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

So Dwight returned to the laughing party and went with them to their table and sat with them – an odd group in their service-worn suits of khaki amid the sumptuously attired guests in the brilliant room. Yet even among the wearers of the handsome Italian uniform the incessant glances toward the American party were far from critical. These men had but recently seen sharp service, and soldiers respect and envy soldier achievement. It was Dwight who first missed and asked for Ray. Ray? Why, Ray wasn't of our party. Ray wasn't of any party, in fact. Ray was "off his feed, if not off his base." The fellow was utterly hipped, said Foster. "No more like his father than I to Hercules, and nobody knows why." Ray came ashore with the rest of the crowd, had business at Cook's Bank, wandered off by himself and had been mooning by himself most of the voyage. Foster buried his muzzle deep in his brimming glass of Chianti and didn't care a billy what had become of young Ray. Gone back to the ship, probably, to sit and sulk the rest of the voyage. Obviously the quartette was out for pleasure, and Ray would have been a spoil-sport. None the less, Dwight felt that he should find him, if possible, and so went to the office. But assuredly, said the smiling, gold-banded official, the tenente departed as they were all in conversation. The tenente wished not to disturb them. The signorino went with him to his carriage and, behold! the signorino himself! Jimmy, indeed, came through the portal at the moment from the Piazza Umberto side, but not the blithe, bounding, joyous Jimmy of the morning. The young face was clouded with a look the father never before had seen, and when he called and Jimmy suddenly turned and saw him, though the bright eyes lighted instantly with all the old love – perhaps, too, with some relief – the cloud did not entirely vanish, nor did the boy come bounding. He ran; he took his father's hand and looked up in his face, and when he was asked what he had done with Mr. Ray, said slowly: "Why, daddy, he isn't a bit like what I 'sposed he'd be. He only spoke to mamma a minute or two, and – I guess he isn't well. He didn't have time to speak to me – he hardly said good-by, or – anything."

"Oh, then mamma saw Mr. Ray! I'm glad of that," said Dwight, though remembering she had not mentioned it.

"Yes, on the gallery," said Jimmy. "At least, I suppose so. He came out through the corridor, and then mamma sent me after him with the gloves he had left. I wanted to ask him – " hesitated Jimmy. He did not know whether to go on or not, but he need not have worried. Papa had suddenly turned from him, turned to meet his new mamma – his beautiful young mamma, who, with bared neck and arms, in dinner toilet, was coming slowly and with trailing skirts down the broad and carpeted stairway and looking more radiant and beautiful than Jimmy ever before had seen her; she whom, a few minutes earlier, he had found on the gallery pallid and excited, trembling from weakness, perhaps. Now she had diamonds in her ears and at her creamy throat, diamonds flashing in her corsage. There were shimmer and spangle and firefly sparklings in the lustrous folds of her gown. There were starlight twinklings from the bands of those wondrous, dainty, high-heeled little "slipper shoes," as Jimmy called them. There were glowworm gems in the dark masses of her luxuriant hair. There were rich and precious stones upon her slender, clasping fingers, for Dwight had been lavish to an extent he only now began to realize, for, though his heart leaped in unison with the instant admiration and worship in his eyes, it ached in strange, dull foreboding and reproach for the thought that instantly seized him: How utterly unlike Margaret!

A moment later and the men in khaki were being presented. They had sprung to their feet at sight of the radiant vision in the doorway, where for a moment Inez seemed to hesitate. Beautiful she was beyond question, with the rich, dusky beauty of the passionate South, and they who gazed upon her marveled not at the lover worship in Dwight's deep-set eyes – at the pride with which he watched her gracious, graceful, yet half-appealing and timid acknowledgment of their soldier homage. They made way for her, and would have it that she should sit with them as they lingered a few moments over their wine. And then Farnham, their senior present, raised his glass to her with a word of soldier compliment and greeting, after the manner of the days of his forefathers, and they joined in the toast, one and all, and Inez blushed and beamed upon them, and looked up into her husband's eyes as though begging that he should speak for her, and sipped just the tiniest ripple from the brimming glass of champagne. They had not too much time, for boxes had been reserved for all their party at the Salone Margherita, and could not – would not Mrs. Dwight and the captain join them? Several of the ladies from the transport were to be with them, and now it would be incomplete without Mrs. Dwight. Again the deep, dark, lustrous eyes sought the husband's face, as though she would say in this, as in everything, he must decide. The transport was to proceed at dawn. The Hohenzollern could not be going earlier. How she would shine, this bird of paradise, among those simply-garbed army women who perforce were limited to such toilets as could be evolved from the little steamer trunks. It was Dwight who negatived the project. She would be utterly overdressed for the place and the occasion, but he based his regrets upon the long and fatiguing day, the packing that had to be done, the coming at any moment of their ship. Even now she was announced, said Jimmy, hastening in. And so the others went their way without the Dwights and joined their fellow-voyagers in their revel, the merriest group in all that laughing company, and only once or twice did someone, some gentle-hearted woman, speak the thought that more than once or twice occurred to many present: Why should Sandy Ray have withdrawn from all companionship? Someone said he had returned to the steamer – alone.

It was long after midnight when they came rippling back to the huge bulk of the troopship, with silver raining from the blades of their oars into the sparkling bosom of that wondrous bay. A joyous little flotilla of Neapolitan water craft was theirs, for they had chartered several of the clumsy, unwieldly looking, yet most serviceable barklings, each with its dusky, brown-throated oarsman. They had spent some merry hours after the long, hot voyage through Indian seas and under torrid skies. They had heard much catchy music that all could appreciate and few words, fortunately, that any could understand. They were chatting and singing and recalling the brilliant scene, the dazzling lights, the lustrous corridor and stairway of pure white marble, the coaxing, wheedling swarm of beggar children, the sharp and ever-recurrent contrast between splendid opulence and squalid misery, and as they circled under the massive overhang of their stanch and trusty ship, and one after another each merry boatload came again in full view of the frowning cone of old Vesuvius, belching lurid flame and billowing ruddy streams of molten lava from its crest, some sweet-voiced woman in the foremost boat uplifted her heart in the barcarole from "Masaniello": "Behold how brightly breaks the morning," and, though morning was yet some hours away, here but a league or two across the star-reflecting deep and under the shoulder of the mountain furnace lay the vine-covered walls of Portici, where first was trilled that exquisite welcome to Aurora. And so with music and merriment and laughter, homeward bound from distant service in defense of a beloved flag, they came trooping up the side, the opulence of their gladness all the sharper contrast to the dull apathy of one lone watcher who shrank from their approach and sought seclusion across the deck and in the shadow of the long boat.

Ray was not in his stateroom when Foster bustled thither to inquire. Ray had returned some hours before, said the ship's official on duty. Ray was not found, however, until nearly four bells, when Foster, who had smoked too much to feel sleepy and wished to "stay up and see Vesuvius, anyhow," made an extended inspection of the silent deck. Foster had taken it amiss that Ray should seem so downhearted and be so uncompanionable. Foster felt that the time had come when, in the absence of Sandy's own, he (Foster) should assume paternal rights, or at least those of elder brother, and take the youngster to task. Here and there about the big ship he found, in knots of two or three, silent or conversing in low tone, comrades of the commissioned list or of the ranks, unwilling to seek their berths so long as so gorgeous a panorama lasted. These were ranged along the starboard side, where best they could study that superb sweep of shore line, of light and shadow, of slope and mountain, of curving strand – white, flashing in the moonbeams, of twinkling villages low-lying, of distant, rock-ribbed isles, but among these worshipers there was no Ray.

It was over on the other – the dark, the port – side, and all alone, sprawled in a steamer chair he had lugged to the upper deck and the shadow of the big boat, that Foster came upon the lad. His field glasses were in his hand; his eyes fixed dreamily upon the dwindling, diminishing night lights of the westward suburbs, and Foster hailed brusquely. It was time to jar the boy out of his mooning:

"Hello, Sandy! Where on earth have you been all night?"

"Nowhere," was the short reply.

"Where on sea then, if you will be captious?"

"Oh, admiring scenery," and Sandy yawned suggestively.

"Scenery is all on t'other side, man! Nothing here but ships and shore lights."

"Well – that's what I'm – looking at."

Foster turned sulkily. He disliked being "stood off" by anybody, especially a youngster. Dimly in the soft moonlight the sleeping city lay outspread before him. Standing on the rail, grasping a stanchion, he could see, save where the charthouse and huge funnel interposed, the entire sweep from Posilipo at the west around almost to Sorrento. Ray, seated under the shadow of the long boat, could see only from Posilipo to a low-lying cluster of lights almost at the water's edge. That then was the Piazza Umberto, and those few twinkling, starlike sparkles to the left, dancing so merrily on the intervening wave – those were from some still open casements at the Grand. Then Foster saw what Sandy Ray was looking for, and turned and left him.

At dawn they were weighing anchor, but the big ship had not yet swung her nose to the west when Foster again appeared on the dripping deck and again found Ray almost at the same spot. Some of the same lights, a very few, were still faintly to be seen to the west of the Piazza, and Ray's signal glasses were lifted to his eyes. Aloft the sentinel stars were paling, their night watch ended. Ashore, along the quays and basin and about the Dogana, the lantern lights told of the stir of coming day and departing shipping. Beyond the heavy smoke all about the lone and threatening mountain, the skies were taking on a rose hue of their own that dulled the glow of the sluggish streams rolling ever down those scarred and desolate slopes. Near by in silvery chime ship after ship announced the passing of the night hours, the birth of the infant day, and a long, light-girdled shape, floating easily close at hand on the swelling tide, slowly changed from shadowy black to gray, from gray to violet, and finally – as the still invisible sun peered long leagues away beyond the Italian mountains, beyond the Adriatic wave, above the dim Ægean shore, and sent his flashing signals through the upper ether – from cream to snowy white, there lay the Hohenzollern, "all a taunto and impatient" for her westward voyage for "Gib," for the Azores, for home, and they of the bulkier, heavier transport envied possibly the lithe and lissome build of the famous pleasure craft, once the pride of the old German Lloyds. She might follow in the run past Ischia and Sicily. She would lead far in the chase for Sandy Hook.

"Been up all night, Sandy?" hailed Foster sharply, believing it high time to break in upon these romantic moonings.

"No," said the young soldier slowly. "I've been – down."

"Poor boy," thought Foster, as he turned away. "He looks it! Poor, nonsensical, damn little fool!"

Yet Foster was not so very big, so very wise, so very safe and sure. He had yet to know for himself much that Ray knew now.

CHAPTER IV

"SHE IS COMING HERE!"

The valley of the Minneconjou was looking its loveliest in the joyous sunshine of mid-May. The post had been enlarged to meet the needs of the increasing garrison. A colonel of infantry had been sent to assume command, there being now two of his battalions at the station and only one squadron, of four troops, of Ray's old regiment, the – th Cavalry. At any moment our friend of that name and many years, now become lieutenant-colonel in his own right, could expect orders for the Philippines, and he was ready as ever, though there were just a few reasons why he hated to go. It had been decided that Marion, his wife, hitherto his almost inseparable companion, should not venture to Manila. The detail at most would not exceed two years. It might cover only one, for it was certain that, with the coming enlargement of the army, Ray would soon be promoted to the full rank of colonel, and that would probably bring him home again, for, as things had been going in Samar and Mindanao, colonels were in that sort of campaigning about as useful as most of them in church. Keen young captains and lieutenants were in demand. Field officers, so-called, were of less account in the field than in fortified places. Occasionally a sizable column – a major's command perhaps – would push forth into the jungle, where it speedily had to split up into small detachments, probing in single file, and in pursuit of scattering bands of ladrones or banditti, the bamboo or the mountain trail. Moreover, much of the vim and spirit had been taken out of the soldiery, officers and men, old and young, by the fate of the more daring and energetic of their number, who had fallen victims, not to lance or bullet of lurking foe at the front, but rather "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" at the rear. A powerful party at home had shown far more concern over the alleged ill-treatment of the few insurgent bands than their actual treachery to our men-at-arms. Officers and men listened in silence to the public rebukes and sentences administered to the leaders who had shed their gloves and fought the insurrecto with weapons far more effective, yet infinitely less deadly, than fire and steel. Officers and men in silence set forth upon their next ordered expedition, and in silence returned and announced the result – practically nothing. Elusive and flitting little bands of native warriors, vanishing like shadows among the thickets, were not to be trapped by the methods prescribed for dealing with an army arrayed in front of Washington. "Don't come unless you have to," wrote Major Blake from the hospital at Manila to Billy Ray at Minneconjou. "The courts-martial of Hill and Dale and Langham have taken the heart out of our fellows. The young officers say they dare not go out for fear they might do some damage somewhere."

So Ray, who had fought Indians all over the West for many a year – sometimes, it is true, coming in for a Puritanical scorching from press and pulpit in far New England, where, two hundred years ago, with prayerful zest our forefathers burned witches at the stake and put Pequots to the sword – now found himself shrinking from the task of tackling savages with gloves who treated men without mercy. Marion, as has been said, was not to accompany him to the Islands and be near to counsel and to comfort. She was not too well now, and had had many an anxiety. Billy, Junior, when he should have been studying for West Point, had been spooning over a pretty girl not yet in long dresses, and Sandy, their firstborn, the soldier boy, had come home from the Islands wounded in body and soul. The scar of the bullet would not be long healing, but the sting of that other shock and sorrow, who could say what that might yet import? for Sandy would not speak of it. Sandy would not so much as refer to his brief dream of bliss and the girl that inspired it. Sandy had come to them at Minneconjou to recuperate, detached from his own regiment "for such light duty as he might be able to perform" with his father's squadron of the old – th. Sandy was a sad and silent man. "Let him alone to beat it out in time," said the soldier-father. "It is the only way." But Marion's mother heart yearned over her boy and his wordless sorrowing. He must have loved that beautiful but unprincipled creature with all his fervent young heart.

Colonel Stone, who was now in command at Minneconjou, had known the Rays for years and was firmly their friend. Without so much as a hint from any source, he had divined that Sandy's low spirits were not the result of that bullet wound. He could not but note the solicitude with which his cavalry friend and oft-time fellow-campaigner regarded the silent young soldier, his eldest son. Colonel Stone had suggested at first that Sandy be put at surveying the reservation – something to keep him long hours each day in the open air. But barely six months had elapsed since the Engineers, under orders from department headquarters, had completed with chain, rod and transit thorough plotting of the six mile square, to the end that a very finely finished map was received almost at the time the colonel first broached the subject. Sandy could not yet take part in the sharp mounted drills that were his father's delight. Something had to be done to give him measurably congenial occupation. He could not play tennis, croquet or billiards. He would not play poker or find solace in Scotch highballs. He might have derived some comfort from reading and study, but Priscilla was beset with desire to prescribe his reading and guide his studies, for Priscilla, being several years his senior in age and many volumes his superior in reading, was ever mindful of the mission which no conscientious woman should be without. Priscilla had thought to start a school for the children of the garrison, but found that many of the elders were driven every day to town and its high school, while most of the mites were corraled each morning in the basement of the post chapel, pupils of a sergeant schoolmaster whose success had been quite remarkable, so much so that parents were reluctant – and their progeny rebellious – when other and more modern methods, Priscilla's, were suggested. It must be owned that the little ones from the start found Miss Sanford unsympathetic, if not impossible. Children love being catechized as little as do their elders, and they resented it that this somewhat prim, yet by no means unprepossessing, spinster should consider it her duty and her privilege to cross-question them as to their infantile responsibilities and, all uninvited, to undertake supervision of their noisy sports. Finding no opening for a day school, Miss Sanford had sought to interest the weans in an afternoon reading class. The first day or two the major's spacious quarters were well filled, so were the children with alluring goodies they could thoroughly appreciate. But when sermons began to take the place of sandwiches, and moral admonitions and questionings were administered in lieu of lemonade and lady-fingers, Miss Sanford's kindergarten dissolved in air and the would-be gentle monitress in disappointed tears. Uncle Will had whimsically striven to console her with the promise of better luck when school stopped in June, but Aunt Marion had smilingly though silently shaken her head. She knew Priscilla's propensities of old. She had convictions, said Aunt Marion, and theories as to how children should be taught to see the serious side of life. Priscilla was suffering from an accumulation of pent-up zeal and enthusiasm that was yet to find an outlet.

Then one day the outlet came.

Lieutenant Parker, "Exchange officer," so-called, was suddenly ordered to duty at West Point, and Colonel Stone asked Sandy Ray if he would take his place. "Strictly speaking," said he, "I should name one of my own officers, but I have other work for all of them, and lots of it. You have really very little else just now that you can do, except, perhaps, go to stables."

Now, if there was one institution more than another at Minneconjou against which Priscilla Sanford had set her seal, it was the post Exchange. In all her months of residence under Uncle Will's, the major's, roof, never once had the others there sheltered forgotten the day of her first acquaintance with the subject. Sandy was still beyond seas, but Billy, Junior, was of the household when, just as they took their place at table for luncheon, the husband and father spoke:

"Maidie wife, they have some capital cider at the Canteen and I ordered some sent over."

Miss Sanford looked up inquiringly over her poised spoonful of soup.

"The – Canteen?" she asked.

"Yes. The Post Exchange, it is called officially. It's the post shop, restaurant, club, amusement hall, etc.," answered the head of the house, while Marion, his wife, glanced just a trifle nervously at her niece.

"But why – Canteen? It isn't, is it, a – bar?" And Miss Sanford's tone betrayed the depth of her disapprobation of the name.

"Yes, and no," said Uncle Will pleasantly, his dark eyes twinkling under their heavy brows and lashes. He rather liked to have 'Cilla mount her successive hobbies, and thought it better, as a rule, to let her air her theories first in the sanctity of the family circle. "After experimenting a hundred years or so we found it wiser to prescribe the drinks as well as the meats of our men, and to provide a place for them at home where they can have rational amusement and refreshment, rather than send them out into the world where they get the worst of everything."

"But, uncle, do you mean you let – you encourage – these young soldiers to – drink?" And the slender gold chain of Miss Sanford's intellectual pince nez began to quiver, as did the lady's sensitive nostrils.

"Encourage? No! Let? Yes, so long as it is nothing but sound beer or light wine – things we buy for them from the most reliable dealers and provide them practically at cost. You see they have their own clubroom, and billiards, checkers, chess, dominoes, coffee, cake and sandwiches. It keeps them here. It helps and contents them. They can't drink more than is good for them."

"Is it good for them that they should drink – at all?" demanded Priscilla.

"Possibly not. The ascetic in everything would be, physically perhaps, the ideal soldier. But precious few soldiers are ascetics, though many are total abstainers."

"Then why not all, since it is best for so many?"

"Because, 'Cilla, a large number refuse to be abstainers, and we can't make them. They won't enlist or serve if such conditions are imposed. If forbidden to use mild and carefully selected stimulant here they will go elsewhere and get the vilest the frontier can furnish, to the ruin of their stomachs, reputation and moral nature. We teach temperance – not intolerance."

But Priscilla had been reared in the shadow of the stanch old Calvanistic church and the strictest of schools.

"I – cannot see how you dare place such temptation in their way," said she. "You thereby take their souls in the hollow of your hand and become responsible – Oh!" – with a shudder of genuine distress and repugnance – "I knew – I had heard – there was drinking; but I never supposed it was countenanced, encouraged by – by those who ought to be their shield against such temptation and trouble." And here Priscilla's words were oddly reminiscent of the editorial columns of the Banner of Light and certain other most excellent organs of the Prohibition element.

"We do it to keep them from vastly worse temptation and trouble, Priscilla," said the veteran soldier kindly, and signaling Marion not to interpose. "You are right, dear, in the abstract, but we have to deal with men as we find them. We would be glad indeed of ideals, but the ideal doesn't, as a rule, enlist."

"The Bible teaches us it stingeth like an adder," said Priscilla solemnly, with suggestive glance at Billy, Junior, whom she but yesterday had rebuked for sipping claret at the colonel's dinner.

"The Bible also tells us Who turned water into wine at a certain marriage feast," said Uncle Will, his mustache twitching.