A Soldier's Trial: An Episode of the Canteen Crusade. Charles King

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СКАЧАТЬ anticipated that orders honorably discharging him from the volunteer service would meet him within the week of his arrival within the Golden Gate. Officers of the Department Staff, interrogated on the subject, said little but looked volumes. Major Blake, of the Cavalry, an old and intimate friend of the Rays, was understood to say that it was a wonder the major had been honorably discharged at all. Farrell, who was to have gone to his Texas property, found that certain mines in Mexico demanded immediate looking after. Indeed, it was this fact that precipitated an earlier marriage than Miss Farrell, whose trousseau was by no means in readiness, had for a moment contemplated. Farrell said he might be as much as six months in the mountains beyond Guadalajara and other places. The señora had, of course, wealthy kindred with whom she could stay at Mexico or Vera Cruz, but the hitch was about Inez, who, said her father, was so Americanized that she couldn't get along with her mother's people—they were forever at swords' points, and what more natural than that the ardent swain should promptly urge immediate union; then the Farrells could go their way in peace and he could bear away his beautiful bride to the Atlantic seaboard, to be made known to his people, and to embrace little Jim. To this Inez responded coyly that she could not think of such a plan. She could not go back to San Francisco, a bride, in the gowns she wore while there as Miss Farrell. Then said Dwight, we'll go straight to New Orleans, where her mother had many friends and kinsfolk, where the best of modistes abound, where everything a bride could possibly wear could surely be found, and Farrell added his dictum to the pleadings of the groom-elect. The plan appealed to him most, as it would cost him least.

      When Farrell gave them his tearful benediction and farewell, ten thousand dollars of Dwight's money was stowed away in bills of exchange on the City of Mexico for investment in the fabulous mines of the Sierras, and Dwight's signature was on the back of one or two bills left in the hands of Farrell's friends and correspondents at the Bank of California, purely, of course, for safe-keeping. And so they went on their respective ways, Farrell not soon to be seen in God's country again.

      Three months later, with little Jim at his side and the young step-mother dawdling along after them in her easy carriage, Captain Dwight was tramping through Switzerland. The surgeons had said in so many words he must not return to the Philippines for half a year, and neither before nor after his marriage had a word reached him from the Rays, who were his next-door neighbors and Margaret's most devoted friends until Jimmy was nearly two years old. Even thereafter, though stationed far apart, Marion Ray and Margaret Dwight had kept up their correspondence almost to the end. Dwight, indeed, had seen barely half a dozen of his former comrades, and that only by accident and in haste. There had come since his second marriage the usual number of cards in response to the wedding announcement sent to so many friends both in and out of the army. There had come a curiously unusual dearth of letters of congratulation. But every man was on the move, he persuaded himself. Everybody was either busy in the Philippines or voyaging to or from them. They, too, were moving from pillar to post, and letters must be miscarrying, so few, for instance, had come from Father-in-law Farrell, and those that did come made no mention of matters Farrell could hardly have ignored, and that Dwight had rather counted on.

      Still, Dwight's health was mending every week. Inez had seen so much of foreign life in her younger days she could not be expected to care to go poking about, as he did with Jimmy, into all manner of odd nooks and corners. Father and son once more were hand in hand—hand in glove—for hours each day, and but for a shyness Jim would surely soon get over—a queer, silent shrinking from his beautiful young mother—but for this and one or two little worries due to the non-appearance of letters that ought to have come and doubtless would come, Dwight strove to persuade himself that he was again a happy and an enviable man.

      Then came a day that left its impress on them all. There had been something very like demur on part of the Welland family when Dwight first announced his intention of taking Jimmy with them to see the Old World. What would Inez—they spoke her name with effort—think of such a plan? Was not a young bride justified in expecting the undivided attention of her husband? Would not any girl, placed as she was, prefer a honeymoon unclouded by the presence of the children of her predecessor? Inez had not warmed to her other kindred by marriage; could she be expected to welcome and, all at once, to warm to little Jim? Conscientiously and consistently they had tried to like Inez, and could not. She was beautiful; she was appealing; she was apparently all desire to please, but she was not convincing. The more they saw of her the less they liked, but Dwight's infatuation was complete. And still he would have his boy, and they spoke at last. He had answered by summoning her to the room—a strange proceeding—and bidding her speak for him, and she did. She said her heart had yearned for little Jim ever since the captain first began to tell of him, and when she realized later how utterly the father's heart was bound up in his boy, she had prayed for guidance that she might prove a second mother to the little fellow, and it was her earnest desire that the lad might come with them. How else was she to hope to win his trust, his affection? There was nothing left for them to say; but the dread and desolation that fell upon the household when, for the second time, they were compelled to part with Margaret's boy, no one but the Wellands was permitted to know.

      Inez, who had been a model sailor on the Pacific, kept much to her stateroom on the gray Atlantic, though the voyage was unusually placid. Nor had she later made much effort in her quest for Jimmy's trust and affection. She could not climb mountains, pedal wheels or ride quadrupeds. She cared little for scenery—she had seen so much in her girlhood. She admitted feeling languid and inert. Perhaps mountain air was not congenial. She would be better when they got to sunny Italy. She wished there to see everything and to live in the open air—it was what the doctor said the captain must do—and then she was always exquisitely gowned and ready to meet them when in the late afternoon they came home, all aglow, with just time to get out of their tweeds and into dinner dress. Then Jimmy went early to bed, and she had the long beautiful evenings with her husband. But now they were in sunny Italy and, except to drive in beauteous toilets and dine in evening garb still more resplendent, Inez had no interest in her surroundings and but little in Jim. They were to sail for home, taking the Hohenzollern at Naples, after the Easter week in Rome. They had been driving much of the day and dining early on the balcony of their hotel, looking out upon the glorious view toward Sorrento and Capri, with grim Vesuvius, smoke-crowned, in the middle distance. Any moment, said their host, they should sight the graceful hull of their expected steamer cleaving the blue beyond the rocky scarp of Posilipo, when Jimmy, gazing steadily through the glass at the crowding fleet of shipping off the Dogana, spoke excitedly: "It is our flag, daddy, and the funnel has three stripes!"

      "A transport," said his father, who had been bending over Inez. "She must have come in while we were driving." Yet, even as he spoke, anxiously, tenderly, he was studying her face.

      "Then—that was one of our officers that spoke to you, mamma?" said Jim, turning quickly, eagerly toward her.

      She had been unusually inert and silent since their return, had herself suggested dinner on the balcony. It would save the bother of dressing, and then repacking, since they might have to go on board any hour that evening. She had been gazing listlessly out over the beautiful bay, almost dazzling in the rays of the setting sun. Now she suddenly started, shivered, but almost as suddenly, quickly rallied.

      "Spoke to me, Jimmy! Why, child, you've been dreaming!"

      "Why, no, mamma! Don't you remember—while daddy was in at the bank?" and the boy's big violet eyes turned full upon her. The white hands gripped the arm of her reclining chair, but she laughed lightly, and the words came quick.

      "Jimmy boy, you were sound asleep on the front seat. Don't you remember, Oswald, dear?"

      Dwight, too, laughed merrily. "Surely! Why, little man, your peepers were shut and you were curled up like a pussy cat——"

      "But I'd waked up, daddy. Mamma gave a little scream and I thought somebody'd hurt her, and there was this gentleman with his hat raised, just standing and staring at her till she bent over and said something quick——"

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