OF THE SERVICE IF* FREDERICK PALMER / *+ % ' A* THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE IHflf. OF CALIF. LIBRARY. LOS ANGCLE* bo T3 rr o 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 ....... / 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 332 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. 333 THE WAYS OF THE SERVICE 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 334 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 335 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, 336 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 337 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 338 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. 340 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A 000114920 2