CHAPTER IV

“Good-bye, sweetheart, good-bye”

Broussard, after reading his orders, walked quickly to his quarters.  On the desk in his luxuriously furnished sitting-room was a letter from the C. O. giving the order in detail from the War Department; Broussard was to make the next steamer sailing from San Francisco.  He went through with a rapid mental calculation.  To do that, he would be obliged to leave Fort Blizzard not later than the next afternoon.

Broussard took his orders with a soldier’s coolness.  He particularly disliked them; he did not want to leave Fort Blizzard for any other spot on the habitable globe, and least of all did he want to go to the island possessions.  But he said no word of complaint, took, with perfect good humor, the condolences and chaff of his brother officers at the mess dinner that night, and plunged into his preparations to leave.

The disposal of the expensive impedimenta which Broussard had accumulated gave him much trouble.  He did not value them greatly, and without much thought determined to give his costly rugs and lamps and glass and china to the Lawrences—­they were originally used to that sort of thing and Broussard was in no fear of the Colonel’s misunderstanding it, or any one else, for that matter, as it had been well known that there was some tie or association between Broussard and Lawrence in their childhood.

The scattering of costly gifts by a very free-handed person is usually most indiscreet, and Broussard was no exception to the rule.  He presented his finest motor to a brother officer, who had to support a wife and children on a captain’s pay and could not afford to support the motor besides.  The game chickens, the beloved of Broussard’s heart, he presented to another officer, whose wife objected seriously to cock-fighting.  The chaplain, seeing the grand piano was about to be thrown away on anybody who could take it, managed to secure it for the men’s reading-room.  The thing which perplexed Broussard most was, what to do with Gamechick.  He longed to give the horse to Anita but dared not.  However, fate befriended him in this matter and Anita got Gamechick by other means.  When Colonel Fortescue came home for the cup of tea that Mrs. Fortescue was always waiting to give him at five o’clock, with the sweet looks and tender words that made the hour so happy, he mentioned, in an off-hand way, Broussard’s orders and that he was leaving the next day.  Neither the father nor the mother looked toward Anita, sitting a little in the shadow of the dim drawing-room.  Mrs. Fortescue, by way of making conversation, said: 

“I wonder what he will do with his motors and horses and game chickens, and all those beautiful things he has in his quarters?”

“Oh, that’s easy enough to tell,” answered Colonel Fortescue.  “All these young officers who load themselves up with that kind of thing act just alike.  As soon as they are ordered somewhere else they throw away these things.  They call it giving, but it is merely largesse.”