It sent the luckless Gothamite away just at the time of all others he most wished to remain. When he returned, within a dozen days, the first thing was to submit his written report, already prepared aboard ship. The next was to report himself in person at Colonel Brent's, to be asked into the presence of the girl he loved and longed to see, and, as has been told, ushered out almost immediately, self-detailed, in search of Sandy.
He had found the lad easily enough, but not so the man with the fit, whom, for reasons of his own and from what he had seen and heard, Stuyvesant was most anxious to overtake. His carriage whirled him rapidly past the parade-ground and over to the First Reserve Hospital, whither he thought the victim had been borne, but no civilian, with or without fits, had recently been admitted.
Inquiry among convalescent patients and soldiers along the road without resulted at last in his finding one of the party that carried the stricken man from the field. He had come to, said the volunteer, before they had gone quarter of a mile, had soused his head in water at a hydrant, rested a minute, offered them a quarter for their trouble, buttoned up the light coat that had been torn open in his struggle, and nervously but positively declared himself all right and vastly obliged, had then hailed a passing carromatta, and been whisked away across the moat and drawbridge into the old city. There all trace was lost of him.
Baffled and troubled, Stuyvesant ordered his coachman to take him to the Luneta. The crowd had disappeared. The carriages were nearly all departed. The lights were twinkling here and there all over the placid bay. It was still nearly an hour to dinner-time at the general's mess, and he wished to be alone to think over matters, to hear the soothing plash and murmur of the little waves, and Stuyvesant vowed in his wrath and vexation that Satan himself must be managing his affairs, for, over and above the longed-for melody of the rhythmic waters, he was hailed by the buzz-saw stridencies of Miss Perkins, whose first words gave the lie to themselves.
"I'm all out of breath, and so het up runnin' after you I can't talk, but I was just bound to see you, an' I've been to your house so often the soldiers laugh at me. Those young men haven't any sense of decency or respect, but I'll teach 'em, and you see they'll sing another song. Where can we sit down?" continued the lady, her words chasing each other's heels in her breathless haste. "These lazy, worthless Spanish officers take every seat along here. Why, here! your carriage will do, an' I've got a thousand things to say!" ("Heaven be merciful," groaned Stuyvesant to himself.) "I saw you driving, and I told my cabman to catch you if he had to flog the hide off his horse. Come, aren't you—don't you want to sit down? I do, anyhow! There's no comfort in my cab. Here, I'll dismiss it now. You can just drop me on the way home, you know. I'm living down the Calle Real a few blocks this side of you. All the soldiers know me, and if they had their say it wouldn't be the stuck-up Red Cross that's flirting with doctors and living high on the dainties our folks sent over. The boys are all right. It's your generals that have ignored the P. D. A.'s, and I'll show 'em presently what a miss they've made. Wait till the papers get the letters I have written. But, say—"("And this is the woman I thought might be literary!" moaned Stuyvesant as he meekly followed to the little open carriage and, with a shiver, assisted his angular visitor to a seat.)
"A Key!" she shouted, "A Key, Cochero! No quiere mas hoy. Mañana! Ocho! Sabe, Cochero? Ocho! Now don't chewbe—What's late in their lingo, anyhow? 'Tisn't tardy, I know; that's afternoon. Tardeeo? Thank you. Now—well, just sit down, first, lieutenant. You see we know how to address officers by their titles, if the Red Cross don't. I'd teach 'em to Mister me if I was an officer. Now, what I want to see you about first is this. Your general has put me off one way or another every time I've called this last two weeks. I've always treated him politely, but for some reason he'll never see me now, and yet they almost ran after me at first. Now, you can fix it easy enough, and you do it and you won't regret it. I only want him to listen to me three minutes, and that's little enough for anybody to ask. You do it, and I can do a good deal more for you than you think for, an' I will do it, too, if certain people don't treat me better. It's something you'll thank me for mightily later on if you don't now. I've had my eyes open, lieutenant, an' I see things an' I hear things an' I know things you mighty little suspect."
"Pardon me, Miss Perkins," interposed Stuyvesant at this juncture, his nerves fairly twitching under the strain. "Let us get at the matters on which you wish to speak to me. Malate, Cochero!" he called to the pygmy Filipino on the box. "I am greatly pressed for time," he added, as the carriage whirled away, the hoofs of the pony team flying like shuttles the instant the little scamps were headed homeward.
"Well, what I want mostly is to see the general. He's got influence with General Drayton and I know it, and these Red Cross people have poisoned his ears. Everybody's ears seem to be just now against me and I can get no hearing whatever. Everything was all right at first; everything was promised me, and then, first one and then another, they all backed out, and I want to know why—I'm bound to know why, and they'd better come to me and make their peace now than wait until the papers and the P. D. A.'s get after 'em, as they will,—you hear my words now,—they will do just as soon as my letters reach the States. You're all right enough. I've told them how you helped with those poor boys of mine aboard the train. Bad way they'd been in if we hadn't been there, you and I. Why, I just canvassed that train till I got clothes and shoes for every one of those poor burned-out fellows, but there wouldn't anybody else have done it. And nursing?—you ought to have seen those boys come to thank me the day I went out to the Presidio, an' most cried—some of them did;—said their own mothers couldn't have done more, and they'd do anything for me now. But when I went out to their camp at Paco their major just as much as ordered me away, and that little whipper-snapper, Lieutenant Ray, that I could take on my knee and spank—— He—Lieutenant Ray—a friend of yours? Well, you may think he is, or you may be a friend of his, but I can tell you right here and now he's no friend, and you'll see he isn't. What's more, I hate to see an honest, high-toned young gentleman just throwing himself away on people that can't appreciate him. I could tell you——"
"Stop, driver!" shouted Stuyvesant, unable longer to control himself. "Miss Perkins," he added, as the little coachman manfully struggled to bring his rushing team to a halt at the curb, "I have a call to make and am late. Tell my coachman where to take you and send him back to this corner. Good-night, madam," and, gritting his teeth, out he sprang to the sidewalk.
It happened to be directly in front of one of those native resorts where, day and night, by dozens the swarthy little brown men gather about a billiard-table with its centre ornament of boxwood pins, betting on a game resembling the Yankee "pin pool" in everything but the possibility of fair play. Hovering about the entrance or on the outskirts of the swarm of men and boys, a dozen native women, some with babies in their arms and nearly all with cigars between their teeth, stood watching the play with absorbing interest, and a score of dusky, pot-bellied children from two to twelve years of age sprawled about the premises, as much at home as the keeper of the place.