MAY 17, 1901
I received a strange letter today from the director of medical services at the military hospital in Manila, a Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Burns. The letter was curiously postmarked from San Francisco.
I am writing you, he said, to tell you some of the things you should know about your husband for his sake and for yours before he arrives home. First of all, he came down with typhoid fever last December and was still recovering from it when he joined the expedition to capture Aguinaldo. In the course of that arduous journey up the east coast of Luzon in inclement weather, he suffered a relapse and consequently collapsed entirely when he reached Palinan. He has been treated here at the hospital not only for typhoid, which we are in the process of curing entirely before we release him, but also for malaria, which was probably also picked up on that dreadful trek. Although we hope to return him to you in reasonably good health, he will inevitably still be weak and in a convalescent state. If you feed him well and get him to take increasing exercise, he should soon recover completely, though the navy has seen fit to invalid him out of the service.
More important, however, than his physical state is his mental one. In the course of his duties as translator with the army, he has had occasion to witness and be involved in a great deal of enemy action. The horrors he has seen, horrors at which you and even I can only guess, are preying on his mind and causing frequent nightmares, not an unusual reaction among soldiers on active duty, I assure you. In addition, he appears to bear an enormous burden of guilt over his participation both in the expedition and in the war in general. It seems that he agreed to go to Palinan with the idea that he might be able in some way to warn Aguinaldo of the ruse, but his illness and the knowledge that it would be a death warrant for the men with him on the expedition prevented him from doing so.
I am sure that much of what I have told you he may already have imparted to you himself in letters, though they would have had to be smuggled out as will this one. This war was, as are all wars, a nasty one, with the added evil that so many of the men who have been mutilated by it in soul if not in body are not at all convinced of the rightness of their cause. In the War Between the States, as terrible as it was in pitting brother against brother, at least each soldier felt that his fight was a just one. Here we flounder about with the suspicion that we are no better than the Spaniards we conquered only to turn around and attempt to subjugate the native peoples ourselves. The only ones easy in their minds are the pure professional soldiers who put their blind faith in the judgment of the military, and those bigots who feel that the Filipinos are a stupid, subservient people who ought to have someone else ruling them.
These concerns have, I’m afraid, hit your husband even harder than most, and it will be a far different man from the one who left who will return home to you. I beg you, both in my capacity as his physician and as his friend, to muster all of the understanding and love and gentleness of which you are capable to bring him back from bitterness and despair. He will never be the same again as he was, but with God’s and your help he may turn out to be an even better human being. I sincerely hope that I can count on your wholehearted cooperation when he returns in a month or so. David is a fine man who has simply had too much to bear. Treat him gently, my dear, and God go with you both.
I find it difficult still to take in everything that this letter is trying to tell me. I have assumed so many things about David only to find how wrong I have been. Why did he never tell me how he felt about the war and about what he was doing? I cannot even begin to imagine what he is like now. It will be like meeting a stranger, and worse, a stranger who may not deserve to be deserted. I would to heaven I didn’t have to show Burns’s letter to Rob, but I must. Oh how I wish it were all over and past and done with and all the decisions made!
JUNE 15, 1901
I have received verification that David is due on or about July 21 on the Burnside, a tender that is being diverted to San Diego with a small contingent of men from southern California, and will dock at Los Angeles also on its way north to San Francisco.
I am now to the place where I am having trouble sleeping despite the strenuous exercise that working with these patients daily entails. One is Melanie, of course, and the other two both children recovering from infantile paralysis. Becky Marsh is a funny little girl of seven who already wears spectacles, and Jimmy Thompson is a pale, silent ten-year-old who still doesn’t seem to comprehend what has happened to him. His father says that he was very good at sports, but I fear that this one may never walk again, for his legs are wasted and his hip and pelvic structure deformed. I feel like weeping every time I see him.
The only thing keeping me sane is the early-morning rides on Nefertiti, which I take sitting astride on the saddle Rob gave me. She is a wonderful horse for me, playful and responsive but not too much of a handful. I have discovered that she is at least a middling jumper, and now I don’t know what I ever did without her. The skies are gray as usual during a California June, but somehow when I am riding in the hills, stirring up quail and deer, I seem to leave my troubles behind and return to a simpler, more innocent time of my life when everything was certain and I had no worries about right and wrong.
I feel so sorry for Rob, even sorrier than for myself and for David. At least I have some control over what will happen, while he has none. When I showed him the letter from Burns, he looked as if someone were twisting a knife in him. By some kind of tacit consent we have now stopped making love to each other. We are both waiting for and dreading the twenty-first of July. How are we going to get through so many last days?
Jimmy asked me today if I was going to cure him, and I didn’t know whether to lie to him or not. I then made a completely cowardly reply, that I wasn’t a doctor and he would have to ask Rob. But why hasn’t Rob been honest with him long since? It seems as if our personal troubles are making cowards of us both.
JULY 20, 1901
This is the last entry I shall ever be making in this journal, and tomorrow morning I shall burn it. Rob came for dinner, I think to give me encouragement, but every time I looked at him I wanted to cry. Even if it should turn out that he and I will be allowed to have each other, nothing will ever be the same as it was in December. The fact that I don’t know and he doesn’t know what I will decide tomorrow is proof enough that the glorious certainty is over and perhaps may never be recaptured.
And what of David? It might well be his decision, too.
What if he asks for his freedom? Strange how I feel a twinge when I think of that possibility. I no longer see him clearly as he was, for Burns’s letter has distorted that image, and I feel as if I am walking blindly down a dark corridor that leads to nowhere.
Chapter VI
Janice craned her head to see over the shoulder of the man standing ahead of her as a file of men in army uniforms straggled down the tender’s gangplank. Then two naval officers in whites descended and behind them a third, but she couldn’t see any of them well enough to tell if one of them was David.
Francis, clinging to her hand, was jumping up and down trying vainly to see. “Where’s Papa? Where’s Papa?” he kept saying over and over like a litany.
It was only when she thought that perhaps he wasn’t on the ship after all that she saw him. Actually she had watched him come down the gangplank without recognizing him, and it was only that a nervous gesture of his, raising his cap and smoothing back his hair, caught her attention, or she might have been in the embarrassing position of being accosted by a seeming stranger.
“David!” she called. “Over here!”
The man in the ill-fitting whites turned and walked slowly over toward where she and Francis were standing. He looked gaunt and bony, with lines of suffering around his mouth. His eyes were deep-set, and he was deathly pale, with a faint beading of perspiration on his face. Nowhere in his appearance could she find the handsome, arrogant David of before the war.
“Janice?” he said tentatively.
Then
suddenly he was embracing her. She could feel his bones and his tendons under his white jacket as if he had no flesh but was held together only by the uniform. She could also feel him trembling.
“Papa! Papa!” Francis had hold of his tunic and was pulling at it frantically.
David pulled away from Janice and looked down at his son. Janice thought briefly that he might ignore him or something equally dreadful — he really wasn’t very good with children — but instead he surprisingly knelt down and took the boy in his arms and buried his face in the child’s shoulder. Francis delightedly shut his eyes and squeezed back as hard as he was able. Then David set him away and put his officer’s hat on the boy’s head.
“Have you been taking care of things properly while I’ve been gone, son?” David asked.
Francis wriggled happily and nodded his head until Janice thought it might come off. In the end he marched proudly between them, holding their hands, while David walked heavily with his duffel bag slung over one shoulder.
“Whose horse is this?” David asked as they came up to the buggy, and Janice realized how much she had never told him, confining herself as she had almost entirely to the children and the weather as subjects. In the beginning she had been afraid that he would forbid her to work, and shortly the omissions had become habit.
“That’s Nevverteetidy,” Francis announced proudly, patting the black mare’s nose. Actually he could now say her name perfectly well but knew that his former childish pronunciation always drew a laugh.
“Never who?” David laughed.
“Nefertiti,” Janice said. “Mr. Winters gave her to me for helping Melanie.”
“Mr. Winters? Melanie? I can see I have a lot of catching-up to do.”
“Yes,” Janice said slowly, “you certainly do.”
When they arrived at the house, Rob and Esperanza were there with Elisabeth, who couldn’t quite seem to take in who David was. At least she didn’t have to explain who Rob and Esperanza were, Janice thought thankfully. When Rob saw David, he winced and turned hopeless eyes toward her. She nodded imperceptibly. Goodbye, my love, she thought. You’ve seen him now, and you must know that I can’t leave him like this.
David had picked up Elisabeth and was holding her in the crook of his arm.
“I guess you’re glad to be back, lieutenant,” Rob said as he shook hands with him.
“You’ll never know how glad,” David replied. “It all seems so safe and ordered and blessedly ordinary,” he added and wiped his brow. “I think I’d better sit down.”
They all sat awkwardly about trying to make conversation for a while. The children had brought their treasures to show their father: the stuffed bears, the snow scenes, Esperanza’s “clickedy-clacks” as Francis called them. Then nothing would do but David had to show them what he had brought them, for Elisabeth an ornate carved ivory fan and for Francis a small embroidered Philippine shirt that the boy insisted upon putting on. Even at the age of four, Elisabeth knew enough to strut about and preen while waving the fan energetically in the general direction of her face.
There was a knock at the door just as Rob announced he was leaving, and Double swept in, followed by a young man with a boater hat who reminded Janice unaccountably of Frank Lawson, the cheerful masher who had tried to pick her up at the Fourth of July picnic. She knew Rob so well that she felt him bristle even though outwardly he gave little sign. He felt very protective of Double, who had teased him once and said that according to the Chinese, he must feel responsible for her for the rest of her life because he had saved it. Instead of laughing, he had answered thoughtfully, “The Chinese weren’t far wrong, were they?”
Rob may not have shown it, but David made no attempt to conceal his feelings about Double’s escort. He hugged her affectionately but only nodded coldly to her companion, whom she introduced as Jerry Salter. He must have felt the family disapproval like a wall of ice, and had the good sense to stay in the background, looking thoroughly uncomfortable.
“I can’t say a naval career has agreed with you,” Double said dryly, and Janice realized again how much she had changed, how hard she had become. In other days she would have been warm and sympathetic.
“It doesn’t matter,” David said indifferently. “I’ve been invalided out anyway.”
“What will you do now?” Double persisted, unquenchable.
He shrugged. “How do I know? I’m only just back.”
“I tell you what — why don’t you come in with me in the business? We’ll make a fortune in the end. In fact, we’re doing very well now.”
He looked startled. “Business? What business? I thought you were working as a secretary.”
“Oh, that’s all over,” she said airily. “I’m running a bookkeeping business now. We do the books for a number of small firms, and I could certainly use someone like you to get us more business. When you get your looks back, you’ll be irresistible, brave war hero and all that.”
David’s face had closed. “I’m hardly the salesman type,” he snapped. “I’m surprised our father is allowing you to be involved in such a masculine undertaking.”
Oh-oh, thought Janice. He couldn’t have said anything more wrong to her.
Double drew herself up, her beaky nose giving her the appearance of an angry hawk. “It’s all very well for people like you, and, yes, Stephen, too, to go off playing soldiers and sailors in foreign climes, but meanwhile you’ve left all your responsibilities at home, haven’t you? And when you die, who takes care of your wives, answer me that? Congress waited thirty years to grant pensions to Civil War dependents, and I suppose they’ll wait another thirty years to do it for this war. Thank God our father has sense enough to stay out of what I do, but even if he didn’t, I wouldn’t pay any attention to him.”
“Surely our father would support you even if Stephen’s family wouldn’t”
“Why should he? I’m a grown woman. Besides, I like the work I’m doing now.”
“It’s not proper for you to be begging sleazy little businessmen to use your services. In fact, it’s not proper for women to work at all unless they have to, and then they should be something civilized like teachers or governesses.” Double’s eyes narrowed. “So it isn’t proper, is it? Well, ask your own wife, brother dear, how she affords a maid and keeping a horse and the like.”
David’s gaze turned accusingly on Janice.
“I refuse to talk about it now,” she said firmly, “And you two shouldn’t be arguing with each other either. You haven’t seen each other for years, and right away you’re into it. You didn’t use to be like that.”
“No,” Double said, “we didn’t, did we? But then we weren’t the same people in those days, either.” She turned to David again. “Don’t be so quick to say no, David. I know you don’t want to work for Papa, more’s the pity, but with the veterans back, suddenly there aren’t all that many jobs to be had.” She began to leave, followed by an all too willing Jerry Salter, but she stopped in front of Rob. “Goodbye, Rob,” she said. “I never see anything of you these days. Do come by the way you used to, will you?”
He gave her a tired smile and nodded.
When the door had closed on Double, David looked at Janice as if he had never seen her before. “What’s this about money?” he asked.
“I think you two should be alone,” Rob interrupted hastily. “I’ll be on my way.”
“Oh no, stay a bit,” Janice insisted. “After all, you are part of the explanation I owe to my husband.”
David looked from one to the other of them suspiciously. “When you were gone, David, things got very bad for me after a while. I’ll be the first to admit that if I had been a better organizer of household management I wouldn’t have been so harassed. But I wasn’t, you see, and I never will be. So Rob suggested that I could make some money to hire household help and be of great benefit to someone else besides. He started me working with a woman who had had infantile paralysis, giving her exercises and massage to enable her
to walk again. Since then there have been several others, and I have as much as I can handle. I’ve been able to put quite a bit aside in the bank, so don’t let Double or anyone else panic you into doing something you don’t want to do.”
After an awkward silence, David contented himself with observing sarcastically, “Well, I can see that I am in for any number of surprises.”
Rob stood. “I really do have to leave. I have patients waiting. You should know, lieutenant, that Mrs. Hand is very good at what she is doing. Invalids are notoriously difficult to get along with, and she has a knack for getting them to put up with the hard work and the pain that these exercises entail. You should be very proud of her — it isn’t everyone who could do nearly as well.”
David looked curiously thoughtful, and Janice wondered what was going through his head. It wasn’t like him to give up so easily.
Janice walked out to Rob’s buggy with him, unsure of what she wanted to say. David’s exchange with Double had more than given her pause. His looks were deceptive, for he certainly didn’t sound as if he had changed entirely.
Rob smiled faintly. “It’s over, isn’t it, love? I took one look at him and knew you couldn’t leave him, not like that. I feel like someone who’s been shot in the heart but doesn’t know he’s dead yet.”
She looked at him levelly. “Please, Rob, if you can bear to, give it a little time. His body will mend, but I don’t know who he is now.”
The tired smile came again. “I’m beginning to wonder if perhaps God punishes sin after all.” He gave her a rueful salute with the buggy whip and trotted away.
She stood watching the buggy disappear down the road until it was completely out of sight.
Inside, Janice sent the children out to play on the swings, though Francis went only reluctantly.
Kings of the Sea Page 57
