Ray's Daughter Part 13

"The man is a crank," said he, "and I shall have him watched." The colonel asked that one or two of the soldier police guard should be sent to the house to look after the stranger. A corporal came from the company barrack around on the Calle Real, and it was after nightfall when next the "old friend" rang the bell and was permitted by Ignacio to enter.

But the instant the corporal started forward to look at him the caller bounded back into outer darkness. He was tall, sinewy, speedy, and had a twenty-yard start before the little guardsman, stout and burly, could squeeze into the street. Then the latter's shouts up the San Luis only served to startle the sentries, to spur the runner, and to excite and agitate Maidie.

Dr. Frank was disgusted when he tried her pulse and temperature half an hour later and said things to the corporal not strictly authorized by the regulations. The episode was unfortunate, yet might soon have been forgotten but for one hapless circ.u.mstance. Despite her announcement, something had overcome Miss Perkins's sense of injury, for she had stepped from a carriage directly in front of the house at the moment of the occurrence, was a witness to all that took place, and the first one to extract from the corporal his version of the affair and his theory as to what lay behind it. In another moment she was driving away towards the Nozaleda, the direction taken by the fugitive, fast as her coachman could whip his ponies, the original purpose of her call abandoned.

As in duty bound, both Mrs. Brent and Dr. Frank had told Sandy of this odd affair. Mrs. Brent described the stranger as tall, slender, sallow, with big cavernous dark eyes that had a wild look to them, and a scraggly, fuzzy beard all over his face, as though he hadn't shaved for long weeks. His hands--of course, she had particularly noticed his hands; what woman doesn't notice such things?--were slim and white. He had the look of a man who had been long in hospital; was probably a recently discharged patient, perhaps one of the many men just now getting their home orders from Was.h.i.+ngton.

"Somebody who served under your father, perhaps," said Mrs. Brent soothingly to Marion, "and thought he ought to see you."

"Somebody who had not been a soldier at all," said she to Sandy. "He had neither the look nor the manner of one." And Sandy marvelled a bit and decided to be on guard.

"Maidie," he had said that afternoon, before riding away, "when you get out next week we must take up pistol practice again. You beat me at Leavenworth, but you can't do it now. Got your gun--anywhere?--the one Dad gave you?" And Dad or Daddy in the Ray household was the "lovingest"

of t.i.tles.

Maidie turned a languid head on her pillow. "In the upper drawer of the cabinet in my room, I think," said she. "I remember Mrs. Brent's examining it."

Sandy went in search, and presently returned with the prize, a short, big-barrelled, powerful little weapon of the bull-dog type, sending a bullet like that of a Derringer, hot and hard, warranted to shock and stop an ox at ten yards, but miss a barn at over twenty: a woman's weapon for defence of her life, not a target pistol, and Sandy twirled the s.h.i.+ning cylinder approvingly. It was a gleaming toy, with its ivory stock and nickeled steel.

"Every chamber crammed," said Sandy, "and sure to knock spots out of anything from a mad dog to an elephant, provided it hits. Best keep it by you at night, Maidie. These natives are marvellous sneak-thieves.

They go all through these ramshackle upper stories like so many ghosts.

No one can hear them."

Then, when he took his leave, the pistol remained there lying on the table, and Frank, coming in to see his most interesting patient just as the band was trooping back to its post on the right of the long line, picked it up and examined it, muzzle uppermost, with professional approbation.

"Yours I see, Miss Ray;--and from your father. A man hit by one of these," he continued musingly, and fingering the fat leaden bullets, "would drop in his tracks. You keep it by you?--always?"

"I? No!" laughed Maidie. "I'm eager to get to my work,--healing--not giving--gunshot wounds."

"You will have abundant time, my dear young lady," said the doctor slowly, as he carefully replaced the weapon on the table by her side, "and--opportunity, if I read the signs aright, and we must get you thoroughly well before you begin. Ah! What's that? What's the matter over there?" he lazily asked. It was a fad of the doctor's never to permit himself to show the least haste or excitement.

A small opera-gla.s.s stood on the sill, and, calmly adjusting it as he peered, Frank had picked it up and levelled it towards the front and centre of the line just back of where the colonel commanding sat in saddle. A lively scuffle and commotion had suddenly begun among the groups of spectators. Miss Ray's reclining-chair was so placed that by merely raising her head she could look out over the field. Mrs. Brent ran to where the colonel's field-gla.s.ses hung in their leathern case and joined the doctor at the gallery rail.

Three pairs of eyes were gazing fixedly at the point of disturbance, already the centre of a surging crowd of soldiers off duty, oblivious now to the fact that the band was playing the "Star-Spangled Banner,"

and they ought to be standing at attention, hats off, and facing the flag as it came floating slowly to earth on the distant ramparts of the old city.

Disdainful of outside attractions, the adjutant came stalking out to the front as the strain ceased, and his shrill voice was heard turning over the parade to his commander. Then the surging group seemed to begin to dissolve, many following a little knot of men carrying on their shoulders an apparently inanimate form. They moved in the direction of the old botanical garden, towards the Estado Mayor, and so absorbed were the three in trying to fathom the cause of the excitement that they were deaf to Ignacio's announcement. A tall, handsome, most distinguished-looking young officer stood at the wide door-way, dressed _cap-a-pie_ in snowy white, and not until, after a moment's hesitation, he stepped within the room and was almost upon them, did Miss Ray turn and see him.

"Why, Mr. Stuyvesant!" was all she said; but the tone was enough. Mrs.

Brent and the doctor dropped the gla.s.ses and whirled about. Both instantly noted the access of color. It had not all disappeared by any means, though the doctor had, when, ten minutes later, Colonel Brent came in.

At the moment of his entrance, Stuyvesant, seated close to Marion's reclining-chair, was, with all the doctor's caution and curiosity, examining her revolver. "Rather bulky for a pocket-pistol," he remarked, as, muzzle downward, he essayed its insertion in the gaping orifice at the right hip of his Manila-made, flapping white trousers. It slipped in without a hitch.

"What was the trouble out there a while ago?" asked the lady of the house of her liege lord. "You saw it, I suppose?"

"Nothing much. Man had a fit, and it took four men to hold him. Maidie, look here. Captain Kress handed this to me--said they picked it up just back of where the colonel stood at parade. Is he another mash?"

Marion took the envelope from the outstretched hand, drew forth a little _carte-de-visite_, on which was the vignette portrait of her own face, gave one quick glance, and dropped back on the pillow. All the bright color fled. The picture fell to the floor. "Can you--find Sandy?" was all she could say, as, with imploring eyes, she gazed into honest Brent's astonished face.

"I can, at once," said Stuyvesant, who had risen from his chair at the colonel's remark. With quick bend he picked up the little card, placed it face downward on the table by her side, never so much as giving one glance at the portrait, and noiselessly left the room.

CHAPTER XIII.

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 pa.s.sengers. 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 sh.o.r.e, daily drives, and, presently, gentle exercise in saddle had still further benefited him.

He had every a.s.surance 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 Pa.s.s, 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 cla.s.s," 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 a.s.s, 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 a.s.sure 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 s.h.i.+p.

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, b.u.t.toned 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 pa.s.sing _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 s.h.i.+ver, a.s.sisted 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 t.i.tles, 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 canva.s.sed 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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.