Ever After (35 page)

Then Cervera showed his nose at Martinique, and boats were rushed off after Admiral Sampson to hurry him out in time to
intercept
the Spanish Fleet before it could make port safely in Cuban waters. It was next heard of at Curaçao, where Dutch neutrality made coaling next to impossible. And then it vanished again on the blue tropical waters.

When Admiral Sampson arrived back at Key West Schley had hurried down from Hampton Roads to join him. The very next day Schley was off again towards Cienfuegos, where Cervera might head in. Fitz and Wendell were on duty with Daisy at Key West, and Bracken stayed at Tampa to sail with the Army. Daisy was to attach herself to whichever transport carried Bracken when they reached Key West, and become his only link with the cable-head at Jamaica. But the Army still could not move until Cervera was found.

He outwitted Schley, who was unduly preoccupied with his own coaling difficulties, and gained the security of Santiago harbour. By the time Sampson arrived there, fuming, Cervera was snug inside. The U.S. Navy cabled for the U.S. Army to come and take Santiago overland, and began to walk up and down off shore, daring Cervera to come out and fight, which he had no intention of doing.

On May thirtieth General Shafter got his orders from Washington to move. After all those weeks in camp the news still exploded at Tampa with the effect of a bombshell. There had been no
staff-work
on embarkation plans, and Port Tampa had but one pier at the end of that single railway track nine miles long. The harness was not with the artillery carriages, the small arms ammunition was not with the guns, the food was not labelled, the volunteer regiments were mostly without uniforms, equipment, weapons, tents, or
blankets
, and there was no transport provided for the cavalry horses. Everything promptly dissolved into profane and perspiring confusion and remained there for another solid week. Late on Monday evening, the sixth of June, a caustic War Department received what proved to be an over-optimistic telegram from General Shafter announcing that the men were being marched on board.

B
RACKEN
had laboured conscientiously at a letter to Dinah after the sailing orders came. Each one he wrote became more difficult now, because Dinah was getting older every day and every day his
impatience
and uncertainty grew. He had had a couple of narrow squeaks already, with Daisy, and going ashore with the troops was not going to be any outing. An attack on Santiago from the hills would hardly go unopposed The strongest Spanish garrison in Cuba was there, as well as the Fleet. One might as well face facts. There was going to be a fight for Santiago. Several fights. It was known that the Spanish couldn’t fight for sour apples, but if enough of them shut their eyes and fired into the American lines somebody was going to get killed. There were quite a lot of Spaniards ready to do that at Santiago.

How dull. How inexcusably, excrutiatingly dull his letters must be, as though they were written by a rather feeble-minded
undergraduate
to a half-wit child. That was what came of bottling up all your feelings, remembering Lisl, considering that Dinah was only sixteen, never forgetting that you weren’t free, always trying to sound like a favourite brother—so that if you died or lost an arm in front of Santiago there would be no scar on Dinah’s life beyond the
childish
grief she had shown at the parting in the spinney.

No, perhaps better not. Just like Alwyn or Clare to read Dinah’s
letters. He tore up the page, which began with the word
Farthingale
, and wrote more discreetly.

Well, that would have to do. Some day he would make it all up to her. Some day he would write her letters that said what he really felt about her….

On his way to the mail-box in the lobby he met Virginia, all in white with an apple-green sash and a fan and a lace parasol.

“I was looking for you,” she said, and tucked her hand under his arm. “Come and have some iced tea, my tongue is hanging out.”

She had very little to say until the tall tinkling tumblers were set before them at a table in a corner of the verandah some distance from the main stream which poured incessantly in and out of the doors of the hotel. It was bakingly hot from the sun glare in the street below, and there was everywhere the smell of horse, and coffee, and cooking, and people, and—the just plain
smell
which was Tampa in summer. The flies were myriad. Virginia fanned them off the table automatically and raised the glass to her lips. Her eyes met his over the brim.

“Bracken. Do you ever think of going back to England?”

“Often,” he admitted cheerfully.

“So
do I. Do you think we ever will?”

“Oh, come, Ginny, we’ve got the house! I have to see to the London office, too. Nelson is doing very well there, but it’s my baby, and I want to get back to it as soon as we settle this Cuban business.”

“Have you heard from Clare lately?”

“No. Had a letter from Dinah, though, in the last mail.”

“From
Dinah
! How cute. Why didn’t you tell me? What did she say?”

“Nothing much. It’s been raining. She’s read
The
Prisoner
of
Zenda
again. Archie has been down for the week-end and looked perfectly splendid.” They eyed each other silently, over the tall glasses. “Mother is wondering why on earth you turned down that nice Conover boy who is so devoted to you,” Bracken said finally.

“You know why.”

“I thought maybe I did. But I didn’t say anything about that to Mother.”

“Thanks. I’ll do as much for you some day.”

“Good,” he said, and smiled at her affectionately.

“Bracken. Have you ever been
terribly
in love? I mean, besides Lisl? I mean so you can’t sleep at night for thinking about it, and you lie there making up long, lovely conversations where the other person always says just what you want him to and never
misunderstands
anything you say, and—and—”

“Yes,” said Bracken kindly as she paused with very pink cheeks. “I’ve had it like that. And it wasn’t Lisl.”

“Did you get over it finally?”

He shook his head.

“Hm-mm.”

“Well, what do you do?”

“You wait. Like me.”

“Is it Clare?” she demanded curiously.

“Ginny, I’ll tell you a secret. I don’t care if I never see Clare again!”

Her eyes widened.

“Somebody
else
?”

“Somebody absolutely else.”

“Do I know her?”

“No.” A bare-faced lie. But she didn’t know Dinah. Not really. Not his Dinah.

Virginia returned to her glass, baffled.

“Suppose they marry somebody—and it isn’t you—while you’re waiting,” she suggested.

“You have to take that risk.”

“If you can get rid of Lisl before that happens are you going to propose?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Does she
know
?”

“Nope.”

She gazed at him with increased respect.

“You’re awfully
cheerful
about it,” she commented.

“Can’t afford to mope, Ginny. Nobody can afford to mope.
Sursum
cauda.
That means Up with the tail. Not a bad family crest, do you think?”

Virginia stirred her glass, looking down.

“At that last dance we all went to in New York I let the Conover boy kiss me—just so I could pretend it was Archie.”

His brows shot up.

“I hate to sound like a brother, but was that wise?”

“No. It wasn’t. He thought we were engaged, and I had a terrible time getting out of it.”

“I should think so!” said Bracken.

“Besides, it didn’t work. He was shaking all over. Archie wouldn’t be like that.” Her wide, grave eyes reproached the
beginnings
of a smile on his face. “
Would
he?”

“Probably not,” he conceded. “But I wonder how you know that.”

“I know a lot about Archie. And I can guess the rest.”

“Well, now, Ginny, no more experiments like that, hear me?”

She wrinkled a fastidious nose.

“I’ll tell you who would be all right, though, if only I hadn’t seen Archie, and that’s Johnny Malone,” she confessed. “I like Johnny a lot, since he’s been in the Army. It’s improved him.
Now
why are you looking like a brother?”

“Well, here goes, I suppose it’s my duty,” he sighed. “Look, Ginny, it’s Archie you want, isn’t it. Then why don’t you let Johnny go?”

“
Let
him go!” cried Virginia indignantly. “Well, I like that! Johnny simply—”

“I know, I know, Johnny simply loves you to trample on him! But it’s not fair, as things are. You’ll go off to England and land Archie one of these days and then where will Johnny be?
Meanwhile
, if you don’t dangle him he might find somebody to be happy with.”

“What shall I do, then, tell him I’m in love with a man who has forgotten I exist?”

“How do you know he has?” Bracken objected.

She shrugged—a small, pathetic hopeless movement of her slim shoulders.

“He has given me no legal evidence to the contrary. I never thought I’d be like this, but I’m as bad as Phoebe is about Miles. Have you noticed the way she watches him, as though she couldn’t even make up her mind to laugh without waiting to see if Miles is amused? It’s
abject
! I never meant to fall in love
all
the
way
—I meant—”

“You meant to cheat, eh?” he accused her grimly. “Well, it serves you right, that’s all, and now you know. Most of us do learn sooner or later. You’re lucky it’s not later. It’s your own fault now, if ever you have to make do with second best.”

“If he’ll have me,” she said humbly. “What do I
do
that’s wrong?
Edward
likes me!”

“Edward has to finance the title, with all due respect to you. Maybe Archie is afraid you’ll think he’s fortune-hunting.”

“Oh, Bracken, he couldn’t be such a chump! As if I cared about the money, I’ll get Father to cut me off with a shilling!”

“Now, don’t let’s do anything hasty,” Bracken grinned. “I’ll think of something, just give
me time. It it’s really Archie you want,
then Archie’s number is up, and I’ll stick by you till we get him!” He reached out a hand to her across the table, and she put hers in it quickly and their fingers gripped.

“Here’s luck to you too,” she said. “And now I think you ought to go upstairs. Mother is awfully worried.”

“I will. Are they sure yet?”

“Yes. It’s the fever again.”

Cabot had gone down that morning under another attack of his old enemy malaria.

B
Y TH
E
night of the seventh, when everyone was ordered aboard the transports, Cabot was worse and his heart was giving trouble. Bracken left the hotel at the last possible moment and found the railroad a quite indescribable scene, and became at once, in spite of his anxiety, the complete reporter.

Word had gone round the regiments that the transports were
sailing
from Tampa port at daybreak the next morning for an unknown destination. How the men were to get aboard them had apparently been left to the enterprise of the men themselves or their immediate commanders. Where other armies might have collapsed into
bewildered
inertia or taken to fighting amongst themselves for the limited transportation, the American troops turned that night into hilarious pandemonium, with fairly successful results.

The Ninth Infantry stole a wagon train from the Sixth, which had not got itself together fast enough to protect its property. The Seventy-first New York took possession of a railway train belonging to the Thirteenth Infantry, who in their turn commandeered some cattle cars and a wood-burning locomotive, and thus beat the Twenty-first and Twenty-fourth to the pier, cheering themselves triumphantly as they pulled in.

The Rough Riders had arrived at Tampa only three days earlier. With the usual idiocy of the Florida railway management, the
regiment
had been dumped out of the train about eight miles from their camping site, which was a cavalry drill ground not far to the rear of the hotel. They rode through the town in rather loose troop
formation
, their practical, dust-coloured khaki outfits envied by the Regulars, who sweltered in canonical blue wool. It was also reported that their guns were the new Krag-Jorgenson carbines which used smokeless powder.

Miles Day was among them, in K troop—which consisted mostly
of supposed dudes from the universities and eastern cities. He came round to the hotel as soon as he could and they all said how tanned he was and how he had
grown,
and Eden gave him all the gifts from home—Phoebe had sent him a copy of
Soldiers
of
Fortune
—and he heard with passionate interest all the latest news from Charlottes-ville and Williamsburg. In return he described the fantastic tangle at the camp, with the railroad unloading their baggage just where it pleased or where the jam made it possible, and how there had been no regular issue of food for days—the officers had had to buy the men’s food out of their own pockets, Miles said. And always his wistful, dazzled eyes had kept going back to Virginia, who was
wearing
pale blue
mousseline
de
soie.