There came a time of something more than anxiety and worry for all who
knew Gerard Stuyvesant,--for those who loved Marion Ray,--and Sandy was
a sorrow-laden man. Vinton could not stand between his favorite
aide-de-camp and the accusation laid at his door. Frank and his most
gifted fellow-surgeons were powerless to prevent the relapse that came
to Marion and bore her so close to the portals of the great beyond that
there were days and nights when the blithe spirit seemed flitting away
from its fragile tenement, and November was half gone before the crisis
was so far past that recovery could be pronounced only a question of
time. Oh, the strain of those long, long, sleepless days of watching,
waiting, hoping, praying, yet days wherein the watchers could nurse and
help and _act_. Oh, the blackness, the misery of the nights of watching,
waiting in helplessness, well-nigh in despair, for the coming of the
next "cable!" the consciousness of utter impotence to help or to do! the
realization that a priceless life is ebbing away, while they who gave
it--they to whom it is so infinitely precious--are at the very opposite
ends of the earth! Oh, the tremulous opening of those fateful messages,
the breathless reading of the cipher, the awful suspense of the search
through Cable Code pages that dance and swim before the straining eyes!
Oh, the meek acceptance of still further suspense! the almost piteous
thankfulness that all is not yet lost, that hope is not yet abandoned!
Strong men break down and add years to those they have lived. Gentle
women sway and totter at last until relief comes to them through
God-given tears.
In a fever-stricken camp in Southern swamplands a father waked night
after night, walking the hospitals where his brave lads lay moaning,
seeing in their burning misery, hearing in their last sigh, the
sufferings of a beloved child. By the bedside of her youngest, her baby
boy as she would ever call the lad, who lay there in delirium, knelt a
mother who, as she nursed and soothed this one, prayed without ceasing
for that other, that beloved daughter for whom the Death Angel crouched
and waited under the tropic skies of the far Philippines. Ah, there were
suffering and distress attendant on that strange, eventful epoch in the
nation's history that even the press said nothing about, and that those
who knew it speak of only in deep solemnity and awe to-day. It was
mid-November before they dared to hope. It was December when once again
Maid Marion was lifted to her lounging-chair overlooking the Bagumbayan,
and little by little began picking up once more the threads that were so
nearly severed for all time, and as health and strength slowly returned,
hearing the tidings of the busy, bustling world about her.
Others too had known anxiety as sore as that which had so lined the face
of Colonel Ray and trebled the silver in the soft hair of Marion, his
wife. Well-nigh distracted, a mother sped across the continent to the
Pacific, there to await the coming of her son's remains.
From the night of Walter Foster's disappearance at Carquinez no word of
his existence came to give her hope, no trace of his movements until,
late in August, there was brought to her the cabled message:
"Alive, well, but in trouble. Have written."
And this was headed Yokohama. Not until October did that longed-for,
prayed-for letter come,--a selfish letter, since it gave no really
adequate excuse for the long weeks of silence, and only told that the
boy had been in hiding, almost in terror of his life. While still dazed
by the shock of the fire and smarting from his burns, wrote Walter, he
had wandered from the cars at Port Costa. He had encountered "most
uncongenial persons," he said, among the recruits, and never realizing
that it was desertion, war-time desertion at that, had determined to get
back to Sacramento and join some other command. Yes. There was another
reason, but--one "mother couldn't appreciate." Unknown to all but one of
his comrades on the train, he had abundant money, realized from the sale
of horses and cattle at the ranch. It was in a buckskin belt about his
waist, and this money bought him "friends" who took him by water to
Sacramento, found him secret lodgings, procured suitable clothing, and
later spirited him off to San Francisco.
But these money-bought friends showed the cloven hoof, threatened to
give him over to the military authorities to be tried for his life
unless he would pay a heavy sum. They had him virtually a prisoner. He
could only stir abroad at night, and then in company with his jailers.
There was a man, he wrote, who had a grudge against him, a man
discharged from the ranch, who followed him to Denver and enlisted in
the same party, a man he was most anxious to get rid of, and the first
thing he knew that fellow, who, he supposed, had gone on to Manila,
turned up in disguise and joined forces with his tormentors. That drove
him to desperation, nerved him to one sublime effort, and one night he
broke away and ran. He was fleet of foot, they were heavy with drink,
and he dodged them among the wharves and piers, took refuge on a coast
steamer, and found himself two days later at Portland.
Here he bethought him of an old friend, and succeeded in finding a man
he well knew he could trust, despite his mother's old dislike for him, a
man who knew his whole past, of his desertion, of his danger,--a man who
was himself about enlisting for service in the Philippines, and who
persuaded him that his surest way to win exemption from punishment was
to hasten after the detachment, beat it, if possible, to Manila, and
join it there at his own expense.
He still had some hundreds left. They went to San Francisco, where
Walter took steamer at once for Honolulu to await there the coming of
the recruit detachment. The infantry finally came, his friend with them,
but no sign of more cavalry. To Walter's dismay he had seen among the
passengers landed from the Doric the disguised rough whom, as Sackett,
he had so unfavorably known before, who as Murray had followed him into
the army. It would never do to fall into his clutches again: the man
would betray him instantly. Walter kept in hiding until he heard that
Sackett was accused of stabbing a staff officer of General Vinton and
had fled the island.
Later, when the next troop-ship came, bringing his friend with it, he
again took counsel. As the lad fully admitted, his friend was the same
old chum of Freiburg days--the friend to whom his parents had so much
objected. The fortunes of war had thrown them together, Willard as
impecunious as ever, and the Damon and Pythias, the Orestes and Pylades,
the two Ajaxes of the old days were in close and intimate touch once
more, Damon, as of old, the banker for the twain. The troop-ships were
to proceed as soon as coaled. There were reasons now why Walter wished
to stay in Honolulu, but Willard urged his moving at once on to Hong
Kong and there awaiting the result of his negotiations at Manila. At
Hong Kong it was his hope to receive the word "Come over. All is well,"
and, finally, as his funds would soon run out, he closed his letter with
the request that his mother cable him five hundred dollars through the
Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank.
The money she cabled at once, then in dread she had wired Colonel
Martindale, who was gadding about with old army chums when most she
needed him at home, and that gentleman, with a sigh, again went
sisterward, saying he knew the boy was sure to turn up to torment him,
and wondering what on earth young Hopeful had done now. He looked grave
enough when he read the letter, asked for time to communicate
confidentially with a chum at Washington, and was awaiting reply when
all on a sudden the papers came out with this startling despatch telling
of the murder of Private Walter Foster while on his post as sentry at
Manila, and then came weeks of woe.
Despite Drayton's cable from Manila that the identification of the
remains was not conclusive to him, at least, Mrs. Foster was convinced
that the murdered lad was her only boy, and all because of that
heartless flirt, that designing--that demoniac army girl who had
bewitched him and then brought his blood upon her own head.
"If it isn't Walter who lies there slain by assassin rival, the innocent
victim of _that creature's_ hideous vanity, would I not have heard from
him? Do you suppose my blessed boy would not _instantly_ have cabled to
tell me he was alive if he wasn't dead?" And, indeed, that was a hard
question to answer.
And so the remains of Private Willard Benton, that had been viewed by
many a genuinely sorrowing comrade and stowed away with solemn military
honors in a vault at Paco Cemetery, were sealed up as best they could do
it at Manila, and, though unconvinced as to their identity despite the
convictions of others in authority, the commanding general yielded to
cables from the War Department and ordered their shipment to San
Francisco. They were out of sight of all signals from Corregidor when
Martindale's cable came suggesting search for Private Benton Willard.
Zenobia Perkins sniffed contemptuously and scoffed malignantly when told
that the doubting Thomases were gaining ground and numbers, that though
Mr. Stuyvesant might be brought to trial for killing a man, it would not
be for killing Foster until more was ascertained regarding the actual
victim. Private Connelly, recovered from his fever, was forever hunting
up Farnham, the brakeman, and devising schemes for the capture of that
blackguard Murray. Day and night, he maintained that Murray was the man
who had accosted Clarke and Hunter at the battery, that it was probably
he who, with his pals, had waylaid and robbed the lone recruit returning
from his quest in East Paco, that it was he who must have struggled with
him again before firing the fatal shot; but not a trace of Murray or his
sailor mates could the secret service agents find, and matters were in
this most unsatisfactory state when at the end of November came the
Queen of the Fleet, despatched several weeks before to fetch along the
troops "sidetracked" at Honolulu, just as the commanding general and his
chief surgeon were in consultation as to what on earth to do with
Zenobia Perkins--the woman had become a public nuisance.
It seems that the Patriotic Daughters of America were now out of
patience and the vice-president out of funds. It seemed that her brief
ascendancy had carried the lady to such an altitude as to dizzy her
brain and rob her of all sense of proportion. It seems that the surgeons
in charge of three hospitals had complained of her meddling, that
colonels of several regiments had discovered her to be the author of
letters to the home papers setting forth that neglect, abuse, and
starvation were driving their men to desertion or the grave. It seems
that the Red Cross had protested against her as the originator of
malignant stories at their expense, and it was evidently high time to
get rid of her, yet how could they if that case was to be tried? Zenobia
Perkins knew they could not and conducted herself accordingly. She came
this day to the Ayuntamiento to demand pay for what she termed her long
detention at Manila.
"You compel me to remain against my will because I'm an indispensable
witness," said she to the saturnine adjutant-general, beyond whom she
never now succeeded in passing. She was volubly berating him, to his
grim amusement, when the lattice doors from the corridor swung open and
two officers entered.
For nearly two minutes they stood waiting for a break in her tempestuous
flow of words, but as none came, the senior impatiently stepped forward
and the adjutant-general, looking up, sprang from his chair just as the
chief himself came hurrying out from the _sanctum sanctorum_ and greeted
the newcomers with cordially clasping hands. The lady too had risen.
This was another of those stuck-up star-wearers who at San Francisco as
much as told her she was a nuisance, and who wouldn't send her by
transport to Manila. Yet here she was in spite of them all, and the most
important woman on the island! Zenobia's face was flushed with triumph
that the star-wearer should be made to feel and see before she would
consent to leave the room.
"Well, I shall have to interrupt you gentlemen," said she, "for _my_
business won't keep if you propose to keep _me_. I want to know right
here and now, General Drayton, whether I'm to get my pay or not; if not,
I don't propose to wait another day in Manila, and you can get out of
the scrape the best way you know how. No one here but me could swear
that young man Foster was dead, and you know it."
"You've sworn to what isn't so, madame," interposed the new arrival
placidly. "Here's that young man Foster!" and as he spoke the lattice
doors again swung open, and, very pale, a tall youth in civilian dress
was ushered in, at sight of whom Major Farquhar fairly shouted.
--------------------
"How'd I get him?" said the new-comer five minutes later. "Found him
aboard the Coptic when she met us as we were pulling out from Honolulu.
He was going back to the States. Left Hong Kong before the story was
published. Didn't want to come, of course, but had to."
"Wasn't there time to write his mother? They surely would have cabled,
and the Coptic must have got into San Francisco a week ago."
"Certainly! Letter was sent right on by the steamer, addressed to
Cincinnati."
"O Lord!" said Drayton. "And she was at 'Frisco all the time. Colonel,"
he added to his chief-of-staff, "what's the first transport home?"
"Zealandia, sir; to-morrow."
"Sorry for the Zealandia, but Zenobia must go with her."