In the Guardianship of God Part 5

"Worrk, is it?" echoed Terence with his charming smile of pure sympathy. "Be jabers! yes. Worrk--plenty, but not regular, as a rule.

The man's a torch-bearer. If it happens to be a dark night, and annybody wants a _dhooli_, he carries the torch for it."

Dr. Pringle's resentful surprise made him stutter: "Do you mean to say that--that--that--that--the public money--the ratepayers' money--is wasted in entertaining a whole man for so trivial a task?"

"Trivial, is it? When he's a pillar of fire by night an' a cloud of witnesses by day? And then he isn't a whole man, sir, at all at all.

Wan of his legs is shorter than the other. I had to break it twice, sir, to get it as straight as it is. Thin, I've grave doubts about his spinal column; and as I trepanned him myself, I know his head isn't sound. It was two ton of earth fell on him, sir, last rains, when he was givin' a drink to wan of the Sikhs that got hurt blasting. It's nasty, shifty stuff, sir, is the mud in these low hills--nasty silted alluvial stuff, with a bias in it. So, poor divvle! seeing he wasn't fit for much but the hospital, I put him to the staff of it. And he kapes things going. Indeed, I wouldn't take it upon myself to say that he doesn't do the native patients as much good as half the drugs I exhibit to the unfortunate craythurs, since for sheer mystherious dispensations of Providence commend me to the British pharmacop[oe]ia."

Once again Surgeon-Major Pringle felt that professional dignity could best be served by silent contempt, and orders that the offender was, at least, not to loaf about the verandahs.

But the fates were against the fiat. In the moonless half of May, driest of all months, a Hindu returning from Hurdwar fell sick, and half-an-hour after the report, Surgeon-Captain Terence O'Brien, going out of the ward with his senior, paused in his cheerful whistling of "Belave me, if all those endearing young charms," to say under his breath, "Cholera, mild type." Now cholera, no matter of what type, has an ugly face when seen for the first time, especially when the face which looks into it, wondering if it means life or death, has youth in its eyes. So in the dark nights the _dhooli_ came into requisition, and with it the torch-bearer, until the green and the blue and yellow wards overflowed into the verandahs, and even the pink _post-mortem_ claimed its final share of boys. Not a large one, however, since, as Terence O'Brien said, "It was wan of those epidemics when ye couldn't rightly say a man had cholera till he died of it."

It was bad enough, however, to make the Surgeon-Major, who had never seen one before, set to work when it pa.s.sed, suddenly as it had come, to cipher out averages, and tabulate treatments, with a view to what is called future guidance. And so, as he confided to his a.s.sistant with great complacency, it became clear as daylight that the largest percentage of recoveries, their rapidity, and as a natural corollary the incidence of mildness in the attack itself, seemed in connection with the position of the cots. Those close to the doors, or actually on the verandahs, were the most fortunate, and so he was inclined to believe in the value of currents of fresh air.

"Fresh air, is it?" echoed Terence, with an encouraging smile. "Maybe; maybe not. G.o.d knows, it may be anything in the wide wurrld, since there's but wan thing you can bet your bottom dollar on in cholera, sir, and that is that ye can't tell anything about it for certain, and that your experience of wan epidemic won't be that of the next."

"Neither does your experience, Mr. O'Brien," retorted his senior, sarcastically, "militate against mine being more fortunate. I mean to leave no stone unturned to arrive at reliable _data_ on points which appear to me to have been overlooked. For instance, I shall begin by asking those cases of recovery if they remember anything which seemed at the time to bring them relief, to stimulate in them that vitality which it is so essential to preserve."

In pursuance of which plan he went out then and there to the verandah, where a dozen or more lank boys were lounging about listlessly, just beginning to feel that life might soon mean more than a grey duffle dressing-gown and a long chair.

"No, sir," said the first, firmly. "I disremember anythin' that done me good. I jest lay with a sickenin' pain in my inside, an' a don't-care-if-I-do feelin' outside." He paused, and another boy took up the tale sympathetically.

"So it was. A reg'lar, don't-care except w'en that little 'eathen--'im that's always saying _shahbash_, sir, come along; an' that seem to me most times. 'E made me feel a blamed sight--beggin' pardon, sir--worse. For I kep' thinkin' of where I see 'im first, like a alley taw in the dead 'ouse; and the dead 'ouse isn't a cheerful sorter think w'en you ain't sure but wot you're going there. It made me--" he paused in his turn.

"Made you what?" asked Terence O'Brien, who had followed to listen.

"Give me the 'orrors, sir, till I'd 'ave swopped all I knew to kick 'im quiet; but not bein' able, I jest lay and kep' it for 'im against I could, till it seemed like as I must; an' so I will."

"In cases of extreme nervous depression, sir," began the junior, mischievously, "a counter irritant--"

"Pshaw!" interrupted Dr. Pringle, angrily, and walked back with great dignity to the office.

But the conversation thus started lingered among the grey dressing-gowns, the result of comparing notes being a general verdict that "Alley taw" deserved that kicking. He did not actually get it, however; the boys were too big, and he too small for that. But he sank into still greater disrepute, becoming, in truth, that most unenviable of all things not made nor created, but begotten of idle wit--a garrison b.u.t.t. Not that he seemed to care much. He grew more furtive in his lounging, but nothing seemed to disturb the divine calm of his commendation for the world which he had created for himself with his "Bravo, boys, bravo!" Behold, all things in it were very good! That, at least, was Terence O'Brien's fanciful way of looking at the position. As he went about his work whistling "Belave me, if all those endearing young charms"--a tune which, he said, cheered the boys--he would often pause to smile at the _shahbash wallah_. After a time, however, the smile would change to a quick narrowing of the eyes, as if something in the bearing of the man was puzzling. Finally, one day, coming upon the man sidling along a bit of brick wall, which had been built to strengthen a crack in the mud one overhanging the dry watercourse, he pulled up, asked a few rapid questions, and then lifted the man's eyelids and peered into the soft brown eyes, as if he wanted to see through them to a crack he knew of in the back of the man's skull.

"And you are sure you see as well as ever?" he asked again.

"Quite as well, _Huzoor_," came the answer, with a faint tremor in it.

"I can see to carry the torch on the darkest of nights if it is wanted, _Huzoor!_"

"Hm!" said Dr. O'Brien, doubtfully, promising himself to test the truth of this statement. But the fates again decreed otherwise. The next day's mail brought orders for him to go and act elsewhere for a senior on two months' leave.

Dr. Pringle was not sorry. How could you collaborate properly with a man who calmly admitted that at a pinch he had used a bullet-mould to extract a tooth?

The monsoon had long since broken in the plains ere the young doctor returned; but in the arid tract in which Fort Lawrence lay rain came seldom at any time. And that was a year of abnormal drought. The fissures in the mud seemed to widen with the heat, and the fringe of green oleanders which followed every turn of the dry watercourse, mutely witnessing to unseen moisture below, wilted and drooped. In the new-built fort itself a crack or two showed in the level platform jutting out across the low valley on which the building stood, and in more than one place portions of the low mud-cliffs crumbled and broke away. The whole earth, indeed, seemed agape with thirst.

But water in plenty came at last. On the very day, in fact, when Terence O'Brien returned to the fort, which he reached on foot, having had to leave his _dhooli_ behind, owing to a small slip on the road; nevertheless, as he crossed over from the mess to his quarters close to the hospital that evening, he told himself that he had the devil's own luck to be there at all. For the rain was then hitting the hard ground with a distinct thud, and spurting up from it in spray, showing white against the black mirk of the night. And the rush of the stream filling up the dry bed of the watercourse, and playing marbles with the boulders, was like a lion's roar.

It did not keep him awake, however, for he was dead tired. So he slept the sleep of the just. For how long he did not know. It was darker than ever when he woke suddenly--why he knew not, and with the same blind instinct was out into the open, quick as he could grope his way.

Not an instant too soon, either. A deafening crash told him that, though he could not see his own hand. The rain had ceased, but the rush of the river dulled hearing to all lesser sounds. As he stood dazed, he staggered, slipped, almost fell. Was that an earthquake, or was the solid ground parting somewhere close at hand? And if his house was down, how about the hospital and the sick folk?

He turned at the thought and ran till, in the dark and the silence of that overwhelming roar, he came full tilt upon some one else running in the dark also. It was the Surgeon-Major.

"The hospital's down. Have you a light--anything--a match?" panted Dr.

Pringle. "We must have a light to see--"

"_Oh, masal! Oh, masal-jee!_" (Oh, the torch! Oh, the torch-bearer!) shouted Terence at the top of his voice as he ran on till stopped by something blocking the way. Ruins! And that was the sound of voices.

"What's up?" he cried.

"Don' know, sir," came from unseen hearers. "Part o' the 'orspital's down, but we can't see. It's a slide o' some sort, for there's a crack right across nigh under our feet. If we could get a light!"

"_Oh, masal! Oh, masal-jee!_" The doctor's voice rang out again towards the camp-followers' lines, but the roar was deafening. And in the night, when all men are asleep, the news of disaster travels slowly. Yet without a light it was impossible even to realise what had happened, still less to help the sick who might lie crushed.

"_Oh, masal! Oh, masal-jee!_--thank G.o.d! there's a light at last."

There was, in the far distance across the quadrangle. But it was not a torch; it was only an officer in a gorgeous sleeping-suit running with a bedroom candle. Still it was a light!

"Come on, man!" shouted Terence O'Brien, as it slackened speed, paused, stopped dead. His was the only voice that seemed to carry through the roar.

But the gay sleeping-suit stood still, waving its candle.

"It's the crack, sir," called some one in Terence O'Brien's ear. "It goes right across, I expect--we'd best find out first."

It did. A yawning fissure, twenty feet wide, had cut the hospital compound in two, and isolated one angle of the fort--that nearest the river--from the rest. Twenty feet wide, at least, judged by the glimmer of light! And how deep? Had the river cut it? Was it only a matter of time when the mud island on which they stood should be swept away? And what were the means of escape? There was more light now; more bedroom candles and sleeping-suits; a lamp or two, and others behind, as the boys--last to wake--came running, to pause like the first-comers, at the unpa.s.sable gulf; for the more it could be seen, the more difficult seemed the task of crossing it at once. By-and-by, perhaps, with ladders and ropes it would be possible--but now? Terence O'Brien, feeling the "now" imperative, skirted the crumbling edge almost too near for safety in his eagerness to find some foothold for a daring man; but there was none. True, the brick wall, built to strengthen the cracked mud one, still bridged the extreme end of the fissure, looking as if the mud had deliberately shrunk from its intrusion. It hung there half seen, on G.o.d knows what slender foundation--perhaps on none. But it could give no help. To trust it would be madness; a touch might send it down into the river below. No!

Since none could cross the gap there must be more light on the farther side; torches, a bonfire, anything to pierce the dark and let men see how to help themselves and other men!

"_Oh, masal! Oh, masal-jee-an!_" The cry went out with all the force of his lungs. Surely the camp-followers must be awake by now.

One was, at any rate; for, surrounded by a halo from the f.a.ggot of blazing pitch-pine it carried, a figure showed upon the path worn, close to the mud walls of the native quarters, by the foot-tracks of those whose duty took them to the hospital. It was the _shahbash wallah_, coming slowly, almost indifferently, in answer to the call; coming as if to his ordinary duty towards the growing fringe of ineffectual candles and eager men bordering the impossible. That was better! Given half-a-dozen more such haloes--and there were plenty if they would only come--and eager men on the other side would see how to help themselves and their comrades!

But no other halo appeared behind the one which followed the foot-track of others so closely; and so once again the call was given--

"_Oh, masal! Oh, masal-jee-an! Oh, masal! Oh, masal-jee!_"

"_Hazr, Huzoor!_" (Present, sir).

The nearness of the voice made Terence O'Brien look up, for it was the first voice he had heard clearly from the other side against that roar of the river. But as he looked another voice beside him said hurriedly--

"My G.o.d! he's coming across!"

He was. Surrounded by the halo of his own light, and keeping religiously to the beaten path, the _shahbash wallah_, leaving the mud wall of the quarters, had struck the outer brick one as it stood, supported for a few yards by a spit of earth upon which the foot-track showed as the light pa.s.sed. A spit narrowing to nothing--no! not to nothing, but to a mere ledge of earth and mortar clinging like a swallow's nest to the brick--wider here, narrower there, yet still able to give faint foothold upon the traces of those feet which had pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed so often to their trivial round, their common task. Foothold! Ay! But what of the brain guiding the feet? What of the courage guiding the brain?

And even then, what of the foundation?

A sort of murmur rose above the roar. "He can't do it--impossible--tell him. Call to him, O'Brien. Tell him not to try."

The doctor stood for one second watching the figure centring its circle of light against the background of wall; then, even though there was no need for it, his voice fell to a whisper. "Hush!" he said. "Don't hustle him. By the Lord who made me, he doesn't know; he's feeling his way every inch by the wall! He's blind, and by G.o.d!

if anybody can do it, he will."