Books: Ranson\'s Folly
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Richard Harding Davis >> Ranson\'s Folly
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"It's Sunday," exclaimed the captain. He pointed with his finger at
the decks of the battleships, where hundreds of snow-white figures
had gone to quarters. "It's church service," he said, "or it's
general inspection."
Channing looked at his watch. It was thirty minutes past nine. "It's
church service," he said. "I can see them carrying out the chaplain's
reading-desk on the Indiana." The press-boat pushed her way nearer
into the circle of battleships until their leaden-hued hulls towered
high above her. On the deck of each, the ship's company stood, ranged
in motionless ranks. The calm of a Sabbath morning hung about them,
the sun fell upon them like a benediction, and so still was the air
that those on the press-boat could hear, from the stripped and naked
decks, the voices of the men answering the roll-call in rising
monotone, "one, two, three, FOUR; one, two, three, FOUR." The white-
clad sailors might have been a chorus of surpliced choir-boys.
But, up above them, the battle-flags, slumbering at the mast-heads,
stirred restlessly and whimpered in their sleep.
Out through the crack in the wall of mountains, where the sea runs in
to meet the waters of Santiago Harbor, and from behind the shield of
Morro Castle, a great, gray ship, like a great, gray rat, stuck out
her nose and peered about her, and then struck boldly for the open
sea. High before her she bore the gold and blood-red flag of Spain,
and, like a fugitive leaping from behind his prison-walls, she raced
forward for her freedom, to give battle, to meet her death.
A shell from the Iowa shrieked its warning in a shrill crescendo, a
flutter of flags painted their message against the sky. "The enemy's
ships are coming out," they signalled, and the ranks of white-clad
figures which the moment before stood motionless on the decks, broke
into thousands of separate beings who flung themselves, panting, down
the hatchways, or sprang, cheering, to the fighting-tops.
Heavily, but swiftly, as islands slip into the water when a volcano
shakes the ocean-bed, the great battle-ships buried their bows in the
sea, their sides ripped apart with flame and smoke, the thunder of
their guns roared and beat against the mountains, and, from the
shore, the Spanish forts roared back at them, until the air between
was split and riven. The Spanish war-ships were already scudding
clouds of smoke, pierced with flashes of red flame, and as they fled,
fighting, their batteries rattled with unceasing, feverish fury. But
the guns of the American ships, straining in pursuit, answered
steadily, carefully, with relentless accuracy, with cruel
persistence. At regular intervals they boomed above the hurricane of
sound, like great bells tolling for the dead.
It seemed to Channing that he had lived through many years; that the
strain of the spectacle would leave its mark upon his nerves forever.
He had been buffeted and beaten by a storm of all the great emotions;
pride of race and country, pity for the dead, agony for the dying,
who clung to blistering armor-plates, or sank to suffocation in the
sea; the lust of the hunter, when the hunted thing is a fellow-man;
the joys of danger and of excitement, when the shells lashed the
waves about him, and the triumph of victory, final, overwhelming and
complete.
Four of the enemy's squadron had struck their colors, two were on the
beach, broken and burning, two had sunk to the bottom of the sea, two
were in abject flight. Three battle-ships were hammering them with
thirteen-inch guns. The battle was won.
"It's all over," Channing said. His tone questioned his own words.
The captain of the tugboat was staring at the face of his silver
watch, as though it were a thing bewitched. He was pale and panting.
He looked at Channing, piteously, as though he doubted his own
senses, and turned the face of the watch toward him.
"Twenty minutes!" Channing said. "Good God! Twenty minutes!"
He had been to hell and back again in twenty minutes. He had seen an
empire, which had begun with Christopher Columbus and which had
spread over two continents, wiped off the map in twenty minutes. The
captain gave a sudden cry of concern. "Mr. Keating," he gasped. "Oh,
Lord, but I forgot Mr. Keating. Where is Mr. Keating?"
"I went below twice," Channing answered. "He's insensible. See what
you can do with him, but first--take me to the Iowa. The Consolidated
Press will want the 'facts.'"
In the dark cabin the captain found Keating on the floor, where
Channing had dragged him, and dripping with the water which Channing
had thrown in his face. He was breathing heavily, comfortably. He was
not concerned with battles.
With a megaphone, Channing gathered his facts from an officer of the
Iowa, who looked like a chimney-sweep, and who was surrounded by a
crew of half-naked pirates, with bodies streaked with sweat and
powder.
Then he ordered all steam for Port Antonio, and, going forward to the
chart-room, seated himself at the captain's desk, and, pushing the
captain's charts to the floor, spread out his elbows, and began to
write the story of his life.
In the joy of creating it, he was lost to all about him. He did not
know that the engines, driven to the breaking-point, were filling the
ship with their groans and protests, that the deck beneath his feet
was quivering like the floor of a planing-mill, nor that his fever
was rising again, and feeding on his veins. The turmoil of leaping
engines and of throbbing pulses was confused with the story he was
writing, and while his mind was inflamed with pictures of warring
battle-ships, his body was swept by the fever, which overran him like
an army of tiny mice, touching his hot skin with cold, tingling taps
of their scampering feet.
From time to time the captain stopped at the door of the chart-room
and observed him in silent admiration. To the man who with difficulty
composed a letter to his family, the fact that Channing was writing
something to be read by millions of people, and more rapidly than he
could have spoken the same words, seemed a superhuman effort. He even
hesitated to interrupt it by an offer of food.
But the fever would not let Channing taste of the food when they
placed it at his elbow, and even as he pushed it away, his mind was
still fixed upon the paragraph before him. He wrote, sprawling across
the desk, covering page upon page with giant hieroglyphics, lighting
cigarette after cigarette at the end of the last one, but with his
thoughts far away, and, as he performed the act, staring
uncomprehendingly at the captain's colored calendar pinned on the
wall before him. For many months later the Battle of Santiago was
associated in his mind with a calendar for the month of July,
illuminated by a colored picture of six white kittens in a basket.
At three o'clock Channing ceased writing and stood up, shivering and
shaking with a violent chill. He cursed himself for this weakness,
and called aloud for the captain.
"I can't stop now," he cried. He seized the rough fist of the captain
as a child clings to the hand of his nurse.
"Give me something," he begged. "Medicine, quinine, give me something
to keep my head straight until it's finished. Go, quick," he
commanded. His teeth were chattering, and his body jerked with sharp,
uncontrollable shudders. The captain ran, muttering, to his medicine-
chest.
"We've got one drunken man on board," he said to the mate, "and now
we've got a crazy one. You mark my words, he'll go off his head at
sunset."
But at sunset Channing called to him and addressed him sanely. He
held in his hand a mass of papers carefully numbered and arranged,
and he gave them up to the captain as though it hurt him to part with
them.
"There's the story," he said. "You've got to do the rest. I can't--I-
-I'm going to be very ill." He was swaying as he spoke. His eyes
burned with the fever, and his eyelids closed of themselves. He
looked as though he had been heavily drugged.
"You put that on the wire at Port Antonio," he commanded, faintly;
"pay the tolls to Kingston. From there they are to send it by way of
Panama, you understand, by the Panama wire."
"Panama!" gasped the captain. "Good Lord, that's two dollars a word."
He shook out the pages in his hand until he found the last one. "And
there's sixty-eight pages here," he expostulated. "Why the tolls will
be five thousand dollars!" Channing dropped feebly to the bench of
the chart-room and fell in a heap, shivering and trembling.
"I guess it's worth it," he murmured, drowsily.
The captain was still staring at the last page.
"But--but, look here," he cried, "you've--you've signed Mr. Keating's
name to it! 'James R. Keating.' You've signed his name to it!"
Channing raised his head from his folded arms and stared at him
dully.
"You don't want to get Keating in trouble, do you?" he asked with
patience. "You don't want the C. P. to know why he couldn't write the
best story of the war? Do you want him to lose his job? Of course you
don't. Well, then, let it go as his story. I won't tell, and see you
don't tell, and Keating won't remember."
His head sank back again upon his crossed arms. "It's not a bad
story," he murmured.
But the captain shook his head; his loyalty to his employer was still
uppermost. "It doesn't seem right!" he protested. "It's a sort of a
liberty, isn't it, signing another man's name to it, it's a sort of
forgery."
Channing made no answer. His eyes were shut and he was shivering
violently, hugging himself in his arms.
A quarter of an hour later, when the captain returned with fresh
quinine, Channing sat upright and saluted him.
"Your information, sir," he said, addressing the open door politely,
"is of the greatest value. Tell the executive officer to proceed
under full steam to Panama. He will first fire a shot across her
bows, and then sink her!" He sprang upright and stood for a moment,
sustained by the false strength of the fever. "To Panama, you hear
me!" he shouted. He beat the floor with his foot. "Faster, faster,
faster," he cried. "We've got a great story! We want a clear wire, we
want the wire clear from Panama to City Hall. It's the greatest story
ever written--full of facts, facts, facts, facts for the Consolidated
Press--and Keating wrote it. I tell you, Keating wrote it. I saw him
write it. I was a stoker on the same ship."
The mate and crew came running forward and stood gaping stupidly
through the doors and windows of the chart-room. Channing welcomed
them joyously, and then crumpled up in a heap and pitched forward
into the arms of the captain. His head swung weakly from shoulder to
shoulder.
"I beg your pardon," he muttered, "I beg your pardon, captain, but
your engine-room is too hot. I'm only a stoker and I know my place,
sir, but I tell you, your engine-room is too hot. It's a burning
hell, sir, it's a hell!"
The captain nodded to the crew and they closed in on him, and bore
him, struggling feebly, to a bunk in the cabin below. In the berth
opposite, Keating was snoring peacefully.
After the six weeks' siege the Fruit Company's doctor told Channing
he was cured, and that he might walk abroad. In this first walk he
found that, during his illness, Port Antonio had reverted to her
original condition of complete isolation from the world, the press-
boats had left her wharves, the correspondents had departed from the
veranda of her only hotel, the war was over, and the Peace
Commissioners had sailed for Paris. Channing expressed his great
gratitude to the people of the hotel and to the Fruit Company's
doctor. He made it clear to them that if they ever hoped to be paid
those lesser debts than that of gratitude which he still owed them,
they must return him to New York and Newspaper Row. It was either
that, he said, or, if they preferred, he would remain and work out
his indebtedness, checking bunches of bananas at twenty dollars a
month. The Fruit Company decided it would be paid more quickly if
Channing worked at his own trade, and accordingly sent him North in
one of its steamers. She landed him in Boston, and he borrowed five
dollars from the chief engineer to pay his way to New York.
It was late in the evening of the same day when he stepped out of the
smoking-car into the roar and riot of the Grand Central Station. He
had no baggage to detain him, and, as he had no money either, he made
his way to an Italian restaurant where he knew they would trust him
to pay later for what he ate. It was a place where the newspaper men
were accustomed to meet, men who knew him, and who, until he found
work, would lend him money to buy a bath, clean clothes, and a hall
bedroom.
Norris, the World man, greeted him as he entered the door of the
restaurant, and hailed him with a cry of mingled fright and pleasure.
"Why, we didn't know but you were dead," he exclaimed. "The boys said
when they left Kingston you weren't expected to live. Did you ever
get the money and things we sent you by the Red Cross boat?"
Channing glanced at himself and laughed.
"Do I look it?" he asked. He was wearing the same clothes in which he
had slept under the fruit-sheds at Port Antonio. They had been soaked
and stained by the night-dews and by the sweat of the fever.
"Well, it's great luck, your turning up here just now," Norris
assured him, heartily. "That is, if you're as hungry as the rest of
the boys are who have had the fever. You struck it just right; we're
giving a big dinner here to-night," he explained, "one of Maria's
best. You come in with me. It's a celebration for old Keating, a
farewell blow-out."
Channing started and laughed.
"Keating?" he asked. "That's funny," he said. "I haven't seen him
since--since before I was ill."
"Yes, old Jimmie Keating. You've got nothing against him, have you?"
Channing shook his head vehemently, and Norris glanced back
complacently toward the door of the dining-room, from whence came the
sound of intimate revelry.
"You might have had, once," Norris said, laughing; "we were all up
against him once. But since he's turned out such a wonder and a war-
hero, we're going to recognize it. They're always saying we newspaper
men have it in for each other, and so we're just giving him this
subscription-dinner to show it's not so. He's going abroad, you know.
He sails to-morrow morning."
"No, I didn't know," said Channing.
"Of course not, how could you? Well, the Consolidated Press's sending
him and his wife to Paris. He's to cover the Peace negotiations
there. It's really a honeymoon-trip at the expense of the C. P. It's
their reward for his work, for his Santiago story, and the beat and
all that--"
Channing's face expressed his bewilderment.
Norris drew back dramatically.
"Don't tell me," he exclaimed, "that you haven't heard about that!"
Channing laughed a short, frightened laugh, and moved nearer to the
street.
"No," he said. "No, I hadn't."
"Yes, but, good Lord! it was the story of the war. You never read
such a story! And he got it through by Panama a day ahead of all the
other stories! And nobody read them, anyway. Why, Captain Mahan said
it was 'naval history,' and the Evening Post had an editorial on it,
and said it was 'the only piece of literature the war has produced.'
We never thought Keating had it in him, did you? The Consolidated
Press people felt so good over it that they've promised, when he
comes back from Paris, they'll make him their Washington
correspondent. He's their 'star' reporter now. It just shows you that
the occasion produces the man. Come on in, and have a drink with
him."
Channing pulled his arm away, and threw a frightened look toward the
open door of the dining-room. Through the layers of tobacco-smoke he
saw Keating seated at the head of a long, crowded table, smiling,
clear-eyed, and alert.
"Oh, no, I couldn't," he said, with sudden panic. "I can't drink;
doctor won't let me. I wasn't coming in, I was just passing when I
saw you. Good-night, I'm much obliged. Good-night."
But the hospitable Norris would not be denied.
"Oh, come in and say 'good-by' to him, anyhow," he insisted. "You
needn't stay."
"No, I can't," Channing protested. "I--they'd make me drink or eat
and the doctor says I can't. You mustn't tempt me. You say 'good-by'
to him for me," he urged. "And Norris--tell him--tell him--that I
asked you to say to him, 'It's all right,' that's all, just that,
'It's all right.' He'll understand."
There was the sound of men's feet scraping on the floor, and of
chairs being moved from their places.
Norris started away eagerly. "I guess they're drinking his health,"
he said. "I must go. I'll tell him what you said, 'It's all right.'
That's enough, is it? There's nothing more?"
Channing shook his head, and moved away from the only place where he
was sure to find food and a welcome that night.
"There's nothing more," he said.
As he stepped from the door and stood irresolutely in the twilight of
the street, he heard the voices of the men who had gathered in
Keating's honor upraised in a joyous chorus.
"For he's a jolly good fellow," they sang, "for he's a jolly good
fellow, which nobody can deny!"
LA LETTRE D'AMOUR
When Bardini, who led the Hungarian Band at the Savoy Restaurant, was
promoted to play at the Casino at Trouville, his place was taken by
the second violin. The second violin was a boy, and when he greeted
his brother Tziganes and the habitues of the restaurant with an
apologetic and deprecatory bow, he showed that he was fully conscious
of the inadequacy of his years. The maitre d'hotel glided from table
to table, busying himself in explanations.
"The boy's name is Edouard; he comes from Budapest," he said. "The
season is too late to make it worth the while of the management to
engage a new chef d'orchestre. So this boy will play. He plays very
good, but he is not like Bardini."
He was not in the least like Bardini. In appearance, Bardini
suggested a Roumanian gypsy or a Portuguese sailor; his skin was
deeply tanned, his hair was plastered on his low forehead in thick,
oily curls, and his body, through much rich living on the scraps that
fell from the tables of Girot's and the Casino des Fleurs, was stout
and gross. He was the typical leader of an orchestra condemned to
entertain a noisy restaurant. His school of music was the school of
Maxim's. To his skill with the violin he had added the arts of the
head waiter, and he and the cook ran a race for popularity, he
pampering to one taste, and the cook, with his sauces, pampering to
another. When so commanded, his pride as an artist did not prevent
him from breaking off in the middle of Schubert's Serenade to play
Daisy Bell, nor was he above breaking it off on his own accord to
salute the American patron, as he entered with the Belle of New York,
or any one of the Gaiety Girls, hurrying in late for supper, with the
Soldiers in the Park. When he walked slowly through the restaurant,
pausing at each table, his eyes, even while they ogled the women to
whom he played, followed the brother Tzigane--who was passing the
plate--and noted which of the patrons gave silver and which gave
gold.
Edouard, the second violin, was all that Bardini was not,
consequently he was entirely unsuited to lead an orchestra in a
restaurant. Indeed, so little did he understand of what was required
of him that on the only occasion when Bardini sent him to pass the
plate he was so unsophisticated as not to hide the sixpences and
shillings under the napkin, and so leave only the half-crowns and
gold pieces exposed. And, instead of smiling mockingly at those who
gave the sixpences, and waiting for them to give more, he even looked
grateful, and at the same time deeply ashamed. He differed from
Bardini also in that he was very thin and tall, with the serious,
smooth-shaven face of a priest. Except for his fantastic costume,
there was nothing about him to recall the poses of the musician: his
hair was neither long nor curly; it lay straight across his forehead
and flat on either side, and when he played, his eyes neither sought
out the admiring auditor nor invited his applause. On the contrary,
they looked steadfastly ahead. It was as though they belonged to
someone apart, who was listening intently to the music. But in the
waits between the numbers the boy's eyes turned from table to table,
observing the people in his audience. He knew nearly all of them by
sight: the head waiters who brought him their "commands," and his
brother-musicians, had often discussed them in his hearing. They
represented every city of the world, every part of the social
edifice: there were those who came to look at the spectacle, and
those who came to be looked at; those who gave a dinner for the sake
of the diners, those who dined for the dinner alone. To some the
restaurant was a club; others ventured in counting the cost, taking
it seriously, even considering that it conferred upon them some
social distinction. There were pretty women in paint and spangles,
with conscious, half-grown boys just up from Oxford; company-
promoters dining and wining possible subscribers or "guinea-pigs"
into an acquiescent state; Guardsmen giving a dinner of farewell to
brother-officers departing for the Soudan or the Cape; wide-eyed
Americans just off the steamer in high dresses, great ladies in low
dresses and lofty tiaras, and ladies of the stage, utterly
unconscious of the boon they were conferring on the people about
them, who, an hour before, had paid ten shillings to look at them
from the stalls.
Edouard, as he sat with his violin on his knee, his fingers fretting
the silent strings, observed them all without envy and without
interest. Had he been able to choose, it would not have been to such
a well-dressed mob as this that he would have given his music. For at
times a burst of laughter killed a phrase that was sacred to him, and
sometimes the murmur of the voices and the clatter of the waiters
would drown him out altogether. But the artist in him forced him to
play all things well, and for his own comfort he would assure himself
that no doubt somewhere in the room someone was listening, someone
who thought more of the strange, elusive melodies of the Hungarian
folksongs than of the chefs entrees, and that for this unknown one he
must be true to himself and true to his work. Covertly, he would seek
out some face to which he could make the violin speak--not openly and
impertinently, as did Bardini, but secretly and for sympathy, so that
only one could understand. It pleased young Edouard to see such a one
raise her head as though she had heard her name spoken, and hold it
poised to listen, and turn slowly in her chair, so completely engaged
that she forgot the man at her elbow, and the food before her was
taken away untouched. It delighted him to think that she knew that
the music was speaking to her alone. But he would not have had her
think that the musician spoke, too--it was the soul of the music, not
his soul, that was reaching out to the pretty stranger. When his soul
spoke through the music it would not be, so he assured himself, to
such chatterers as gathered on the terrace of the Savoy Restaurant.
Mrs. Warriner and her daughter were on their way home, or to one of
their homes; this one was up the Hills of Lenox. They had been in
Egypt and up the Nile, and for the last two months had been slowly
working their way north through Greece and Italy. They were in
London, at the Savoy, waiting for their sailing-day, and on the night
of their arrival young Corbin was giving them a dinner. For three
months Mrs. Warriner and himself had alternated in giving each other
dinners in every part of Southern Europe, and the gloom which hung
over this one was not due to the fact that the diners had become
wearied of one another's society, but that the opportunities still
left to them for this exchange of hospitality were almost at an end.
That night, for the hundredth time, young Corbin had decided it would
have been much better for him if they had come to an end many weeks
previous, for the part he played in the trio was a difficult one. It
was that of the lover who will not take "no" for an answer. The lover
who will take no, and goes on his way disconsolate, may live to love
another day, and everyone is content; but the one who will not have
no, who will not hear of it, nor consider it, has much to answer for
in making life a burden to himself and all around him.
When Corbin joined the Warriners on their trip up the Nile it was
considered by all of them, in their ignorance, a happy accident.
Other mothers, more worldly than Mrs. Warriner, with daughters less
attractive, gave her undeserved credit for having lured into her
party one of the young men of Boston who was most to be desired as a
son-in-law. But the mind of Mrs. Warriner, so far as Mr. Corbin was
concerned, was quite free from any such consideration; so was the
mind of the young bachelor; certainly Miss Warriner held no tender
thoughts concerning him. The families of the Warriners and the
Corbins had been friends ever since the cowpath crossed the Common.
Before Corbin entered Harvard Miss Warriner and he had belonged to
the same dancing-class. Later she had danced with him at four class-
days, and many times between. When he graduated, she had gone abroad
with her mother, and he had joined the Somerset Club, and played polo
at Pride's Crossing, and talked vaguely of becoming a lawyer, and of
re-entering Harvard by the door of the Law School, chiefly, it was
supposed, that he might have another year of the football team. He
was very young in spirit, very big and athletic, very rich, and
without a care or serious thought. Miss Warriner was to him, then, no
more than a friend; to her he was a boy, one of many nice, cultivated
Harvard boys, who occasionally called upon her and talked football.
On the face of things, she was not the sort of girl he should have
loved. But for some saving clause in him, he should have loved and
married one of the many other girls who had belonged to the same
dancing-class, who would have been known as "Mrs. Tom" Corbin, who
would have been sought after as a chaperone, and who would have stood
up in her cart when he played polo and shouted at him across the
field to "ride him off."
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