Part 26

"You said a while ago, Carlin, 'What a kid you are!' and perhaps I am, though I think I'm an old, old party myself; but about the time I came back from the East that first time I must have been a good deal of a kid. I know now I was. That first night at the hotel, after I'd been to the fort all day, I talked to myself in good shape. And I wound up by saying: 'Well, what do you care? There are forty nice girls between this hotel and the post.' But there weren't forty. There were a hundred, as far as that went, but there was only one that I wanted to see coming over the side of my ship, and next day when I went to see that one again I set out to win her. And I'm not going to give you any history of the courtship of Doris. I couldn't tell it right if I wanted to, and I don't want to--it's our own private story, but she wasn't trifling when she told me she'd never forget me before I went East. In a week it all came back, and once more we were walking under tall pines and sailing in a beautiful bay. In another week it was as when I left her--I had hopes.

"And then came the morning of the last day of my leave, and as an ensign doesn't rate any shore duty I knew that next day it would have to be back to my ship for me; though that same ship being slated for a neighborly berth with the North Atlantic fleet, I didn't feel too discouraged. I'd be within wireless distance at least. But I did not want to go without a promise. The night before I couldn't get two minutes together with her--there being a reception in her father's quarters to somebody or other--but when I was leaving for the night she had said yes, she'd come sailing with me in the morning after breakfast. And I left the hotel at sunrise and went down to the boat-landing to overhaul the hotel's little twenty-one-footer to make sure everything would be all ready for our sail after breakfast.

"I went through the post grounds to get sight of her window in passing, and there she was--all dressed, and looking out across the bay from their veranda. 'I was just wondering if you, too, would be up early this morning, Dick,' she said. 'Do you think it is going to storm?' And I told her no, and if it did, what matter? And without waiting until after breakfast we went off for our young cruise in the bay.

"I was half hoping it would storm, so I could show her what I could do with that little boat. But there was no storm or anything like it. There did come a squall of wind and I let it come, wearing the boat around, and letting the main-sheet run. And she zizzed. And I let her zizz. Nothing could happen. She was one of those little craft with a lead keel that you couldn't capsize, which I explained to Doris, while down on her side the little thing was tearing a white path in the blue water. But Doris's people had been always army people, and she hadn't much faith in floating contraptions. She clung closer to me; and the two of us sitting together and nothing to do but watch the boat go, why--well, we sat together and let her go.

"The breeze died down until there wasn't enough of it to be called a breeze, but that was no matter. We were still sitting close together and while we sat so, I found courage to tell her what had been flooding my heart through all those nights and days in Eastern waters. And we came back to breakfast engaged. And after breakfast--" Wickett unexpectedly turned to Carlin and said, half shyly: "I suppose you still think I'm a good deal of a kid to be telling you all this?"

Carlin nodded in serene agreement. "I always thought you were a good deal of a kid. I hope you always will be. God save me from the man who isn't still a good deal of a kid at thirty. What did you do after breakfast?"

"After breakfast I went up to see Colonel Blenner, and found him on his veranda smoking his after-breakfast cigar before he went over to guard-mount. He was genial as ever; except that he put his foot down on an engagement. 'An engagement means a marriage, or should,' he says, 'and how can you marry on an ensign's pay? You with your mess bills and other expenses aboard ship, and Doris with her quarters ashore--you would never meet your bills.'

"I agreed with him, but also argued with him, and shook him some, but could not quite upset him. I left him to run back to the hotel to throw my things together. And there I found a new complication--orders were waiting me. I was to be detached from my ship and to take command of the gunboat Bayport--and a rust-eaten old kettle of a Bayport she was, famous for her disabilities; and I was to sail for Manila next morning at eight o'clock. Manila! Another jolt. I sat down and thought it out.

"And when I got talking to myself again, I said: 'Doris Blenner, you're a great girl--the best ever; but you're not superhuman. No man has a right to expect a girl to be that. You're too lovable, too human, Doris, to be the superhuman kind. I'll be away in the East Lord knows how long--another two years perhaps--and there's all those army chaps always on the job. We'll just have to be married, that's all there is to that, before I leave.'

"I was back to the post in time to join a riding-party after lunch. It was no use my trying to see her alone riding. But after the ride we slipped out onto the ramparts of the fort, and there, the pair of us sitting hand in hand and a sentry a dozen paces away trying not to see and hear us, I told her of my orders and then entered my new plea. 'All for myself, Doris,' I told her. By that time the sun was low behind us and throwing our two shadows onto where the water of the bay came gurgling up against the walls of the fort, and looking down on our shadows from the fort walls, she said at last she would marry me before I left, if papa agreed--and glad one minute and sad the next, we walked back in the twilight.

"Colors had sounded when we got back, and the colonel was dressing for dinner; but after dinner I took him out for a walk. Three laps we made around the drill-ground and then, halting him under the clump of willows down by the outer walls, I plumped it at him--what it meant to be away for months and years from your own people.

"And he heard me through, and said: 'Why, that's part of the hardship, Richard, in both arms of the service. In my day, Richard----"

"'Pardon, Colonel,' I butted in, 'pardon me, Colonel, but in your day the army people never left the country. Even when you were fighting Indians on the frontier, after all it was only the frontier and never more than a couple of thousand miles at the most to get back home. And when you were through campaigning and back in garrison, your people could come to see you. But twelve thousand miles! It isn't as if a man's within telephone call then. And when you're not to see your people for that length of time, there's danger.'

"'Danger?' He stiffens up and takes a peek at me.

"'Danger, yes sir,' I said. 'I've been out there in the islands, in a tugboat with her engines broken down and she drifting onto a beach where four hundred squatting Moros with Remington rifles were waiting hopefully for us to come ashore. Four hundred of them and five of us all told. But that's not danger, sir,' I hurries on, 'of the kind to scare a man, though it did sicken me to think I'd never see Doris again, and that perhaps it would shock her when she heard of it. But otherwise, sir, that's no danger. But when a young officer goes a thousand miles up a Chinese river in command of a gunboat, as I was this last time--gone for months on it--and being commander was everywhere received as the representative of a great country by all the governors and topside mandarins along the route. And they haven't our idea of things--a lot of things that seem wrong to us seem all right to them. They mean no harm. They intend only to be courteous and complimentary, and so they strew a fellow's path with the flowers of ease and pleasure--if he forgets himself, there's danger, Colonel,' I said. 'I sail at eight in the morning, sir. I'm to be gone I don't know how long, perhaps another two years, and--Colonel--I want a home anchor.'

"He said no word till he had finished his cigar. When he does he drops it at his feet, steps on it to put out the light, and says: 'A good argument for yourself, Richard, but what of Doris?'

"'Doris has probably done a lot of thinking in the matter, sir. Why not leave it to Doris, sir?'

"'Of course,' he said, dry as powder, 'Doris would be disinterested in this case!'

"'Then leave it to her mother, sir.'

"'I see neither logic nor prudence in your argument, Richard,' he answers at last, 'but I will leave it to her mother.' And when he said that, I knew I had won; for, without her ever telling me, I knew her mother was with us. If I had told him that, I would only have been telling what he already guessed, as he told me that same night, later.

"Anyway, after a minute with Doris and her mother, I jumped over to the hotel, and from the side of a most billowy waltz partner I detached Shorty Erroll to get the ring and the smaller stores for a proper wedding, and then I went out to bespeak my own ship's chaplain. I found him lying in his bunk in his pajamas with a History of the Tunisian Wars balanced on his chest and a wall-light just back of his head, and he says: 'Why surely, Dick,' when I told him, but added: 'Though that old sieve of a Bayport, I doubt will you ever get her as far as Manila,' after which, carefully inserting a book-mark into the Tunisians, he glides into his uniform and comes ashore with me.

"And without Doris even changing her dress we were married--in the colonel's quarters, with every officer and every member of every officer's family on the reservation--even the children--standing by. And the women said, 'How distressing, Mr. Wickett, to have to leave in the morning!' and the men said, 'Tough luck, Dick'--and be sure I thought it was tough luck, and it would have been tough luck only by this time the entire post had got busy and got word to Washington, and at eleven o'clock, while we were still at the wedding-supper, word came to delay the sailing of the gunboat for twenty-four hours. And that was followed by a telegraphic order next morning to haul the Bayport into dry dock and overhaul her."

Wickett, who had been talking rapidly, came to a full stop, while three bells were striking throughout the fleet.

"Nine-thirty," said Wickett. "I thought I saw a steamer's light beyond the breakwater."

Carlin looked where he pointed. "I don't, but I haven't your eyes. How long was the respite?"

"In ten days they had her afloat again. I thanked my God-given luck for every flying minute of those ten days."

"And did she stay afloat long enough to get to Manila?"

"Oh, yes. She wasn't half bad. Needed a little nursing in heavy weather, but outside of that she wasn't hopeless at all."