Then followed the historic days of the blockade; the first landing
on Cuba; the suspense and triumph attending Cervera's capture; El
Caney; San Juan Hill; Santiago; and the end of the war. Howard
Quintan fell ill with fever and was early invalided home; but
Raymond stayed to the finish, an obscure spectator, often an
obscure actor, in that world-drama of fleets and armies. Tried in
the fire, his character underwent some noted changes. He developed
unexpected aptitudes, became a marksman of big guns, showed
resource and skill in boat-work, earned the repeated commendations
of his superiors. He put his resolutions to the test, and emerged,
surprised, thankful, and satisfied, to find that he was a brave
man. He rose in his own esteem; it was borne in on him that he had
qualities that others often lacked; it was inspiriting to win a
reputation for daring, fearlessness, and responsibility.
He wrote when he could to his mother and Miss Latimer, and at rare
intervals was sometimes fortunate enough to hear in turn from
them. His mother was ill; the strain of his absence and danger was
telling on her enfeebled constitution; she said she could not have
got along at all had it not been for Miss Latimer's great
kindness. It seemed that the old maid was her constant visitor,
bringing her flowers, taking her drives, comforting her in the
dark hours when her courage was nigh spent. "A good and noble
woman," wrote the old lady, "and very much in love with my boy."
That line rang in Raymond's head long afterwards. He read it
again and again, bewildered, tempted and yet afraid to believe it
true, moved to the depths of his nature, at once happy and unhappy
in the gamut of his doubts. It could not be possible. No, it could
not be possible. Standing at the breech of his gun, his eyes on a
Spanish gunboat they had driven under the shelter of a fort, he
found himself repeating: "And very much in love with my boy. And
very much in love with my boy." And then, suddenly becoming intent
again on the matter in hand, he slammed the breech-mechanism shut
and gave the enemy a six-inch shell.
Then there came the news of his mother's death. As much a victim
of the war as any stricken soldier or sailor at the front, she was
numbered on the roll of the fallen. The war had killed her as
certainly, as surely, as any Mauser bullet sped from a tropic
thicket. Raymond had only the consolation of knowing that Miss
Latimer had been with her at the last and that she had followed
his mother to the grave. Her letter, tender and pitiful, filled
him with an inexpressible emotion. His little world now held but
her.
This was the last letter he was destined to receive from her. The
others, if there were others, all went astray in the chaotic
confusion attendant on active service. The poor quartermaster,
when the ship was so lucky as to take a mail aboard, grew
accustomed to be told that there was nothing for him. He lost
heart and stopped writing himself. What was the use, he asked
himself? Had she not abandoned him? The critical days of the war
were over; peace was assured; the victory won, the country was
already growing forgetful of the victors. Such were his moody
reflections as he paced the deck, hungry for the word that never
came. Yes, he was forgotten. There could be no other explanation
of that long silence. He was forgotten!
He returned in due course to New York and was paid off and
mustered out of the service. It was dusk when he boarded an uptown
car and stood holding to a strap, jostled and pushed about by the
unheeding crowd. Already jealous of his uniform, he felt a little
bitterness to see it regarded with such scant respect. He looked
out of the windows at the lighted streets and wondered whether any
of those hurrying thousands cared a jot for the men that had
fought and died for them. The air, so sharp and chill after the
tropics, served still further to dispirit him and add the
concluding note of depression to his home-coming. He got off the
car and walked down to Fifth Avenue, holding his breath as he drew
near the Quintans' house. He rang the bell: waited and rang again.
Then at last the door was unlocked and opened by an old woman.
"Is Miss--Mrs. Quintan at home?" he asked.
"Gone to Europe," said the old woman.
"But Miss Latimer?" he persisted.
"Gone to Europe," said the old woman.
"Mr. Howard Quintan?"
"Gone to Europe!"
He walked slowly down the steps, not even waiting to ask for their
address abroad nor when they might be expected to return. They had
faded into the immeasurable distance. What more was there to be
said or hoped, and his dejected heart gave back the answer:
nothing. He slept that night in a cheap hotel. The next day he
bought a suit of civilian clothes and sought the office of the
auditor's department. Here he received something more like a
welcome. Many of the clerks, with whom he had scarcely been on
nodding terms, now came up and shook him warmly by the hand. The
superintendent sent for him and told him that his place had been
held open, hinting, in the exuberance of the moment, at a slight
increase of salary. The assistant superintendent made much of him
and invited him out to lunch. The old darkey door-keeper greeted
him like a long-lost parent. Raymond went back to his desk, and
resumed with a sort of melancholy satisfaction the interrupted
routine of twenty years. In a week he could hardly believe he had
ever quitted his desk. He would shut his eyes and wonder whether
the war had not been all a dream. He looked at his hands and asked
himself whether they indeed had pulled the lanyards of cannon,
lifted loaded projectiles, had held the spokes of the leaping
wheel. His eyes, now intent on figures, had they in truth ever
searched the manned decks of the enemy or trained the sights that
had blown Spanish blockhouses to the four winds of heaven? Had it
been he or his ghost who had stood behind the Nordenfeldt shields
with the bullets pattering against the steel and stinging the air
overhead? He or his ghost, barefoot in the sand that sopped the
blood of fallen comrades, the ship shaking with the detonation of
her guns, the hoarse cheering of her crew re-echoing in his half-
deafened ears? A dream, yes; tragic and wonderful in the
retrospect, filled with wild, bright pictures; incredible, yet
true!
He was restless and lonely. He dreaded his evenings, which he knew
not how to spend; dreaded the recurring Sunday, interminable in
duration, whose leaden hours seemed never to reach their end. His
only solace was in his work, which took him out of himself and
prevented him from thinking. He made a weekly pilgrimage past the
Quintans' house. The blinds were always drawn. It was as dead as
one of those Cuban mills, standing in the desolation of burned
fields. Once, greatly daring, and impelled by a sudden impulse, he
went to the door and requested the address of his vanished
friends:
"Grand Hotel, Vevey, Switzerland." He repeated the words to
himself as he went back to his boarding-house, repeated them again
and again like a child going on an errand, "Grand Hotel, Vevey,
Switzerland," in a sort of panic lest he might forget them. He
tossed that night in his bed in a torment of indecision. Ought he
to write? Ought he to take the risk of a reply, courteous and
cold, that he felt himself without the courage to endure? Or was
it not better to put an end to it altogether and accept like a man
the inevitable "no" of her decision.
He rose at dawn, and, lighting the gas, went back to bed with what
paper he could lay his hands on. He had no pen, no ink, only the
stub of a pencil he carried in his pocket. How it flew over the
ragged sheets under the fierce spell of his determination! All the
misery and longing of months went out in that letter. Inarticulate
no longer, he found the expression of a passionate and despairing
eloquence. He could not live without her; he loved her; he had
always loved her; before he had been daunted by the inequality
between them, but now he must speak or die. At the end he asked
her, in set old-fashioned terms, whether or not she would marry
him.
He mailed it as it was, in odd sheets and under the cover of an
official envelope of the railroad company. He dropped it into the
box and walked away, wondering whether he wasn't the biggest fool
on earth and the most audacious, and yet stirred and trembling
with a strange satisfaction. After all he was a man; he had lived
as a man should, honorably and straightforwardly; he had the
right to ask such a question of any woman and the right to an
honest and considerate answer. Be it yes or no, he could reproach
himself no longer with perhaps having let his happiness slip past
him. The matter would be put beyond a doubt for ever, and if it
went against him, as in the bottom of his heart he felt assured it
would, he would try to bear it with what fortitude he might. She
would know that he loved her. There was always that to comfort
him. She would know that he loved her.
He got a postal guide and studied out the mails. He learned the
names of the various steamers, the date of their sailing and
arriving, the distance of Vevey from the sea. Were she to write on
the same day she received his letter, he might hear from her by
the Touraine. Were she to wait a day, her answer would be delayed
for the Normandie. All this, if the schedule was followed to the
letter and bad weather or accident did not intervene. The shipping
page of the New York Herald became the only part of it he read. He
scanned it daily with anxiety. Did it not tell him of his letter
speeding over seas? For him no news was good news, telling him
that all was well. He kept himself informed of the temperature of
Paris, the temperature of Nice, and worried over the floods in
Belgium. From the gloomy offices of the railroad he held all
Europe under the closest scrutiny.
Then came the time when his letter was calculated to arrive. In
his mind's eye he saw the Grand Hotel at Vevey, a Waldorf-Astoria
set in snowy mountains with attendant Swiss yodelling on
inaccessible summits, or getting marvels of melody out of little
hand-bells, or making cuckoo clocks in top-swollen chalets. The
letter would be brought to her on a silver salver, exciting
perhaps the stately curiosity of Mrs. Quintan and questions
embarrassing to answer. It was a pity he used that railroad
envelope! Or would it lie beside her plate at breakfast, as clumsy
and unrefined as himself, amid a heap of scented notes from
members of the nobility? Ah, if he could but see her face and read
his fate in her blue eyes!
When he returned home that night there was a singular-looking
telegram awaiting him on the hall table. His hands shook as he
took it up for it suddenly came over him that it was a cable. It
had never occurred to him that she might do that; that there was
anything more expeditious than the mail.
"Sailing by Touraine arriving sixth Christine Latimer."
He read and re-read it until the type grew blurred. What did it
mean? He asked himself that a thousand times. What did it mean? He
sought his room and locked the door, striding up and down with
agitation, the cablegram clenched in his hand. He was beside
himself, triumphant and yet in a fever of misgiving. Was it not
perhaps a coincidence--not an answer to his own letter, but one of
those extraordinary instances of what is called telepathy? Her
words would bear either interpretation. Possibly the whole family
was returning with her. Possibly she had never seen his letter at
all. Possibly it was following her back to America, unopened and
undelivered.
"Sailing by Touraine arriving sixth." Was that an answer? Perhaps
indeed it was. Perhaps it was a woman's way of saying "yes"; it
might even be, in her surpassing kindness, that she was coming to
break her refusal as gently as she might, too considerate of his
feelings to write it baldly on paper. At least, amid all these
doubts, it assured him of one thing, her regard; that he was not
forgotten; that he had been mistaken in thinking himself ignored.
He spent the next eight days in a cruel and heart-breaking
suspense. He could hardly eat or sleep. He grew thin and started
at a sound. He paid a dollar to have the Touraine's arrival
telegraphed to the office; another dollar to have it telegraphed
to the boarding-house; he was fearful that one or the other might
miscarry, and repeatedly warned the landlady of a possible message
for him in the middle of the night.
"It means a great deal to me," he said. "It means everything to
me. I don't know what I'd do if I missed the Touraine!"
Of course he did not miss the Touraine. He was on the wharf hours
before her coming. He exasperated everyone with his questions. He
was turned out of all kinds of barriers; he earned the distrust of
the detectives; he became a marked man. He was certainly there for
no good, that tall guy in the slouch hat, his lean hands fidgeting
for a surreptitious pearl-necklace or an innocent-looking
umbrella full of diamonds--one who, in their language, was a guy
that would bear watching.
The steamer came alongside, and Raymond gazed up at the tier upon
tier of faces. At length, with a catch in his heart, he caught
sight of Miss Latimer, who smiled and waved her hand to him. He
scanned her narrowly for an answer to his doubts; and these
increased the more he gazed at her. It seemed a bad sign to see
her so calm, so composed; worse still to see her occasionally in
animated conversation with some of her fellow-passengers. He
thought her smiles had even a perfunctory friendliness, and he had
to share them besides with others. It was plain she had never
received his letter. No woman could bear herself like that who had
received such a letter. Then too she appeared so handsome, so
high-bred, so charming and noticeable a figure in the little
company about her that Raymond felt a peremptory sense of his own
humbleness and of the impassable void between them. How had he
ever dared aspire to this beautiful woman, and the thought of his
effrontery took him by the throat.
He stood by the gangway as the passengers came off, an
interminable throng, slow moving, teetering on the slats, a gush
of funnelled humanity, hampered with bags, hat-boxes, rolls of
rugs, dressing-cases, golf-sticks, and children. At last Miss
Latimer was carried into the eddy, her maid behind her carrying
her things, lost to view save by the bright feather in her
travelling bonnet. The seconds were like hours as Raymond waited.
He had a peep of her, smiling and patient, talking over her
shoulder to a big Englishman behind her. Then, as the slow stream
brought her down, she stepped lightly on the wharf, turned to
Raymond, and, before he could so much as stammer out a word, flung
her arms round his neck and kissed him.
"Did you really want me?" she said; and then, "You gave me but two
hours to catch the old Touraine!"