Van Cleve and His Friends

CHAPTER XII

IN WHICH WE CONCENTRATE AT TAMPA

ON a hot, wet, stifling day of June — it was the twenty-fourth or toward that date — a train from the North got into the station at Tampa, Florida, some six or seven hours late, as was not unusual, and discharged its passengers upon the cinder esplanade which was already crowded with men in uniform, men out of uniform, dogs, boys, crates, barrels, mules, colored women, drays, boxes labeled ‘6th Regmt. U. S. Inft. Rush.' — ‘Lieut. W. W. Branscombe, 3d Penn. Vol. Cav. Personal,’and so on.

The train discharged into the middle of all this, and of the proportionate uproar and bewilderment, a little party of travelers, some of whom we ought to be able to recognize by this time. The girl in the gray coat-and-skirt suit, with the pretty face, rather tired and pale just now, and with an anxious look in her brown eyes, which roam about as if there were somebody whom she half expects and half dreads to see — that is, of a surety, Miss Lorrie Gilbert. And there is an active, alert, well-built woman a head taller and five years older than Lorrie, who must be the trained nurse, Miss Rodgers, from Christ’s Hospital, sent down here to the kindred military establishment at Tampa, or Key West, she herself is uncertain which. But for her, I suppose, the presence of that tall, raw-boned, ungainly young man (V. C. Kendrick: you may read the initials on the end of his suitcase), I say, but for Miss Rodgers, his presence in company with Miss Gilbert, at this distance from home, would undoubtedly be a scandal; however, let Mrs. Grundy possess her soul in peace, Lorrie and Van are not eloping, and they are sufficiently chaperoned. There is even another trained nurse along, some subordinate of Miss Rodgers’s, the stout young woman with the fine complexion — Van Cleve never can remember her name.

Mr. Kendrick displays great promptness and efficiency in getting his ladies off the car, in accumulating their belongings, and marooning the party safely upon a reef of luggage, out of the crowd and the torrid sunshine, while he starts off to find a conveyance, and incidentally whatever information about the town he can pick up.

‘Say, Jim, git on to Brigham Young in the blue sack-suit! ’ a lounging khakiclad gentleman, with a toothpick in one corner of his mouth and ‘52d Mich. V. I.’ on the front of his slouch hat, observes to another facetiously, noting Van’s activities; by good luck, the latter does not hear him.

‘They say the train goes on somewhere across the river and backs right up into the grounds of the Tampa Bay Hotel.' says Miss Rodgers, staring about her; ‘is n’t that the limit for you, though? I never heard of a train running around hunting up hotels before. Look, that must be a Cuban! No, I don’t mean him — I mean him — the one that looks like a mulatto, only he is n’t. That’s what we’re fighting for!’

The other nurse remarks, in a strain of cheerful fatalism fostered by three days and nights of travel, beset with surprises and uncertainties, that you can’t tell what you may have to go up against down here; you’ve got just to take it as it comes. And, ‘Was your brother going to meet you here, Miss Gilbert?' she asks with interest.

‘No. I — I don’t even know where he is, you see. I could n’t send him word. I’ll have to look for him,’ says Lorrie, nervously, plucking at the edge of her veil.

The two nurses exchange a glance behind her back. I believe they are not less sympathetic for being devoured with curiosity. They know all about her engagement; trained nurses always know Who is Who in Society and what is being done; they study the “Jottings” column as devoutly as the Testament. These two think that Lorrie is as sweet as she can be, and no wonder she’s frightened to death about her feeonsay going off to the army; they have offered freely to bet each other that she’s ten times more upset about him than about her brother. But what is it that’s wrong about the brother, anyhow? They can’t make it out, but (again they bet) there’s something behind it. Was n’t there some talk about his being a dope-fiend, or something? The question has agitated them for all these three days; nothing to be got out of Mr. Kendrick; he said he just thought he’d spend his vacation taking a look at the army, but pooh! you couldn’t fool them that easy! ‘I’m glad he’s along, anyhow,’ Miss Rodgers confided to her associate. ‘I tell you, it certainly is nice sometimes to have a man around to look out for you and kind of run you. I’ve been my own boss so long, I did n’t realize how nice it was. And Mr. Kendrick never gets fresh and talky—you know, he never gets that way. That’s what I like about him.’

‘Yes, but he’s kind of stiff and — and distant, more than anybody needs to be,’ said the stout girl, not without resentment; ‘do you suppose there’s ever been anything between him and Miss Gilbert?’

‘Well, if there ever was, he’s good and got over it now. You’d think they were married, he pays so little attention to her,’said Miss Rodgers, with a half-laugh; and her companion’s face cleared.

Lorrie Gilbert will never to her final breath forget those hideous days; sometimes even now, years afterwards, she will live over in dreams the frenzied hurry of her departure, the grief and suspense and, worst of all, the intolerable need of deception that drove and harried her. Paula’s secret, Bob’s secret, laid them all under its shameful bondage; honorable men and women, they had to sit down together ignobly and concert falsehoods wholesale. All the story must hold together, and they must take care not to contradict one another. She must pretend that she was going as a nurse, and, of course, incidentally, to see Bob — oh, yes, she would see Bob! Her father and mother must pretend that they approved of it. Van Cleve (since he would insist on accompanying her party) must pretend that he wanted a vacation trip! She could not meet a girl friend, she could not answer the telephone, or write a note, without an adjusting of her mask and a renewed conning of her rôle. It was the same with her mother, with her father. I doubt if Paula Jameson ever felt a tenth part so guilty as any one of the upright, blameless people caught in the meshes of her wretched intrigue.

Lorrie had gone to see the girl, finding her silent and strangely self-possessed or self-contained now. She did not complain, and she made no excuses for either herself or Bob; in fact, she would not speak of the young man at all, out of some perverse notion of loyalty or self-sacrifice, Lorrie guessed. ‘You’ll see she won’t say right out it was him — you can’t make her say it right out,’ Mrs. Jameson explained to Lorrie in a voluble whisper outside the door. ‘She just cries if you ask her about him. It took me hours to find out who it was the other day. My, I can understand that, can’t you? Any woman can understand that! I believe she’s sorry now she told me — or let me find out, rather. But you just go on in and talk to her, anyhow; don’t mind the way she acts. She — it ’s the way she is — she ain’t well — and — and she ain’t going to be well for a while yet, you know, Miss Gilbert,’ said Mrs. Jameson, shamefacedly. ‘I’m going to take her away —I’ve found a place down in the country. There’s a good doctor there, and I can telegraph for a nurse any time. I’ll give you the address, in case—but we don’t want to bother you or your folks any more than we can help, Miss Gilbert. You’ve been just as kind as can be. And I know you ’re going to do everything you can to get your brother back—’ Her voice failed.

It went to Lorrie’s heart to see the poor woman so humble and grateful. Mrs. Jameson had aged a lifetime in the last few days; her red hair was twisted up in a loose knot, regardless of its accustomed puffs and braids and carefully set undulations, and of the gray streaks that were beginning to show in it here and there; her corsets were relaxed for the first time in twenty years; she was puzzling over a Butterick pattern with the scissors in one hand and yards of incalculably fine lawn spread upon the bed before her, when Lorrie was ushered in. ’It’s queer, the things are so little, but they’re just as much trouble to make as if they were big. I used to sew pretty well, too, once,’ she sighed, looking at Lorrie with wholly maternal eyes.

She kept out of Paula’s room, during this visit, with a delicacy nobody would have expected of her; it was better for the two young women to be alone. Lorrie told the other what they were doing; she assured Paula with strong emotion that everything would be all right; that Bob would come back to her; that when he realized the wrong that he had done, how foolish and selfish he had been, he would be the most anxious of them all to make it right. ‘He’s not bad — he’s not a bad man — and of course he — he cares for you, Paula,’ said Lorrie, shrinking from the word, even the thought, love, in such a connection. Of course Bob and Paula must be in love, after their fashion, the girl had concluded; but she recoiled from what seemed to her the animal ugliness of it. Try as she would, the sympathy she wanted to feel and show for Paula was forced and unreal, and perhaps the other girl felt it to be so. She sat unresponsive to all Lorrie’s feverish earnestness.

‘That Mr. Kendrick knows. I don’t see why Momma had to let him know. I think it was real dumb of her,’ she said sulkily; ‘she’ll go telling somebody else, if she don’t look out.’

‘Why, it just happened so—your mother could n’t help his knowing — and, anyway, he’s just like a brother to Bob, you know, Paula. He’ll never say anything,’ protested Lorrie, quickly, repelled. Paula’s mother was doing the best she could for her, poor thing!

‘I don’t like him. I don’t see why she had to tell it before him; Paula repeated, shrugging peevishly; and she let Lorrie kiss her and go away with hardly another word.

It is likely that Van Cleve, who, as he would have frankly owned, cared nothing for the Jameson women, mother or daughter, was as much disturbed over his unfortunate knowledge as Paula herself; he would have been thankful to be out of the whole miserable business. But having become involved against his will, he meant to see it through. What made the situation serious for the young man was the way it affected Lorrie. Van exhausted every argument, he suggested half a dozen other plans, he lost his temper and fumed, to no avail: nothing he could say or do would persuade her out of going on what he considered about as wild and foolhardy a quest as any woman could undertake. She might be able to manage Bob when she got hold of him, but first get hold of him! In what unspeakable state, and in what unspeakable camp, troopship, slum of Tampa or Key West or even Cuba, if she got that far (which Heaven forbid!) might she not find him, after a search among hundreds of men in scores of such places! And when he had painted the prospect in as lively colors as he could muster and announced that she should not go without his protection, Mrs. Gilbert added the last straw to his burden of impatience by looking alarmed and dropping various carefully worded hints about impropriety! ‘If Lorrie can stand the things she’s going to see and hear, alone, in a place full of all kinds of men, she can very well stand one man going down on the train with her, even if she does unfortunately know him,’ he said severely; and Mrs. Gilbert had no answer.

He who had never asked for a rest or favor before, had no difficulty in getting this; Mr. Gebhardt, indeed, dismissed him heartily, with many exhortations to have a good time, and burlesque warnings against enlistment. In fact, Van Cleve, heartless as it may seem, did have a fairly good time; he could not keep Bob’s misdoing and the nature of their errand before his mind constantly. He enjoyed the change and bustle and the humors of the road; and he thought Miss Rodgers and the other nurse, the pudgy one,—he could not remember her name, — were nice women, even if they did ask too many questions. Innumerable were the cigars he smoked, the games of cards he took a hand in, the stories he heard and told, in the ‘smoker,’ while the train screeched and rattled across the sweltering Southern countryside. At Montgomery he got a cinder in his eye, and Miss — the fat girl, whatever her name was — got it out for him with signal gentleness and dexterity. ‘The fellow that gets you will be lucky,’ said Van, and wondered at the way she blushed and giggled; ‘I mean gets you for a nurse, you know,’ he added. She turned redder still and flounced off, and would hardly speak to him the rest of the day, as he vaguely noticed; and decided with regret that he must have made himself offensively familiar. As the young women had remarked, he kept himself rather aloof from Lorrie, while doing everything he could think of for her comfort in his awkward way, heaping her seat with magazines and books and baskets of fruit, opening and shutting windows, fetching and carrying her wraps and bags, eagerly, and diffidently, kind.

Miss Gilbert, I am bound to say, received all of this from him without effusive gratitude, quite coolly and as a matter of course. She was used to Van Cleve, whose attentions always took a practical form; and between her brother and her lover poor Lorrie’s mind was too filled with anxiety and unhappy forebodings to spare Van any thought. The young man knew it; he accepted his portion with his habitual iron philosophy.

The town of Tampa is of sufficiently ancient foundation to have figured in our history a good while before the year '98; and General Shafter’s men and his ordnance and his mules and his wagons and everything else that was his, even the transports that lay off Port Tampa, were not by any means the first that this unmartial-looking burg had seen. It knew at first-hand all our bloody struggles with the Seminole and other savages of the peninsula; there is, indeed, an old fort, or the site of one, hereabouts, and many of the streets bear the name of some stout Indian fighter of those old years.

The place was full of an exhilarating noise and color that day when Lorrie reached it: the wide streets, unpaved and ankle-deep in sand, wherein the army wagons had worn all manner of holes and trenches, were jammed with people; it seemed as if there were flags and groups of white tents at the end of every vista, and bugle-calls sounding every hour; across the river there were pennants streaming from the minarets of the great hotel; exotic trees and flowers bloomed with fantastic exaggeration in all the door-yards; and a band somewhere in the offing was playing vigorously. ‘ My gal is a highbo’n lady,’ it proclaimed in splendid time and tune. Something of the sanguine excitement communicated itself even to Lorrie’s troubled spirit; and Van Cleve, after he had got them all safely installed in a boarding-house (on Florida Street, a common-looking little frame building which is still there, or I saw it the other day when I was in the town) that had been recommended to Miss Rodgers by some Red Cross authority, had all he could do to persuade the girl to stay there quietly while he himself went out and made inquiry for her brother. ‘I’ll find Bob if he’s in Tampa, and I’ll bring him to you, Lorrie, but you’ve got to stay here so I’ll know where to find you. This is no place for women to be tagging, around after a man,’ he said at last, shortly, quite unconscious of the harshness of his manner.

‘Yes, Van, I’ll — I’ll do whatever you say,’ said Lorrie, meekly. All at once she began to feel unnecessary and troublesome; and, after he had gone, crept off to the cramped, little, stuffy, boarding-house bedroom, and cried miserably to herself, with her face in the pillows. Van meant well, she knew that; about everything that mattered, he was as good and kind as could be, and thoughtful, too, but — but Philip would not have spoken to her that way!

CHAPTER XIII

IN WHICH A CERTAIN KIND OF NEWS TRAVELS FAST

The efficient Mr. Kendrick, starting out to explore Tampa in search of his friend, had no very clear idea where to go or whom to ask, for all his efficiency. Upon applying to the heads of Bob’s paper, which he had had the forethought to do before leaving home, he had been told that they did not know where the young man was, and furthermore they added with some strong qualifying adjectives that they did not care; so far as the Record was concerned, there was one war correspondent less in Tampa or at the front, the management having dismissed (they said ‘fired’) Gilbert a few days previously.

‘Why, was n’t he doing all right?’ Van Cleve asked, and was immediately conscious, with a kind of angry sinking of the heart, of the needlessness of the question.

‘Doing all right?’ repeated the authority whom he addressed — and whether this was the editor-in-chief or some other editor, or what position he occupied, Van, who had never been inside a newspaper office before, was entirely ignorant; but the other man spoke like one of the powers. ’Doing all right ? Say, you know Gilbert, don’t you? Well, then—!’ He made a gesture. ‘What’s the use?’

What was the use, indeed? Van Cleve came away in a very gloomy mood; he had not the courage to tell Lorrie; the family had enough on their minds already, and they would learn this only too soon, anyhow. He felt an unhappy certainty that Robert would not come home because of being thus deposed; on the contrary, he was much more likely to stay with the army, loafing and drinking till his money gave out, and then getting somebody to stake him until that resource was exhausted, too; after which he might possibly beat his way home, or write for help — thus thought Van Cleve, out of temper and out of heart.

He went out now through the crowds and around to the corner of Tampa and Twiggs Streets, where was the home of that journal to whose care Bob’s mail had been directed. The place was in a prodigious rush of business, — messenger-boys and reporters tearing back and forth, and bulletins tacked up outside, about which people were standing three and four deep in the glare of the sun, with the thermometer at ninety. There was a little entry on the ground floor, with offices opening on either hand. Van Cleve pushed his way in, and, feeling himself a nuisance, began on the first person he could reach, a shirt-sleeved lad pounding away on a typewriter in the corner, with his collar and tie undone, and the moisture beading off his chin. He did not even look up when Van spoke.

‘ Gilbert? Ump! ’ He made a negative motion with his head and at the same time contrived to twitch it in the direction of the other side of the room. ‘Ask the boss,’

The boss was a stout man, chewing the butt of a cold cigar, and dictating to a young woman stenographer, with his foot cocked or braced up on the rung of her chair. He stared and considered. ‘Gilbert? R. D. Gilbert? No, I don’t remember him. How is that, anyhow?’ he said to the stenographer vaguely. ‘Do you know anything about any Gilbert?’

She did not; and they both eyed Van Cleve with a sort of fatigued hostility, the man gnawing at his cigar, the girl with her hand poised above the writing-pad.

‘ The man I mean is a war correspondent for a Cincinnati paper—’ Van Cleve began again; ‘he had his mail — ’

‘Sa-ay, how many correspondents d’ye think we’ve had here, son?’ said the fat man, in benevolent irony; ‘one or two? You’ve got another think coming. Anyway, they’re all gone now. They went with Shatter two weeks ago. Don’t you get to see the papers in Podunk?’

‘I was going to say he had his mail sent here, so I thought possibly you’d know something about him,’ Van explained. ‘Don’t you have the rural free delivery in Tampa?’

‘Oh! Well now, Mr. Soyer attended to that, did n’t he, Jennie? I can have somebody look that up, if you’ll wait — we’re kind of busy—’

It appeared, however, upon inquiry, that Mr. Soyer had gone out to the encampment at Tampa Heights; he had gone down to St. Petersburg; he had gone over to the hotel to interview somebody; in fine, Mr. Soyer was not to be found. Anyway, the probabilities were that the man the gentleman was looking for was in Cuba — that’s where he ought to be if he was on his job. What paper did Van represent?

‘I’m not representing any paper. I ’m only trying to hunt this fellow up. because he’s wanted at his home. Sickness,’ said Van Cleve, truthfully enough. It had occurred to him that he did not want to be taken for a private detective in search of a criminal — an aspect which the inquiry gave signs of assuming!

‘Sickness, eh? Too bad! Because you ’re not going to have one easy time finding him,’ said the other, perfunctorily, and resumed his dictation.

Van Cleve walked out again, baffled. He went up to the other newspaper office. There nobody had ever heard of Bob, either; but they suggested that he go down to Key West and wait until one of the Associated Press boats, which were constantly ‘on the jump’ between Cuba and the mainland, came in. His friend might be on any one of them. ‘What regiment was he with? You might trace him that way. Most of them asked to be assigned to some particular regiment, you know,’ somebody told him. ‘They were all going and getting permits or credentials, you might call ’em, from the staff officer that had it in charge —Lieutenant Miley, I believe it was.’

‘All right. Where’ll I find Miley? He might know, or have it listed somewhere,’ said Van, promptly.

But the others began to laugh.

‘Lord love you, man, Miley’s gone to Cuba! Now the thing for you to do is to go on down to Key West, and just scout around for those dispatchboats, like I’m telling you,’ they advised him earnestly, with a good-natured interest.

Van Cleve gratefully shared among them the three cigars he happened to have on hand, and lingered awhile listening and asking questions, and hearing mostly that pleasingly free criticism of war proceedings at which civilians and onlookers are invariably so apt. As he left, they repeated their assurances. ‘There’ll sure be a battle before long; our fellows have landed, you know. And the minute anything happens, the press boats will be coming in, thick as flies. All you’ve got to do is to wait —’ and so on.

He was not aware of having been any more communicative about himself and his business than was necessary, and later received a shock at reading under the caption, ‘Personals. Arrivals in Tampa,’ that Mr. and Mrs. Kendrick of Cincinnati, and party, were stopping at the Holt House!

Our friend had consumed most of the afternoon in this fruitless business, and now faced homeward, or boarding-houseward, in a disagreeably puzzled and undecided frame of mind. ‘Nice time Lorrie would have had down here by herself!’ he remarked inwardly; and then reflected with chagrin that her efforts could scarcely have been more futile and ill-directed than his own. He did not know whether to go to Key West or not; if the discharge had arrived in time, Bob might not have left with the army after all; he might be right here in Tampa; the plain truth was, Bob’s whereabouts was a matter of pure guess-work. Van found himself exasperated by the inability to take some kind of definite action; never before in the whole of his narrow, resolutely ordered, undeviating career had he hesitated over his course or waited upon another person’s pleasure. By and by he fell in with Miss Rodgers and the other nurse, who had gone out to discover what they might about their own assignment and were returning in a state of irritation similar to his own.

‘It’s the worst mix-up you ever saw!’ Miss Rodgers complained volubly; ‘nobody can tell us who the surgeon is, or where he is, that we’re to report to. They don’t, seem to know anything about their own business, so I suppose it’s not to be wondered at that they don’t know anything about ours. We’ve asked about forty dozen adjutants and captains and brigadier-generals and quartermasters, and not one of ’em can even give us a steer in the right direction. They keep telling us that the hospital ship was the Olivette, or that Miss Barton has gone to Cuba with her ship, and, anyway, we’re too late to be of any use! “I know all that,” s’d I to the last one; “if you’d just listen to what I’m telling you a minute,” s’d I; and then I said it all over again: “ I ’m going to the military hospital here or wherever you need nurses.” And he just looked wildeyed, and said in that case we’d better see Major Thingummy or Colonel What’s-his-name!’

The stout young woman chimed in: ‘It made me so tired having ’em say they did n’t know where the hospital was, I just said to one, “Well, for mercy’s sake, why don’t you get a pain in your toe or a case of appendicitis and find out! ” He looked just as mad for a minute, and then he kind of laughed.’

’Well, it’s all very nice to laugh — but I’m here to nurse sick men, I’m not here to chase around tra-la-ing with well ones,’ said her superior, impatiently. ‘If I could n’t run an army better than this, I’d take a back seat and let somebody do it that could!’

‘They’re pretty nearly all volunteer troops, you know. The regulars are better managed, I guess,’ Van reminded her.

‘The Lord help ’em if they aren’t!’ retorted Miss Rodgers, fervently.

It gave Van Cleve a queer sense of comfort to hear the two hearty, capable women; and that they should be knocking about the camp among all the crowds and sights and sounds which he had so peremptorily forbade Lorrie’s essaying, nowise offended him. Lorrie was different; these nurses could stand anything. For that matter, they themselves expected little or nothing of her. ‘These society girls —! ’ the fat little nurse had remarked to Van Cleve privately, with a knowing smile; she did not finish, but it was amazing with what a world of tolerance, of patient and good-natured superiority, she charged the three words. Van Cleve understood; he was somewhat surprised to note how confidential Miss — er — no use, he could not get her name! — had become with him in the few days of their acquaintance. And now, studying his face, she said quickly, ‘You did n’t find your friend — Miss Gilbert’s brother—you could n’t find him, Mr. Kendrick? I’m so sorry.’

‘Better luck to-morrow, perhaps,’ said Van, trying to speak carelessly. As usual, when the name of Miss Gilbert’s brother came up, the nurses asked no questions, sending each other a brief, warning glance. Something was wrong about that brother, they knew it!

They went back to Lorrie at the Holt House and had their supper, during which meal Van Cleve performed what was for him a prodigy of dissimulation by referring to his bootless search in a casual, off-hand manner, with no hint of any difficulties and with a matter-of-course air of expecting success at any moment. And he further gave it, as the result of his observations, that this war was going to turn out a picayune business after all — a deal of cry and no wool. The Spanish were notoriously much better at running away than fighting. They might do a little bushwhacking, perhaps, but stand against the advance of our army? Never! The minute our troops landed, every Spaniard in the neighborhood probably beat it for the tall timber, and left his gun behind — these were Mr. Kendrick’s graphic and humorous words. According to him there would be no danger, no wounds, no fever, no anything of any consequence. He gave a burlesque rendition of his interviews with the newspaper-men that sent Miss Rodgers and her colleague into fits of laughter, and even succeeded in brightening up Lorrie; he made amiable jokes about the eating, which, indeed, was very poor; he entered into affable converse with the darky waiter at their table; in short, never was there so light-hearted and care-free a person as he.

The nurses were immoderately entertained; they had not known that Mr. Kendrick was so lively and easy — easy as an old shoe! As for Lorrie, for whose sole benefit Van Cleve was painfully going through this exhibition, the girl ended by being at least halfconvinced by it, and her spirits rose proportionately. Knowing Van as she did, she could not have believed him equal to so much humane hypocrisy; the young man, when he had time to think, listened to himself with astonishment. ‘By Jove, I’m doing as well as Uncle Stan! I come by it rightly, I guess!’ he thought mirthlessly.

After this they all went together to the Tampa Bay Hotel, upon the motion of that indefatigable entertainer, Van Kendrick, who seemed determined that nobody, including himself, perhaps, should be alone for any length of time, or have a moment for thought. ‘Never mind letters, Lorrie; you have n’t got anything to write about, and you’ll have plenty of time after a while,’ he ordered her. ‘You want to get out and see all this. It’s a very remarkable thing, really, and it won’t happen again in our time. Come along now.’ In fact, there was something very exhilarating in the lights and noise and movement, and the curious sense of nearness to all the other people, so many thousands of them. To feel one’s self alone in a crowd is a dreadful experience, but nobody could feel alone in this crowd, not even in the bedecked corridors of the hotel, which the newspapers said were ‘thronged with celebrities.’ Van Cleve got his party four rocking-chairs around a teakwood stand in a corner encompassed by the bronze jardinières, and Chinese cabinets and ormolu mirrors and marble statuary and astounding tapestries and oil paintings with which the establishment is well known to be profusely furnished; and there they were all sitting when, for a final dramatic touch, an old acquaintance happened upon them, among all the aliens.

This was Mr. J. B. B. Taylor, of all men in the world, and he has since described the meeting with a good deal of interest. ‘I was n’t much surprised,’ he says; ‘you were n’t surprised to meet anybody in Tampa those days. The ends of the earth came together there. And then, you know, I’m eternally on the move and running into people, anyhow. Just a minute before I had come across a man I knew, a Japanese, some kind of an attaché at their legation in Washington that his government had sent down to follow our army around, I believe — a little Mr. Takuhira — a nice little fellow. He’d been educated over here, and that’s how I came to know him, meeting him at the Harvard Society banquets, — Class of ’90 he was, a very pleasant fellow, — I think he’s back in Japan now, in some big position over there. He knew a great many of the newspaper-men — of course he spoke English perfectly — and they called him Take-your-hair-off! But I was going to tell you about Kendrick. I was standing talking to Takuhira when I caught sight of him; there he was with Miss Gilbert, whom at that time I did n’t know at all, and two other ladies that I’d never seen before either, with some lemonades in front of them, listening to the music and watching the crowds and the epaulets and uniforms and all the rest of it, just as if it were the most natural thing in the world for them to be there. Van Cleve looked a good deal older than the last time I saw him, and, do you know, my first thought was, “Why, those are n’t his own people! I’d know the Van Cleve ladies anywhere, and those are n’t any of them, and what ’s become of the Major? Can Van possibly have got married and annexed another family to take care of?" Then he saw me, and got up and spoke right away.’

So J. B. was introduced to the assemblage, and Mr. Takuhira, too; and if the little Oriental gentleman was confounded at the spectacle of a single young man in company with three single young women voyaging about the country a thousand miles from home, unquestioned, and evidently entirely respectable, he was by far too mannerly to show it. ‘Take-your-hairoff was used to American ways,’J. B. said; ‘and of course the Red Cross explained everything, anyhow. You saw dozens of nice girls going around by themselves. I think Van Cleve was glad to see us; he looked fagged out, and, after we joined them, sat back and let us do the talking as if he wanted a rest. Miss Gilbert and Takuhira got on together wonderfully; it turned out that they had some mutual friends, — people they both knew, that is,— anybody’s a friend when you meet away from home,—Boston and Washington people, and I believe some army and navy men. The two nurses talked mainly to me; they looked at Takuhira as if he were some kind of educated chimpanzee, and I’m sure that’s how they classed him. That youngest nurse was rather making eyes at Van Cleve, I thought, but he did n’t seem to be conscious of it at all; it was rather funny. He told me he was down on business, and then caught himself, and said, “That is — well, I’m taking a vacation — I’m making a vacation of it, you know.” I thought he did n’t look much like a man taking a vacation, but, of course, it was no affair of mine.’

They sat there talking, J. B. said, until quite late; and it was after they had all said their good-nights, and the others had been gone some time, and he himself was upstairs in his room getting ready for bed, that, on a sudden, a tremendous racket broke out in the streets of the town across the river, quickly spreading to the hotel side: bells ringing, whistles tooting, people running and yelling, and by and by guns or fire-crackers beginning to go off deafeningly. He hustled himself into some clothes again and ran out, meeting in the halls other half-dressed men, none of whom knew what was happening; they were guessing everything, from a fire-alarm to Spanish gunboats coming up to shell Port Tampa! Takuhira joined them. ’He was the least interested man present, you might have thought,’ J. B. said afterwards, with a laugh; ‘but, by George, he was the first to suggest that the telegraph office was the place to inquire. And he added, as calm as Buddha, that “very possiblee the boats mide have come outt.” He meant Cervera ’s fleet, of course. It sounded so queer in his precise, grammatical way of talking, and with no more expression on his face than if he had been carved out of old ivory, with jet eyes. All the rest of us gesticulating and shouting like lunatics!’

As they were hurrying over the bridge, they ran into some men and boys who wildly reported that there had been a battle; there had been fighting at Santiago, and our boys had whipped, of course. In the town the streets were full of hurrahing people, and all the bells and sirens were going madly; it was just before the Fourth, so there was a plentiful supply of cannon-crackers and bonfire material besides.

J. B. and the Japanese attaché made for a newspaper office; the crowd was so wedged together outside that it was impossible to get through, and on the skirts of it they fell in again with Van Cleve Kendrick. Van had taken his ladies to their hotel and was on his way to the cot he had secured in a rooming-house when the excitement began. Nobody seemed to know whence the information came, but everybody was sure it was correct. Victory! Hurrah! ‘There’ll be a hot time in the old town to-night’ —!

‘I suppose it’s true?’ Van Cleve asked the man next him. ‘How did they get the news?’

‘Why, it was telegraphed from Jacksonville, I believe—’

‘ Jacksonville! ’ ejaculated J. B. ‘They could make up pretty nearly any story and send it here from Jacksonville!’

‘No, no, it’s a wire from Key West,’ somebody else volunteered. Mr. Takuhira, however, told Van Cleve, in his neat English, that he understood most of the news was always sent by dispatch-boat from Kingston, or by the cable off Cienfuegos, which we had picked up after bombarding and destroying the Spanish station there.

Presently the crowd, in its constant shifting, allowed them to press farther in; bulletins were already posted, but the heads and hats were so thick in front of them that only the topmost lines could be seen from the edge of the sidewalk by a tall man like Van Cleve or J. B. Taylor. Those nearest the boards began obligingly to pass back bits of information. The first fight of the land forces had occurred at a place called Las Guasimas; the Rough Riders and Tenth Cavalry (all of them dismounted) had been engaged; they had driven the Spaniards back after a stubborn resistance; it was not possible at the moment of writing to estimate the loss on either side, but the Spaniards’ had been the most severe; of the United States troops engaged, the following were known to have been killed: —

‘Captain Allen Capron — it says Captain Allen Capron,’ repeated the man in front of Van Cleve, turning; ‘d’ye know any of ’em?’ he asked, parenthetically.

‘I know one man,’ said Van, outwardly calm at least. ‘Much obliged. Can you read any more?’

‘Can’t read any. It’s this fellow in front of me that’s telling me; I can’t see a thing.—Sergeant Hamilton Fish. Know him?’

Van Cleve shook his head. The man went on. ‘He says there’s a war correspondent killed — don’t see what a war correspondent was doing up in front on the firing-line, do you?’

Van Cleve heard his own voice saying, ‘What was that man’s name?’

‘I did n’t catch it — wait a minute. — Say, say that over again, will you? Hey? It was a fellow by the name of Marshall. Friend of yours ? ’

‘No,’ Van said, with almost as much effort as before; he was trembling with relief, and at the same time adjuring himself impatiently not to be a fool; there must be a hundred correspondents in the field besides Bob.

‘Here, now you can get in and read ’em for yourself, if you’re quick about it,’ said the other, good-naturedly, squeezing aside, as the crowd swayed open momentarily.

Van Cleve edged forward, and the aisle closed up on the instant. The two men immediately in front of him were stooping to read the last items at the bottom of the manila-paper sheet, one of them copying rapidly into a notebook. Van craned over their shoulders. The list of the dead came first. He read, ‘ —Cortwright, shot through the heart.’

CHAPTER XIV

KEY WEST

The triumphant din went on more or less exuberantly until the small hours of that night at Tampa. The news flashed to the four corners of the country, and thousands read it next morning at their comfortable breakfast-tables, with unbounded martial pride and satisfaction; and numbers of honest, good-tempered citizens who had never quarreled with a neighbor in their lives, and who sang lustily in church every Sunday great words about Peace and Mercy and Patience and Brotherly Love, gave the children a quarter to buy fire-crackers with which to celebrate, and went out to their fields or factories or offices, telling one another it was just what they had expected and predicted from the start; that our men were the best all-round fighters in the world, invincible in open battle; and as for this guerilla style, why, they could fairly eat the other side Up at that! That had been our natural way of fighting ever since the pioneers went into business against the Indians! And it was a pity about the poor fellows that were killed, but war was n’t any picnic, we all knew that, and so did they when they went into it.

These, too, were the sort of reflections that would undoubtedly have occurred to Van Kendrick, if he had been at his normal occupations, under normal circumstances; and it is conceivable that he would have learned of the other man’s death, had it been an ordinary one in bed after an ordinary illness, with no shock or regret. But, as it was, he presented a face of such ghastly consternation to the two gentlemen, his acquaintances, who were still hovering on the edge of the mob when he pushed his way out to them, that they both observed it, even by the artificial light, and exclaimed aloud with concern. Moreover, when Van Cleve told them, they were almost as much shocked as he.

‘Good Lord, you say it’s the man Miss Gilbert’s engaged to? The poor girl! Why, that’s—that’s a dreadful thing!' J. B. said in horror and compassion. He shook his head solemnly. ‘It’s the women that bear the brunt of it after all,’ he said, in a lowered voice, thinking of his father who had fallen gallantly at Shiloh, of the grave in the little old Kentucky churchyard, and his mother’s face when she went to lay flowers there. ‘Poor girl! Poor thing! Do you have to go and tell her? Do you think you’d better?’

‘It may not be the same man. It is written “Blank Cortwright,”I think you said?’ the Japanese gentleman pointed out practically.

‘Yes, I know — I thought about that. This man’s name is Philip, so there’s a chance still. There might easily be some other Cortwright in the regiment. But do you suppose there’s any way of finding out?’ said Van Cleve, in a haggard anxiety. ‘The uncertainty only makes it worse for her, you know,’ he added out of his not inconsiderable experience with womankind.

They all three looked at one another blankly. ‘ All you can do is to wait, I ’m afraid,’ said J. B. at last. As they walked away, a sudden recollection prompted him. ‘Cortwright? Why, I’ve met him, have n’t I? Oh, yes, I remember perfectly now. I remember hearing about that engagement. I never had —’ had any use for that young man, Mr. Taylor was on the point of saying, but checked himself. Cortwright might be dead. The same feeling restrained Van Cleve even from admitting to himself that the fate of Lorrie’s lover was, personally, a matter of entire indifference to him; he knew that at heart he did not care what became of Cortwright, one way or the other; but he was desperately sorry for Lorrie. She thought Cortwright was a hero, poor girl! Probably he did not lack the physical courage which is the least and commonest of man’s gifts; and if he had borne himself well and died doing his duty, why, the best of us could achieve no more and make no finer end.

Van Cleve’s own endowment did not include anything like tactfulness or capacity for expressing sympathy, — a fact of which he was ruefully conscious; and he carried this heavy news to Lorrie without the dimmest idea of how to ’break it gently,’ as people say, to her. Van thought — and I am not sure, on the whole, that he was not right — that bluntness might be the best mercy. As it happened, however, she had already heard; the plump nurse came out of the room with a gravely warning and important carriage, and stopped Van Cleve on the threshold.

‘No, she did n’t faint, and she has n’t been crying or anything,’ she whispered, in answer to his questions; ‘but she gave up right away that it was true. She says she does n’t believe there was another Cortwright. Oh, Mr. Kendrick, is n’t it awful?’ she wound up, not without some enjoyment, in spite of her real kindness of heart and desire to help.

‘Ask her if she’ll see me, will you, Miss — er—,’ Van said. He was wondering whether to tell Lorrie what he intended to do next; whether, indeed, she would be in a fit state to hear or consider his plans.

‘My name is n’t Miss Urr — urr —, Mr. Kendrick, I’m Miss Crow,’ said the nurse, bridling a little and mimicking him roguishly; ‘I do believe you’ve been forgetting it right along. Miss Crow; now do try and fix me in your mind.’

‘All right — that is, I mean, I beg your pardon — much obliged,’ said Van Cleve, clumsily, in his preoccupation; at his best, he would have been a mortally unpromising subject for a flirtation, and now he scarcely looked at the young woman, scarcely heard her. ‘If you’ll just ask Miss Gilbert if she minds speaking to me a minute—?’

Lorrie herself came to the door, and stood before the young man with eyes that seemed very large and bright and of soundless depth, in her white face. ‘Have you found Bob, Van Cleve?’ she said quite steadily. ‘That is what we must do, whatever comes, you know that.’

Van Cleve felt something bravely self-forgetful in her speech and manner that touched him more than all the tears she could have shed. He took her hand. ’I’m sorry about this — this other thing —this report, Lorrie. But don’t forget it may not be he. It may be some other man. I hope to Heaven it is!’ he said, and meant the words. It made no difference who and what and how unworthy Cortwright might be, all Van Cleve’s dislike and jealousy of him were swept away by an unselfish tenderness, to see the woman he loved so stricken.

She looked at him, tensely composed, with a kind of distance in her gaze, as from some far height; it almost frightened Van Cleve, this spectacle which he had never before witnessed, of the essential loneliness of sorrow. ‘I think it is Phil. I think he is dead,’ she said.

‘Oh, you ought n’t to make up your mind to it that way, Lorrie — it’s only a report — they’re all the time making mistakes,’Van Cleve began, awkwardly trying to reassure her.

Lorrie made a little nervous gesture as of renunciation, with her two shaking hands. ‘If it is so, it’s for the best — I thought of that last night when I heard — it would be a noble way to die, Van Cleve — it would be the way of his choice,’she said in a pathetic exaltation, before which the young man stood silent and somehow shamed.

Van Cleve, having by dint of persistent inquiry made reasonably sure that Bob had at any rate left Tampa, now planned to go on down to Key West, as he had been repeatedly advised; he had made up his mind to go to Cuba, too, if need be, and, through the good offices of Mr. Takuhira, who was supplied with credentials or some unknown instruments of power everywhere, and who showed himself very active and useful, the trip might be arranged. The attaché himself had received orders from his chiefs to reach the army or fleet before Santiago without delay; everybody was expecting news of a big engagement on land or sea, perhaps both, at any moment. Lorrie must stay in Tampa, Van decided, until she heard from him; the two nurses who had finally got themselves officially recognized, would look after her, as far as their duties allowed; at least she would not be without a soul she knew in the place. They had ceased to expect her to act the part of volunteer nurse with which she had begun, and Van himself had ceased to play his own. It would have been better never to have attempted that petty farce, he thought; of necessity it would sort ill with the tragedies of these days, and, soon or late, they must abandon it. Lorrie acquiesced in everything he said; for the time all the spirit had gone out of the girl.

‘ Do you believe she ’ll ever get over it?’ the younger nurse questioned; and prophesied that Miss Gilbert never would, recalling many instances of brokenhearted spinsters who had remained angelically faithful to an early love to the end of their days. She was in a fever of romantic interest, and felt as if they were ‘living in one of Marie Corelli’s works,’as she confided to her senior, adding that she ‘would n’t have missed it for anything! ’

‘Oh, yes, she’ll get over it. Person has to, you know,’returned Miss Rodgers, who was of an eminently prosaic temperament. “I ’ve seen a raft of widows and widowers that were all broken-up right at first, but mercy me, they all got over it! — except some of the real old widows, that is. The men are generally pretty chipper inside of a year. It’s not so awful when you come to think about it. Nobody can keep on grieving right along, day in and day out, forever. If they do, you can take it from me, something’s the matter with ’em!’

‘Well, I think Miss Gilbert’s the kind that would be loyal to the grave. I think it’s lovely,’ said the other with a sigh. She was at hand, accidentally, of course, when Van Cleve came, the next day, to say good-bye to Lorrie; and assured him earnestly that they would take good care of Miss Gilbert. ‘She is the sweetest thing! And I hope we’ll hear from you soon, Mr. Kendrick,’ said the girl, wistfully.

‘ Why, I hope so myself. And I want to thank you very much for everything you ’re doing — you ’ ve been most kind, Miss — er — Miss Sparrow,’said Van, warmly, shaking her hand. He was off without another thought of her, as she dismally knew; and I believe they have never met since; when Van Cleve got back to Tampa, Miss Rodgers had been sent down to Egmont Key to the army hospital there, and he had not leisure to look up the other young woman. So now Mr. Kendrick embarked for Key West, and he did not know how much farther. The vessel on which he and Takuhira secured passage put to sea in the august company of the troopship Niagara, now known as Transport No. 16, with seven hundred men aboard to reinforce Shafter before Santiago. And to Van’s surprise, this large body of heroes left their native shores without any patriotic or sentimental to-do whatever, no flags, no salutes, no crowds of weeping women, no band playing ‘The girl I left behind me,’ — nothing that even Van Cleve’s worka-day spirit would have regarded as reasonable and appropriate. A fellow passenger going down on business connected with furnishing canned cornedbeef to the government, enlightened him.

‘The good-bye-sweetheart business is about played out,’ he explained. ‘You see when the order first came for the army to start, everybody went piling down to Port Tampa and gave the boys the biggest send-off they knew how. Well then, the last of the transports had hardly got past the bell-buoys when there came an order for ’em to come back home! Day or so after that, they tried it again. That time they only got about three hundred yards down the bay — same old song-and-dance! They just settled right down where they were and waited. It was two or three days after that, I think, before they Anally did get off. Looked like starting and stopping was a kind of habit with ’em — “Farewell forever — forever farewell!” as the song says. Only people get tired farewelling, you know; they can’t keep it up that long. Once is enough, it don’t seem to have any point the second time. You can’t get a rise out of anybody nowadays.’

It was a fact that Van Cleve himself began to feel, as it were, callous to further excitement ; he had had enough of the alarums and excursions, the sight of fighting men and armaments. Transport No. 16, which had no time to spare, shortly left them behind, but the waters were full of other shipping, which Van barely noticed. There were moments when the whole adventure seemed to the young man’s naturally slow and cool judgment absolutely insane. What was he, Van Cleve Kendrick, doing in this outlandish environment? Why, he was going a knight-erranting, to be sure — knight-erranting at the end of the nineteenth century, on a little steamer with a ridiculous comic opera name, crowded with men, tumbling about under the red-hot sky, with the gulls squeaking in their rear, and the low coasts of Florida simmering there ten miles off! And here, for a final incongruity, was a polite Oriental (in a straw hat and beautifully polished shoes!) at his elbow, proffering him a cigar! He took the cigar; he smoked and talked with the other men sitting in the narrow shade of the deck-house with their feet propped on the extra chairs. He might have been traveling down to see about tobacco contracts or canned corned-beef for the army like the rest of them, for all the excitement he showed or, indeed, felt; the commonplace attitude of his mind sometimes puzzled him.

Twenty-four hours brought them to Key West, on a hot, noisy morning; and in the paper Van Cleve bought on the dock he found a final report of the fight at Las Guasimas, much enlarged, with a complete and verified list of killed and wounded. Among the former, ‘Troop X, Lieut. Philip Cortwright’ appeared half-way down the page. So poor Lorrie was right in her sad presentiment; and she too must have seen this last dispatch by now. Van read the account of the battle. It did not seem to have been very spectacular; no charging up to breastworks, or handto-hand struggle. Our advance had been through a practically pathless jungle; the Spanish used smokeless powder so that it was almost impossible to locate them — this statement was repeated continually with a childlike surprise and indignation; also their sharpshooting was very good; they had men posted in the trees; it had been no such slight skirmish as at first reported.

The United States troops had behaved with the greatest firmness and daring, as indeed the tale of losses showed; owing to the scattering nature of the fighting, it was not until after some time and search that it had been possible to get an accurate list of the casualties. Lieutenant Cortwright had pressed forward very eagerly, and was one of the first to fall with a bullet through the lungs (not the heart as previously stated); he died while being carried to the rear. Mr. Marshall, the correspondent, had not been killed, but so severely wounded that his recovery was improbable. In another column was the statement that all the bodies found had been buried on the field and could not be removed until after the close of the war — if even then. The graves were marked, and whatever small possessions of the dead men seemed worth while, had been taken charge of, in most cases, by some friend or ‘ bunkie.’

‘Poor Lorrie!’ said Van to himself again.

(To be continued.)