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Found in the Philippines: The Story of a Woman's Letters, a novel by Charles King |
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Chapter 17 |
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_ CHAPTER XVII In the fortnight of incessant action that followed the mad attack of that starlit Sunday morning there was no place for Billy Gray. Sorely wounded, yet envied by many a fellow soldier for the glowing words in which the brigade commander praised his conduct and urged his brevet, the boy had been carried back to the great reserve hospital at Malate. The breezy wards were filled with sick or wounded, and certain of the rooms of the old convent once used for study and recitation had been set apart for officers. There were three cots in the one to which they bore him, and two were already occupied. Even in his pain and weakness he could hardly suppress a cry of dismay; for there, with his arm bandaged and in splints, his face white from loss of blood, his eyes closed in the sleep of utter exhaustion, lay Stanley Armstrong. Time and again the boy's heart and conscience had rebuked him for the estrangement that had arisen between him and this man who had proved his best friend. Time and again he had promised himself that he would strive to win back that friendship; but well he knew that first he must reinstate himself in Armstrong's respect; and how could he hope for that so long as he surrendered to the fascinations that kept him dangling about the dainty skirts of Witchie Garrison? Oddly enough the boy had hardly bothered his head with any thought of what Frank Garrison might think of his attentions or devotions, whatever they could be called, to this very captivating and capricious helpmate. When a husband is so overwhelmed with other cares or considerations that he never sees his wife from morn till night, society seems to correspondingly lose sight of him. Down in the depths of his heart the boy was ashamed of himself. He never heard Armstrong mentioned that he did not wince. He knew and she knew that, coming suddenly upon them as Armstrong had that tropic night on the Queen, he must have heard her words, must have realized that some compact or understanding existed between them, which neither Gray nor Mrs. Frank could palliate or explain. It had not needed that episode to tell her that Armstrong held her in contempt; and yet, when they chanced to meet, she could smile up into his eyes as beamingly, as guilelessly, as though no shadow of sin had ever darkened her winsome face. But not so Gray. He moaned in secret over the loss of a strong man's confidence and esteem. He longed to find a way to win it back. He had even thought to go to the colonel with his trouble, make a clean breast of it, tell him the truth--that he had fallen deeply, as it was possible for him to fall, in love with Amy Lawrence; had hoped his love was returned; had found it was not--that she had only a frank, friendly, kindly interest in him; and that, wounded and stung, he had fretted himself into a fever at Honolulu, aided by Canker's aspersions, and then--well--any man is liable, said Billy to himself, to get smitten with a woman who tenderly and skillfully nurses him day after day; and that's just what Witchie Garrison did. But somehow the opportunity to tell him never seemed to come; and now, now that Armstrong and himself were thus thrown together with the prospect of being in the same room day and night for the best of the month, a third officer, a stranger, lay there, too, and in his presence or hearing any confidences would be impossible, even if Armstrong encouraged them, which he probably would not. In this embarrassment Billy's wish was that the colonel were fifty miles away. It was fate and a hard one, thought he, that brought him there--an ever-present reproach. It was luck of the worst kind that they should be confronted under such circumstances, since neither could retreat. He submitted in anxious silence to the keen, quick examination of the skillful surgeon in charge and to the re-dressing of his wound. He could have been proud and happy but for that shadow on his life, of which Armstrong's presence would so constantly remind him. He could not even think how his dear old dragoon daddy would rejoice in the congratulations that would surely greet him when the story of the brave dash of the --teenth, Billy among the foremost, should reach the States. He could not even dream how it might affect her--Amy Lawrence. He was beginning to be ashamed now in this presence to think how that other--how Margaret Garrison might be impressed, forgetting that, to the army girl who has lived long years on the frontier, tales of heroism are the rule, not the exception. He wondered how long it could be before she would come to him to bring him comfort. Surely by this time she knew that he had been seriously, painfully wounded. He did not know, however, that at the very first sound of battle Frost had bundled the sisters aboard his launch and steamed away to the transports. Yet, what comfort could her visit bring to him with that stern censor lying there, seeing and hearing all? Billy Gray that Monday night could almost have wished that Armstrong's slumber might be eternal, never dreaming that before a second Monday should come he would thank Heaven with grateful heart for Armstrong's presence, vigilance and intervention. In three days the colonel was able to sit up. Within the week he was permitted to take air and exercise in the spacious court of the old college, his sword arm in its sling. But Gray and the young officer of volunteers were too seriously wounded to leave their pillows. The --teenth had occupied a new line far south of the old one; but, one at a time, several of Billy's brother officers had dropped in to see him and tell him regimental news; and one of them, the young West Pointer who had broken down at sight of the dying face that stirring Sunday morning, told him of Latrobe's soldier funeral and of General Drayton's presence and speechless grief; and Billy's hand groped beneath the pillow for that little blood-stained packet still undelivered. He had promptly caused the information to be conveyed to the veteran commander that it was his own lost nephew who had died his soldier death in front of the firing line; but the packet still remained in his hands; and even before the tiny thermometer confirmed his views, the keen eye of the surgeon saw that something had heightened Billy's fever that day; and so, when just at sunset there came driving into the court the most stylish equipage in all Manila, and Mrs. Garrison fluttered up the broad stairway and confidently asked to be announced to Mr. Gray, the steward in charge of the floor was very, very sorry, but--the doctor had given instructions that no more visitors should see the young gentleman that day. Mrs. Frank smiled indulgently, and asked for the doctor himself, and beamed on him with all her witchery and begged for just a few words; but the suave, placid, yet implacable doctor said he, too, was sorry--sorry that Mr. Gray was not able to see any one else, but such was the case. Mrs. Garrison said she thought if Mr. Gray knew that it was--but perhaps Dr. Frank didn't know it was she who had nursed Mr. Gray so assiduously at Honolulu. Dr. Frank did know that and more; but he did not say so; neither did he yield. There were tears in her eyes as she sprang into her carriage again; but they were tears of anger and defeat. She dashed them away the very next instant and smiled joy and congratulation, even adulation, at sight of the tall, stalwart officer, his arm in a sling, who stood the center of a staring group as her carriage flashed by. She would have ordered stop; but while the rest of the party had gazed as they lifted their caps, Armstrong's uninjured hand performed its duty, his cap had been lifted with the others, but not so much as a glance went her way; and Margaret Garrison, bitter in spirit, drove on down past the old cuartel to her luxurious quarters where Nita, a piteous shadow of the "sweet girl graduate" of the year before, was awaiting her coming. With the Insurgents' retreat and the advance of the American lines there had been a gradual return of the refugees among the transports; and Frost had finally brought his birdling back to shore; but Nita dare not drive, she said, for fear of again seeing those stern, reproachful eyes. The guard at the gate had received orders to admit no more of the rank and file, even when they came as messengers; and so the child was safe, said Margaret. As for herself, she must drive, she must see Will Gray. But the instant she re-entered the house Mrs. Garrison knew that during her brief absence some new trouble had come. Good heavens, could she never leave Nita's side that harm did not befall her! At the head of the broad flight of stairs stood her brother-in-law, a black frown on his brow. "Go in and do what you can for her," he briefly said. "I thought--she'd be glad to know that--that--fellow would trouble her no more." "That fellow?" she gasped. "You mean----" "I mean--Yes--Latrobe--killed and buried a whole week ago." "And you told her!" she cried, clinching her little hands in impotent wrath. "You--brute!" * * * * * Another week rolled by. The tide of battle had swept inland and northward; and all eyes were on the plucky advance of MacArthur's strong division, while far out to the south and east the thinned and depleted lines of Anderson held an insurgent force that forever menaced but dare not attack. The Primeval Dudes, sorely missing their calmly energetic colonel, had drifted into a war of words with their nearest neighbors on the firing line, a far Western regiment gifted with great command of language and small regard for style. The latter had crowed mightily over their more rigorously disciplined comrades because of the compliments bestowed on them in an official report, wherein the Dudes received only honorable mention. It was Captain Stricker of the volunteers who had led the dash on the rebel works across the Tripa to the left of Blockhouse 12. It was their Sergeant Finney who whacked a Filipino major with the butt of his Springfield, and tumbled out of him the batch of reports and records that gave the numbers and positions of every unit of Pilar's division on the southward zone. It was their Corporal Norton who got the Mauser through the shoulder just as, foremost in the rush, he bayoneted the last Tagal at the Krupp guns in the river redoubt. It was his devoted bunky, Private Latrobe, who volunteered to carry the division commander's dispatch across the open rice field and the yawning ditches that separated the staff from the rest of the charging --teenth, and who died gloriously in the rush on the rebel works. Man after man of the woolly Westerners had been referred to by name while, but the Dudes had nothing to show but their wounded colonel's modest report that "where every officer and man appeared to do his whole duty it would be unjust to make especial mention of even a limited few." The Dudes were getting hot over the taunts of the "Toughs," as some one had misnamed their neighbors; and one night when there was more or less interchange of pointed chaff in lieu of fight with a common foe, there was heard a shrill voice from the flank of the rifle pit nearest the Westerners, and what it said was repeated in wonderment over the brigade before the Dudes were another day older. "Well, dash your thievin' gang! We made our record for ourselves anyhow. We didn't have to rely on any dashed deserters from the regulars--as you did." And that was why Sergeant Sterne, of the Dudes, was sent for by the field officers of both regiments the following morning and bidden to explain, which he did in few words. He was ready to swear that the wounded Corporal Norton was the very same young man he saw in the adjutant's office of the --teenth Regulars at Camp Merritt, and was then called Morton. And that evening the veteran sergeant major of the --teenth was bidden to report at the reserve hospital in Ermita, close to the Malate line, was conducted to the bedside of a pallid young soldier whose ticket bore the name of Norton, and was asked to tell whether he had ever seen him before. "I have, sir," said the veteran, sadly and gravely. "He is a deserter from the --teenth. His name on our rolls was Morton." And that night Colonel Armstrong cabled to "Primate," New York, the single word "Found." Nor was it likely the lad would soon be lost again, for a sentry with fixed bayonet stood within ten feet of his bed with orders not to let him out of his sight a second. Mrs. Garrison appeared at the hospital that very evening and heard of the episode, and reached Billy Gray's bedside looking harassed, even haggard. During the past three days she had been accorded admission, for Gray was so much improved there was no reason to longer forbid; but on each occasion the wounded volunteer officer and the brace of attendants present had precluded all possibility of confidential talk. She must bide her time. Gray would be up in a few days, said the doctor; and then nothing would do, said Mrs. Garrison, but he must be moved to their big, roomy, lovely house on the bay side, and be made strong and well again--made to give up those letters, too, thought she; for she had wormed it out of a bystander that a packet of some kind had been given by the dying soldier to the lieutenant, and she well knew what it must be. She had even penned him a little note, since not a whisper could be safely exchanged, and headed it "Give this back to me the moment you have read it." In it she reminded him of his promise, and--did he need to be reminded of hers? She knew that packet of Nita's letters had been intrusted to his care. She assured him she had it straight from the surgeon who attended both Latrobe and himself, and they must reach the hands of no man on earth, but must come to her. Would he not give them at once or tell her where she could find them? He gave back the note, but closed his eyes and turned away. In the presence of Armstrong day after day, and in the recollection of Latrobe's dying face and the last parting touch of his stricken hand, Gray's eyes were opening to his own deplorable weakness. She plainly saw her power was going, if not gone. He had wrapped a silk handkerchief about the packet and still kept it, with his watch and purse beneath his pillow. He would not tell her where it lay. She smiled archly for the benefit of the attendant; but her eyes again eagerly claimed a look from his, her lips framed the word "to-morrow." But neither on that morrow nor yet the next day came her opportunity. The gallant fellow who had lain there for days, dumb and patient, but a barrier to her plans, had taken a turn for the worse, and she was again denied admission. Then came the tidings that the barrier was removed, the long fight was over; and the heartless woman actually rejoiced. Now at last she could talk to Will Gray; and when midnight came she knew that now at last she must, for Frank Garrison, worn and weary, returning late from the front, briefly announced that General Drayton purposed visiting the hospital the following afternoon, and long before noon--long before visiting hours, in fact, she was there with flowers as winsome as her smile, and some jelly as dainty as her own fair hands. She was there, and the instant the hour sounded was ushered in, and Billy Gray, propped on his pillows, was writing to his father, and alone. No time was to be lost. Any moment the attendant might return. She threw herself on her knees beside the homely, narrow cot, seized his hand in hers, and looked him in the face. "Where are they, Will?" she pleaded. "Quick! I must have them now!" But well she realized that the spell was broken--that the old fascination had died its death. Then it was useless to hint at love; and in a torrent of impassioned words she bade him think of all he owed her, appealed to his sense of gratitude and honor, and there, too, failed, for, admitting all she claimed, he clumsily, haltingly, yet honestly told her he saw now that it was all for an object, all done in the hope that he might become her instrument for the recovery of those compromising letters; and now that fate had delivered them into his hands he was bound by honor and his promise--unheard, unspoken perhaps, but all the same his promise--to the dead to give them to General Drayton. Then rising in fury and denunciation, she played her last trump. Trembling from head to foot, pale with baffled purpose and with growing dread, she bent over him, both hands clinched. "You mad fool!" she cried. "Do you know what I can do--will do--unless you give them to me here and now? As God hears me, Will Gray, I will give that other packet to General Drayton myself and swear that Colonel Canker was right--that you were the thief he thought you, and that I got those letters from you." For a moment she stood there, menacing, at his bedside, looking down in almost malignant triumph on his amazed and incredulous face; and then, with an awful fear checking the beat of her heart and turning her veins to ice, she grasped at the flimsy framework that supported the netting over the cot, and stood swaying and staggering, her eyes fixed in terror on the man in the uniform of a colonel, who, quietly entering, stood between her and the door, two papers in his half-extended hand--a man whose voice, long and too well known, cut her to the very quick as she heard, in calm and measured tone the words: "Mrs. Garrison, here are two reasons why you will do nothing of the kind. Shall I hand these to General Drayton--or to your husband?" _ |
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