Captain Macklin: His Memoirs

by Richard Harding Davis

  DOBBS FERRY, September, 1882

  September passed before I was a convalescent, and it was the first ofOctober when the Port of Sydney passed Sandy Hook, and I stood at thebow, trembling with cold and happiness, and saw the autumn leaves on thehills of Staten Island and the thousands of columns of circling, whitesmoke rising over the three cities. I had not let Beatrice and Aunt Maryknow that I was in a hospital, but had told them that I was making myway home slowly, which was true enough, and that they need not expect tohear from me until I had arrived in New York City. So, there was no oneat the dock to meet me.

  But, as we came up the harbor, I waved at the people on the passingferry-boats, and they, shivering, no doubt, at the sight of our canvasawnings and the stewards' white jackets, waved back, and gave me myfirst welcome home.

  It was worth all the disappointments, and the weeks in hospital, tostick my head in the ticket-window of the Grand Central Station, andhear myself say, "Dobbs Ferry, please." I remember the fascination withwhich I watched the man (he was talking over his shoulder to another manat the time) punch the precious ticket, and toss it to me. I supposein his life he has many times sold tickets to Dobbs Ferry, but he neversold them as often as I had rehearsed asking him for that one.

  I had wired them not to meet me at the station, but to be waiting at thehouse, and when I came up the old walk, with the box-hedges on eitherside, they were at the door, and Aunt Mary ran to meet me, and huggedand scolded me, and cried on my shoulder, and Beatrice smiled at me,just as though she were very proud of me, and I kissed her once. Afterten minutes, it did not seem as though I had ever been away from home.And, when I looked at Beatrice, and I could not keep my eyes from her, Iwas filled with wonder that I had ever had the courage to go from whereshe was. We were very happy.

  I am afraid that for the next two weeks I traded upon their affectionscandalously. But it was their own fault. It was their wish that Ishould constantly pose in the dual roles of the returned prodigal andOthello, and, as I told them, if I were an obnoxious prig ever after,they alone were responsible.

  I had the ravenous hunger of the fever-convalescent, and I had anaudience that would have turned General Grant into a braggart. So, everyday wonderful dishes of Aunt Mary's contriving were set before me, andBeatrice would not open a book so long as there was one adventure I hadleft untold.

  And this, as I soon learned, was the more flattering, as she had alreadyheard most of them at second-hand.

  I can remember my bewilderment that first evening as I was relating thestory of the duel, and she corrected me.

  "Weren't you much nearer?" she asked. "You fired at twenty paces."

  "So we did," I cried, "but how could you know that?"

  "Mr. Lowell told us," she said.

  "Lowell!" I shouted. "Has Lowell been here?"

  "Yes, he brought us your sword," Beatrice answered. "Didn't you seewhere we placed it?" and she rose rather quickly, and stood with herface toward the fireplace, where, sure enough, my sword was hangingabove the mantel.

  "Oh yes," said Aunt Mary, "Mr. Lowell has been very kind. He has comeout often to ask for news of you. He is at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Welike him so much," she added.

  "Like him!" I echoed. "I should think you would! Isn't that bully,"I cried, "to think of his being so near me, and that he's a friend ofyours already. We must have him out to-morrow. Isn't he fine, Beatrice?"

  She had taken down the sword, and was standing holding it out to me.

  "Yes, he is," she said, "and he is very fond of you, too, Royal. I don'tbelieve you've got a better friend."

  Attractive as the prodigal son may seem at first, he soon becomes anuisance. Even Othello when he began to tell over his stories for thesecond time must have been something of a bore. And when Aunt Mary gaveme roast beef for dinner two nights in succession, and after dinnerBeatrice picked up "Lorna Doone" and retired to a corner, I knew that Ihad had my day.

  The next morning at breakfast, in a tone of gentle reproach, I announcedthat I was going out into the cold world, as represented by New YorkCity, to look for a job. I had no idea of doing anything of the sort.I only threw out the suggestion tentatively, and I was exceedinglydisgusted when they caught up my plan with such enthusiasm and alacrity,that I was forced to go on with it. I could not see why it was necessaryfor me to work. I had two thousand dollars a year my grandfather hadleft me, and my idea of seeking for a job, was to look for it leisurely,and with caution. But the family seemed to think that, before the winterset in, I should take any chance that offered, and, as they expressedit, settle down.

  None of us had any very definite ideas as to what I ought to do, or eventhat there was anything I could do. Lowell, who is so much with us now,that I treat him like one of the family, argued that to business men mystrongest recommendation would be my knowledge of languages. He saidI ought to try for a clerkship in some firm where I could handlethe foreign correspondence. His even suggesting such work annoyed meextremely. I told him that, on the contrary, my strongest card wasmy experience in active campaigning, backed by my thorough militaryeducation, and my ability to command men. He said unfeelingly, thatyou must first catch your men, and that in down-town business circlesa military education counted for no more than a college-course infootball.

  "You good people don't seem to understand," I explained (we were holdinga family council on my case at the time); "I have no desire to move indown-town business circles. I hate business circles."

  "Well, you must live, Royal," Aunt Mary said. "You have not enough moneyto be a gentleman of leisure."

  "Royal wouldn't be content without some kind of work," said Beatrice.

  "No, he can't persuade us he's not ambitious!" Lowell added. "You meanto make something of yourself, you know you do, and you can't begin tooearly."

  Since Lowell has been promoted to the ward-room, he talks just like agrandfather.

  "Young man," I said, "I've seen the day when you were an ensign, andI was a Minister of War, and you had to click your heels if you camewithin thirty feet of my distinguished person. Of course, I'm ambitious,and the best proof of it is, that I don't want to sit in a bird-cage allmy life, counting other people's money."

  Aunt Mary looked troubled, and shook her head at me.

  "Well, Royal," she remonstrated, "you've got very little of your own tocount, and some day you'll want to marry, and then you'll be sorry."

  I don't know why Aunt Mary's remark should have affected anyone exceptmyself, but it seemed to take all the life out of the discussion, andBeatrice remembered she had some letters to write, and Lowell said hemust go back to the Navy Yard, although when he arrived he told ushe had fixed it with another man to stand his watch. The reason I wasdisturbed was because, when Aunt Mary spoke, it made me wonder if shewere not thinking of Beatrice. One day just after I arrived from Panama,when we were alone, she said that while I was gone she had been in fearshe might die before I came back, and that Beatrice would be left alone.I laughed at her and told her she would live a hundred years, and added,not meaning anything in particular, "And she'll not be alone. I'll behere."

  Then Aunt Mary looked at me very sadly, and said: "Royal, I could die socontentedly if I thought you two were happy." She waited, as though sheexpected me to make some reply, but I couldn't think of anything tosay, and so just looked solemn, then she changed the subject by asking:"Royal, have you noticed that Lieutenant Lowell admires Beatrice verymuch?" And I said, "Of course he does. If he didn't, I'd punch hishead." At which she again looked at me in such a wistful, pained way,smiling so sadly, as though for some reason she were sorry for me.

  They all seemed to agree that I had had my fling, and should, as theypersisted in calling it, "settle down." A most odious phrase. They weretwo to one against me, and when one finished another took it up. So thatat last I ceased arguing and allowed myself to be bullied into lookingfor a position.

  But before surrendering myself to the downtown business circles I madeone last effort to remain free.<
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  In Honduras, Laguerre had told me that a letter to the Credit Lyonnaisin Paris would always find him. I knew that since his arrival at SanFrancisco he had had plenty of time to reach Paris, and that if hewere there now he must know whether there is anything in this talk of aFrench expedition against the Chinese in Tonkin. Also whether the Mahdireally means to make trouble for the Khedive in the Soudan. Laguerre wasin the Egyptian army for three years, and knows Baker Pasha well. I wassure that if there was going to be trouble, either in China or Egypt, hecould not keep out of it.

  So I cabled him to the Credit Lyonnais, "Are you well? If going any morecampaigns, please take me." I waited three restless weeks for an answer,and then, as no answer came, I put it all behind me, and hung my old,torn uniform where I would not see it, and hid the presentation-swordbehind the eight-day clock in the library.

  Beatrice raised her eyes from her book and watched me.

  "Why?" she asked.

  "It hurts me," I said.

  She put down her book, and for a long time looked at me withoutspeaking.

  "I did not know you disliked it as much as that," she said. "I wonderif we are wrong. And yet," she added, smiling, "it does not seem a greatsacrifice; to have work to do, to live at home, and in such a dear,old home as this, near a big city, and with the river in front and thecountry all about you. It seems better than dying of wounds in a swamp,or of fever in a hospital."

  "I haven't complained. I'm taking my medicine," I answered. "I know youall wouldn't ask it of me, if you didn't think it was for my good."I had seated myself in front of the wood fire opposite her, and wasturning the chain she gave me round and round my wrist. I slipped itoff, and showed it to her as it hung from my fingers, shining in thefirelight.

  "And yet," I said, "it was fine being your Knight-Errant, and takingrisks for your sake, and having only this to keep me straight." I cannotsee why saying just that should have disturbed her, but certainly mywords, or the sight of the chain, had a most curious effect. It isabsurd, but I could almost swear that she looked frightened. Sheflushed, and her eyes were suddenly filled with tears. I was greatlyembarrassed. Why should she be afraid of me? I was too much upset to askher what was wrong, so I went on hastily: "But now I'll have you alwayswith me, to keep me straight," I said.

  She laughed at that, a tremulous little laugh, and said: "And so youwon't want it any more, will you?"

  "Won't want it," I protested gallantly. "I'd like to see anyone make megive it up."

  "You'd give it up to me, wouldn't you?" she asked gently. "It looks--"she added, and stopped.

  "I see," I exclaimed. "Looks like a pose, sort of effeminate, a man'swearing a bracelet. Is that what you think?"

  She laughed again, but this time quite differently. She seemed greatlyrelieved.

  "Perhaps that's it," she said. "Give it me, Royal. You'll never need anywoman's trinkets to keep you straight."

  I weighed the gold links in the hollow of my palm.

  "Do you really want it?" I asked. She raised her eyes eagerly. "If youdon't mind," she said.

  I dropped the chain into her hand, but as I turned toward the fire, Icould not help a little sigh. She heard me, and leaned forward. I couldjust see her sweet, troubled face in the firelight. "But I mean toreturn it you, Royal," she said, "some day, when--when you go out againto fight wind-mills."

  "That's safe!" I returned, roughly. "You know that time will nevercome. The three of you together have fixed that. I'm no longer aknight-errant. I'm a business-man now. I'm not to remember I ever was aknight-errant. I must even give up my Order of the Golden Chain, becauseit's too romantic, because it might remind me that somewhere in thisworld there is romance, and adventure, and fighting. And it wouldn't do.You can't have romance around a business office. Some day, when I wastrying to add up my sums, I might see it on my wrist, and forget whereI was. I might remember the days when it shone in the light of acamp-fire, when I used to sleep on the ground with my arm under my head,and it was the last thing I saw, when it seemed like your fingers on mywrist holding me back, or urging me forward. Business circles would notallow that. They'd put up a sign, 'Canvassers, pedlers, and Romance notadmitted.'"

  The first time I applied for a job I was unsuccessful. The man I went tosee had been an instructor at Harvard when my uncle was professor there,and Aunt Mary said he had been a great friend of Professor Endicott's.One day in the laboratory the man discovered something, and had itpatented. It brought him a fortune, and he was now president of acompany which manufactured it, and with branches all over the world.

  Aunt Mary wrote him a personal letter about me, in the hope that hemight put me in charge of the foreign correspondence.

  He kept me waiting outside his office-door for one full hour. Duringthe first half-hour I was angry, but the second half-hour I enjoyedexceedingly. By that time the situation appealed to my sense of humor.When the great man finally said he would see me, I found him tiltingback in a swivel-chair in front of a mahogany table. He picked out AuntMary's letter from a heap in front of him, and said: "Are you the Mr.Macklin mentioned in this letter? What can I do for you?"

  I said very deliberately: "You can do nothing for me. I have waited onehour to tell you so. When my aunt, Mrs. Endicott, does anyone the honorto write him a letter, there is no other business in New York Citymore important than attending promptly to that letter. I _had_ intendedbecoming a partner in your firm; now, I shall not. You are a rude, fat,and absurd, little person. Good-morning."

  I crossed over to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and told Lowell and the otherwatch-officers in the ward-room of my first attempt to obtain a job.They laughed until I hoped they would strangle.

  "Who the devil do you think you are, anyway," they cried, "going around,insulting millionnaires like that?"

  After leaving the cruiser that afternoon, I was so miserable that Icould have jumped into the East River. It was the sight of thebig, brown guns did it, and the cutlasses in their racks, and theclean-limbed, bare-throated Jackies, and the watch-officer stamping thedeck just as though he were at sea, with his glass and side-arms. Andwhen the marine at the gate of the yard shifted his gun and challengedme, it was so like old times that I could have fallen on his neck andhugged him.

  Over the wharves, all along my way to the ferry, the names of strangeand beautiful ports mocked at me from the sheds of the steam-ship lines;"Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, and the River Plata," "Guayaquil, Callao, andSantiago," "Cape Town, Durban, and Lorenzo Marquez." It was past sixo'clock and very dark. The ice was pushing and grinding against thepier-heads, and through the falling snow the tall buildings in New Yorktwinkled with thousands of electric lights, like great Christmas-trees.At one wharf a steamer of the Red D line, just in from La Guayra, wasmaking fast, and I guiltily crept on board. Without, she was coated ina shearing of ice, but within she reeked of Spanish-America--of coffee,rubber, and raw sugar. Pineapples were still swinging in a net fromthe awning-rail, a two-necked water-bottle hung at the hot mouth of theengine-room. I found her captain and told him I only wanted to smell aship again, and to find out, if where he came from, the bands were stillplaying in the plazas. He seemed to understand, and gave me a drinkof Jamaica rum with fresh limes in it, and a black cigar; and when hissteward brought them, I talked to him in Spanish just for the sound ofit. For half an hour I was under the Southern Cross, and New York was3,000 miles astern.

  When I left him, the captain gave me a bag of alligator-pears to takehome with me, and I promised to come the next day, and bring him a newlibrary of old, paper novels.

  But, as it turned out, I sent them instead, for that night when Ireached the New York side, I saw how weakly and meanly I was acting, andI threw the alligator-pears over the rail of the ferry-boat and watchedthem fall into the dirty, grinding ice. I saw that I had been in rankmutiny. My bed had been made for me and I must lie in it. I was to be abusiness-man. I was to "settle down," and it is only slaves who rebel.

  The next day, humble and chastened in spirit, I ki
ssed the rod, andwent into the city to search for a situation. I determined to start atForty-second Street, and work my way down town until I found a placethat looked as though it could afford a foreign correspondent. But I hadreached Twenty-eighth Street, without seeing any place that appealed tome, when a little groom, in a warm fur collar and chilly white breeches,ran up beside me and touched his hat. I was so surprised that I salutedhim in return, and then felt uneasily conscious that that was not theproper thing to do, and that forever I had lost his respect.

  "Miss Fiske would like to speak with you, sir," he said. He ran back toa brougham that was drawn up beside the curb behind me, and opened thedoor. When I reached it, Miss Fiske leaned from it, smiling.

  "I couldn't help calling you back, Captain Macklin," she said, and heldout her hand.

  When I took it she laughed again. "Isn't this like our last meeting?"she asked. "Don't you remember my reaching out of the carriage, andour shaking hands? Only now," she went on, in a most frank and friendlymanner, "instead of a tropical thunder-storm, it's a snow-storm, andinstead of my running away from your shells, I'm out shopping. At least,mother's out shopping," she added. "She's in there. I'm waiting forher." She seemed to think that the situation required a chaperon.

  "You mustn't say they were my shells, Miss Fiske," I protested. "Imay insult a woman for protecting her brother's life, but I never fireshells at her."

  It did not surprise me to hear myself laughing at the words which, whenshe spoke them, had seemed so terrible. It was as though none of it hadever occurred. It was part of a romantic play, and we had seen the playtogether. Who could believe that the young man, tramping the streets onthe lookout for a job, had ever signed his name, as vice-president ofHonduras, to a passport for Joseph Fiske; that the beautiful girl inthe sables, with her card-case in her hand, had ever heard the shriek ofshrapnel?

  And she exclaimed, just as though we had both been thinking aloud: "No,it's not possible, is it?"

  "It never happened," I said.

  "But I tell you what has happened," she went on, eagerly, "or perhapsyou know. Have you heard what my father did?"

  I said I had not. I refrained from adding that I believed her fathercapable of doing almost anything.

  "Then I'm the first to tell you the news," she exclaimed. She nodded atme energetically. "Well, he's paid that money. He owed it all the time.'

  "That's not news," I said.

  She flushed a little, and laughed.

  "But, indeed, father was not to blame," she exclaimed. "They deceivedhim dreadfully. But when we got home, he looked it up, and found youwere right about that money, and so he's paid it back, not to thatodious Alvarez man, but in some way, I don't quite understand how, butso the poor people will get it."

  "Good!" I cried.

  "And he's discharged all that Isthmian crowd," she went on.

  "Better," I said.

  "And made my brother president of the new company," she continued, andthen raised her eyebrows, and waited, smiling.

  "Oh, well," I said, "since he's your brother--'best.'"

  "That's right," she cried. "That's very nice of you. Here comes mother.I want you to meet her."

  Mother came toward us, out of a French dress-maker's. It was one of theplaces I had decided against, when I had passed it a few minutes before.It seemed one of the few business houses where a French linguist wouldbe superfluous.

  I was presented as "Captain Macklin--who, you know, mother--who foughtthe duel with Arthur--that is, who didn't shoot at him."

  Mrs. Fiske looked somewhat startled. Even to a trained social leader itmust be trying to have a man presented to you on a sidewalk as the onewho did not shoot your son.

  Mrs. Fiske had a toy dog under one arm, and was holding up her train,but she slipped the dog to the groom, and gave me her hand.

  "How do you do, Mr.--Captain Macklin," she said. "My son has told me agreat deal about you. Have you asked Captain Macklin to come to see us,Helen?" she said, and stepped into the brougham.

  "Come in any day after five," said Miss Fiske, "and we'll have tortillasand frijoles, and build a camp-fire in the library. What's youraddress?"

  "Dobbs Ferry," I said.

  "Just Dobbs Ferry?" she asked. "But you're such a well-known person,Captain Macklin."

  "I'm Mr. Macklin now," I answered, and I tried to shut the door on them,but the groom seemed to think that was his privilege, and so I bowed,and they drove away. Then I went at once to a drug-store and borrowedthe directory, to find out where they lived, and I walked all the way upthe avenue to have a look at their house. Somehow I felt that for thatday I could not go on asking for a job. I saw a picture of myself ona high stool in the French dressmaker's writing to the Paris house formore sable cloaks for Mrs. Fiske.

  The Fiske mansion overlooks Central Park, and it is as big as theAcademy of Music. I found that I knew it well by sight. I at once madeup my mind that I never would have the courage to ring thatdoor-bell, and I mounted a Fifth Avenue stage, and took up my work ofreconnoitering for a job where Miss Fiske had interrupted it.

  The next day I got the job. I am to begin work on Monday. It is atSchwartz & Carboy's. They manufacture locks and hinges and agriculturalthings. I saw a lot of their machetes in Honduras with their paper stampon the blade. They have almost a monopoly of the trade in South America.Fortunately, or unfortunately, one of their Spanish clerks had leftthem, and when I said I had been in Central America and could writeSpanish easily, Schwartz, or, it may have been Carboy--I didn't ask himwhich was his silly name--dictated a letter and I wrote it in Spanish.One of the other clerks admitted it was faultless. So, I regret to say,I got the job. I'm to begin with fifteen dollars, and Schwartz or Carboyadded, as though it were a sort of a perquisite: "If our young men actgentlemanly, and are good dressers, we often send them to take our SouthAmerican customers to lunch. The house pays the expenses. And in theevenings you can show them around the town. Our young men find that aneasy way of seeing the theatres for nothing."

  Knowing the tastes of South Americans visiting New York, I repliedseverely that my connection with Schwartz & Carboy would end daily atfour in the afternoon, but that a cross-town car passed Koster &Bial's every hour. I half hoped he would take offence at that, and inconsequence my connection, with Schwartz & Carboy might end instantlyand forever; but whichever one he was, only laughed and said: "Yes,those Brazilians are a queer lot. We eat up most of our profits bailingthem out of police courts the next morning. Well--you turn up Monday."