It
must have been premonition, for I had no idea that I was leaving
the line of the army forever.
The ambulance was at the door, to take us to Valentine, where I
bade Jack good bye, and took the train for the East. His last
promise was to visit us once a year, or whenever he could get a
leave of absence.
My husband had now worn the single bar on his shoulder-strap for
eleven years or more; before that, the straps of the second
lieutenant had adorned his broad shoulders for a period quite as
long. Twenty-two years a lieutenant in the regular army, after
fighting, in a volunteer regiment of his own state, through the
four years of the Civil War! The "gallant and meritorious
service" for which he had received brevets, seemed, indeed, to
have been forgotten. He had grown grey in Indian campaigns, and
it looked as if the frontier might always be the home of the
senior lieutenant of the old Eighth. Promotion in that regiment
had been at a standstill for years.
Being in Washington for a short time towards mid-winter enjoying
the social side of military life at the Capital, an opportunity
came to me to meet President Cleveland, and although his
administration was nearing its close, and the stress of official
cares was very great, he seemed to have leisure and interest to
ask me about my life on the frontier; and as the conversation
became quite personal, the impulse seized me, to tell him just
how I felt about the education of our children, and then to tell
him what I thought and what others thought about the unjust way
in which the promotions and retirements in our regiment had been
managed.
He listened with the greatest interest and seemed pleased with my
frankness. He asked me what the soldiers and officers out there
thought of "So and So." "They hate him," I said.
Whereupon he laughed outright and I knew I had committed an
indiscretion, but life on the frontier does not teach one
diplomacy of speech, and by that time I was nerved up to say just
what I felt, regardless of results.
"Well," he said, smiling, "I am afraid I cannot interfere much
with those military matters;" then, pointing with his left hand
and thumb towards the War Department, "they fix them all up over
there in the Adjutant General's office," he added.
Then he asked me many more questions; if I had always stayed out
there with my husband, and why I did not live in the East, as so
many army women did; and all the time I could hear the dull thud
of the carpenters' hammers, for they were building even then the
board seats for the public who would witness the inaugural
ceremonies of his successor, and with each stroke of the hammer,
his face seemed to grow more sad.
