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THE RED CROSS GIRL
THE RED CROSS GIRL RICHARD HARDING DAVIS 2. THE GRAND CROSS OF THE CRESCENT
3. THE INVASION OF ENGLAND
4. BLOOD WILL TELL
5. THE SAILORMAN
6. THE MIND READER
7. THE NAKED MAN
8. THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF
9. THE CARD-SHARP
INTRODUCTION
R. H. D.
"And they rise to their feet as he passes gentlemen
unafraid."
He was almost too good to be true. In addition the gods
loved him and so he had to die young. Some people think that
a man of fifty-two is middle-aged. But if R. H. D. had lived
to be a hundred he would never have grown old. It is not
generally known that the name of his other brother was Peter
Pan.
Within the year we have played at pirates together at the
taking of sperm whales; and we have ransacked the Westchester
Hills for gunsites against the Mexican invasion. And we have
made lists of guns and medicines and tinned things in case
we should ever happen to go elephant shooting in Africa. But
we weren't going to hurt the elephants. Once R. H. D. shot a
hippopotamus and he was always ashamed and sorry. I think he
never killed anything else. He wasn't that kind of a
sportsman. Of hunting as of many other things he has said
the last word. Do you remember the Happy Hunting Ground in
"The Bar Sinister"?--"Where nobody hunts us and there is
nothing to hunt."
Experienced persons tell us that a man-hunt is the most
exciting of all sports. R. H. D. hunted men in Cuba. He
hunted for wounded men who were out in front of the trenches
and still under fire and found some of them and brought them
in. The Rough Riders didn't make him an honorary member of
their regiment just because he was charming and a faithful
friend but largely because they were a lot of daredevils and
he was another.
To hear him talk you wouldn't have thought that he had ever
done a brave thing in his life. He talked a great deal and
he talked even better than he wrote (at his best he wrote
like an angel) but I have dusted every corner of my memory
and cannot recall any story of his in which he played a
heroic or successful part. Always he was running at top
speed or hiding behind a tree or lying face down in a foot
of water (for hours!) so as not to be seen. Always he was
getting the worst of it. But about the other fellows he told
the whole truth with lightning flashes of wit and character
building and admiration or contempt. Until the invention of
moving pictures the world had nothing in the least like his
talk. His eye had photographed his mind had developed and
prepared the slides his words sent the light through them
and lo and behold they were reproduced on the screen of your
own mind exact in drawing and color. With the written word
or the spoken word he was the greatest recorder and reporter
of things that he had seen of any man perhaps that ever
lived. The history of the last thirty years its manners and
customs and its leading events and inventions cannot be
written truthfully without reference to the records which he
has left to his special articles and to his letters. Read
over again the Queen's Jubilee the Czar's Coronation the
March of the Germans through Brussels and see for yourself
if I speak too zealously even for a friend to whom now
that R. H. D. is dead the world can never be the same again.
But I did not set out to estimate his genius. That matter
will come in due time before the unerring tribunal of
posterity.
One secret of Mr. Roosevelt's hold upon those who come into
contact with him is his energy. Retaining enough for his own
use (he uses a good deal because every day he does the work
of five or six men) he distributes the inexhaustible
remainder among those who most need it. Men go to him tired
and discouraged he sends them away glad to be alive still
gladder that he is alive and ready to fight the devil
himself in a good cause. Upon his friends R. H. D. had the
same effect. And it was not only in proximity that he could
distribute energy but from afar by letter and cable. He had
some intuitive way of knowing just when you were slipping
into a slough of laziness and discouragement. And at such
times he either appeared suddenly upon the scene or there
came a boy on a bicycle with a yellow envelope and a book to
sign or the postman in his buggy or the telephone rang and
from the receiver there poured into you affection and
encouragement.
But the great times of course were when he came in person
and the temperature of the house which a moment before had
been too hot or too cold became just right and a sense of
cheerfulness and well-being invaded the hearts of the master
and the mistress and of the servants in the house and in the
yard. And the older daughter ran to him and the baby who
had been fretting because nobody would give her a double-
barrelled shotgun climbed upon his knee and forgot all about
the disappointments of this uncompromising world.
He was touchingly sweet with children. I think he was a
little afraid of them. He was afraid perhaps that they
wouldn't find out how much he loved them. But when they
showed him that they trusted him and unsolicited climbed
upon him and laid their cheeks against his then the
loveliest expression came over his face and you knew that
the great heart which the other day ceased to beat throbbed
with an exquisite bliss akin to anguish.
One of the happiest days I remember was when I and mine
received a telegram saying that he had a baby of his own. And
I thank God that little Miss Hope is too young to know what
an appalling loss she has suffered....
Perhaps he stayed to dine. Then perhaps the older daughter
was allowed to sit up an extra half-hour so that she could
wait on the table (and though I say it that shouldn't she
could do this beautifully with dignity and without
giggling) and perhaps the dinner was good or R. H. D.
thought it was and in that event he must abandon his place
and storm the kitchen to tell the cook all about it. Perhaps
the gardener was taking life easy on the kitchen porch. He
too came in for praise. R. H. D. had never seen our Japanese
iris so beautiful; as for his they wouldn't grow at all. It
wasn't the iris it was the man behind the iris. And then
back he would come to us with a wonderful story of his
adventures in the pantry on his way to the kitchen and
leaving behind him a cook to whom there had been issued a new
lease of life and a gardener who blushed and smiled in the
darkness under the Actinidia vines.
It was in our little house at Aiken in South Carolina that
he was with us most and we learned to know him best and that
he and I became dependent upon each other in many ways.
Events into which I shall not go had made his life very
difficult and complicated. And he who had given so much
friendship to so many people needed a little friendship in
return and perhaps too he needed for a time to live in a
house whose master and mistress loved each other and where
there were children. Before he came that first year our house
had no name. Now it is called "Let's Pretend."
Now the chimney in the living-room draws but in those first
days of the built-over house it didn't. At least it didn't
draw all the time but we pretended that it did and with
much pretense came faith. From the fireplace that smoked to
the serious things of life we extended our pretendings until
real troubles went down before them--down and out.
It was one of Aiken's very best winters and the earliest
spring I ever lived anywhere. R. H. D. came shortly after
Christmas. The spireas were in bloom and the monthly roses;
you could always find a sweet violet or two somewhere in the
yard; here and there splotches of deep pink against gray
cabin walls proved that precocious peach-trees were in bloom.
It never rained. At night it was cold enough for fires. In
the middle of the day it was hot. The wind never blew and
every morning we had a four for tennis and every afternoon we
rode in the woods. And every night we sat in front of the
fire (that didn't smoke because of pretending) and talked
until the next morning.
He was one of those rarely gifted men who find their chiefest
pleasure not in looking backward or forward but in what is
going on at the moment. Weeks did not have to pass before it
was forced upon his knowledge that Tuesday the fourteenth
(let us say) had been a good Tuesday. He knew it the moment
he waked at 7 A. M. and perceived the Tuesday sunshine making
patterns of bright light upon the floor. The sunshine
rejoiced him and the knowledge that even before breakfast
there was vouchsafed to him a whole hour of life. That day
began with attentions to his physical well-being. There were
exercises conducted with great vigor and rejoicing followed
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