The Red Cross Girl

R >> Richard Harding Davis >> The Red Cross Girl

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"And you LIKE this?" groaned David.

"I wouldn't, if I were as sick as you are," said Carr, "but I've
a stomach like a Harlem goat." He stooped and lowered his voice.
"Now, here are two fake filibusters," he whispered. "The men you
read about in the newspapers. If a man's a REAL filibuster,
nobody knows it!"

Coming toward them was the tall man who had knocked David out,
and the little one who had wanted to tie him to a tree.

"All they ask," whispered Carr, "is money and advertisement. If
they knew I was a reporter, they'd eat out of my hand. The tall
man calls himself Lighthouse Harry. He once kept a light-house on
the Florida coast, and that's as near to the sea as he ever got.
The other one is a dare-devil calling himself Colonel Beamish. He
says he's an English officer, and a soldier of fortune, and that
he's been in eighteen battles. Jimmy says he's never been near
enough to a battle to see the red-cross flags on the base
hospital. But they've fooled these Cubans. The Junta thinks
they're great fighters, and it's sent them down here to work the
machine guns. But I'm afraid the only fighting they will do will
be in the sporting columns, and not in the ring."

A half dozen sea-sick Cubans were carrying a heavy, oblong box.
They dropped it not two yards from where David lay, and with a
screwdriver Lighthouse Harry proceeded to open the lid.

Carr explained to David that The Three Friends was approaching
that part of the coast of Cuba on which she had arranged to land
her expedition, and that in case she was surprised by one of the
Spanish patrol boats she was preparing to defend herself.

"They've got an automatic gun in that crate," said Carr, "and
they're going to assemble it. You'd better move; they'll be
tramping all over you.

David shook his head feebly.

"I can't move!" he protested. "I wouldn't move if it would free
Cuba."

For several hours with very languid interest David watched
Lighthouse Harry and Colonel Beamish screw a heavy tripod to the
deck and balance above it a quick-firing one-pounder. They worked
very slowly, and to David, watching them from the lee scupper,
they appeared extremely unintelligent.

"I don't believe either of those thugs put an automatic gun
together in his life," he whispered to Carr. "I never did,
either, but I've put hundreds of automatic punches together, and
I bet that gun won't work."

"What's wrong with it?" said Carr.

Before David could summon sufficient energy to answer, the
attention of all on board was diverted, and by a single word.

Whether the word is whispered apologetically by the smoking-room
steward to those deep in bridge, or shrieked from the tops of a
sinking ship it never quite fails of its effect. A sweating
stoker from the engine-room saw it first.

"Land!" he hailed.

The sea-sick Cubans raised themselves and swung their hats; their
voices rose in a fierce chorus.

"Cuba libre!" they yelled.

The sun piercing the morning mists had uncovered a coast-line
broken with bays and inlets. Above it towered green hills, the
peak of each topped by a squat blockhouse; in the valleys and
water courses like columns of marble rose the royal palms.

"You MUST look!" Carr entreated David. "it's just as it is in the
pictures!

"Then I don't have to look," groaned David.

The Three Friends was making for a point of land that curved like
a sickle. On the inside of the sickle was Nipe Bay. On the
opposite shore of that broad harbor at the place of rendezvous a
little band of Cubans waited to receive the filibusters. The goal
was in sight. The dreadful voyage was done. Joy and excitement
thrilled the ship's company. Cuban patriots appeared in uniforms
with Cuban flags pinned in the brims of their straw sombreros.
From the hold came boxes of small-arm ammunition of Mausers,
rifles, machetes, and saddles. To protect the landing a box of
shells was placed in readiness beside the one-pounder.

"In two hours, if we have smooth water," shouted Lighthouse
Harry, "we ought to get all of this on shore. And then, all I
ask," he cried mightily, "is for some one to kindly show me a
Spaniard!"

His heart's desire was instantly granted. He was shown not only
one Spaniard, but several Spaniards. They were on the deck of one
of the fastest gun-boats of the Spanish navy. Not a mile from The
Three Friends she sprang from the cover of a narrow inlet. She
did not signal questions or extend courtesies. For her the name
of the ocean-going tug was sufficient introduction. Throwing
ahead of her a solid shell, she raced in pursuit, and as The
Three Friends leaped to full speed there came from the gun-boat
the sharp dry crackle of Mausers.

With an explosion of terrifying oaths Lighthouse Harry thrust a
shell into the breech of the quick-firing gun. Without waiting to
aim it, he tugged at the trigger. Nothing happened! He threw open
the breech and gazed impotently at the base of the shell. It was
untouched. The ship was ringing with cries of anger, of hate,
with rat-like squeaks of fear.

Above the heads of the filibusters a shell screamed and within a
hundred feet splashed into a wave.

From his mat in the lee scupper David groaned miserably. He was
far removed from any of the greater emotions.

"It's no use!" he protested. "They can't do! It's not connected!"

"WHAT'S not connected?" yelled Carr. He fell upon David. He
half-lifted, half-dragged him to his feet.

"If you know what's wrong with that gun, you fix it! Fix it," he
shouted, "or I'll--"

David was not concerned with the vengeance Carr threatened. For,
on the instant a miracle had taken place. With the swift
insidiousness of morphine, peace ran through his veins, soothed
his racked body, his jangled nerves. The Three Friends had made
the harbor, and was gliding through water flat as a pond. But
David did not know why the change had come. He knew only that his
soul and body were at rest, that the sun was shining, that he had
passed through the valley of the shadow, and once more was a
sane, sound young man.

With a savage thrust of the shoulder he sent Lighthouse Harry
sprawling from the gun. With swift, practised fingers he fell
upon its mechanism. He wrenched it apart. He lifted it, reset,
readjusted it.

Ignorant themselves, those about him saw that he understood, saw
that his work was good.

They raised a joyous, defiant cheer. But a shower of bullets
drove them to cover, bullets that ripped the deck, splintered the
superstructure, smashed the glass in the air ports, like angry
wasps sang in a continuous whining chorus. Intent only on the
gun, David worked feverishly. He swung to the breech, locked it,
and dragged it open, pulled on the trigger and found it gave
before his forefinger.

He shouted with delight.

"I've got it working," he yelled.

He turned to his audience, but his audience had fled. From
beneath one of the life-boats protruded the riding-boots of
Colonel Beamish, the tall form of Lighthouse Harry was doubled
behind a water butt. A shell splashed to port, a shell splashed
to starboard. For an instant David stood staring wide-eyed at the
greyhound of a boat that ate up the distance between them, at the
jets of smoke and stabs of flame that sprang from her bow, at the
figures crouched behind her gunwale, firing in volleys.

To David it came suddenly, convincingly, that in a dream he had
lived it all before, and something like raw poison stirred in
David, something leaped to his throat and choked him, something
rose in his brain and made him see scarlet. He felt rather than
saw young Carr kneeling at the box of ammunition, and holding a
shell toward him. He heard the click as the breech shut, felt the
rubber tire of the brace give against the weight of his shoulder,
down a long shining tube saw the pursuing gun-boat, saw her again
and many times disappear behind a flash of flame. A bullet gashed
his forehead, a bullet passed deftly through his forearm, but he
did not heed them. Confused with the thrashing of the engines,
with the roar of the gun he heard a strange voice shrieking
unceasingly:

"Cuba libre!" it yelled. "To hell with Spain!" and he found that
the voice was his own.

The story lost nothing in the way Carr wrote it.

"And the best of it is," he exclaimed joyfully, "it's true!"

For a Spanish gun-boat HAD been crippled and forced to run
herself aground by a tug-boat manned by Cuban patriots, and by a
single gun served by one man, and that man an American. It was
the first sea-fight of the war. Over night a Cuban navy had been
born, and into the limelight a cub reporter had projected a new
"hero," a ready-made, warranted-not-to-run, popular idol.

They were seated in the pilot-house, "Jimmy" Doyle, Carr, and
David, the patriots and their arms had been safely dumped upon
the coast of Cuba, and The Three Friends was gliding swiftly and,
having caught the Florida straits napping, smoothly toward Key
West. Carr had just finished reading aloud his account of the
engagement.

You will tell the story just as I have written it," commanded the
proud author. "Your being South as a travelling salesman was only
a blind. You came to volunteer for this expedition. Before you
could explain your wish you were mistaken for a secret-service
man, and hustled on board. That was just where you wanted to be,
and when the moment arrived you took command of the ship and
single-handed won the naval battle of Nipe Bay."

Jimmy Doyle nodded his head approvingly. "You certainty did,
Dave," protested the great man, "I seen you when you done it!"

At Key West Carr filed his story and while the hospital surgeons
kept David there over one steamer, to dress his wounds, his fame
and features spread across the map of the United States.

Burdett and Sons basked in reflected glory. Reporters besieged
their office. At the Merchants Down-Town Club the business men of
lower Broadway tendered congratulations.

"Of course, it's a great surprise to us," Burdett and Sons would
protest and wink heavily. "Of course, when the boy asked to be
sent South we'd no idea he was planning to fight for Cuba! Or we
wouldn't have let him go, would we?" Then again they would wink
heavily. "I suppose you know," they would say, "that he's a
direct descendant of General Hiram Greene, who won the battle of
Trenton. What I say is, 'Blood will tell!'" And then in a body
every one in the club would move against the bar and exclaim:
"Here's to Cuba libre!"

When the Olivette from Key West reached Tampa Bay every Cuban in
the Tampa cigar factories was at the dock. There were thousands
of them and all of the Junta, in high hats, to read David an
address of welcome.

And, when they saw him at the top of the gang-plank with his head
in a bandage and his arm in a sling, like a mob of maniacs they
howled and surged toward him. But before they could reach their
hero the courteous Junta forced them back, and cleared a pathway
for a young girl. She was travel-worn and pale, her shirt-waist
was disgracefully wrinkled, her best hat was a wreck. No one on
Broadway would have recognized her as Burdett and Sons' most
immaculate and beautiful stenographer.

She dug the shapeless hat into David's shoulder, and clung to
him. "David!" she sobbed, "promise me you'll never, never do it
again!"

Chapter 5. THE SAILORMAN

Before Latimer put him on watch, the Nantucket sailorman had not
a care in the world. If the wind blew from the north, he spun to
the left; if it came from the south, he spun to the right. But it
was entirely the wind that was responsible. So, whichever way he
turned, he smiled broadly, happily. His outlook upon the world
was that of one who loved his fellowman. He had many brothers as
like him as twins all over Nantucket and Cape Cod and the North
Shore, smiling from the railings of verandas, from the roofs of
bungalows, from the eaves of summer palaces. Empaled on their
little iron uprights, each sailorman whirled--sometimes
languidly, like a great lady revolving to the slow measures of a
waltz, sometimes so rapidly that he made you quite dizzy, and had
he not been a sailorman with a heart of oak and a head and
stomach of pine, he would have been quite seasick. But the
particular sailorman that Latimer bought for Helen Page and put
on sentry duty carried on his shoulders most grave and unusual
responsibilities. He was the guardian of a buried treasure, the
keeper of the happiness of two young people. It was really asking
a great deal of a care-free, happy-go-lucky weather-vane.

Every summer from Boston Helen Page's people had been coming to
Fair Harbor. They knew it when what now is the polo field was
their cow pasture. And whether at the age of twelve or of twenty
or more, Helen Page ruled Fair Harbor. When she arrived the
"season" opened; when she departed the local trades-people
sighed and began to take account of stock. She was so popular
because she possessed charm, and because she played no favorites.
To the grooms who held the ponies on the sidelines her manner was
just as simple and interested as it was to the gilded youths who
came to win the championship cups and remained to try to win
Helen. She was just as genuinely pleased to make a four at tennis
with the "kids" as to take tea on the veranda of the club-house
with the matrons. To each her manner was always as though she
were of their age. When she met the latter on the beach road, she
greeted them riotously and joyfully by their maiden names. And
the matrons liked it. In comparison the deference shown them by
the other young women did not so strongly appeal.

"When I'm jogging along in my station wagon," said one of them,
"and Helen shrieks and waves at me from her car, I feel as though
I were twenty, and I believe that she is really sorry I am not
sitting beside her, instead of that good-looking Latimer man,
who never wears a hat. Why does he never wear a hat? Because he
knows he's good-looking, or because Helen drives so fast he can't
keep it on?"

"Does he wear a hat when he is not with Helen?" asked the new
arrival. "That might help some."

"We will never know," exclaimed the young matron; "he never
leaves her."

This was so true that it had become a public scandal. You met
them so many times a day driving together, motoring together,
playing golf together, that you were embarrassed for them and did
not know which way to look. But they gloried in their shame. If
you tactfully pretended not to see them, Helen shouted at you.
She made you feel you had been caught doing something indelicate
and underhand.

The mothers of Fair Harbor were rather slow in accepting young
Latimer. So many of their sons had seen Helen shake her head in
that inarticulate, worried way, and look so sorry for them, that
any strange young man who apparently succeeded where those who
had been her friends for years had learned they must remain
friends, could not hope to escape criticism. Besides, they did
not know him: he did not come from Boston and Harvard, but from a
Western city. They were told that at home, at both the law and
the game of politics, he worked hard and successfully; but it was
rather held against him by the youth of Fair Harbor that he
played at there games, not so much for the sake of the game as
for exercise. He put aside many things, such as whiskey and soda
at two in the morning, and bridge all afternoon, with the remark:
"I find it does not tend toward efficiency." It was a remark that
irritated and, to the minds of the men at the country clubs,
seemed to place him. They liked to play polo because they liked
to play polo, not because it kept their muscles limber and their
brains clear.

"Some Western people were telling me," said one of the matrons,
"that he wants to be the next lieutenant-governor. They say he is
very ambitious and very selfish."

"Any man is selfish," protested one who for years had attempted
to marry Helen, "who wants to keep Helen to himself. But that he
should wish to be a lieutenant-governor, too, is rather an
anticlimax. It makes one lose sympathy."

Latimer went on his way without asking any sympathy. The
companionship of Helen Page was quite sufficient. He had been
working overtime and was treating himself to his first vacation
in years--he was young--he was in love and he was very happy. Nor
was there any question, either, that Helen Page was happy. Those
who had known her since she was a child could not remember when
she had not been happy, but these days she wore her joyousness
with a difference. It was in her eyes, in her greetings to old
friends: it showed itself hourly in courtesies and kindnesses.
She was very kind to Latimer, too. She did not deceive him. She
told him she liked better to be with him than with any one
else,--it would have been difficult to deny to him what was
apparent to an entire summer colony,--but she explained that that
did not mean she would marry him. She announced this when the
signs she knew made it seem necessary. She announced it in what
was for her a roundabout way, by remarking suddenly that she did
not intend to marry for several years.

This brought Latimer to his feet and called forth from him
remarks so eloquent that Helen found it very difficult to keep
her own. She as though she had been caught in an undertow and was
being whirled out to sea. When, at last, she had regained her
breath, only because Latimer had paused to catch his, she shook
her head miserably.

"The trouble is," she complained, "there are so many think the
same thing!"

"What do they think?" demanded Latimer.

"That they want to marry me."

Checked but not discouraged, Latimer attacked in force.

"I can quite believe that," he agreed, "but there's this
important difference: no matter how much a man wants to marry
you, he can't LOVE you as I do!"

"That's ANOTHER thing they think," sighed Helen.

"I'm sorry to be so unoriginal," snapped Latimer.

"PLEASE don't!" pleaded Helen. "I don't mean to be unfeeling. I'm
not unfeeling. I'm only trying to be fair. If I don't seem to
take it to heart, it's because I know it does no good. I can see
how miserable a girl must be if she is loved by one man and can't
make up her mind whether or not she wants to marry him. But when
there's so many she just stops worrying; for she can't possibly
marry them all."

"ALL!" exclaimed Latimer. "It is incredible that I have
undervalued you, but may I ask how many there are?"

"I don't know," sighed Helen miserably. "There seems to be
something about me that--"

"There is!" interrupted Latimer. "I've noticed it. You don't have
to tell me about it. I know that the Helen Page habit is a damned
difficult habit to break!"

It cannot be said that he made any violent effort to break it. At
least, not one that was obvious to Fair Harbor or to Helen.

One of their favorite drives was through the pine woods to the
point on which stood the lighthouse, and on one of these
excursions they explored a forgotten wood road and came out upon
a cliff. The cliff overlooked the sea, and below it was a jumble
of rocks with which the waves played hide and seek. On many
afternoons and mornings they returned to this place, and, while
Latimer read to her, Helen would sit with her back to a tree and
toss pine-cones into the water. Sometimes the poets whose works
he read made love so charmingly that Latimer was most grateful to
them for rendering such excellent first aid to the wounded, and
into his voice he would throw all that feeling and music that
from juries and mass meetings had dragged tears and cheers and
votes.

But when his voice became so appealing that it no longer was
possible for any woman to resist it, Helen would exclaim
excitedly: "Please excuse me for interrupting, but there is a
large spider--" and the spell was gone.

One day she exclaimed: "Oh!" and Latimer patiently lowered the
"Oxford Book of Verse," and asked: "What is it, NOW?"

"I'm so sorry," Helen said, "but I can't help watching that
Chapman boy; he's only got one reef in, and the next time he jibs
he'll capsize, and he can't swim, and he'll drown. I told his
mother only yesterday--"

"I haven't the least interest in the Chapman boy," said Latimer,
"or in what you told his mother, or whether he drowns or not! I'm
a drowning man myself!"

Helen shook her head firmly and reprovingly. "Men get over THAT
kind of drowning," she said.

"Not THIS kind of man doesn't!" said Latimer. "And don't tell
me," he cried indignantly, "that that's ANOTHER thing they all
say."

"If one could only be sure!" sighed Helen. "If one could only be
sure that you--that the right man would keep on caring after you
marry him the way he says he cares before you marry him. If you
could know that, it would help you a lot in making up your mind."

"There is only one way to find that out," said Latimer; "that is
to marry him. I mean, of course," he corrected hastily, "to marry
me."

One day, when on their way to the cliff at the end of the wood
road, the man who makes the Nantucket sailor and peddles him
passed through the village; and Latimer bought the sailorman and
carried him to their hiding-place. There he fastened him to the
lowest limb of one of the ancient pine-trees that helped to
screen their hiding-place from the world. The limb reached out
free of the other branches, and the wind caught the sailorman
fairly and spun him like a dancing dervish. Then it tired of him,
and went off to try to drown the Chapman boy, leaving the
sailorman motionless with his arms outstretched, balancing in
each hand a tiny oar and smiling happily.

"He has a friendly smile," said Helen; "I think he likes us."

"He is on guard," Latimer explained. "I put him there to warn us
if any one approaches, and when we are not here, he is to
frighten away trespassers. Do you understand?" he demanded of the
sailorman. "Your duty is to protect this beautiful lady. So long
as I love her you must guard this place. It is a life sentence.
You are always on watch. You never sleep. You are her slave. She
says you have a friendly smile. She wrongs you. It is a
beseeching, abject, worshipping smile. I am sure when I look at
her mine is equally idiotic. In fact, we are in many ways alike.
I also am her slave. I also am devoted only to her service. And I
never sleep, at least not since I met her."

From her throne among the pine needles Helen looked up at the
sailorman and frowned.

"It is not a happy simile," she objected. "For one thing, a
sailorman has a sweetheart in every port."

"Wait and see," said Latimer.

"And," continued the girl with some asperity, "if there is
anything on earth that changes its mind as often as a
weather-vane, that is less CERTAIN, less CONSTANT--"

"Constant?" Latimer laughed at her in open scorn. "You come back
here," he challenged, "months from now, years from now, when the
winds have beaten him, and the sun blistered him, and the snow
frozen him, and you will find him smiling at you just as he is
now, just as confidently, proudly, joyously, devotedly. Because
those who are your slaves, those who love YOU, cannot come to any
harm; only if you disown them, only if you drive them away!

The sailorman, delighted at such beautiful language, threw
himself about in a delirium of joy. His arms spun in their
sockets like Indian clubs, his oars flashed in the sun, and his
eyes and lips were fixed in one blissful, long-drawn-out,
unalterable smile.

When the golden-rod turned gray, and the leaves red and yellow,
and it was time for Latimer to return to his work in the West, he
came to say good-by. But the best Helen could do to keep hope
alive in him was to say that she was glad he cared. She added it
was very helpful to think that a man such as he believed you were
so fine a person, and during the coming winter she would try to
be like the fine person he believed her to be, but which, she
assured him, she was not.

Then he told her again she was the most wonderful being in the
world, to which she said: "Oh, indeed no!" and then, as though he
were giving her a cue, he said: "Good-by!" But she did not take
up his cue, and they shook hands. He waited, hardly daring to
breathe.

"Surely, now that the parting has come," he assured himself, "she
will make some sign, she will give me a word, a look that will
write 'total' under the hours we have spent together, that will
help to carry me through the long winter."

But he held her hand so long and looked at her so hungrily that
he really forced her to say: "Don't miss your train," which kind
consideration for his comfort did not delight him as it should.
Nor, indeed, later did she herself recall the remark with
satisfaction.

With Latimer out of the way the other two hundred and forty-nine
suitor attacked with renewed hope. Among other advantages they
had over Latimer was that they were on the ground. They saw Helen
daily, at dinners, dances, at the country clubs, in her own
drawing-room. Like any sailor from the Charlestown Navy Yard and
his sweetheart, they could walk beside her in the park and throw
peanuts to the pigeons, and scratch dates and initials on the
green benches; they could walk with her up one side of
Commonwealth Avenue and down the south bank of the Charles, when
the sun was gilding the dome of the State House, when the bridges
were beginning to deck themselves with necklaces of lights. They
had known her since they wore knickerbockers; and they shared
many interests and friends in common; they talked the same
language. Latimer could talk to her only in letters, for with her
he shared no friends or interests, and he was forced to choose
between telling her of his lawsuits and his efforts in politics
or of his love. To write to her of his affairs seemed wasteful
and impertinent, and of his love for her, after she had received
what he told of it in silence, he was too proud to speak. So he
wrote but seldom, and then only to say: "You know what I send
you." Had he known it, his best letters were those he did not
send. When in the morning mail Helen found his familiar
handwriting, that seemed to stand out like the face of a friend
in a crowd, she would pounce upon the letter, read it, and,
assured of his love, would go on her way rejoicing. But when in
the morning there was no letter, she wondered why, and all day
she wondered why. And the next morning when again she was
disappointed, her thoughts of Latimer and her doubts and
speculations concerning him shut out every other interest. He
became a perplexing, insistent problem. He was never out of her
mind. And then he would spoil it all by writing her that he loved
her and that of all the women in the world she was the only one.
And, reassured upon that point, Helen happily and promptly would
forget all about him.

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