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