The Lost Road, etc.

R >> Richard Harding Davis >> The Lost Road, etc.

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He offered, if one of the younger Cohens would take him to the
young lady, to let him first ask her if she would receive Captain Lee,
and for his service he would give the young Cohen untold gold.
He exhibited the untold gold. The young Cohen choked at the sight
and sprang into the seat beside the driver of a taxicab.

"To the Working Girls' Home, on Tenth Street!" he commanded.

Through the falling snow and the flashing lights they slid,
skidded, and leaped. Inside the cab Lee shivered with excitement,
with cold, with fear that it might not be true. He could not
realize she was near. It was easier to imagine himself still in
the jungle, with months of time and sixteen thousand miles of
land and water separating them; or in the hospital, on a
white-enamel cot, watching the shadow creep across the
whitewashed wall; or lying beneath an awning that did not move,
staring at a burning, brazen sea that did not move, on a transport
that, timed by the beating of his heart, stood still.

Those days were within the radius of his experience. Separation,
absence, the immutable giants of time and space, he knew. With
them he had fought and could withstand them. But to be near her,
to hear her voice, to bring his love into her actual presence, that was
an attack upon his feelings which found him without weapons. That
for a very few dollars she had traded the cup from which she had sworn
never to part did not concern him. Having parted from him, what she
did with a silver mug was of little consequence. It was of significance
only in that it meant she was poor. And that she was either an inmate
or a matron of a lodging-house for working girls also showed she was
poor.

He had been told that was her condition, and that she was in ill health,
and that from all who loved her she had refused to accept help. At the
thought his jaws locked pugnaciously. There was one who loved her,
who, should she refuse his aid, was prepared to make her life intolerable.
He planned in succession at lightning speed all he might do for her. Among
other things he would make this Christmas the happiest she or he would
ever know. Not for an instant did he question that she who had refused
help from all who loved her could refuse anything he offered. For he
knew it was offered with a love that demanded nothing in return, with
a love that asked only to be allowed to love, and to serve. To refuse help
inspired by such a feeling as his would be morbid, wicked, ridiculous,
as though a flower refused to turn its face to the sun, and shut its lips
to the dew.

The cab stopped in front of a brick building adorned with many fire-
escapes. Afterward he remembered a bare, brilliantly lit hall hung with
photographs of the Acropolis, and a stout, capable woman in a cap, who
looked him over and said:

"You will find Mrs. Stedman in the writing-room."

And he remembered entering a room filled with Mission furniture and
reading-lamps under green shades. It was empty, except for a young
girl in deep black, who was seated facing him, her head bent above a
writing-desk. As he came into the circle of the lamps the girl raised
her eyes and as though lifted to her feet by what she saw, and through
no effort of her own, stood erect.

And the young man who had persuaded himself his love demanded
nothing, who asked only to worship at her gate, found his arms reaching
out, and heard his voice as though it came from a great distance, cry,
"Frances!"

And the girl who had refused the help of all who loved her, like a
homing pigeon walked straight into the outstretched arms.

After five minutes, when he was almost able to believe it was true,
he said in his commanding, masterful way: "And now I'm going to
take you out of here. I'm going to buy you a ring, and a sable coat,
and a house to live in, and a dinner. Which shall we buy first?"

"First," said Frances, frowning happily, "I am afraid we must go
to the Ritz, to tell Aunt Emily. She always loved you, and it will
make her so happy."

"To the Ritz!" stammered the young man. "To Aunt Emily! I thought
they told me your aunt and-you-"

"We quarrelled, yes," said Frances, "and she has forgiven me; but she
has not forgiven herself, so she spoils me, and already I have a house
to live in, and several sable coats, and, oh! everything, everything but
the ring."

"I am so sorry!" cried Lee. "I thought you were poor. I hoped you were
poor. But you are joking!" he exclaimed delightedly. "You are here in
a working girls' home-"

"It is one of Aunt Emily's charities. She built it," said Frances. "I
come here to talk to the girls."

"But," persisted Lee triumphantly, "if you are not poor, why did you
pawn our silver loving-cup?"

The face of the girl became a lovely crimson, and tears rose to her eyes.
As though at a confessional, she lifted her hands penitently.

"Try to understand," she begged; "I wanted you to love me, not for
my money-"

"But you knew!" cried Lee.

"I had to be sure," begged the girl; "and I wanted to believe you loved
me even if I did not love you. When it was too late I knew you loved me
as no woman ever deserved to be loved; and I wanted that love. I could
not live without it. So when I read in the papers you had returned I
wouldn't let myself write you; I wouldn't let myself beg you to come
to see me. I set a test for you. I knew from the papers you were at the
Army and Navy Club, and that around the corner was the recruiting
office. I'd often seen the sergeant there, in uniform, at the door. I knew
you must pass from your club to the office many times each day, so I
thought of the loving-cup and the pawn-shop. I planted it there. It was
a trick, a test. I thought if you saw it in a pawn-shop you would believe I
no longer cared for you, and that I was very poor. If you passed it by,
then I would know you yourself had stopped caring, but if you asked
about it, if you inquired for me, then I would know you came to me of
your own wish, because you-"

Lee shook his head.

"You don't have to tell me," he said gently, "why I came. I've a cab
outside. You will get in it," he commanded, "and we will rescue our
cup. I always told you they would look well together over an open
fireplace."

THE MIRACLE OF LAS PALMAS

This is the story of a gallant officer who loved his profession,
his regiment, his country, but above all, whiskey; of his
miraculous conversion to total abstinence, and of the humble
instrument that worked the miracle. At the time it was worked,
a battalion of the Thirty-third Infantry had been left behind to
guard the Zone, and was occupying impromptu barracks on the hill
above Las Palmas. That was when Las Palmas was one of the four
thousand stations along the forty miles of the Panama Railroad.
When the railroad was "reconstructed" the name of Las Palmas did
not appear on the new time-table, and when this story appears
Las Palmas will be eighty feet under water. So if any one wishes
to dispute the miracle he will have to conduct his investigation
in a diving-bell.

On this particular evening young Major Aintree, in command of the
battalion, had gone up the line to Panama to dine at the Hotel
Tivoli, and had dined well. To prevent his doing this a paternal
government had ordered that at the Tivoli no alcoholic liquors
may be sold; but only two hundred yards from the hotel, outside
the zone of temperance, lies Panama and Angelina's, and during
the dinner, between the Tivoli and Angelina's, the Jamaican
waiter-boys ran relay races.

After the dinner, the Jamaican waiter-boys proving too slow, the
dinner-party in a body adjourned to Angelina's, and when later,
Major Aintree moved across the street to the night train to Las
Palmas, he moved unsteadily.

Young Standish of the Canal Zone police, who, though but twenty-
six, was a full corporal, was for that night on duty as "train
guard," and was waiting at the rear steps of the last car. As
Aintree approached the steps he saw indistinctly a boyish figure
in khaki, and, mistaking it for one of his own men, he clasped
the handrail for support, and halted frowning.

Observing the condition of the officer the policeman also frowned,
but in deference to the uniform, slowly and with reluctance raised
his hand to his sombrero. The reluctance was more apparent than
the salute. It was less of a salute than an impertinence.

Partly out of regard for his rank, partly from temper, chiefly
from whiskey, Aintree saw scarlet.

"When you s'lute your s'perior officer," he shouted, "you s'lute him
quick. You unnerstan', you s'lute him quick! S'lute me again," he
commanded, "and s'lute me damn quick."

Standish remained motionless. As is the habit of policemen over
all the world, his thumbs were stuck in his belt. He answered
without offense, in tones matter-of-fact and calm.

"You are not my superior officer," he said.

It was the calmness that irritated Aintree. His eyes sought for
the infantryman's cap and found a sombrero.

"You damned leatherneck," he began, "I'll report--"

"I'm not a marine, either," interrupted Standish. "I'm a policeman.
Move on," he ordered, "you're keeping these people waiting."

Others of the dinner-party formed a flying wedge around Aintree
and crowded him up the steps and into a seat and sat upon him.
Ten minutes later, when Standish made his rounds of the cars,
Aintree saw him approaching. He had a vague recollection that
he had been insulted, and by a policeman.

"You!" he called, and so loudly that all in the car turned, "I'm
going to report you, going to report you for insolence. What's
your name?"

Looking neither at Aintree nor at the faces turned toward him,
Standish replied as though Aintree had asked him what time it was.

"Standish," he said, "corporal, shield number 226, on train
guard." He continued down the aisle.

"I'll remember you," Aintree shouted.

But in the hot, glaring dawn of the morning after, Aintree forgot.
It was Standish who remembered.

The men of the Zone police are hand-picked. They have been
soldiers, marines, cowboys, sheriffs, "Black Hussars" of the
Pennsylvania State constabulary, rough riders with Roosevelt,
mounted police in Canada, irregular horse in South Africa; they
form one of the best-organized, best-disciplined, most efficient,
most picturesque semi-military bodies in the world. Standish
joined them from the Philippine constabulary in which he had
been a second lieutenant. There are several like him in the
Zone police, and in England they would be called gentlemen
rankers. On the Isthmus, because of his youth, his fellow
policemen called Standish "Kid." And smart as each of them was,
each of them admitted the Kid wore his uniform with a difference.
With him it always looked as though it had come freshly ironed
from the Colon laundry; his leather leggings shone like
meerschaum pipes; the brim of his sombrero rested impudently on
the bridge of his nose.

"He's been an officer," they used to say in extenuation. "You can
tell when he salutes. He shows the back of his hand." Secretly,
they were proud of him. Standish came of a long chain of soldiers,
and that the weakest link in the chain had proved to be himself was
a sorrow no one else but himself could fathom. Since he was three
years old he had been trained to be a soldier, as carefully, with the
same singleness of purpose, as the crown prince is trained to be a
king. And when, after three happy, glorious years at West Point,
he was found not clever enough to pass the examinations and was
dropped, he did not curse the gods and die, but began again to work
his way up. He was determined he still would wear shoulder-straps.
He owed it to his ancestors. It was the tradition of his family, the one
thing he wanted; it was his religion. He would get into the army
even if by the side door, if only after many years of rough and
patient service. He knew that some day, through his record,
through the opportunity of a war, he would come into his
inheritance. Meanwhile he officered his soul, disciplined his
body, and daily tried to learn the lesson that he who hopes to
control others must first control himself.

He allowed himself but one dissipation, one excess. That was
to hate Major Aintree, commanding the Thirty-third Infantry. Of
all the world could give, Aintree possessed everything that
Standish considered the most to be desired. He was a graduate of
West Point, he had seen service in Cuba, in the Boxer business,
and in the Philippines. For an act of conspicuous courage at
Batangas, he had received the medal of honor. He had had the
luck of the devil. Wherever he held command turned out to be the
place where things broke loose. And Aintree always attacked and
routed them, always was the man on the job. It was his name that
appeared in the newspapers, it was his name that headed the list
of the junior officers mentioned for distinguished conduct.
Standish had followed his career with an admiration and a joy
that was without taint of envy or detraction. He gloried in
Aintree, he delighted to know the army held such a man. He was
grateful to Aintree for upholding the traditions of a profession
to which he himself gave all the devotion of a fanatic. He made
a god of him. This was the attitude of mind toward Aintree before
he came to the Isthmus. Up to that time he had never seen his
idol. Aintree had been only a name signed to brilliant articles
in the service magazines, a man of whom those who had served with
him or under him, when asked concerning him, spoke with loyalty
and awe, the man the newspapers called "the hero of Batangas."
And when at last he saw his hero, he believed his worship was
justified. For Aintree looked the part. He was built like a
greyhound with the shoulders of a stevedore. His chin was as
projecting, and as hard, as the pointed end of a flat-iron. His every
movement showed physical fitness, and his every glance and tone a
confidence in himself that approached insolence. He was thirty-
eight, twelve years older than the youth who had failed to make
his commission, and who, as Aintree strode past, looked after him
with wistful, hero-worshipping eyes. The revulsion, when it came,
was extreme. The hero-worship gave way to contempt, to indignant
condemnation, in which there was no pity, no excuse. That one upon
whom so much had been lavished, who for himself had accomplished
such good things, should bring disgrace upon his profession,
should by his example demoralize his men, should risk losing all
he had attained, all that had been given, was intolerable. When
Standish learned his hero was a drunkard, when day after day
Aintree furnished visible evidences of that fact, Standish felt
Aintree had betrayed him and the army and the government that had
educated, trained, clothed, and fed him. He regarded Aintree as
worse than Benedict Arnold, because Arnold had turned traitor for
power and money; Aintree was a traitor through mere weakness,
because he could not say "no" to a bottle.

Only in secret Standish railed against Aintree. When his brother
policemen gossiped and jested about him, out of loyalty to the
army he remained silent. But in his heart he could not forgive.
The man he had so generously envied, the man after whose career
he had wished to model his own, had voluntarily stepped from his
pedestal and made a swine of himself. And not only could he not
forgive, but as day after day Aintree furnished fresh food for
his indignation he felt a fierce desire to punish.

Meanwhile, of the conduct of Aintree, men older and wiser, if less
intolerant than Standish, were beginning to take notice. It was
after a dinner on Ancon Hill, and the women had left the men to
themselves. They were the men who were placing the Panama Canal
on the map. They were officers of the army who for five years had
not worn a uniform. But for five years they had been at war with
an enemy that never slept. Daily they had engaged in battle with
mountains, rivers, swamps, two oceans, and disease. Where Aintree
commanded five hundred soldiers, they commanded a body of men
better drilled, better disciplined, and in number half as many as
those who formed the entire army of the United States. The mind
of each was occupied with a world problem. They thought and
talked in millions --of millions of cubic yards of dirt, of
millions of barrels of cement, of millions of tons of steel, of
hundreds of millions of dollars, of which latter each received
enough to keep himself and his family just beyond the reach of
necessity. To these men with the world waiting upon the outcome
of their endeavor, with responsibilities that never relaxed,
Aintree's behavior was an incident, an annoyance of less
importance than an overturned dirt train that for five minutes
dared to block the completion of their work. But they were human
and loyal to the army, and in such an infrequent moment as this,
over the coffee and cigars, they could afford to remember the
junior officer, to feel sorry for him, for the sake of the army,
to save him from himself.

"He takes his orders direct from the War Department," said the
chief. "I've no authority over him. If he'd been one of my workmen
I'd have shipped him north three months ago."

"That's it," said the surgeon, "he's not a workman. He has nothing
to do, and idleness is the curse of the army. And in this climate--"

"Nothing to do!" snorted the civil administrator. "Keeping his
men in hand is what he has to do! They're running amuck all over
Panama, getting into fights with the Spiggoty police, bringing
the uniform into contempt. As for the climate, it's the same
climate for all of us. Look at Butler's marines and Barber's Zone
police. The climate hasn't hurt them. They're as smart men as
ever wore khaki. It's not the climate or lack of work that ails
the Thirty- third, it's their commanding officer. 'So the
colonel, so the regiment.' That's as old as the hills. Until
Aintree takes a brace, his men won't. Some one ought to talk to
him. It's a shame to see a fine fellow like that going to the
dogs because no one has the courage to tell him the truth."

The chief smiled mockingly.

"Then why don't you?" he asked.

"I'm a civilian," protested the administrator. "If I told him he was
going to the dogs he'd tell me to go to the devil. No, one of you
army men must do it. He'll listen to you."

Young Captain Haldane of the cavalry was at the table; he was
visiting Panama on leave as a tourist. The chief turned to him.

"Haldane's the man," he said. "You're his friend and you're his
junior in rank, so what you say won't sound official. Tell him
people are talking; tell him it won't be long before they'll be
talking in Washington. Scare him!"

The captain of cavalry smiled dubiously.

"Aintree's a hard man to scare," he said. "But if it's as bad as you
all seem to think, I'll risk it. But, why is it," he complained,
"that whenever a man has to be told anything particularly
unpleasant they always pick on his best friend to tell him? It
makes them both miserable. Why not let his bitterest enemy try
it? The enemy at least would have a fine time."

"Because," said the chief, "Aintree hasn't an enemy in the world-
except Aintree."
The next morning, as he had promised, Haldane called upon his
friend. When he arrived at Las Palmas, although the morning was
well advanced toward noon, he found Aintree still under his
mosquito bars and awake only to command a drink. The situation
furnished Haldane with his text. He expressed his opinion of
any individual, friend or no friend, officer or civilian, who on
the Zone, where all men begin work at sunrise, could be found
at noon still in his pajamas and preparing to face the duties of
the day on an absinth cocktail. He said further that since he had
arrived on the isthmus he had heard only of Aintree's misconduct,
that soon the War Department would hear of it, that Aintree would
lose his commission, would break the backbone of a splendid career.

"It's a friend talking," continued Haldane, "and you know it! It's
because I am your friend that I've risked losing your friendship!
And, whether you like it or not, it's the truth. You're going down-hill,
going fast, going like a motor-bus running away, and unless you put
on the brakes you'll smash!"

Aintree was not even annoyed.

"That's good advice for the right man," he granted, "but why waste
it on me? I can do things other men can't. I can stop drinking this
minute, and it will mean so little to me that I won't know I've stopped."

"Then stop," said Haldane.

"Why?" demanded Aintree. "I like it. Why should I stop anything
I like? Because a lot of old women are gossiping? Because old men
who can't drink green mint without dancing turkey-trots think I'm
going to the devil because I can drink whiskey? I'm not afraid of
whiskey," he laughed tolerantly. "It amuses me, that's all it does
to me; it amuses me." He pulled back the coat of his pajamas and
showed his giant chest and shoulder. With his fist he struck his
bare flesh and it glowed instantly a healthy, splendid pink.

"See that!" commanded Aintree. "If there's a man on the isthmus in
any better physical shape than I am, I'll--" He interrupted himself
to begin again eagerly. "I'll make you a sporting proposition,"
he announced "I'll fight any man on the isthmus ten rounds--
no matter who he is, a wop laborer, shovel man, Barbadian
nigger, marine, anybody--and if he can knock me out I'll stop
drinking. You see," he explained patiently, "I'm no mollycoddle
or jelly-fish. I can afford a headache. And besides, it's my own
head. If I don't give anybody else a headache, I don't see that it's
anybody else's damned business."

"But you do," retorted Haldane steadily. "You're giving your own
men worse than a headache, you're setting them a rotten example,
you're giving the Thirty-third a bad name-"

Aintree vaulted off his cot and shook his fist at his friend.
"You can't say that to me," he cried.

"I do say it," protested Haldane. "When you were in Manila your
men were models; here they're unshaven, sloppy, undisciplined.
They look like bell-hops. And it's your fault. And everybody
thinks so."

Slowly and carefully Aintree snapped his fingers.

"And you can tell everybody, from me," he cried, "that's all I care
what they think! And now," he continued, smiling hospitably, "let
me congratulate you on your success as a missionary, and, to show
you there's not a trace of hard feeling, we will have a drink."

Informally Haldane reported back to the commission, and the wife
of one of them must have talked, for it was soon known that a
brother officer had appealed to Aintree to reform, and Aintree
had refused to listen.

When she heard this, Grace Carter, the wife of Major Carter, one
of the surgeons at the Ancon Hospital, was greatly perturbed.
Aintree was engaged to be married to Helen Scott, who was her
best friend and who was arriving by the next steamer to spend the
winter. When she had Helen safely under her roof, Mrs. Carter had
planned to marry off the young couple out of hand on the isthmus.
But she had begun to wonder if it would not be better they should
delay, or best that they should never marry.

"The awakening is going to be a terrible blow to Helen," she said
to her husband. "She is so proud of him."

"On the contrary," he protested, "it will be the awakening of
Aintree--if Helen will stand for the way he's acting, she is not
the girl I know. And when he finds she won't, and that he may lose
her, he'll pull up short. He's talked Helen to me night after
night until he's bored me so I could strangle him. He cares more
for her than he does for anything, for the army, or for himself,
and that's saying a great deal. One word from her will be enough."

Helen spoke the word three weeks after she arrived. It had not
been necessary to tell her of the manner in which her lover was
misconducting himself. At various dinners given in their honor
he had made a nuisance of himself; on another occasion, while in
uniform, he had created a scene in the dining-room of the Tivoli
under the prying eyes of three hundred seeing-the-Canal tourists;
and one night he had so badly beaten up a cabman who had laughed
at his condition that the man went to the hospital. Major Carter,
largely with money, had healed the injuries of the cabman, but
Helen, who had witnessed the assault, had suffered an injury that
money could not heal.

She sent for Aintree, and at the home of her friend delivered
her ultimatum.

"I hit him because he was offensive to you," said Aintree. "That's
why I hit him. If I'd not had a drink in a year, I'd have hit him
just as quick and just as hard."

"Can't you see," said the girl, "that in being not yourself when
I was in your care you were much more insulting to me than any
cabman could possibly be? When you are like that you have no
respect for me, or for yourself. Part of my pride in you is that
you are so strong, that you control yourself, that common
pleasures never get a hold on you. If you couldn't control your
temper I wouldn't blame you, because you've a villainous temper
and you were born with it. But you weren't born with a taste for
liquor. None of your people drank. You never drank until you went
into the army. If I were a man," declared the girl, "I'd be ashamed
to admit anything was stronger than I was. You never let pain beat
you. I've seen you play polo with a broken arm, but in this you give
pain to others, you shame and humiliate the one you pretend to love,
just because you are weak, just because you can't say 'no.'"

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