"The best of the batch," said the Adjutant to the Colonel. "Keep back that young skrimshanker Porkiss, sir, and let Revere make him sit up."
So Bobby departed joyously to Simla Pahar with a tin box of gorgeous raiment.
"Son of Wick--old Wick of Chota-Buldana? Ask him to dinner, dear," said the aged men.
"What a nice boy!" said the matrons and the maids.
"First-cla.s.s place, Simla. Oh, ri----ipping!" said Bobby Wick, and ordered new white cord breeches on the strength of it.
"We"re in a bad way," wrote Revere to Bobby at the end of two months.
"Since you left, the Regiment has taken to fever and is fairly rotten with it--two hundred in hospital, about a hundred in cells--drinking to keep off fever--and the Companies on parade fifteen file strong at the outside. There"s rather more sickness in the out-villages than I care for, but then I"m so blistered with p.r.i.c.kly-heat that I"m ready to hang myself. What"s the yarn about your mashing a Miss Haverley up there? Not serious, I hope? You"re over-young to hang millstones round your neck, and the Colonel will turf you out of that in double-quick time if you attempt it."
It was not the Colonel that brought Bobby out of Simla, but a much more to be respected Commandant. The sickness in the out-villages spread, the Bazar was put out of bounds, and then came the news that the Tail Twisters must go into camp. The message flashed to the Hill stations.--"Cholera--Leave stopped--Officers recalled." Alas, for the white gloves in the neatly soldered boxes, the rides and the dances and picnics that were to be, the loves half spoken, and the debts unpaid!
Without demur and without question, fast as tonga could fly or pony gallop, back to their Regiments and their Batteries, as though they were hastening to their weddings, fled the subalterns.
Bobby received his orders on returning from a dance at Viceregal Lodge, where he had but only the Haverley girl knows what Bobby had said or how many waltzes he had claimed for the next ball. Six in the morning saw Bobby at the Tonga Office in the drenching rain, the whirl of the last waltz still in his ears, and an intoxication due neither to wine nor waltzing in his brain.
"Good man!" shouted Deighton of the Horse Battery through the mists.
"Whar you raise dat tonga? I"m coming with you. Ow! But I"ve a head and half. I didn"t sit out all night. They say the Battery"s awful bad," and he hummed dolorously--
"Leave the what at the what"s-its-name, Leave the flock without shelter, Leave the corpse uninterred, Leave the bride at the altar
"My faith! It"ll be more bally corpse than bride, though, this journey.
Jump in, Bobby. Get on, Coachwan!"
On the Umballa platform waited a detachment of officers discussing the latest news from the stricken cantonment, and it was here that Bobby learned the real condition of the Tail Twisters.
"They went into camp," said an elderly Major recalled from the whist-tables at Mussoorie to a sickly Native Regiment, "they went into camp with two hundred and ten sick in carts. Two hundred and ten fever cases only, and the balance looking like so many ghosts with sore eyes.
A Madras Regiment could have walked through "em."
"But they were as fit as be-d.a.m.ned when I left them!" said Bobby.
"Then you"d better make them as fit as be-d.a.m.ned when you rejoin," said the Major brutally.
Bobby pressed his forehead against the rain-splashed window-pane as the train lumbered across the sodden Doab, and prayed for the health of the Tyneside Tail Twisters. Naini Tal had sent down her contingent with all speed; the lathering ponies of the Dalhousie Road staggered into Pathankot, taxed to the full stretch of their strength; while from cloudy Darjiling the Calcutta Mail whirled up the last straggler of the little army that was to fight a fight, in which was neither medal nor honour for the winning, against an enemy none other than "the sickness that destroyeth in the noonday."
And as each man reported himself, he said: "This is a bad business,"
and went about his own forthwith, for every Regiment and Battery in the cantonment was under canvas, the sickness bearing them company.
Bobby fought his way through the rain to the Tail Twisters" temporary mess, and Revere could have fallen on the boy"s neck for the joy of seeing that ugly, wholesome phiz once more.
"Keep "em amused and interested," said Revere. "They went on the drink, poor fools, after the first two cases, and there was no improvement. Oh, it"s good to have you back, Bobby! Porkiss is a--never mind."
Deighton came over from the Artillery camp to attend a dreary mess dinner, and contributed to the general gloom by nearly weeping over the condition of his beloved Battery. Porkiss so far forgot himself as to insinuate that the presence of the officers could do no earthly good, and that the best thing would be to send the entire Regiment into hospital and "let the doctors look after them." Porkiss was demoralised with fear, nor was his peace of mind restored when Revere said coldly: "Oh! The sooner you go out the better, if that"s your way of thinking.
Any public school could send us fifty good men in your place, but it takes time, time, Porkiss, and money, and a certain amount of trouble, to make a Regiment. S"pose you"re the person we go into camp for, eh?"
Whereupon Porkiss was overtaken with a great and chilly fear which a drenching in the rain did not allay, and, two days later, quitted this world for another where, men do fondly hope, allowances are made for the weaknesses of the flesh. The Regimental Sergeant-Major looked wearily across the Sergeants" Mess tent when the news was announced.
"There goes the worst of them," he said. "It"ll take the best, and then, please G.o.d, it"ll stop." The Sergeants were silent till one said: "It couldn"t be him!" and all knew of whom Travis was thinking.
Bobby Wick stormed through the tents of his Company, rallying, rebuking, mildly, as is consistent with the Regulations, chaffing the fainthearted; haling the sound into the watery sunlight when there was a break in the weather, and bidding them be of good cheer, for their trouble was nearly at an end; scuttling on his dun pony round the outskirts of the camp and heading back men who, with the innate perversity of British soldiers, were always wandering into infected villages, or drinking deeply from rain-flooded marshes; comforting the panic-stricken with rude speech, and more than once tending the dying who had no friends--the men without "townies"; organizing, with banjos and burnt cork, Sing-songs which should allow the talent of the Regiment full play; and generally, as he explained, "playing the giddy garden-goat all round."
"You"re worth half a dozen of us, Bobby," said Revere in a moment of enthusiasm. "How the devil do you keep it up?"
Bobby made no answer, but had Revere looked into the breast-pocket of his coat he might have seen there a sheaf of badly-written letters which perhaps accounted for the power that possessed the boy. A letter came to Bobby every other day. The spelling was not above reproach, but the sentiments must have been most satisfactory, for on receipt Bobby"s eyes softened marvellously, and he was wont to fall into a tender abstraction for a while ere, shaking his cropped head, he charged into his work.
By what power he drew after him the hearts of the roughest, and the Tail Twisters counted in their ranks some rough diamonds indeed, was a mystery to both skipper and C. O., who learned from the regimental chaplain that Bobby was considerably more in request in the hospital tents than the Reverend John Emery.
"The men seem fond of you. Are you in the hospitals much?" said the Colonel, who did his daily round and ordered the men to get well with a hardness that did not cover his bitter grief.
"A little, sir," said Bobby.
"Shouldn"t go there too often if I were you. They say it"s not contagious, but there"s no use in running unnecessary risks. We can"t afford to have you down, y" know."
Six days later, it was with the utmost difficulty that the post-runner plashed his way out to the camp with the mail-bags, for the rain was falling in torrents. Bobby received a letter, bore it off to his tent, and, the programme for the next week"s Sing-song being satisfactorily disposed of, sat down to answer it. For an hour the unhandy pen toiled over the paper, and where sentiment rose to more than normal tide-level, Bobby Wick stuck out his tongue and breathed heavily. He was not used to letter-writing.
"Beg y" pardon, sir," said a voice at the tent door; "but Dormer"s "orrid bad, sir, an" they"ve taken him orf, sir."
"d.a.m.n Private Dormer and you too!" said Bobby Wick, running the blotter over the half-finished letter. "Tell him I"ll come in the morning."
""E"s awful bad, sir," said the voice hesitatingly. There was an undecided squelching of heavy boots.
"Well?" said Bobby impatiently.
"Excusin" "imself before "and for takin" the liberty, "e says it would be a comfort for to a.s.sist "im, sir, if--tattoo lao! Get my pony! Here, come in out of the rain till I"mready. What blasted nuisances you are!
That"s brandy. Drink some; you want it. Hang on to my stirrup and tell me if I go too fast."
Strengthened by a four-finger "nip" which he swallowed without a wink, the Hospital Orderly kept up with the slipping, mud-stained, and very disgusted pony as it shambled to the hospital tent.
Private Dormer was certainly ""orrid bad." He had all but reached the stage of collapse, and was not pleasant to look upon.
"What"s this, Dormer?" said Bobby, bending over the man. "You"re not going out this time. You"ve got to come fishing with me once or twice more yet."
The blue lips parted and in the ghost of a whisper said,--"Beg y"
pardon, sir, disturbin" of you now, but would you min" "oldin" my "and, sir"?"
Bobby sat on the side of the bed, and the icy-cold hand closed on his own like a vice, forcing a lady"s ring which was on the little finger deep into the flesh. Bobby set his lips and waited, the water dripping from the hem of his trousers. An hour pa.s.sed, and the grasp of the hand did not relax, nor did the expression of the drawn face change. Bobby with infinite craft lit himself a cheroot with the left hand (his right arm was numbed to the elbow), and resigned himself to a night of pain.
Dawn showed a very white-faced Subaltern sitting on the side of a sick man"s cot, and a Doctor in the doorway using language unfit for publication.
"Have you been here all night, you young a.s.s?" said the Doctor.
"There or thereabouts," said Bobby ruefully. "He"s frozen on to me."
Dormer"s mouth shut with a click. He turned his head and sighed. The clinging hand opened, and Bobby"s arm fell useless at his side.
"He"ll do," said the Doctor quietly. "It must have been a toss-up all through the night. "Think you"re to be congratulated on this case."