Captain Arthur Hamilton, of the ——th Infantry, moved on his narrow cot, groaned partly from irritation and partly from pain, muttered a few inaudible words, and looked with strong disapproval toward the opening of the hospital tent in which he lay. Through it came the soft breezes of the Cuban night, a glimpse of brilliantly starred horizon-line, and the cheerful voice of Private Kelly, raised in song. The words came distinctly to the helpless officer's reluctant ears.
"'Oh, Liza, de-ar Liza,'" carolled Kelly, in buoyant response to the beauty of the evening.
Captain Hamilton muttered again as he suppressed a seductive desire to throw something at the Irishman's head, silhouetted against the sky as he limped past the entrance. Six weeks had elapsed since the battle of San Juan, in which Hamilton and Kelly had been among the many grievously hurt. Kelly, witness this needless service of song, was already convalescent. He could wander from tent to tent in well-meaning but futile efforts to cheer less fortunate mates. Baker was around again, too, Hamilton remembered, and Barnard and Hallenbeck and Lee, and—oh, hosts of others. He ran over their names as he had done countless times before in the long days and nights which had passed since he had been "out of it all," as he put it to himself. He alone, of his fellow officers in the regiment, still lay chained to his wretched cot, a very log of helplessness, in which a fiery spirit flamed and consumed. His was not a nature that took gracefully to inactivity; and of late it had been borne in upon him with a cold, sickening sense of fear, new, like his helplessness, that inactivity must be his portion for a long, long time to come. At first the thought had touched his consciousness only at wide intervals, but now it was becoming a constant, lurking horror, always with him, or just within reach, ready to spring.
He was "out of it all," not for weeks or even for months, but very possibly for all time. The doctor's reticence told him this; so did his own sick heart; so did the dutiful cheerfulness of his men and his brother officers. They overdid it, he realized, and the efforts they so conscientiously made showed how deep their sympathy must be, and how tragic the cause of it. His lips twisted sardonically as he remembered their optimistic predictions of his immediate recovery and the tributes they paid to his courage in the field. It was true he had distinguished himself in action (by chance, he assured himself and them), and he had figured as a hero in the subsequent reports of the battle. But the other fellows would hardly have bothered to have a trifle like that mentioned, he told himself, if the little glowing badge of fame he carried off the field had not been now his sole possession. He had given more than his life for it. He had sacrificed his career, his place in the active ranks, his perfect, athletic body. His life would have been a simple gift in comparison. Why couldn't it have been taken? he wondered for the hundredth time. Why could not he, like others, have died gloriously and been laid away with the flag wrapped round him? But that, he reflected, bitterly, would have been too much luck. Instead, he must drag on and on and on, of no use to himself or to any one else.
Again and again he contemplated the dreary outlook, checking off mentally the details of the past, the depressing experiences to come, the hopelessness of it all; and as his mind swung wearily round the small circle he despised himself for the futility of the whole mental process, and for his inability to fix his thoughts on things other than his own misfortune. A man paralyzed; a thing dead from the waist down—that was what he had become. He groaned again as the realization gnawed at his soul, and at the sound a white-capped nurse rose from a table where she had been sitting and came to his bedside with a smile of professional cheerfulness. She had a tired, worn face, and faded blue eyes, which looked as if they had seen too much of human suffering. But an indomitable spirit gazed out of them, and spoke, too, in her alert step and in the fine poise of her head and shoulders.
"Your mail has come," she told him, "and there seem to be some nice letters—fat ones. One, from Russia, has a gold crown on the envelope. Perhaps I had better leave you alone while you read it."
Hamilton smiled grimly as he held out a languid hand. He liked Miss Foster. She was a good sort, and she had stood by the boys nobly through the awful days after the fight. He liked her humor, too, though he sometimes had suspicions as to its spontaneity. Then his eye fell on the top envelope of the little package she had given him, and at the sight of the handwriting he caught his breath, and the blood rushed suddenly to his face. He closed his eyes for a moment in an effort to pull himself together. Did he still care, after ten years, and like that! But possibly, very probably, it was merely a manifestation of his wretched weakness, which could not endure even a pleasant surprise without these absurd physical effects. He remembered, with a more cheerful grin, that he had hardly thought of her at all during the past year. Preparations for war and his small part in them had absorbed him heart and soul. He opened the letter without further self-analysis, and read with deepening interest the closely written lines on the thin foreign paper, whose left-hand corner held a duplicate of the gold crown on the envelope.
"DEAR OLD FRIEND,—You have forgotten me, no doubt, in all these years. Ten, is it not? But I have not forgotten you, nor my other friends in America, exile though I am and oblivious though I may have seemed. I do not know quite why I have not come home for a visit long before this. Indeed, I have planned to do so from year to year, but a full life and many varied interests have deferred the journey one way or another. I have three boys—nine, seven, and five—and it would be difficult to bring them with me and impossible to leave them behind. So, you see—
"But my heart often longs for my native land, and in one tower of this old castle I have a great room full of souvenirs of home. It is the spot I love best in my new country. Here I read my mail and write my letters and follow American news in the newspapers friends send me. Here, with my boys tumbling over each other before the fireplace, I read of the ascent of San Juan Hill, and of you, my friend, and your splendid courage, and your injury.
"No doubt by the time this letter reaches you you will be well again, and in no need of my sympathy. But you will let me tell you how proud of you I am.