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."
"Oh, bosh!" said Bobby. "I thought the man had gone out long ago only only I didn"t care to take my hand away. Rub my arm down, there"s a good chap. What a grip the brute has! I"m chilled to the marrow!" He pa.s.sed out of the tent shivering.
Private Dormer was allowed to celebrate his repulse of Death by strong waters. Four days later he sat on the side of his cot and said to the patients mildly: "I"d "a" liken to "a" spoken to "im so I should."
But at that time Bobby was reading yet another letter he had the most persistent correspondent of any man in camp and was even then about to write that the sickness had abated, and in another week at the outside would be gone. He did not intend to say that the chill of a sick man"s hand seemed to have struck into the heart whose capacities for affection he dwelt on at such length. He did intend to enclose the ill.u.s.trated programme of the forthcoming Sing-song whereof he was not a little proud. He also intended to write on many other matters which do not concern us, and doubtless would have done so but for the slight feverish headache which made him dull and unresponsive at mess.
"You are overdoing it, Bobby," said his skipper. "Might give the rest of us credit of doing a little work. You go on as if you were the whole Mess rolled into one. Take it easy."
"I will," said Bobby. "I"m feeling done up, somehow." Revere looked at him anxiously and said nothing.
There was a flickering of lanterns about the camp that night, and a rumour that brought men out of their cots to the tent doors, a paddling of the naked feet of doolie-bearers and the rush of a galloping horse.
"Wot"s up?" asked twenty tents; and through twenty tents ran the answer "Wick, "e"s down."
They brought the news to Revere and he groaned. "Any one but Bobby and I shouldn"t have cared! The Sergeant-Major was right."
"Not going out this journey," gasped Bobby, as he was lifted from the doolie. "Not going out this journey." Then with an air of supreme conviction "I can"t, you see."
"Not if I can do anything!" said the Surgeon-Major, who had hastened over from the mess where he had been dining.
He and the Regimental Surgeon fought together with Death for the life of Bobby Wick. Their work was interrupted by a hairy apparition in a bluegray dressing-gown who stared in horror at the bed and cried "Oh, my Gawd! It can"t be "im!" until an indignant Hospital Orderly whisked him away.
If care of man and desire to live could have done aught, Bobby would have been saved. As it was, he made a fight of three days, and the Surgeon-Major"s brow uncreased. "We"ll save him yet," he said; and the Surgeon, who, though he ranked with the Captain, had a very youthful heart, went out upon the word and pranced joyously in the mud.
"Not going out this journey," whispered Bobby Wick gallantly, at the end of the third day.
"Bravo!" said the Surgeon-Major. "That"s the way to look at it, Bobby."
As evening fell a gray shade gathered round Bobby"s mouth, and he turned his face to the tent wall wearily. The Surgeon-Major frowned.
"I"m awfully tired," said Bobby, very faintly. "What"s the use of bothering me with medicine? I don"t want it. Let me alone."
The desire for life had departed, and Bobby was content to drift away on the easy tide of Death.
"It"s no good," said the Surgeon-Major. "He doesn"t want to live. He"s meeting it, poor child." And he blew his nose.
Half a mile away the regimental band was playing the overture to the Sing-song, for the men had been told that Bobby was out of danger. The clash of the bra.s.s and the wail of the horns reached Bobby"s ears.
Is there a single joy or pain, That I should never kno-ow?
You do not love me, "tis in vain, Bid me good-bye and go!
An expression of hopeless irritation crossed the boy"s face, and he tried to shake his head.
The Surgeon-Major bent down "What is it, Bobby?" "Not that waltz,"
muttered Bobby. "That"s our own our very ownest own. Mummy dear."
With this he sank into the stupor that gave place to death early next morning.
Revere, his eyes red at the rims and his nose very white, went into Bobby"s tent to write a letter to Papa Wick which should bow the white head of the ex-Commissioner of Chota-Buldana in the keenest sorrow of his life. Bobby"s little store of papers lay in confusion on the table, and among them a half-finished letter. The last sentence ran: "So you see, darling, there is really no fear, because as long as I know you care for me and I care for you, nothing can touch me."
Revere stayed in the tent for an hour. When he came out his eyes were redder than ever.
Private Conklin sat on a turned-down bucket, and listened to a not unfamiliar tune. Private Conklin was a convalescent and should have been tenderly treated.
"Ho!" said Private Conklin. "There"s another bloomin" orf"cer da ed."
The bucket shot from under him, and his eyes filled with a smithyful of sparks. A tall man in a blue-gray bedgown was regarding him with deep disfavour.
"You ought to take shame for yourself, Conky! Orf"cer? Bloomin" orf"cer?
I"ll learn you to misname the likes of "im. Hangel! Bloomin" Hangel!
That"s wot"e is!"
And the Hospital Orderly was so satisfied with the justice of the punishment that he did not even order Private Dormer back to his cot.
IN THE MATTER OF A PRIVATE
Hurrah! hurrah! a soldier"s life for me! Shout, boys, shout! for it makes you jolly and free.
--The Ramrod Corps.
PEOPLE who have seen, say that one of the quaintest spectacles of human frailty is an outbreak of hysterics in a girls" school. It starts without warning, generally on a hot afternoon among the elder pupils. A girl giggles till the giggle gets beyond control. Then she throws up her head, and cries, "Honk, honk, honk," like a wild goose, and tears mix with the laughter. If the mistress be wise she will rap out something severe at this point and check matters. If she be tender-hearted, and send for a drink of water, the chances are largely in favor of another girl laughing at the afflicted one and herself collapsing. Thus the trouble spreads, and may end in half of what answers to the Lower Sixth of a boys" school rocking and whooping together. Given a week of warm weather, two stately promenades per diem, a heavy mutton and rice meal in the middle of the day, a certain amount of nagging from the teachers, and a few other things, some amazing effects develop. At least this is what folk say who have had experience.
Now, the Mother Superior of a Convent and the Colonel of a British Infantry Regiment would be justly shocked at any comparison being made between their respective charges. But it is a fact that, under certain circ.u.mstances, Thomas in bulk can be worked up into ditthering, rippling hysteria. He does not weep, but he shows his trouble unmistakably, and the consequences get into the newspapers, and all the good people who hardly know a Martini from a Snider say: "Take away the brute"s ammunition!"
Thomas isn"t a brute, and his business, which is to look after the virtuous people, demands that he shall have his ammunition to his hand.
He doesn"t wear silk stockings, and he really ought to be supplied with a new Adjective to help him to express his opinions; but, for all that, he is a great man. If you call him "the heroic defender of the national honor" one day, and "a brutal and licentious soldiery" the next, you naturally bewilder him, and he looks upon you with suspicion. There is n.o.body to speak for Thomas except people who have theories to work off on him; and n.o.body understands Thomas except Thomas, and he does not always know what is the matter with himself.
That is the prologue. This is the story: