Love, the Fiddler Part 16

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 pa.s.sionate 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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 a.s.sured it would, he would try to bear it with what fort.i.tude 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 s.h.i.+pping 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 embarra.s.sing 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 n.o.bility? 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 surpa.s.sing 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 a.s.sured 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 surrept.i.tious 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-pa.s.sengers. 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 impa.s.sable 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 pa.s.sengers 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!"

THE MASCOT OF BATTERY B

Battery A had a mascot goat, and Battery C a Filipino kid, and Battery D a parrot that could swear in five languages, but I guess we were the only battery in the brigade that carried an old lady!

Filipino, nothing! But white as yourself and from Oakland, California, and I don't suppose I'd be here talking to you now, if it hadn't been for her.

I had known Benny a long time--Benny was her son, you know, the only one she had--and when I enlisted at the beginning of the war Benny wished to do it, too, only he was scared to death, not of the Spaniards, but his old Ma! So he hung off and on, while I drilled at the Presidio and rode free on the street cars, and did the little hero act, and ate pie the whole day long. My! How they used to bring us pies in them times and boxes of see-gars--and flowers! Flowers to burn! Well I remember a Wisconsin regiment marching along Market Street, big splendid men from the up-North woods, every one of them with a Calla lily stuck in his gun! Oh, it was fine, with the troops pouring in, and the whole city afire to receive them, and the girls almost cutting the clothes off your back for souvenirs--and it made Benny sick to see it all, him clerking in a hardware store and eating his heart out to go with the boys. He hung back as long as he could, but at last he couldn't stand it no longer, and the day before we sailed he went and enlisted in my battery.

He knew there was going to be a rumpus at home and I suppose that was why he put it off to the very end, not wanting to be plagued to death or cried over. But when he got into his uniform and had done a spell of goose-step with the first sergeant, he was so blamed rattled about going home that he had to take me along too.

He lived away off somewheres in a poorish sort of neighbourhood, all little frame houses and little front yards about that big, where you could see commuters watering Calla lilies in their city clothes. Benny's house seemed the smallest and poorest of the lot, though it had Calla lilies too and other sorts of flowers, and a mat with "welcome" on it, and some kind of a dog that licked our hands as we walked up the front steps and answered to the name of Dook.

Benny pushed open the door and went in, me at his heels, and both of us nervous as cats. His mother was sitting in a rocker, reading the evening paper with gold spectacles, and I never saw such a straight-backed old lady in my life, nor any so tall and thin and commanding. She looked up at us, kind of startled to see two soldiers walking into her kitchen, and Benny smiled a silly smile and said:

"Mommer, I'm off to help Dooey in the Fillypines!"

I guess he thought she'd jump at him or something, for he had always been a mother's boy and minded everything she said, though he was twenty-eight years old and rising-nine--but all she did was to draw in her breath sharp and sudden, so you could hear the whistle of it, and then two big tears rolled out under her specs.

"Don't feel bad about it, Mommer," said Benny in a snuffly voice.

She never said a word, but got up from the chair and came over to where Benny was, very white and trembly, and looking at his army coat like it was a shroud.

"Oh, my son, my son!" she said, kind of choking over the words.

"I couldn't stay behind when all the boys was going," he said.

I saw he was holding back all he could to keep from crying, and I didn't blame him either, as we was to sail the next day and the old lady was his Ma. It's them good-byes that break a soldier all up. So I lit out and played with the dog and made him jump through my hands and fetch sticks and give his paw (he was quite a RE-markable dog, that dog, though his breeding wasn't much), while I could hear them inside, talking and talking, and the old lady's voice running on about the danger of drink and how he mustn't sleep in wet clothes or give back-talk to his officers--it was wonderful the horse-sense that old lady had--and how he must respeck the uniform he wore and be cheerful and willing and brave, like his sainted father who was dead--all that mothers say and sometimes what soldiers do--and through it all there was a pleasant rattle of dishes and the sound of the fire being poked up, and Benny asking where's the table-cloth, and was there another pie?

By and by I was called in, and there, sure enough, the table was spread, and we were both made to sit down while the old lady skirmished around and wiped her eyes when we weren't looking.

We had beefsteak, warmed-over pigs' feet, coffee, potato cakes, fresh lettuce, Graham gems, and two kinds of pie, and the next day we sailed for Manila.

Them early days in the Fillypines was the toughest proposition I was ever up against. Things hadn't settled down as they did afterward, n.o.body knowing where he was at, and all of us shoved up to the front higgeldy-piggeldy; and, being Regulars, they gave us the heavy end of it, having to do all the fighting while the Volunteers was being taught the difference between a Krag- Jorgensen and a Moro Castle. It was all front in them days--for the Regulars! But we were lucky in our commissary sergeant, a splendid young man named Orr, and we lived well from the start and never came down to rations. The battery got quite a name for having griddle-cakes for breakfast and carrying a lot of dog generally in the eating line, and someone wrote a song, to the toon of Chickamauga, called "The Fried Chicken of Battery B." But I tell you, it wasn't all fried chicken either, for the fighting was heavy and hot, and a good many of the boys pegged out. If ever there was a battery that looked for trouble and got it--it was Battery B! But we took good care of our commissary sergeant--did I mention he was a splendid young man named Orr?--and though we dropped a good many numbers, wounded, dead, sick, and missing--we kep' up the good name of the battery and had canned b.u.t.ter and pop-overs nearly every day.

Benny and I were chums, but n.o.body knows what that word means till you've kept warm under the same blanket and kneeled side by side in the firing-line. It brings men together like nothing else in the world, and it's queer the unlikely sorts that take to one another. I was so common and uneddicated that I wonder what Benny ever saw to like in me, for, as I said, he was a regular Mommer's boy and splendidly brought up and an electrician. Religious, too, and a church member! But he was powerful fond of me, and never went into action but what he'd let off a little prayer to himself that I might come out all right and go to heaven if bolo-ed. Pity he hadn't taken as much trouble for himself, for one day while we were lying in a trench, and firing for all we were worth, I suddenly saw that look in his face that a soldier gets to know so well.

"Benny, you're shot!" I yelled out, dropping my Krag and all struck of a heap.

"Shot, nothing!" he answered, and then he keeled over in the dirt and his legs began to kick.

He took a powerful long time to die, and there was even some talk of sending him down to the base hospital, the field one being that full and constantly needed at our heels. But he pleaded with the doctors and was allowed as a favour to stay on and die where he was minded--with the battery. I was with him all I could, and I'll never forget how good that commissary sergeant was, a splendid young man named Orr, who always had a little pot of chicken broth for Benny and cornstarch, and what he fancied most of all--a sort of thick dough cakes we called sinkers. As luck would have it I got into trouble about this time--a little matter of two silver candle-sticks and a Virgin's crown--and Benny sent for Captain Howard (it was him that commanded the battery), and weak as he was, dying, he begged me off, and the captain swore awful to hide how bad he felt, and struck my name off the sheet to please him.

There was little enough to do in this line, for it was plain as day where Benny was bound for, and he knew himself he would never see that little home in Oakland again.

Well, he got worse and worse, and sometimes when I went there he didn't know me, being out of his head or kind of dopy with the doctor's stuff, the shadow being over him, as Irish people say.

One night he was that low that I got scared, and I waylaid the contract surgeon as he came out.

"Doctor," I said, "it's all up with Benny, ain't it?"

"He'll never hear reveille no more," he says.

I got my blanket and lay outside the door, it being against regulations for any of us to be in the field-hospital after taps.

But the orderly said he'd call me if Benny was to wake up before the end, and the doctor promised me I might go in. Sure enough, I was called somewheres along of four o'clock and the orderly led me inside the tent to Benny's cot. There was no light but a candle in a bottle, and I held it in my hand and bent over and looked in Benny's face. He was himself all right, and he put his cold, sweaty hand in mine and pressed it.

"Do you know me, old man?" I said. "Do you know me?"

"Good-bye, Bill," he said, and then, as I leaned over him, his voice being that low and faint--he whispered: "Billy, I guess you'll have to rustle for another chum!"

Them was his last words and he said them with a kind of a smile, like he was happy and didn't give a d.a.m.n to live. Then the little life he had left went out. The orderly looked at his watch, and then wrote the time on a slate after Benny's regimental number and the word: "died." This was about all the epitaph he got, though we buried him properly in the morning and gave him the usual send- off. Then his effects was auctioned off in front of the captain's tent, a nickel for this, ten cents for that--a soldier hasn't much at any time, you know, and on the march less than a little--and five-sixty about covered the lot. There was quite a rush for the picture of his best girl, but I bought it in, along with one of his Ma and a one-pound Hotchkiss sh.e.l.l and the hilt of a Spanish officer's sword; and when I had laid them away in my haversack and had borrowed a sheet of paper and an envelope from the commissary sergeant to write to Benny's mother, it came over me what a little place a man fills in the world and how things go on much the same without him.

I was setting down to write that letter and was about midway through, having got to "the pride of the battery and regretted by all who noo him," when I looked up, and what in thunder do you suppose I saw? The old lady herself, by G.o.d! walking into camp with an umberella and a valise, and looking like she always did-- powerful grim and commanding. Someone must have told her the news and which was my tent, for she walked straight up to where I was and said: "William, William!" like that. She didn't cry or nothing, and anybody at a distance might have thought she was just talking to a stranger; but there was a whole funeral march in the sound of her voice, and you could read Benny's death like print in her wrinkled old face. I took her out to where we had buried him, and she plumped down on her knees and prayed, with the umberella and the valise beside her, while I held my hat in one hand and my pistol in the other, ready for any bolo business that might come out of the high gra.s.s.

Then we went back to the field-hospital and had a look in, she explaining on the way how she had mortgaged her home, so as to come and look after Benny. I guess the hospital must have appeared kind of cheerless, for lots of the wounded were lying on the bare ground, and it was a caution the way some of them groaned and groaned. You see Battery K had just come in, having had an engagement by the way at Dagupan, and Wilson's cavalry, besides, had dumped a sight of their men on us.

"And it was in a place like this that my boy died?" said the old lady, her mouth quivering and then closing on the words like a steel trap.

"There's the very cot, Ma'am," I said.

She said something like "Oh, oh, oh!" under her breath, and, taking out her handkerchief, wiped the face and lips of the man in the cot, who was lying there with his uniform still on him. I suppose he had got it because he was a bad case,--the cot, I mean,--and certainly he was far from spry.