Like many another man's that summer and autumn of '98, Mr. Gerard
Stuyvesant's one overwhelming ambition had been to get on to Manila. The
enforced sojourn at Honolulu had been, therefore, a bitter trial. He had
reached at last the objective point of his soldier desires, and with all
his heart now wished himself back on the Sacramento with one, at
least,--or was it at most?--of the Sacramento's passengers. The voyage
had done much to speed his recovery. The cordial greeting extended by
his general and comrade officers had gladdened his heart. Pleasant
quarters on the breezy bay shore, daily drives, and, presently, gentle
exercise in saddle had still further benefited him.
He had every assurance that Marion Ray's illness was not of an alarming
nature, and that, soon as the fever had run its course, her
convalescence would be rapid. He was measurably happy in the privilege
of calling every day to ask for her, but speedily realized the poverty
of Oriental marts in the means wherewith to convey to the fair patient
some tangible token of his constant devotion. Where were the glorious
roses, the fragrant, delicate violets, the heaping baskets of cool,
luscious, tempting grapes, pears, and peaches with which from Saco to
Seattle, from the Sault de Sainte Marie to Southwest Pass, in any city
outside of Alaska in the three million square miles of his own native
land, he could have laid siege to her temporary retreat? Ransack the
city as he might,--market, shops, and gardens,--hardly a flower could he
find worthy her acceptance--a garish, red-headed hybrid twixt poppy and
tulip and some inodorous waxen shoots that looked like decrepit
hyacinths and smelled like nothing, representing the stock in trade at
that season of the few flower-stands about Manila. As for fruit, some
stunted sugar bananas about the size of a shoehorn and a few diminutive
China oranges proved the extent of the weekly exhibit along the Escolta.
Once, La Extremena displayed a keg of Malaga grapes duly powdered with
cork, and several pounds of these did Stuyvesant levy upon forthwith,
and, after being duly immersed in water and cooled in the ice-chest,
send them in dainty basket by a white-robed lackey, with an
unimpeachable card bearing the legend "Mr. Gerard Stuyvesant,
One-Hundred-and-Sixth New York Infantry Volunteers," and much were they
admired on arrival, but that was in the earlier days of Maidie's
convalescence, and Dr. Frank shook his head. Grape-seeds were "perilous
stuff," and Mrs. Brent knew they would not last until Maidie was well
enough to enjoy them, and so--they did not.
Military duty for the staff was not exacting about Manila in the autumn
days. It was the intermission. The Spanish war was over; the Filipino
yet to come. There was abundant time for "love and sighing," and
Stuyvesant did both, for there was no question the poor fellow had found
his fate, and yet thought it trembling in the balance. Not one look or
word of hers for him could Stuyvesant recall that was more winsome and
kind than those bestowed on other men. Indeed, had he not seen with
jealous eyes with what beaming cordiality and delight she had met and
welcomed one or two young gallants, who, having been comrades of Sandy
in "the Corps" at the Point, had found means to get out to the
Sacramento, obviously to see her, just before that untimely illness
claimed her for its own? Had he not heard his general, his fellow staff
officers, speaking enthusiastically of her beauty and fascinations and
their destructive effects in various quarters? Had he not been compelled
in silence to listen again and in detail to the story of old Sam
Martindale's nephew?--Sam Martingale, the cavalry called him--"Martinet
Martindale" he was dubbed by the "doughboys"--that conscientious,
dutiful, and therefore none too popular veteran, whose sister's children
much more than supplied the lack of his own.
Farquhar of the cavalry, scion of a Philadelphia family well known to
the Stuyvesants of Gotham and "trotting in the same class," had come
over from department head-quarters, where he had a billet as engineer
officer, to call on Stuyvesant and to cheer him up and contribute to his
convalescence, and did so after the manner of men, by talking on all
manner of topics for nearly an hour and winding up by a dissertation on
Billy Ray's pretty daughter and "Wally" Foster's infatuation. Farquhar
said it was the general belief that Maidie liked Wally mighty well and
would marry him were he only in the army. And Stuyvesant wondered how it
was, in all the years he had known Farquhar and envied him his being a
West Pointer and in the cavalry, he had never really discovered what a
bore, what a wearisome ass, Farquhar could be.
Then just as Miss Ray was reported sitting up and soon to be able to
"see her friends,"--with what smiling significance did Mrs. Brent so
assure him!--what should Stuyvesant's general do but select Stuyvesant
himself to go on a voyage of discovery to Iloilo and beyond. The
commanding general wanted a competent officer who spoke Spanish to make
a certain line of investigation. He consulted Vinton. Vinton thought
another voyage the very thing for Stuyvesant, and so suggested his name.
It sent the luckless Gothamite away just at the time of all others he
most wished to remain. When he returned, within a dozen days, the first
thing was to submit his written report, already prepared aboard ship.
The next was to report himself in person at Colonel Brent's, to be asked
into the presence of the girl he loved and longed to see, and, as has
been told, ushered out almost immediately, self-detailed, in search of
Sandy.
He had found the lad easily enough, but not so the man with the fit,
whom, for reasons of his own and from what he had seen and heard,
Stuyvesant was most anxious to overtake. His carriage whirled him
rapidly past the parade-ground and over to the First Reserve Hospital,
whither he thought the victim had been borne, but no civilian, with or
without fits, had recently been admitted.
Inquiry among convalescent patients and soldiers along the road without
resulted at last in his finding one of the party that carried the
stricken man from the field. He had come to, said the volunteer, before
they had gone quarter of a mile, had soused his head in water at a
hydrant, rested a minute, offered them a quarter for their trouble,
buttoned up the light coat that had been torn open in his struggle, and
nervously but positively declared himself all right and vastly obliged,
had then hailed a passing _carromatta_, and been whisked away across the
moat and drawbridge into the old city. There all trace was lost of him.
Baffled and troubled, Stuyvesant ordered his coachman to take him to the
Luneta. The crowd had disappeared. The carriages were nearly all
departed. The lights were twinkling here and there all over the placid
bay. It was still nearly an hour to dinner-time at the general's mess,
and he wished to be alone to think over matters, to hear the soothing
plash and murmur of the little waves, and Stuyvesant vowed in his wrath
and vexation that Satan himself must be managing his affairs, for, over
and above the longed-for melody of the rhythmic waters, he was hailed by
the buzz-saw stridencies of Miss Perkins, whose first words gave the lie
to themselves.
"I'm all out of breath, and so het up runnin' after you I can't talk,
but I was just bound to see you, an' I've been to your house so often
the soldiers laugh at me. Those young men haven't any sense of decency
or respect, but I'll teach 'em, and you see they'll sing another song.
Where can we sit down?" continued the lady, her words chasing each
other's heels in her breathless haste. "These lazy, worthless Spanish
officers take every seat along here. Why, here! your carriage will do,
an' I've got a thousand things to say!" ("Heaven be merciful," groaned
Stuyvesant to himself.) "I saw you driving, and I told my cabman to
catch you if he had to flog the hide off his horse. Come, aren't
you--don't you want to sit down? I do, anyhow! There's no comfort in my
cab. Here, I'll dismiss it now. You can just drop me on the way home,
you know. I'm living down the Calle Real a few blocks this side of you.
All the soldiers know me, and if _they_ had _their_ say it wouldn't be
the stuck-up Red Cross that's flirting with doctors and living high on
the dainties our folks sent over. The _boys_ are all right. It's your
generals that have ignored the P. D. A.'s, and I'll show 'em presently
what a miss they've made. Wait till the papers get the letters I have
written. But, say--"("And this is the woman I thought might be
literary!" moaned Stuyvesant as he meekly followed to the little open
carriage and, with a shiver, assisted his angular visitor to a seat.)
"A Key!" she shouted, "A Key, Cochero! No quiere mas hoy. Manana! Ocho!
Sabe, Cochero? Ocho! Now don't chewbe--What's late in their lingo,
anyhow? 'Tisn't tardy, I know; that's afternoon. Tardeeo? Thank you.
Now--well, just sit down, first, lieutenant. You see _we_ know how
to address officers by their titles, if the Red Cross don't. I'd teach
'em to Mister me if I was an officer. Now, what I want to see you about
first is this. Your general has put me off one way or another every time
I've called this last two weeks. I've always treated him politely, but
for some reason he'll never see me now, and yet they almost ran after me
at first. Now, you can fix it easy enough, and you do it and you won't
regret it. I only want him to listen to me three minutes, and that's
little enough for anybody to ask. You do it, and I can do a good deal
more for you than you think for, an' I will do it, too, if certain
people don't treat me better. It's something you'll thank me for
mightily later on if you don't now. I've had my eyes open, lieutenant,
an' I see things an' I hear things an' I know things you mighty little
suspect."
"Pardon me, Miss Perkins," interposed Stuyvesant at this juncture, his
nerves fairly twitching under the strain. "Let us get at the matters on
which you wish to speak to me. Malate, Cochero!" he called to the pygmy
Filipino on the box. "I am greatly pressed for time," he added, as the
carriage whirled away, the hoofs of the pony team flying like shuttles
the instant the little scamps were headed homeward.
"Well, what I want mostly is to see the general. He's got influence with
General Drayton and I know it, and these Red Cross people have poisoned
his ears. Everybody's ears seem to be just now against me and I can get
no hearing whatever. Everything was all right at first; everything was
promised me, and then, first one and then another, they all backed out,
and I want to know why--I'm bound to know why, and they'd better come to
me and make their peace now than wait until the papers and the P. D.
A.'s get after 'em, as they will,--you hear my words now,--they _will_
do just as soon as my letters reach the States. _You're_ all right
enough. I've told them how you helped with those poor boys of mine
aboard the train. Bad way they'd been in if we hadn't been there, you
and I. Why, I just canvassed that train till I got clothes and shoes
for every one of those poor burned-out fellows, but there wouldn't
anybody else have done it. And nursing?--you ought to have seen those
boys come to thank me the day I went out to the Presidio, an' most
cried--some of them did;--said their own mothers couldn't have done
more, and they'd do anything for me now. But when I went out to their
camp at Paco their major just as much as ordered me away, and that
little whipper-snapper, Lieutenant Ray, that I could take on my knee
and spank---- He--Lieutenant Ray--a friend of yours? Well, you may
_think_ he is, or you may be a friend of _his_, but _I_ can tell you
right here and now he's no friend, and you'll see he isn't. What's
more, I hate to see an honest, high-toned young gentleman just
throwing himself away on people that can't appreciate him. I could
tell you----"
"Stop, driver!" shouted Stuyvesant, unable longer to control himself.
"Miss Perkins," he added, as the little coachman manfully struggled to
bring his rushing team to a halt at the curb, "I have a call to make and
am late. Tell my coachman where to take you and send him back to this
corner. Good-night, madam," and, gritting his teeth, out he sprang to
the sidewalk.
It happened to be directly in front of one of those native resorts
where, day and night, by dozens the swarthy little brown men gather
about a billiard-table with its centre ornament of boxwood pins, betting
on a game resembling the Yankee "pin pool" in everything but the
possibility of fair play. Hovering about the entrance or on the
outskirts of the swarm of men and boys, a dozen native women, some with
babies in their arms and nearly all with cigars between their teeth,
stood watching the play with absorbing interest, and a score of dusky,
pot-bellied children from two to twelve years of age sprawled about the
premises, as much at home as the keeper of the place.
The lamps had been lighted but a few minutes and the game was in full
blast. Some stalwart soldiers, regulars from the Cuartel de Malate from
down the street or the nipa barracks of the Dakotas and Idahos, were
curiously studying the scene, making jovial and unstinted comment after
their fearless democratic fashion, but sagely abstaining from trying
their luck and not so sagely sampling the sizzling soda drinks held
forth to them by tempting hands. Liquor the vendors dare not
proffer,--the provost marshal's people had forbidden that,--and only at
the licensed bars in town or by bribery and stealth in the outlying
suburbs could the natives dispose of the villainous "bino" with which at
times the unwary and unaccustomed American was overcome.
Three or four men in civilian dress, that somehow smacked of the sea, as
did their muttered, low-toned talk, huddled together at the corner post,
furtively eying the laughing soldiers and occasionally peering up and
down the darkened street. It was not the place Stuyvesant would have
chosen to leave his carriage, but it was a case of any port in a
storm,--anything to escape that awful woman. With one quick spring he
was out of the vehicle and into the midst of the group on the narrow
sidewalk before he noticed them at all, but not before they saw him.
Even as Miss Perkins threw forward a would-be grasping and detaining
hand and called him by name, one of the group in civilian dress gave
sudden, instant start, sprang round the corner, but, tripping on some
obstacle, sprawled full length on the hard stone pavement. Despite the
violence of the fall, which wrung from him a fierce curse, the man was
up in a second, away, and out of sight in a twinkling.
"Go on!" shouted Stuyvesant impatiently, imperiously, to his coachman,
as, never caring what street he took, he too darted around the same
corner, and his tall white form vanished on the track of the civilian.
But the sound of the heavy fall, the muttered curse, and the sudden
question in the nearest group, "What's wrong with Sackett?" had reached
Miss Perkins's ears, for while once more the little team was speeding
swiftly away, the strident voice of the lone passenger was uplifted in
excited hail to the coachman to stop. And here the Filipino demonstrated
to the uttermost that the amenities of civilization were yet undreamed
of in his darkened intellect--as between the orders of the man and the
demands of the woman he obeyed the former. Deaf, even to that awful
voice, he drove furiously on until brought up standing by the bayonets
of the patrol in front of the English Club, and in a fury of
denunciation and quiver of mingled wrath and excitement, Miss Perkins
tumbled out into the arms of an amazed and disgusted sergeant, and
demanded that he come at once to arrest a vile thief and deserter.