I bent my head and drove my spurs into my horse. I did not know where he was carrying me. My eyes were shut with tears, and with the horror of what I had witnessed. I was reckless, mad, for the first time in my life, filled with hate against my fellow-men. I rode a hundred yards before I heard the scout at my side shouting, “To the right, Captain, to the right.”
At the word I pulled on my rein, and we turned into the Plaza.
The scout was McGraw, the Kansas cowboy, who had halted Aiken and myself the day we first met with the filibusters. He was shooting from the saddle as steadily as other men would shoot with a rest, and each time he fired, he laughed. The laugh brought me back to the desperate need of our mission. I tricked myself into believing that Laguerre was not seriously wounded. I persuaded myself that by bringing him aid quickly I was rendering him as good service as I might have given had I remained at his side. I shut out the picture of him, faint and bleeding, and opened my eyes to the work before us.
We were like the lost dogs on a race-course that run between lines of hooting men. On every side we were assailed with cries. Even the voices of women mocked at us. Men sprang at my bridle, and my horse rode them down. They shot at us from the doors of the cafes, from either curbstone. As we passed the barracks even the men of my own native regiment raised their rifles and fired.
The nearest gun was at the end of the Calle Bogran, and we raced down it, each with his revolver cocked, and held in front of him.
But before we reached the outpost I saw the men who formed it, pushing their way toward us, bunched about their gatling with their clubbed rifles warding off the blows of a mob that struck at them from every side. They were ignorant of what had transpired; they did not know who was, or who was not their official enemy, and they were unwilling to fire upon the people, who a moment before, before the flag of Alvarez had risen on Pecachua, had been their friends and comrades. These friends now beset them like a pack of wolves. They hung upon their flanks and stabbed at them from the front and rear. The air was filled with broken tiles from the roofs, and with flying paving-stones.
When the men saw us they raised a broken cheer.
“Open that gun on them!” I shouted. “Clear the street, and push your gun to the palace. Laguerre is there. Kill every man in this street if you have to, but get to the palace.”
The officer in charge fought his way to my side. He was covered with sweat and blood. He made a path for himself with his bare arms.
“What in hell does this mean, Macklin?” he shouted. “Who are we fighting?”
“You are fighting every native you see,” I ordered. “Let loose up this street. Get to the palace!”
I rode on to the rear of the gun, and as McGraw and I raced on toward the next post, we heard it stabbing the air with short, vicious blows.
At the same instant the heavens shook with a clap of thunder, the sky turned black, and with the sudden fierceness of the tropics, heavy drops of rain began to beat upon us, and to splash in the dust like hail.
A moment later and the storm burst upon the city. The streets were swept with great sheets of water, torrents flowed from the housetop, the skies darkened to ink, or were ripped asunder by vivid flashes, and the thunder rolled unceasingly. We were half drowned, as though we were dragged through a pond, and our ponies bowed and staggered before the double onslaught of wind and water. We bent our bodies to theirs, and lashed them forward.
The outpost to which we were now riding was stationed at the edge of the city where the Calle Morizan joins the trail to San Lorenzo on the Pacific coast. As we approached it I saw a number of mounted men, surrounding a closed carriage. They were evidently travellers starting forth on the three days’ ride to San Lorenzo, to cross to Amapala, where the Pacific Mail takes on her passengers. They had been halted by our sentries. As I came nearer I recognized, through the mist of rain, Joseph Fiske, young Fiske, and a group of the Isthmian men. The storm, or the bursting shells, had stampeded their pack-train, and a dozen frantic Mozos were rounding up the mules and adding their shrieks and the sound of their falling whips to the tumult of the storm.
I galloped past them to where our main guard were lashing the canvas-cover to their gun, and ordered them to unstrap it, and fight their way to the palace.
As I turned again the sentry called: “Am I to let these people go? They have no passes.”
I halted, and Joseph Fiske raised his heavy eyelids, and blinked at me like a huge crocodile. I put a restraint upon myself and moved toward him with a confident smile. I could not bear to have him depart, thinking he went in triumph. I looked the group over carefully and said: “Certainly, let them pass,” and Fiske and some of the Isthmian men, who appeared ashamed, nodded at me sheepishly.
But one of them, who was hidden by the carriage, called out: “You’d better come, too; your ship of state is getting water-logged.”
I made no sign that I heard him, but McGraw instantly answered, “Yes, it looks so. The rats are leaving it!”
At that the man called back tauntingly the old Spanish proverb: “He who takes Pecachua, sleeps in the palace.” McGraw did not understand Spanish, and looked at me appealingly, and I retorted, “We’ve altered that, sir. The man who sleeps in the palace will take Pecachua tonight.”
And McGraw added: “Yes, and he won’t take it with thirty pieces of silver, either.”
I started away, beckoning to McGraw, but, as we moved, Mr. Fiske pushed his pony forward.
“Can you give me a pass, sir?” he asked. He shouted the words, for the roaring of the storm drowned all ordinary sounds. “In case I meet with more of your men, can you give me a written pass?”
I knew that the only men of ours still outside of the city were a few scouts, but I could not let Fiske suspect that, so I whipped out my notebook and wrote:
“To commanders of all military posts: Pass bearer, Joseph Fiske, his family, servants, and baggage-train.
“Vice-President of Honduras”
I tore out the page and gave it him, and he read it carefully and bowed.
“Does this include my friends?” he asked, nodding toward the Isthmian men.
“You can pass them off as your servants,” I answered, and he smiled grimly.
The men had formed around the gun, and it was being pushed toward me, but as I turned to meet it I was again halted, this time by young Fiske, who rode his horse in front of mine, and held out his hand.
“You must shake hands with me!” he cried, “I acted like a cad.” He bent forward, raising his other arm to shield his face from the storm. “I say, I acted like a cad,” he shouted, “and I ask your pardon.”
I took his hand and nodded. At the same moment as we held each other’s hands the window of the carriage was pushed down and his sister leaned out and beckoned to me. Her face, beaten by the rain, and with her hair blown across it, was filled with distress.
“I want to thank you,” she cried. “Thank you,” she repeated, “for my brother. I thank you. I wanted you to know.”
She stretched out her hand and I took it, and released it instantly, and as she withdrew her face from the window of the carriage, I dug my spurs into my pony and galloped on with the gun.
What followed is all confused.
I remember that we reached the third and last post just after the men had abandoned it, but that we overtook them, and with them fought our way through the streets. But through what streets, or how long it took us to reach the palace I do not know. No one thing is very clear to me. Even the day after, I remembered it only as a bad dream, in which I saw innumerable, dark-skinned faces pressing upon me with open mouths, and white eyeballs; lit by gleams of lightning and flashes of powder. I remember going down under my pony and thinking how cool and pleasant it was in the wet mud, and of being thrown back on him again as though I were a pack-saddle, and I remember wiping the rain out of my eyes with a wet sleeve, and finding the sleeve warm with blood. And then there was a pitchy blackness through which I kept striking at faces that sprang out of the storm, faces that when they were beaten down were replaced by other faces; drunken, savage, exulting. I remember the ceaseless booming of the thunder that shook the houseslike an earthquake, the futile popping of revolvers, the whining shells overhead, the cries and groans, the Spanish oaths, and the heavy breathing of my men about me, and always just in front of us, the breathless whir of the gatling.
After that the next I remember I was inside the palace, and breaking holes in the wall with an axe. Some of my men took the axe from me, and said: “He’s crazy, clean crazy,” and Van Ritter and Miller fought with me, and held me down upon a cot. From the cot I watched the others making more holes in the wall, through which they shoved their rifles and then there was a great cheer outside, and a man came running in crying, “Alvarez and Heinze are at the corner with the twelve-pounders!” Then our men cursed like fiends, and swept out of the room, and as no one remained to hold me down, I stumbled after them into the big reception-hall, and came upon Laguerre, lying rigid and still upon a red-silk sofa. I thought he was dead, and screamed, and at that they seized me again and hustled me back to the cot, telling me that he was not dead, but that at any moment he might die, and that if I did not rest, I would die also.
When I came to, it was early morning, and through the holes in the plaster wall I could see the stars fading before the dawn. The gatlings were gone and the men were gone, and I was wondering if they had deserted me, when Von Ritter came back and asked if I were strong enough to ride, and I stood up feeling dizzy and very weak. But my head was clear and I could understand what he said to me. Of the whole of the Foreign Legion only thirty were left. Miller was killed, Russell was killed and old man Webster was killed. They told me how they had caught him when he made a dash to the barracks for ammunition, and how, from the roof, our men had seen them place him against the iron railings of the University Gardens. There he died, as his hero, William Walker, had died, on the soil of the country he had tried to save from itself, with his arms behind him, and his blindfolded eyes turned upon a firing-squad.
McGraw had been killed as he rode beside me, holding me in the saddle. That hurt me worse than all. They told me a blow from behind had knocked me over, and though, of that, I could remember nothing, I could still feel McGraw’s arm pressing my ribs, and hear his great foolish laugh in my ears.
They helped me out into the court-yard, where the men stood in a hollow square, with Laguerre on a litter in the centre, and with the four gatlings at each corner. The wound was in his throat, so he could not speak, but when they led me down into the Patio he raised his eyes and smiled. I tried to smile back, but his face was so white and drawn that I had to turn away, that he might not see me crying.
There was much besides to make one weep. We were running away. We were abandoning the country to which some of us had come to better their fortunes, to which others had come that they might set the people free. We were being driven out of it by the very men for whom we had risked our lives. Some among us, the reckless, the mercenary, the adventurers, had played like gamblers for a stake, and had lost. Others, as they thought, had planned wisely for the people’s good, had asked nothing in return but that they might teach them to rule themselves. But they, too, had lost, and because they had lost, they were to pay the penalty.
Within the week the natives had turned from us to the painted idols of their jungle, and the new gods toward whom they had wavered were to be sacrificed on the altars of the old. They were waiting only until the sun rose to fall upon our little garrison and set us up against the barrack wall, as a peace offering to their former masters. Only one chance remained to us. If, while it were still night, we could escape from the city to the hills, we might be able to fight our way to the Pacific side, and there claim the protection of our war-ship.
It was a forlorn hope, but we trusted to the gatlings to clear a road for us, and there was no other way.
So just before the dawn, silently and stealthily the President and the Cabinet, and all that was left of the Government and Army of General Laguerre, stole out of his palace through a hole in the courtyard-wall.
We were only a shadowy blot in the darkness, but the instant we reached the open street they saw us and gave cry.
From behind the barriers they had raised to shut off our escape, from the house-tops, and from the darkened windows, they opened fire with rifle and artillery. But our men had seen the dead faces of their leaders and comrades, and they were frantic, desperate. They charged like madmen. Nothing could hold them. Our wedge swept steadily forward, and the guns sputtered from the front and rear and sides, flashing and illuminating the night like a war-ship in action.
They drove our enemies from behind the barricades, and cleaned the street beyond it to the bridge, and then swept the bridge itself. We could hear the splashes when the men who held it leaped out of range of the whirling bullets into the stream below.
In a quarter of an hour we were running swiftly through the sleeping suburbs, with only one of our guns barking an occasional warning at the ghostly figures in our rear.
We made desperate progress during the dark hours of the morning, but when daylight came we were afraid to remain longer on the trail, and turned off into the forest. And then, as the sun grew stronger, our endurance reached its limit, and when they called a halt our fellows dropped where they stood, and slept like dead men. But they could not sleep for long. We all knew that our only chance lay in reaching San Lorenzo, on the Pacific Ocean. Once there, we were confident that the war-ship would protect us, and her surgeons save our wounded. By the trail and unmolested, we could have reached it in three days, but in the jungle we were forced to cut our way painfully and slowly, and at times we did not know whether we were moving toward the ocean or had turned back upon the capital.
I do not believe that slaves hunted through a swamp by blood-hounds have ever suffered more keenly than did the survivors of the Foreign Legion. Of our thirty men, only five were unwounded. Even those who carried Laguerre wore blood-stained bandages. All were starving, and after the second day of hiding in swamps and fording mountain-streams, half of our little band was sick with fever. We lived on what we found in the woods, or stole from the clearing, on plants, and roots, and fruit. We were no longer a military body. We had ceased to be either officers or privates. We were now only so many wretched fellow-beings, dependent upon each other, like sailors cast adrift upon some desert island, and each worked for the good of all, and the ties which bound us together were stronger than those of authority and discipline. Men scarcely able to drag themselves on, begged for the privilege of helping to carry Laguerre, and he in turn besought and commanded that we leave him by the trail, and hasten to the safety of the coast. In one of his conscious moments he protested: “I cannot live, and I am only hindering your escape. It is not right, nor human, that one man should risk the lives of all the rest. For God’s sake, obey my orders and put me down.”
Hour after hour, by night as well as by day, we struggled forward, staggering, stumbling, some raving with fever, others with set faces, biting their yellow lips to choke back the pain.
Three times when we endeavored to gain ground by venturing on the level trail, the mounted scouts of Alvarez overtook us, or attacked us from ambush, and when we beat them off, they rode ahead and warned the villages that we were coming; so, that, when we reached them, we were driven forth like lepers. Even the village dogs snapped and bit at the gaunt figures, trembling for lack of food, and loss of sleep and blood.
But on the sixth day, just at sunset, as we had dragged ourselves to the top of a wooded hill we saw below us, beyond a league of unbroken jungle, a great, shining sheet of water, like a cloud on the horizon, and someone cried: “The Pacific!” and we all stumbled forward, and some dropped on their knees, and some wept, and some swung their hats and tried to cheer.
And then one of them, I never knew which, started singing, “Praise God, from whom all blessings flow,” and we stood up, the last of the Legion, shaken with fever, starving, wounded, and hunted by our fellow-men, and gave praise to God, as we had never praised Him before.
That night the fever took hold of me, and in my tossings and turnings I burst open the sword-wound at the back of my head. I remember someone exclaiming “He’s bled to death!” and a torch held to my eyes, and then darkness, and the sense that I was being carried and bumped about on men’s shoulders.
The next thing I knew I was lying in a hammock, a lot of naked, brown children were playing in the dirt beside me, the sun was shining, great palms were bending in the wind above me, and the strong, sweet air of the salt sea was blowing in my face.
I lay for a long time trying to guess where I was, and how I had come there. But I found no explanation for it, so I gave up guessing, and gazed contentedly at the bending palms until one of the children found my eyes upon him, and gave a scream, and they all pattered off like frightened partridges.
That brought a native woman from behind me, smiling, and murmuring prayers in Spanish. She handed me a gourd filled with water.
I asked where I was, and she said, “San Lorenzo.”
I could have jumped out of the hammock at that, but when I tried to do so I found I could hardly raise my body. But I had gained the coast. I knew I would find strength enough to leave it.
“Where are my friends?” I asked. “Where are the Gringoes?”
But she raised her hands, and threw them wide apart.
“They have gone,” she said, “three, four days from now, they sailed away in the white ship. There was a great fighting,” she said, raising her eyes and shaking her head, “and they carried you here, and told me to hide you. You have been very ill, and you are still very ill.” She gave a little exclamation and disappeared, and returned at once with a piece of folded paper. “For you,” she said.
On the outside of the paper was written in Spanish: “This paper will be found on the body of Royal Macklin. Let the priest bury him and send word to the Military Academy, West Point, U. S. A., asking that his family be informed of his place of burial. They will reward you well.”
Inside, in English, was the following letter in Aiken’s handwriting:
“DEAR OLD MAN—We had to drop you here, as we were too sick to carry you any farther. They jumped us at San Lorenzo, and when we found we couldn’t get to Amapala from here, we decided to scatter, and let each man take care of himself. Von Ritter and I, and two of the boys, are taking Laguerre with us. He is still alive, but very bad. We hope to pick up a fishing-boat outside of town, and make for the Raleigh. We tried to carry you, too, but it wasn’t possible. We had to desert one of you, so we stuck by the old man. We hid your revolver and money-belt under the seventh palm, on the beach to the right of this shack. If I’d known you had twenty double eagles on you all this time, I’d have cracked your skull myself. The crack you’ve got is healing, and if you pull through the fever you’ll be all right. If you do, give this woman twenty pesos I borrowed from her. Get her to hire a boat, and men, and row it to Amapala. This island is only fifteen miles out, and the Pacific Mail boat touches there Thursdays and Sundays. If you leave here the night before, you can make it. Whatever you do, don’t go into the village here or land at Amapala. If they catch you on shore they will surely shoot you. So board the steamer in the offing. Hoping you will live to read this, and that we may meet again under more agreeable circumstances, I am,
“Yours truly,
“P.S. I have your gilt sword, and I’m going to turn it over to the officers of the Raleigh, to take back to your folks. Good luck to you, old man.”
After reading this letter, which I have preserved carefully as a characteristic souvenir of Aiken, I had but two anxieties. The first was to learn if Laguerre and the others had reached the Raleigh, and the second was how could I escape to the steamer—the first question was at once answered by the woman. She told me it was known in San Lorenzo that the late “Presidente Generale,” with three Gringoes, had reached the American war-ship and had been received on board. The Commandante of Amapala had demanded their surrender to him, but the captain of the ship had declared that as political refugees, they were entitled to the protection they claimed, and when three days later he had been ordered to return to San Francisco, he had taken them with him.
When I heard that, I gave a cheer all by myself, and I felt so much better for the news that I at once began to plot for my own departure. The day was Wednesday, the day before the steamer left Amapala, and I determined to start for the island the following evening. When I told the woman this, she protested I was much too weak to move, but the risk that my hiding-place might be discovered before another steamer-day arrived was much too great, and I insisted on making a try for the first one.
The woman accordingly procured a fishing-boat and a crew of three men, and I dug up my money-belt, and my revolver, and thanked her and paid her, for Aiken and for myself, as well as one can pay a person for saving one’s life. The next night, as soon as the sun set, I seated myself in the stern of the boat, and we pushed out from the shore of Honduras, and were soon rising and falling on the broad swell of the Pacific.
My crew were simple fishermen, unconcerned with politics, and as I had no fear of harm from them, I curled up on a mat at their feet and instantly fell asleep.
When I again awoke the sun was well up, and when I raised my head the boatman pointed to a fringe of palms that hung above the water, and which he told me rose from the Island of Amapala. Two hours later we made out the wharves and the custom-house of the port itself, and, lying well toward us in the harbor, a big steamer with the smoke issuing from her stacks, and the American flag hanging at the stern. I was still weak and shaky, and I must confess that I choked a bit at the sight of the flag, and at the thought that, in spite of all, I was going safely back to life, and Beatrice and Aunt Mary. The name I made out on the stern of the steamer was Barracouta, and I considered it the prettiest name I had ever known, and the steamer the handsomest ship that ever sailed the sea. I loved her from her keel to her topmast. I loved her every line and curve, her every rope and bolt. But specially did I love the flag at her stern and the blue Peter at the fore. They meant home. They meant peace, friends, and my own countrymen.
I gave the boatmen a double eagle, and we all shook hands with great glee, and then with new strength and unassisted I pulled myself up the companion-ladder, and stood upon the deck.
When I reached it I wanted to embrace the first man I saw. I somehow expected that he would want to embrace me, too, and say how glad he was I had escaped. But he happened to be the ship’s purser, and, instead of embracing me, he told me coldly that steerage passengers are not allowed aft. But I did not mind, I knew that I was a disreputable object, but I also knew that I had gold in my money-belt, and that clothes could be bought from the slop-chest.
So I said in great good-humor, that I wanted a first-class cabin, the immediate use of the bathroom, and the services of the ship’s barber.
My head was bound in a dirty bandage. My uniform, which I still wore as I had nothing else, was in rags from the briers, and the mud of the swamps and the sweat of the fever had caked it with dirt. I had an eight days’ beard, and my bare feet were in native sandals. So my feelings were not greatly hurt because the purser was not as genuinely glad to see me as I was to see him.
“A first-class passage costs forty dollars gold—in advance,” he said.
“That’s all right,” I answered, and I laughed from sheer, foolish happiness, “I’ll take six.”
We had been standing at the head of the companion-ladder, and as the purser moved rather reluctantly toward his cabin, a group of men came down the deck toward us.
One of them was a fat, red-faced American, the others wore the uniform of Alvarez. When they saw me they gave little squeals of excitement, and fell upon the fat man gesticulating violently, and pointing angrily at me.
The purser halted, and if it were possible, regarded me with even greater unfriendliness. As for myself, the sight of the brown, impish faces, and the familiar uniforms filled me with disgust. I had thought I was done with brawling and fighting, of being hated and hunted. I had had my fill of it. I wanted to be let alone, I wanted to feel that everybody about me was a friend. I was not in the least alarmed, for now that I was under the Stars and Stripes, I knew that I was immune from capture, but the mere possibility of a row was intolerable.
One of the Honduranians wore the uniform of a colonel, and was, as I guessed, the Commandante of the port. He spoke to the fat man in English, but in the same breath turned to one of his lieutenants, and gave an order in Spanish.
The lieutenant started in my direction, and then hesitated and beckoned to some one behind me.
I heard a patter of bare feet on the deck, and a dozen soldiers ran past me, and surrounded us. I noticed that they and their officers belonged to the Eleventh Infantry. It was the regiment I had driven out of the barracks at Santa Barbara.
The fat American in his shirt-sleeves was listening to what the Commandante was saying, and apparently with great dissatisfaction. As he listened he scowled at me, chewing savagely on an unlit cigar, and rocking himself to and fro on his heels and toes. His thumbs were stuck in his suspenders, so that it looked as though, with great indecision he was pulling himself forward and back.
I turned to the purser and said, as carelessly as I could: “Well, what are we waiting for?”
But he only shook his head.
With a gesture of impatience the fat man turned suddenly from the Commandante and came toward me.
He spoke abruptly and with the tone of a man holding authority.
“Have you got your police-permit to leave Amapala?” he demanded.
“No,” I answered.
“Well, why haven’t you?” he snapped.
“I didn’t know I had to have one,” I said. “Why do you ask?” I added. “Are you the captain of this ship?”
“I think I am,” he suddenly roared, as though I had questioned his word. “Anyway, I’ve got enough say on her to put you ashore if you don’t answer my questions.”
I shut my lips together and looked away from him. His tone stirred what little blood there was still left in me to rebellion; but when I saw the shore with its swamps and ragged palms, I felt how perilously near it was, and Panama became suddenly a distant mirage. I was as helpless as a sailor clinging to a plank. I felt I was in no position to take offence, so I bit my lips and tried to smile.
The Captain shook his head at me, as though I were a prisoner in the dock.
“Do you mean to say,” he shouted, “that our agent sold you a ticket without you showing a police-permit?”
“I haven’t got a ticket,” I said. “I was just going to buy one now.”
The Commandante thrust himself between us.
“Ah, what did I tell you?” he cried. “You see? He is escaping. This is the man. He answers all the descriptions. He was dressed just so; green coat, red trousers, very torn and dirty—head in bandage. This is the description. Is it not so?” he demanded of his lieutenants. They nodded vigorously.
“Why—a-yes, that is the man,” the Commandante cried in triumph. “Last night he stabbed Jose Mendez in the Libertad Billiard Hall. He has wanted to murder him. If Jose, he die, this man he is murderer. He cannot go. He must come to land with me.”
He gave an order in Spanish, and the soldiers closed in around us.
I saw that I was in great peril, in danger more real than any I had faced in open fight since I had entered Honduras. For the men who had met me then had fought with fair weapons. These men were trying to take away my life with a trick, with cunning lies and false witnesses.
They knew the Captain might not surrender a passenger who was only a political offender, but that he could not harbor a criminal. And at the first glance at my uniform, and when he knew nothing more of me than that I wore it, the Commandante had trumped up this charge of crime, and had fitted to my appearance the imaginary description of an imaginary murderer. And I knew that he did this that he might send me, bound hand and foot, as a gift to Alvarez, or that he might, for his own vengeance, shoot me against a wall.
I knew how little I would receive of either justice or mercy. I had heard of Dr. Rojas killed between decks on a steamer of this same line; of Bonilla taken from the Ariadne and murdered on this very wharf at this very port of Amapala; of General Pulido strangled in the launch of the Commandante of Corinto and thrown overboard, while still in the sight of his fellow-passengers on the Southern Cross.
It was a degraded, horrible, inglorious end—to be caught by the heels after the real battle was lost; to die of fever in a cell; to be stabbed with bayonets on the wharf, and thrown to the carrion harbor-sharks.
I swung around upon the Captain, and fought for my life as desperately as though I had a rope around my neck.
“That man is a liar,” I cried. “I was not in Amapala last night. I came from San Lorenzo—this morning. The boat is alongside now; you can ask the men who brought me. I’m no murderer. That man knows I’m no murderer. He wants me because I belonged to the opposition government. It’s because I wear this uniform he wants me. I’m no criminal. He has no more right to touch me here, than he would if I were on Broadway.”
The Commandante seized the Captain’s arm.
“As Commandante of this port,” he screamed, “I tell you if you do not surrender the murderer to me, your ship shall not sail. I will take back your clearance-papers.”
The Captain turned on me, shaking his red fists, and tossing his head like a bull. “You see that!” he cried. “You see what you get me into, coming on board my ship without a permit! That’s what I get at every banana-patch along this coast, a lot of damned beach-combers and stowaways stealing on board, and the Commandante chasing ‘em all over my ship and holding up my papers. You go ashore!” he ordered. He swept his arm toward the gangway. “You go to Kessler, our consul. If you haven’t done nothing wrong, he’ll take care of you. You haven’t got a ticket, and you haven’t got a permit, and you’re no passenger of mine! Over you go; do you hear me? Quick now, over you go.”
I could not believe that I heard the man aright. He seemed to be talking a language I did not know.
“Do you mean to tell me,” I cried, speaking very slowly, for I was incredulous, and I was so weak besides that it was difficult for me to find the words, “that you refuse to protect me from these half-breeds, that you are going to turn me over to them—to be shot! And you call yourself an American?” I cried, “and this an American ship!”
As I turned from him I found that the passengers had come forward and now surrounded us; big, tall men in cool, clean linen, and beautiful women, shading their eyes with their fans, and little children crowding in between them and clinging to their skirts. To my famished eyes they looked like angels out of Paradise. They were my own people, and they brought back to me how I loved the life these men were plotting to take from me. The sight of them drove me into a sort of frenzy.
“Are you going to take that man’s word against mine?” I cried at the Captain. “Are you going to let him murder me in sight of that flag? You know he’ll do it. You know what they did to Rojas on one of your own ships. Do you want another man butchered in sight of your passengers?”
The Commandante crowded in front of the ship’s captain.
“That man is my prisoner,” he cried. “He is going to jail, to be tried by law. He shall see his consul every day. And so, if you try to leave this harbor with him, I will sink your ship from the fort!”
The Captain turned with an oath and looked up to the second officer, who was leaning over the rail of the bridge above us.
“Up anchor,” the Captain shouted. “Get her under weigh! There is your answer,” he cried, turning upon me. “I’m not going to have this ship held up any longer, and I’m not going to risk the lives of these ladies and gentlemen by any bombardment, either. You’re only going to jail. I’ll report the matter to our consul at Corinto, and he’ll tell our minister.”
“Corinto!” I replied. “I’ll be dead before you’ve passed that lighthouse.”
The Captain roared with anger.
“Can’t you hear what he says,” he shouted. “He says he’ll fire on my ship. They’ve fired on our ships before! I’m not here to protect every damned scalawag that tries to stowaway on my ship. I’m here to protect the owners, and I mean to do it. Now you get down that ladder, before we throw you down.”
I knew his words were final. From the bow I heard the creak of the anchor-chains as they were drawn on board, and from the engine-room the tinkle of bells.
The ship was abandoning me. My last appeal had failed. My condition was desperate.
“Protect your owners, and yourself, damn you!” I cried. “You’re no American. You’re no white man. No American would let a conch-nigger run his ship. To hell with your protection!”
All the misery of the last two months, the bitterness of my dismissal from the Point, the ignominy of our defeat and flight, rose in me and drove me on. “And I don’t want the protection of that flag either,” I cried. “I wasn’t good enough to serve it once, and I don’t need it now.”
It should be remembered that when I spoke these words I thought my death was inevitable and immediate, that it had been brought upon me by one of my own countrymen, while others of my countrymen stood indifferently by, and I hope that for what I said in that moment of fever and despair I may be forgiven.
“I can protect myself!” I cried.
Before anyone could move I whipped out my gun and held it over the Commandante’s heart, and at the same instant without turning my eyes from his face I waved my other hand at the passengers. “Take those children away,” I shouted.
“Don’t move!” I yelled in Spanish at the soldiers. “If one of you raises his musket I’ll kill him.” I pressed the cocked revolver against the Commandante’s chest. “Now, then, take me ashore,” I called to his men. “You know me, I’m Captain Macklin. Captain Macklin, of the Foreign Legion, and you know that six of you will die before you get me. Come on,” I taunted. “Which six is it to be?”
Out of the corners of my eyes I could see the bayonets lifting cautiously and forming a ring of points about me, and the sight, and my own words lashed me into a frenzy of bravado.
“Oh, you don’t remember me, don’t you?” I cried. “You ought to remember the Foreign Legion! We drove you out of Santa Barbara and Tabla Ve and Comyagua, and I’m your Vice-President! Take off your hats to your Vice-President! To Captain Macklin, Vice-President of Honduras!”
{Illustration: I sprang back against the cabin}
I sprang back against the cabin and swung the gun in swift half-circles. The men shrank from it as though I had lashed them with a whip. “Come on,” I cried, “which six is it to be? Come on, you cowards, why don’t you take me!”
The only answer came from a voice that was suddenly uplifted at my side. I recognized it as the voice of the ship’s captain.
“Put down that gun!” he shouted.
But I only swung it the further until it covered him also. The man stood in terror of his ship’s owners, he had a seaman’s dread of international law, but he certainly was not afraid of a gun. He regarded it no more than a pointed finger, and leaned eagerly toward me. To my amazement I saw that his face was beaming with excitement and delight.
“Are you Captain Macklin?” he cried.
I was so amazed that for a moment I could only gape at him while I still covered him with the revolver.
“Yes,” I answered.
“Then why in hell didn’t you say so!” he roared, and with a bellow like a bull he threw himself upon the Commandante. He seized him by his epaulettes and pushed him backward. With the strength of a bull he butted and shoved him across the deck.
“Off my ship you!” he roared. “Every one of you; you’re a gang of murdering cutthroats.”
The deck-hands and the ship-stewards, who had gathered at the gangway to assist in throwing me down it, sprang to the Captain’s aid.
“Over with him, boys,” he roared. “Clear the ship of them. Throw them overboard.” The crew fell upon the astonished soldiers, and drove them to the side. Their curses and shrieks filled the air, the women retreated screaming, and I was left alone, leaning limply against the cabin with my revolver hanging from my fingers.
It began and ended in an instant, and as the ship moved forward and the last red-breeched soldier disappeared headforemost down the companion-ladder, the Captain rushed back to me and clutched me by both shoulders. Had it not been for the genial grin on his fat face, I would have thought that he meant to hurl me after the others.
“Now then, Captain Macklin,” he cried, “you come with me. You come to my cabin, and that’s where you stay as long as you are on my ship. You’re no passenger, you’re my guest, and there’s nothing on board too good for you.”
“But I don’t—understand,” I protested faintly. “What does it mean?”
“What does it mean?” he shouted. “It means you’re the right sort for me! I haven’t heard of nothing but your goings-on for the last three trips. Vice-President of Honduras!” he exclaimed, shaking me as though I were a carpet. “A kid like you! You come to my cabin and tell me the whole yarn from start to finish. I’d rather carry you than old man Huntington himself!”
The passengers had returned, and stood listening to his exclamations, in a wondering circle. The stewards and deck-hands, panting with their late exertions, were grinning at me with unmistakable interest.
“Bring Captain Macklin’s breakfast to my cabin, you,” he shouted to them. “And, Mr. Owen,” he continued, addressing the Purser, with great impressiveness, “this is Captain Macklin, himself. He’s going with us as my guest.”
With a wink, he cautiously removed my revolver from my fingers, and slapped me jovially on the shoulder. “Son!” he exclaimed, “I wouldn’t have missed the sight of you holding your gun on that gang for a cargo of bullion. I suspicioned it was you, the moment you did it. That will be something for me to tell them in ‘Frisco, that will. Now, you come along,” he added, suddenly, with parental solicitude, “and take a cup of coffee, and a dose of quinine, or you’ll be ailing.”
He pushed a way for me through the crowd of passengers, who fell back in two long lines. As we moved between them, I heard a woman’s voice ask, in a loud whisper:
“Who did you say?”
A man’s voice answered, “Why, Captain Macklin,” and then protested, in a rising accent, “Now, for Heaven’s sake, Jennie, don’t tell me you don’t know who he is?”
That was my first taste of fame. It was a short-lived, limited sort of fame, but at that time it stretched throughout all Central America. I doubt if it is sufficiently robust to live in the cold latitudes of the North. It is just an exotic of the tropics. I am sure it will never weather Cape Hatteras. But although I won’t amount to much in Dobbs Ferry, down here in Central America I am pretty well known, and during these last two months that I have been lying, very near to death, in the Canal Company’s hospital, my poor little fame stuck by me, and turned strangers into kind and generous friends.
DOBBS FERRY, September, 1882
September passed before I was a convalescent, and it was the first of October when the Port of Sydney passed Sandy Hook, and I stood at the bow, trembling with cold and happiness, and saw the autumn leaves on the hills of Staten Island and the thousands of columns of circling, white smoke rising over the three cities. I had not let Beatrice and Aunt Mary know that I was in a hospital, but had told them that I was making my way home slowly, which was true enough, and that they need not expect to hear from me until I had arrived in New York City. So, there was no one at the dock to meet me.
But, as we came up the harbor, I waved at the people on the passing ferry-boats, and they, shivering, no doubt, at the sight of our canvas awnings and the stewards’ white jackets, waved back, and gave me my first welcome home.
It was worth all the disappointments, and the weeks in hospital, to stick my head in the ticket-window of the Grand Central Station, and hear myself say, “Dobbs Ferry, please.” I remember the fascination with which I watched the man (he was talking over his shoulder to another man at the time) punch the precious ticket, and toss it to me. I suppose in his life he has many times sold tickets to Dobbs Ferry, but he never sold them as often as I had rehearsed asking him for that one.
I had wired them not to meet me at the station, but to be waiting at the house, and when I came up the old walk, with the box-hedges on either side, they were at the door, and Aunt Mary ran to meet me, and hugged and scolded me, and cried on my shoulder, and Beatrice smiled at me, just as though she were very proud of me, and I kissed her once. After ten minutes, it did not seem as though I had ever been away from home. And, when I looked at Beatrice, and I could not keep my eyes from her, I was filled with wonder that I had ever had the courage to go from where she was. We were very happy.
I am afraid that for the next two weeks I traded upon their affection scandalously. But it was their own fault. It was their wish that I should constantly pose in the dual roles of the returned prodigal and Othello, and, as I told them, if I were an obnoxious prig ever after, they alone were responsible.
I had the ravenous hunger of the fever-convalescent, and I had an audience that would have turned General Grant into a braggart. So, every day wonderful dishes of Aunt Mary’s contriving were set before me, and Beatrice would not open a book so long as there was one adventure I had left untold.
And this, as I soon learned, was the more flattering, as she had already heard most of them at second-hand.
I can remember my bewilderment that first evening as I was relating the story of the duel, and she corrected me.
“Weren’t you much nearer?” she asked. “You fired at twenty paces.”
“So we did,” I cried, “but how could you know that?”
“Mr. Lowell told us,” she said.
“Lowell!” I shouted. “Has Lowell been here?”
“Yes, he brought us your sword,” Beatrice answered. “Didn’t you see where we placed it?” and she rose rather quickly, and stood with her face toward the fireplace, where, sure enough, my sword was hanging above the mantel.
“Oh yes,” said Aunt Mary, “Mr. Lowell has been very kind. He has come out often to ask for news of you. He is at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. We like him so much,” she added.
“Like him!” I echoed. “I should think you would! Isn’t that bully,” I cried, “to think of his being so near me, and that he’s a friend of yours already. We must have him out to-morrow. Isn’t he fine, Beatrice?”
She had taken down the sword, and was standing holding it out to me.
“Yes, he is,” she said, “and he is very fond of you, too, Royal. I don’t believe you’ve got a better friend.”
Attractive as the prodigal son may seem at first, he soon becomes a nuisance. Even Othello when he began to tell over his stories for the second time must have been something of a bore. And when Aunt Mary gave me roast beef for dinner two nights in succession, and after dinner Beatrice picked up “Lorna Doone” and retired to a corner, I knew that I had had my day.
The next morning at breakfast, in a tone of gentle reproach, I announced that I was going out into the cold world, as represented by New York City, to look for a job. I had no idea of doing anything of the sort. I only threw out the suggestion tentatively, and I was exceedingly disgusted when they caught up my plan with such enthusiasm and alacrity, that I was forced to go on with it. I could not see why it was necessary for me to work. I had two thousand dollars a year my grandfather had left me, and my idea of seeking for a job, was to look for it leisurely, and with caution. But the family seemed to think that, before the winter set in, I should take any chance that offered, and, as they expressed it, settle down.
None of us had any very definite ideas as to what I ought to do, or even that there was anything I could do. Lowell, who is so much with us now, that I treat him like one of the family, argued that to business men my strongest recommendation would be my knowledge of languages. He said I ought to try for a clerkship in some firm where I could handle the foreign correspondence. His even suggesting such work annoyed me extremely. I told him that, on the contrary, my strongest card was my experience in active campaigning, backed by my thorough military education, and my ability to command men. He said unfeelingly, that you must first catch your men, and that in down-town business circles a military education counted for no more than a college-course in football.
“You good people don’t seem to understand,” I explained (we were holding a family council on my case at the time); “I have no desire to move in down-town business circles. I hate business circles.”
“Well, you must live, Royal,” Aunt Mary said. “You have not enough money to be a gentleman of leisure.”
“Royal wouldn’t be content without some kind of work,” said Beatrice.
“No, he can’t persuade us he’s not ambitious!” Lowell added. “You mean to make something of yourself, you know you do, and you can’t begin too early.”
Since Lowell has been promoted to the ward-room, he talks just like a grandfather.
“Young man,” I said, “I’ve seen the day when you were an ensign, and I was a Minister of War, and you had to click your heels if you came within thirty feet of my distinguished person. Of course, I’m ambitious, and the best proof of it is, that I don’t want to sit in a bird-cage all my life, counting other people’s money.”
Aunt Mary looked troubled, and shook her head at me.
“Well, Royal,” she remonstrated, “you’ve got very little of your own to count, and some day you’ll want to marry, and then you’ll be sorry.”
I don’t know why Aunt Mary’s remark should have affected anyone except myself, but it seemed to take all the life out of the discussion, and Beatrice remembered she had some letters to write, and Lowell said he must go back to the Navy Yard, although when he arrived he told us he had fixed it with another man to stand his watch. The reason I was disturbed was because, when Aunt Mary spoke, it made me wonder if she were not thinking of Beatrice. One day just after I arrived from Panama, when we were alone, she said that while I was gone she had been in fear she might die before I came back, and that Beatrice would be left alone. I laughed at her and told her she would live a hundred years, and added, not meaning anything in particular, “And she’ll not be alone. I’ll be here.”
Then Aunt Mary looked at me very sadly, and said: “Royal, I could die so contentedly if I thought you two were happy.” She waited, as though she expected me to make some reply, but I couldn’t think of anything to say, and so just looked solemn, then she changed the subject by asking: “Royal, have you noticed that Lieutenant Lowell admires Beatrice very much?” And I said, “Of course he does. If he didn’t, I’d punch his head.” At which she again looked at me in such a wistful, pained way, smiling so sadly, as though for some reason she were sorry for me.
They all seemed to agree that I had had my fling, and should, as they persisted in calling it, “settle down.” A most odious phrase. They were two to one against me, and when one finished another took it up. So that at last I ceased arguing and allowed myself to be bullied into looking for a position.
But before surrendering myself to the downtown business circles I made one last effort to remain free.
In Honduras, Laguerre had told me that a letter to the Credit Lyonnais in Paris would always find him. I knew that since his arrival at San Francisco he had had plenty of time to reach Paris, and that if he were there now he must know whether there is anything in this talk of a French expedition against the Chinese in Tonkin. Also whether the Mahdi really means to make trouble for the Khedive in the Soudan. Laguerre was in the Egyptian army for three years, and knows Baker Pasha well. I was sure that if there was going to be trouble, either in China or Egypt, he could not keep out of it.
So I cabled him to the Credit Lyonnais, “Are you well? If going any more campaigns, please take me.” I waited three restless weeks for an answer, and then, as no answer came, I put it all behind me, and hung my old, torn uniform where I would not see it, and hid the presentation-sword behind the eight-day clock in the library.
Beatrice raised her eyes from her book and watched me.
“Why?” she asked.
“It hurts me,” I said.
She put down her book, and for a long time looked at me without speaking.
“I did not know you disliked it as much as that,” she said. “I wonder if we are wrong. And yet,” she added, smiling, “it does not seem a great sacrifice; to have work to do, to live at home, and in such a dear, old home as this, near a big city, and with the river in front and the country all about you. It seems better than dying of wounds in a swamp, or of fever in a hospital.”
“I haven’t complained. I’m taking my medicine,” I answered. “I know you all wouldn’t ask it of me, if you didn’t think it was for my good.” I had seated myself in front of the wood fire opposite her, and was turning the chain she gave me round and round my wrist. I slipped it off, and showed it to her as it hung from my fingers, shining in the firelight.
“And yet,” I said, “it was fine being your Knight-Errant, and taking risks for your sake, and having only this to keep me straight.” I cannot see why saying just that should have disturbed her, but certainly my words, or the sight of the chain, had a most curious effect. It is absurd, but I could almost swear that she looked frightened. She flushed, and her eyes were suddenly filled with tears. I was greatly embarrassed. Why should she be afraid of me? I was too much upset to ask her what was wrong, so I went on hastily: “But now I’ll have you always with me, to keep me straight,” I said.
She laughed at that, a tremulous little laugh, and said: “And so you won’t want it any more, will you?”
“Won’t want it,” I protested gallantly. “I’d like to see anyone make me give it up.”
“You’d give it up to me, wouldn’t you?” she asked gently. “It looks—” she added, and stopped.
“I see,” I exclaimed. “Looks like a pose, sort of effeminate, a man’s wearing a bracelet. Is that what you think?”
She laughed again, but this time quite differently. She seemed greatly relieved.
“Perhaps that’s it,” she said. “Give it me, Royal. You’ll never need any woman’s trinkets to keep you straight.”
I weighed the gold links in the hollow of my palm.
“Do you really want it?” I asked. She raised her eyes eagerly. “If you don’t mind,” she said.
I dropped the chain into her hand, but as I turned toward the fire, I could not help a little sigh. She heard me, and leaned forward. I could just see her sweet, troubled face in the firelight. “But I mean to return it you, Royal,” she said, “some day, when—when you go out again to fight wind-mills.”
“That’s safe!” I returned, roughly. “You know that time will never come. The three of you together have fixed that. I’m no longer a knight-errant. I’m a business-man now. I’m not to remember I ever was a knight-errant. I must even give up my Order of the Golden Chain, because it’s too romantic, because it might remind me that somewhere in this world there is romance, and adventure, and fighting. And it wouldn’t do. You can’t have romance around a business office. Some day, when I was trying to add up my sums, I might see it on my wrist, and forget where I was. I might remember the days when it shone in the light of a camp-fire, when I used to sleep on the ground with my arm under my head, and it was the last thing I saw, when it seemed like your fingers on my wrist holding me back, or urging me forward. Business circles would not allow that. They’d put up a sign, ‘Canvassers, pedlers, and Romance not admitted.’”
The first time I applied for a job I was unsuccessful. The man I went to see had been an instructor at Harvard when my uncle was professor there, and Aunt Mary said he had been a great friend of Professor Endicott’s. One day in the laboratory the man discovered something, and had it patented. It brought him a fortune, and he was now president of a company which manufactured it, and with branches all over the world.
Aunt Mary wrote him a personal letter about me, in the hope that he might put me in charge of the foreign correspondence.
He kept me waiting outside his office-door for one full hour. During the first half-hour I was angry, but the second half-hour I enjoyed exceedingly. By that time the situation appealed to my sense of humor. When the great man finally said he would see me, I found him tilting back in a swivel-chair in front of a mahogany table. He picked out Aunt Mary’s letter from a heap in front of him, and said: “Are you the Mr. Macklin mentioned in this letter? What can I do for you?”
I said very deliberately: “You can do nothing for me. I have waited one hour to tell you so. When my aunt, Mrs. Endicott, does anyone the honor to write him a letter, there is no other business in New York City more important than attending promptly to that letter. I had intended becoming a partner in your firm; now, I shall not. You are a rude, fat, and absurd, little person. Good-morning.”
I crossed over to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and told Lowell and the other watch-officers in the ward-room of my first attempt to obtain a job. They laughed until I hoped they would strangle.
“Who the devil do you think you are, anyway,” they cried, “going around, insulting millionnaires like that?”
After leaving the cruiser that afternoon, I was so miserable that I could have jumped into the East River. It was the sight of the big, brown guns did it, and the cutlasses in their racks, and the clean-limbed, bare-throated Jackies, and the watch-officer stamping the deck just as though he were at sea, with his glass and side-arms. And when the marine at the gate of the yard shifted his gun and challenged me, it was so like old times that I could have fallen on his neck and hugged him.
Over the wharves, all along my way to the ferry, the names of strange and beautiful ports mocked at me from the sheds of the steam-ship lines; “Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, and the River Plata,” “Guayaquil, Callao, and Santiago,” “Cape Town, Durban, and Lorenzo Marquez.” It was past six o’clock and very dark. The ice was pushing and grinding against the pier-heads, and through the falling snow the tall buildings in New York twinkled with thousands of electric lights, like great Christmas-trees. At one wharf a steamer of the Red D line, just in from La Guayra, was making fast, and I guiltily crept on board. Without, she was coated in a shearing of ice, but within she reeked of Spanish-America—of coffee, rubber, and raw sugar. Pineapples were still swinging in a net from the awning-rail, a two-necked water-bottle hung at the hot mouth of the engine-room. I found her captain and told him I only wanted to smell a ship again, and to find out, if where he came from, the bands were still playing in the plazas. He seemed to understand, and gave me a drink of Jamaica rum with fresh limes in it, and a black cigar; and when his steward brought them, I talked to him in Spanish just for the sound of it. For half an hour I was under the Southern Cross, and New York was 3,000 miles astern.
When I left him, the captain gave me a bag of alligator-pears to take home with me, and I promised to come the next day, and bring him a new library of old, paper novels.
But, as it turned out, I sent them instead, for that night when I reached the New York side, I saw how weakly and meanly I was acting, and I threw the alligator-pears over the rail of the ferry-boat and watched them fall into the dirty, grinding ice. I saw that I had been in rank mutiny. My bed had been made for me and I must lie in it. I was to be a business-man. I was to “settle down,” and it is only slaves who rebel.
The next day, humble and chastened in spirit, I kissed the rod, and went into the city to search for a situation. I determined to start at Forty-second Street, and work my way down town until I found a place that looked as though it could afford a foreign correspondent. But I had reached Twenty-eighth Street, without seeing any place that appealed to me, when a little groom, in a warm fur collar and chilly white breeches, ran up beside me and touched his hat. I was so surprised that I saluted him in return, and then felt uneasily conscious that that was not the proper thing to do, and that forever I had lost his respect.
“Miss Fiske would like to speak with you, sir,” he said. He ran back to a brougham that was drawn up beside the curb behind me, and opened the door. When I reached it, Miss Fiske leaned from it, smiling.
“I couldn’t help calling you back, Captain Macklin,” she said, and held out her hand.
When I took it she laughed again. “Isn’t this like our last meeting?” she asked. “Don’t you remember my reaching out of the carriage, and our shaking hands? Only now,” she went on, in a most frank and friendly manner, “instead of a tropical thunder-storm, it’s a snow-storm, and instead of my running away from your shells, I’m out shopping. At least, mother’s out shopping,” she added. “She’s in there. I’m waiting for her.” She seemed to think that the situation required a chaperon.
“You mustn’t say they were my shells, Miss Fiske,” I protested. “I may insult a woman for protecting her brother’s life, but I never fire shells at her.”
It did not surprise me to hear myself laughing at the words which, when she spoke them, had seemed so terrible. It was as though none of it had ever occurred. It was part of a romantic play, and we had seen the play together. Who could believe that the young man, tramping the streets on the lookout for a job, had ever signed his name, as vice-president of Honduras, to a passport for Joseph Fiske; that the beautiful girl in the sables, with her card-case in her hand, had ever heard the shriek of shrapnel?
And she exclaimed, just as though we had both been thinking aloud: “No, it’s not possible, is it?”
“It never happened,” I said.
“But I tell you what has happened,” she went on, eagerly, “or perhaps you know. Have you heard what my father did?”
I said I had not. I refrained from adding that I believed her father capable of doing almost anything.
“Then I’m the first to tell you the news,” she exclaimed. She nodded at me energetically. “Well, he’s paid that money. He owed it all the time.’
“That’s not news,” I said.
She flushed a little, and laughed.
“But, indeed, father was not to blame,” she exclaimed. “They deceived him dreadfully. But when we got home, he looked it up, and found you were right about that money, and so he’s paid it back, not to that odious Alvarez man, but in some way, I don’t quite understand how, but so the poor people will get it.”
“Good!” I cried.
“And he’s discharged all that Isthmian crowd,” she went on.
“Better,” I said.
“And made my brother president of the new company,” she continued, and then raised her eyebrows, and waited, smiling.
“Oh, well,” I said, “since he’s your brother—‘best.’”
“That’s right,” she cried. “That’s very nice of you. Here comes mother. I want you to meet her.”
Mother came toward us, out of a French dress-maker’s. It was one of the places I had decided against, when I had passed it a few minutes before. It seemed one of the few business houses where a French linguist would be superfluous.
I was presented as “Captain Macklin—who, you know, mother—who fought the duel with Arthur—that is, who didn’t shoot at him.”
Mrs. Fiske looked somewhat startled. Even to a trained social leader it must be trying to have a man presented to you on a sidewalk as the one who did not shoot your son.
Mrs. Fiske had a toy dog under one arm, and was holding up her train, but she slipped the dog to the groom, and gave me her hand.
“How do you do, Mr.—Captain Macklin,” she said. “My son has told me a great deal about you. Have you asked Captain Macklin to come to see us, Helen?” she said, and stepped into the brougham.
“Come in any day after five,” said Miss Fiske, “and we’ll have tortillas and frijoles, and build a camp-fire in the library. What’s your address?”
“Dobbs Ferry,” I said.
“Just Dobbs Ferry?” she asked. “But you’re such a well-known person, Captain Macklin.”
“I’m Mr. Macklin now,” I answered, and I tried to shut the door on them, but the groom seemed to think that was his privilege, and so I bowed, and they drove away. Then I went at once to a drug-store and borrowed the directory, to find out where they lived, and I walked all the way up the avenue to have a look at their house. Somehow I felt that for that day I could not go on asking for a job. I saw a picture of myself on a high stool in the French dressmaker’s writing to the Paris house for more sable cloaks for Mrs. Fiske.
The Fiske mansion overlooks Central Park, and it is as big as the Academy of Music. I found that I knew it well by sight. I at once made up my mind that I never would have the courage to ring that door-bell, and I mounted a Fifth Avenue stage, and took up my work of reconnoitering for a job where Miss Fiske had interrupted it.
The next day I got the job. I am to begin work on Monday. It is at Schwartz & Carboy’s. They manufacture locks and hinges and agricultural things. I saw a lot of their machetes in Honduras with their paper stamp on the blade. They have almost a monopoly of the trade in South America. Fortunately, or unfortunately, one of their Spanish clerks had left them, and when I said I had been in Central America and could write Spanish easily, Schwartz, or, it may have been Carboy—I didn’t ask him which was his silly name—dictated a letter and I wrote it in Spanish. One of the other clerks admitted it was faultless. So, I regret to say, I got the job. I’m to begin with fifteen dollars, and Schwartz or Carboy added, as though it were a sort of a perquisite: “If our young men act gentlemanly, and are good dressers, we often send them to take our South American customers to lunch. The house pays the expenses. And in the evenings you can show them around the town. Our young men find that an easy way of seeing the theatres for nothing.”
Knowing the tastes of South Americans visiting New York, I replied severely that my connection with Schwartz & Carboy would end daily at four in the afternoon, but that a cross-town car passed Koster & Bial’s every hour. I half hoped he would take offence at that, and in consequence my connection, with Schwartz & Carboy might end instantly and forever; but whichever one he was, only laughed and said: “Yes, those Brazilians are a queer lot. We eat up most of our profits bailing them out of police courts the next morning. Well—you turn up Monday.”
DOBBS FERRY, Sunday, Midnight
It’s all over. It will be a long time before I add another chapter to my “Memoirs.” When I have written this one they are to be sealed, and to-morrow they are to be packed away in Aunt Mary’s cedar chest. I am now writing these lines after everyone else has gone to bed.
It happened after dinner. Aunt Mary was upstairs, and Beatrice was at the piano. We were waiting for Lowell, who had promised to come up and spend the evening. I was sitting at the centre-table, pretending to read, but watching Beatrice. Her back was turned toward me, so I could stare at her as long as I pleased. The light of the candles on each side of the music-rack fell upon her hair, and made it flash and burn. She had twisted it high, in a coil, and there never was anything more lovely than the burnished copper against the white glow of her skin, nor anything so noble as the way her head rose upon her neck and sloping shoulders. It was like a flower on a white stem.
She was not looking at the music before her, but up at nothing, while her hands ran over the keyboard, playing an old sailor’s “chantey” which Lowell has taught us. It carries with it all the sweep and murmur of the sea at night.
She could not see me, she had forgotten that I was even in the room, and I was at liberty to gaze at her and dream of her undisturbed. I felt that, without that slight, white figure always at my side, the life I was to begin on the morrow, or any other life, would be intolerable. Without the thought of Beatrice to carry me through the day I could not bear it. Except for her, what promise was there before me of reward or honor? I was no longer “an officer and a gentleman,” I was a copying clerk, “a model letter-writer.” I could foresee the end. I would become a nervous, knowing, smug-faced civilian. Instead of clean liquors, I would poison myself with cocktails and “quick-order” luncheons. I would carry a commuter’s ticket. In time I might rise to the importance of calling the local conductors by their familiar names. “Bill, what was the matter with the 8.13 this morning?” From to-morrow forward I would be “our” Mr. Macklin, “Yours of even date received. Our Mr. Macklin will submit samples of goods desired.” “Mr.” Macklin! “Our” Mr. Macklin! Ye Gods! Schwartz any servitude, I would struggle to rise above the most hateful surroundings.
I had just registered this mental vow, my eyes were still fixed appealingly on the woman who was all unconscious of the sacrifice I was about to make for her, when the servant came into the room and handed me a telegram. I signed for it, and she went out. Beatrice had not heard her enter, and was still playing. I guessed the telegram was from Lowell to say he could not get away, and I was sorry. But as I tore open the envelope, I noticed that it was not the usual one of yellow paper, but of a pinkish white. I had never received a cablegram. I did not know that this was one. I read the message, and as I read it the blood in every part of my body came to a sudden stop. There was a strange buzzing in my ears, the drums seemed to have burst with a tiny report. The shock was so tremendous that it seemed Beatrice must have felt it too, and I looked up at her stupidly. She was still playing.
The cablegram had been sent that morning from Marseilles. The message read, “Commanding Battalion French Zouaves, Tonkin Expedition, holding position of Adjutant open for you, rank of Captain, if accept join Marseilles. Laguerre.”
I laid the paper on my knee, and sat staring, scarcely breathing, as though I were afraid if I moved I would wake. I was trembling and cold, for I was at the parting of the ways, and I knew it. Beyond the light of the candles, beyond the dull red curtains jealously drawn against the winter landscape, beyond even the slight, white figure with its crown of burnished copper, I saw the swarming harbor of Marseilles. I saw the swaggering turcos in their scarlet breeches, the crowded troop-ships, and from every ship’s mast the glorious tri-color of France; the flag that in ten short years had again risen, that was flying over advancing columns in China, in Africa, in Madagascar; over armies that for Alsace Lorraine were giving France new and great colonies on every seaboard of the world. The thoughts that flew through my brain made my fingers clench until the nails bit into my palms. Even to dream of such happiness was actual pain. That this might come to me! To serve under the tri-color, to be a captain of the Grand Armee, to be one of the army reared and trained by Napoleon Bonaparte.
I heard a cheery voice, and Lowell passed me, and advanced bowing toward Beatrice, and she turned and smiled at him. But as she rose, she saw my face.
“Roy!” she cried. “What is it? What has happened?”
I watched her coming toward me, as someone projected from another life, a wonderful, beautiful memory, from a life already far in the past. I handed her the cablegram and stood up stiffly. My joints were rigid and the blood was still cold in my veins. She read the message, and gave a little cry, and stood silent, gazing at me. I motioned her to give it to Lowell, who was looking at us anxiously, his eyes filled with concern.
He kept his head lowered over the message for so long, that I thought he was reading it several times. When he again raised his face it was filled with surprise and disapproval. But beneath, I saw a dawning look which he could not keep down, of a great hope. It was as though he had been condemned to death, and the paper Beatrice had handed him to read had been his own reprieve.
“Tell me,” said Beatrice. Her tone was as gentle and as solemn as the stroke of a bell, and as impersonal. It neither commended nor reproved. I saw that instantly she had determined to conceal her own wishes, to obliterate herself entirely, to let me know that, so far as she could affect my choice, I was a free agent. I looked appealingly from her to Lowell, and from Lowell back to Beatrice. I still was trembling with the fever the message had lit in me. When I tried to answer, my voice was hoarse and shaking.
“It’s like drink!” I said.
Lowell raised his eyes as though he meant to speak, and then lowered them and stepped back, leaving Beatrice and myself together.
“I only want you to see,” Beatrice began bravely, “how—how serious it is. Every one of us in his life must have a moment like this, and, if he could only know that the moment had come, he might decide wisely. You know the moment has come. You must see that this is the crisis. It means choosing not for a year, but for always.” She held out her hands, entwining the fingers closely. “Oh, don’t think I’m trying to stop you, Royal,” she cried. “I only want you to see that it’s final. I know that it’s like strong drink to you, but the more you give way to it—. Don’t you think, if you gave your life here a fairer trial, if you bore with it a little longer—”
She stopped sharply as though she recognized that, in urging me to a choice, she was acting as she had determined she would not. I did not answer, but stood in silence with my head bent, for I could not look at her. I knew now how much dearer to me, even than her voice, was the one which gave the call to arms. I did indeed understand that the crisis had come. In that same room, five minutes before the message arrived, I had sworn for her sake alone to submit to the life I hated. And yet in an instant, without a moment’s pause, at the first sound of “Boots and Saddles,” I had sprung to my first love, and had forgotten Beatrice and my sworn allegiance. Knowing how greatly I loved her, I now could understand, since it made me turn from her, how much greater must be my love for this, her only rival, the old life that was again inviting me.
I was no longer to be deceived; the one and only thing I really loved, the one thing I understood and craved, was the free, homeless, untrammelled life of the soldier of fortune. I wanted to see the shells splash up the earth again, I wanted to throw my leg across a saddle, I wanted to sleep on a blanket by a camp-fire, I wanted the kiss and caress of danger, the joy which comes when the sword wins honor and victory together, and I wanted the clear, clean view of right and wrong, that is given only to those who hourly walk with death.
I raised my head, and spoke very softly:
“It is too late. I am sorry. But I have decided. I must go.”
Lowell stepped out of the shadow, and faced me with the same strange look, partly of wonder, and partly of indignation.
“Nonsense, Royal,” he said, “let me talk to you. We’ve been shipmates, or comrades, and all that sort of thing, and you’ve got to listen to me. Think, man, think what you’re losing. Think of all the things you are giving up. Don’t be a weak child. This will affect your whole life. You have no right to decide it in a minute.”
I stepped to its hiding-place, and took out the sword my grandfather had carried in the Civil War; the sword I had worn in Honduras. I had hidden it away, that it might not remind me that once I, too, was a soldier. It acted on me like a potion. The instant my fingers touched its hilt, the blood, which had grown chilled, leaped through my body. In answer I held the sword toward Lowell. It was very hard to speak. They did not know how hard. They did not know how cruelly it hurt me to differ from them, and to part from them. The very thought of it turned me sick and miserable. But it was written. It had to be.
“You ask me to think of what I am giving up,” I said, gently. “I gave up this. I shall never surrender it again. I am not deciding in a minute. It was decided for me long ago. It’s a tradition. It’s handed down to me. My grandfather was Hamilton, of Cerro Gordo, of the City of Mexico, of Gettysburg. My father was ‘Fighting’ Macklin. He was killed at the head of his soldiers. All my people have been soldiers. One fought at the battle of Princeton, one died fighting the king at Culloden. It’s bred in me. It’s in the blood. It’s the blood of the Macklins that has decided this. And I—I am the last of the Macklins, and I must live and die like one.”
The house is quiet now. They have all left me to my packing, and are asleep. Lowell went early and bade me good-by at the gate. He was very sad and solemn. “God bless you, Royal,” he said, “and keep you safe, and bring you back to us.” And I watched him swinging down the silent, moon-lit road, knocking the icicles from the hedges with his stick. I stood there some time looking after him, for I love him very dearly, and then a strange thing happened. After he had walked quite a distance from the house, he suddenly raised his head and began to whistle a jolly, rollicking sea-song. I could hear him for some minutes. I was glad to think he took it so light-heartedly. It is good to know that he is not jealous of my great fortune.
To-night we spared each other the parting words. But to-morrow they must be spoken, when Aunt Mary and Beatrice come to see me sail away on the French liner. The ship leaves at noon, and ten days later I shall be in Havre. Ye gods, to think that in ten days I shall see Paris! And then, the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, the Indian Ocean, Singapore, and, at last, the yellow flags and black dragons of the enemy. It cannot last long, this row. I shall be coming home again in six months, unless the Mahdi makes trouble. Laguerre was three years in the Khedive’s service, and with his influence an ex-captain of the French army should have little difficulty in getting a commission in Egypt.
Then, after that, I really will come home. But not as an ex-soldier. This time I shall come home on furlough. I shall come home a real officer, and play the prodigal again to the two noblest and sweetest and best women in God’s world. All women are good, but they are the best. All women are so good, that when one of them thinks one of us is worthy to marry her, she pays a compliment to our entire sex. But as they are all good and all beautiful, Beatrice being the best and most beautiful, I was right not to think of marrying only one of them. With the world full of good women, and with a fight always going on somewhere, I am very wise not to “settle down.” I know I shall be very happy.
In a year I certainly must come back, a foreign officer on leave, and I shall go to West Point and pay my respects to the Commandant. The men who saw me turned out will have to present arms to me, and the older men will say to the plebs, “That distinguished-looking officer with the French mustache, and the red ribbon of the Legion of Honor, is Captain Macklin. He was turned out of here. Now he’s only a soldier of fortune. He belongs to no country.”
But when the battalion is drawn up at retreat and the shadows stretch across the grass, I shall take up my stand once more on the old parade ground, with all the future Grants and Lees around me, and when the flag comes down, I shall raise my hand with theirs, and show them that I have a country, too, and that the flag we salute together is my flag still.
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