There seemed no way of bringing about either result in the absence or silence of witnesses. But, meantime, he had bitterly resented the apparent readiness of certain of the officials to look upon him with suspicion, and had withdrawn from all except most formal and distant a.s.sociation. No wonder he desired to be relieved from further service with or near them. Mrs. Nevins had insisted on removing to a cheap lodging in Sacramento as soon as able to move at all, and had taken her dependent sister with her, sorely against that young woman's wish, as she had made an impression, a decided impression upon an unmarried aide-de-camp who was reported to be wealthy, but whose attentions fell short of the matrimonial point, as the poverty of the sisters became revealed to him. There was, therefore, no longer to Loring the possible embarra.s.sment of meeting or seeing the girl who had so wronged him, yet there was constant evidence of the seeds that she had sown. Some man, he felt sure, must have kept alive the rumors to his discredit, and the extreme constraint of manner, the avoidance, shown by this very gentleman, stamped him as in all probability the person at fault. Loring was only waiting now for proofs.

It so happened the very day the stanch old salt came searching through the building in quest of his friend that the General with two aides and others of the staff, had a.s.sembled in the office of Colonel Strain.

Several of them had known and sailed with the Idaho's master and liked her captain well, despite his frequent flings at soldiers. His appearance at the doorway, therefore, was the signal for quite a cordial welcome. The General himself came forward to take him by the hand and say how sorry he was at the loss of his ship, and how he hoped soon to see him on the decks of a bigger and better one. But the bluff captain thought as little of land generals as of lubbers of lower grade, and was not as grateful as he should perhaps have been, and was evidently looking for somebody beyond the sympathetic group, and presently said so.

"I've come to see Mr. Loring, by George! I haven't laid eyes on him since the night he backed me up in restoring order and discipline on my ship. That man ought to have been a sailor! Where'll I find him?" he concluded abruptly, staring round at the circle of somewhat embarra.s.sed faces.

"We heard some rumor about this, captain," said the General. "Suppose you come into my office and tell me the whole story?"

"Why not right here where they can all hear?" was the instant answer.

"I'm told that more'n one man has been at work trying to rob him of the credit, and as for Mr. Jennings, who was our first officer, I gave the company a piece of my mind the moment I heard it, and I've got a tongue-lashing in store for him. 'Taint the first I've had to give him, either, and it won't be the last if he ever runs foul of me again. They tell me, what's more, that Escalante's agent has had the impudence to come here a dozen times threatening Mr. Loring. Next time he comes you have him kicked out and charge it to me. That man's a thief, and so is one of the Escalantes--if not more than one. As for Loring, he's head and shoulders above any of the young fellows that have sailed with me, and when I was flattened out by the rush of that cowardly gang, he stood up to 'em like a man. That one shot of his brought 'em up with a jerk and put an end to the trouble."

He broke off short and glanced about him to note the effect of his words. It was an awkward moment. Three of the group had had their doubts as to the possibility of Loring's being culpable, but so disturbed and partially convinced had been the General and his chief-of-staff, so active had been the aide-de-camp referred to in his collection and dissemination of scandal at Loring's expense that no one felt able to say anything until the General himself had spoken. The Chief evidently felt his dignity a.s.sailed, and his commanding att.i.tude imperiled. No further revelations ought to be allowed except such as should be filtered through him or his accredited staff officer.

"Come into my den, captain," he exclaimed, therefore. "You interest me greatly, and I want to hear all about it."

"I'll come quick enough," said the captain briefly, "after I've seen Loring. I want to shake hands with him, I say, before I do anything else. Where'll I find him?" And with most depressing disregard of the General's greatness, the sailor would have turned his back on the entire party in order to find his injured friend, but the Chief was a strategist.

"Ah--go to Mr. Loring, captain," said he, to a ready staff officer, "and say to him that I desire he should come to my room a moment." And the aide-de-camp was off like a shot, so the seaman could only wait. The General led the way into his comfortable room and signaled to one or two to follow, and presently back came his messenger, and a moment after him, grave, composed, but freezingly formal, there at the door stood the Engineer. His eyes brightened up the instant he laid them on the Idaho's st.u.r.dy commander, but etiquette demanded that he should first address the General.

"You sent for me, sir?"

"I did, Mr. Loring. Our good friend, Captain Moreland, has been telling us of your most--er--praiseworthy conduct the night of the disaster. We all, I wish to a.s.sure you, are--er--gratified to hear of this. And now it has occurred to me that Captain Moreland might be able to throw some light on the very--unpleasant matter which we had to bring to your attention a few weeks since. Surely he must know something of these--er--people who were your accusers."

The General was seated at his big desk. He was flanked by the adjutant-general and backed by a brace of aides. Moreland, the mariner, was standing at the table and started forward as Loring entered as though to grasp his hand. The General still considered it essential to observe a certain air of formality in speaking. It was as though he had begun to believe Loring an injured man, and therefore he himself must be an aggrieved one, for surely the lieutenant should have spared the General the mortification of being placed in the wrong.

But to this tentative remark Mr. Loring made no reply. He stood calmly before the department commander, looked straight into his face, but did not open his lips.

"I say," repeated the General, in louder tone, "the captain appears to know and may be able to tell us something about the people who were your accusers."

"Possibly, sir," said Loring, finding that he was expected to say something, but with an indifference of manner most culpable in one so far inferior in rank.

"I was in hopes, Mr. Loring," said the General, evidently nettled, "that you would appreciate the evident desire of myself and my confidential officers to see you relieved of these--er--aspersions. For that reason I urged Captain Moreland to make his statement public."

And still looking straight at the department commander, whose florid face was turning purple, Loring was silent. Perhaps after a month of accusation, real or implied, on part of the General and the "confidential officers," he found it difficult to account for the sudden manifestation of desire to acquit. He was thinking, too, of a tear-stained little letter that had come to him only a few days earlier--the last from Pancha, before the child was formally entered at the school of the good gray sisters. He was wondering if she at sixteen were really more alone in her little world than he in the broad and liberal sphere of soldier life. Then the sight of Moreland's weather-beaten face, perturbed and aggrieved, gave him a sense of sympathy that through all the weeks of his virtual ostracism had been lacking. He had other letters, too, worth far more than a dollar apiece, which was what their carriage cost him, bidding him have no fear, doc.u.ments of weight were coming that would teach the authorities of the Pacific coast the error of their views and ways, but of these he did not care to speak. He chose to await the coming of the doc.u.ments themselves. The silence, however, was oppressive, and the sailor spoke.

"If the only accusers this gentleman has are Escalantes, or a.s.sociates of the Escalantes, you'd better beg his pardon and have done with it,"

said he, "and thereby put the matter in its most luckless way."

Angrily the General turned to the aide-de-camp fidgeting on his left.

"Do you know whether the Escalantes are the sole accusers, captain?"

said he deliberately.

"I regret to say that they are not," was the answer. "And Mr. Loring has shown strange reluctance, to put it mildly, to meet the--others."

"I have answered, once and for all, every charge brought to my ears,"

said Loring, turning on the speaker, with eyes that blazed, and Moreland, who had seen him cool and composed in the face of panic, marveled now to note the intensity of his emotion, for Loring was white and trembling, though his gaze was steady as the hand that held back the terror-stricken crew that wild night on the waters.

"Perhaps you are unaware of the more recent developments--and the source of information," said the aide uneasily.

"I am; and I demand the right to know or to meet both without delay.

Captain Moreland," and here he turned on the wondering sailor, "can you be here to-morrow?"

"Certainly I can, and will," was the prompt answer.

"That wouldn't help," said the aide-de-camp, on whom all eyes were fixed again. "My informant couldn't be here."

"Very good. We'll go to your informant, then," answered Loring.

Another silence. It was not Loring now who seemed hesitant or reluctant. It was the aide.

There came a knock at the door. An orderly appeared with several telegraphic dispatches. Colonel Strain stepped forward, took them, shut the door in the orderly's face, handed them to the General, and resumed his seat. Glad of a diversion, the commander glanced at the superscription. "Here is one for you, sir," said he to the Engineer, who received it, but did not open it. He was again facing the embarra.s.sed aide, who finally found words.

"Mr. Loring, my informant was here a whole month and said you refused to appear. Now--they are beyond recall, unless--it should come to trial."

The answer came like a flash:

"Your informant, sir--and there was but one--would never appear in the event of trial. That informant sailed three days ago on the Sonora, and you know it." Then, as a sudden thought struck him, he tore open his dispatch and read, then turned again to his faltering opponent: "So long as that informant could be confronted you kept me ignorant of any new allegations, if there were any. Now come out with your story, and by the next steamer I'll run it down."

CHAPTER XVI.

The worst of having a man of Moreland's views present on such an occasion is that the whole thing is sure to be noised abroad with scant reference to military propriety. Moreland told the owners of the steamer line, the Chamber of Commerce, the easily-gathered audience on Rush and Montgomery streets, the usual customers at Barry & Patton's, the loungers in the lobbies of the hotels, everybody who would listen--and who would not?--how that brave fellow Loring, who ought to have been a sailor, faced down that quartette of "blue-bellied lobsters" up at headquarters. The General was not a popular character. His princ.i.p.al claim to distinction during the great war seemed to be that of being able to criticise every other general's battles and to win none of his own. "He never went into a fight that he didn't get licked," declared the exultant Moreland, "and now he's bowled over by his youngest lieutenant." The story of that interview went over the bay like wildfire and stirred up the fellows at the Presidio and Angel Island, while the islanders of Alcatraz came bustling to town to learn the facts as retailed at the Occidental, and to hear something more about that queer, silent fellow Loring. Among the junior subalterns in the artillery were one or two who knew him at the Point, and they scouted the story of his having ever having stolen a cent's worth, or the idea of extracting anything about the matter from his lips. The latest yarn in circulation was that after the now famous interview Loring had "laid for" Captain Petty, the aide-de-camp referred to, a young Gothamite of good family who had got into the regulars early in the war and out of company duty from that time to this, and, having met the aide-de-camp, Loring had thereupon calmly pulled the gentleman's aquiline nose for him. Petty could not be found, had gone to Fort Yuma on important business for the department commander, was the explanation. The General properly refused to be interviewed by reporters of the papers and couldn't be approached by anybody else on the subject. Only two things were positively known.

Lieutenant Loring had received telegraphic notification from the Chief of Engineers of his relief from duty in the department and his a.s.signment to similar work in the Department of the Platte, and it was rumored, though it could not be confirmed, that the General had been directed by telegraph to designate a staff officer to receipt to Lieutenant Loring at once for the public property for which he was accountable, in order that the latter officer might take an early steamer for the Isthmus, as his services were urgently needed at his new station. It was an open secret that the General considered himself aggrieved by the action of the authorities at Washington and said so. He had made no charge against Lieutenant Loring. He had merely called that gentleman's attention to the very serious allegations laid at his door, and this was true. On the other hand, people who had been permitted to know anything about the matter, notably certain senior officers of the Engineer Corps not under the General's orders, and one or two staff department officers who, unhappily for themselves, were under his orders and subject to his semi-occasional rebuke, now openly said that not one allegation against Loring came from a reliable or respectable source, and that it was an outrage to have held him even to inferential account on the statement of such a cad as Escalante's agent, who hadn't been near the office since the recovery of Captain Moreland, the insinuations of Mr. Purser Traynor, now totally vanished, and the rumored aspersions of a fair incognita, known only to Captain Petty, a man who had few a.s.sociates in the "line" or outside the limited circle of the General's personal staff, and who was not too well liked even there.

And, as the revulsion of feeling set in, Petty set out for Yuma. "Where there is so d.a.m.ned much smoke," said he, as it later transpired, "there must be some fire," and the General had bidden him to go to Yuma, to Gila Bend, to Guaymas, to the devil, if need be, and find out all the facts. But the linesmen at Presidio and the jovial blades at Moreland's elbow were loud in their laughing statement that if Petty were looking for fire he could have found it here in abundance. Loring could have given him more than he wanted.

Then came the order in the case of Captain Nevins, dismissing that worthy from the service on charges of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, and awarding a year's imprisonment at such penitentiary, etc., as the reviewing authority should direct, and by the same post the official order transferring Lieutenant Loring of the Engineers to duty in the Department of the Platte, and then what did the steamship company do but issue invitations for a dinner to be given in honor of that distinguished young officer, and great was the noise thereof until it was known that the gentleman had gratefully, but firmly declined. Then the papers said "it was rumored" that the General had forbidden his acceptance, despite the fact that the General had expressed publicly his gratification that the company had at last done something in recognition of its indebtedness to the army--which was most adroit, and equally impersonal. And all the while Loring himself was having anything but an enviable time of it. A man so reticent and retiring could not but be annoyed by the persistent calls and cross-questions of all manner of people in whom he had but small personal interest. He wished to have nothing whatever to say upon the subject, denied himself to reporters and relapsed into impenetrable reserve when importuned by brother officers whom he but slightly knew. One or two with whom he would gladly have held counsel were far removed, one at least forever, from his circle. The stalwart old inspector, Turnbull, lay sleeping his last sleep in the cemetery at Monterey. The veteran who served as president of the Nevins' court was in far Arizona, and Blake, sound of heart, if not of head, was under a cloud at Yuma. His forceful expressions concerning the imbecility of department officials led to his being confined very closely to company work and minor, yet exacting, duties at the post, all because of his abandonment of Lieutenant Loring at a critical moment, said the few defenders of the department's letter to the post commander on that subject. "All because of his too vehement defense of Loring," said everybody else.

With feverish eagerness, Loring awaited the sailing of the next steamer.

Every item for which he stood accountable was then at his office, invoices and receipts made out in full. Nothing was needed but the officer designated to relieve him. The Columbia was to leave on Sat.u.r.day, and up to Thursday evening no relief had appeared. Friday morning the adjutant-general received a written communication, most respectful yet urgent in terms, requesting that the officer might be designated without further delay, and as no answer was received up to noon, Loring followed it with a personal call upon the chief of staff, who said the General had the matter under advis.e.m.e.nt.

"My luggage goes aboard the Columbia to-night, sir, and I should be aboard by ten o'clock to-morrow," said Loring. Colonel Strain coughed dubiously.

"It might be impracticable to relieve you from duty so soon. The General is in communication with the War Department upon the subject, and possibly if--you--had had the courtesy to call upon the General or upon me, his chief-of-staff, and to explain your wishes, the thing might have been arranged."

Loring flushed. He saw through the motive at a glance, and could have found it easy to express his opinion in very few words. There are times when a man is so goaded that an outburst is the only natural relief, but it is none the less fatal. There might even be method in the colonel's manner, and Loring curbed, with long-practiced hand, both tongue and temper. It would have been warrantable to say that the manner of both the General and his chief-of-staff had been too repellent to to invite calls, but he knew that, whatever the merits of the case, superior officers, like inferior papers, always have the last word. He might be only inviting reprimand. Without a word, therefore, he faced about, went straight to the telegraph office down the avenue and wired to Washington. "Steamer sails noon Sat.u.r.day. Not yet relieved. What instructions?"

By that hour there would be no one in the office of the Chief of Engineers at Washington, but Loring addressed it direct to the home of the a.s.sistant, upon whose interest in the case he had reason to rely, and then returned at once to his desk. Were he not to be there it would place it in the power of a would-be oppressor to say the officer designated to receive the property had called during office hours and could not find Mr. Loring. And then, with such patience as he could command, Loring received the visitors who kept dropping in, among them the boisterous Moreland, whose Bay of Biscay voice had become almost as trying to his host as to the other occupants of the building, and during the long afternoon awaited the action of the General upon his morning's letter and that of the War Department upon his telegram.

Four o'clock came at last. Office hours were over. Neither relief nor reply had reached him. He heard the halls resounding to the footsteps of officers and clerks as they closed their doors and left the building.

Bidding his a.s.sistant remain a moment he strode to the further end of the long pa.s.sage. The General was at the moment issuing from his private office, conversing with two of his staff. The adjutant-general, a bundle of papers in his hand, was hastily crossing the hall toward his own office. Loring raised his hat in grave salutation to his commander, who bowed with dignified reserve in return, and moment later the Engineer was facing the colonel at his desk.

"Colonel Strain," said he, "I have much to do. Will you name the hour at which I am to meet my relief?"

"Mr. Loring," said the official tartly, "when we are ready to relieve you the order will be issued--and not before."