Part 119 (1/2)
CHAPTER XXIV
THE BIG, BIG GAME OF LIFE
It was many hours later that understanding returned to Noel.
He came to himself abruptly, in utter darkness, with the horror of it still strong within his soul. His head was swathed in bandages. He turned it to and fro with restless jerks.
”And will ye please to lie quiet?” said the voice of the Irish regimental surgeon peremptorily by his side.
Noel, also Irish, collected his forces and made reply. ”No. Why the devil should I? Where am I? What's going to happen to me? Am I--am I blind for life?”
The falter in the words spoke to the tenseness of his suspense. The doctor answered instantly, with more of kindliness than judgment.
”Faith, no! It's not so bad as that. But ye'll have to pretend ye are for the present, or, egad, ye will be before ye've done. We brought ye to the Musgraves' shanty. Mrs. Musgrave wanted the care of ye. d.a.m.n'
quare taste on her part, I'm thinking. And now ye're not to talk any more; but drink this stuff like a good boy and go to sleep.”
Noel drank with disgust; the taste of blood was still in his mouth. He had never been ill in his life before, and he had not the smallest intention of obeying the doctor's orders.
”Let's hear what happened!” he said impatiently. ”Oh, leave me alone, do! When can I have this beastly bandage off my eyes?”
”Not for a very long while, my son.” The doctor's voice was jaunty, but the eyes that looked at the blind, swathed face were full of pity. ”And don't ye go loosening it when my back's turned, or it isn't meself that'll be answerable for the consequences.”
”Oh, d.a.m.n the consequences!” said Noel. ”I want to get up.”
”And that ye can't!” was the doctor's prompt rejoinder. ”Ye'll just lie quiet till further orders. Ye'll find yourself as weak as a rat moreover, when ye start to move about. It's only the fever in your veins that makes ye want to try.”
Noel straightened himself in the bed. He was becoming aware of a fiery, throbbing torture beneath the bandages. With clenched teeth and hands hard gripped he set himself to endure.
But in a few minutes he turned his head again. ”Are you still there, Maloney?”
”Still here, my son,” said Maloney.
”Well, go and find someone--anyone who knows--to tell me exactly what happened last night.”
”I can tell ye meself,” began Maloney.
But Noel interrupted. ”No; not you! You're such a liar. No offence meant! You can't help it. Find--find Nick, will you?”
”It isn't visitors ye ought to be having with your pulse in this state,”
objected Maloney.
”Do as I say!” commanded Noel stubbornly.
His will prevailed. The Irish doctor saw the futility of argument, and departed, having extracted a promise from his patient not to move during his absence.
And then came silence as well as darkness, an awful sense of being entombed, an isolation that appalled him added to the torture that racked. With an acuteness of consciousness more harrowing than delirium, he faced this thing that had come upon him, grabbing all his courage to endure the ordeal.
He felt as if his brain were on fire, each nerve-centre agonizing separately in the intolerable, all-enveloping flames. And through the dreadful stillness he heard the beat, beat, beat, of his heart, like the feet of a runaway along a desert road.
He turned his head again restlessly from side to side. The agony was beginning to master him. His powers of endurance were dwindling.