The boy colored to the roots of his dark hair. His eyes half filled. He choked and stammered a moment and then--back went the head with the old familiar toss that was so like his father, and through his set lips Sandy bravely spoke:
"Can"t, major. I swore off--to-day!"
"All right, my boy, that ends it!" answered the major heartily, while Marion, her eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g, barely touched her lips to the gla.s.s, and longed to be on Sandy"s side of the table that she might steal a hand to him in love and sympathy and sisterly pride. But he avoided even her when dinner was over, and was busy, he sent word, with troop papers down between-decks, and she felt, somehow, that that letter was at the bottom of his sudden resolution and longed to see it, yet could not ask.
At three bells, half-past nine, she saw him coming quickly along the promenade-deck, and she stopped her escort and held out a detaining hand.
"You"ll come and have a little talk with me, won"t you, Sandy?" she pleaded. "I"ll wait for you as long as you like."
"After I"ve seen Stuyvesant awhile," he answered hurriedly. "He isn"t so well. I reckon he must have overdone it," and away he went with his springy step until he reached the forward end of the promenade, where he tapped at the stateroom door. The surgeon opened it and admitted him.
His eyes were grave and anxious when, ten minutes later, he reappeared.
"Norris is with him," he said in low tone, as he looked down into the sweet, serious, upturned face. "He shouldn"t have tried it. He fooled the doctors completely. I"ll tell you more presently," he added, noting that Mrs. Wells, with two or three of the band, were bearing down upon him for tidings of the invalid, and Sandy had heard,--as who had not?--the unfavorable opinions entertained by the sisterhood of his luckless, new-found friend.
"The doctor says he mustn"t be both--I mean disturbed--wants to get him to sleep, you know," was his hurried and not too happy response to the queries of the three. "Matter of business he wanted to ask me about, that"s all," he called back, as he broke away and dodged other inquiries. Once in the little box of a stateroom to which he and a fellow subaltern had been a.s.signed, he bolted the door, turned on the electric light, and took from under his pillow a packet of letters and sat him down to read. There was one from his mother, written on her way back to Leavenworth, which he pored over intently and then reverently kissed. Later, and for the second time, he unfolded and read the longest letter his father had ever penned. It was as follows:
"I have slipped away from camp and its countless interruptions and taken a room at the hotel to-night, dear Sandy, for I want to have a long talk with my boy,--a talk we ought to have had before, and it is my fault that we didn"t. I shrank from it somehow, and now am sorry for it.
"Your frank and manful letter, telling me of your severe loss and of the weakness that followed, reached me two days ago. Your mother"s came yesterday, fonder than ever and pleading for you as only mothers can. It is a matter that has cost us all dear financially, but, thanks to that loving mother, you were promptly enabled to cover the loss and save your name. You know and realize the sacrifices she had to make, and she tells me that you insisted on knowing. I am glad you did, my boy. I am going to leave in your hands the whole matter of repayment.
"A young fellow of twenty can start in the army with many a worse handicap than a debt of honor and a determination to work it off.
That steadies him. That matter really gives me less care than you thought for. It is the other--your giving way to an impulse to drink--that fills me with concern. You come up like a man, admit your fault, and say you deserve and expect my severe censure.
Well, I"ve thought it all over, Sandy. My heart and my arms go out to you in your distress and humiliation, and--I have not one word of reproach or blame to give you.
"For now I shall tell you what I had thought to say when your graduation drew nigh, had we been able to master mechanics and molecules and other mathematical rot as useful to a cavalry officer as a binocular to a blind man, and that I ought to have told you when you started out for yourself as a young _ranchero_, but could not bring myself to it so long as you seemed to have no inclination that way. Times, men, and customs have greatly changed in the last forty or fifty years, my boy, and greatly for the better. Looking back over my boyhood, I can recall no day when wine was not served on your grandfather"s table. The brightest minds and bravest men in all Kentucky pledged each other day and night in the cup that sometimes cheers and ofttimes inebriates, and no public occasion was complete without champagne and whiskey in abundance, no personal or private transaction considered auspicious unless appropriately "wet."
"Those were days when our statesmen revelled in sentiment and song, and drank and gambled with the fervor of the followers of the races. I was a boy of tender years then, and often, with my playmates, I was called from our merry games to join the gentlemen over their wine and drain a b.u.mper to our glorious "Harry of the West," and before I went to the Point, Sandy, I knew the best, and possibly the worst, whiskeys made in Kentucky,--we _all_ did,--and the man or youth who could not stand his gla.s.s of liquor was looked upon as a milksop or pitied, and yet, after all, respected, as a "singed cat,"--a fellow who owned that John Barleycorn was too much for him, and he did not dare a single round with him.
"Then came the great war, and wars are always in one way demoralizing. West Point in the early sixties was utterly unlike the West Point of to-day, and no worse than a dozen of our greatest colleges. The corps still had its tales and traditions of the old time Fourth-of-July dinners at the mess hall, when everybody made a dash for the decanters and drank everything in sight. It was the only day in the year on which wine was served.
It was in my time the invariable custom for the superintendent to receive the Board of Visitors on the day of their arrival at his quarters and to invite the officers and the graduating cla.s.s to meet them, and to set forth, as for years had been the fashion at Washington, wine and punch in abundance, and the very officers detailed as our instructors would laughingly invite and challenge the youngsters so soon to shed the gray and wear the blue to drink with them again and again. I have seen dozens of the best and bravest of our fellows come reeling and shouting back to barracks, and a thoughtless set of boys laughing and applauding.
"I was stationed at the Point soon after graduation, and the men who drank were the rule, not the exception. Social visits were rarely exchanged without the introduction of the decanter. The marvel is that so many were "temperate in our meat and drink," as my father and grandfather used to plead when, regularly every morning, the family and the negro servants were mustered for prayers. At every post where I was stationed, either in the East or where I was most at home,--the far frontier,--whiskey was the established custom, and man after man, fellows who had made fine records during the war, and bright boys with whom I had worn the gray at the Point, fell by the wayside and were court-martialled out of service.
"In "70 and "71 we had a Board that swept the army like a seine and relegated scores of tipplers to civil life, but that didn"t stop it. Little by little the sense and manhood of our people began to tell. Little by little the feeling against stimulant began to develop at the Point. It was no longer a joke to set a fledgling officer to taste the tempter--it was a crime. Four years after I was commissioned we had only one total abstainer out of some fifty officers at the mess, and he was a man whose life and honor depended on it. Three years ago, when I went to see you, there were dozens at the mess who never drank at all, and only eight who even smoked. Athletics and rifle-practice had much to do with this, I know, but there has gradually developed all over our land, notably in those communities where the custom used to be most honored in the observance, a total revulsion of sentiment.
"Quarter of a century ago, even among many gently nurtured women, the sight of a man overcome by liquor excited only sorrow and sympathy; now it commands nothing less than abhorrence. I and my surviving contemporaries started in life under the old system.
You, my dear boy, are more fortunate in having begun with the new.
Among the old soldiers there are still some few votaries of Bacchus who have to count their cups most carefully or risk their commissions. Among those under forty our army has far more total abstainers than all the others in the world, and such soldiers as Grant, Crook, Merritt, and Upton, of our service, and Kitchener of Khartoum, are on record as saying that the staying powers of the teetotaller exceed those even of the temperate man, and staying power is a thing to cultivate.
"As you know, I have never banished wine from our table, my boy.
Both your mother and I had been accustomed to seeing it in daily use from childhood, yet she rarely touches it, even at our dinners. But, Sanford, I sent John Barleycorn to the right about the day your blessed mother promised to be my wife, and though I always keep it in the sideboard for old comrades whose heads and stomachs are still sound, and who find it agrees with them better than wine, I never offer it to the youngsters. They don"t need it, Sandy, and no more do you.
"But you come of a race that lived as did their fellow-men,--to whom cards, the bottle, and betting were everyday affairs. It would be remarkable if you never developed a tendency towards one or all of them, and it was my duty to warn you before. I mourn every hour I wasted over cards and every dollar I ever won from a comrade more than--much more than--the many hundred dollars I lost in my several years" apprenticeship to poker. It"s just about the poorest investment of time a soldier can devise.
"Knowing all I do, and looking back over the path of my life, strewn as it is with the wrecks of fellow-men ruined by whiskey, I declare if I could live it over again it would be with the determination never to touch a card for money or a gla.s.s for liquor.
"And now, my own boy, let me bear the blame of this--your first transgression. You are more to us than we have ever told you. You are now your sister"s guardian and knight, for, though she goes under the wing of Mrs. Dr. Wells, and, owing to her intense desire to take a woman"s part we could not deny her, both your mother and I are filled with anxiety as to the result. To you we look to be her shield in every possible way. We have never ceased to thank G.o.d for the pride and joy He has given us in our children. (You yourself would delight in seeing what a tip-top little soldier Will is making.) You have ever been manful, truthful, and, I say it with pride and thankfulness unutterable, _square_ as boy could be. You have our whole faith and trust and love unspeakable. You have the best and fondest mother in the world, my son. And now I have not one more word to urge or advise. Think and decide for yourself. Your manhood, under G.o.d, will do the rest.
"In love and confidence,
"Father."
When Marion came tapping timidly at the stateroom door there was for a moment no answer. Sandy"s face was buried in his hands as he knelt beside the little white berth. He presently arose, dashed some water over his eyes and brows, then shot back the bolt and took his sister in his arms.
CHAPTER X.
Not until the tenth day out from Honolulu was Mr. Stuyvesant so far recovered as to warrant the surgeons in permitting his being lifted from the hot and narrow berth to a steamer-chair on the starboard side. Even then it was with the caution to everybody that he must not be disturbed.
The heat below and in many of the staterooms was overpowering, and officers and soldiers in numbers slept upon the deck, and not a few of the Red Cross nurses spent night after night in the bamboo and wicker reclining-chairs under the canvas awnings.
Except for the tropic temperature, the weather had been fine and the voyage smooth and uneventful. The Sacramento rolled easily, lazily along. The men had morning shower-baths and, a few at a time, salt-water plunges in big canvas tanks set fore and aft on the main deck. On the port or southern side of the promenade deck the officers sported their pajamas both day and night, and were expected to appear in khaki or serge, and consequent discomfort, only at table, on drill or duty, and when visiting the starboard side, which, abaft the captain"s room, was by common consent given up to the women.
They were all on hand the morning that the invalid officer was carefully aided from his stateroom to a broad reclining-chair, which was then borne to a shaded nook beneath the stairway leading to the bridge and there securely lashed. The doctor and Mr. Ray remained some minutes with him, and the steward came with a cooling drink. Mrs. Wells, doctor by courtesy and diploma, arose and asked the surgeon if there were really nothing the ladies could do--"Mr. Stuyvesant looks so very pale and weak,"--and the sisterhood strained their ears for the reply, which, as the surgeon regarded the lady"s remark as reflecting upon the results of his treatment, might well be expected to be somewhat tart.
"Nothing to-day, Mrs.--er--Dr. Wells," said the army man, half vexed, also, at being detained on way to hospital. "The fever has gone and he will soon recuperate now, provided he can rest and sleep. It is much cooler on deck and--if it"s only quiet----"
"Oh, he sha"n"t be bothered, if that"s what you mean," interposed Dr.
Wells with proper spirit. "I"m sure n.o.body desires to intrude in the least. I asked for my a.s.sociates from a sense of duty. Most of them are capable of fanning or even reading aloud to a patient without danger of over-exciting him."
"Unquestionably, madam," responded the surgeon affably, "and when such ministrations are needed I"ll let you know. Good-morning." And, lifting his stiff helmet, the doctor darted down the companion-way.
"Brute!" said the lady doctor. "No wonder that poor boy doesn"t get well. Miss Ray, I marvel that your brother can stand him."
Miss Ray glanced quietly up from her book and smiled. "We have known Dr.
Sturgis many years," she said. "He is brusque, yet very much thought of in the army."
But at this stage of the colloquy there came interruption most merciful--for the surgeon. The deep whistle of the steamer sounded three quick blasts. There was instant rush and scurry on the lower deck. The cavalry trumpets fore and aft rang out the a.s.sembly.
It was the signal for boat-drill, and while the men of certain companies sprang to ranks and stood in silence at attention awaiting orders, other detachments rushed to their stations at the life-rafts, and others still swarmed up the stairways or clambered over the rails, and in less than a minute every man was at his post. Quickly the staff officers made the rounds, received the reports of the detachment commanders and the boat crews, and returning, with soldierly salute, gave the results to the commanding officer, who had taken position with the captain on the bridge.
For five or ten minutes the upper deck was dotted by squads of blue-shirted soldiers, grouped in disciplined silence about the boats.
Then the recall was sounded, and slowly and quietly the commands dispersed and went below.
It so happened that in returning to the forecastle about a dozen troopers pa.s.sed close to where Stuyvesant lay, a languid spectator, and at sight of his pale, thin face two of them stopped, raised their hands in salute, looked first eager and pleased, and then embarra.s.sed. Their faces were familiar, and suddenly Stuyvesant remembered. Beckoning them to come nearer, he feebly spoke:
"You were in the car-fire. I thought I knew your faces."
"Yes, sir," was the instant reply of the first. "We"re sorry to see the lieutenant so badly hurt--and by that blackguard Murray too, they say.
If the boys ever get hold of him, sir, he"ll never have time for his prayers."
"No, nor another chance to bite," grinned the second, whom Stuyvesant now recognized as the lance corporal of artillery. "He"s left his mark on both of us, sir," and, so saying, the soldier held out his hand.
In the soft and fleshy part of the palm at the base of the thumb were the scars of several wounds. It did not need an expert eye to tell that they were human-tooth marks. There were the even traces of the middle incisors, the deep gash made by the fang-like dog tooth, and between the mark of the right upper canine and those of three incisors a smooth, unscarred s.p.a.ce. There, then, must have been a vacancy in the upper jaw, a tooth broken off or gone entirely, and Stuyvesant remembered that as Murray spoke the eye-tooth was the more prominent because of the ugly gap beside it.
"He had changed the cut of his jib considerably," faintly whispered Stuyvesant, after he had extended a kind but nerveless hand to each, "but that mark would betray him anywhere under any disguise. Was Foster ever found?"