonplaces of
their tongues. She was a Russian.
" Then my father laughed at her. He seized her
by the wrists and led her to a window where the
light was strong, so that he could look into her face.
He told her that if she thought that he loved her
she was a great fool. His farewell message was
to gloat over the misery he had brought her. Thus
he could fly from one extreme of passion to another
as a woman would."
" Why a woman? " Ballard asked.
" Well, isn't it as a woman would do? A man,
if he finds that his affection is misplaced, usually
sighs and slowly forgets. A woman refuses to
think that she has loved at all and then always
remembers."
" Perhaps as some women would do," he said,
keen upon the continuance of her story, while he
69
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
thought, in the practical way of the Service, that
the mess, with a little all-round hazing, might have
made a man of her father.
" You think him absurd, ridiculous ! " she ex-
claimed.
" I am afraid I do."
" I think him ridiculous and terrible and master-
ful," she continued. " But he was my father. I can
no more be separated from him than I can change
the color of my eyes.
" My grandfather was face to face with the ruin
of his position and the loss of his influence. He
saved my father from punishment for the crime of
murder by having him sent to Siberia. In their
last meeting he said to my father:
" ' You will be sent to Siberia for life. But you
will find it easy to escape. At Shanghai you will
find a hundred thousand roubles awaiting you.
That is all you will ever receive from me, the last
that you will ever hear from me. In Russia you
have ceased to exist. May your long tramp cool
your head and make you realize what a mad fool
you have been/
" That sounds like fiction. I wish it were fiction
and not all as real to me as it was to him. When
he reached Shanghai the hundred thousand roubles
70
BALLARD
were there as his father had promised. For two
years more he travelled back and forth, spending
his money cautiously, until he knew the East from
Bombay to Yokohama as well as a white man may
know it. Then, still shifting for an occupation to
his taste, not caring if he never found one, knowing,
as he did, that life is easily ended when it has no ties
to earth except its own, he met one day at Singa-
pore some Spanish officers who were on their way
to the Philippines with recruits in a trooper. He
joined them. He arrived in Manila to find that the
Governor-General was sending out one of the many
expeditions for pacifying the Moros of Mindanao.
You know the farce of those expeditions. You
know how the Spanish soldiers died like flies of fever
on their advance into the interior and upon their
retreat, while the Governor-General wrote de-
spatches to his Government which made him re-
ceived as a conqueror by the silly populace of
Madrid. It was generous of him to leave Min-
danao as he found it, so that his successors for
generations to come could win glory by recon-
quering it.
" My father was fascinated with Mindanao from
the first. He was amazed, he said, to find anywhere
in the world so large an island so little explored. A
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
hundred years ago Luzon was better known than
Mindanao is to-day if I exclude my father's knowl-
edge for he went everywhere in his litter. While
Borneo and Java were exploited, no one ever heard
of Mindanao. The Moros came to admire him,
first for his courage and his success as a fighter.
Then he learned their tongue. He became the
great chief of all the dattos. He turned the jungle
into a garden, and when he died he left all his plan-
tations to me, nothing to my brother.
" He paid little attention to my brother from the
first. I accompanied him on his different jour-
neys. He taught me how to swim, to shoot, to
ride, and all that I learned out of books before I
went to Europe. On that journey he accompanied
me as far as Colombo. He would not go through
the Canal. There we waited for two months. Just
as I was ready to start he would find it so hard to
leave me that he would postpone my departure until
the next week. Finally, on the day that a steamer
was sailing for Singapore and Manila, I found a
note from him saying that he was hurrying aboard
it, for he knew that to say farewell would only mean
that he would detain me longer. He could not wait
for news from me by post, so I used to cable to him
once a week. He met me at Colombo upon my
return. His first question was :
72
BALLARD
" * Which do you prefer, to be ruled in Paris or to
rule in Mindanao? '
" I don't know why, but I said, ' Rule in Min-
danao.' He seemed to be pleased.
" When the insurrection broke out in Cuba and
shortly after the rebels in Luzon took heart again
and began to make headway, he would walk up and
down the veranda of the bungalow and say :
" ' If I were twenty years younger I'd not sit
and wait, just to protect my property. I'd join the
insurrectionists. We could drive the Spaniards
out. I would become ruler yes, dictator of the
whole archipelago. Yes, and I would hold my
place and the independence of the islands. I tell
you this, Maria, but not your brother. He might
tattle it to the ends of the world.'
" Even then my father was so old that he was
prostrated if he burst into a tirade or into a fit of
rage. When he heard that your country had made
war on Spain, he said that the islands would be
yours. I can hear him now as he cried : ' American
pigs ! Spanish fools ! '
During the narrative Ballard sometimes found
himself looking at her face to make sure that it was
only a girl who was expressing thoughts showing
such mature comprehension of the world. He now
interrupted her.
73
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
" Your property will be protected as thoroughly
as if it were my own. A part of our own country-
men once rebelled. We did not confiscate their
property. We welcomed them back to the coun-
cils of the State."
" Ah, that was within your own race. Lions do
not prey upon their own kind, though they may
fight among themselves. And my brother? If
you capture him, what will be his punishment? "
" We will release him on parole."
" Oh, no. You only say that. You are the one
man in a hundred. You yourself perhaps would
keep your word, but not your Government. I
know! I know! "
" We have been keeping our word in Luzon for
over a year. Scores of generals, colonels, and what
not of the Filipino army are going freely about the
streets. You read English. Perhaps you have
been in England. You must have heard of the
Anglo-Saxon way."
" Yes," she replied. " Once I was in England.
I was ill with pneumonia oh, so ill ! I lived to get
out of London because I could not bear to die
there. It was all as they said in Paris foggy,
sooty, chilly; never the light of the sun ! Then, do
I not know it? The French, if they were in your
74
BALLARD
place, would they not take our estates for their own
spoils they, the conquerors? And the English!
Are they not worse? Are they not seizing the
whole world? And the Americans! Are they not
still worse? You are so white, so cold, so correct!
You cannot be bribed as the Spaniards could. You
just seize and hold ! "
" Then, at least, we are honest."
;< Yes, my father said that. He said : * The Amer-
icans are a dry people who say what they think
through their noses. It is easy to deceive them
once, but you cannot deceive them many times.
When they find you out nothing will buy back their
favor they are so stiff, unsmiling, and dour. Be
candid with their governor! Tell him all, my
Maria ! '
" Such a man was my father. Such is my posi-
tion. I belong neither to Europe nor to Mindanao,
and yet to both. I look into white faces and say:
1 You are not mine ! ' Into brown faces and say :
' You are not mine ! ' I look into the mirror and
say: 'You alone are mine!' Sometimes I "
she was kneading her slender fingers together in a
little frenzy of agony " sometimes I talk too
much," she added, and flew to the piano.
With the first notes under her skilful touch Bal-
75
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
lard gave that start of pleasure and surprise of a
music-lover who has expected to hear strumming
and instead hears playing. He had heard no good
music since he came to the Philippines a year be-
fore, and he drew his chair into a position where he
could watch the wonderful play of emotions in her
face in keeping with those which she brought from
the instrument. She played for an hour or more
neither could have told how long as if for her own
satisfaction, as if quite unconscious of his presence,
until the sun had set and its last glow of light was
being quickly dissipated over the sea by darkness.
When she stopped, such was her fatigue that she
leaned one hand upon the piano to support herself.
" You like music, don't you? " she exclaimed.
" Passionately," he replied, as he rose to go.
" I knew that you did as soon as I struck a few
notes. If you hadn't I should not have played on.
It's the first time I've had anyone sympathetic to
play to since my father's death. The afternoons
when he listened made me forget his brutalities to
his people. Should you care to come again, I will
play for you again."
In the succeeding days before the arrival of the
transport, when he was not occupied with work,
which required really only a little of his time, Bal-
76
BALLARD
lard was at the Senorita's house. Upon the second
evening he dined there quite alone with her, at
a table with fine linen and Japanese china, and a
noiseless Visayan as their attendant. As he rea-
soned, she and her piano had appeared as a god-
send, when diversion had become vital to him, to
relieve the irksomeness of garrison duties which his
sailor's nature found more wearing than an un-
eventful cruise.
Her charm grew upon him. In his journal for
Margaret he ceased to mention her and spoke of
nothing relating to her except his hope of getting
an insurgent leader to surrender his arms.
Yet he did not realize that he had at all been
treading upon dangerous ground when, one even-
ing, he found her in a Parisian gown whose lines
became her supple figure far better than the native
camisa or the Japanese kimona which she usually
wore. She recognized his pleasurable surprise.
" I thought I would dress as a foreigner for the
foreigner," she said, clasping her hands, stretching
her arms, and dropping her head archly to one side.
" You could waltz in that ! " he exclaimed.
" Can't you waltz waltz as the French do, as we
do, not in the little nickety steps of the Filipinos? "
" Yes."
77
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
" But we have no one to play the piano/' he said.
She replied by whistling adeptly the first bars of
a Strauss " Siren," and with the next moment they
were skimming over the hard-wood floor. They
kept on and on, back and forth, in the delight of
absolute harmony of step and feeling. He never
lifted his eyes from hers until, as they came to the
limit of their endurance, in his infatuation he seized
her in his arms and kissed her. She screamed and
struck him in the face with her clinched fist.
" It is always that way with you white men ! " she
cried, and dashed out of the room.
Ballard pulled back the hanging, still trembling
from her angry touch, and saw her on a divan, her
head buried in the cushions, sobbing, he thought.
He realized the pain and mortification to her of the
construction she had put upon his act.
" I didn't mean I didn't do it out of I did it
because I apologize. I am a brute," he said.
She made no reply, and he left the house.
He did not write in his journal that night. He
looked at the photograph of Margaret which held
the place of honor in his room; he thought of what
had just passed, and he was very much at a loss
what to make of himself except that he had been
foolish and heartless. And he was still in utter
78
BALLARD
confusion of mind the next morning, when, to his
great surprise, the Senorita appeared alone and un-
announced.
" You did not expect me," she said, " and that is
why I came."
Then her eyes met the eyes in the photograph
and she uttered a little cry which she tried to deflect
into one of amiable curiosity. She picked up the
photograph and scanned it sharply.
" American? " she asked, recovering her poise.
Ballard nodded.
" You love her love her very much? "
He made no reply. Spellbound, he watched her
face which he saw in profile. Her nose was of the
rare type which has the curve of that of the tiger,
the leopard and others of the wildcat tribe. Its
point was rising and falling with her quick breaths.
The rims of the dilating nostrils were white with
passion which she could not control.
" Give it to me," she demanded in answer to his
silence. " I will tear it up ! "
She prepared to suit the action to the word. In
contrast to this savagery was the picture of one who
had pledged her faith to him. Ballard snatched
the photograph from her hand.
" No, you'll not," he said.
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THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
She threw back her head, laughing, while she
pointed her finger mockingly at him.
" I tease you a little about your sweetheart the
sweetheart you never talked about," she said. Then
she turned to another subject as if the incident was
forgotten with her last word. " My carromata is
below," she continued. " I am going out to my
bungalow this morning. I will try to persuade my
brother to surrender. I have been candid with
you. If I do not see you again, I ask for your
good-will in your report to your Government. I
thank you for listening to my music."
He recalled how brutally he had spoken to her
about the photograph. She had saved his life, and
the construction which she put upon his act of the
previous evening was her reward. He revolted at
a parting under such circumstances. Without
thinking that the transport was already due, he
said:
" It is a hot, dusty ride in a carromata. I will
take you in the Avispa. Steam is up and we can
start at once."
80
ONLY Mrs. Gerlison and the General Command-
ing knew everything that was officially going on.
The General gave his orders to the departmental
heads separately, while the departmental heads re-
lated them separately and confidentially to Mrs. Ger-
lison. Of course, she was the first woman in Manila
to hear of Ballard's exploit. Thereupon she had
only one mission in mind, until, bearing the
story in person, she had made Margaret proud and
happy. A few days later the transportation quar-
termaster told her that the Idaho was not fitting out
for Mindanao, as the local papers announced, but
was to carry a battalion to Durinao. Mrs. Gerlison,
who was as judicious a dispenser, as she was a tal-
ented gatherer, of news, mentioned this as usual,
where it would do the most good to Margaret.
Then Mrs. Gerlison made a suggestion. Mar-
garet cried joyfully in response that she'd like to,
she didn't think she ought to it seemed so forward
yes, she would, she would, she would ! As a re-
sult, when the Idaho sailed out of the bay, her
destination still so he supposed locked in the
81
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
Patient One's beloved casket of mysteries, a young
woman and her chaperone were on board.
Just before leaving Manila Margaret received Bal-
lard's first enclosure from his journal. At Cebu,
where the Idaho stopped for a few hours, she re-
ceived the second, with its account of the siege of
the church and the part that Maria Varkoff had
played in his rescue.
" If for no other reason," said Margaret, her heart
full of gratitude, " I'm glad I came; for I can see
the Sefiorita and thank her. And you don't think
he's in any danger now, do you? "
" For the five hundredth time, no, not the least,
dear," Mrs. Gerlison replied. " And you are the
same girl who was sure two months ago that she
didn't care particularly more for any one man than
another? "
" Yes, of course I am. But when I did care
well, I just cared hard."
"As the Admiral says, having made up your
mind to go ahead you went that being quite in
keeping with the ways of the Service."
When the Idaho sighted the coast of Mindanao,
forty miles from Durinao, at daybreak on the same
morning that Ballard and Maria had started to-
gether in the Avispa for the bungalow, Margaret
82
BALLARD
was reading again the many times re-read pages as
a way of abating her trepidation and of hurrying by
the moments. Mrs. Gerlison, herself, became a
little impatient with the cautious English skipper.
The transport was not Government owned, and he
did not propose to lose his ship for his company.
With his glasses he made out the speck lying
alongshore as a gun-boat long before the passen-
gers. As soon as he was near enough he signalled
to her to come alongside.
" It's one of the mosquitos," said the Major com-
manding the battalion.
"Which one? Which one?" Margaret asked
breathlessly.
He could not tell. Without asking permission,
Margaret rushed up to the sacred precincts of the
bridge with her question.
The skipper dropped his glass and blinked several
times in the sunlight.
" The Avispa" he replied.
"Then it's he! "she cried.
" It's who? " he asked absently, still blinking.
" Oh, just he ! " replied Margaret, skurrying back
to Mrs. Gerlison with her news, while the skipper
passed certain comments to himself upon the ways
of American army women.
83
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
She watched with straining eyes until she could
make out a white uniform in the bow, and then
watched the uniform until she was sure it was his.
Recognizing- her through his strong glasses, Bal-
lard swung himself out from one of the awning rails
and waved his cap. First she waved her own hand-
kerchief alone, then seized Mrs. Gerlison's and
waved them both. It looked as if he had come out
to meet them and to escort the Idaho into the har-
bor; and, of course, there was nothing else for him
to do now. Mrs. Gerlison, not Margaret (who had
eyes only for one figure aboard the Avispa) was the
first to announce the presence of Maria. The
amiable chaperone little knew of the embarrass-
ment that she was causing Ballard when she called
to him that she and Margaret could not wait, but
were coming aboard at once, if possible. She
sought the commanding officer, who consented to
the lowering of the gang-way. The transfer, upon
a sea of glass, was as easy as stepping from a ferry-
boat to shore.
" We must be very careful not to say anything
about color that will offend her. She's not all
white, and she must feel it terribly," Margaret said
to Mrs. Gerlison as they started to descend.
Meanwhile, Maria, sitting on the side of the
84
BALLARD
Avispa away from the transport, had not risen and
she had not lifted her eyes from that face which she
had recognized as the original of the photograph.
"Your sweetheart, isn't she?" she remarked
enigmatically, as if her composure might or might
not be the calm before a storm.
" Yes," replied Ballard.
" Are you going to introduce me? "
" Certainly," he replied.
" And kiss her? "
" Yes."
" It will be very interesting," she replied, in the
same enigmatical tone.
As he turned to receive his guests, she closed
her eyes, forbidding herself to see what was to
follow.
" You look tired, worried oh, very tired ! " Mar-
garet exclaimed, as her hands lingered on his
shoulders and her gaze searched his face for the rea-
son. "You are not ill? It's only because you
haven't had enough sleep and such hard lines? "
" It's no holiday taking a town with a crew of
eight," he said; then turned and introduced her and
Mrs. Gerlison to Maria, who rose gracefully and
extended her hand.
" He wrote to me all about what you did," said
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THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
Margaret, feelingly. " You were so good, so
brave."
" Not in the least," Maria replied. " You see a
man drowning; you throw him a buoy; his life is
saved. Is that brave? But, naturally, I am glad
to have thrown the buoy that saved a lover and then
to be thanked by his sweetheart."
There was no outward semblance of mere purr-
ing felinity in this. It was simply and girlishly
spoken, in a pleasant, even a sweet, tone. She had
won her way into Mrs. Gerlison's as well as Mar-
garet's heart long before they were at the pier. In
place of their stifling cabins on the transport, Maria
made them at home in the cool rooms of her house.
They ate tiffin and dinner there, and marvelled at
her and her surroundings as much as Ballard had;
while she was soft, almost apologetic, in all she did
and said. She took a feminine interest in the latest
fashions and in what the American women found
to do in Manila. When it came to speaking of
herself and her people she led the conversation
again and again back to La Nidada, as if her house
was by comparison merely a lodge that must give
them an ill opinion of her hospitality.
" I should like to go out there. Isn't there some
way that we can? " said Margaret.
86
BALLARD
" It is only three hours' run in the Avispa, if the
Ensign would be so good," Maria hinted.
Mrs. Gerlison, as usual, thought that " it could
be arranged." Ballard at the time was at the Presi-
dencia, completing the details of turning the town
over to the army. When he returned to them in
the evening, Mrs. Gerlison suggested that as the
transport would be held all the next day unloading
supplies, they could go early in the morning and
return in the evening.
He appeared to give his consent freely. As much
as he disliked the idea of taking Mrs. Gerlison and
Margaret into the territory of a savage enemy, he
knew that Maria would regard his refusal as dis-
trust of her hospitality. He felt that he had injured
her feelings enough. The woman who, after saving
his life, had opened her house to his friends, would
surely be as loath to expose them to any danger as
he knew she would be quick to resent his sugges-
tion of a guard.
More and more the incident of the waltz was rasp-
ing his conscience. When he asked Margaret to
walk around the square with him before retiring, he
was seeking a way of freeing himself from the bur-
den of deceit. But how could he begin? How ex-
plain while she was Maria's guest? he was asking
87
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
himself when Margaret began to talk about her
hostess.
" I am completely under her charm," she said.
" I pity her so. She's deserving of so much credit
for being good and unselfish, for not being a fiend.
I'm sure I should be if I were in her place."
" You you would? Oh, no."
" Yes. It's so easy for me to be good with a
dear father and mother and with you to love
me."
" But her wealth ! She doesn't need much sym-
pathy on that score," he suggested.
" Yes, that is all she has; and it makes the black
blood in her veins all the more stinging. I can
see that underneath, in her heart, she suffers. And
her suffering has only made her nature the sweeter.
I was going to invite her to Manila for a long stay.
Then I thought that some of our women would
say something, perhaps without meaning it at all,
which would cut her to the quick. Yes, she has
her property, and you must use all your influence
to have her rights protected, won't you, Bailie? "
" Certainly."
He wondered if, after all, the underlying purpose
of Maria's conduct from the first had not been that
of the property holder. To think so relieved him
88
BALLARD
of the idea that the kiss had led her to care for
him and the unpleasant egoism associated with it.
If he could have seen her when, after attending
to every want of her guests, she went to her room,
he would have been of different mind. There was
now no sweetness in the pathos of her emotion. She
had gained her immediate object. Margaret and
Ballard, the savage of her nature cried triumph-
antly, were going out of the white man's domain
into her own, where they would be in her power.
And then? She had not planned that far. Pick-
ing up a fan from her dressing-table, she slowly
ripped apart the paper separating the ribs. She
snapped the thin strips of bamboo into tiny pieces,
until there was nothing left which she could break
between her fingers. Then she laughed hysterically
at the pile of debris and threw herself upon her bed.
She awakened Margaret and Mrs. Gerlison in
person, apologizing for that introductory discomfort
which is necessary in the Philippines, if you would
not travel in the heat of the day. Before dawn
the party had breakfasted and were aboard the
Avispa, which rounded the little peninsula that is
the natural breakwater for the harbor as the sun
burst upon its first, its true love, the massy, wine-
dark tropical sea. What a coast-line is that which
89
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
stretched before them, as rugged in places where
titanic masses of rock rise perpendicularly, over-
shadowing great depths, as it is soft in others, where
broad stretches of white sand are the gleaming
borders of sweeps of foliage a fair consort to
waters as deadly calm in halcyon weather as they
are terrible in the typhoon !
For the first eight miles there was neither habi-
tation nor any sign of life. Then they came to the
dividing line between the wilderness and the realm
of the pioneer. The villages on the beach and the
groves of cocoa-nut bearing palms were a part of
one great plantation stretching to the gardens of
La Nidada itself, a one-story building covering such
an area as to suggest an exposition hall. A stream
of some size and apparently of great swiftness en-
tered the sea near it.
" We will land on this side of the river," said
Maria. " There is no pier on the other, and it is
also too steep, as you see. I will act as pilot, if
you don't mind."
As the Avispa was made fast to the small staging
which stood within sound of a rushing of waters,
the guests were a little surprised to see bearers
ready with five chairs.
" It is better to be carried than to climb," Maria
90
BALLARD
explained. " We have no telegraph in Mindanao,
but we have many fleet legs. I sent a runner out
last night to have everything made ready for
you."
They were borne up a path to the river, where
a rope stretched across from bank to bank with a
banca attached to it made a primitive ferry. For
two hundred feet below it the water eddied in a
basin and then went roaring in a cataract through
a canyon.
" If the rope should ever break when you were
taking your guests across they'd be pretty badly
cut up when you recovered them," the Babe re-
marked.
" There is no danger," Maria replied. " We've
never had an accident. It was my father's idea
building the bungalow here. It is not easily ap-
proached, you see. He said that it impressed the
Spaniards as well as the natives. Then he used
to laugh and say that if he ever found the Spanish
Governor difficult of persuasion he might stop the
banca in midstream to argue the point."
First the Babe and Mrs. Gerlison and then Mar-
garet, Maria, and Ballard passed over, a sturdy
Moro pulling the banca along hand over hand on
the rope.
91
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
" Then my father had another object," said
Maria. " We get the benefit of all the breeze going
up here. As for the sun " she nodded toward the
ladders leaning against the eaves and the coolies
who were throwing water upon the roofing of many
layers of nipa leaves " he said that he would show
the Spaniards how easy it is to keep cool in the
tropics."
And he had, indeed, solved the problem of living
comfortably instead of merely existing, or of drink-
ing to excess, to drive by the time between vacations
in a temperate climate.
The house was a series of great rooms enclosing
a court with a portico on the inside of the tier and
a veranda around the outside. The veranda was
hung with wet, loosely woven native mats, and the
court, with a skeleton roof of bamboo poles, was
also covered with them during the day. Within,
the air was as solacing as the shady side of the house
at home at four o'clock in the afternoon of an Au-
gust day.
Their tiffin was such as a friend can give you
at the Hong-Kong Club if he wishes you a very,
very happy voyage. Afterward they lounged, half
asleep, half awake, in the post-prandial fashion of
the tropics. Maria brought Mrs. Gerlison her
92
BALLARD
father's collection of exquisite old Japanese carv-
ings of ivory, which completely occupied her atten-
tion. Then while the men smoked, she led Mar-
garet away to see the garden in the court.
" You must be very happy to be with your lover,"
she said, after a time.
" Gloriously happy ! And then to have a day like
this, which we have you to thank for."
" What would you do if you found that he loved
another? "
Margaret started at the possibility that the ques-
tion brought to her mind and then replied, with a
woman's show of tartness and independence :
" Give him up."
" What if he had kissed another woman, passion-
ately, and made love to her? "
" I should dismiss him."
" Perhaps he has."
" I know that he has not ! " Her natural indigna-
tion, which she had kept under, now got the better
of her desire to be patient out of deference to the
customs of Maria's world, which she realized were
different to hers. " Why do you ask these ques-
tions?"
The rims of Maria's nostrils were as white, her
breath was coming and going as quickly, as on the
93
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
day when she held Margaret's photograph in her
hand. She was of a sudden a new being to Mar-
garet, who found herself both disliking and fearing
her, and wishing, for some intuitive reason which
she could not explain, that she had not come to
La Nidada.
Maria, seemingly on the point of an outburst,
was still able to control her passion.
" Forgive me, if I tried to tease you," she said,
leading the way into the room where the men were
just finishing their cigars.
She went to the piano, proposing that Margaret
and Ballard should dance. The strains of a waltz
floated through the room, and Ballard offered his
arm to Margaret, who welcomed the diversion from
thoughts of the scene in the court.
After a few measures Maria arose.
" It's your turn now to play," she said to Mar-
garet. " I've laid a Strauss ' Siren ' on the rack
my favorite."
Mrs. Gerlison observed with surprise the freedom
with which she put her hand on Ballard's shoulder,
the abandon with which she threw herself into the
movement. But she explained to herself that it was
not immodesty, as she thought of the girl's up-
bringing without restraint.
94
BALLARD
"Whew! She moves on air!" exclaimed the
Babe.
Then there flashed through Mrs. Gerlison's mind
the revelation that Maria loved the man that she
was dancing with; that something had passed be-
tween them.
" Have they been together much? Has she be-
come fond of him?" she asked the Babe.
" No, not at all. She's bothered him a good deal
about her property."
Babe was telling a single big white lie bluntly as
the best way of avoiding a train of little ones to
support one another. Mrs. Gerlison recognized that
he was.
Maria's face was close to Ballard's, her head
thrown back, her eyes half closed yet looking with
concentrated force into his. He realized that she
was putting him to the test of the evening of
Durinao; he could not help feeling the intoxication
of the rhythm of her spirit with his.
" Do I dance well? " she whispered, drawing her-
self a little closer.
At this moment Mrs. Gerlison crossed the room
to the piano, " positively with fear already in my
heart," as she afterward said.
" Come, stop playing, dear," she whispered.
95
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
Margaret lifted her fingers from the keys and
turned around on the stool to see that Ballard was
leading Maria to a chair. This time he had not
succumbed to temptation. Yet Maria was not con-
vinced against her wish. She was trembling, ex-
hausted. The savage whispered to her to use her
power for all that it was worth ; to call her Moros,
who, at a word, would flock into the room with their
knives and enforce her will, whatever it was.
Then Mrs. Gerlison, at her side, said:
" You danced too hard; you are fatigued."
" A Jittle, perhaps," she replied. " You see I
don't have the privilege often. I can't waltz with
my servants."
" I think that we must be going. We shall be
back scarcely before dark, as it is," Mrs. Gerlison
added. " Will you accompany us? "
" Yes, I want to see you safely in Durinao and
say good-by there, if you will let me."
And Mrs. Gerlison, who knew that it was Ballard
of whom Maria was thinking, expressed her pleas-
ure, of course.
Maria begged that each would accept one of the
Japanese ivories as a souvenir of the visit. She
asked them to wait until a servant should have
picked bouquets from the court.
96
BALLARD
As they passed down the path to the river she
dropped behind for a few words with the Moro
boatman in his own tongue.
Mrs. Gerlison and the Babe were taken over first.
When the banco, returned to make the second trip,
Margaret was given her old place in the bow and
Maria seated herself by Ballard in the stern.
" The roaring of the water down there fairly
makes me shiver," Margaret remarked. " I confess
I have strong prejudices in favor of a bridge."
" Yes," said Maria. " You see, I have become
used to it. Indeed, I have been so near Death so
many times that I am fond, as Mr. Ballard is, of
looking in his face and keeping him mockingly at
arms' length."
They were now almost half way over. Maria
called their attention to the crest of spray where
the swift-flowing water banked up between the
great rocks that flanked the canyon.
" The natives call it the mane of the white pony
that has never been broken to ride," she said.
Then they heard the ping of the parting of the
rope, and the banco was suddenly overturned.
As he rose to the surface, Ballard found Maria
at his side, her eyes pleading for help. In his glance
she had the final, definite answer that she had
97
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
sought. He struck out for Margaret, who was in
the middle of the current, with the Moro just be-
hind, swimming easily and yet offering her no assist-
ance. On Ballard's approach he swam toward
Maria.
" Put your hand on my shoulders ! " Ballard
said, drawing Margaret toward him.
She obeyed, coolly and implicitly. With all his
great strength, Ballard made for the eddy on the
bungalow side where the stream narrowed. If
given another second, or if unencumbered, he would
have reached this haven. He saw that he could not,
but he kept on with no less determination toward
the shore. They passed into the cataract. He saw
a projecting sliver of rock, threw up his left hand,
and gripped it. As they swung around Margaret
let go of his blouse. But her body was in such a
position that he was able to catch her about the
waist, postponing death for the little while that his
strength should last.
The Babe, as soon as he saw what had happened,
plunged in. A much weaker swimmer than Bal-
lard, the current lodged him, stunned and fainting,
in a crotch of rock on the side from which he had
started.
Maria and the Moro (who had been appointed to
98
BALLARD
save Margaret if Ballard did not go to her), know-
ing the stream, had easily reached the eddy. She
ran up over the rocks until she could see the posi-
tion of Ballard and Margaret.
Ballard tried to draw himself up to his support
in vain. He might have succeeded if he could have
used both hands, but he would not consider the risk
of Margaret's being parted from him. This, Maria,
peering over the edge of a flat rock, unseen by
them, understood. She turned away.
" Dear," said Ballard, " I've been a great cad, a
funk. I was mad for a moment. I kissed that
woman ! I hated myself afterward. I hate myself
now. Please forgive me."
" You do not surprise me after what she told me
in the garden. I do forgive, I do ! And, Bailie, it
won't be so hard to go to go down there if you
hold me very tight."
She was happy as she looked into his face, tender
in expression, having now the character that comes
with years, and felt the rigid muscles of his arm
around her.
" Not yet. We'll do our best. We'll make a good
fight together ! "
The roar of the torrent was becoming a hum in
his ears when he received a new impulse upon hear-
99
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
ing voices and calls. Maria, her head now buried in
cushions at La Nidada, as she gave the word for
their rescue, had added to herself:
" I am very good for me for me for me! "
With agile hands the natives fastened ropes
around the couple and brought them to the bank.
Margaret was able to stand. Ballard lay gasping
on the grass.
" In my journal Margaret you "
He made an effort to put his hand into the inside
pocket of his blouse. The strain of the fight he had
made with the current had opened wider the lesion.
His heart collapsed.
As Margaret looked into his dead face she knew
that he belonged to her.
ICO
THE ROMANCE OF PRIVATE
SAUNDERS
THE ROMANCE OF PRIVATE
SAUNDERS
MRS. WAINDEERING knew little of any
Service except the diplomatic, and not much
of that as yet. Even if she had been familiar with
the ways of the army, this spoiled young woman,
who had brought wealth as well as her beauty to
a First Secretary, would not have felt herself bound
by them when she was away from the Legation on
a holiday. Therefore, her conduct concerning
Private Saunders was in keeping with her reputa-
tion.
Upon her arrival at Nagasaki (en route from Yo-
kohama to Shanghai, where she was to be the guest
of the Barkers, of the Chinese Customs, for the
races) she found that a school friend, Miss Berke-
ley, with her parents, General and Mrs. Berkeley,
were on board the transport Hancock, which was
coaling at Manila. She cabled at once to the
Barkers that she would arrive by the Coptic, sailing
three days after the Empress of Japan, and made her
husband bundle their baggage off the Empress to
103
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
the hotel, while he deprecated the proceeding in the
manner of a second-class power which knows that
its protest is purely formal.
" You're invited to waltz with me, hubby," she
said, " and there's an end of it."
To white womankind in Nagasaki the point of
interest about any arriving transport was whether
it had a band or not. If it had, then the dining-room
of the hotel was cleared with a promptness which
robbed the late diners of their desserts; and the
Consular Body, American wives waiting for news of
husbands serving by land and sea, and whatever
navy and army officers happened to be in port,
danced until after midnight.
The ball for which the band of the Hancock fur-
nished music would have passed off without any
striking incident provided that Mrs. Waindeering
had not recognized a familiar face in that of a tall,
fine-looking private on shore leave from the trans-
port as she was passing along the Bund. It is
known that after he had responded to her greeting,
which seemed to embarrass him a good deal, she ex-
claimed :
" You poor boy ! "
Beyond this it is only necessary to state that no
sooner were the words spoken than a little laugh
104
ROMANCE OF PRIVATE SAUNDERS
rippled from her lips in token of what her husband
playfully called one of her " ecstatic impulses to
combat the monotony of existence." Considering
her way of carrying men and events with her, it was
hopeless for the private to call up the unwritten rule
against his dancing on the same floor with his offi-
cers. The freedom of her plan from anything really
scandalous to the civilian mind was fully guaranteed
by the fact that Mr. Waindeering himself was so far
and no farther made a party to it as to furnish
Saunders with a dinner-jacket for the occasion.
Miss Berkeley dined at the hotel, the vis-a-vis of
Saunders at the Waindeerings' table, while General
and Mrs. Berkeley dined at the Consul's an ar-
rangement of Mrs. Waindeering's with method in
it. During dinner Miss Berkeley frequently asked
herself where she had met this Mr. Saunders before.
If she did not recognize him as one of the thousand
men in khaki who had come on the transport from
San Francisco, it is not surprising that none of the
officers in the dining-room did. They, no more than
she, were looking for privates in evening dress at
the hotel table. As Saunders and Miss Berkeley,
raptly chatting, passed out on the broad veranda
for coffee, Mrs. Waindeering pinched her husband's
arm and nodded toward them triumphantly.
105
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
" Won't it be lovely if we can keep it secret all
through the evening?" she exclaimed. " If we do,
I shall never be able to resist telling Mrs. Berkeley
about it in the morning, just to hear her talk."
" I don't mind saying that I think you are going
a little too far," said Waindeering.
" Edward, once I thought you had a sense of
romance once, I say, Edward," she replied, slap-
ping his shoulder with her fan.
If Miss Berkeley had not danced two waltzes run-
ning with Mr. Saunders perhaps Mrs. Waindeer-
ing's highest hopes for her plan might have been
fulfilled. Simply one waltz would not have so in-
tensified the regimental adjutant's interest in the
civilian as to associate his name and face with a
name and face on the transport. When he had satis-
fied himself after a moment's close scrutiny, he went
to the General and his wife with the great news.
" Of course, Charles, you will send him out of the
room at once," said Mrs. Berkeley.
" Yes, I think I had better. It's a bad precedent.
But let it be done quietly, so as to avoid a scene."
The Adjutant, who was sealed up in his shop for
life the day that he was admitted to West Point,
reported the orders to Saunders, who spoke his little
" Yes, sir," and saluted smilingly.
1 06
ROMANCE OF PRIVATE SAUNDERS
Mrs. Waindeering, her cheeks flushed with anger,
threw back her head, up-lifting a small square chin
which was the outpost of a will quite the equal of an
adjutant's.
" Is there any regulation of the army against a
private on leave attending an informal dance at the
Nagasaki Hotel? " she asked.
" It is not customary ! It is impossible ! " replied
the Adjutant, who actually had his heels together.
" Then there is no regulation ! Private Saunders
is my guest and is going to remain."
Before the Adjutant could express his astonish-
ment at such insubordination, Saunders himself in-
terposed.
" No, no. Please, no, Mrs. Waindeering," he
said. " It would be worse taste for me to remain
than it was to come."
Mrs. Waindeering's perception was as quick as it
was sympathetic.
" Yes, yes," she said, " you are right. I brought
you here under protest, and I appreciate how you
feel."
The Adjutant bowed and returned to the General
with the strides of the parade ground.
There remained for Saunders to say good-night
to Miss Berkeley and leave the room. If he had
107
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
known that the girl was so charming, he said to
himself, he would not have consented to Mrs. Wain-
deering's ruse. He concluded to tell her about the
trick he had played before she heard it from others.
And he held to his determination while he was cross-
ing the room; held to it until he looked into her
eyes, when the improvisation of being called away
suddenly by a cablegram quite inexplicably and un-
expectedly took its place as an excuse for going.
Mr. Waindeering sat on his bed while Saunders
returned to the garb of the ranks. He tried in vain
to draw the private's story, which Mrs. Waindeer-
ing had refused to tell him except in tantalizing gen-
eralities. When they came down-stairs Saunders
stopped at the desk to write what he had been
unable to say.
" Mrs. Waindeering will explain the deceit I prac-
tised," he told Miss Berkeley. " The least I can do
is to offer apologies for conduct of which I am
heartily ashamed. The blame lies entirely with me
and with Mr. Waindeering's dinner-jacket."
This, he thought, would relieve both women of
any embarrassment.
As he left the hotel with the strains of a waltz
following him and before him the twinkling lights
of the scores of small boats and the steady gleam
108
_
c
2
ROMANCE OF PRIVATE SAUNDERS
of the lights of the ships at anchor, he recalled other
days, when finely gowned women, dinners and
dances were as much a part of his routine of life
as lining up on deck with his company for ra-
tions.
" Two years and ten months more of it ! " he re-
marked, as he stepped into a sampan. " I made the
bargain and I'll see it out. But I don't want any
more experiences like to-night's. They make it too
hard."
The next morning, shortly before the Hancock
sailed, he received a note from Mrs. Waindeering.
It was such a note as woman can write when she is
thoroughly in earnest in taking anyone's part
particularly a man's. Incidentally, she asked him
to write to her, and inclosed a letter to her friend,
Mrs. Gerlison, in Manila. He was at first a little
disappointed at getting no answer from Miss Berke-
ley, and then promptly told himself that, considering
the circumstances, he should not be.
As for Miss Berkeley, as soon as she had received
his note she had shown it to Mrs. Waindeering, who
promptly said :
" Nancy, he's fibbing for our sakes. I'm the
author of the whole plot. When I met the poor boy
in the street and recognized him, I thought I would
109
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
give him one happy evening. He protested. I in-
sisted, and so "
"Then he has a story! Tell me all about it,
do!"
" I promised him upon my word of honor that
I wouldn't."
" Please, just to me. I'll never repeat it. It must
be very interesting. Is is it very terrible or or
very wicked? Anyway, you'll say that much."
" No, it's not very terrible, or very wicked."
Having learned all she could, Nancy remarked,
finally, that it was certainly extremely interesting
to have such a man as a private in the regiment.
As you will readily understand, it was not at all
because she wanted to talk with Private Saunders,
not at all because she was tantalized with curiosity
to get his story herself, but entirely because it is
not within the ways of the Service for a general's
daughter to write to privates that she determined to
answer his note orally on board the Hancock.
This seemed easy enough in theory, but in practice
was difficult, as a girl reared in the army ought to
have known. Compared to the Chinese wall be-
tween rank and file on a transport, the barrier
between first and second class on an Atlantic liner
is merely an imaginary parallel separating zones.
no
ROMANCE OF PRIVATE SAUNDERS
Saunders was one of a thousand privates on the
main deck. To see him Nancy must either go down
the ladder and single out one of the thousand for
conversation, or else he must ascend the ladder
while she met him at its head in the presence of rank
as well as file. In the afternoon, when the men
were brought on the upper deck, which afforded
more room for their exercises, there was no ex-
change of recognition, though he looked fairly into
her face as he went through the setting-up drill.
And he hated the experience when a second lieu-
tenant told him to do the most undignified and
difficult of all the movements alone so that
the others of his company might see it done
properly.
Therefore it passed that the Sixteenth went into
camp on the plaza of the Luneta in Manila to re-
cuperate from the voyage preparatory to going into
the field, and the Berkeleys went to the hotel with-
out Nancy having acknowledged the private's
apology. Mrs. Gerlison and the Berkeleys were
old and firm friends; and Nancy, after telling of
all that had happened since they last met, found it
convenient to relate her experience with Private
Saunders to the great keeper of army secrets.
" Mrs. Waindeering wrote that she had sent him
in
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
a letter of introduction to me and told him to call,"
said Mrs. Gerlison. " Now that you have sur-
rounded the young man with mystery I am very
much interested. I shouldn't mind quizzing him,
myself."
Nancy saw Mrs. Gerlison every evening on the
Luneta, if not during the day at her house. When
a week had passed without Private Saunders having
called on Mrs. Gerlison, both conspirators were be-
ginning to lose hope.
" I think he's embarrassed and afraid he might
meet some officer if he came," was Nancy's expla-
nation. " I shall have to write to him after all,
though it isn't exactly the thing. But I must not
let him think that I didn't appreciate his apol-
ogy."
" Of course," Mrs. Gerlison replied. " I'll just
drop him a note saying that I can introduce him as
newspaper correspondent or a clerk. That will ex-
plain the absence of shoulder-straps. And I'll
apologize for you, my dear, when he comes."
" Thank you, thank you very much, Mrs. Gerli-
son," a little dubiously.
It happened, however, that Nancy was at Mrs.
Gerlison's the next afternoon when a reply to the
note came. It read :
112
ROMANCE OF PRIVATE SAUNDERS
MY DEAR MRS. GERLISON:
Thank you. But I think I'd better not.
With all politeness and all respect,
JOHN SAUNDERS,
Private, 1 6th U. S. Infantry.
" Isn't he delightful ! And awfully disappoint-
ing," said Nancy, passing from an exclamation of
joy to a pout in a twinkling.
" Very," said Mrs. Gerlison. " And also very
independent to receive my kindly suggestion in that
way."
" I don't think so at all."
" You don't? " asked Mrs. Gerlison, in feigned
surprise.
"No, not a bit. I'm astonished that you of all
women can't see through it. It's so beautifully put.
In just those few words he says how tired he is of
associating with those horrid men, how he longs to
come, but how he realizes that he might embarrass
you and others."
" You seem to read his innermost thoughts, my
dear."
Miss Berkeley's face became crimson.
" That remark is quite uncalled for, Mrs. Gerli-
son," she said. " I pity a man of his character in
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
his position. I wonder that you don't. You're so
cantankerous this afternoon that I'll not stay an-
other minute."
" Well, any way it doesn't matter much," Mrs.
Gerlison added at the door. " I suppose you've
heard that the Sixteenth is going out on the line
to-morrow."
"No! Are they?" (In great surprise.)
"Where?" (Attempted nonchalance.)
" To Bulacan."
" That isn't as far as Mindanao or Jolo ! " (In
unconcealed delight.)
" No," Mrs. Gerlison called after her, as she hur-
ried down the path in confusion. " No, it isn't as
far as Mindanao or Jolo."
" I drew her wickedly," Mrs. Gerlison said to
herself as she sought the ease of her long cane
chair, " and if I don't praise him as a Roland who
has won her heart she may be falling in love with
him by the proxy of contrariness without knowing
him at all. But that was a clever letter. I'm im-
mensely interested in Private Saunders myself."
However, Nancy concluded, upon thinking it
over, that for the purpose of satisfying her curiosity
by getting Saunders's story, Bulacan was not only
as far away as Mindanao or Jolo, but as far as Ber-
114
ROMANCE OF PRIVATE SAUNDERS
muda or Martinique. Privates, wherever they are
in the field, do not get leave to come into Manila.
But events moved rapidly, and surprises were as
numerous as casualties in those days. The Six-
teenth went into action almost at once, and Saun-
ders, with a bad wound in the shoulder from a
poisonous Remington bullet, was sent into town
on a stretcher and thence to Hospital Number i.
His captain mentioned him for conspicuous cool-
ness under trying circumstances. This was a great
honor, considering that in our regular service cour-
age is a matter of course rather than of comment.
As the story was told, Saunders's squad was fired on
from ambush. Four of them were hit, including
Saunders. He kept his head and rallied the others
while, under his direction, they held off the enemy
until help came.
Nancy waited for nearly five hours after she heard
the news before she went to Mrs. Gerlison brimming
over with solicitude about the hard lot of enlisted
men in hospitals. Mrs. Gerlison was in the same
state of mind.
Saunders's expressions of gratitude for their call
were purely within the limitations of the ranks and
yet forbade approaches to the vital subject of his
story. After they had sent him jellies and custards
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
and magazines, they tried collectively and individ-
ually to bring him to the point, only to be led away
from it with more adroitness than they had led up
to it, which fully accounted for the remark of so
clever a woman as Mrs. Gerlison, that Saunders
was a remarkable private, indeed. It may be added,
for reasons of state, that he was more generous with
Nancy than with her. Once Nancy got this far, only
to wonder afterward how she had dared to:
" Your story of course I don't ask you to tell
it but it is it we're all so interested, you see
I mean, is it terrible? "
" Not so very, Miss Berkeley," he replied, so-
berly.
" That's precisely what Mrs. Waindeering said."
" And shows I am consistent," he added.
The story of the ball at Nagasaki had travelled
to Manila. Joining it to Nancy's frequent calls at
Hospital Number i (to the exclusion, it was ob-
served, of Hospitals Numbers 2 and 3), with the
warp of exaggeration, the gossips wove a fabric
of romance which clothed the pair in an entente
highly amusing to the Service, which had a saying
that " Mrs. General " Berkeley would never allow
her daughter to marry anything less than a field
marshal.
116
ROMANCE OF PRIVATE SAUNDERS
Though abstractly a truthful girl, Nancy saved
herself trouble by not telling her mother of her
visits to the hospital. The Adjutant, who was now
on the General's staff, pondered much over the
matter. He had a weighty rather than a lucid mind,
which was always absorbed with the necessity of
doing his duty, without any proper conception of
what duty was except as he read it in the Orders
of the Day. In the language of the Service, he
was irredeemably a " duffer." And being a "duf-
fer," he was bound to decide after painful debates
with himself that he owed it to the General to give
Mrs. Berkeley a hint a very little hint of what
was going on. He did not foresee that a very
little hint would mean a stern matronly demand
for full and explicit details.
Mrs. Berkeley thanked the Adjutant. She called
him a high-minded young man, when he left her
in a state of humiliation and torment, which she
had to endure for an hour before her daughter re-
turned (as it happened from a visit to the hospital)
to be met at the door by an outburst of pent-up
indignation. Nancy took the wind out of her
mother's sails by promptly admitting the charges
with a merry toss of the head.
" My daughter," said Mrs. Berkeley, finally, " we
117
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
shall see when your father comes. Yes, we shall
see. You may go to your room."
" Certainly I shall, Mamma dear," was the happy
reply, " as I want to wash a little dust off before
tiffin."
It was of good omen for Nancy that her father
had come straight from a few minutes at the club,
where he had had something with ice in it which
tasted very much to his Georgia-trained palate like
those of fragrant memory at home. And then
Nancy, blooming and fresh, met him at the door
with a kiss which she followed with a smiling : " Real
mint, too, wasn't it, Daddy? "
As her mother proceeded at length with the scan-
dal which had befallen the house of Berkeley, Nancy
mixed her father's white wine and Tansan in just
the right proportion and smiled at him trustingly.
As the General was in a hurry to return to his prep-
arations for his expedition to the island of Marin-
duque, it is not surprising that he failed to be
properly indignant.
" Why not? " he asked. " I think it very proper
for Nancy to do anything she can to help the poor
fellows in the hospitals. In fact, it's her duty as a
daughter of the Service."
" But can't you see," demanded the exasperated
118
ROMANCE OF PRIVATE SAUNDERS
wife, " that it's one private, this man Saunders?
Maybe he's a bank robber, or a forger, or what
not!"
" Nancy," the General asked, " do you go to see
only one private? "
" No. I have given jellies to twenty if to one."
" Circumstantial, always. That's right. You in-
herit it from me. Are you falling in love with this
one? " The General chuckled over his question.
" Preposterous ! Of course I'm not ! "
And Nancy meant what she said, at the time.
" Reductio ad absurdum," the General concluded,
laughing at his wife. " You see how groundless
are your fears. I think it is ridiculous not to trust
our daughter to keep from getting moony over
privates with strange histories. But who told you
all this, Mother? "
; ' The ever-useful Adjutant," interposed Nancy.
" He did, eh! What business was it of his? "
" Official, sir-r," said Nancy, making a mock
salute.
" That goes to support my later observations that
that young man is a duffer. I don't want him on
my staff any longer. I'll send him back to his regi-
ment."
Mrs. Berkeley had learned from experience that
119
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
when her husband was in a certain mood her point
could be gained in the end only by saying nothing
at the time. She determined that she would wait
and watch in martyrlike humility.
As Nancy found that she could not leave the
house unaccompanied, she concluded to forego her
visits to the hospital until her mother should forget
her vigil and relapse again into the afternoon naps
which she was now demonstratively denying her-
self. In fact, Nancy's determination to get the
private's story from his own lips was stronger than
ever, and she was as yet conscious of no other in-
terest in him.
Saunders missed her calls more than he cared to
say to Mrs. Gerlison, but not more than Mrs. Gerli-
son implied from the manner in which he took in
any remarks she made about Nancy. Indeed, Mrs.
Gerlison was becoming worried lest Nancy's and her
own foolishness had prepared fresh miseries for one
who must have, on his part, quite all he ought to
bear. She was even pondering on a plan of cam-
paign for getting Nancy out of his mind.
The time came when he was well enough to
join the pale company of convalescents from fever
and wounds who go out on the Luneta at seven in
the evening, when the sun partly atones for the
1 20
ROMANCE OF PRIVATE SAUNDERS
tyranny of the long, galling day by sinking into
the bay with a glory of coloring that surpasses any
conception of dwellers in temperate zones. To
Saunders the gay parade of carriages with officers
and their wives up and down the Malecon brought
home to him, even more bitterly than before, how
completely he was separated from the world to
which he was accustomed. He did not join the
other sick men who sit in chairs or walk up and
down by the band-stand, but, regardless of his
weakness, crossed the driveway to the long stretch
of hard, sandy beach. Here he recognized a familiar
figure bending over the antics of a fox terrier.
When the terrier started to investigate the passer-
by, Nancy looked up into Saunders's eyes.
" I left the carriage to give Biff and, incidentally,
myself, a little exercise," she said. " Oh, I am so
glad to see that you are well enough to be out ! "
" Thank you," he replied. " Were you going this
way?" forgetting completely his position and the
resolution he had made after his experience at the
ball.
As to what passed between them as they walked
up and down the beach, oblivious of the stares of
passing officers, while the growing darkness made
them unrecognizable from the drive, our only infor-
121
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
mation comes from Nancy's own report to her father
and mother, who had waited for her long after the
band ceased playing and until theirs was the only
carriage remaining on the Luneta. She came to
them with the light step and the cheery confidence
of youth in the full measure of a new-born happi-
ness.
" It took some time for us to understand each
other," she said, simply.
" Who? Understand who?" from her mother.
" Mr. Saunders and I Private Saunders and I,
of course."
Mrs. Berkeley was not the woman to faint. She
listened all but speechlessly to her daughter's nar-
rative, while the General silently stroked his mus-
tache, as he always did in a crisis.
" He asked me if I loved him. He said he
wouldn't tell me his story until I answered. I told
him yes, though I admit that I thought and I hate
myself for it I might backslide if the story was
bad."
" Was it bad? " from her father.
" Not very. That's what he told me to say, and
that's just it, and I'm not to tell his story to any-
one. I wouldn't have told you we were engaged
only tie said I was to let you and Mrs. Gerlison
122
ROMANCE OF PRIVATE SAUNDERS
know that much, and you were not to let it go
any farther."
" It won't ! " from father and mother together.
" Yes, Jack said he was sure it wouldn't." She
laughed lightly, then added, more seriously: " We
walked up and down as he told me the story, for-
getting all about the time. How well he talked!
And we parted with an understanding which will
endure forever. Though we didn't even kiss."
"I should hope not!" devoutly from her
mother.
" But we shall some time, many times, Mamma.
We were too earnest for that. We just pressed
each other's hands. We understood. The con-
tract was sealed."
The weight of the calamity was such as not to
permit of its verbal consideration in an open car-
riage. The father and mother discussed it far into
the night in their room, while their daughter slept
peacefully, as confident as a corps with a division
in the reserve which is forcing the enemy from his
position. The parental plan had complete separa-
tion of the couple as a first premise. And thus
Nancy stole their thunder after the greeting at the
breakfast-table :
" I suppose you are going to have Jack trans-
123
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
ferred to the Fifteenth in Southern Mindanao,
Father? "
" Precisely," was the reply.
" Jack said he thought that was what you woulcl
do. And, Daddy dear, we are not such poor tac-
ticians as not to be prepared to meet routine emer-
gencies. If you do transfer him I shall publicly
announce our engagement. Then I shall ask Mrs.
Gerlison to take me in. Jack can "
" Jack ! " A shudder from Mrs. Berkeley.
" To be dignified, I should say that Mr. Saunders
can let me have his pay, and I can earn more. As
you know, Mother, there is a great demand for a
milliner a good milliner in Manila. And with
the influence of Father's name to help me I'm sure
I could get on."
This ultimatum put altogether a new aspect on
affairs. Mrs. Berkeley followed the General to his
carriage, where they had a whispered consultation,
while Nancy leisurely sipped her coffee, broke her
roll into tiny mouthfuls, and smiled both at her own
thoughts and at the situation. Finally, the General
told his wife that they had best let the matter
stand until tiffin. Departing with the intention of
going straight to head-quarters, his pursuit of the
vital subject of his daughter's welfare, which he
124
ROMANCE OF PRIVATE SAUNDERS
could not banish from his mind, led him to change
his directions to his driver to the Calle Nozaleda.
He would not have admitted even to himself that
he had more confidence in Mrs. Gerlison's opinion
on such matters than in his wife's or his own. She
had keen ears, indeed, for the great news he bore,
and did not forget that she ever a conscientious
woman was, perhaps, in some measure responsible
for this romantic outcome of Mrs. Waindeering's
caprice. She cupped her chin in her hands and
thought seriously, while her black eyes danced with
interest.
" When it comes to us old women," she said,
"it's possible; but with girls it's different. They
are like the men easier led than driven. Nancy's
resolution is pretty firm already, I take it, and if
you wish to make it rockbound I think that Saun-
ders's transfer is precisely the move. As for her com-
ing to live with me, you know that the right of host-
age is sacred on the part of a neutral."
' Yes, but that doesn't tell me how to pro-
ceed."
" Oh, if it's advice, you know I never give that
unless I am asked."
'That's why so many ask, possibly," said the
General.
125
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
" Perhaps. Rarity means price. Well, I bid you
also consider that crossing a woman's true love fre-
quently means a life of misery for her."
How feelingly Mrs. Gerlison could speak on that
subject the Service well knew, and you shall know
later.
" Nancy is a good girl and a sensible girl, I think.
Time will prove whether or not she loves Saunders.
And, after all, this young man I like his looks.
Yes, I do like his looks, and I must say I'm not so
often deceived. He may be an F. F. V. Mrs. Wain-
deering is. How I love that woman! What a
woman she will be when she matures, while her hus-
band is going to wither up till he creaks and rattles.
Or, let us hope that, better than an F. F. V., he's a
millionaire's son under discipline. At all events, if
he was so bad and deceitful, why shouldn't he have
kept the engagement secret and not informed you?
Don't you see he could if he wanted to? Or, if he
was so very wicked why shouldn't he want it gener-
ally known? His desire that it be kept within
well, within the family shows a sense of delicacy
and suggests that he is confident of the outcome.
If I were you I would try to get Nancy to tell the
story, and I would trust her a little more. It might
be apropos, if it were not embarrassing, to say that
126
ROMANCE OF PRIVATE SAUNDERS
she has a great many of your own sterling qualities,
General."
" She is my daughter." The General stroked his
mustache, which he always did when he was ex-
tremely pleased with himself as surely as in a crisis.
" To separate them means perhaps that she will
continue to love him out of contrariness when there
is no sound basis for true love. To put them con-
tinually together would settle the matter perma-
nently. That being impossible, let him return to
his regiment, let them write to each other if they
wish, and hold quietly to the status quo. I will tell
a little story about some manly deed of Mr. Saun-
ders in well, in saving Mrs. Waindeering's life
Mrs. Waindeering being a friend of ours and
noblesse oblige to one who has seen better days, and
so on or a whiter fib if I can invent it which will
account for Nancy's visits to the hospital and dis-
pose of gossip, while, of course, she can't go to
Bulacan to see him. And don't you think that if he
had done anything very bad it will come out before
his enlistment expires? "
As he drove away, the General was almost in a
mood to clap Saunders on the shoulder and call him
son.
At the tiffin hour he went directly to Nancy, and,
127
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
taking her hands in his, said, in the manner of
comradeship:
" Your daddy thinks only of your interests. He
recognizes fully that the choice of your husband lies
entirely within your department. So we'll wait and
see how it all turns out. But won't you tell me Mr.
Saunders's story? "
" No."
"Why not?"
" Because I promised him not to."
" Then will you promise me not to get married
till you have convinced me not your mother just
me? And I'll not be so hard to convince! "
" I'll ask him" she said.
The note bearing the question to Hospital Num-
ber i received this reply :
" Certainly. Up to the time my enlistment ex-
pires. But not after that."
This was satisfactory to the General, and, there-
fore, perforce, to Mrs. Berkeley. Meanwhile, Mrs.
Gerlison, who was becoming more and more an ally
of the private, was going to try for a commission for
Saunders. Once he had bars on his shoulders, he
was anybody's social equal. The first move in her
campaign, as her strained curiosity was quick to
suggest, was to get Saunders's record. However,
128
ROMANCE OF PRIVATE SAUNDERS
when she spoke to him about the matter he replied
that he did not care for a commission, and begged
her to go no farther. This for reasons of his own,
as he said could not but strengthen the fear that,
after all, there was something in his history from
which he had sought escape in the oblivion of a
recruiting office.
An astonishing cablegram which fully supported
this conclusion was received a few days later by
head-quarters from the police of San Francisco. It
read:
" Hold man enlisted Sixteenth Infantry, assumed
name John Saunders, supposed embezzler. Identi-
fication photograph mailed."
Mrs. Berkeley, upon reading the copy which the
General brought home, reminded him that she had
always said forger, and patted her egoism with the
thought that embezzler was much the same thing.
Both the General and his wife were greatly relieved,
for neither now had any doubt of the end of the
romance. When, after a wordy introduction meant
to ease the blow, the General laid the abbreviated
sentences before Nancy, she was neither angry nor
grieved. She smiled contemptuously.
" It's a lie ! Or, if there is an embezzler in the
regiment, it's not Jack."
129
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
" Then you still intend to "
" Of course. If ever a man needs the trust of the
woman he is going to marry it's when everyone else
distrusts him."
Her father began to doubt his daughter's sanity.
Mrs. Berkeley conceived the idea that Saunders was
a hypnotist as well as a villain.
While her parents waited in misery and indecision
for the arrival of the photograph, Nancy continued
to face all doubts, even those of Mrs. Gerlison, with
charming serenity. On the morning of the day set
for his discharge from the hospital, Private Saunders
was informed that he would be detained until the
chief of police's letter came. He smiled by way of
reply with a confidence that had a counterpart in
that of a stranger of middle age who called upon
Captain Leeds, the commanding officer of the hos-
pital, that afternoon. Having first asked for Saun-
ders, he then requested an account of how the
private had behaved in action and rubbed his hands
in delight as he listened.
" Yes," Leeds continued, " I took an interest in
Saunders, though nobody could get a word out of
him as to who he was. I confess that I felt that
cablegram as a personal blow."
"What cablegram?"
130
ROMANCE OF PRIVATE SAUNDERS
Leeds explained.
" Rot ! rot ! That's his real name," said the visitor
warmly. " I expected to find bushels of debts in
'Frisco and couldn't find one. He may be wild,
but not that. Not much. It isn't in the blood."
" Then you aren't a detective? "
The visitor was about to be very indignant. On
second thought he burst out laughing at the absurd-
ity of the idea.
" But look here ! I'm wasting time. I came
here to see him," he demanded.
When he had conducted his caller to Ward I,
Captain Leeds had the pleasure of being a witness
to the meeting of a millionaire of some repute in the
iron and steel trade and his only son.
" My boy," said John Saunders, Sr., " I didn't
think you'd finish your vacation in this way when I
refused your call for money from 'Frisco. I only
wanted to teach you a little economy. But I've got
your discharge in my pocket. We can start right
back."
" Dad, in two days after I did it I realized what a
chump I was, when I had such a brick for a father,
to enlist as a private when I ought to go back to my
last year at Princeton. Being in the thing I con-
cluded to see it out and keep my place in the ranks.
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
So I don't want the discharge. No, I don't know
but I do. I can marry Nancy two years sooner,
can't I?"
" He told me he was poor but honest and I would
have to wait until he could make a living for two,"
said Nancy when she heard the news. " Still, I
don't think Mamma will mind, because he is a
millionaire."
AS MAN TO MAN
AS MAN TO MAN
HATE is a strong word, but not too strong for
the feeling of Private Haines of the Kansans
toward his Captain. It was the most uncomfortable
kind of hate, that which festers in a rugged and out-
spoken nature by the compression of enforced si-
lence. Haines had been a month in the home com-
pany of militia of Blashton, Gordon long enough
to be its commander, when, at the outbreak of the
war, a small town's furor of patriotism promised
social ostracism for any young man who did not en-
list. In the national organization, Gordon retained
his commission, Haines remained in the ranks.
Theirs was not the only volunteer company that
started out with the idea that war stood for rollick-
ing comradeship, only to find that privates were
privates and officers were officers.
Suffice it to say in Haines's case that he and the
Captain were in love with the same girl; and, more-
over, that Haines had last seen her as the train pulled
out of Blashton waving her handkerchief to the offi-
cers' car. In face of her repeated promises to write
he had not received a word in response to his many
135
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
letters. Suspicion had grown into conviction that
Gordon had used his position to destroy anything
in her hand addressed to him. Brooding on the
march by day and in his blankets at night had con-
strued every act of the Captain relating to himself
into one of spite.
His assignment to the Pepperbox was the crown-
ing humiliation. The Pepperbox, so named by the
Captain, was an antiquated harbor launch remodelled
into a gun-boat for use on the Laguna de Bay, the
big lake whose waters the Pasig carries under the
bridges of Manila. Nine feet beam and thirty feet
over all, with a leaky boiler and a sputtering engine,
a native pilot and a native engineer, the Pepperbox
was not a thing of flight; though painted leaden,
with a Colt's automatic fore and a one-pounder aft
and bulwarks of half-inch sheet iron, she was not a
thing of power. Gordon had been chosen for her
command because he was by profession a steam-
boat captain. Haines had been selected for one of
the guard of five soldiers because he was a mechani-
cal engineer. As Haines reasoned, however, the
Captain merely wanted an excuse for keeping his
rival where he could still rub the vinegar of rank
into open sores.
Gordon had run over too many bars in the Mis-
136
AS MAN TO MAN
souri not to be aggressive. His idea was to stir the
insurgents up whenever he had an opportunity.
That, he said, kept them thinking. The Pepperbox's
first assignment was the carrying of orders to Law-
ton, who had taken an expedition by water to Santa
Cruz, the capital of Laguna Province,' half-way
down the lake. On the return journey Gordon had
stopped at Calamba, where he had enjoyed himself
for half an hour by silencing the insurgent trenches.
When he reported this to head-quarters in Manila,
expecting commendation for his enterprise, he was
told in decisive language that his business was to
carry despatches; that his armament was meant
only to assist his escape in case of trouble, and,
finally, that if he did anything of the sort again it
would go hard with him.
Therefore, as the launch re-entered the lake at
dawn the next morning he was not only as irritable
as his crew from loss of sleep, but, the reproof still
rankling in his mind, he was in a mood to agree with
nobody. He told himself that he might as well be
crocheting tidies or towing coal out to Dewey as
commanding the Pepperbox. Without any hope of
excitement, he was in for worry all day and worry
all night and complaints at both ends of the line be-
cause he was never on time.
137,
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
While he sat in the bow, the men lounged in
cramped positions in the stern. After the danger
of running on bars at the entrance of the river was
passed, in the hope of getting some sleep he
stretched himself on the deck with the platform of
the Colt's as a pillow, and called to Haines to let
him know if anything unusual happened.
The Pepperbox chugged on with Oriental endur-
ance. Every throb of her engine affected to be a
despairing, complaining last. It was some time be-
fore Haines noticed that the pilot was taking an
altogether different course from the two previous
trips. When finally he did observe that the launch
was well into the centre of the lake and pointing
toward the right shore instead of the left, he de-
manded an explanation of Manuel the pilot.
" All same. Go straight. No go round. Mucho
bueno (very good). Me savey allri'," was the reply
in a mixture of " pidgin " English and Spanish.
Haines would have said no more if he had not
noticed that the engineer was engrossed in the con-
versation. The engineer had the reputation of un-
derstanding English much better than he pretended.
When he saw that Haines was looking at him he
became most animatedly engaged with his duties.
" I believe you're up to some deviltry," Haines
138
AS MAN TO MAN
exclaimed, and, forgetting his resolution, he seized
the Captain by the arm and shook him.
The Captain woke with a start and a pounding
headache. He instantly looked to the three essen-
tials and found that the launch was upright, going
at her usual speed, and there was no firing.
" Well, what is it? " he asked, irritably.
" Every time before we've gone just under the lee
of that island yonder. Now we're going clear to
the other side of the lake. I don't believe we've got
eight feet under us."
" That's all right. We draw only four. Manuel "
(to the pilot), " why you go this fashion? We no
belong over there? "
Manuel's jargon stated that Santa Cruz lay
straight ahead around the point of beach and the
village toward which the Pepperbox was pointing.
So it did. He had previously followed the track of
the big launches. Now he was taking advantage
of the launch's light draught and a shallow channel
which enabled him to cut off five miles.
" Yeh," piped the engineer, too absorbed in the
subject to remember that he was ignorant of Eng-
lish. " Many times go so fashion. All time all
same Spanish time. Me savey. No can go fast,
no have go so far. Mucho bueno, eh? "
139
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
The Captain was delighted at the prospect of de-
livering his message an hour less tardily than he had
expected. It meant, if Lawton was very tired, that
his " So you are here, eh? " would be a little more
patient; or, if he was in good-humor, his " Well! I
never expected you back with that thing, Captain.
What did you do? Walk along the bank and tow
her? " a little more jovial.
Haines forgot his position. He was conscious
only that the Captain was trying to argue him down.
" It's the first I've heard of this channel," he said.
" The wonder is they didn't take it before. It
would be easy enough for these two Gugus to run
on a bar and leave us stuck there to fight it out with
three or four hundred of their friends that lay in
hiding to jump us."
" Nonsense ! They know that if they attempted
anything of the sort our first act would be to blow
their brains out."
" Well, a good many of 'em did try it on the night
of February 4."
" That's all, Haines," remarked the Captain,
sharply.
Haines made a salute of ironical deference which
was not lost on his superior.
" You, Manuel, and you, Engineer, there," Gor-
140
AS MAN TO MAN
don added, tapping his revolver, " you savey you
play any tricks one, two, bang, bang ! No more
Manuel, no more engineer."
" Si, si. MucJio bucno," replied the engineer.
" You savey me long time. All time Americano.
No insurrecto. Goddam Aguinaldo. He no good."
Manuel was speechless and trembling with fear.
His appearance and the engineer's protestations
quite satisfied the Captain, who lay down on the
deck again. Manuel began timorously to change
the course. But his hope of deceiving the engineer,
who was grinning with confidence, was futile. If
the Captain had known what the engineer said in
Tagal to Manuel which caused him to point the bow
dead on to the village again, he would have rushed
to the wheel and turned it hard a-port with his own
hands. Instead, he lay idly gazing at the water, a
victim of the difficulties of teaching and governing a
race which can speak treason gleefully to the faces of
their rulers. Meanwhile, the engineer partially un-
covered something he had hidden in the coal and
felt again in his pocket to make sure that his matches
were there.
The Pepperbox was now so near shore that the
little swells were breaking on the long beach only a
few yards away. The Captain at the same time as
141
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
the men, saw a heavy pole stuck in the bottom of the
lake standing upright ten feet above the surface of
the water and directly in front of the bow. All
called to Manuel in a breath. He turned the launch
sharply on the inshore of this mark, which had been
set there for a specific purpose. As the Captain
sprang to his feet a dozen Mauser bullets, fired from
a trench on shore, cracked by and the Pepperbox
grounded and keeled over on her side. In his dis-
gust, the Captain first of all seized Manuel, who was
already about to jump, and threw him overboard.
" Nolan, you can handle the one-pounder
alone ! " he cried. " I'll take care of the Colt, and
every man Jack of the rest jump in and push her off.
Once afloat, we'll coax our friends out here up to
their necks and then throw a hailstorm into 'em."
The men were in the water and had their shoul-
ders against the hull before they realized that the
still revolving screw was driving the Pepperbox
farther and farther into the sand. As Haines
straightened up and yelled to the engineer to know
why he hadn't reversed the engine, he saw him go-
ing overboard head first. Then he was tossed to
one side, stunned by an explosion and blinded by
coal-dust and spray.
The Captain was hurled over the bow. As he
142
AS MAN TO MAN
wiped the water out of his eyes and looked at the
cloud of steam and smoke which hung over the re-
mains of the Pepperbox he remarked, in his Western
drawl :
" Well, the crockery's broken now, all right."
Then he saw the engineer swimming away, and
drew his revolver and put a bullet through the engi-
neer's head at the second shot. That poor creature
was as much a victim as a culprit. The half-breed
agitators in Manila, too cowardly to undertake any
masterly deed themselves, had assured him that the
explosion would kill everybody on board, while he
could save his own life by merely jumping out into
the lake after lighting the fuse. He knew nothing
of the nature of dynamite, which they had smuggled
in from Hong-Kong through Chinese merchants.
They knew nothing of the nature of dynamite, with
the difference that they pretended to know every-
thing. It was easy for him to believe all they said
in a land so long tongue-tied by Spanish rule as to
make bold and imaginative lying under the new
order of things the open way to insurgent leader-
ship.
The fate of Manuel was worse than that of the
engineer. He was so frightened by the decisive
manner in which the Captain threw him overboard
143
; THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
that he forgot everything except awe of the white
man's presence and will to do the white man's bid-
ding. He had placed his shoulder against the hull
at the very point where the concussion burst the
sides. His terribly mangled body served as a
buffer which saved the life of Haines, who was
standing partially behind him as he called to the
engineer.
Haines's eyebrows were singed, his face and
shoulder cut, the top of his hat sliced off by a flying
piece of the boiler, his shirt torn and his face black-
ened. Nolan lay on the deck, the smoke-stack
across his stomach and a sliver of steel through his
forehead. His gun was dismounted and lying in
the water. Simmons, standing nearly opposite to
Manuel on the other side of the launch, met an
equally sudden death. Worley, gashed and badly
burned, was still alive. He had regained his feet
and stood begging piteously for someone to put an
end to his agony. Smith and Haines alone of the
crew were fit for duty.
Gordon had grasped the situation at once, but
not before he heard a shout from the shore and
saw forty or fifty insurgents rushing out from it.
Smith and Haines could lay hands upon only one
rifle in condition for use. While Haines took that,
144
AS MAN TO MAN
with the body of the launch as a breastwork, Smith
helped poor Worley into the larger of the two bancas
(dugouts) which were towed by the Pepperbox, and
did what he could to relieve his pain. With odds
of fifty against two, Gordon naturally chose the
lesser evil of being killed with his face instead of his
back toward the enemy. He clutched at the mech-
anism of the Colt which still stood, though with
the bolts of its support loosened, on the tilted plat-
form of the deck as a dying man clutches at a straw.
It was in working order. A hundred rounds of am-
munition remained. The rest had been destroyed
by the explosion.
" One Colt is good for a regiment," said Gordon.
" Haines, wait until they get up close ! Wait till I
give the word ! "
On the insurgents came, yelling triumphantly as
they splashed through the water, while the Captain
waited, his finger on the trigger and his eye glanc-
ing along the barrel. When they were within fifty
yards he fired one shot to make sure of his aim. It
was right. He jammed the elevating lever hard on.
" Now! " he cried to Haines; and while Haines's
rifle cracked, tat-tat-tat the Colt spoke, as its barrel
swung back and forth, distributing with mathemati-
cal impartiality its stream of leaden pellets.
145
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
This was a bitter and tragic surprise for the ad-
vancing manikins. The messenger from the great
minds in Manila which had evolved the great plan
said that all the manikins would have to do after
the explosion was to take possession of the wreck
and corpses. Some fired back; some fell in the man-
ner of a man who trips over a wire in the dark; and
in a moment all who were not dead or wounded
scampered back to the cover of their trench.
Gordon did not hear the few bullets which passed
as he fully exposed himself according to the Ameri-
can precept that a shield for a machine gun pre-
vents good marksmanship. He followed the re-
treating foe with enough fire to bring the lesson
home. Then he counted the cartridges remaining
in the belt, sixteen in all.
" How many shots have you left? " he asked
Haines.
" Ten," was the reply.
The Captain looked around in all directions, as if
to ascertain what next was in store for him. Be-
hind a bluff three miles or more away he saw a col-
umn of smoke. He knew that this must come from
the stack of the Gasman, a much larger improvised
gun-boat, which was proceeding in his direction.
A quarter of a mile away from the village, along the
146
AS MAN TO MAN
road leading from the interior, he saw a column of
about two hundred insurgents at the double quick.
In the second and more determined attack which
was sure to come they could reach the wreck of the
Pepperbox, despite all he could do with his sixteen
cartridges, long before the Gasman, which carried
a twelve-pounder, two six-pounders, and two Colt's,
would be in range.
" Haines, you and Smith take Worley in the large
banco, and make for the centre of the lake. The
Gasman will pick you up. I'll remain here."
" Don't do that, Captain," Smith protested, while
Haines in silence took a water-soaked cigar from his
pocket and began chewing it vigorously.
" Orders! " the Captain rasped.
Smith had a mother at home to whom he was
sending ten dollars of his " $15.60 per." His death
meant that she would be sent to the poorhouse. He
obeyed. Before going he secured Nolan's watch
and a few trinkets to give to Nolan's sweetheart
at home. Haines still stood in the water with
his rifle on the deck in front of him, chewing his
cigar.
"Ain't you comin'?" called Smith.
" No," he replied.
" Man, you must," said the Captain. " If you
147
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
don't you'll be killed or taken prisoner, and that's
worse."
" So will you. I'm going to stay, orders or no
orders, by G ! "
" All right," the Captain assented. " Go on,
Smith."
Gordon was touched by what he took for Haines's
loyalty. He now blamed himself for holding the
grudge of rivalry against the private but not for
long. Haines leaped up on the deck as soon as
Smith had paddled out of hearing. He threw his
cigar into the water and turned on the Captain.
" I've stayed for satisfaction, that's what I've
stayed for ! " he said. " There's time enough, if
you've got any sand, for you to stand up to me,
you " and he used an expression which is un-
answerable in words.
" Certainly," Gordon responded quickly, laying
aside his revolver to give himself greater freedom.
" And those bars you set such store by," said
Haines, indicating by a glance the Captain's shoul-
der-straps.
" Don't you take my word there's no rank in
this? " He tore off his open blouse, thus divesting
himself of authority. " There, d n you ! "
Such was his rage that Haines, poised on the balls
148
AS MAN TO MAN
of his feet, did not wait for the Captain to assume a
position of readiness, but struck at his jaw with all
the initiative at his command. Gordon ducked
enough to prevent it from landing fairly, and in-
stantly grappled with his adversary. Haines was
somewhat proficient in boxing, while the Captain
knew only of the rough-and-tumble tricks of boy-
hood days in a country town. Haines was the more
agile; Gordon was of sturdier frame, bigger bones
and harder muscles.
All oblivious of the bullets which were again be-
ing fired from the trench, they grappled, each bend-
ing all his energy to overcome his adversary before
the enemy should overcome them both. Gradually
Gordon's superior strength began to tell. Realiz-
ing this, Haines tried to break away in order to strike
a blow. The result was to give Gordon a good hip
hold. With Gordon uppermost, the two fell against
the platform of the Colt. Such was the impact that
the loosened bearings gave way, precipitating the
combatants into the water. With them went their
last hope of defence, the rifle as well as the gun.
Their positions being reversed by the fall, Haines
was the first to rise. As he waited an instant for
Gordon to come up he heard the yells and splashing
of the insurgents as they approached in their second
149
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
charge. Gordon made a staggering effort to ward
off the blow aimed at him. As his fist came in con-
tact with a bare spot where the army shirt was torn
away from Gordon's shoulder, Haines saw a red
blotch which told him of a bullet that had just en-
tered the flesh. At the sight of it came a swamping
sense of repugnance to the hatred and anger which
had been in his heart. He had struck a wounded
man who was making a fair fight. He felt the buoy-
ancy of strength and sympathy to protect Gordon's
life against all comers. As he lifted his adversary
from the water he asked hoarsely for forgiveness.
" Take the banca! Save yourself! " the Captain
whispered. " It's all right for me. I must stay.
I can't go back to face the regiment or the folks at
home after a smash like this. But finish me! I
don't want to fall into the hands of those sav-
ages! "
Haines made no answer except immediate action
upon a plan for escape. He carried Gordon to the
stern of the Pepperbox, and swinging the banca
around so that the hull would be out of sight of the
insurgents, turned it bottom side up and succeeded
in getting the Captain and himself underneath it just
as the insurgents reached the wreck. By half kneel-
ing, half standing, in a painfully cramped position,
150
AS MAN TO MAN
they could breathe, with the backs of their heads
under water and their faces out of it.
The enemy first of all busied themselves with the
most important feature of their warfare sacking
the pockets of the dead before stripping them of
their clothing, and slashing, kicking, and spitting on
the nude bodies. Haines was congratulating him-
self that they would not be discovered when a man-
ikin leaped upon the bottom of the banca. Their
heads were driven under water, and rose out of it to
see two brown legs very near their own and a pair
of brown hands on the gunwale. With his free arm
Haines prepared to strike as soon as the manikin
should try to overturn their poor fortress. At that
moment there was a great splash not far distant.
The brown legs leaped upon the deck. Then came
a hurtling swish.
" That one passed over," Haines whispered cheer-
fully.
Then came a crack-ung-thr-t-t-t !
The Gasman, coming on with the speed of her
Captain's wrath, had burst its third shrapnel fairly
above the wreck; and the insurgents sought the
shore.
As Captain and private, both too weak to stand,
lay on the deck of the Gasinan, her commander
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
brought a letter to Gordon which had been sent care
of the division instead of the regiment. After he
had read it Gordon looked over to Haines.
" Jim," he said, using the familiar address for the
first time since they left Blashton, " Jim, I guess the
war fever has died out in Kansas. My sister Minnie
says the girl we've been scrapping over is engaged
to Hicks, the lawyer, who stayed at home."
152
A BATTLE AND A QUARREL
A BATTLE AND A QUARREL
THE nickname of "Plain John Dobbins,"
which he acquired at the Academy, and also
the essentials of his sober yeomanry stock, still
clung to him as a captain of regular cavalry twenty
years after his graduation.
His courtship had been characteristic. He began
by earnest and almost embarrassing devotion to a
beautiful and popular girl, who deprecated his suit
only to accept him when she had sounded the depths
of his character with the deep-sea lead of a love
whose existence she had been slow to recognize.
The Spanish War found them fifteen years mar-
ried. She followed him to Tampa; and met him,
his arm in a sling, at Montauk, with her hair almost
white from having killed him at least twice a day and
ten times a night during his absence.
" I know I'm foolish about John," she told a
young officer in the Adjutant-General's office, " but
I just can't help it."
After Montauk there was a period of rest in the
home barracks in Dakota, and then orders to the
155
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
wearing business of making our hold on tropical
possessions more than titular. Two months after
the Captain had sailed for the Philippines she left
San Francisco. If she had not been a day at sea
when his troop (dismounted), attached to the Sixty-
third Volunteer Infantry, was ordered to the Cama-
rines Provinces, which are two days' sail from Ma-
nila, he would have cabled her to remain in the
States. He left a letter with a friend telling her to
wait for further word as to the practicability of join-
ing him. She arrived to find that one woman had
already gone to the Camarines. This was the wife
of her husband's old Lieutenant, who had a " Mex "
commission as Major in the Sixty-third.
" Where Mrs. Lane can go, I can go," said Mrs.
Dobbins.
A kindly Quartermaster, without asking the com-
manding General for permission (because he knew
that it would be refused), put her aboard a transport
which was sailing immediately. In four days after
she had set foot in Manila she was at Brigade Head-
quarters in Nueva Caceres. There, she asked the
general not to telegraph her husband lest he should
tell her to wait until he could come for her. On
the afternoon of the fifth day, after a ride of thirty
miles in dust and heat, the driver of the army wagon
156
A BATTLE AND A QUARREL
which carried her and the mail drove into the little
plaza of the town of Lingat, in a dramatic manner
worthy of the occasion, pulling up short with the
side of the seat occupied by Mrs. Dobbins next to
the door of the municipal building.
" You're awfully thin, John ! " she exclaimed, as
she looked up through her tears at her idol.
" Worked off my fat, girl," he said. " That's all.
I'm as tough and healthy as a cayuse. As long as I
get enough saddle it doesn't matter whether I'm
in the Dakotas at forty below, or in the Camarines
at a hundred in the shade. You see they've spread
the Regulars out as usual. My troop's in three
towns and I have a thirty-mile gallop every day."
He did not notice that she had grown more gray
and wrinkled since he last saw her. She would al-
ways be young to him.
Picking their way among the Quartermaster's
stores and the troop equipments in the basement,
he led her up the rickety stairs into the four living-
rooms, where the Filipino servants, who had
watched from the window with many wriggles and
gesticulations the embrace of a strange white
" Americano " lady the first they had ever seen
by their master, now stood in a line of grins, white
shirts and trousers, and naked brown feet and
157
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
greeted her with profound bows and " Good-day,
Sefiora!"
" So this is our palace and these are our depend-
ents, John ! " she said, as she began to look the place
over. Palace ! A mental note of the shabbiness of
the quarters, compared to those of Mrs. Lane at
Bigao, made her hasten to say, the more cheerfully:
" We shall be as comfortable as two bugs in a rug
I mean as comfortable as bugs on ice. Heavens!
Isn't it scorching ! I made the driver start at 2 A.M.,
so that I wouldn't have to stop at Mrs. Lane's for
tiffin, and could be with you. I'm hungry as a
bear."
John bounded into the kitchen, whereupon the
three servants ceased staring and hastened the prep-
aration of the meal.
" And so you didn't want to tiffin with Mrs.
Lane? " he asked, in order to hear her say again
how anxious she was to be with him.
" No. I wanted to have a look at my big hus-
band again. And I don't like Mrs. Lane. Why,
that young thing is putting on the airs of a general's
wife over her Mex rank ! Is it true, John, that you
are supposed to salute him? "
" Yes, his volunteer commission makes him my
superior officer."
158
A BATTLE AND A QUARREL
" That boy, whom you taught all the soldiering
that he knows ! And do you actually have to take
orders from him? "
" Yes in a way."
" It's outrageous ! "
" But he tries to be very nice about it," he added,
permitting himself this little stroke of diplomacy to
cover his wounded pride, for her sake. At the same
time he looked at her questioningly, wondering if,
after all, even Mary was not a little disappointed
with him for failing of promotion. She set all
doubts at rest by springing into his arms.
" It's no matter if you're a sergeant. It's no mat-
ter if you're a private in the rear ranks ! "
" I know that. I know that, Mary. If I didn't
know it I would lose heart."
A flurry at the door interrupted them. They
looked around to see the Presidente and two mem-
bers of the Common Council, as elected under Gen-
eral Order No. 43, standing, hats in hand, in a state
of doubt and embarrassment. The great news had
travelled fast, and they had come to pay their re-
spects to the wife of the Captain. The Presidente
placed his rickety carriage, the only one in town, at
Mrs. Dobbins's service to drive in every evening.
After him, more deliberately, the next day, came
159
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
the leading Chinese merchants with presents of silk
and.pina cloth. Both offers were refused by the
Captain himself, as a matter of official discretion.
But Mrs. Dobbins, though she did not mean to, re-
called that Mrs. Lane spoke of driving in the Presi-
dente's carriage and of the beautiful presents which
she had received from the local officials. In fact,
Mrs. Lane might have been expected to speak of
such things to the wife of the man who formerly had
ranked her husband. In the old days on the plains
Mrs. Dobbins had more than once put young Mrs.
Lane " in her place."
" You see, Mary," explained the Captain, " I'm
trying to teach these people what honest govern-
ment is."
The Chinese, who had heard of the English meth-
ods in Hong-Kong, concluded that this must be the
peculiar characteristic of all big white men with
blond hair, and proceeded to adapt themselves to
the new conditions and make the best of them as
they always do abroad and never at home. But the
little Presidente had not heard of the English meth-
ods in Hong-Kong. He knew only the Spanish
method, which was his method his civilization
and that of those beneath him. So he secretly
thought that the Captain was a dunce, who would
1 60
A BATTLE AND A QUARREL
be recalled in disgrace some day by the American
don who was at the head of affairs in Manila. Even
as little presidentes go, the little Presidente of Lin-
gat was a bad man.
It was her first experience away from a post where
there was not some society. She had always
thought that John alone would be sufficient to her
happiness. In truth, he had been a foil to the rest
of the world. She had come back to her quiet,
forceful husband as to a retreat from the talk and
gossip of the post. She had not foreseen that a re-
treat becomes a hermitage if you are restricted to it.
For he was never talkative. When he was at home
he read and smoked, being supremely happy in the
consciousness of her presence.
As the days wore on she did little but lie on a long
chair, with thoughts passing through her mind
which used to have no place there. She grew sick
of the sight of brown faces and bare limbs; of naked
infants dying of small-pox in their mothers' arms;
of children, with shirts reaching only to their navels,
wriggling up the bamboo rungs of the ladders lead-
ing to nipa huts. Or, to be diagnostic, she was
suffering from the little liver devils of the tropics
which fatten on lassitude and starve on exercise.
One unusually hot morning John came in with
161
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
a map of Africa in perspiration on the back of his
blouse and his hair gray with dust and matted to his
head. He had his mail, which he had just received,
in his hand. He dropped into a chair, called to the
houseboy to make sure that the tank supplying the
shower-bath was full, and began to read the orders
from head-quarters as if they were the gospel as well
as the law. His wife looked at him and then at
some bits of paper, the remains of a letter which she
and the little devils had torn to pieces in exaspera-
tion as soon as she had read it. Mrs. Lane had
written to say :
" We expected you to see us before this. The
Major was speaking only to-day about how lone-
some you must be. He says that you can come on
the mail wagon any time you wish, and he will see
that you are escorted back. Regimental head-
quarters is here now, you know, and we have the
band to play every evening. We have had two
balls, and, of course, being the only white woman
here with twelve officers, I danced till I was like a
rag."
John was unusually absorbed. He had just been
told again that the Presidente, while so fawningly
loyal, was plotting to deliver the town over to an
insurgent attack; and he had caught a Chinese
162
A BATTLE AND A QUARREL
trader cheating the people with false weights. More-
over a communication in his hand held out no hope
of detaching any of Major Lane's battalion as rein-
forcements for his three towns. Perhaps he was
abrupt in reply to his wife's questions. At all events,
the time had come for the outburst which she had
long been holding back.
" The presidentes may amuse you, but they don't
amuse me," she said. " Think what my life is here
Dreyfused with no hope of anything better if
I depend on you! Yes, Dreyfused! With the
chances that the whole parcel of volunteers will be
taken into the regulars as they stand, while I have
to courtesy to school-girls who rank me out of quar-
ters ! Look at your own classmates who are colonels
and lieutenant-colonels! Look at your own lieu-
tenant who is a major ! You haven't even written
to the senators from your State! You seem to
like to vegetate in this ghastly place, while I
suffer!"
Her angrily spoken sentences came as so many
blows in the face to her husband. He slowly and
mechanically folded up his letters, rose and took
three or four steps toward the bathroom, before he
found a few poor words.
" I'm I'm sorry, Mary," he said.
163
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
She was already repentant of her abrupt com-
plaint. At tiffin she vainly looked for him to say
something upon which she could, with a show of
self-respect, hang her plea for forgiveness. After
an awkward moment of silence, when he rose from a
meal of a few mouthfuls, he said :
" Mary, perhaps a trip to Japan would do you
good. You may go, if you wish or to the States,
or anywhere. My expenses are nothing here. You
will have most of our income."
He spoke so coldly, so definitely that she was in-
stantly in a temper of independence.
" Yes, I will," she said. " I'll go and enjoy my-
self as other women do. This life of devotion is all
very well, but it brings precious little reward I
notice."
" Very good. To-morrow, or next day, or when-
ever you wish, we can start you off with an escort to
Nueva Caceres."
For the moment the woman was bolstered up
with her own anger. The man? He passed down
the stairs in a daze. For he knew only how to fight,
not how to quarrel.
As he left the building without any particular
destination in view he was conscious only of a wish
that he might be spared the misery of seeing her
164
A BATTLE AND A QUARREL
again, now that he knew that repugnance had taken
the place of love in her heart. He was too preoccu-
pied to notice that the figure coming across the
square was running. He did not even recognize it
as the familiar one of Juan Mendez, a Filipino prop-
erty-holder whose blood had not been poisoned by
a Spanish strain, until two agitated brown hands
were actually under his nose.
" They are coming ! " cried Mendez. " I have
been up the road and seen them! Four or five
hundred, with rifles ! They have gathered from all
the bands in the country around. The Presidente
is guiding them! He hates you! All the drones
and schemers hate you! You have not let them
make us pay taxes. They know that you have few
men. Now they have come for revenge to burn
my home to kill me to kill all who are honest!
Let me have a rifle ! Let me help you ! "
The sound of a shot from an outpost put the seal
to Mendez's statement.
" No. You go tell the people to take cover, Juan.
And tell them that there is no danger. The Ameri-
canos will protect them."
" But there are hundreds and you are only a
handful!"
" Then we shall get the more rifles."
1165
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
" Ah, Captain, you are not Spanish you are not
Spanish ! " said Mendez, laughing hysterically and
becoming quite confident.
While the bugle was sounding to " fall in " and
the men were rushing from the shady places where
they were resting to their accoutrements, the Cap-
tain went up the bamboo ladder two steps at a time
to the tower of the church, which commanded a view
of the surrounding country.
He took it for granted that Mendez's numbers
could be divided by two, and of this only half would
be armed. His vision flew over the foliage in which
nestled the nipa roofs of the town, past the open
stretch of paddy-field to the bamboo-grove which
bordered it. Just beyond, hugging the cover of
the river-bank and apparently intending to debouch
from the grove and charge across fatal open ground
with Oriental perversity, was a column of white fig-
ures. Through the glasses each seemed to be car-
rying a black stick, which was, of course, a rifle.
When his practised eye told him that there were act-
ually three if not four hundred, he only smiled a little
more grimly and confidently. During his rides he
had mapped the country in his mind. His plan for
dealing with such an emergency as this had been
made long ago. After scanning the horizon to
A BATTLE AND A QUARREL
make sure that an attack was not to be directed from
two sides he hastened back down the stairs.
His wife was standing by the entrance. He
started, and paused long enough to say, in a tone
distinctly military :
" Yes, the church is the best place for you. Stray
bullets might go through the walls of the house.
There is no danger. The affair will be over in half
an hour."
And then he passed on.
Her anger going as quickly as it had come, Mrs.
Dobbins had hurried from the table to the window
and had watched her husband cross the square, his
erect figure bearing no sign of his distress of mind.
She had overheard Juan's excited tale, and had cor-
roboration of the overwhelming force of the enemy
from the outpost who came running into the square
after the Captain had entered the church. As an
army woman she knew what such odds meant; as
a wife she knew that her husband would attack in
flank, no matter what the force against him, and
that failure meant annihilation, with him cheer-
fully exposing himself to the last moment. Yet the
only sign that she longed for forgiveness before he
went into action was the imploring gesture of arms
outstretched toward his retreating back.
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
'As the Captain stopped in front of his waiting
garrison, two pale, almost emaciated creatures,
wavering under the load of their rifles, came out of
the barracks and took their places in the line of forty
men, each of whose faces bore that individual reali-
zation of what was before him and that stern inten-
tion to go through with it which are so characteristic
of the American soldier.
" Stoke and Leman," he said to the sick ones,
" I thought you were in hospital with dysentery."
" We was, sir," said Stoke, " but if you're willing,
we ain't now."
The Captain divided the force into two parts, one
part under the Sergeant, with Gelley, the Surgeon,
attached, and the other under his own command.
" I'm going to take my men," he said to the
Sergeant, " and pass under cover of a path to the
west of the main road leading north, then come out
on the road so as to be at right angles with the bam-
boo and with your position. You are to go to the
northern outskirts of the town, and as our friends
come out of the bamboo you are to hold them back
and not let them get near enough to become over-
confident. If they come too near, understand,
they'll get a grip and their numbers will count.
When we begin firing from the roadway, throw it
168
A BATTLE AND A QUARREL
into 'em till your rifles blister your hands. When
we charge, you charge. Mind your sights and
don't fire high. We'll get 'em all right."
Thereupon, he gave the word and the two col-
umns started off at the double. After he had taken
three or four steps with his column he stopped sud-
denly at the thought of the danger to his wife from
some sniper in the town who might bring his rifle
out of hiding to throw bullets about among the
women and children. He detached Stoke and Le-
man from the ranks.
" You will stand guard over Mrs. Dobbins," he
said. " Search anyone for arms who wants to enter
the church."
" Yes, sir," they replied, in broken voices, while
he hurried on to catch up with his command.
To them this disappointment meant as much as
for a playwright to have his play rehearsed up to the
night of presentation and then refused a hearing.
Still they had the satisfaction of the philosophy
which lies behind the Sergeant's saying, that " or-
ders 's orders, and you can usually rely on 'em to be
disagreeable."
When they reported themselves with a statement
of their duty to Mrs. Dobbins, she bade them, with
great asperity, to go to the front, where they were
169
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
needed. They stood stock-still and merely repeated
the Captain's words.
" But won't you do this for me for a woman
your Captain's wife? " she pleaded. " Every man,
every rifle, ought to be out yonder."
" We'd do most anything for the Captain's wife,"
Stoke replied, " except not do as we're told by the
Captain in a fight."
" Very well, then," she said, " if you have to stay,
I don't."
She started in the direction which her husband
had taken.
" Don't, Mrs. Dobbins ! " they begged. " Bullets
is going to be perty thick here in a minute. Think
how the Captain would worry ! Don't ! "
She did not even give their protests the deference
of arresting her steps.
The two men looked at each other for a minute,
in doubt. Then Stoke had a flash of wisdom.
" We was left to guard her, not to guard the
church," he said. " My God ! If anything hap-
pened to her I wouldn't face the Captain for Rocke-
feller's fortune."
Then, following correct tactics, one went to the
right and the other to the left of Mrs. Dobbins, as if
she were a column and they her flankers. So they
1170
A BATTLE AND A QUARREL
followed her by the road and by the path her hus-
band had taken, until all instinctively halted as they
heard the crash of a Krag volley.
" It's the Sergeant's line, not his," Mrs. Dobbins
thought, pressing on.
Immediately the answering bullets of the insur-
gents began thripping through the banana-trees.
At first they were few; then a storm. When Stoke
saw two spits of dust in the road in front of her, he
rushed to her side, crying, in a tone of command:
" Mrs. Dobbins, you must take cover! If you
don't we'll have to carry you by force."
" I'll go if you'll go to the front," she replied.
" One of us will," he declared as he promptly hur-
ried her behind the protecting trunk of a big mango-
tree. " Leman," he added, as he drew his hand out
of his pocket, " odd or even? The fellow who goes
has to tell the Captain that he did it on his own."
Leman won. With an exclamation of joy he
started on the run, blowing the dust out of his sights
as he went. He was ten yards away when he fell
in a heap. Stoke ran to him and found him already
unconscious, with a hole over the heart. Another
waif of the world, taken by the regular recruiting
office from a life of uselessness and turned into a man
and an expert who had learned how to smile when
171
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
he heard the cry of loafers in garrison towns, " Will
you work, soldier? " and had still smiled when the
volunteers told him how they carried San Juan Hill
had fallen doing his duty in the simple way of the
Service. Stoke picked up his dead comrade's rifle
and laying it on the big root of the mango-tree be-
side him, looked out into the thicket with flashing
eyes, as confident of the power of the instrument in
his hands as any white man ever was in a brown
man's country.
There is no suspense like the suspense of being
under fire out of sight of the combatants. After
the first Krag volley, all the firing had come
from the insurgent side. Mrs. Dobbins, as she
listened to the passing of the bullets, imagined the
worst.
For an explanation, we must turn to the Sergeant,
who, at this juncture, was as airy as the belle of a
ball. His men were barely on their bellies scanning
the line of earth over their sights, when the white
figures broke out of the bamboo. He waited for
them to come within seven hundred yards. Then,
in answer to his volley, they passed out of sight as
suddenly as if the earth had opened and swallowed
them.
" Oh, ho, my Gugu callers, so you've laid down,
172
A BATTLE AND A QUARREL
behind a paddy dyke to take account of stock, have
you?" he called. "Get down, clear down, boys,
and don't shoot till the target's up again."
After firing for five minutes without hitting any-
one except poor Leman, the insurrectos rose and
began to advance by rushes. Our men now had to
rise on their elbows and return the fire. Butts was
the first man wounded. He got " it " in the shoul-
der at the same moment as a complaint from the
Sergeant for exposing himself unnecessarily. Then
Stanley's head dropped down on his rifle-stock with
a bullet hole between the eyes. No one noticed
these incidents besides the Sergeant and the Sur-
geon.
Many insurgents were falling, many were waver-
ing, and others kept on less surely, but, nevertheless,
gaining ground. When they were within three
hundred yards their bugle bade them halt. Our
men, whose rifle-barrels hissed if touched by a per-
spiring hand, knew that the supreme moment was
yet to come.
As the insurgents crawled forward to reform their
line, their officers recalled to them all the encour-
agements of the weeks in which this " grand attack "
by the mobilization of small guerilla bands and in-
dividuals with hidden rifles had been preparing.
173
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
They told them again of the weakness of the garri-
son and fanned their wrath against the American
Captain who had been making the people trust him.
They shouted the prospect of the American supplies
and money in the town; of the award of the Cap-
tain's watch to the man who killed or captured him;
of the loot of Mendez's house and the killing of
the traitorous citizens who had failed to pay their
taxes to the Republic. The absence of fire from
our side encouraged them to think that we had fled.
So they rose again with the confidence of the first
charge, and all the bullets which the Sergeant's little
corps could throw seemed to have no effect upon
them.
" Pot those in front ! " the Sergeant called. " Then
the others will see 'em fall. Leave that officer who's
waving his sword to me ! "
He aimed at the officer and missed. He fired
again with greater care and the officer dropped.
Still other officers sprang forward, and there was
now no cessation in the movement, which seemed
to have the grip of a charge which feels that it is go-
ing home and becomes reckless of the cost.
" Is that all you can do? " asked the Sergeant,
awakening from the absorption of his own sharp-
shooting to notice that the fire from his men was
174
A BATTLE AND A QUARREL
slackening. There was no reply. Not even the
man next to him had heard him speak.
" Burleigh ! " he shrieked, turning his attention
entirely from the field to his men, " Burleigh, what
are you doing behind that root? Funking it? "
Then he saw that Burleigh was dead; and he saw
that he had only eight men firing eight men whose
faces were set with the purpose of making the most
of the inevitable.
" If any man opens the clip to his magazine 'fore
there's a Gugu within ten foot of him, I'll pommel
him till he's black and blue. Pump it into 'em!
Pump " the Sergeant's yell was drowned by the
triumphing cry of the Filipinos of " Gangway
Americanos ! " as they started forward at a dead run.
As if in answer to the insurrectos' taunt, the
broken volley of men falling into position in haste
spoke from the side of the road. The insurrectos
stopped with the shock of the flank fire like a beast
wounded in the side as it is about to reach its prey.
" Plain John Dobbins " never looked finer than
now, his face lighted with the enthusiasm and trie
preoccupation of the business at hand, which was
to maintain the accuracy of the fire of twenty excited
men; for that, and not shouting or the beating of
drums, is the art of company command, and, there-
175
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
fore, the way of the Service. With the instinct of
the animal, the insurgents turned in the direction
from which the wound had been inflicted and des-
perately replied to the fire.
It was then that the Captain, who was standing
erect despite his preachings about the necessity of a
line officer taking cover, whirled half round with the
impact of a blow that stung his left forearm. He
looked down to see blood, and immediately forgot
the wound in watching for the moment when the
enemy's fire should be so far reduced as to warrant
a charge with the minimum of exposure. So
short was the range that he drew his revolver and
emptied its chambers with the zest of personal
encounter.
It is not in the blood and marrow under brown
skins to grapple with a flank fire. The insurgents'
impulse of desperation did not last long. They
imagined that there were a thousand Americans,
instead of a handful which they could easily sweep
away with the bayonet. When they saw the big
forms in blue shirts and khaki spring out of the rut
by the roadway, everyone sought to save his own
life if his legs were too weak with fear to carry
him, by lying prone on the ground and crying for
mercy; if not, by running for the bamboo.
176
A BATTLE AND A QUARREL
Without his charge the Captain would not have
considered that he had administered a " licking."
He stopped in the middle of the field with his bugler
at his elbow, while his men went in chase. As he
looked around at the dead and the dying and the
prisoners, he heard a familiar voice crying, " Medi-
co! " (surgeon). Its source was the parched lips of
the Presidente a bullet through his shoulder and a
Mauser rifle on the ground by his side.
" Mercy ! mercy ! " he begged. " The wicked
ones kidnapped me and forced me to fight."
" Yes," the Captain replied, " you've made a
great fool of yourself. However, you mustn't think
that I believe your lie."
And the little Presidente nestled closer to the
earth for fear of accidents as the Sergeant and his
eight remaining men, who had charged with the
moral force of a division, came hurrying forward to
catch the rest of the line. The Captain stopped
them.
" What are your casualties? " he asked.
" Well, Stanley, Burleigh, and Smith are dead and
Swanson's perty bad. The others'll recover, I guess
great guns, sir! Don't you know that you've
been hit in the arm? "
" I should say he had ! " said Surgeon Gelley,
177
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
coming up and instantly ripping open the Captain's
sleeve with his knife.
" Not much," said the Captain. " Went clean
through."
" I suppose if two went clean through you
wouldn't have it bandaged," said Gelley, applying a
" first aid." " Blood trickling off your fingers not
much ! Nipped an artery not much ! Here, put
this sling over your head; that'll do for the present.
If you don't go back to the house I'll order you.
Now you're sick, I'm your boss."
" I don't want the men to get too far afield," the
Captain told the Sergeant. " Call them in. Make
the Presidente's house a hospital and have the pris-
oners carry in their wounded."
And the little Presidente was already proud-
ly thinking that our victory did not count, be-
cause we were such fools as not to take advantage
of it.
As he walked unsteadily toward the road, so as to
have the shade of the trees back to the plaza, the
Captain began to feel the effects of reaction. He
involuntarily put his free arm to his head as if to
steady it. At the roadside he met his wife, whom
Stoke could hold back no longer after the fire had
diminished. The sight of her brought up the
178
A BATTLE AND A QUARREL
events of the morning and all its contingent misery,
which had been momentarily forgotten.
" John," she asked, " is it bad? "
" We've licked them good and hard," was the re-
ply, " but we had to pay a price. Four killed "
" Not them ! Your arm, I mean."
" That's nothing."
" But there's a great red spot on the bandage."
" Always is, Mary. It doesn't stop bleeding the
minute that you slap a ' first aid ' onto it."
Meanwhile he had continued to walk. Now he
stopped suddenly and, staggering almost to the
point of falling, asked, in a military manner:
" What are you doing here? I thought I left you
at the church."
What she wanted to reply was, " Because I loved
you and couldn't wait for you to forgive me." But
he seemed at once too weak and too formidable in
his dusty khaki and flapping, bloody sleeve to recur
to the subject.
" I wanted to to see," she stammered.
" To see ! " he repeated. " And if we had been
driven back? "
She made no reply.
They went on in silence, save for the plunking
of their feet in the thick, hot dust until, without
179
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
any warning, there was a sharp report from the
roadside, followed by the peculiar thud of a bullet
striking flesh.
The Captain whirled and fell, with the blood
gushing from his leg, but facing his antagonist. The
instinct of his profession gave him strength for the
time being. His vision was quite clear again. Only
a few yards away he saw peering over the root of a
mango-tree a black, pock-marked face. The as-
sassin had partly risen on his elbow while his rifle
rested on the root, as if entranced by the effect of his
deed. Then he seemed to comprehend that it was
life for life and took aim again as the Captain
reached for his revolver only to remember that the
chambers were empty. There followed a report,
the sound of a bullet going high over the Captain's
head in the bamboo and of a blow with the stock of a
rifle which crushed in the Filipino's skull.
" There, you swine ! " Stoke said. " You ain't
worth a cartridge."
Then he went to the assistance of Mrs. Dobbins,
who had her thumb pressed with all the strength of
her arm just above the wound. With his bayonet
Stoke made a tourniquet and applied his own first-
aid bandage. He was about to start back to the
field for a stretcher when he espied a full-grown
180
A BATTLE AND A QUARREL
manikin peeking out of a nipa hut. So he and the
native bore the prostrate man to the house on a
piece of nipa thatch.
It seemed to the Captain that his bearers were
travelling up and down the swells of a rolling sea
of dust, as through a hot fog which stifled him he
saw his wife hurrying ahead to prepare the way.
His racing thoughts again dwelt entirely upon what
had passed between them in the morning.
" How old she looks ! Grown old suffering un-
der a yoke. She's trying to do her duty," he told
himself. " That's what she has been doing for
years, in contrition, with all the love out of her
heart. And I have never known it until to-day!
Never knew it until when she let the mask fall I
saw that she loathed the sight of me. How easy it
would be an artery, Gelley said and save further
trouble. I would leave her sufficient income,
and "
The next that he knew he was drinking iced water
out of a glass held by Gelley, while his wife was at
the Surgeon's elbow.
" Hemorrhage stopped, all right, old chap," Gel-
ley said, cheerfully. " You'd have been done for in
two minutes if Stoke hadn't put the tourniquet on.
I'm not going to have you undressed or excited in
181
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
any way till all danger is past. I'll peep in at the
door again in ten minutes and want to find you
sound asleep. Meanwhile, I'm going back to poor
Swanson and try to save him."
Contrary to expectations, the iced water revived
the Captain and carried him back to the train of
irrational thought which he was following when
he had become unconscious. As the resultant de-
termination gained force in his mind he said, ab-
ruptly :
" Mary, I can sleep easier if you will go outside
and lie down and rest."
j " Then I will," she said, cheerfully, not daring to
excite him by any protest, much less relieve herself
of the burden of self-blame which lay heavier and
heavier upon her heart.
The subterfuge served his purpose. His strength
grew with his idea.
" She will have income enough and we shall both
have peace. No one will suspect suicide," he
whispered. " They will say I was delirious, as
Smith was when he tore his bandages off in Cuba.
In two minutes, Gelley said "
With an effort he reached the knot of the band-
age around his leg, but he could not untie it. He
fumbled in his pocket, took out his knife, leaned
1182
A BATTLE AND A QUARREL
against the pillow while he laboriously opened it.
He slipped the blade under the outside strand of
the bandage. Then he suddenly recalled, smiling
in the cynicism of his conception, that he had not
yet written the report of his action.
" I'll make it a true report," he said, in a mock-
ing whisper.
He took a piece of paper and a pencil from the,
table at the head of his bed and wrote, in trembling
characters :
" For four months I have been holding three
towns with one hundred men, while I have been
denied reinforcements from the full battalion at
Bigao. I do not consider my losses against four
hundred unreasonably heavy, considering that the
enemy was organized in, and marched unnoticed
from, the battalion's sphere of influence."
" And now," he thought. Once he bent over,
only to fall back in exhaustion. The second at-
tempt was more successful. He laid his hand upon
the knife.
Again he was arrested in the execution of his
purpose; this time by a sob from the adjoining
room. His wife, who had been suppressing her
emotion, had now involuntarily put her agony into
words. He listened.
183
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
" Oh, if he only could understand ! " she was say-
ing. " If he only knew how I love him and hate
myself for what I said ! "
His delirium had passed. He fell back upon his
pillow with the smile of one who has found life
worth living again.
"Mary! "he called.
She came on tiptoe.
" Mary," he said, " I think that I could sleep b'et-
ter if you were in the room with me."
The wife picked up that novel report, and, before
her husband thought of it again, had sent it to the
Patient and Well-Abused One in Manila.
" As if I had anything to do with promotions,"
he remarked, grimly.
He smiled to himself for his American sense of
humor never deserted him and enclosing the let-
ter, wrote on his familiar pad :
" This is not military and was written by Captain
Dobbins in a delirium. However, it states the
truth. Confidential."
The Adjutant-General, who opened this letter
after one from a Congressman's wife pleading that
her son be sent home, remarked :
184
A BATTLE AND A QUARREL
" Why will such men always hide themselves
when they ought to know that we are looking for
them? Can't they read in the newspapers that it
pays to advertise? "
Whereupon, he wrote a two-months' extension of
leave for an officer who, under the devoted ministra-
tions of his wife, was happily convalescing in the
mountains of Japan.
185
AGAINST HIS OWN PEOPLE
AGAINST HIS OWN PEOPLE
ON the morning after the fight at Dangwan
River, a man, whose stature and physiog-
nomy were distinctly not those of a Filipino, avoid-
ing the open places and going under cover of thick-
ets and gullies, came to the deep fringe of foliage
which shades the main highway connecting Bacoor
and Imus, in the Province of Cavite. He carried a
Mauser rifle and a cloth bandolier of native make
full of cartridges. His dress that of a Filipino
regular soldier, even to the miserable rope shoes
could not belie, on closer examination, his national-
ity, which was American.
He looked up and down the road and listened;
finally, he looked behind him and listened, before
he started to cross. He was barely on the other
side when the sound of hoofs in the distance made
him leap behind a mango-tree and cower in the
crotch of two of its great projecting roots while he
waited fearfully for the coming of a patrol of his
own countrymen. Not until they were past did he,
with a great sigh of relief, so far expose himself as
189
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
to have a peep at the cantering group. A glance
was sufficient to make him fall back with a groan
and bury his face in his hands. He had recognized
the leading figure as his own Colonel.
" God A'mighty ! " he exclaimed. " It was hard
enough without that ! "
He remained for some time in this attitude, an
easy prey for pursuers if pursuers he had, again
fighting a battle in his heart to preserve a resolution.
When he arose he had more than ever the air of one
fleeing from peril behind to a precipice beyond.
He made his way rapidly, treading as softly upon
his rope soles as if they were moccasins. By five
in the afternoon he was in the ruburbs of Manila,
where he threw his rifle and cartridges into a ditch.
Once in town, he pulled his straw hat well down
over his eyes. His garb and his black, straggling
beard made it easy for him to pass as one of the
many Spanish soldiers enjoying liberty after their
release from the hands of the Filipinos by the ad-
vance of our forces.
The Spanish soldiers themselves might have
thought that he was an orderly going on a life-and-
death message. His speed increased with his fear
that he might be detected before he could speak
with the one for whose ears he had been framing a
190
AGAINST HIS OWN PEOPLE
narrative during the last thirty-six sleepless hours.
He passed the length of Calle Real, then over to
Calle Nozaleda, which he crossed to the opposite
side of the street from Mrs. Gerlison's. As he went
by, the only outward evidence that he had any in-
terest in her residence was a sharp glance. Assured
that there was no one on her porch, he turned at the
next crossing and soon was at her door, expectant,
with head bared. She came herself in response to
the knock at the great sliding windows which were
literally one side of the lower story of the house.
" Can I talk to you a a little? " he asked, in a
trembling voice.
" To me? What about? " she queried, shudder-
ing a little .at the sight of this unkempt man, with
his deepset eyes and the prominence of his high
cheek-bones enhanced by the hollows beneath them.
" I guess you don't 'member me, I've changed
so," he said. " Or is it that you don't want to? "
" Of course I do. It's Sergeant Kanley ! "
" Yes, and I've come to you first. You're the
only lady in the regiment I'd dare to come to or I'd
want to come to if you'll give me just a few min-
utes."
For many years she had known Kanley as an
efficient and trim non-commissioned officer. His
191
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
face told her at a glance that there was far more
behind his case than the circumstances related at
the time of his disappearance attested.
" Certainly. I always have time to listen or to
do anything that I can to help anyone in the regi-
ment."
She showed him into her sitting-room, to a seat
in a comfortable chair facing the window, through
which the light of day was still streaming..
" I ain't deceivin' myself," he said. " I ain't
askin' pardon. I know by the law o' the land, the
law o' God, the law o' nature, I deserve no mercy."
At this statement she was a little surprised. But
she was too experienced a listener to make any re-
mark.
" I had a squaw for a gran'mother on one side
and a Mexican for a gran'dad on t'other. It's the
little Injin and the little Greaser that's the devil in
my blood. The rest's all right. It's that that's
kep' me straight, that that's kep' me out o' trouble
when the Injin and Greaser got me drunk in Ari-
zona you 'member? "
She nodded.
" And I lost my chevrons and got six months'
pay, and thanked God that the ballast o' the white
man's blood kep' me from doin' murder, just as it
192
AGAINST HIS OWN PEOPLE
kep' me from joinin' the Apaches and goin' to hefl
gen'rally. Ever since that, when I seen a Greaser
or an Injin, it seems to me as if I seen my own
shadow that I was tryin' to get away from and
couldn't. But mebbe I'm wastin' your time. Mebbe
you think I'm a long time comin' to the point. I'm
sayin' it my way, the way I've reasoned it out."
" That is how I want you to say it, so don't try
to hurry," replied Mrs. Gerlison.
" Oh, you don't know the hell thoughts I used
to have at Reno," he continued, " while my face
was a mummy with duty and teachin' rookies regu-
lar to put their heels together. But there was the
Greaser 'n Injin, the shadow hangin' 'round re-
mindin' me what 'twas to be sloppy, dirty, God-
forsaken. I was on t'other side teachin' others to
keep the step o' t'other side. It's easier to stick to
the road when there's a wagon behind than if you're
out o' harness. Well, it it's dif'rent out here, ain't
it, don't you think? " he asked, pleadingly, as he
worked the brim of his hat nervously between a
thumb and forefinger.
" Very," she replied. " Go on."
" The harness seems to hang loose and there don't
seem to be much of any roads. Barricks? Humph!
Nipa huts that's the same's all other nipa huts.
393
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
There's the monot'ny and the homesickness allus
the homesickness eggin' one 'nother on. There's
the heat drivin' you to one place to get cool and
then drivin' you to another. There ain't the shadow
a-followin', and when you get off the road nothin'
to remind you it's the Greaser 'n Injin that made
you stray."
He paused.
" I couldn't say then, I can't say now, whether her
face's perty. That ain't the point with her kind any
more'n a perty ankle is. It's somethin' down deep
the taint which a white man left. The first time
she looked into my eyes she began playin' with the
Injin n' Greaser. She was goin' into Cavite from
Paranaque and she had no pass.
" ' I spik In-glish, Mister Sergeant,' she says,
laughin'. ' My father he In-glish sailorman. My
mother she don' know. She meet my father.
Bimeby she know a great much. She live Cavite.
Please me go one girl. You no care see my
mother.'
"The Injin n' Greaser says to let her go, and I
let her go when I had no business to. Yes, her dad
was English, the kind that's kicked out of the white
man's world, and then kicked from port to port in
the Orient. And she knew it. God A'mighty!
194
AGAINST HIS OWN PEOPLE
how she knew it ! It didn't take her long to find
out that she'd got in her what the Gugu ain't got.
It's the same thing that's in the bowels of a steamer
or in a bandolier o' cartridges which look innocent
'nough force. With it she had the Gugu's cunnin',
and that makes a kind of devil that can do things.
" She kep' comin' 'round and talkin' and talkin'.
One day she'd say, ' Me good Americano,' and the
next, laughin' just as hard, ' Me good insurrecto.
Viva Aguinaldo ! ' All the time she was gettin' in-
formation for the insurgents. All the time she was
readin' all I thought. One day I was tellin' her
what fools the Filipinos was. I'd often reckoned it
out, after we'd druv twice our number out o'
trenches by front attack, how easy 'twould be, if
the Gugus had a man with sand in his craw, to
drive us back. All they had to do was to lay to it
and keep on firm'. But they always ran soon as we
charged, 'stead o' takin' that as a signal that we was
all plain targets in the open and to pump it into us.
I ain't the only one that's said that. I guess it's
been talked in every officers' mess and every can-
teen in the islands. I talked it like the rest, not
thinkin' of it as anything but talk till the Injin n'
Greaser and the woman began their partnership."
He shifted uneasily in the chair, as if he had come
195
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
to a point in his story where he was at a loss for
words.
" Then Busher, the Second Lieutenant, just out o'
civil life and no good, swore at me a good deal for
his own mistakes. That's another thing that ain't
the way it was at the posts, where the Colonel wasn't
too busy to keep an eye out. It's the thing, some
think, to swear at sergeants out here. This particu-
lar time he ripped me up like I was a lazy nigger in
a cotton patch. The Injin n' Greaser, who know
what growlin' and riot is, but don't know what dis-
cipline and order is, rose up and made me feel's if I
couldn't stand it any longer.
" Ten minutes after that the woman came slippin'
up. She'd overheard the Lieutenant cussin' me out.
She just leaned over me and talked. I can feel her
breath on my cheek yet. She told me she knew I
was like herself. She could see it in my face. I
wasn't all white, and people that wasn't all white
was outcasts. They wasn't meant to serve white
ner black, but to pay the world the revenge
they owed it for makin' 'em mongrels. I must
come with her. I'd be a general we'd rule to-
gether.
" I can't explain. I dunno how it happened. I
went. That's the whole thing. I went sneakin'
196
AGAINST HIS OWN PEOPLE
'cross the fields with the rifle the Gov'ment give me
went against my country after twenty-five years
in harness. She was takin' me to Das Marinas,
where I was to drill the Gugu army. That first
night we slep' at Cavite Viejo. Toward mornin' I
woke up with the Injin n' Greaser all out o' me. It
wasn't too late, if I could dodge the Gugu patrols,
to get back and explain how I'd been captured and
escaped. I got out o' the door, but I hadn't got
to the road when the woman stood before me
mockin' me with her smile.
" ' You walk your sleep, eh? ' she says, though I
could see she knew what I was thinkin' 'bout. She
talked and talked, and the Greaser n' Injin heard and
come back. It wouldn't have done any good if I'd
gone on. She was prepared for any backslidin' and
had established guards all 'round. The Greaser n'
Injin had me for good then. The next day I was
at Das Marinas, and they made me a full colonel
and rigged me out in a captured Spanish uniform,
which is a great treasure with them. I didn't tell
'em my real name. There was just 'nough white
man left in me for that. I took my gran'mother's
name, Dark Cloud. My gran'mother! I can
'member her sittin' in a shack mumblin' fortunes
for a peso apiece to the Greasers.
197
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
" So I started out to make soldiers out o' the little
black runts Aguinaldo calls his army. They knocked
my theories into shucks. I'd allus said, gimme
time and I can make a soldier out o' 'most anybody
'cept a rooky out o' the slums that's been spoiled
in a milishy reg'ment. I take it back. It applies
only to white men. A white man can be as wicked
a man as anybody. But he's got somethin' a man
with yeller, brown, or black skin ain't got some-
thin' that's been built up by centuries o' havin' to
build houses to keep out the cold, I guess. I tried
to treat the hayfoots and strawfoots they brought
into the square to be drilled as if they was white.
Their own officers didn't, you bet. There was no
squad. The rookies was put in company drill first
off. If they didn't toe it right they was yanked out o'
line and a black snake laid on their backs. One day
a little, withered turkey-cock of a colonel they're
all colonels, the officers ran his sword into a poor
little Gugu who had all his wits scared out o' him.
I couldn't stand that, so I slung the runt 'round and
chucked him into a ditch. I expected to be killed
by the rest of the Gugus then and there. I would
have been, I guess, if the woman, who never let me
get far out o' her sight, hadn't sprung to my side
like a cat. She harangued 'em and called 'em cow-
198
AGAINST HIS OWN PEOPLE
ards and pigs, and we went off together. That
night she slep' at my door.
" ' Maybe they try to kill you. I'll watch,' she
said. ' To-morrow I make it all ri' so you no have
man who want you die.'
" The next day the fellow I slung into the ditch,
meanin' it for his good, was assassinated 'long with
two of his friends. That's the way they run their
dear republic.
" ' You no more Americano,' said the woman.
' You mestizo (half-breed) now. You must stick
these pigs,' meanin' the rookies. ' They no think
you a Don.'
" So I slambanged the rookies about in a way
that if I'd done the same to white men, after it was
over I'd been still all one piece but perty soft. And
they liked me and thought I was a great man. I
wanted to teach 'em to fight out in the open, 'stead
o' diggin' trenches. The trouble with trenches is
that they're so hard to move when t'other fellow
comes 'round on the flank. But the Gugu can't
fight 'thout he stands behind somethin', any more'n
he can use his fists 'stead o' a knife. So we built
trenches; that is, the fellows that hew the bamboo
and plant the rice built 'em, with the turkey-cock
officers struttin' 'bout and puttin' the fear o' God
199
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
into 'em. We had a mile of trenches on the Dang-
wan River by February ist.
" ' Americanos come to bank. No can swim
river. We kill all,' says the turkey-cocks.
" 'Bout this time the woman and I was married
by a Gugu priest. As we come out o' church with
a crowd and all the fixin's, I noticed an old Spanish
padre on the balcony, smilin' at me, a smile with
jaws set and eyes half open. 'Twas plain 'nough
he'd seen some o' the world besides the Philippines.
The Gugus held him prisoner, but they was half
'fraid o' him. He spoke to me in the lingo o' the
Mexican border, which the girl couldn't under-
stand.
" ' You you you mongrel/ he says, ' who
broke the white man's faith, was your mother an
Apache or a Yaqui? '
" It seemed's if he'd come all the way 'cross the
seas to say that to me. God A'mighty! How it
went home !
" So we mustered our army. Oh, it was a great
army ! It had a bugler that could do the trills 'most
as well as old Johnny Tubbs of the Third. It did
the manual of arms all right ; it could form a line of
skirmishers all right, and Lord ! how it could cheer !
But it had no sand in its craw.
200
AGAINST HIS OWN PEOPLE
" Just after we heard the Americans was goin' to
advance in two or three days, the woman says :
" ' You tell the pigs fight. Make grand speech.
No go yourself no, no ! '
" She was 'fraid o' nothin' herself and I couldn't
understand.
" ' Why not? ' I says.
" ' I love you/ she says. * I no want you killed.'
" I told her I must or my army O Lord ! my
army ! 'd run.
" ' They run always. The pigs run always when
white man come. No can help. They run and
leave you alone.'
" I reminded her how she said we was to win vic-
tories and rule, and she says, smilin' :
" ' I say many thing when you mad your Lieuten-
ant, 'cause I want you come. We go always to-
gether. We go back, back, back when Americanos
come. Bimeby no room on island for us. Then
we go Singapore, not? '
" With that some o' the white man come back to
me. She see it did, and she talks and talks and
says she's only jokin'. And the white man ain't
lef me since. It's kep' a-fightin' with the Greaser
'n Injin, makin' a hell o' my insides that it seemed
'd soon burn me up. But there's just as much
20 1
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
fuel left so far's I can see as there was at the
start-off.
" The woman'd been by my side in the fight if
the Americans hadn't come a day sooner'n we ex-
pected. I oughter known they would. It's the
way o' the Service. And it was in the nature o'
justice that I had to face my own battalion, my
own comp'ny my own messmates. I could see
'em comin' out o' the bamboo and I let 'em, 'thout
givin' the order to fire. Two or three times I tried
to give it and the words caught in my throat. A
turkey-cock officer looked at me and says, ' Are you
betrayin' us? ' and I told him to pass the word. Our
men laid down, but the old Major stood up lookin'
'round with his glasses. My army God ! my army !
was all shootin' at him. Bimeby he disappeared,
and our fellows not comin' on, the Gugus began
cheerin', thinkin' they'd won. I knew better. I
knew the Major well enough to know what he was
up to. He was goin' 'round by the ford with a
flankin' party. I knew if I was found there in that
uniform, ev'ry man of the men I'd bunked with,
yarned with, and fought with 'd put a bullet into my
carcass. I knew how I could get that flankin' party
on the hip, and I never moved. I let the poor little
Gugus chortle over their vict'ry one minute when I
202
AGAINST HIS OWN PEOPLE
knew the next the trench 'd be a slaughter pit. I'd
raised my arm against my country once, but I
wasn't goin' to raise it ag'in.
" I slipped down to one end o' the trench and
when our men fired I jumped over it and dove into
the river, with the yells of the Gugus' pain and
panic in my ears. Our fellows lyin' in front of the
trench saw me, takin' me for a Gugu o' course, and
begun firm'. It was my own comp'ny. I knew
there was no horseplay to their shootin'. I slipped
behind a root of a tree and let my hat float down
stream. They cut holes in the hat and churned the
water up 'round it till they seen there wasn't a man
under it and quit. In a few minutes they marched
off up to the ford to cross over and help the rest in
the chase.
" I swum ashore on the American bank. It
seemed at that minute's if I was all white ag'in and
I'd waked up out o' a nightmare. I wanted the
barricks and the parade-ground and the band in the
evenin'. I started out, not knowin' just where I'd
go, till I was stopped by the sight o' one o' our own
men lyin' dead. He'd been overlooked in the haste
to catch up with the advance. The band in the
evenin' was still in my ears. I was mad with the
one idea, and I made to take off his khaki so I might
203
have the harness ag'in, place o' these rags. Then
I saw who the man was. 'Twas Berry, old Tom
Berry, that'd give me a hand many a time my
bunky for two years. I buttoned up his blouse,
crossed his hands, laid his hat over his face and slunk
away. I wanted revenge for his death. I wanted
to pay the debt to the shadow that's followed me
since I was old 'nough t' reason.
" At first I was for goin' out alone in the brush
and gunnin' for Gugu soldiers, a-cuttin' as many
notches on my rifle-stock as I could 'fore they got
me. But I couldn't get the longin' for the feelin' o'
the harness on my back ag'in out o' my head. I
want to wear it once more, if only for a day. And
I've come to you, Mrs. Gerlison, who can do it for
me if anyone can. Yes, death's the only penalty.
I expect it. I want a squad to go with me to hunt
in the places where I know the prey is and to be
killed that way or any way in harness, so I can pay
back a little o' what I owe ! "
By way of reply Mrs. Gerlison put a question
which, as you will see later, is not as much out of
place as it appears to be.
" What became of Private Darklin who de-
serted from our regiment to the Filipinos? " she
asked.
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AGAINST HIS OWN PEOPLE
" Died of dysentery," he replied.
" And now as to your request," she said. " You
have broken faith twice. You broke faith as an
officer to those men in the trenches when you might
have saved them. Is it not so?"
" Yes. You're right," he slowly admitted.
"Yes, I'm worse'n I thought."
" You know the oath you took when you en-
listed. You know the penalty of such offence. I
think that there will be no mercy for you, an old
non-commissioned officer. Would you show any
if you were a commissioned officer and on the
court? "
" No."
" Can you justly expect any? "
" No."
"Then there is but one thing for you to do, if
you wish to show that you are a soldier again. That
is to face the facts and their consequences."
" In jail to-night and never ag'in to wear the uni-
form, and shot by my messmates! I I can't do
that."
" Then you had better sneak back as you came,
to the insurgents. I shall not break your confi-
dence, of course."
" Sneak ! sneak ! " He weighed the words, while
205
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
he pressed his nails into his palms. " I've been
Greaser n' Injin enough. I've sneaked enough!
I'll go out o' the world with my head up like a
man! " As he rose, he added, in the matter-of-fact
tone of one who has made up his mind : " I'm go-
in' to quarters and give myself up now."
Mrs. Gerlison stepped over to him and laid her
hand on his shoulder, smiling as she said :
" The court adjourns, the prisoner having shown
himself a man. I know all about the fight at Dang-
wan yesterday. It was Darklin, confused with
your Dark Cloud, who, we supposed, was in com-
mand of the insurgents. As for you, your record
has saved you. It was thought that you were
honestly captured. No one suspects you. So
you will be welcomed back, unless I become a
witness against you. Will you promise me that
in future death alone shall separate you from
duty? "
There were tears in Kanley's voice as well as in
his eyes as he said :
"I do, so help me God!"
" And what are you going to tell the Colonel and
your fellows? "
" That a dozen insurgents run me in while I was
lookin' for mangoes and not much else."
206
AGAINST HIS OWN PEOPLE
" And not much else, Sergeant. Remember ! A
leak may lead to a flood. Good-night."
The story might well end thus in fiction. How-
ever, it does not in fact.
More than a month afterward, the Sergeant, a
fashion-plate for " non-coms " from his waxed
mustache to his shining boots, appeared on Mrs.
Gerlison's porch at a favorable hour when she had
no visitors.
" It's 'bout the woman," he told her. "Consid-
erin' circumstances, when it comes to anything
'bout her I thought I was bound to come to you. I
ought to known I couldn't get her out o' my mind
as easy's I thought. Do what I could, I kep'
thinkin' o' her. As I heard Paddy Hourigan
sayin' to Bill Banby when they didn't know I was
listenin':
" ' Somethin's eatin' into the Sergeant's mind and
he's goin' off his head one o' these days. You'll
see.'
" It seemed sometimes as if she was thinkin' o'
me to make me think o' her, as if she was talkin' to
me and callin' me to come. I used to look over my
shoulder as I set in the shade away from everybody,
expectin' to see her there, till well, till I did see
207
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
her one afternoon comin' down the street, and no
mistake. I went into head-quarters as if I was
runnin' from the devil. I begged the Colonel's par-
don and pointed her out to him as she passed. She
didn't even look up to the buildin'.
" ' She's a spy,' I says. ' She's smarter'n the whole
Gugu army put together. She oughtn't to be al-
lowed in town, if I might make the suggestion.'
" He never said a word, 'cept to send a guard t'
take her out and warn her not to come back.
" I was so anxious not to have her look at me
with her devil's eyes and talk to me ag'in to guard
myself ag'in temptation that I didn't think she
might out with the whole story to the guard and it'd
be all over with me. I was in torment for two or
three days. Not hearin' any thin', I asked the Cor-
poral of the guard what the lady'd said.
" ' She's a bird ! ' he says. ' She says nothin' 'cept
says it in English, too " All ri'. Me good Ameri-
cano. All ri'. You like make walk hot sun, eh?"
And laughed to herself all the way out to the bridge
where we left her.'
" You see, she wouldn't do nothin' to harm me.
When I realized what that meant, I set by myself
more'n more, and there was times, so help me God,
when if it hadn't been for the mem'ry o' the look on
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AGAINST HIS OWN PEOPLE
your face that night I'd just nacherly gone out into
the brush to find her 'thout knowin' what I was
doin'.
" But the worst is to come. Last Wednesday the
Colonel sent me out with a squad to stop some snip-
in'. I got on to the snipers all right, and they run
soon's I did. The point is they didn't run Gugu
fashion. They'd fall and fire, 'bout a dozen of 'em,
and then get back, all in good order. They hit two
o' my men. I got my mad up and went farther'n I
expected. I laid for one that seemed to be doin' all
the bossin'. I shot a dozen times and missed him,
till finally I sneaked up to within two hundred yards
of 'em. They seemed to be waitin' for us, and so I
got a bead on the leader and dropped him. At that
we charged, and they laid down and, what I couldn't
'count for, not firin' a shot. As I come up to 'em
well, I seen that the leader was a woman yes, the
woman in a Gugu uniform.
" ' I want you back. I plan. I get you,' she
says.
" I heard a yell, and looked to see three or four
hundred Gugus from both sides right on top of us.
They had us all right. The woman, so faint she
couldn't hardly speak, says to their turkey-cock
colonel :
209
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
" ' Let him go.'
" And the Gugu crowd sneaked off.
" Then she says to me :
' I no can have you now. Good-by ! You go
back, be real white man ! '
" And that's why," the Sergeant concluded, " I'm
wearin' this bit o' crape on my arm. That's why I
can never be exactly happy. That's why there ain't
a steadier man in the Service now than me. For all
the Injin n' Greaser in me died with her."
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MARRYING OUT OF THE
ARMY
MARRYING OUT OF THE ARMY
WHAT remained of the Eleventh was tired,
cynical, and business-like. Twenty per
cent, of its muster was dead or in the hospital at the
close of the fifth day of the movement on Malolos.
On the sixth day, as sheer humanity demanded, it
was put in the reserve with the prospect now, at
dusk, of being in the advance again on the morrow.
In response to the order to halt, the men impulsively,
and the officers with a semblance of deliberation,
sank to the embankment of the railway. They
might be going into camp in five minutes; or, they
might have to wait an hour and then march five
miles, as every mother's son in the regiment well
knew.
Colonel Sterne was seated on the abutment of a
bridge spanning a gully which was the course of a
torrent in the rainy season. So were the regimental
Surgeon and the Major of the Second Battalion
but not the Acting Adjutant, First Lieutenant
" Bobby " Sanderson.
Bobby stood on a tie twirling, by its silk tassel,
213
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
the gold-headed cane of the late Presidente of
Marilao around his finger. The presence of his
superabundance of physical energy irritated the old
Colonel, who was mopping his brow with one hand
and using his hat as a fan with the other.
" Mr. Sanderson," he said, " that stick is property
as much as anything else. You must turn it in."
" Yes, sir," Bobby replied. " I was carrying it so
as to make sure by turning it in in person."
If the Colonel had any reply it was forgotten in
the arrival of an orderly, who told him that the
Eleventh would pass the night on the right of a cer-
tain road at the edge of a certain grove of bamboo,
with the South Dakotas on its left. After the regi-
mental staff had eaten its hardtack and corned beef
and drunk its coffee, and was lying on its blankets,
it tried, as the whole army was trying, to sleep. For
fifteen minutes there was silence. Then, nip-nip,
something cut the branches of the mango-trees, and
pop-pop, something exploded the hollows of the
bamboos.
" Sniping us again," thought the regiment, with
half-opened eyes. The Colonel rose up on his
elbow. As he did so a dozen bullets passed over-
head, and our outposts began to reply.
" How annoying ! " he remarked. " I thought
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MARRYING OUT OF THE ARMY
that we should get one comfortable night. Mr.
Sanderson, ascertain what it's about."
Bobby's departure was in due time followed by
some Krag volleying, which put an end to firing
from the other side. Meanwhile a great event had
taken place. Bobby, picking his way back through
the bamboo thicket, was informed by Fairweather,
of Company C, of the news which had travelled as
fast as that of a death of a general in the field. The
officers of the regiment had postponed sleep to dis-
cuss it in the dark.
" The Colonel's just received a telegram from
Molly," Fairweather said. " She was to have
stayed in Hong-Kong with friends until the Colonel
knew where he was to be settled, or, at least, could
come to Manila and take care of her. She has re-
plied, saying that she will be in the bay day after to-
morrow morning, on the Lang Wang, or some such
Chinese thing."
" Good for Molly! She inherits the spirit of the
Service."
" The old man has been grouchy enough all day,"
Fairweather concluded, " and this is the straw that
about breaks the camel's back."
The regiment was devoted to Molly. Most of
the unmarried officers had experienced a period of
215
being " serious," and when Molly had told them
confidentially that she wouldn't think of such a thing
as marrying, she made it easy for them to hide their
disappointment by publicly and platonically appre-
ciating her as a regimental blessing. Fairweather
was one of these, having learned his fate at Dear-
born. As for the irresponsible Bobby, he had never
been anything like in love since he was sixteen, when
he suffered for only a week. Molly had boxed his
ears in return for his setting the latest arrival from
the Academy on to make love to her; and he had
frequently taken money to her to keep against the
expense of a vacation in the East. Once he saved
all of three months' pay in this way. He spent it,
and was owing two months' besides, when he re-
turned with thirty-five cents to his name. The
change was in an overcoat pocket where he had
overlooked it.
As Bobby approached him, the Colonel was sit-
ting up on his blanket with his hands crossed over
his knees looking into space. Bobby saluted.
The Colonel nodded.
" Forty or fifty Filipinos crept up a gully, which
furnished them protection, two-thirds of the way to
our lines," he reported. " I took a platoon and
drove them out. Didn't get many, because they
216
MARRYING OUT OF THE ARMY
sneaked off as they had come under cover. They'll
be back sniping again early in the morning. I
thought if you were willing I would take Sergeant
Burke and twenty picked men and creep around
behind them, then the ground permits it; I looked
it over bag the lot."
Bobby had not the slightest idea that the Colonel,
who had refused many similar ones, would grant
his request.
" Very well," said the Colonel, absent-mindedly.
Bobby wanted to jump into the air and knock his
heels together. What he did was to worry in si-
lence, lest the Colonel should change his mind. But
the Colonel quite dismissed the subject by pulling a
piece of paper out of the inside pocket of his blouse.
" Can you get me a light, Mr. Sanderson? " he
asked.
Bobby brought forth a stub of candle from his
bedding and held it, while, by its flickering flame,
the Colonel read for the tenth time the following :
" ' Horrid place. Can't wait here while you're
fighting. Arrive Thursday morning on the Loong
Sang. Don't make target of yourself and do take
cover for sake your loving Molly.' '
It did not matter that the cable tolls from Hong-
Kong to Manila were ninety cents a word. The
217,
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
Colonel would have gone on to the parade-ground
in a shabby uniform rather than have had Molly
know that she was extravagant. Whatever econ-
omy, with all his pay to spend, she had practised
since her mother's death was purely conscientious.
Clearly defined in the shadows, her father's fine old
face, with its big Roman nose and military mus-
tache and goatee, told only too well that he con-
sidered himself a grossly outraged man. He had
received two wounds at San Juan, and before he had
fairly recovered had been sent again to the tropics
to face the hardships of bushwhacking in the jungle.
He " let go " with his lost temper for a moment
against the wrongs of the regular Service and closed
his little speech with the customary remark (on such
occasions) that he was going to resign as soon as
these Filipinos were whipped and he decently
could.
" Probably she came down from Hong-Kong
without any chaperone," he added, leaving off theo-
ries to take up conditions. " Of course, Mrs. Gerli-
son would see that she was established at the hotel
with some officer's wife to look after her, and Field
would go out for her on the Quartermaster's launch.
But that is not like going myself, or having some
one from the regiment go."
218
MARRYING OUT OF THE ARMY
;< You might send me into town on business,"
Bobby suggested.
' Yes, you always have a way out of everything,
don't you, Mr. Sanderson? " said the Colonel,
sharply. " Well, it's possible. Malolos is our ob-
jective. We'll be in there in the morning, though
we may have something of a brush. The railway
is intact right up to the lines, and you could go on
the train after the engagement. Very well. Good-
night, Mr. Sanderson."
" Good-night, Colonel."
Bobby wanted to jump in the air and kick his
heels together again at the prospect of seeing Molly
and hearing all the " home talk." What he did was
to worry again in silence until the Colonel's eyes
were closed, for fear that the Colonel would sud-
denly recall what he had been talking about previ-
ously and say: " No, sir; you can't go risking lives
stumbling around any gully in the dark."
Shortly before midnight Bobby picked his way
among the forms of the men to the side of Sergeant
Burke, who, when Bobby shook him, emitted a
cuss word for the benefit of the supposed private,
and then, recognizing Bobby, jumped to his feet
and saluted. Bobby explained his little plan.
Flushed with the joy of the thing, Burke went from
219
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
one sleeping man to another until he had picked
out the twenty best shots in B and C companies.
What followed is a part of the history of the regi-
ment. Suffice it that at dawn, while the General
and his staff were drinking their coffee and the ar-
tillery was passing up the road to open the engage-
ment, Bobby and the Sergeant appeared on the
scene with a picturesque procession behind them.
All his men and all the prisoners were either carry-
ing native wounded or bundles of captured rifles.
" Ninety-six Mausers and eighteen Remingtons,"
Bobby reported, " and a colonel and a major,"
nodding to two crestfallen little Tagal officers
" who may give you some information."
" Well, well, Mr. Sanderson," said the General,
his eyes sparkling under his Quaker hat; " that's
more than the whole division has taken in the last
three days. How did you do it? "
" They were in a gully. I got behind them, and
had them like rats in a sewer with both ends closed.
A very valorous deed, sir," Bobby added with a
laugh, " considering that we had no casualties."
The General was on the point of offering Bobby
a place on his staff. To be trained by the head
under that Quaker hat was the same as being a
" made man " in the Eighth Army Corps. On
220
MARRYING OUT OF THE ARMY
second thought, he apprehended how easy it would
be for Bobby to upset even the gravity of a Presby-
terian Synod and he postponed consideration of the
matter. So Bobby turned over his prisoners and
their arms and ammunition to the proper authori-
ties of the division, bade Burke get some breakfast
for his men, and, without thinking of any breakfast
for himself, hurried off to the Colonel, who, not
having slept at all, and having been too nauseated
to eat anything, was now almost in a temper be-
cause the Adjutant, whom he deceived himself that
he could not rely upon at all, was not at his side.
Therefore, Bobby worried all through the march
into Malolos for the morning's work cannot be
dignified with the name of engagement lest the
Colonel should revoke his leave to go into town.
The first of the two daily trains went, and still the
Colonel said nothing. An hour before the time set
by the Staff Quartermaster for the departure of the
second train he was bold enough to recall the sub-
ject, saying, in his pleasantest tone:
" Molly's coming in the morning, isn't she? "
"Don't you suppose I know it?" the Colonel
snapped. " I've been trying ever since last night
to get up enough courage to ask leave to go into
town, myself; but I've no business to. It isn't in
221
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
the line of duty to meet your daughter; and there's
an end of it. So you'll have to go you'll have to
go."
He walked along the rough ballast of the track
under the broiling sun with Bobby to the train,
calling out as the last of many repeated injunctions :
" See that she's comfortable no matter what the
cost; and tell her that I will come to Manila very
soon, and she mustn't think of trying to come out to
Malolos."
It took the train four hours to wriggle in the
twenty-five miles to Manila, over twisted rails
joined together in " some fashion " by the engi-
neers, and past burned stations and deserted vil-
lages. Bobby went at once to Calle Nozaleda.
"We can't think of letting Molly go to that
abominable Spanish hotel," said Mrs. Gerlison;
" she must come and live with me in my abominable
Spanish house. What with the things we get from
the Commissary, what that rascal, Ah Foy, my
cook, buys at the market, and my chafing-dish,
I manage to exist. Anyway, it's a lot better than
the hotel. So we'll do until the Colonel comes into
town and regularly sets up an establishment of his
own, which, of course, will put mine in the shade;
as I devoutly hope it will, if this heat keeps up."
222
MARRYING OUT OF THE ARMY
" That settles it," said Bobby. " I'll telegraph
the Colonel the news and he will cut my leave short
as a reward for using my influence in behalf of a
homeless girl eh? "
Bobby was not the sole passenger on the First
Quartermaster's launch, which steamed out into the
lead-colored, glassy bay, already (at 7 A.M.) dully
gleaming with the heat of the sun. No more were
all the others merely Ministers Plenipotentiary on
behalf of officers in the field. Some were the kings
themselves. On this morning the joy aboard the
old China coast trader was not to be alloyed by the
moan of a woman's grief. Two husbands and one
son had been wounded, but none had been killed.
Bobby, swinging himself up under the rope rail of
the gangway, was the first on deck.
" Molly," he cried, as he seized both her hands,
" in behalf of the regiment, which sends you its love,
I will formally and publicly state that you're look-
ing so fine, all in white, that I've a notion to kiss
you, officially, for your father."
She did not reply with fully armed and armored
banter as she would have in the old days; and it was
the absence of this which first aroused in Bobby's
mind the suspicions which were justified by later
events.
223
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
" Mr. Sanderson ! " she said, " you had better not.
Mr. Sanderson, how is my father? "
"Mr. Sanderson!" he mocked her. "Mr. San-
derson does not know a thing about your precious
father until you call him Bobby. What kind of
manners have you been learning on the way across
the Pacific?"
" Oh, Bobby, then, quick ! " She put her hand
on his arm. " Tell me, nothing has happened? "
" Your father is a little tired, without so much
as a scratch. We've taken Malolos. He's there
with his regiment and sent me to make prepara-
tions for you. You're to live with Mrs. Gerlison
until he comes to town and fixes something per-
manent."
" It's very nice of Mrs. Gerlison." Here Molly
became unnatural again. " I will call and thank
her. But I'm going to stop at the hotel with Mrs.
Bickerford, who has kindly chaperoned me down
from Hong-Kong."
With this, Molly introduced to Bobby the wife of
a well-known and well-to-do political mark the
word, political brigadier-general of volunteers,
with whose military career Bobby was quite fa-
miliar. It was Bickerford who, having tied his line
into a knot and waited three hours for the news-
224
MARRYING OUT OF THE ARMY
paper correspondents to come up, charged into the
town of Balingtig, where he found in front of the
Presidente's house a small fat artist sketching, for
an illustrated paper, the sole defender of the town,
an aged woman. So Bobby was bound on prin-
ciple to be merely polite to Mrs. Bickerford and not
to like her.
" And this, Mr. Sanderson," Molly continued,
turning to a man who was standing by the side of
Mrs. Bickerford, " is Mr. Opdyke."
Poor Mr. Opdyke, with moist handkerchief in
hand, was suffering from the contrast between the
cool air twelve hours off Manila and the oven which
the vessel passed into as soon as she was under the
lee of Luzon. Mr. Opdyke was large about the
waist and had the air of Broadway. Bobby after-
ward officially described him to the regiment as a
" soft importation with three diamond rings
three ! " And Bobby held up three fingers as he
spoke. Mr. Opdyke's opinion of Bobby, at first
sight, was no more complimentary. " I'll bet the
young fool couldn't draw his check for three cents,"
was Mr. Opdyke's mental comment. This was
perfectly true. In all the time since his rich uncle
secured an appointment to West Point, in order to
keep his mischievous nephew out of an apprentice-
225
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
ship in his own glue works, Bobby had never had a
bank account.
" You'll go off in the Quartermaster's launch, of
course," Bobby said. " Shall I help you with your
baggage? "
" No, thank you," was the reply. " Mr. Opdyke
has some friends in business here and their launch
is waiting to get alongside now."
Whereupon Mr. Opdyke seemed as much relieved
as if Molly had been snatched from the burning. It
was patent to the most superficial observer that he
was hopelessly in love with her.
" Then I will hurry back by the afternoon train
and assure the Colonel that you are in the best of
hands." Bowing, he passed down the gangway.
As he related the incident to Mrs. Gerlison, who
was everybody's confidant, he remarked, with a sad
shake of his head :
" And Molly's always been such good fun. I
thought she would be the last girl in the world to
turn snob. Didn't you? "
" Oh, I don't think that she had the slightest idea
of being snobbish. You see, others come to ma-
turity, even if you don't, Bobby, and a girl can't
always be a tomboy. Besides, I have always had
an idea that Molly would marry out of the army
226
MARRYING OUT OF THE ARMY
and eventually become a dignified leader of society,
anyway."
Mrs. Gerlison watched Bobby narrowly out of
the corner of her eye for the effect of her words.
" But what has marrying got to do with it? " he
asked. "That's Molly's business; but it's no rea-
son why she should be haughty to the Eleventh."
" If he does, he does not know it," Mrs. Gerlison
thought. " And I think he does. What a tumult
there'll be if he awakens to it too late " a remark
which you are to interpret for yourself.
A telegram ordering the Eleventh into Manila for
police duty passed Bobby on the train on his way
to Malolos, where he found the Colonel in good
humor with the whole world at the prospect of be-
ing with his daughter in the next twenty-four hours,
while every officer in the regiment had assured him-
self that he should have one dance with Molly at
the next provost-marshal's " hop." But Molly
danced only twice at the next provost-marshal's
hop once with Mr. Opdyke and once with General
Bickerford and went home early. By this time
everybody knew that Mr. Opdyke was very rich;
and everybody concluded that Molly was going to
marry for money. Her old father seemed highly
pleased with the arrangement, and he sat facing the
227
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
couple every evening when they drove on the Lu-
neta. Tropical campaigning, which led one colonel
to resign the first day he was out in the field with
his regiment, had awakened him to a sense of his
age and disabilities. He was beginning to realize
how little would be left for Molly in the event of his
death. She would marry well, while he would retire
and live near New York. A dozen times he was
on the point of resigning, but, when it came to the
test, postponed it upon the plea that he owed it
to his country to wait until the dry season's cam-
paign was over, at any rate. He did not admit to
himself that it was disagreeable for a man who had
been mustered out as Major-General of Volunteers
in 1865 to be retired as a Colonel as long as there
was a hope of becoming a Brigadier in the Regulars.
Of course, it did not even occur to him that his love
of the Service was too deep-seated for him to be
happy out of it.
When he was in the Ayuntamiento one day, the
tireless Patient and Well-abused One who ran all
the departments of the army with his pad and pencil
and still had time to keep track of army gossip,
looked up from his desk and said :
" So you think your daughter will live in New
York eh, Sterne?"
" Well, I think the army doesn't offer much re-
228
MARRYING OUT OF THE ARMY
ward, and I want to see my child well settled in life.
Why, you've often expressed such opinions your-
self." "
" Yes, yes, we all talk. Behind it all, once in the
Service, you are forever of it. We don't like to
lose such a girl as Molly."
" He'll be overlooking my table expenses yet,"
growled the Colonel as he left the room.
" Pudge " Bilter, who received his nickname at
the Academy, took Molly's desertion most seriously
of all the officers of the Eleventh on principle, not
that he entertained any hopes for himself. He had
proposed to Molly within a fortnight after he joined
the regiment; had thought seriously of suicide, and
then turned philosopher. It was more than a
month after Molly arrived when he buttonholed
Bobby, one day, on the Escolta, and said, impetu-
ously, after a circumlocutory introduction:
" Bobby, it's a pity. She's going to be awfully
unhappy with that fellow. I wouldn't mind so
much if he were the real thing of his kind. He isn't.
Do you think he is? "
" Oh, I suppose he's a real thing of some kind
but not my kind. Three diamond rings. Three ! "
" You're to blame, Bobby. You could keep her
in the regiment if you would."
" I could? How, for Heaven's sake? "
229
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
" You're the only fellow in the regiment who
could, and why don't you get her away from that
soft thing? "
" Pudge, you're suffering from the heat; you had
better step under the awning there for a time and
fan yourself. Morning ! "
Bobby frequently passed a few words but only a
few with Molly on the Luneta in the evening.
She still addressed him by the name by which he
was known throughout the army. Their banter
still had the form, but none of the heart, of the old
days. The evening after Pudge's outburst it hap-
pened that neither her father nor Mr. Opdyke was
with her. She moved over to make room for him
on the seat by her side; and she spoke with some-
thing of the old confidential fellowship.
" Mr. Opdyke has gone over to Cavite," she said.
" He's been very patient, you know, Bobby."
" About what ? " he asked, innocently.
" About the military situation, of course. I have
promised him an answer to-morrow and I'm going
to say yes, I suppose. But, Bobby, I shouldn't
have told you that. What was I thinking of to tell
you? You mustn't breathe a word! Promise!"
She seized his arm in a little fury of insistence.
" What do you think? Did I breathe a word
230
MARRYING OUT OF THE ARMY
when you told me how when Pudge fell upon his
knees at the psychological moment he slipped on
the grass and slid all the way down the ter-
race "
" Oh, Bobby, that was so wicked of me."
" Molly, I don't understand it. I mean we hate
to lose you. I mean " Bobby spoke incoher-
ently and almost angrily. The color was coming
and going in his face. " I thought that any one of
the fellows in the regiment was better than I mean
Fairweather, Stokes, and Pudge they worship the
ground you walk on."
" Oh ! So I'm not to be considered in the matter
of choosing my husband? "
" I mean, Molly, we don't want to lose you. Of
course, it's none of our business. You have been
so long with the regiment, you see. I congratu-
late you. You shall have a wedding present
worthy of the daughter of the regiment. A great
present, Molly pardon me for a moment there's
Major Symes and I have something to say to
him."
" And, Bobby, you're sure you won't tell." She
detained him a moment. " It will be announced
regularly, you know."
" 'Pon honor. Forget what I said. You know
231
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
that its source is the most thoughtless and least
serious man in the regiment. Molly, it's quite
proper. You're too fine to waste your life in a
garrison town."
Bobby merely told Major Symes that the sunset
was unusually beautiful. Then he went straight to
the barnlike building on the Calle Real, formerly
occupied by a Spanish official, which was his living
quarters. There the growing storm burst; there
came the " tumult " and the " awakening " which
Mrs. Gerlison had prophesied.
" What a girl like that can see in a man like
that ! " he exclaimed, gritting his teeth as he peeled
off his blouse and threw it into a corner.
He seized a foil and began lunging about the
room as if he were cutting his way out of a cul-de-
sac; and finally, in his outburst of childish wrath, he
thrust at the screen, which stood before the door,
knocking it over and nearly precipitating himself
as well into the arms of the Colonel, who was not
the man to call frequently upon his subalterns and
expected to be received with arms at attention in-
stead of with fixed bayonets.
" Damnation ! what do you mean, sir? " he de-
manded.
" I was practising with the foil, sir, but I assure
232
MARRYING OUT OF THE ARMY
you that I was not thinking of you in the light of
an opponent. Won't you come in? "
" No; I merely stopped in passing to tell you
that General MacArthur has asked you to come on
his staff. I had even assured him that you would
settle down."
" Exactly what I was trying to do, sir. Won't
you come in? "
" No. Good-evening, Mr. Sanderson," stamp-
ing down the stairs.
The Colonel had been told of his daughter's in-
tention that afternoon. He thought it meant the
consummation of all his plans. Yet he had refused
to go riding because he did not feel well and had
taken a public carromata all the way out to Calle
Real with a weight upon his mind, whose bulk he
fully appreciated, but whose nature he did not un-
derstand any more than he could understand why
he wanted to see and talk with his Adjutant, " the
most hare-brained youngster in the army," whom
he could never rely upon.
But this incident quite decided him that he was
tired of the Service. In fact, he kept repeating to
himself all the way back that he would be supremely
happy on the retired list if he were not far away
from Molly.
233
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
" Well, my girl," he told her after he arrived
home, " it's better to be a millionaire's wife than to
live on a captain's pay ! I'm satisfied. But I didn't
say a word to influence you, did I? "
" Not a word, Daddy "
He started into his own room, but stopped on the
threshold to say : " And mind, Molly, don't you
have him if you don't want to. Take your time,
Molly. The army has its attractions."
" You may be very sure I won't," replied Mol-
ly, who seemed very much preoccupied. " I've
thought it all over, Daddy."
The old gentleman went " rummaging about " in
his room, picking things up and laying them down
absent-mindedly. He opened his trunk and took
out of a little case a plain bronze medal the kind
which are not struck by the bushel. It was from
the Congress of the United States to First Lieu-
tenant Edward E. Sterne " for rescuing the colors
of his regiment from the enemy at Chancellorsville."
As he fondled it, he said, confidentially:
" I was a good deal such a colt as young Sander-
son, myself, in those days."
To return to Bobby. After the Colonel's de-
parture, he concluded that a shower-bath would
bring him to his senses. It merely hastened the
234
awakening process. He told the other officers of
the mess that he was going out to dinner, though
he did not know where. He passed across the
Luneta and down the Malecon at a furious gait.
Then he went through the Walled City, past the
Bridge of Spain and across the suspension bridge,
where he unconsciously turned his rapid strides
toward the street where the Colonel lived.
I can assure you that he had no intention of en-
tering. He says, himself, that he had not. But a
familiar voice from the Colonel's yard after he was
by the gate called :
" Bobby, do you pass your friends without speak-
ing?"
" No, never, Molly. At least, not when they
speak first." A few steps, and he was sitting beside
her on the bench in a little arbor.
" You're quite sure you haven't told anybody
not even Mrs. Gerlison? "
Of all things Bobby did not want to recur to this
subject. Yet he began talking about it, and im-
mediately, as he knew that he would, began saying
things that he ought not to say.
" I hope you didn't misunderstand me this even-
ing. I wanted to congratulate you I mean-
he began, " I mean the regiment didn't want to
235
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
lose you. We thought some fellow in the regi-
ment eventually would why, every unmarried
man except Dodge and myself "
His effort to laugh was a tragic failure.
" And if," he continued, " if I thought I'm go>
ing to say it no matter if I am ridiculous if I
thought that you would care for such a buster as
I am, why, Molly, I would go on my knees with you
to a chaplain to-night."
" Bobby ! " She held out both hands. " You
needn't do that, Bobby. For I'll want to lean on
your arm. Only, we will wait a few days."
The manner of making this contract was abrupt;
but no one shall gainsay that it was characteristic;
or somewhat in keeping with the ways of the
Service.
When Mrs. Gerlison came up to the Sternes's
carriage on the Luneta she officially welcomed
Molly back to the Service and afterward whispered
to her :
" And, my dear, didn't you really know that you
cared for him until that evening? "
" Not a bit," was the reply.
" How delightful it is to be young," Mrs. Gerli-
son remarked, incidentally.
236
THE TAMING OF THE
CAPTAIN
THE TAMING OF THE CAPTAIN
DIDN'T see you on the Luneta this even-
J. ing," said Mrs. Gerlison to Captain Leeds,
of Hospital Number i, as he took a seat on her
veranda after dinner.
" No," replied the weary giant a giant with a
little blonde mustache and a very high forehead
leaning over and twirling his cap around his
thumbs.
" You missed a beautiful sunset."
" Yes? "
" Grumpy? "
" Yes. Awfully grumpy, Mrs. Gerlison."
" Overworked, you mean. Trying to do two
days' work in one in the tropics. When will you get
your nose off the grindstone for the one glorious
hour of the day in Manila? "
" It's more restful to see the sunsets through your
eyes. I always come to you. You are the sov-
ereign balm for blues."
This woman of forty was used to such remarks
from this man of twenty-eight.
239
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
" And what is the specific trouble to-night? " she
asked. " Has the Patient and Well-Abused One
been denying you the zinc to make a sink because
they didn't have zinc sinks in the Civil War? "
" No. It's another Florence Nightingale ! "
" Poor boy ! " she said, shaking her head dubi-
ously.
" I've had clear boards for a week. Worked all
kinds of dodges to get them transferred to the other
hospitals and here is another specially asked to
come to me ! "
" Po-or boy ! " Mrs. Gerlison repeated.
" Worse yet. She's the daughter of a Senator !
Think of how she'll fill the malingerers with cham-
pagne, overload the stomachs of fever patients, and
raise riot generally ! "
" Po-oor, po-oor persecuted boy! "
He looked up into Mrs. Gerlison's eyes, which
were twinkling. She was still shaking her head
and her fan at him. Whereupon, he saw what he
had come to Mrs. Gerlison to see: that is, how ri-
diculous he was and he burst out laughing.
" Didn't I say that sunsets were as nothing com-
pared to you?" he exclaimed. "I have it!" he
added. " I'll put the Senator's daughter in the
Light Diet Kitchen, poaching eggs and making
240
THE TAMING OF THE CAPTAIN
toast and she'll burn her fingers on that damnable
contraption of a stove which I took by main force
one night from the Quartermaster's Department
when it properly belongs to Mrs. Colonel Dyer.
She'd still be looking for it, if the Quartermaster, to
save himself, hadn't told her that it slipped off a
casco into the bay when it was being unloaded from
the transport. Yes, the Senator's daughter'll burn
her fingers; she'll call me a brutal military tyrant,
and go home to tell her father all about it. Maybe
there'll be resolutions in the Senate : ' Whereas,
the Senator's daughter burned her fingers ' "
" Now let me preach just a little :
" Your experience at Chickamauga with the New
York rookies blinded you to the merits of every-
thing on the earth but a hospital corps man of three
years' training. We were all volunteers in the be-
ginning. If one is capable of the good use of
power, as I know that you are, he ought to plan to
attain power."
" Just as you have done to make yourself the
most influential woman in the Philippines."
" But I'm not. I've done no planning. I do try
to be helpful."
" Then you fail to practise your own theory."
" S-s-h ! Didn't I tell you in the beginning that
241
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
it was a sermon? Now I fancy that you are going
to find the Senator's daughter a lovely girl who
wants to do something besides flutter around in
Washington. If you are nice to her she certainly
will be less bothersome than if you are not nice."
" I hope that I shall always be decently polite to
women, even to the daughter of a Senator who gets
commissions for the worthless sons of his political
lieutenants."
" S-s-h ! She won't keep at it long. They never
do. In a month they can learn enough to last them
a lifetime. And if you will simply behave she will
go back to Washington and tell her father what a
dear you are and that may mean promotion."
" Never ! never ! She goes to the Light Diet
Kitchen," he said, merrily, as he rose to go.
" Thank you, O sovereign cure for the blues ! "
" I suppose you will forbid me coming over with
newspapers and talking with the sick pretty soon,"
she called after him; " and put up a sign, ' Ladies
passing in the street will please cross themselves and
utter a prayer begging forgiveness for the crime of
their sex.' '
" No, not you, Mrs. Gerlison. You are always
welcome. You are a real layman you don't try
to prescribe or be a doctor or a nurse or something
242
THE TAMING OF THE CAPTAIN
that you're not. If a woman will only come into
the hospital and be a woman that's what we want.
But they always insist upon being either something
extremely tragic or else something extremely tech-
nical and practical."
Back at his desk in the hospital, he was the erect,
self-possessed, exacting officer, applying himself
again with energy after his little recess from school
to the care of 400 sick men and the training of a
hundred or more recruits enlisted in the States
and dumped in Manila as so much raw material
varying in flexibility. Thus he worked far into night
writing, drawing, and planning in his fight against
Spanish filth, until weariness began to stale his
ideas, when he found himself too nervous to sleep
well.
He was awake as soon as his junior assistants,
whom he drove to bed at nine, and, freshened by his
shower-bath and coffee, he cheerfully attacked the
problems of the day. Greater stimulant than these
there was the Senator's daughter! He was in-
terested, as he put it in his own mind, to see the
nose of Miss Dodsworth go up when he proposed a
course in the Light Diet Kitchen in the month of
May in Manila.
Now, Miss Dodsworth had taken quarters just
243
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
across from the hospital so as to be near her work.
He had not expected her before nine, and she ar-
rived before eight. She was clad in a neat-fitting
lawn gown. At a first glance, Leeds could not help
noticing that gown, which shone so by comparison
in a community garbed by Chinese tailors. She
was small of stature and compact, with a rather pro-
nounced chin and slightly retrousse nose alto-
gether comely.
With a very-much-at-home air she accepted the
Captain's outstretched hand and sat down without
being asked.
" They offered me my choice of hospitals," she
explained. " When I found that you had no wom-
an here I chose this one at once, of course."
" How good of you ! " he said, quite forgetting
the gown.
" I am ready for an assignment."
" You will be of most assistance in the Light Diet
Kitchen, now."
" What is that? I mean of course, I know."
" To poach eggs nicely, make custards and such
things for convalescents who can retain nothing else
on their stomachs."
" Of course," she put in with asperity. " I said
that I knew what a Light Diet Kitchen was."
244
THE TAMING OF THE CAPTAIN
He picked up a little system of cards.
" The Sergeant will explain these to you. They
merely hold others accountable to you and you ac-
countable to others, so that by reaching up to this
cabinet I can trace any error to its source and cor-
rect it."
" What nonsensical red tape ! " she exclaimed.
" Do you take a check for your cloak when you
go to the theatre?" he asked abruptly, as he saw
her anger rising and began to hope that she might
ask immediately to be transferred to some other
hospital.
" Yes, if I want to."
" You do if you leave it in the cloak-room ? "
" Yes."
" Strange. What is your father's occupation? "
" If you wish to know very much, he's a manu-
facturer. Why don't you write it down on your
cards? What has it to do with the hospital? "
" Is he bankrupt? "
" No, he isn't ! " As she told a friend afterward,
she was " just mad all through " by this time.
" Then you will find that he has a system of checks
and counterchecks which places responsibility for
every article coming in or going out of his factory.
There are people who also think that government
245
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
institutions should be run on business principles.
As a consequence, I am running this hospital, effi-
ciently, my superiors say, with one-half the force
used for the same number of patients at any of the
great chaotic camps during the Spanish War."
He thought that he was making himself very dis-
agreeable.
"Indeed!" said Miss Dodsworth. "Thank
you."
Leeds wanted to say : " That was a beautiful re-
turn," but he only added, " I have rung for the
Sergeant, who will be here in a moment. Mean-
while, you will pardon me if I go over these or-
ders."
" Oh, don't trouble. Perhaps I might inquire
my way to the Light Diet Kitchen and save the
Sergeant time. Do I cut my own wood? "
'* You may if you think it will make the eggs any
better. The eggs are the result to be achieved. I
will leave the details to you."
Here the Sergeant appeared. The Captain gave
him the cards and instructions.
" Good-morning, Miss Dodsworth. I hope that
your poached eggs will win the hearts of our
patients."
She turned to him with a little courtesy. (In fact,
246
THE TAMING OF THE CAPTAIN
it was a very fine and challenging little courtesy;
for she had enough presence of mind not to stamp
her foot, though she did thrust it forward.)
" I was told all about you last night," she said.
" What you have said this morning quite bears out
your reputation as a military tyrant. Probably you
think that I can't poach eggs. You will find that I
can. You will also find that I propose to stand on
my rights. I am going to do something besides
poach eggs. I am going to do what I can to lighten
the hearts of patients here, whom you regard as so
many blocks of wood."
The old Sergeant's blue eyes twinkled twinkled
into the Captain's in an understanding which is not
expressed in official language.
" Delightful, Miss Dodsworth," said the Captain.
" You recognize the usual procedure of a declara-
tion of war before hostilities begin."
"Wasn't she sassy?" he exclaimed to himself
after she had passed out. " But of course the pretty
young thing can't poach eggs."
The Sergeant explained the method of the cards,
which, after all, was as simple as daylight, and in-
troduced Miss Dodsworth to Biggins, a private of
the hospital corps, whom she was to succeed as
poacher of eggs and maker of custards.
247
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
" The heat's something awful, miss," he said, in
a tone of kindly, respectful fellowship, " and if you
find it too bad just call on me and I'll help you out.
The Captain's strict all right, you'll find, and he
doesn't see why others can't work as hard's him-
self."
" Yes. You poor men must suffer a great deal.
If you have any grievances, come to me. I am here
to see justice done. I am Senator Dodsworth's
daughter."
" Well, miss," he said, coldly, " count me out on
that. The Captain's my kind of an officer. It's be-
cause of the likes of him that the regulars is always
fed and comf'table and know their work, and the
volunteers ain't and don't."
" So calloused to the yoke that he likes it, poor
man," she thought.
Biggins hurried across the court to catch up with
the Sergeant, to whom, in justice to his Captain, he
reported all that Miss Dodsworth had said.
" She's goin' to get up some row in the papers,"
Biggins concluded, weightily. " That's what she's
goin' to do, and I thought you ought to be
warned."
"All right, Biggins," the Sergeant said. "I
ain't going to tell the Captain yet. He's got enough
248
THE TAMING OF THE CAPTAIN
to worry about. I'll just keep an eye on her, my-
self. Mebbe I'll have to train the Senator's daugh-
ter a little."
At this stage of the world's progress, Miss Dods-
worth was sucking a blistered finger, but in nowise
shaken in her determination to show the Captain
that she could poach eggs. In place of a gauntlet
she sent him for tiffin two which rested as lightly
upon their bed of toast as two lotus flowers.
As she was leaving the hospital in the evening
the Captain was entering his office. He lifted his
cap.
" Your eggs were delicious, Miss Dodsworth,"
he said.
She made a salute of mock humility.
" I hope that any amiability which you may have
absorbed from them may be bestowed on your
patients," she replied, and started on.
He arrested her with a gesture and the impulse
of parrying the thrust.
" How did you account for the two eggs on the
cards? "
" I wrote, ' Two eggs for the Pooh Bah.' '
" That will never do " and he preserved a sol-
emn countenance. " The commissioned officers'
mess is quite separate. It is robbing the men. I
249
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
will send two eggs to the storeroom and we can
tear up the card."
" Thank you," she replied; and passed on.
After he had told Mrs. Gerlison everything,
Mrs. Gerlison did not surprise him by quietly re-
marking that she had heard both sides of the
controversy.
" Yes. I met her this evening on the Luneta,"
she said. " She's a spirited girl. What do you
think she called you? The Duke of Alva."
" Ripping ! ripping ! " He hugged his knee and
rocked his body back and forth. " Go on. Tell
me s'more ! "
" To be exact, she said that you were an unbend-
ing, heartless brute, who could vivisect a fawn while
looking into its weeping eyes and incidentally cuff
it for being so demonstrative."
" Lovely ! What did you tell her? "
" That if she could see the way you slouch on my
porch sometimes she wouldn't think you unbend-
ing. I spoke of your distinguished conduct on the
night of the outbreak and tried generally to im-
prove her opinion of you."
" The deuce you did ! Why, you'll spoil all the
fun."
" Oh, no, I won't. The young lady merely said
250
THE TAMING OF THE CAPTAIN
that she knew of course the regulars all held to-
gether."
"Good!"
" And now, boy, I want to tell you again that
you're making a mistake. The girl is matching her
power the power of her father and her friends
against you, and they can make you trouble. Please,
boy, do be sensible."
" They might take my hospital away from me !
They might Dreyfus me but not my commission !
For that we go back to the people. But don't put
it in that light or you'll spoil all the fun, I say."
" She's so angry with you you know the insidi-
ous effect of the climate she may work herself
ill."
" I'll trust a Senator's daughter not to do that.
You'll see. She'll soon be leaving the eggs and the
custards to Biggins."
His prophecy was fulfilled the next day, when
Miss Dodsworth divided her time between the Light
Diet Kitchen and the wards in pursuit of her in-
tention to make a thorough investigation of con-
ditions at the hospital. In Ward Number 2 her
sympathy was immediately drawn to Pike, who, if he
had been at Montauk in the lugubrious days, could
have shed hot tears at the approach of every Lady
251
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
Bountiful. At Manila he was in poor pickings; but
his hopes brightened the minute that he saw Miss
Dodsworth, knowing intuitively that she was his
kind. With a feeling of pride in his superiority, he
watched the other fellows along the line fumbling
their " graft."
" It's so seldom we sees women here," he told the
Senator's daughter, " that I had to rub my eyes,
miss, to make sure you wasn't an angel."
" How long have you been in the hospital, poor
fellow? " she asked.
" A month now," he said. " Oh, I'll never be
fit to go back to duty. It's the climate and me
knee. I'm goin' all to pieces. Me knee was in-
jured in a charge, and it's like boils. Never teched
foot to ground since. The doctors can't do nawthin'
for it and say I'm shammin'."
" What doctors? "
" The Captain, and all of 'em. Yes, sha-a-min' !
Me what hates being shut up in the house and loves
to be out fightin'. I get weaker 'n' weaker, and
I'll jest keep gettin' weaker 'n' weaker and the doc-
tors'll keep me here! Oh, if I could only die at
home, miss ! "
The clear-eyed young soldier with a bandage on
his shoulder partially rose from the next cot and
252
THE TAMING OF THE CAPTAIN
grinned. Miss Dodsworth was too absorbed to
notice him.
" You shall you shall live at home ! " she ex-
claimed. She had searched for treasure and had at
last found it. " Meanwhile, cheer up, poor fellow.
I can see how weak you are. You shall have a little
champagne. I know that that is strengthening."
" Oh, I dunno, I dunno," said the man in the next
cot, in an undertone; " I dunno but I need sym-
pathy, myself."
The Sergeant entered from the opposite end of
the ward just as Miss Dodsworth was leaving at the
other. He saw that the men around Pike were
grinning and smelled mice at once. When he
spoke to Pike, the malingerer assured the Sergeant
that he had said " scurcely " a word to the lady.
He then went to Miss Dodsworth, who was in a
high state of indignation.
" Miss, if you don't mind, I'd like to warn you
against that man, Pike," he said. " He's a hobo
that sneaked into the army under the bars and
they sometimes will, do the best you can."
" How do you know that he is? " she demanded,
with the flashing eyes of an agitator hewing her
way through injustice with broadsword blows.
" He funked and lay down behind a dike in his
253
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
first scrap and claimed that his knee was hurt. Been
so sore he couldn't touch his foot to the ground ever
since when the doctors was about. Miss, he's a
malingerer."
" How do you know he is? "
" Personal investigation, miss. I stayed up one
night just to satisfy myself. If you touch his knee
when he's awake he yells bloody murder and he's
always got his leg bent. When he was asleep that
leg was stretched out straight and I felt all around
his knee-cap without waking him."
" Did the Captain tell you to tell me all this? "
" No, miss. He don't delegate his talkin'. He's
pretty well able to do it himself."
" Yes. You just carry out the brutalities that he
doesn't care to carry out in person. Because you've
got a stripe on your arm and get a few dollars a
month more than the other men you can tyran-
nize over them like a plantation overseer in slave
times ! "
This brought the color to the Sergeant's cheeks.
He was still in the Service at his age for the love of
it, and at one-third of the pay that he could get in
civil life.
" Miss, you can call me any kind of brute you
want to, but when it comes to the Captain I'm bound
254
THE TAMING OF THE CAPTAIN
to speak up. Brute is it ? I've known him to walk
when he was sicker'n his horse. I've seen him
sleep cold and give his blanket to one of his men.
But he didn't say it loud enough for the whole camp
to hear : ' Here you are, old man, take my blanket ! '
He didn't get his name in the papers. He just said :
' Biggins, take this blanket.' That's his way. He
was born to it. And I'm thinking it's a good thing
some of us was born to it or there'd be no order."
Having delivered himself of this little lecture, the
Sergeant pointed straight for the Captain's office,
where it happened that that very brutal officer was
in the midst of a letter, making still another attempt
to get two brave men, whose lives he knew depended
upon it, started for home on the next transport.
" Pike's been filling Miss Dodsworth up with guff
and she takes his part," he reported. " She called
me a brute and wouldn't listen to my advice. I
overheard her say she was going to give him cham-
pagne."
" Supposing she did give him champagne? "
" Too much vino's the seat of his trouble anyway.
'Twould set him off."
" And maybe he would forget that sick leg and
we should have indisputable evidence of his sham-
ming? "
255
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
" Mebbe. Yes, sir."
" Well, let the matter stand."
Then the Captain picked up a duplicating pad
and sent this note marked " copy " to Miss Dods-
worth:
" Pike is suffering from alcoholism and, I am
convinced, is a malingerer. Sympathy shown to
him will be derogatory to discipline. I trust that
you will realize the bad effect of questioning the
Sergeant's authority before the men."
It merely increased the receiver's vexation. In-
stead of going to the Luneta before dinner she went
to the Commissary. As there were no pint bottles
in stock she got a quart bottle of champagne. When
she gave a glass to Pike he said it was life to him,
only he was so weak that it had little effect. Event-
ually, he wheedled three glasses out of her.
" I'll come to see you the first thing in the morn-
ing," she said. " Be of good heart. I'm going to
see the General about your case myself."
If she could have seen how ravenously his eye fol-
lowed the bottle as she took it out of the ward it
would not have prepared her, but it would certainly
have prepared the Sergeant, for what followed. At
one o'clock in the morning she was awakened by a
noise at her window. She sprang up and looked to
256
THE TAMING OF THE CAPTAIN
see, ghoulish in expression by the light of the match
she had just struck, Pike's face.
" Come to get the rest of that champagne, my
angel," he said, in a maudlin voice.
The idea of calling upon her had not occurred to
him until after crawling under cover of the shadows,
to avoid the sentries, to the officers' kitchen, he had
re-enforced his imagination with a pint of sherry.
Miss Dodsworth, who was alone in her quarters,
called to him hysterically to leave her window. By
way of reply he began to crawl in. She ran to the
door and out of it, not knowing where she should go
to escape from this beast at that hour when the
streets were deserted, until she saw that there was
still a light in the office of the bloody military tyrant
who held sway over Military Hospital Number i.
He was interrupted in writing a report by the
appearance of a young woman in pajamas and a
state of terror, who cried, " Pike is in my room ! "
and then slipped behind a screen.
He met Pike (who had followed Miss Dodsworth)
almost at the threshold. At the sight of the Cap-
tain, the malingerer lifted his foot from the ground
and moaned : " The pain in me knee must 'a' driv'
me mad ! "
"Go into the Sergeant's office! You are under
257
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
arrest," Leeds told him. " And you might as well
walk on both feet again."
" Yes, I guess I've worked that graft out, all
right," Pike replied, as he obeyed.
" Now, Miss Dodsworth," the Captain called,
" you may return to your room. I regret that my
sentries are so inefficient that any patient should
leave the hospital without detection."
He turned his back to the door and waited until
the pat of small feet unmistakably bare passed out
of hearing on the other side of the street.
It was late when Miss Dodsworth entered the
hospital next morning. Leeds was just returning
from inspection, his sword, unbuckled as soon as the
function was over, in his hand.
" I came to thank you for last night," she said,
" and to surrender."
" And with all the honors of war," he replied, " if
you will accept my apologies."
258
II
Miss Dodsworth made custards until luncheon,
but she did not appear at the hospital in the after-
noon. The next morning Leeds received a note
from her saying that she was not well and that she
had decided to give up the work.
" I can poach eggs just as skilfully as Biggins,"
she added, " only I'm afraid I never can stand the
heat as he does. I take this opportunity to confess
that I spoke disparagingly of you to him and to the
Sergeant. That was unwarranted. I made it a
point to tell them so yesterday. You are, no doubt,
a very efficient officer."
Leeds chuckled as he read.
" Though she looks down from a high place, she
is bound to be just, at any rate," he thought.
Suddenly he became serious.
" I wonder if I had anything to do with making
her ill ! " he exclaimed.
At heart, he was ever all kindness and gentle-
ness. He saw the part that he had played in the last
two days in a new light. Looking at the matter
259
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
from her side, he understood how she might well
have considered him a brute.
When he replied, expressing regret that she was
not to remain in the hospital, he was intensely in
earnest. He closed the note with what (so he con-
cluded twenty-four hours later) was the most
awkward thing he had ever written :
" I'm afraid that my enjoyment of combat car-
ried the thing too far. I thought you enjoyed it,
too. Really, I am not a blood-thirsty monster; and,
really, I have some manners. If I might have the
chance, now, I would show you that I have. I hope
your indisposition will be slight. My great fear is
that I am to blame for it."
She replied:
" Of course, I know you have manners. Of
course, I enjoyed them. I have told you that I con-
sider you an efficient officer. If my testimonial to
your superior officer is of any use, say so, and I will
write it; also, one for the Sergeant. I now realize
that it is superficial judgment which considers self-
importance as a sure sign of inefficiency."
Clearly, Miss Dodsworth, in closing the incident,
had scored again. Leeds felt extremely " mean," at
the same time that he was conscious of increased
admiration for her. He had the satisfaction, at
260
THE TAMING OF THE CAPTAIN
least, that he had done everything decency might
require when she flew to him as a refuge from
Pike. That evening he went to Mrs. Gerlison to
find out if her illness was serious or trifling (as he
had supposed). Now that he was interested in her,
he proceeded to show, in the plainest way, that he
was by not coming directly to the point.
" I suppose you've heard that my Florence
Nightingale has departed," he said, nonchalantly.
" Yes. I wonder you're not a wreath of smiles.
Has another come to take her place? "
" No, and no news of any."
" You say it as if you were disappointed."
" Well, you see I've no one to entertain me, now.
Miss Dodsworth was rather clever. Did she say
anything about Pike calling on her at one o'clock in
the morning? "
" No. I haven't heard any gossip from her."
He related the story.
" Naturally, she wouldn't tell an experience
like that. I don't know of any woman that
would."
Leeds now felt as if he had been caught red-
handed in a crime.
" Of course, of course," he said, moodily. " Mrs.
Gerlison, I'm afraid that hospital work is about all
261
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
I am efficient in. I know you won't repeat the
story, will you? And I'll speak to the Sergeant."
" You grow wise. I have always said that you
were capable of learning, boy."
" Do you know? she isn't seriously ill, is she? "
" Yes, I think she is. She took to her bed in a
high fever this afternoon. If she isn't better in the
morning, she's to be brought here. The doctor
fears that she is in for a bad time of it."
" Who? What doctor? " he asked, quickly.
" Linwood. Have you any objection to him? "
she asked, puckering her brows.
It seemed to Leeds that she had been unusually
cold from the first, that evening.
" Oh, no," he said. " But she ought to go to a
hospital. She would get better care there."
" Thank you. To what hospital? Yours? To
your Light Diet Kitchen? "
Her sarcasm put his conscience upon a bed of
coals.
" Then you think that I am responsible for her
illness?"
" I have not said that," she replied. " What do
you think? "
" But she was not in the Light Diet Kitchen five
hours altogether. I made no objection when she
262
THE TAMING OF THE CAPTAIN
left it to visit the men. I couldn't help it because
Pike got away and followed her. I warned her not
to give him champagne. If she hadn't, he wouldn't
have got out of hand."
" Oh, officially, you are quite correct. You al-
ways are."
" But," he fairly pleaded, " I'm not so terribly-
well, incorrect that's your word anyway. I
mean, I'm not responsible."
" I have just said that you weren't."
" But you said it in a way that implied other-
wise."
" I did! Then you think that I'm incapable of ex-
pressing clearly what I mean? "
" No. I think that you have more ways of inti-
mating what you mean than any woman I have ever
known. How am I responsible? "
" There are times when, if a person does not
know, there is no need of telling him. This is
one. You must see for yourself or remain in
ignorance."
" You are not amiable this evening. I think I
had better be going."
He stopped halfway down the walk and called
back:
" Promise me that you won't tell her that I told
263
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
you about her experience with Pike! It might
worry her have a bad effect."
" Oh, no," she replied. " The doctor says she
must not be irritated. I'm not likely to mention you"
He pondered on what Mrs. Gerlison had meant
until he thought that he had reached a solution.
He had unnecessarily tantalized Miss Dodsworth;
she had wrought herself to too high a pitch in com-
bating him. He began to appreciate more fully the
shock to her of being driven out of her room by
Pike and the humiliation of having to flee, in night
attire, to the arms of her arch enemy. He had been
official, but unmanly and unappreciative of a
woman's fine sense of pride or her delicate constitu-
tion. If he had been sitting on a Board for the
consideration of his own case he would have dis-
missed himself from the Service for " conduct un-
becoming an officer and a gentleman."
He learned from other sources, the next day, that
Miss Dodsworth had been taken to Mrs. Gerlison's.
Before dinner, he walked out to the Luneta. Mrs.
Gerlison was not there. Her absence suggested
that the patient must be worse. After dinner, he
went to her house, where he found her on the
veranda. As soon as she saw him she started down
the walk to meet him.
264
THE TAMING OF THE CAPTAIN
" My patient's asleep, and if we talked it would
disturb her, especially, if she knew that it was you
who " she seemed to check herself in the middle
of an indiscreet sentence. " So we'll walk back and
forth for exercise in place of my usual outing on the
Luneta, if you don't mind."
" Is she really very ill? " he demanded.
'' Yes. Linwood says that the crisis won't come
for two or three days."
He started a flood of professional questions.
" You must ask Linwood," she said. " He is
official, you see."
" What does she say? Does she think that I'm
responsible? "
" I haven't heard her mention your name."
" Well, I've thought over what you said last
night, and I feel that I am, in a sense, to blame."
" Yes? Well, let us hope that she will soon be
better. You didn't go to the Luneta this evening? "
" Yes."
" You did ! What could have taken you away
from the shop? "
" Why I I went to see if you were there to
ask about her."
" Oh ! I hope you did not suffer too much from
the relaxation."
265
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
For the next week, while Leeds still attended
strictly to his duties his thoughts were upon an ex-
traneous subject. Finding little that was definite
and all that was ominous and exasperating in the
replies of Mrs. Gerlison, who was worn with nursing,
to his questions, he went to Linwood for informa-
tion. Linwood said that Miss Dodsworth's life, in
a crisis, hung by a thread. Leeds felt the more
helpless because he had to remain inactive, and to
conceal his belief that Linwood was not doing all
that might be done. When he asked Linwood to
send him a note twice a day as to her condition, Lin-
wood showed by his smile that he smelled a mouse.
This sunk Leeds deeper in trouble. He feared that
the Luneta soon would be linking two names to-
gether in a new theme of gossip. But to protest or
attempt to explain to Linwood would only make
matters worse.
Miss Dodsworth survived; and her recovery was
rapid. During her convalescence Leeds called in
every expert in the city to make ice-cream; he sent
her California oranges, Anam mangosteens, and
flowers. Meanwhile, Mrs. Gerlison had as good as
forbidden him her house. She always met him gin-
gerly with a bulletin at the edge of the veranda. So
he came to send his delicacies (with his card at-
266
THE TAMING OF THE CAPTAIN
tached) by messenger rather than deliver them in
person ; and he looked in vain for any thanks or ac-
knowledgment.
When he heard that Miss Dodsworth was so
much better that she had been driving with Mrs.
Gerlison on the Luneta, he was among the first to
arrive there on the next evening. Miss Dodsworth,
thin and pale, was with Mrs. Gerlison again. Leeds
summoned his courage, and approached the car-
riage; but Mrs. Gerlison only bowed as she drove
away. After dinner, he went to her home. This
time, she allowed him on the veranda.
" For such old friends as we are," he said, " I
thought you were somewhat unkind not to let me
speak to you this evening."
" Oh, if I had been alone it would have been dif-
ferent," she replied.
" But I want to see Miss Dodsworth. I must
I will apologize to her. I thought that the fruit
and other things would open the way would let
her know that I realized that I had been rude
and brutal. You told her that it was I who sent
them?"
" Why you wanted them to assist her convales-
cence, didn't you? "
" Yes, above all things."
267
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
" Well, then, should I have mentioned you? "
" Did you take off the cards? "
" No, I don't think I did. Why should you put
cards on them? "
" Mrs. Gerlison, you're making me out a fiend.
I know I treated her as if she was an unwelcome ad-
dition to the H. C. I know that the test is that a
man should always be nice to women, regardless of
circumstances. But I do know, too, that if she had
been a girl of no position I should have been more
considerate. Being a Senator's daughter why, you
told me to bear her influence in mind well, at any
rate, I didn't try to curry her favor because of her
father's power. I want to speak to her; to tell her
how I feel."
There was a rustle of skirts, and Miss Dodsworth
herself appeared in the doorway.
" Mrs. Gerlison, I could not help listening. As
much as I love you," she said, " I must say that I
have given you no authority to talk in this way.
Captain Leeds, I knew that you sent the fruits, and
I thank you for them. You did save me from that
ruffian Pike and from my own folly. And you
must not forget that I called you a military ty-
rant and threw down the gauntlet in our first
interview."
268
THE TAMING OF THE CAPTAIN
When a certain engagement was announced a
week later, Mrs. Gerlison said to Captain Leeds:
" I always thought that you ought to marry and
you weren't so very hard to tame!"
Then he forgave her.
269
MRS. GERLISON'S OWN
STORY
MRS. GERLISON'S OWN STORY
IN the late seventies, when an American man-of-
war approached a European harbor, the lookout
was quite justified in remarking that she must be
American because her pattern was too old to be
Greek or Turkish. But our personnel, if not our
ships, was worthy of our pride. The commanders
were veterans who had smelt powder in the first
shock of ironclads driven by steam, while officers of
some nations that I might mention were sipping
their chocolate in cafes and training their mus-
taches. Associated with them were the graduates
of Annapolis since the great war, who, as their elders
pass the age limit, are becoming the masters of our
fighting-machines of to-day.
This story has to do with one of these youngsters,
Lieutenant Arthur Barnes, who becomes interest-
ing on the afternoon of January 15, 1877, when he
went ashore with two other officers at Naples. He
tried to persuade them to accompany him to Pom-
273
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
peii. They had already been there; and once a
cruise was enough, they said. So he went alone
in a public carriage.
He had barely alighted when he heard the sound
of galloping horses and the cries of the attendants
of the little inn near the gate to the ruins. He
looked up the road to see a team, out of the driver's
control, approaching. His guide was yelling " Stop !
Stop ! " alternately in three languages, while the
waiters, running out, excitedly waved their towels
and aprons.
Barnes hastened to the side of the road away
from the cafe. As the frightened ponies turned to
avoid the group that sought to bar their progress,
the Lieutenant, seizing the reins of the one nearest
to him, was able to bring them to a standstill. The
carriage slewed and upset in the gutter, throwing
out its occupants, who were a girl of twenty and a
middle-aged woman. The girl was on her feet be-
fore Barnes reached her side.
" That's the first time I ever knew that a Neapoli-
tan pony had sufficient force of character to run
away ! " she exclaimed.
By her voice she was an American; and when a
young woman makes so cool a remark as that un-
der such circumstances she is bound to excite the
274
MRS. GERLISON'S OWN STORY
interest of any young unmarried naval officer. She
put out her hand at the same time as Barnes to
assist her companion to arise.
" I am so glad I was on that side. I acted as a
buffer for you," she said to the elder lady, who
groaned. " You aren't hurt, mother? You haven't
broken a bone? Do you feel any pain? " the young
woman inquired anxiously, as she arranged the ma-
ternal bonnet and brushed the dust off the maternal
gown.
" No, I'm not hurt, if you only give me time to
get my breath and realize that I haven't been
killed," was the reply.
" After all, the shaking up may be for the best,"
added the other, soothingly. " I have felt all the
way out that some violent means was needed to deal
with the luncheon we had at the hotel."
When the mother was seated in the shade and
had drunk some cognac and water, she recovered a
composure of the rigid kind then in fashion in Bos-
ton. The daughter had her slim, tall figure, only it
was supple, while the black hair must have come
from the paternal side. There was now a flush on
the young woman's cheeks which heightened her
charm. The sparkle of her eyes spoke of a great
fund of reserve energy and good-nature.
275
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
Barnes gave his card to them. The mother hav-
ing focussed her vision on the letters U. S. N.,
through her eyeglasses, was reassured a little. At
least, she thought, she was not under obligations to
a vagabond.
" Mrs. and Miss Crofton," she announced. " I
am sure that we are greatly indebted to you. In-
deed, I fear I think that you saved our lives."
" Oh, no. When the ponies had tired as they
soon would have the driver would have got con-
trol of them again. I was one of a number of men
trying to stop them. If I hadn't caught the reins
someone else would. So please don't put it in that
light. I trust you will go back in my carriage; and
now that you are here you might as well see Pom-
peii."
"Barnes!" exclaimed Mrs. Crofton. "Are you
one of the Connecticut Barneses? "
" No, the Virginia Barneses. My great-grand-
father was in New England a little. He was on
Washington's staff."
As he spoke he flashed a plea for forgiveness into
the daughter's eyes for indulging in the most ridicu-
lous of American foibles. On his behalf it must
be said that he was very keen on seeing Pompeii in
the company of Miss Crofton. If he had said that
276
MRS. GERLISON'S OWN STORY
he was a Connecticut Barnes Mrs. Crofton would
have been convinced that he was a " perfect gen-
tleman." As it was, she was so far satisfied with
him as to consent to his proposal.
She was sorry almost immediately, and very sorry
after her Sadie and Barnes, leaving her and the guide
alone, spent more than three-quarters of an hour
looking at the remains of the theatre; as if the
theatre, with twenty lines in the guide-book, was
more interesting than the house of Marcus Lucre-
tius, with two pages.
She was silent all the way back to Naples, thank-
ing her stars that she had kept Sadie's high spirits
in strict abeyance, and that Sadie was already pub-
licly and solemnly engaged to one of the Massachu-
setts Gerlisons; while the young people talked and
laughed as if the world was their nut and they were
cracking it and prying out the meat leisurely with
picks of gold. She made their good-by formal,
final, for all that was said then, but was not quite
brutal enough to offer to pay for the carriage.
Barnes returned to his ship in the frame of mind
of one who has met with a most enjoyable adventure.
He pictured to himself how he would chaff his two
friends for not accompanying him. But when he
found himself at the mess-table he merely said that
277
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
he had seen Pompeii, and that it had not changed
any more since the other members saw it than it had
in the last 1,500 years. The reason for his silence
was due to a peculiar process of recollection that
gradually came to occupy most of his spare mo-
ments. You will better understand this if you will
read the following letters:
U. S. S. Vermont.
From NAPLES to SMYRNA,
January 16, 1877.
DEAR Miss CROFTON: We sailed fifteen minutes
after I was aboard, and this morning our noble ferry-
boat is meandering along at the rate of five knots.
Still, if the Government builds no new ships we may
look back on five knots as reckless.
If I were ashore I should certainly give myself
the pleasure of calling on you. I do hope that
neither you nor your mother has suffered any un-
pleasant consequences from the upsetting. If you
haven't, then I must say I'm very thankful for the
runaway. Instead of the dreary afternoon that I
contemplated well, I don't know when I have had
such a pleasant time. I thank you for it. I hope
that I may see you again one day to thank you in
person. I am afraid that I didn't make enough of
a point of doing so yesterday. For, after all, Ameri-
278
MRS. GERLISON'S OWN STORY
cans are not so numerous in Italy that they need
be strangers.
I am addressing this letter care your hotel in
Naples. Probably you will have gone before I have
mailed it at Smyrna and it has travelled all the way
back to you.
With the pleasantest recollections, I am,
Yours sincerely, ARTHUR BARNES.
U. S. S. Vermont,
From NAPLES to SMYRNA,
January 17, 1877.
DEAR Miss CROFTON: Though I did have some
excuse yesterday for writing, I confess that I have
none to-day except well, a sailor's time may hang
heavy on his hands. Besides, I have thought a great
deal of the afternoon I spent with you. It is the
brightest memory of my European cruise. How
admirably cool you were in the runaway! I have
laughed a dozen times about your remark as you
got up from the spill.
You asked me a great deal about the routine
aboard ship. [Then follows a description of the
day's routine.]
The other letter is already sealed, so I will mail
this one separately. Yours sincerely,
ARTHUR BARNES.
279
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
U. S. S. Vermont.
From NAPLES to SMYRNA,
January 18, 1877.
DEAR Miss CROFTON: I have no excuse except
that I want to write to you; and it is such an un-
usual thing for me to want to write to anybody in
common with others, I enjoy receiving letters in
inverse ratio to making them that I feel bound to
carry out my desire. Am I presumptuous? I hope,
at any rate, that you will not reason if I write so
much on short acquaintance that yet, I must con-
fess that that is just what I should do. . . .
(More details about life at sea.)
Yours sincerely,
ARTHUR BARNES.
U. S. S. Vermont.
From NAPLES to SMYRNA,
January 19, 1877.
DEAR Miss CROFTON: No excuse offered, except
that I thought of you all the while last night during
my watch, as I paced the deck with the stars over-
head and the wheezing of our old kettledrum en-
gines (which are a disgrace to the navy of a civilized
state) in my ears. There are other things about the
routine of the ship that you may not know. You
see, when I spent four years at Annapolis to learn
280
MRS. GERLISON'S OWN STORY
the trick how foolish I was to try to tell it all in
one letter. . . .
And if what I thought of to-day could be ex-
pressed in a wish, it would be that I could have a
month's vacation, and every day thereof I could go
to Pompeii to stop a pair of runaway horses.
Yours sincerely,
ARTHUR BARNES.
U. S. S. Vermont.
From NAPLES to SMYRNA,
January 20, 1877.
DEAR Miss CROFTON: There is still another point
about the routine that I did not mention. . . .
Consider the letters as a diary. Then there is
only one letter. It is the only diary I have ever
kept. In that way, you may judge by the im-
portance of- yourself in these annals of your
importance in my present scheme of the universe.
We reach Smyrna to-morrow.
Yours sincerely,
ARTHUR BARNES.
U. S. S. Vermont.
SMYRNA, January 21, 1877.
DEAR Miss CROFTON: We have called on the
consul and the missionaries and impressed the Turks.
281
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
So to-morrow we'll up anchor and off to the Piraeus.
Our Secretary of the Navy must overwork himself
in keeping us on the go back and forth across the
Mediterranean and that's another point about the
routine important for the layman to know. . . .
I posted all the letters to-day and I marked them
one, two, three, etc. They will come to you in the
same mail all in a strange hand! I can imagine
your curiosity. I pray that you will begin at the
beginning.
I should like to know that your spill did you no
harm. If you will be so kind as to reply, address
me care the American Consul at Trieste. We are
going there after the Piraeus, and then back to
Naples. Sincerely yours,
ARTHUR BARNES.
P. S. The most important observation I have to
make about Smyrna is that there is no Pompeii near
at hand.
U. S. S. Vermont.
From SMYRNA to the PIR^US,
January 22, 1877.
DEAR Miss CROFTON: I'm sorry about the car-
riage incident. I wish that we could have met un-
der different circumstances. Now it looks to a
superficial observer as if, because I had saved you
282
MRS. GERLISON'S OWN STORY
from a bad spill well, that I had taken advantage
of your feeling of thankfulness to write to you.
Nothing of the kind. I should have written to you
just the same yes, I know that I should have writ-
ten more if we had merely been introduced by a
friend at the gate of Pompeii. [More details about
the routine of a man-of-war.]
Sincerely yours,
ARTHUR BARNES.
U. S. S. Vermont.
The PHLEUS, January 23, 1877.
DEAR Miss CROFTON: I don't want you to put
a wrong construction on my regret about the car-
riage incident. I thank kind fate for it in one sense
because through it I met you. There! I have
been candid. This is to be a candid letter and the
last I shall write before I see you or hear from
you. From the other letters I fear you will think
I have not been in earnest. I am very much in ear-
nest, now. Last night, on watch, I recalled every
word of yours that afternoon. By thinking of you
so much I have come to feel that I have known you
for years. This frank statement I offer as an ex-
planation, as a basis for hope. If I write you more
letters I shall confess all the truth. I shall confess
that the girl for me has " arrived," and with my
283
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
heartstrings for reins she could drive me where she
pleased. But in propriety [a word, apparently
" dear," is crossed out] I ought not to say that until
I have proved myself worthy.
I beg of you to write to me. I beg that I may
come to see you wherever you are. Anyway, I
shall seek you out. At the worst you can only turn
me away from your door. Until then I shall visit
Pompeii every day, with deep interest, without even
knowing one sight from another. You will give me
a chance well, a chance for you to know me. [No
details about the routine of a man-of-war.]
Patiently yours,
ARTHUR BARNES.
He received no answer at Trieste. He received
none at Naples, where he made inquiries about the
Croftons at the hotel. All the concierge knew was
that the young lady and her mother had given their
address as the American Legation, Rome. The Le-
gation (instead of the Consulate) suggested that
they might be friends of the Minister. He secured
leave as soon as he could.
Two stations out of Rome he saw Miss Crofton
(as he supposed) and her mother enter a compart-
ment of the same carriage. He met them as they
284
MRS. GERLISON'S OWN STORY
alighted. Miss Crofton started and then, with
heightening color, held out her hand. Mrs. Crof-
ton was affable. In a moment, when Mrs. Crofton
was busy with instructions to her maid, Barnes had
an opportunity for a word alone with the daughter.
" You received my letters? You won't be too
hard, I hope."
" Yes," she stammered in great embarrassment.
" I was just about to send you a card. I didn't tell
you I was engaged. I have been Mrs. Gerlison for
two weeks."
" Forgive me," he exclaimed.
He tried to say something more and could not.
Then he turned back, as if he had left something in
his compartment. As he entered the street he saw
that her husband and a carriage were waiting for
her. For some time he could not recall where he
had seen Lieutenant Gerlison. It was at a cafe in
Naples two nights before. A friend had pointed him
out as the beastly American military attache at
Rome who had just married a wealthy girl, but was
not willing to give up visits to a popular woman of
the world in Naples.
Then Barnes thought of the straight back and the
straight profile of Mrs. Crofton, and pitied Mrs.
Gerlison as well as himself.
285
II
Major Gerlison had two friends: His wife, whom
he considered as his enemy because she had saved
him on three occasions from dismissal from the Ser-
vice; and Slearing, a bad-mannered, itinerant news-
paper correspondent, who had no sponsors among
his fellows. The Major and Slearing got drunk to-
gether; they agreed that the country was going to
ruin, while the Major retailed what he said was the
gossip of the club for the correspondent's letters;
they agreed that there remained as a bulwark against
the corruption of the day only one honest officer and
one honest correspondent, when, if anybody had
found it worth while to pay the price, both could
have been bribed with a bottle of champagne.
For the sake of the most charming woman in the
army Gerlison was allowed to remain in the club;
for her sake, the officers spoke to him pleasantly
when they met him; for her sake, the beast was per-
mitted to wear the uniform which is supposed to be
the insignia of decent conduct as well as of courage.
286
MRS. GERLISON'S OWN STORY
His regiment had come with the First Expedi-
tion. As soon as he had set foot on the soil of Luzon
he began to wonder, between oaths, " why, in h 1,
the United States had violated all its principles and
come to this God-forsaken country," where you had
to sleep in tents, and drinks were few and far be-
tween.
" Why, in h 1, the United States," was the stock
complaint of the Major from first to last. Naturally,
it grew irksome to officers to whom love of country
was as well grounded a first precept as obedience to
its orders. That was what he was saying on Au-
gust 1 3th, the day when the flag was raised for good
and all over Manila, as he came limping up from the
rear after the fight was over.
" I hate to say it," his Colonel said. " I hate to
believe it of any man of the regular service, whom
his country has paid and found for thirty years of
peace but I do believe you are a coward, and I'll
prefer charges against you, if it's the last thing I do
in this world."
Yet when Mrs. Gerlison, pleading with the Colo-
nel, said that she was sure that her husband had
been taken suddenly ill just as his regiment began
its advance, the Colonel concluded that the silent
contempt of the Major's men as he passed their line
287
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
on the evening of the I3th was punishment enough
for him.
And so the beast had another grudge against his
wife.
When second lieutenants asked how she had ever
come to marry him, old officers said that Gerlison
was handsome as a young man, with an influential
father and friends; she could not have known at the
time that he was a sneak and a roue.
When second lieutenants asked why she did not
leave him and seek a divorce, old officers shook their
heads.
" If you marry into the army," they said, " you
are yoked to more than a man or a woman for better
or worse you are yoked to the Service, which may
believe in divorce with all its heart, but will not ex-
cuse it."
When second lieutenants asked how it was that
she kept so young, old officers said that it was a habit
with her to be cheerful and to think of the happiness
of others.
There was another reason which explained, among
other things, why she was the ally and confidant of
all couples who found that family, wealth, or posi-
tion ran counter to their true love. She was young
because she fed on the memory of an innocent and
288
MRS. GERLISON'S OWN STORY
delicious flirtation of her youth. Some hold secrets
in their hearts which eat as decay destroys an apple
from the core, no matter how thick its skin; Mrs.
Gerlison's secret radiated happiness through her
whole being.
" It is such a little thing; so ridiculous to make
so much of it, to live upon it," she told herself. " Yet
it is my philosophy to make much of little things; to
rejoice in the eddies and not to hear the roar of the
main current."
Probably he had forgotten all about it, she some-
times thought. Still, there was the fact that he had
never married. She had followed his career in the
Service journals. She had glowed with pride over
his part in the battle of Manila Bay. His efficiency
record was as well known to her as to himself. She
looked forward with as much if not more interest
than he to the great date in the near future when
he should be a rear-admiral.
In all the twenty years that had elapsed since that
day in Naples, she had seen him only once. Then
he was passing in a carriage on the Bridge of Spain
and his face was turned away she wondered if by
intention. From the Luneta, in the evening, she
could see his cruiser standing out against the
golden fan of the sun's nightly adieu, and then
289
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
watch its lights breaking out when darkness
came.
Naval officers, though they went frequently to the
club, seldom went to the Luneta. It was not, then,
surprising that Captain Barnes's first appearance
there, to Mrs. Gerlison's knowledge, was not until
the evening of February 3, 1899. She was not im-
mediately certain that the man walking up and down
with Colonel Smalley was he, as his back was toward
her. When he faced in her direction she no longer
had any doubt. She felt her heart flutter. Instantly
she became engrossed in the sea, as if that would
stop the beating in her temples. She did not dare
to look around.
" Good-evening, Mrs. Gerlison."
The voice sounded as familiar as if she had heard
it only yesterday. She turned; her eyes met his;
she felt the blood leaving her face in a flood. The
presence in the life of the image which she had car-
ried in her imagination for twenty years had numbed
her faculties.
" You haven't forgotten me Mr. Barnes, at
Naples? "
" No. How could I? " she exclaimed, holding out
her hand. She had meant to speak lightly and easily,
but her words sounded distraught and pathetic in
290
MRS. GERLISON'S OWN STORY
her own ears. " You see I wasn't expecting to see
you. I was taken by surprise," she added.
Even after that stern attempt her voice seemed
unnatural.
' Yes, twenty years is a long time between calls,
and I've grown pretty gray and old," he remarked,
" while you haven't a single white hair. The world
has been kind to you."
" I have tried to make it kind," which was nearer
than she had ever come to confessing her system of
philosophy to anyone.
" As I knew you would."
" And you? " she asked. " Has it been kind to
you? "
" The lot of the Service: little worry, some work,
much routine, and clean linen, while I have honestly
tried to do my duty. And I have not married," he
added.
Then Mrs. Gerlison felt the blood rushing back to
her face in a flood, and it seemed that her sight was
dimmed with tears. Why should he have said that ?
How could she reply to it?
On his part, the sailor wondered what else he
could say. The sudden impulse which sent him to
the carriage arose from his desire to tell her this.
An officer of the navy who, for twenty years, had
291
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
loved the memory of a woman can he pay her any
greater compliment than such a confession?
At that moment Major Gerlison approached.
He brushed Barnes's elbow roughly as he put his
foot on the step and called to the driver to go to
the club. The Captain, lifting his hat to Mrs. Ger-
lison, turned away without seeming to notice the
Major's rudeness.
Only a few words passed between husband and
wife on the way.
" If I waited until you were through talking to
some man if it isn't one it's another we'd never
move," he said. " I have to get a little use of my
carriage once in awhile."
As a matter of fact, the carriage and their house
were maintained out of her money. He had lost his
own fortune by gambling, and his pay was spent on
himself.
" Of course you have," was the quiet reply. " The
seat beside me is always vacant."
" Oh, yes. If you can't let all your admirers ride,
what's the use of letting any? " he growled.
" You're impartial, at least."
She did not attempt to argue with him. As she
looked at his face she could not help comparing it
with that of Captain Barnes. Each told its story
292
MRS. GERLISON'S OWN STORY
plainly enough. One stood for debauchery, idle-
ness, and selfishness; the other for character and
rational living.
From the moment that she left her husband at the
club, Mrs. Gerlison's thoughts were of the Captain.
As soon as she reached the house she unlocked a lit-
tle box in her trunk and took out the package which
she had conned since 1877. This was the only secret
which she would not have confessed under any cir-
cumstances to the Major or to the world.
" He's finer looking now than he was then," she
said to herself. " White hair becomes him better
than black. His face has filled out so that his nose
is strong, and not too prominent."
Tied up with the packet was a portrait of him
which she had clipped from an illustrated weekly.
She seated herself, oblivious of everything, to read
the letters over again. Often, as a wife who tried to
be loyal, she had told herself that she had done
wrong to keep them; as often she had excused her-
self by the thought that if she put the one sweet
romance of her life out of mind she would not have
the strength to be good or dutiful any longer. And
you, my good woman you, though you have a back
as stiff as Mrs. Crofton's I can imagine you com-
plaining of a sick headache when the bonds have
293
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
been especially hard, and seeking your room to live
again with your secret!
She was pausing over a sentence, drinking in its
possible meaning " with my heartstrings for reins "
when the Major interrupted her happy dream.
Except in growls and he must growl he had
never objected to her friends. Confident that she
was true to him, he found his ownership of the most
admired woman in the army a source of innate pride.
Either some recollection of Captain Barnes, or his
mood when agitated by successive drinks, had de-
veloped in him this evening one of his increasingly
frequent passions. When it had reached a certain
stage he started home to have an " understanding "
with his wife. Not finding her in the library, he went
to her room. There, as he entered, he first made
her aware of his presence by an oath at the sight of
the portrait and the letters. She seized them all in
her hands, but not before, acute for the moment
from drink, he had recognized that the likeness was
that of Captain Barnes.
" So, that's what you're mooning over! " he cried.
"Well, I'll take 'em now!"
He snatched for them. She sprang away and
dodged around the table to the door.
" Either you give them up, or, by G , I'll make
294
MRS. GERLISON'S OWN STORY
you! You, the pattern of wifely respectability in the
army, sighing over a lover's letters! "
"No, you will not!"
"Why won't I? I can if I want to."
" Because I shall run into the street and cry for
help. I haven't done that when you've struck me
before, but I will this time."
He stood with his hand on the table, swaying from
the effect of drink.
" Oh, of course the army will side with a lady who
has so many friends."
" Charles," she said, " I hadn't seen Captain
Barnes for twenty years until this evening. You
know as well as I do that I have been true to you.
I know, too, that I have done wrong as a wife to
keep these. I will destroy them now, but you may
not see them."
" All right, destroy them! "
She led the way into the kitchen. As the letters
and the portrait were put into the stove it seemed
as if her heart was being shrivelled by the flames in
which they were crackling. She asked herself if,
after this, she should become desperate and care-
less.
The Major felt that he had won a great victory.
He spent all the day of the 4th at the club, celebrat-
295
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
ing it in drink. He was extremely critical, extremely
bellicose. What he wanted to know, he said, was
how much longer old Elwell was going to wait be-
fore he cleaned out the cordon of " niggers " who
were besieging the town. For his part, he could take
his battalion and lick them all to a standstill in
twenty-four hours. At times, he chuckled drunk-
enly as he thought of the burning of his wife's treas-
ures. Then he became regretful of his meekness and
charity in not having pushed the victory home.
What he ought to have done was to take the letters
away from her, read them, and then yes, throw
them into Barnes's face.
He happened to be absorbed in this train of
thought as Barnes entered the club in the evening;
whereupon, his murky brain conceived another
conquest which should surpass that of the previ-
ous day.
" Barnes, you're the man I want to see," he said.
He took a great draught as he rose.
" I am at your service, Major," the Captain re-
plied, passing over to the table.
" I've found you out, you "
With this, the Major threw the remaining con-
tents of his glass at the face of the Captain, who,
perceiving the intention as the Major raised his
296
MRS. GERLISON'S OWN STORY
arm, stepped to one side. Only a few drops of
whiskey and soda fell on Barnes's shoulder.
The Captain felt instinctively that any blow he
dealt Gerlison would be passed on to Mrs. Gerlison.
He wiped his coat with his handkerchief coolly.
Then he seized the Major by the shoulder and
pushed him back into his chair in a heap.
When actually face to face with the man who was
so much his superior, Gerlison had suddenly lost all
of his bravado. He was one of the few men who are
devoid of both physical and moral courage. Trem-
bling as if with palsy, he had not enough strength left
to topple over a small boy. Hoarsely he called for
another drink. Two or three officers, including Gen-
eral Berkeley, who had risen with the intention of
preventing the two men from coming to blows, now
stood around them. Others were listening, though
pretending to be occupied with something else.
" Well, what is it? I think I have a right to know
why you threw your whiskey in my face," Barnes
said.
"Yes, what is it?" put in General Berkeley.
" Let's have this matter settled now and here, and
not let it get any farther."
" Oh, you're on her side, too! " the Major replied
petulantly.
297
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
" I am on nobody's side. Speak up, or you do
go out of the army this time. We haven't degene-
rated quite so far yet in the tropics that one man
can insult another in this way without explanation."
" He's been writing letters to my wife."
" You lie! " said Barnes. " I have not written or
spoken to your wife for twenty years, until last even-
ing on the Luneta. You lie! "
The conqueror did not attempt to rise under the
whip of this clear-cut assault on his honor.
" It's the letters of twenty years ago. I made her
burn them." And the conqueror truly felt himself
the outraged husband.
Before Captain Barnes found words the subject
was blotted out of the mind of everyone present by
an officer, all excitement, who thrust his head in at
the door and shouted:
"It's come! It's come!"
" What? What's come? " someone asked.
" Listen! " (In disgust, over his shoulder, as he
passed on.)
Then they heard the sound of rifle fire in the di-
rection of San Pedro Macati. A single shot was
the fuse to a train of powder which had been ready
for ignition for two months. At last the insurrection
was actually begun. The calm atmosphere had sud-
298
MRS. GERLISON'S OWN STORY
denly become charged with electricity. Men who
had been idling, chatting and drinking, as if all the
time of future ages was theirs, rushed out of the
club, without waiting to pick up their caps. Offi-
cers coming from dances and dinners in evening
dress; officers in undershirts and trousers; and offi-
cers and men out of sick beds were hurrying on foot,
on horseback, and in carromatas to their places
on the line, on the lookout for treachery as they
went.
Major Gerlison alone remaining in the club,
called for more whiskey.
" Only a little outpost firing. No use getting ex-
cited about it," he told the attendant.
Having drunk an ordinary drinking-glass half full
of whiskey, he swaggered and wabbled out. He told
himself that he was dignified; that he was not being
led off on a wild goose chase by a lot of hare-
brained fools. A dying Mauser bullet, sighing as it
dipped, passed overhead. He jumped behind a tree,
looked to see if he had been observed, and then
bravely pursued his way. But he did not keep to the
street leading to his regiment, which was stationed
in the Tondo district. He took the one leading to
his house, where he found his wife an interested
spectator on her porch, quite regardless of any dan-
299
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
ger. She had supposed that her husband was al-
ready well on the way to the front.
" There's no hurry," he explained, as he stum-
bled up the steps. " I'll have my carriage brought.
The * niggers ' won't fight at night, anyway."
" There's only Benito to go for it," she said. " He
might be shot on the way, even if we can get him
to go. No native wants to be in the streets."
" A good job if they did shoot him and all the
other ' niggers ' that sent us out to this God-for-
saken country. What in h 1 we "
" And, Charles, the stable is half a mile away. It
will take some time for him to go. Perhaps he
cannot get the carriage anyway. Our cook has
gone to the insurgents. Probably the stable boys
have."
" I'll not move an inch without my carriage," he
growled.
She called Benito. He said that he did not want
to go, but he would to please the Sefiora. She has-
tily wrote a pass for him, and he darted out into the
street.
Realizing her husband's drunken condition, she
asked if she might not prepare a drink of bromo-
seltzer or something to eat for him. By way of
reply he started toward the sideboard. She put her-
300
MRS. GERLISON'S OWN STORY
self in the way, holding up her hands in appeal. He
threw her roughly to one side.
" Please don't, Charles," she pleaded. " You are
not yourself. You have had too much, already.
Think of the work that is before you in the next two
or three days and yet to-night "
" Oh, I've fixed your friend, Captain Barnes," he
said, after he had drained a glass of sherry.
Then he gave his version of the incident at the
club, in which he made Barnes apologize and con-
fess to the world his fondness for Mrs. Gerlison.
"I don't believe he did that!" she exclaimed,
with the impulse of outraged logic.
" Oh, of course you don't. Of course you take
your lover's side."
" He's not," she began. Then realizing the hope-
lessness of talk, she was silent.
"But I told them! I told them! Everybody
knows about the spotless Mrs. Gerlison now. Let-
ters and a photograph, by G ! Wouldn't let me
read them! "
He launched into a tirade in which he blamed her
for every one of his shortcomings. She bent as a
reed bends to the storm, smitten with a night-
mare of conscientiousness. Perhaps after all, she
thought, what he said was true. He could not have
301
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
helped learning long ago that her relations to him
were implacably limited by dutifulness. Had love
mismated meant to him what it had to her, she could
readily understand how, from indifference and cyn-
icism, he might have drifted into debauchery as if
character and steel were not forged by fire. Observ-
ing that he impressed her, he revelled in this new
victory, while his Service was winning one of a dif-
ferent kind in the darkness.
Finally, Benito came, angering the Major not be-
cause he had been so long gone, but because he had
returned at all. One side of his coat was matted
with blood from a bolo slash on his cheek and an-
other on his arm.
" My own people did that," he said in his " pid-
gin " Spanish. " Oh, I had my orders to go like
the rest. They jump on the seat when they see me
driving the white man's carriage. An officer he shot
them with his revolver. The officer want to take
the empty carriage. I show them your pass and I
tell him a great lie that I go to save your life. Then
he want to go with me to help save it. So I tell
that no more. Oh, I do this for you, Senora, for
you, for no one else. I always say to you when my
people fight your people I go fight with my people
and your husband fight with his people. Is that not
302
MRS. GERLISON'S OWN STOKY
right? Now I am a marked man, a friend of the
Americans, and when my people take the city they
will find me in the dark, and "
" Oh, shut up, you d n nigger! "
The Major (that profound feeder of arguments to
anti-expansionist correspondents) had struggled to
his feet. He now struck a fellow-man in the face,
merely because he might; merely because that man
was of a different color.
" For you, Senora! " Benito cried, as he moved
away.
" Now, Charles. You won't want your sword, of
course," she said, as she went to his room and
brought out his revolver.
He had sunk back into his chair in the manner of
one who intends to stick there.
" Oh, you needn't be in a hurry," he growled.
" I'll not go out till morning. Captain Higginson
can take care of the battalion, all right. He's so
d n smart! Responsibility will do him good.
Anyway, it's nothing but a little outpost firing that
sets the shavetails (second lieutenants) and mus-
tangs (officers not graduates of the Academy) out of
their heads. The niggers won't fight. You're not
going to get me mixed up in night attacks. I never
did believe in 'em."
303
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
" Outpost firing! " she repeated. " Charles,
listen!"
From the distance came the* crackling of thou-
sands of rifles, and then, in " one, two, three " order,
the pounding reports of field guns.
" If it was only outpost firing they wouldn't be
using the artillery," she added.
"Humph h! Those volunteer Utahs. They'd
shoot away all their ammunition at a yellow
dog."
" No, no, Charles. They wouldn't fire without
Division orders Brigade orders, anyway."
" Well, I can't help it if we've got fools for Briga-
diers."
She flew to the shutter and threw it open.
"Look!" she cried, pointing toward the Tondo
district, where the heavens were lighted with a red
glare, which signified an attempt to burn the city
over the heads of the defenders.
The fire was in the direction of the Major's regi-
ment. He shuddered, as if in a chill.
" Nothing but a house or a store, I guess," he re-
plied.
She went to his chair and knelt, with her hands
upon its arm, all intensity in her desire to awaken
him to a sense of his position.
304
MRS. GERLISON'S OWN STORY
" Charles, this is the time of all times. Everybody
has said that when it came it would come with a
rush. It has come. The whole line is engaged. A
part of the city is in flames. You missed the fight
of the 1 3th of August. For twenty years you have
been waiting for this chance. How often back in
the posts, in the old days, when we expected to go
to our graves without ever smelling powder, we have
talked of how reputations were made in a minute in
a fight, and how the thing to do was to seize the
opportunity the instant it presented itself! The op-
portunity is here, Charles. Your battalion must
have been in the thick of it from the start. It needs
you. Come, Charles! "
" All right. Get me a drink of sherry, and I'll
go."
" Oh, no, I beg you, Charles."
" Do you think I'm a calf to be fed on milk? " he
asked. Then he added, in the thick voice of the
drunken man when he is non-committal: " All right.
I won't go. I told you it was nothing but outpost
firing."
She went to the sideboard. She knew him too
well not to bring him a full glass, but she weakened
the wine with water as much as she dared. The
effect of the draught was quite the opposite of what
305
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
he had expected and she had hoped. It made him
bellicose, but only oratorically so.
" What in h 1 my country wanted to violate all
its principles for and come to this God-forsaken hole
I don't understand. I'm not going out there in the
dark. I'll go in the morning. I'll go when I'm
ready. Let the President's friends, his brigadiers,
do his work ! He didn't give me any promotion."
The wife's patience was exhausted. Persuasion
having failed, she tried indignation and taunt.
" You don't know what you are saying. Your
country has paid and kept you since you entered the
army to be ready to do such work as this when the
call came. You know what they said on the I3th.
They will say the same thing if you fail now."
" Let them," was the maudlin response.
" Either you go to your battalion or I will.
Someone must."
" Oh, ho, will you? " He broke into a derisive
laugh.
She picked up the revolver from his lap and
started. At the door she stopped and looked back
to observe the effect of this stratagem. Her hus-
band had not moved from his slouching, helpless
position with his hands hanging in front of either
arm of his chair. The light of the lamp streaming
306
MRS. GERLISON'S OWN STORY
upon his dissipated face showed clearly what a wreck
he was.
" Shall I go? " she asked.
" Do as you please," he replied. " Fine idea!
D n fine idea! "
She felt the sudden, full and crushing realization
that she, with whom generals had discussed cam-
paigns and battles, had a coward for a husband.
While every white man in uniform in Manila was
doing his duty, and many of them were doing a little
more, he was skulking at home. However poor a
knight he was. his crest was hers. She had solaced
herself with the thought that men who drank hard
were sometimes capable as well as brave in the field.
Her reputation as lacking ambition was grossly false.
In her heart, as much as any other woman, she would
have liked to see her husband the head of the army.
Anything was now preferable to remaining in the
house with him at this great hour; for, against his
presence, besides the natural, inbred contempt of the
Service, all her reason and instinct were in revolt.
She made her threat a deed. She felt that if she
remained longer she would call him coward, drunk-
ard, beast, to his face.
" I'll tell them you are ill," she called, as she left
the house.
307
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
She had always respected Benito for saying can-
didly that he would go to fight for his own people
when the time came. She felt that she could not
now justly ask him to accompany her. All she knew,
all she thought, as she untied the hitching-strap and
took the reins in hand, was represented in the pros-
pect and the philosophy of action hastening from a
horrible phantom. Very likely she would be con-
sidered mad; but she was doing the best she could
for the honor of the uniform that her husband wore.
Down the Calle Nozaleda and along the road to
the Bridge of Spain flew this carriage with its gal-
loping horses and its sole occupant, the only woman
abroad in Manila at that hour. The sentries on the
bridge halted her. She told them imperiously that
she was on her way to get wounded, and they allowed
her to proceed. A block on one side of the Calle
Rosario was burning, so she turned into the narrow
Calle Anloague. A few erring shots were fired at
her from the windows, quickening the speed of the
ponies, while the carriage, slewing from curb to curb,
threatened to be upset.
Out into the open space of the Plaza del Calderon
de la Barca she guided her team with a cool and
practiced hand which would have excited the ad-
miration of the army teamsters. Before her the sky
308
MRS. GERLISON'S OWN STORY
was a glow of savage red light, sometimes darkened
by a column of black smoke from a burning hemp
warehouse, where the blaze had not yet gained full
headway, and again cut by a darting sheet of flame
as a nipa hut tumbled into ruins. The hollows of
the bamboos, as they exploded from the heat, made
a crackling easily mistaken for continuous Mauser
volleys.
As she pursued her way, the ponies growing more
and more excited and less manageable, she soon
realized that some of the explosions were indeed the
popping of bullets through the air; for she felt the
breath of one and heard the swan song of others in
their dying flight. She passed houses which were
on fire, the heat burning her cheek and the smoke
stifling her. Then she emerged into an area which
had not yet been ignited. A hundred yards beyond
was a veritable sea of burning nipa huts, their flames
meeting across the street.
Not an American soldier was to be seen. There
was no one to tell her the way to her husband's regi-
ment. She could not go through the furnace before
her. She must stop her carriage. She pulled at
the reins with all her strength. But the team had
gone mad, and, even as the horse will return to the
burning stable, they were rushing straight ahead into
309
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
the fire. She had resolved to leap to the ground
and seek escape by one of the alleys, through which
some of the natives, who had remained to the last
moment in their houses to collect their valuables,
were going, when one of the ponies was hit by a
bullet which had passed through the wall of flame.
He fell, taking with him his mate, who was soon
tangled in the harness in his efforts to rise. Mrs.
Gerlison was partly thrown, and she partly leaped,
to the pavement, but rose uninjured.
At that moment she had no doubt of her safety.
She knew that beyond tBe burning region immedi-
ately ahead was the American line, already driving
the insurgents back. This she was sure that she
could reach by simply going around the fire. As
she started toward the nearest alley there emerged
from it a native whose face was as distinctive of his
character as is that of the Bowery tough. He was
equipped with the emblems of his pursuit of murder
and arson. Rather than have them commit crime
in the ranks of his army, Aguinaldo had sent his
brigands to Manila with orders to kill all Americans
regardless of sex. Behind the villain were half a
dozen of his fellows, all armed with knives. Mrs.
Gerlison called to them in Spanish to go back.
" It is our turn now, Sefiora," the leader replied;
310
MRS. GERLISON'S OWN STORY
adding, with native sarcasm, " I like your carriage,
and I hope you have some diamonds."
" If you don't go, I shall fire," she said.
Even in a class with men she had been accounted
a good pistol shot at the range. Now, she was
astonished to find how cool she was when, for the
first time, she faced the awful necessity of de-
liberately taking a human life as the alternative of
losing her own.
The leader halted for an instant. Then he sprang
forward with the cry, " Women can't shoot ! " and
fell as she fired. The others ran back down the al-
ley; while she, amazed at what she had done, re-
volted at the sight of the figure on the pavement, his
limbs twitching in his death agony. She grew
faint and leaned against the carriage for support.
The dead man's comrades gained recruits from
the houses which they were looting and burning.
Doubling back by other alleys they were soon creep-
ing up under cover of the buildings on either side
of the street. She realized too late their plan
of surrounding her. Desperation renewed her
strength. She stepped into the middle of the pave-
ment, away from the buildings and the carriage.
With her few remaining cartridges she was prepared
to make the ruffians pay dearly for success.
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
They crept nearer and nearer. Suddenly her
heart leaped at the sound of voices, unmistakably
those of white men, coming from beyond the wall of
smoke through which she had just driven. With
an accuracy that did her credit, she emptied her re-
volver at the manikins in that direction. Then,
taking quick advantage of their resultant demor-
alization, she ran as fast as she could toward the
voices.
The next that she knew she was lying on the car-
riage seat, with a glass of brandy to her lips, while
Captain Barnes, who had been sent ashore with his
crew to be useful wherever there was work to be
done, was at her side. The jackies were clearing
the houses and tearing them down to prevent the
fire from spreading.
" In another minute you would have been shot
for a Filipino because of your white dress and the
glitter of the revolver in your hand. You fainted
just as we saw you. We barely caught you before
you fell. I hope you are better."
" Yes," she replied, " much better. I I am quite
myself again."
" I could scarcely believe my eyes a white
woman in this place at this time! "
" I was very foolish. I came to tell the Colonel
312
MRS. GERLISO?4'S OWN STORY
that my husband is ill at home and could not come."
She tried to speak with spirit, even mirthfully, but
her voice was weak and quavering. " You see," she
continued, " my pony was hit. Then the natives
surrounded me. I heard your voices and I broke
through the enemy's lines by a sudden attack at one
point with all my forces. That was correct tactics,
wasn't it? But after all my talk about white men
permitting brown men to besiege them, that was
just the error I committed, myself. Instead of rush-
ing down the alley the minute I killed that one on
the ground there, I remained here."
" I was hoping that we could save this area be-
tween the two fires," he said, " but I think I had
better give it up and begin work on the other side.
The heat is terrible here, too. If you will allow me,
I will assist you out of it."
He bent over her, as if he would carry her away
from the carriage in the same manner that he had
carried her to it.
" No, I can walk," she said, rising. " Yes, I can
I'm sure I can if if you will let me rest my hand
on your shoulder," she added, with an effort.
She trembled from the effect of reaction. She
was so weak that she would have fallen but for his
support. He lifted her in his arms.
313
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
" After all, I am only a woman," she said, half in
explanation, half in complaint.
As he had hastened to the quay, to his cruiser and
back to shore again, beyond his plans and his direct-
ing of his men was the thought:
" She has kept my letters! She has kept my let-
ters!"
He would have been a poor student of mankind,
indeed, if he had not seen through the story of her
mad ride. He knew well enough that she had
braved all dangers to apologize for a drunken hus-
band. The love for her, born in the theatre at Pom-
peii, seemed now shallow and boyish beside the new
feeling in his heart. He told himself, again and
again, as he bore her away from the smoke and the
roar of the flames, that he must be guarded in what
he said; that, as an honorable man, he would apply
the next day to be relieved from the Asiatic Squad-
ron. If they Dreyfused him to a Devil's Island, so
much the better; anything, so that he should not be
walking the deck of a ship in the harbor of the city
where she lived. All this was a pledge of his honest
effort to crowd out of mind the sweet and holy
pleasure of having her in his arms.
He carried her to a cool place beside the bridge
of a canal.
MRS. GERLISON'S OWN STORY
" I shall be quite safe here," she said. " Don't let
me keep you from your work, for this is the time of
all times "
She checked herself quickly as she recalled that
these were the very words which she had used to her
husband.
" There isn't much glory for a naval officer in
police duty," he replied, lightly. " Still, police work
is the most important work to be done here, and I
must direct my crew." As he spoke, his second in
command, at the head of his men, appeared in the
open place where they were.
" I shall be back in a minute," he added.
After giving a few directions, he returned to her
with a boatswain and six jackies.
" I hope it will not be ungallant," he said, " but
there is a great deal for me to do. I have brought
you a guard. They will help you over to the Hotel
Oriente, where you can get a carriage and return to
your house."
" You could not do more," she replied. " I thank
you."
Thus he had recognized and resisted temptation.
After the scene at the club, after the incident just
passed, there could be nothing worse for her reputa-
tion, nothing more likely to bring her husband's
315
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
wrath down upon her head, than for him to accom-
pany her to her door. All that he had done so far
was no more than he must have done for any woman
placed in a like situation.
As he offered his wishes for no unpleasant effects
from her experience, as he shook hands and said
good-night, he was confident that he should never
permit himself the pain or her the embarrassment
of seeing him again. She watched him, erect and
easy of bearing, as he went back to his men. For a
moment she hid her face in her hands in agony.
Then, straightening up, she smiled at the boatswain
who was now responsible for her safety.
Meanwhile, a tragedy had been enacted on the
Calle Nozaleda. When Benito entered the room in
response to a call for more sherry, the Major sud-
denly developed the veritable courage of a lion. He
swore something, by G , about the best " nig-
ger " being a dead one, and started into his room
to get his sword. But a knife, which the house-boy
had concealed in his shirt, prevented him from going
farther than the doorway.
With the grim satisfaction of one who has paid a
grudge in full, Benito watched his master die, and
then passed out into the darkness to join his own
people.
316
Ill
When a lieutenant of artillery and a lieutenant
of cavalry seated themselves by a window of the
club, one afternoon, they did not notice the naval
officer who was reading a newspaper in the far corner
of the room with his back to the light.
" I saw Mrs. Gerlison on the Luneta last even-
ing," said the tanned Cavalry, who was just in from
"hikes" in the sun. "How she's changed! She
looked like an invalid. It can't be that she's
mourning so for the loss of her beast of a husband."
(The Unobserved Officer stopped reading. With
his eyes still on the paper, he listened.)
" Yes, people don't understand it. Her friends
have been trying for six months to get her started
for Japan. She's really going to-morrow. Some
think that horrible scene of old Gerlison there in
the library in a mess of blood has affected her mind."
" But how about the naval man she was supposed
to be fond of? "
(The Unobserved Officer was trying to read a line
backward. He dared not move.)
317
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
" Oh, there was nothing in that! "
The Artillery, which was white-faced from con-
finement in town, spoke with a sickly feeling of its
proficiency in gossip.
" M-m-m-m! " exclaimed the Cavalry, as he took
a sip of the claret lemonade which the Chinese
" boy " placed before him. " That ice is real, isn't
it? And the lemons aren't celluloid make-believes,
either!"
" It tastes like sop to me. The club's getting
worse and worse."
" Rot! It isn't the club. It's your liver. Come
out to Bogabo with me and I'll ' hike ' a little of the
fur off your tongue. You can help us hunt General
Morales. We've captured Morales eight times,
now. We're going after him again next week.
Every time we take him we telegraph down to the
Patient and Well-Abused One to know what we
shall do with him. ' Release him,' is the reply; ' the
Government says so.' Then the people wonder why
the Government doesn't, and the Government
wonders why the army doesn't, put down the re-
bellion.
(" Oh, do tell us all about it," thought the Unob-
served Officer.)
' Prepare me a bath! ' says the man to his ser-
MRS. GERLISON'S OWN STORY
vant in the desert. ' I have no water, sir,' is the
reply. ' You are very foolish/ says the man. And
the servant may not talk back, even in the desert.
Yes, thanks, another; and a little more ice in it, if
you please. Oh, I've seen times while we were
chasing Morales when I should like to have had a
chunk frozen in my stomach the way they freeze it
in the hotel water-bottles at home."
" Here, stop that! " put in the Artillery. " Didn't
you know that there's a new rule at the club that
you mustn't speak of home? "
"No. Why?"
" Don't we come to the club to enjoy ourselves
and not to droon over hateful impossibilities, you
bumpkin from Bogabo? "
" That's so. I was going to tell you that we had
a cake of ice at Bogabo the other day the first in
the history of the place. (" Government policy, culi-
nary lessons, anything, so you don't go," thought
the Unobserved One.) When it arrived in a Dor-
rity it was the size of your fist. We put it in water
in a big bowl, and we purred over it, and smacked
our lips while the water cooled, until somebody said
we ought to give it to the hospital. * That's what
we ought,' we all concluded. To the hospital it
went. We didn't get a drop. If that doesn't blot
319
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
out all the sins of the Eighth Cavalry in the record-
ing angel's book, then there's no justice in the world
beyond."
" Thanks," said the Artillery. " The lemonade
tastes better."
Then it occurred to the Cavalry that he had not
finished with the subject of Mrs. Gerlison.
" What makes you think there's nothing between
her and Captain Barnes? I heard that they were
old sweethearts."
" They met in Italy when they were young, and
didn't meet again until they came here; and that's
all, so far as anybody knows."
" What about the letters Gerlison mentioned
when he jumped Barnes in the club? That looked
like business," said the matter-of-fact Cavalry.
" There weren't any letters, except those of Ger-
lison's imagination. He was getting into such a
state that he was equal to any aberration of mind.
Barnes hasn't been with her at all, except I saw him
at her carriage on the Luneta two nights ago."
(The Unobserved Officer, still reading the line
backward, studied it the more intently to keep from
writhing in his chair.)
" Yes. If he had cared such a lot for her I
shouldn't think that he would have sent her home
320
MRS. GERLISON'S OWN STORY
with a boatswain when she drove out to Tondo
through the fire in that mad way."
(" Yes yes yes," thought the Unobserved Of-
ficer.)
" Precisely. And let me tell you this: Mrs. Ger-
lison would never be equal to it when she came face
to face with marrying out of the army. But it looks
very much as if she was going to spend the rest of
her days mourning for Gerlison. You know how
hard she worked to save him whenever he got in
trouble. I'm beginning to think that she loved the
brute. (The line had become an utter blank to the
Unobserved One.) It's a shame for such a woman
to waste a tear on such a man."
" A downright, blithering shame! " assented the
vigorous Cavalry.
" Well, I must be going."
" And I, too. I've an engagement at five at the
hotel, where I'm to have a tub with a cake of ice in
it my own conception. After that, I'm going to
put on a white blouse and go out to the Luneta and
hear the band play, along with you pale faces."
Captain Barnes sprang to his feet the moment the
Cavalry and the Artillery, without having recog-
nized him, passed out of the room. He felt as one
gagged and bound, who is suddenly released. He
321
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
had come ashore early in order that he might see
Mrs. Gerlison at her house, where she would not be
surrounded by friends, as she was on the Luneta.
Intending to go straight to Calle Nozaleda from the
quay, he had found himself so flustered as the mo-
ment approached that he went into the club, not
thinking that he did so to collect his wits and over-
come his trepidation, but rather because it was a
little too early to call. Now, in a state of demoraliza-
tion, he directed his coachman to return to the quay,
as he concluded that the talk of the two subalterns
was precisely in keeping with Mrs. Gerlison's con-
duct toward him.
Shortly after the outbreak, his cruiser had been
sent to the Southern Islands. He had been back in
Manila only two weeks. During his absence he had
had no communication with Mrs. Gerlison. He had
written two or three letters of sympathy to her, only
to destroy them as being false in sentiment. Since
his return he had stopped beside her carriage twice
on the Luneta. Each time they were joined by a
third person before anything except commonplaces
had passed, while there was every indication that
Mrs. Gerlison was relieved by the intrusion.
A man of his age in the Service, settled and firm
in his place, has reason for more than the ordinary
322
MRS. GERLISON'S OWN STORY
horror of being ridiculous. The more he thought of
it, the more logical became the views of the Artillery.
She had never uttered a word to show that she had
ever returned a particle of his affection. He had
been living for twenty years in a bubble for a house,
which a little discursive club gossip had pricked.
Of course, she had not kept his letters! Of course,
the Major had seen her reading some other letters
and fashioned a tale out of his drunken imagination!
Her ride to Tondo now appeared to him in what he
thought was its true light. Why had he not realized
before that no woman would have undertaken such
a risk for her husband unless she loved him? And
if she did not love him, would she have remained
in the same house where the Major had been mur-
dered, and near to everything that would remind her
of him?
This was logic. Feeling is quite another thing.
It waited, gaining strength from compression, until
he had completed his edifice of argument; then
bowled it over. His heart told him to return to
Mrs. Gerlison. He concluded to obey it, on the
ground that she would give him a decisive answer
which would effectually put the folly out of his mind.
Such was the impulse that he called to the driver to
turn around in the middle of the Bridge of Spain,
323
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
where the hubs of the two closely packed lines of
vehicles going in opposite directions almost graze.
The driver explained that he would have to wait
until they were across, and the Captain almost
grumbled in reply. As I have stated heretofore,
having determined on a line of action, the Service
hates delay.
Fifteen minutes later he was at Mrs. Gerlison's
house. She promptly came out on to the veranda in
reply to his card. He saw that she was pale and
haggard. From what? From mourning for her
husband, of course, he told himself. He had been
planning all the way from the bridge to ask her if
she thought that she could ever care for him. She
was going to say No, he knew. She was going to
be indignant with him, he knew. Then he was go-
ing his way and never think about her any more.
Her presence left a blank in place of the scheme
of action he had in mind. He was conscious only
that he was sitting opposite to her and that he wished
to say something. She was scarcely self-possessed.
Only one subject to break the awkward silence oc-
curred to.her. They talked about the latest legisla-
tion for the army and navy. Then her carriage drew
up before the door for her evening drive. He hoped
that she would ask him to join her as if the woman
324
MRS. GERLISON'S OWN STORY
and not the man were expected to give such an in-
vitation! But she hinted nothing of the kind.
" You might rest your ponies," he said, as one
who lights on an excuse, " and and drive with me."
Anyone not so dumb as he was at that moment,
while he hung upon the words and not the manner
of her reply, would have noticed that her voice was
trembling as she said that she had some errands to
do, and, therefore, would not trouble him.
He assisted her into the carriage, and saw her ride
away.
" I know now," he thought, as he drove back to
the quay. " That's the end of it. There's no fool
like an old fool. I'm not fit to command a ship.
I've been living on a sentiment, and I'll never think
of it again. If I do, I'll resign. I'll go on the stage!
I'll take to writing novels and twanging a mandolin!
A man of my years sighing like a lovesick boy!
Bah!"
Mrs. Gerlison's errands were imaginary. She was
in no condition of mind to talk to people on the
Luneta after what had just passed. Alone, she
drove into the open country through the dust to the
water-works, her New England conscience arguing
down her feelings toward Captain Barnes all the
way. That conscience (ever recalling the scene of
325
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
her husband lying dead on the library floor, even as
the preacher summons hell fire and damnation to
hold his congregation) was fast driving her out of
her mind. The woman who had been so often the
partisan of true love against all mundane obstacles;
who had seen clearly where the affections of others
were concerned, was now sinking her chance of hap-
piness in an hallucination which she called duty.
In truth, Mrs. Gerlison needed a Mrs. Gerlison to
take her in hand; and, unfortunately, there was only
one Mrs. Gerlison in the army.
If she found herself wondering whether or not
Captain Barnes still loved her, or ever had loved her,
she forced back the guilty question and its prospect
of happiness. She had done enough wrong by keep-
ing the letters. If her husband had not been in-
toxicated he would have gone out to the lines; he
would not have played the coward. The letters
were the cause of his drinking to excess at that time.
She had hired Benito, herself. When he had said
deliberately that he would fight for his own people,
she had still kept him in her house. The Major, per-
haps, was more ill than anything else on the night of
the 4th. Her place was to have remained at home
by his side. Therefore, however she looked at it,
she regarded herself as blameworthy for his murder.
326
MRS. GERLISON'S OWN STORY
As she saw the actions of the world, it had come
to the same conclusion. Only a few persons those
who felt that they must, for her sake had followed
the hearse to Paco Cemetery. The many women
who had been at her side before the funeral had had
no kind word for the dead man. They merely left
him out of their expressions of sympathy. For the
Service it must, as a matter of course considers
death preferable to dishonor. There was no officer
who did not think that Gerlison was better dead;
who did not think that he, himself, would rather be
dead than look at the world through the eyes of a
proved coward. When her friends saw that she was
becoming ill from grief; when they concluded that
she had really loved Gerlison, they had to cover a
feeling of disgust that so fine a woman should ruin
her health and peace of mind for such a miserable
object. For her sake, because they could not refer
to him with respect, they were less than ever in-
clined to mention him. She construed this as mean-
ing that they thought that she had not found her
husband's death unwelcome.
Continually, the Major's account of the scene at
the club passed through her mind. She, the subject
of a brawl on the night that he was killed! All
Manila must know, she was certain, that she had kept
327
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
Captain Barnes's letters. Probably it had no doubt
but they loved each other even no! she would
not, could not think that they would believe that of
her. She had left the Major to go out at a time
when women ought not to have been abroad, to be
met by Captain Barnes. She had been seen with
him; yes, in his arms! Melancholy having gained
sway over her, it fed upon its own vagaries.
The prescription which she needed was to over-
hear such a conversation as that which had so ab-
ruptly taken the Captain's mind off his newspaper at
the club. Captain Leeds partially supplied it. He
was of a character equal to heroic measures.
" I'm afraid that something besides Japan is
needed to do you any good," he said.
" No, no! Why do you say that? "
She leaned forward in her chair on the launch
which was taking them out to the transport, feeling
that in what was to follow was corroboration of all
her fears. Leeds had always been a true friend; she
felt that he was going to tell her the opinion of the
Service reveal the heart of the bugbear of every
woman in the army.
" Why? Mrs. Gerlison, you have been candid
with me a great many times! It's my turn to be
candid with you."
328
MRS. GERLISON'S OWN STORY
"Yes, yes. Go on!" she cried, inviting the
worst.
" Yes, you've called me a small boy and a great
fool, as I remember. I I," he hesitated. He had
always, whatever she said, received it with the awe,
gallantry, and respect of youth at the bottom of the
ladder addressing a goddess at the top. " I I am
glad to see you so much interested in anything,
these days."
" Is that any reason you shouldn't go on? Or is
it all preamble, like a Spanish proclamation? "
She tried to smile, while she cupped her chin in
her hands in the old way.
" Well, the army thinks you are a great fool! It
would like to take you and shake you, and know
what you mean by it he's been dead eight mo
and I'm the only one that has nerve enough to tell
you so."
Leeds wiped his face with his handkerchief and
breathed hard. He expected to be told to mind his
own business.
" They do think that? " she asked, absently. Then
she added: " You have begun telling me, go on
I have always relied on you tell me what they think
of the scene at the club between Captain Barnes and
my husband ! "
329
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
" That the Major deserved more than he got. As
I heard it, Captain Barnes, who is a gentleman "
Leeds could not help putting that in " was dazed
when your husband threw the contents of his glass
in the Captain's face. Captain Barnes told him that
his tale was a lie, and pushed him back into his chair.
He called for another drink. Then the cry of the
outbreak came."
" And my going out into Tondo alone in a car-
riage? "
" The noblest thing a woman ever did. We stand
in awe of you for it ! "
" And Captain Barnes's rescuing me? "
" Why, that it was fortunate and that he did not
want to embarrass you by returning with you; but
if he had cared for you he would have gone any-
way. I would. I couldn't have helped it, duty or
no duty. The army doesn't expect you to be gay,
but it does think that you're a great fool to mourn
yourself ill; that Gerlison owed everything to you;
that he would have been out of the army long ago
but for you why, whenever the regulars criticised
the volunteers, the volunteers had only to point to
him in reply that he was a drunken brute, and a
disgrace to the Service; that you were a fool to re-
main with him when that half-breed Senora ;
330
MRS. GERLISON'S OWN STORY
that he was not worth a tear of such a woman as
you; that if Benito were to appear on the Luneta
to-night he would receive an ovation; that "
He was rushing on with the impetuosity which is
the extreme that goes with the stiff drill of the
parade-ground and the discipline of corps; while she
had listened spellbound for a moment, as his flood
of words beat down her illusions, before she realized
how awful was the character which he was paint-
ing.
" Stop! He was my husband! " she cried.
But once in a charge, Leeds would not halt until
he reached his objective.
" It's all true," he repeated, firmly.
She could not deny that it was; and she looked
away from him in silence.
" And Benito. I have something to say about
him, too," he went on. " He was brought in
wounded, four days ago."
" He was? "
' Yes. He's dead. I wouldn't speak to you be-
fore because I wanted him to die in peace, and I
didn't know what you might do. He stood up alone
in the face of a company, firing till we brought him
down. When he saw that I recognized him, he
said: ' No quere (I don't care). I kill him now,
THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
again. He go to get his sword to kill me. I kill
him first.' "
"And if I had left my husband his revolver he
would still be alive."
" Where was the revolver? "
" I took it out of his lap when I went to the car-
riage."
" Who put it there? "
" I did."
" And where did you get it? " he went on merci-
lessly.
" From his room, hanging beside his sword."
" Then he couldn't have reached his revolver any
more than he did his sword before Benito struck the
blow. Benito was bound to have killed him."
" But if I had remained at the house? "
" Is it a wife's duty to be at the side of a soldier-
husband every moment for fear a servant may kill
him? Is that the creed of an army woman? "
The manner of her silence showed that she had
found his argument unanswerable, if not convincing.
After their arrival alongside the transport, the
presence of other persons made it impossible to recur
to the subject. As he exacted a final promise that
she would try to be more cheerful, he told her
that if he did not hear good news about her from
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MRS. GERLISON'S OWN STORY
Japan he would go there himself, and continue the
rough treatment which he had just begun. She
smiled faintly, replying that he would be welcome.
" She's going to drop right back into the rut," he
thought, on his way ashore. " It's a pure and simple
case of melancholia. If I'd only known what the
real trouble was in the first place, I'd have burned
her house down, if necessary, to get her out of
Manila."
While the transport was sailing out of the bay,
Captain Barnes was walking up and down the deck,
with his hands clasped behind him, trying to think
that he was not thinking of Mrs. Gerlison. That
had been the state of his mind for most of a sleepless
night. He was dimly conscious, however, that there
is no fool like an old fool, and no old fool like an old
fool of a sailor. His pursuit of something which
would kill all recollection of her and make him again
a sober being instead of a sentimentalist, led him
into many paths of reasoning natural to one who had
long nurtured love without giving it any expression
in practice. If she had told him No, bluntly; if she
had said clearly that there was no hope, it would
have been better, he thought. He had acted like a
clod in her presence, anyway. He had written noth-
ing, said nothing to sympathize with her in her grief.
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He had left her that night in Tondo under circum-
stances unworthy of any man who called himself a
gentleman. She ought to know the reason for his
discourtesy. In justice to himself he ought to apol-
ogize. He sat down at his desk to write as shame-
facedly as a stolid merchant wipes a tear from his
eye at the theatre.
Once started, he wrote rapidly, impulsively, the
feelings of his heart, without regard for the niceties
of composition:
U. S. S. Terre Haute,
October 16, 1899.
DEAR MADAM: That day at Pompeii was the
beginning of my first real love, which still lives. In
all the time elapsed since then I have known many
women, and all that I have seen of them has only
confirmed the opinion that you were the one woman
to me. Such narrowness of vision is said to be out
of date, but that does not make it possible for mine
to be broadened. The place reserved for a wife in
my heart was occupied by your memory. I never
sought you out because I would not submit myself
to such temptation or misery. The memory was
better than your presence with the barrier between
us. Besides, I had no reason to believe that you
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MRS. GERLISON'S OWN STORY
cared for me. It was unreasonable that you should.
You did not.
Yet, when your husband said he had found you
with my letters and my picture, I believed that you
did. I realized a joy which is unimaginable. But I
told your husband that he lied. I denied all, for
that was right. Now I know that I spoke the truth
for I have heard the gossip of the club when it
was not known that I was listening I know that the
letters were an hallucination of your husband. So,
no breath of scandal was attached to your name.
But I did not know that you had not kept the
letters when I carried you in my arms out of the fire.
I could not help it: I did then have for you the feel-
ing of a lover for his sweetheart while I dammed the
tide of my emotion with reason and subterfuge. I
did not go back with you, as my heart prompted,
because I thought that it would not be right; be-
cause I thought that it would save you trouble.
I did not write to you sympathizing with you on
the death of your husband because I thought him a
drunkard and a brute that I must say, in keeping
with the candor of this letter. Your love and feel-
ing for him, as you mourn his death, I respect.
You will forgive a white-haired sailor for his
bluntness. Twenty years' waiting behind him and
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THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
a lifetime's waiting before him ought to make it
allowable for him to say what he thinks. To the
end I love you. Sincerely yours,
ARTHUR BARNES.
The next morning he was sorry that he had sent
the letter. On the evening of the same day he was
glad that he had. It was too soon for a reply when,
two weeks after Mrs. Gerlison's departure, he was
ordered to Hong-Kong. There, the cable bade him
to go to Yokohama as soon as the cruiser was
docked. Mrs. Gerlison, he had been told, was at
Yokohama. His regret that he had written the let-
ter grew during the voyage. It was a boorish way
to state his feelings; he ought to have gone to her
in person, he thought.
After the Terre Haute had dropped anchor late
one afternoon in the harbor, some naval officers and
army officers on sick leave, who were recuperating
in Japan, came on board to give him any news they
had in return for his. They mentioned that Mrs.
Gerlison was at the hotel. Moreover, she was no
longer in mourning, and seemed like herself again.
While they were talking, a bundle of mail forwarded
from Manila was brought to him. As he glanced
over the letters he noticed one in a feminine hand,
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MRS. GERLISON'S OWN STORY
post-marked " Yokohama." He placed it with the
address side down by itself on his desk. When his
visitors had gone he picked it up and looked at it.
It was thin, suggesting a brief answer. He put it
down. Then he began walking back and forth, re-
peating to himself:
" She's out of mourning! Looking like herself
again ! "
He picked up the letter a second time; again, laid
it down.
" No, no! I won't open it. I haven't had a fair
chance. I've put all my eggs in one basket. No!
I must see her and talk to her why, she doesn't
know that I can talk. Courting in that way by
letter as if I was not man enough to go to her in
person! "
For he realized at heart that if the letter said No,
he would not have the courage to call on her. With
her answer unopened, his more than boyish reason-
ing told him that the gate was not entirely closed.
Unless he could be alone with her for a few hours,
he knew that he would become embarrassed.
Safe from intrusion, he was sure that he could be
eloquent. Again he wrote to her.
" I shall be at the hotel at nine in the morning to
take you for a ride to Pompeii," he said. " Will you
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THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE
go? It is all that I shall ever ask. Is it too much
after I have loved you for twenty years? "
Su Chee, his Chinese " boy," had been wonder-
ing for some time what was troubling his master.
The next morning he assigned the cause. He knew
that it was a woman.
" I look better in a uniform, don't I, Chee? " he
asked impulsively, as he regarded himself in civilian
garb in the mirror. " I'll have to wear this, though."
" Li!'. Mlasta can do. All same velly hand-
some."
So he was. But he thought that he looked very
old; that there was no reason in the world why a
man of his age should have snow-white hair.
He took her letter ashore with him. If she were
not there to receive him he was going to ride out
into the country alone and read it, and never think
of her after that day never!
As a carriage was drawn up before the hotel
promptly at nine, its occupant was conscious that
the beats of his heart were pounding against the
cushion. Fearfully, he looked up toward the
veranda, and there he saw Mrs. Gerlison, parasol in
hand, rising from a chair.
She was in a summer gown. The color was back
in her cheeks. Thanks to Captain Leeds, who had
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MRS. GERLISON'S OWN STORY
shown her the way out of purgatory, she was herself
again.
The Captain suddenly found himself as self-pos-
sessed as if he were on the bridge of his cruiser.
" I thank you! I thank you! " he said, as he as-
sisted her into the carriage.
They talked of Japan and Yokohama while they
were yet in the city and the suburbs. Not until they
were in the open country, with no one in sight ex-
cept the laborers going about their work in the rice-
fields did he speak of what was in his heart.
"That letter," he explained"! said what I
thought. But I want to say more. I do not want
to be judged by that alone."
" Didn't you get my answer? " she asked.
" Yes. I have it with me. But I didn't dare to
read it."
" Then you'd better, now."
She was looking at the bottom of the carriage,
which she was poking with her parasol.
His coolness turned to fear while he opened the
envelope with trembling fingers. As he unfolded
the sheet, he read:
" Yokohama is not far away. Wouldn't you
rather tell me these things in person? "
Below the words, in the fold of the paper, was a
339
dried flower. He knew that it was the one that he
had picked from between the stone seats of the
theatre at Pompeii and given to her.
" And I've kept the one that you gave me in re-
turn," he replied.
While they were lunching in the inn at Kamakura,
alone, except for a little Japanese maid who went
and came, he said:
" I like this even better than Pompeii."
" So do I," she replied. " Because we shall not
be separated afterward. And let us forget we are
young enough to, dear that there was any stretch
of years between that day and this."
I will add that in some of the tales in which she
has appeared, Mrs. Gerlison was already known by
a different name; but to have called her " Mrs.
Barnes " would have been telling.
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