One last story, to show a different side of our Plattsburg activities. You know we have a cavalry camp here, and a medical department, where volunteers come exactly as to our infantry regiment. Well, Corder came back from the medicos lately, where he went to visit a friend, with a great tale of the mending of a cavalryman’s broken jaw by one of the volunteer surgeons, a Boston dentist. Corder, being professor-like in appearance, was not detected as an impostor, and stood close at hand in the ring of doctors who watched the clinic.
“It was done under field conditions,” said he, “the operator using only an alcohol lamp, a small pair of nippers, and about eight inches of ordinary electric light wire, which happened to be handy. The insulation was scraped from the cable, and its various fine wires were burned clean in the flame of the lamp. The rookie was then put on a table in the company street, and the doctor took a turn with one of the fine wires around a tooth behind the break, twisting the ends together. The same was done with a tooth in front of the break; and then in the upper jaw wires were twisted around teeth above the lower two. An assistant then held the broken jaw in place, and the doctor twisted tight together the wires from the lower back tooth and the upper front tooth, and then those from the upper back tooth and the lower front tooth. He cut off the ends, made all smooth, and the work was done, all in a very few minutes. The jaw could not move, and was bound to heal perfectly. The doctors all said they never had seen anything so simple or so clever.”
We thought the same; Clay, as a budding doctor, was envious of Corder for having seen it. “Too bad for the chap to lose the hike,” said Bannister.
“He won’t lose it!” replied Corder. “The fellow can drink, of course. He can get any liquid, or even a cereal or a stew, around behind his back teeth, so he’s simply going right along with us.”
So much for smartness, and for grit!
The showers lasting long enough to spoil conferences, and then the sky clearing, I went this evening to say good-by to Vera, which I had half promised to do. David, by the way, to whom a social duty used to be sacred, called yesterday afternoon, as Knudsen suggested, and was manfully relieved to find her out. But I found her in, and alone. She told me that her sister Frances was coming, made rather a point of it, expecting me to manage to see her, though on the hike how can I? There was a delightful old colonel there, who rather took to me, and when on the coming of Lieutenant Pendleton I naturally tried to make myself scarce, the colonel took me into his study to show me the service pistol that they used in his day. And when finally I took my leave of him, on my way out (missing the front door and blundering into the parlor) I ran into the most distressing sort of scene.
Pendleton and Kirby were both there, and the captain having his hat in his hand, I imagine he’d only just come. The lieutenant was fiery red; I think I know the look of a man when he’s been turned down, and I saw it in his face. Vera was in that cold and lofty mood of hers when nothing counts but the idea she has in mind; no one seeing her so would think she ever again could be gentle or tender—poor Vera, with all her struggles to perfect herself, and yet with so much manner, yes and so much headstrong will, hiding it all. It seemed as if she had called the captain to witness, perhaps to agree in, something she had just announced; you know it, mother, that old idea of hers that caused me such years of effort. I heard the words just as I parted the curtains, and they stopped me dead.
“A man should be able to offer a woman the best that there is.”
Pendleton with his head hanging low, Kirby gone white under his tan and looking as if he had been shot through the heart—but that was not all. Vera herself looked sick and—there is no other word than desperate. Explain it if you can. All I could do was to find my way out as quickly and silently as I could.
I went across the parade-ground and walked up and down by the lake, to still my many memories. Poor Vera! She is still groping, having a woman’s instincts but yet suppressing them. If only the right man could show her her true self, she is so honest she would recognize it. But where is he? or how could he get to know the heart which she herself does not understand?