Part 35 (2/2)

The Major lay in the next room--the casualty ward--and stared up at the whitewashed ceiling.

His whole being ached as though, mind and body, he had been set upon and beaten senseless with bladders. And this was the second time! Yes--good heavens, how had he deserved it?--the second time!

He remembered, after the disaster off Boulogne--many days after-- awaking to consciousness in his prison bed in the fortress of Givet.

Then, as now, he had lain staring, his whole soul sickened by the cruel jar of the jest. Hand of fate, was it? Nay, a jocose and blundering finger, rather, that had flipped him, as a man might flip a beetle, into the night. Then, as now, his soul had welled up in sullen indignation. He blamed no one; for in all the stupid chapter of accidents there was no one to blame. But when the Protestant chaplain in Givet came to his bed he turned his face to the wall.

He refused to give his name. He did not understand this blind malevolence of fate, but he would make no terms with it. He--Solomon Hymen--had a will of his own and a proper pride. If the world chose to use him so, after all his services to mankind, let it go and be d.a.m.ned to it. I tell you, the man had courage.

If his friends at home valued him, let them seek him out. He had given them cause enough for grat.i.tude. If not, he asked nothing of them. In the prison he gave his name as Mr. Solomon.

Yet he had made two attempts to escape. In the first he ran away with two comrades as far as Mezieres. Being pursued by the _gens-d'armes_ there, and called upon to surrender, his companions had given themselves up. Not so our hero; nor was he secured until he lay unconscious with a bullet-hole in the cheek. It was this which ever afterwards affected his speech, the bullet having cut or partially paralysed some string of the tongue.

It had been touch-and-go with him; but he recovered, and, pa.s.sing henceforward as a desperate character, was drafted south with a dozen other desperate characters to the gloomy fortress of Briancon.

There, in a second attempt for liberty, a fall from the ramparts had cost him his leg.

But worse than all his incarceration had been the final tramp through France--right away north to Valenciennes; then left-about-turn, three hundred and fifty miles to Tours; then south-east to Riou; and from Riou south-west to Bordeaux, where the transport took him off--one of six transports for about fifteen hundred released prisoners. All the way, too, on a wooden leg! Heaven knows how bitterly he had come to hate that leg. Yet his heart, hardened though it was by all this long adversity, had melted as the _Romney_ transport beat up closer and closer for England, and at sight of Plymouth heights he had broken into tears.

Troy! Troy! After all, Troy would remember him. Though he knew it brought him nearer to freedom, all that marching through France had been a weariness eating into his soul. Now a free man, along the road from Plymouth to Troy he had almost skipped.

And this had been his homecoming!

They remembered him. Beyond all his hopes they remembered him.

In their memory he had grown into a Homeric man, a demi-G.o.d. He had only to declare himself. . . .

The Major lay on his hospital bed and stared at the ceiling. It was all very well, but ten years had made a difference--a mighty difference; a difference which beat all his calculations. It was a double difference, too; for all the while that he had been shrinking in self-knowledge, his reputation at home had been expanding like a cuc.u.mber.

Good Lord! How could he live up to it now? To obey his impulses and declare himself was simple enough, perhaps; but afterwards--

He had nearly betrayed himself when Cai Tamblyn--in a queer straight-cut frock-coat of livery, blue with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, but otherwise looking much the same as ever--thrust his head in at the door.

In the first shock of astonishment the Major had almost cried out on him by name.

”Why--eh?--what are _you_ doing here?” he stammered. Hitherto he had been waited on by a strange doctor (Hansombody's new partner) and a nurse whom he had a.s.sisted twelve years ago, when she was left a widow, to set up as a midwife.

”Might ask the same question of you,” said Cai Tamblyn. ”I'm the kew-rator, havin' been Hymen's servant in the old days, and shows around the visitors, besides dustin' the mementoes--locks of his bloomin' 'air and the rest of the trash, I looked in to see how you was a-gettin' on after the palaver. If I'm not wanted I'll go.”

”Don't go.”

”Very well, then, I won't.” Mr. Tamblyn took a seat on the edge of an unoccupied bed, drew from his pocket a knife and a screw of pig-tail tobacco, sliced off a portion and rubbed it meditatively between his hands. ”I done you a good turn just now,” he continued. ”Some o'

the company--the womenkind especially--wanted to come in and make a fuss over you before leavin'.”

”Why should they want to make a fuss over me?”

”Well you may ask,” said Mr. Tamblyn, candidly. ”'Tain't a question of looks, though. There's a kind of female--an' 'tis the commonest kind, too--can't hear of a man bein' hurt an' put to bed but she wants to see for herself. 'Tis like the game a female child plays with a dollies' house. Here they've got a nice little orspital to amuse 'em, with nice clean blankets an' sheets, an' texteses 'pon the walls, an' a cupboard full o' real medicines an' splints, and along comes a real live patient to be put to bed, an' the thing's complete.

Hows'ever, they didn' get no fun out of 'ee to-day, for I told 'em you was sleepin' peaceful an' not to be disturbed.”

”Thank you.” Under pretence of settling down more comfortably against the pillow, the Major turned his head aside. ”Then it seems you knew this--this--”

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