One day, just before their intended departure, she drove out paying parting calls. It was quite late when the carriage drew up at the Market Street entrance, the nearest to their elevator. The door boy sprang across the sidewalk to open the carriage, and as she stepped wearily out, a tall young man, erect and slender, dressed in a dark traveling suit, fairly confronted her, raised his derby, and said: “You can give me ten minutes now, Mrs. Frost. Be good enough to take my arm.”
Bowing her head she strove to dodge by, but it was useless. Again he confronted her. Piteously she looked up into his pale, stern face and clasped her hands. “Oh, Rollin,” she cried, “give me my letters. I dare not—see you. Have mercy—” and down again she went in a senseless heap upon the stone. Colonel and Mrs. Frost did not sail with the Empress of India. Brain fever set in and for three weeks the patient never left the hotel. Frost made his wife’s dangerous illness the basis of an application to be relieved from the Manila detail, but, knowing well it would be late summer before the troops could be assembled there in sufficient force to occupy the city, and that his clerks and books had gone by transport with the second expedition in June, the War Department compromised on a permission to delay. By the time the fourth expedition was ready to start there was no further excuse; moreover, the doctors declared the sea voyage was just what Mrs. Frost needed, and again their stateroom was engaged by the Empress line, and, though weak and languid, Mrs. Frost was able to appear in the dining-room. Meanwhile a vast amount of work was saddled on the department to which Frost was attached, and daily he was called upon to aid the local officials or be in consultation with the commanding general. This would have left Mrs. Frost to the ministrations of her nurse alone, but for the loving kindness of army women in the hotel. They hovered about her room, taking turns in spending the afternoon with her, or the evening, for it was speedily apparent that she had a nervous dread of being left by herself, “or even with her husband,” said the most observing. Already it had been whispered that despite his assiduous care and devotion during her illness, something serious was amiss. Everybody had heard of the adventure which had preceded her alarming illness. Everybody knew that she had been accosted and confronted by a strange young man, at sight of whom she had pleaded piteously a minute and then fainted dead away. By this time, too, there were or had been nearly a dozen of the graduating class in town—classmates of Rollin Latrobe—their much-loved “Pat”—and speedily the story was told of his devotion to her when she was Nita Terriss, of their correspondence, of their engagement to be married on his graduation, which in strict confidence he had imparted to his roommate, who kept it inviolate until after her sudden union with Colonel Frost and poor “Pat’s” equally sudden disappearance. Everybody, Frost included, knew that the young man who had accosted her must be Latrobe, and Frost by this time knew that it must have been he who caused her shock at the Arlington. He raged in his jealous heart. He employed detectives to find the fellow, swearing he would have him arrested. He became morose and gloomy, for all the arts by which Mrs. Garrison persuaded him that Nita looked up to him with admiration and reverence that would speedily develop into wifely love were now proved to be machinations. He knew that Nita feared him, shrank from him and was very far from loving him, and he believed that despite her denials and fears and protestations she loved young Latrobe. He wrote angrily, reproachfully to Margaret, who, now that her fish was hooked, did not greatly exert herself to soothe or reassure him. That he could ever use violence to one so sweet and fragile as Nita she would not believe for an instant. Then the nurse, still retained, heard bitter words from the colonel as one morning she came to the door with Mrs. Frost’s breakfast, and while she paused, uncertain about entering at such a time, he rushed angrily forth and nearly collided with her. Mrs. Frost was in tears when the nurse finally entered, and the breakfast was left untouched.
Late that afternoon, just after the various trunks and boxes of the Frosts that were to go by the transport were packed and ready, and Mrs. Frost, looking stronger at last, though still fragile, almost ethereal, was returning from a drive with one of her friends, the attention of the two ladies was drawn to a crowd gathering rapidly on the sidewalk not far from the Baldwin Hotel. There was no shouting, no commotion, nothing but the idle curiosity of men and boys, for a young soldier, a handsome, slender, dark-eyed, dark-complexioned fellow of twenty-one or two, had been arrested by a patrol and there they stood, the sergeant and his two soldiers fully armed and equipped, the hapless captive with his arms half filled with bundles, and over the heads of the little throng the ladies could see that he was pleading earnestly with his captors, and that the sergeant, though looking sympathetic and far from unkind, was shaking his head. Mrs. Frost, listless and a little fatigued, had witnessed too many such scenes in former days of garrison life to take any interest in the proceeding. “How stupid these people are!” she irritably exclaimed. “Running like mad and blocking the streets to see a soldier arrested for absence from camp without a pass. Shan’t we drive on?”
“Oh—just one moment, please, Mrs. Frost. He has such a nice face—a gentleman’s face, and he seems so troubled. Do look at it!”
Languidly and with something very like a pout, Mrs. Frost turned her face again toward the sidewalk, but by this time the sergeant had linked an arm in that of the young soldier and had led him a pace or two away, so that his back was now toward the carriage. He was still pleading, and the crowd had begun to back him up, and was expostulating, too.
“Awe, take him where he says, sergeant, and let him prove it.”
“Don’t be hard on him, man. If he’s taking care of a sick friend give ’m a chance.”
Then the sergeant tried to explain matters. “I can’t help myself, gentlemen,” said he; “orders are orders, and mine are to find this recruit and fetch him back to camp. He’s two days over time now.”
“Oh, I wish I knew what it meant!” anxiously exclaimed Mrs. Frost’s companion. “I’m sure he needs help.” Then with sudden joy in her eyes—“Oh, good! There goes Colonel Crosby. He’ll see what’s amiss,” and as she spoke a tall man in the fatigue uniform of an officer of infantry shouldered his way through the crowd, and reached the blue-coated quartette in the center. Up went the hands to the shouldered rifles in salute, and the young soldier, the cause of all the gathering which the police were now trying to disperse, whirled quickly, and with something suspiciously like tears in his fine dark eyes, was seen to be eagerly speaking to the veteran officer. There was a brief colloquy, and then the colonel said something to the sergeant at which the crowd set up a cheer. The sergeant looked pleased, the young soldier most grateful, and away went the four along the sidewalk, many of the throng following.
And then the colonel caught sight of the ladies in the carriage, saw that one was signaling eagerly, and heard his name called. Hastening to their side, he raised his cap and smiled a cordial greeting.