Chapter 13

And more than one man looked at me. It was not because I could possibly be that somebody, although I was young enough and of little enough consequence. But Fortune had been busy with me. She had knocked all the interest out of my life, and then she had proceeded to shower her fickle favours upon me. I was by way of becoming a success in that line of life wherein I had been cast. I had been mentioned in despatches, and somehow the bullets had passed by on the other side. Her gracious Majesty had written to me twice as her dearly beloved Thomas, and I was well up in my profession.

In those days things were differently done in India. There was less telegraphing here and there for instructions. There was more action and less talk. The native gentleman did not sit on a jury then.

“Yes,” said young Martello, “somebody must go. Question is--who?”

And they looked at me again.

“There be those in high places,” I said, “who shall decide.”

They laughed and made no answer. They were pleased to think that I should have to decide which doctor should go to Capoo, where a sickness unknown and incomprehensible had broken out. It was true that I was senior surgeon of the division; indeed, I was surgeon-major of a tract of country as big as Scotland. It is India now, but in the days of which I write the question had not been settled with a turbulent native prince. We were, in fact, settling that question.

Capoo was right in the heart of the new country, while we were in occupation of a border town. Behind us lay India; in front, the Unknown. The garrison of Capoo was small and self-important, but sickness made itself conspicuous among its members. Their doctor--poor young Barber--died, and the self-importance of the Capoo garrison oozed out of their finger-ends. They sent down post-haste to us for help, and a special letter addressed to me detailed symptoms of no human malady.

I had two men under me. The question seemed simple enough. One of them would have to go. As to which one there was really no doubt whatever. The duty fell upon Thurkow. Thurkow was junior. This might prove to be Thurkow's opportunity, or--the other thing.

We all knew that he would be willing enough to go; nay, he would be eager. But Thurkow's father was in command, which made all the difference.

While we were thinking over these things an orderly appeared at the mess-room door.

“Brigadier would like to see you, sir,” he said to me. And I had to throw away the better half of a first-class manilla.

The brigadier's quarters were across a square in the centre of a long rambling palace, for which a handsome rent was duly paid. We were not making war. On the contrary, we were forcing peace down the throat of the native prince on the point of a sword.

Everything was upon a friendly footing. We were not an invading force. Oh, no! we were only the escort of a political officer. We had been quartered in this border town for more than a year, and the senior officers' lady-wives had brought their lares and penates in three bullock-carts a-piece.

I suppose we were objects of envy. We had all the excitement of novelty without any of the penalties of active warfare. We were strong enough to make an awful example of the whole Principality at a day's notice, and the Principality knew it, which kept bazaar prices down and made the coloured brother remember the hue of his cheek.

In the palace there were half a dozen officers' quarters, and these had been apportioned to the married; consequently the palace had that air of homeliness which is supposed to be lacking in the quarters of single men.

As I was crossing the square I heard some one running after me, and, turning, I faced Fitz. Fitz Marner--usually called Fitz--was my second in command and two years my junior. He was quite a different sort of man to myself, and, if I may say so, a much better man. However, I am not going to talk about myself more than I can help this time. Some day I shall, and then I shall have a portrait on the cover. This is an age of portraits. But some day the British public will wake up and will refuse to read the works of a smug-faced man in spectacles who tries to make them believe that he is doughty, fearless, and beloved of beautiful damsels. The bookstalls are full to-day of works written in the first person singular, and relating deeds of the utmost daring; while on the cover is a portrait of the author--the aforesaid smug man in spectacles--who has not the good sense to suppress himself.

Fitz was tall and lithe. He had a large brown moustache and pleasantly thoughtful eyes. His smile was the kindliest I have ever met. Moreover, a modester man than Fitz never breathed. He had a way of carrying his chin rather low, so that when he looked at one he had to raise his eyes, which imparted a pleasing suggestion of attention to his face. It always seemed to me that Fitz listened more carefully to what was said to him than other men are in the habit of doing.

“Say, doctor,” he said, looking up at me in his peculiar thoughtful way, “give me a chance.”

I knew what he meant. He wanted me to send him to a certain death instead of young Thurkow. Those little missions to that bourne from whence no traveller returns are all in the work of a soldier's life, and we two were soldiers, although ours was the task of repairing instead of doing the damage. Every soldier-man and most civilians know that it is sometimes the duty of a red-coat to go and get killed without pausing to ask whether it be expedient or not. One aide-de-camp may be sent on a mad attempt to get through the enemy's lines, while his colleague rides quietly to the rear with a despatch inside his tunic, the delivery of which to the commander-in-chief will ensure promotion. And in view of this the wholesome law of seniority was invented. The missions come in rotation, and according to seniority the men step forward.

Fitz Marner's place was at my side, where, by the way, I never want a better man, for his will was iron, and he had no nerves whatever. Capoo, the stricken, was calling for help. Fitz and I knew more about cholera than we cared to discuss just then. Some one must go up to Capoo to fight a hopeless fight and die. And old Fitz--God bless him!--was asking to go.

In reply I laughed.

“Not if I can help it. The fortune of war is the same for all.”

Fitz tugged at his moustache and looked gravely at me.

“It is hard on the old man,” he said. “It is more than you can expect.”

“Much,” I answered. “I gave up expecting justice some years ago. I am sorry for the brigadier, of course. He committed the terrible mistake of getting his son into his own brigade, and this is the result. All that he does to-night he does on his own responsibility. I am not inclined to help him. If it had been you, I should not have moved an inch--you know that.”

He turned half away, looking up speculatively at the yellow Indian moon.

“Yes,” he muttered, “I know that.”

And without another word he went back to the mess-room.

I went on and entered the palace. To reach the brigadier's quarters I had to pass down the whole length of the building, and I was not in the least surprised to see Elsie Matheson waiting for me in one of the passage-like ante-rooms. Elsie Matheson was bound to come into this matter sooner or later--I knew that; but I did not quite know in what capacity her advent might be expected.

“What is this news from Capoo?” she asked, without attempting to disguise her anxiety. Her father, assistant political officer in this affair, was not at Capoo or near there. He was upstairs playing a rubber.

“Bad,” I answered.

She winced, but turned no paler. Women and horses are always surprising me, and they never surprise me more than when in danger. Elsie Matheson was by no means a masculine young person. Had she been so, I should not have troubled to mention her. For me, men cannot be too manly, nor women too womanly.

“What is the illness they have?” she asked.

“I really cannot tell you, Elsie,” I answered. “Old Simpson has written me a long letter--he always had a fancy for symptoms, you know--but I can make nothing of it. The symptoms he describes are quite impossible. They are too scientific for me.”

“You know it is cholera,” she snapped out with a strange little break in her voice which I did not like, for I was very fond of this girl.

“Perhaps it is,” I answered.

She gave a funny little helpless look round her as if she wanted something to lean against.

“And who will go?” she asked. She was watching me keenly.

“Ah--that does not rest with me.”

“And if it did?”

“I should go myself.”

Her face lighted up suddenly. She had not thought of that. I bore her no ill-feeling, however. I did not expect her to love ME.

“But they cannot spare you,” she was kind enough to say.

“Everybody can always be spared--with alacrity,” I answered; “but it is not a question of that. It is a question of routine. One of the others will have to go.”

“Which one?” she asked with a suddenly assumed indifference.

It was precisely the question in my own mind, but relative to a very different matter. If the decision rested with Miss Matheson, which of these two men would she send to Capoo? Perhaps I looked rather too keenly into her face, for she turned suddenly away and drew the gauzy wrap she had thrown over her evening dress more closely round her throat, for the passages were cold.

“That does not rest with me,” I repeated, and I went on towards the brigadier's quarters, leaving her--a white shadow in the dimly lighted passage.

I found the chief at his own dinner-table with an untouched glass of wine before him.

“This is a bad business,” he said, looking at me with haggard eyes. I had never quite realized before what an old man he was. His trim beard and moustache had been white for years, but he had always been a hale man up to his work--a fine soldier but not a great leader. There was a vein of indolence in Brigadier-General Thurkow's nature which had the same effect on his career as that caused by barnacles round a ship's keel. This inherent indolence was a steady drag on the man's life. Only one interest thoroughly aroused him--only one train of thought received the full gift of his mind. This one absorbing interest was his son Charlie, and it says much for Charlie Thurkow that we did not hate him.

The brigadier had lost his wife years before. All that belonged to ancient history--to the old Company days before our time. To say that he was absorbed in his son is to state the case in the mildest imaginable form. The love in this old man's heart for his reckless, happy-souled offspring was of that higher order which stops at nothing. There is a love that worketh wonders, and the same love can make a villain of an honest man.

I looked at old Thurkow, sitting white-lipped behind the decanter, and I knew that there was villainy in his upright, honest heart. He scarcely met my eyes. He moved uneasily in his chair. All through a long life this man had carried nobly the noblest name that can be given to any--the name of gentleman. No great soldier, but a man of dauntless courage. No strategist, but a leader who could be trusted with his country's honour. Upright, honourable, honest, brave--and it had come to this. It had come to his sitting shamefaced before a poor unknown sawbones--not daring to look him in the face.

His duty was plain enough. Charlie Thurkow's turn had come. Charlie Thurkow must be sent to Capoo--by his father's orders. But the old man--the soldier who had never turned his back on danger--could not do it.

We were old friends, this man and I. I owed him much. He had made my career, and I am afraid I had been his accomplice more than once. But we had never wronged any other man. Fitz had aided and abetted more than once. It had been an understood thing between Fitz and myself that the winds of our service were to be tempered to Charlie Thurkow, and I imagine we had succeeded in withholding the fact from his knowledge. Like most spoilt sons, Charlie was a little selfish, with that convenient blindness which does not perceive how much dirty work is done by others.

But we had never deceived the brigadier. He was not easily deceived in those matters which concerned his son. I knew the old man very well, and for years I had been content to sit by the hour together and talk with him of Charlie. To tell the honest truth, Master Charlie was a very ordinary young man. I take it that a solution of all that was best in five Charles Thurkows would make up one Fitz Marner.

There was something horribly pathetic in the blindness of this usually keen old man on this one point. He would sit there stiffly behind the decanter fingering his wine-glass, and make statements about Charlie which would have made me blush had that accomplishment not belonged to my past. A certain cheery impertinence which characterized Charlie was fondly set down as savoir-faire and dash. A cheap wit was held to be brilliancy and conversational finish. And somehow we had all fallen into the way of humouring the brigadier. I never told him, for instance, that his son was a very second-rate doctor and a nervous operator. I never hinted that many of the cures which had been placed to his credit were the work of Fitz--that the men had no confidence in Charlie, and that they were somewhat justified in their opinion.

“This is a bad business,” repeated the brigadier, looking hard at the despatch that lay on the table before him.

“Yes,” I answered.

He tossed the paper towards me and pointed to a chair.

“Sit down!” he said sharply. “Have you had any report from poor Barber?”

In response I handed him the beginning of an official report. I say the beginning, because it consisted of four lines only. It was in Barber's handwriting, and it broke off suddenly in the middle of a word before it began to tell me anything. In its way it was a tragedy. Death had called for Barber while he was wondering how to spell “nauseous.” I also gave him Colonel Simpson's letter, which he read carefully.

“What is it?” he asked suddenly, as he laid the papers aside.

“Officially--I don't know.”

“And unofficially?”

“I am afraid it is cholera.”

The brigadier raised his glass of claret a few inches from the table, but his hand was too unsteady, and he set the glass down again untouched. I was helplessly sorry for him. There was something abject and humiliating in his averted gaze. Beneath his white moustache his lips were twitching nervously.

For a few moments there was silence, and I dreaded his next words. I was trembling for his manhood.

“I suppose something must be done for them,” he said at length, hoarsely, and it was hard to believe that the voice was the voice of our leader--a man dreaded in warfare, respected in peace.

“Yes,” I answered uncompromisingly.

“Some one must go to them--”

“Yes.”

Again there was that horrid silence, broken only by the tramp of the sentinel outside the glassless windows.

“Who?” asked the brigadier, in little more than a whisper.

I suppose he expected it of me--I suppose he knew that even for him, even in mercy to an old man whose only joy in life trembled at that moment in the balance, I could not perpetrate a cruel injustice.

“It devolves on Charlie,” I answered.

He gave one quick glance beneath his lashes, and again lowered his eyes. I heard a long gasping sound, as if he found difficulty in breathing. He sat upright, and threw back his shoulders with a pitiable effort to be strong.

“Is he up to the work?” he asked quietly.

“I cannot conscientiously say that he is not.”

“D--n it, man,” he burst out suddenly, “is there no way out of it?”

“Yes--one way!”

“What is it?”

“I will go.”

“That is impossible,” he answered with a sublime unconsciousness of his own huge selfishness which almost made me laugh. This man would have asked nothing for himself. For his son he had no shame in asking all. He would have accepted my offer, I could see that, had it been possible.

At this moment the door opened, and Charlie Thurkow came in. His eyes were bright with excitement, and he glanced at us both quickly. He was quite well aware of his father's weakness in regard to himself, and I am afraid he sometimes took advantage of it. He often ignored discipline entirely, as he did in coming into the room at that moment.

I suppose there is in every one a sense of justice which accounts for the subtle annoyance caused by the devotion of parents and others--a devotion which has not the good sense to hide itself. There are few things more annoying than an exhibition of unjust love. I rose at once. The coming interview would be either painful or humiliating, and I preferred not to assist at it.

As I went down the dark passages a man in a staff uniform, wearing spurs, clanked past me. I did not know until later that it was Fitz, for I could not see his face.

I went back to my quarters, and was busy for some time with certain technicalities of my trade which are not worth detailing here. While I and my two dispensers were still measuring out and mixing drugs, Fitz came to us.

“I am going to Capoo,” he said quietly.

In his silent, quick way he was taking in all that we were doing. We were packing medical stores for Capoo. I did not answer him, but waited for further details. We could not speak openly before the two assistants at that moment, and somehow we never spoke about it at all. I glanced up at him. His face was pale beneath the sunburn. There was a drawn look just above his moustache, as if his lips were held tightly.

“I volunteered,” he said, “and the brigadier accepted my offer.”

Whenever the word “duty” is mentioned, I think of Fitz to this day.

I said nothing, but went on with my work. The whole business was too disgusting, too selfish, too unjust, to bear speaking of.

I had long known that Fitz loved Elsie Matheson. In my feeble way, according to my scanty opportunity, I had endeavoured to assist him. But her name had never been mentioned between us except carelessly in passing conversation. I knew no details. I did not even know whether Elsie knew of his love; but it was exceedingly likely that if she did, he had not told her. As to her feelings, I was ignorant. She loved somebody, that much I knew. One can generally tell that. One sees it in a woman's eyes. But it is one thing to know that a woman loves, and quite another to find out whom she loves. I have tried in vain more than once. I once thought that I was the favoured person--not with Elsie, with quite another woman--but I was mistaken. I only know that those women who have that in their eyes which I have learnt to recognize are better women than those who lack it.

Fitz was the first to speak.

“Don't put all of that into one case,” he said to one of the dispensers, indicating a row of bottles that stood on the floor. “Divide the different drugs over the cases, so that one or two of them can be lost without doing much harm.”

His voice was quite calm and practical.

“When do you go?” I asked curtly. I was rather afraid of trusting my voice too long, for Fitz was one of the few men who have really entered into my life sufficiently to leave a blank space behind them. I have been a rolling stone, and what little moss I ever gathered soon got knocked off, but it left scars. Fitz left a scar.

“My orders are to start to-night--with one trooper,” he answered.

“What time?”

“In half an hour.”

“I will ride with you a few miles,” I said.

He turned and went to his quarters, which were next to mine. I was still at work when Charlie Thurkow came in. He had changed his dress clothes for an old working suit. I was working in my evening dress--a subtle difference.

“Do you want any help?” he asked. I could hear a grievance in his voice.

“Of course; get on packing that case; plenty of straw between the bottles.”

He obeyed me, working slowly, badly, without concentration, as he always did.

“It's a beastly shame, isn't it?” he muttered presently.

“Yes,” I answered, “it is.”

I suppose he did not detect the sarcasm.

“Makes me look a fool,” he said heatedly. “Why couldn't the governor let me go and take my chance?”

The answer to this question being beyond my ken, I kept a discreet silence. Giving him further instructions, I presently left my junior to complete the task of packing up the necessary medicaments for Capoo.

In less than half an hour Fitz and I mounted our horses. A few of the fellows came out of the messroom, cigar in mouth, to say good-bye to Fitz. One or two of them called out “Good luck” as we left them. Each wish was followed by a little laugh, as if the wisher was ashamed of showing even so minute an emotion. It was, after all, all in the way of our business. Many a time Fitz and I had stood idle while these same men rode out to face death. It was Fitz's turn now--that was all.

The Sikh trooper was waiting for us in the middle of the square--in the moonlight--a grand picturesque figure. A long-faced, silent man, with deep eyes and a grizzled moustache. He wheeled his horse, and dropped ten paces in our rear.

In the course of a varied experience Fitz and I had learnt to ride hard. We rode hard that night beneath the yellow moon, through the sleeping, odorous country. We both knew too well that cholera under canvas is like a fire in a timber-yard. You may pump your drugs upon it, but without avail unless the pumping be scientific. Fitz represented science. Every moment meant a man's life. Our horses soon settled into their stride with a pleasant creaking sound of warm leather and willing lungs.

The moon was above and behind us; we each had a galloping shadow beneath our horse's forefeet. It was a sandy country, and the hoofs only produced a dull thud. There was something exhilarating in the speed--in the shimmering Indian atmosphere. A sense of envy came over me, and I dreaded the moment when I should have to turn and ride soberly home, leaving Fitz to complete his forty-five miles before daylight.

We were riding our chargers. They had naturally fallen into step, and bounded beneath us with a regular, mechanical rhythm. Both alike had their heads down, their shoulders forward, with that intelligent desire to do well which draws a man's heart towards a horse in preference to any other animal. I looked sideways at Fitz, and waited for him to speak. But he was staring straight in front of him, and seemed lost in thought.

“You know,” I said at length, “you have done that old man an ill-turn. Even if you come back he will never forgive himself. He will never look either of us straight in the face again.”

“Can't help that,” replied Fitz. “The thing--” He paused, as if choosing his words. “If,” he went on rather quickly, “the worst comes to the worst, don't let people--ANY ONE--think that I did it because I didn't care, because I set no value on my life. The thing was forced upon me. I was asked to volunteer for it.”

“All right,” I answered, rather absent-mindedly perhaps. I was wondering who “any one” might be, and also who had asked him to throw away his life. The latter might, of course, be the brigadier. Surely it could not have been Elsie. But, as I said before, I always was uncertain about women.

I did not say anything about hoping for the best. Fitz and I had left all that nonsense behind us years before. We did our business amidst battle, murder, and sudden death. Perhaps we were callous, perhaps we had only learnt to value the thing at its true worth, and did not set much fear on death.