The colonel of a regiment stationed near Manila was sitting in hisheadquarters. An orderly came to the door and saluted.
"A woman to see you, sir," he said.
"A woman? What kind of a woman?"
"A white woman, sir. Looks about fifty years old. Talks American. Saysshe has only just come here. Says her name is Smith."
"Show her in."
The man went out. In a few minutes he came back again, and with himthe woman that had stayed out on the deck of the Pacific steamer whenthe boat came past the light of Corregidor.
The Colonel gave his visitor a seat. "What can I do for you?" he said.
"Can I speak to you alone?"
"We are alone now."
"Can't that man out there hear?" motioning toward a soldier pacingback and forth before the door.
"No," said the officer. "We are quite alone."
The woman unfolded a sheet of paper which she had been holding,and looked at it a moment. Then she looked at the officer. "I wantto see Heber Smith, of Company F, of your regiment," she said. "Canyou tell me where he is?"
In spite of himself--in spite of the self possession which he wouldhave said his campaigning experience had given him, the Colonelstarted.
"Are you his--?" he began to say. But he changed the question to,"Was he a relative of yours?"
"I am his mother," the woman said, as if she had completed theofficer's first question in her mind and answered it.
"I have a letter from him, here," she went on. "The last one I havehad. It is dated three months ago. It is not very long." She held upa half sheet of paper, written over on one side with a lead pencil;but she did not offer to let the officer read what was written.
"He tells me in this letter," the woman said, "that he has disgracedhimself, been a coward, run away from some danger which he ought tohave faced; and that he can't stand the shame of it." "He says," thewoman's voice faltered for the first time, and instead of looking theColonel in the face, as she had been doing, her eyes were fixed on thefloor--"he says that he isn't going to try to stay here any longer,and that he is going over to the enemy. Is this true? Did he do that?"
"Yes," said the officer slowly. "It is true."
"He says here," the woman went on, holding up the letter again,"that I shall never hear from him again, or see him. I want you tohelp me to find him."
"I would be glad to help you if I could," the man said, "but Icannot. No one knows where the man went to, except that he disappearedfrom the camp and from the city. Besides I have not the right. He wasa coward, and now he is a deserter. If he came back now he would haveto stand trial, and he might be shot."
"He is not a coward." The woman's cheeks flamed red. "Some men shuttheir eyes and cringe when there comes a flash of lightning. But thatdon't make them cowards. He might have been frightened at the time,and not known what he was doing, but he is not a coward. I guessI know that as well as anybody can tell me. He is my boy--my onlychild. I've come out here to find him, and I'm going to do it. Idon't expect I'll find him quick or easy, perhaps. I've let out ourfarm for a year, with the privilege of renewing the trade when theyear is up; and I'm going to stay as long as need be. I'm not goingto sit still and hold my hands while I'm waiting, either. I'm goingto be a nurse. I know how to take care of the sick and maimed allright, and I guess from what I hear since I've been here you needall the help of that kind you can get. All I want of you is to getme a chance to work nursing just as close to the front as I can go,and then do all you can to help me find out where Heber is, and thenlet me have as many as you can of these heathen prisoners the menbring in here to take care of, so I can ask them if they have seenHeber. My boy isn't a coward, and if he has got scared and run away,he's got to come back and face the music. Thank goodness none of thefolks at home know anything about it, and they won't if I can help it."
The woman folded the letter, and putting it back into its envelope satwaiting. It was evident that she did not conceive of the possibilityeven of her request not being granted.
The officer hesitated.
"You will have to see the General, Mrs. Smith," he said at last,glad that it need not be his duty to tell her how hopeless hererrand was. "I will arrange for you to see him. I will take you tohim myself. I wish I could do more to help you."
"How soon can I see him?"
"Tomorrow, I think. I will find out and let you know."
"Thank you," said the woman, as she rose to go. "I don't want to loseany time. I want to get right to work."
The next day the young soldier's mother saw the General and toldher story to him. In the mean time, apprised by the Colonel of theregiment of the woman's errand, the General had had a report ofthe case brought to him. Heber Smith had been sent out with a smallscouting party. They had been ambushed, and instead of trying to fight,he had left the men and had run back to cover.
"But that don't necessarily make him a coward," the young man's motherpleaded with the General. "A coward is a man who plans to run away. Helost his head that time. Wasn't that the first time he had been putin such a place?"
The officer admitted that it was.
"Well, then he can live it down. He has got to, for the sake of hisfather's reputation as well as his own. His father was a soldier,too," she said proudly. "He was in the Union army four years, and hada medal given to him for bravery, and every spring since he died themembers of his Grand Army Post have decorated his grave. When Hebercomes to think of that, I know he will come back."
The General was not an old man;--that is he was not so old but that,back in her prairie home in a western state, there was a mother towhom he wrote letters, a mother whom he knew to value above his lifeitself his reputation. The thought of her came to him now.
"I will do what I can, Mrs. Smith" he said, "to help you find yourboy. I fear I cannot give you any hope, though, and if he should befound I cannot promise you anything as to his future."
"Thank you," said the woman. "That is all I can ask."
And so it came about that Mrs. Hannah Smith was enrolled as a nurse,and assigned to duty as near the front in the island of Luzon as anynurse could go.
Six months passed, and then another six came near to theirend. Mrs. Smith renewed the lease of the farm back among the NewEngland hills for another year, and wrote to a neighbor's wife to seethat her woolen clothes and furs were aired and then packed away witha fresh supply of camphor to keep the moths out of them.
In this year's time Mrs. Smith had picked up a wonderful smatteringof the Spanish and Tagalog languages for a woman who had livedthe life she had before she came to the East. The reason for this,so her companions said, was her being "just possessed to talk withthose native prisoners who are brought wounded to the hospital." Theother nurses liked her. She not only was willing to take the casesthey liked least--the natives--but asked for them.
And sometime in the course of their hospital experience, allMrs. Smith's native patients--if they did not die before they gotable to talk coherently--had to go through the same catechism:
Was there a white man among the people from whom they had come;a white man who had come there from the American army?
Was he a tall young man with light hair and a smooth face?
Did he have a three-cornered white scar on one side of his chin,where a steer had hooked him when he was a boy?
Did he look like this picture? (A photograph was shown the patient)
From no one, though, did she get the answer that her heart craved. Someof the prisoners knew white men that had come among the Tagalognatives, but no one knew a man who answered to this description.
One day a native prisoner who had been brought in more than a weekbefore, terribly wounded, opened his eyes to consciousness for thefirst time, after days and nights of stupor. He was one of these whonaturally fell, now, to "Mrs. Smith's lot," as the surgeons calledthem. As soon as the nurse's watchful eyes saw the change in the manshe came to him and bent over his cot.
"Water, please," he murmu
red
The woman brought the water, her two natures struggling to decidewhat she should do after she had given it to him. As nurse, she knewthe man ought not to be allowed to talk then. As mother, she wasimpatient to ask him where he had learned to speak English, and toinquire if he knew her boy.
The nurse conquered. The patient drank the water and was allowed togo to sleep again undisturbed.
In time, though, he was stronger, and then, one day, the mother'squestions were asked for the hundredth time; and the last.
Yes, the prisoner patient knew just such a man. He had come among thepeople of the tribe many months ago. He was a tall, fair young man,and he had such a scar as the "senora," described. He was a fine youngman. Once, when this man's father had been sick, the white man haddoctored him and made him well. It was this white man, the patientsaid, who had taught him the little English that he knew.
"Yes," when he saw the photograph of Heber Smith, "that is the man. Hehas a picture, too," the patient said, "two pictures, little ones,set in a little gold box which hangs on his watch chain."
The hospital nurse unclasped a big cameo breast pin from the throatof her gown and held it down so that the man in bed could see adaguerreotype set in the back of the pin.
"Was one of the pictures like that?" she asked.
The Tagalog looked at the picture, a likeness of a middle-aged manwearing the coat and hat of the Grand Army of the Republic. In thepicture a medal pinned on to the breast of the man's coat showed.
"Yes," said he, "one of the pictures is like that."
Then he looked up curiously at the woman sitting beside his bed. "Theother picture is that of a woman," he went on, "and--yes--" stillstudying her face, "I think it must be you. Only," he added, "itdoesn't look very much like you."
"No," said the woman, with a grim smile, "it doesn't. It was takena good many years ago, when I was younger than I am now, and when Ihadn't been baked for a year in this heathen climate. It's me, though."
In time, Juan, that was the man's name, was so far recovered of hiswound that he was to be discharged from the hospital and placed withthe other able-bodied prisoners. The hospital at that time occupiedan old convent. The day before Juan was to be discharged, Mrs. Smithmanaged her cases so that for a time no one else was left in one ofthe rooms with her but this man.
"Juan," she said, when she was sure they were alone, and that no onewas anywhere within hearing, "do you feel that I have done anythingto help you to get well?"
The man reached down, and taking one of the nurse's hands in his ownbent over and kissed it.
"Senora," he said, "I owe my life to you."
"Will you do something for me, then? Something which I want done morethan anything else in the world?"
"My life is the senora's. I would that I had ten lives to give her."
The woman pulled a letter from out the folds of her nurse's dress. Theenvelope was not sealed, and before she fastened it she took theletter which was in it out and read it over for one last time. Then,pulling from her waist a little red, white and blue badge pin--oneof those patriotic emblems which so many people wear at times--shedropped this into the letter, sealed the envelope, and handed it tothe Tagalog. The envelope bore no address.
"I hav'n't put the name of the place on it you said you came from,"she told the man, "because goodness only knows how it is spelled;I don't. Besides that, it isn't necessary. You know the place, andyou know the man; the man who has got my picture and his father's ina gold locket on his watch chain. I want you to give this letter intohis own hands. I expect it will be rather a ticklish job for you toget away from here and get through the lines, but I guess you can doit if you try. Other men have. Don't start until you are well enoughso you will have strength to make the whole trip."
A week or so after that, one of the surgeons making his daily visitreported that Juan had made his escape the previous night, and up tothat time had not been brought back.
"What a shame!" said one of the other nurses. "After all the careyou gave that man, Mrs. Smith. It does seem as if he might have hada little more gratitude."
Mrs. Smith said nothing aloud. But to herself, when she was alone,she said: "Well, I suppose some folks would say that I wasn't actingright, but I guess I've saved the lives of enough of those men sinceI've been here so that I'm entitled to one of them if I want him."
Then she went on with her work, and waited; and the waiting was harderthan the work.