The Swindler and Other Stories Part 39

"I was with him when he died," the man said. "It was in just such an inferno as this. We were alone together, looking for gold in the Australian desert. We didn't find it, though it was there, mountains of it. The water gave out. We tossed for the last drain--and I won. That was how Rotherby came to die. He hadn't much to live for, and he was going to die, anyhow. A queer chap, he was. He and his wife never lived together after the smash came, and he had to leave the country. Perhaps you knew?"

"Yes," the doctor said again, "I knew."

Ford moved his head restlessly.

"The thought of her used to worry him in the night," he said. "I've known him lie for hours not sleeping, just staring up at the stars, and thinking, thinking. I've sometimes thought that the worst torture on earth can't equal that. You know, after he was dead, they found her miniature on him--a thing in a gold case, with their names engraved inside. He used to wear it round his neck like a charm. It was by that they identified him--that and his signet-ring, and one or two letters.

Scamp though I was, I had the grace not to rob the dead. They sent the things to his wife. I've often wondered what she did with them."

"I can tell you that," said the doctor quietly. "She keeps them among her greatest treasures."

Ford turned sharply on his pillows, and stifled an exclamation of pain.

"You know her still, then?" he said.

"She is my wife," the doctor answered.

A long silence followed his words. The wounded soldier lay with closed eyes and drawn brows. He seemed to be unconscious of everything save physical pain.

Suddenly he seemed to recover himself, and looked up.

"You," he said slowly, "you are Montagu Durant, the fellow she was engaged to before she married Rotherby."

The doctor bent his head.

"Yes," he said. "I am Montagu Durant."

"Rotherby's friend," Ford went on. "The chap who stuck to him through thick and thin--to be betrayed in the end. I know all about you, you see, though you haven't placed me yet."

"No, I can't place you," Durant said. "I don't think we ever knew each other very well. You will have to tell me who you are."

"Later--later," said Ford. "No, you never knew me very well. It was always you and Rotherby, you and Rotherby. You never looked at any one else, till that row at the 'Varsity when he got kicked out. Yes," with a sudden, sharp sigh, "I was a 'Varsity man too. I admired Leonard Rotherby in those days. Poor old Leo! He knew how to hit a boundary as well as any fellow! You never forgave him, I suppose, for marrying your girl?"

There was a pause, and the fevered eyes sought Durant's face. The answer came at length very slowly.

"I could have forgiven him," Durant said, "if he had stuck to her and made her happy."

"Ah! There came the rub. But did Rotherby ever stick to anything? It was a jolly good thing he died--for all concerned. Yet, you know, he cared for her to the last. Blackguard as he was, he carried her in his heart right up to his death. I tell you I was with him, and I know."

There was strong insistence in the man's words. Durant could feel the racing pulse leap and quiver under his hand. He leaned forward a little, looking closely into the drawn face.

"I think you have talked enough," he said. "Try to get some rest."

"I haven't raved," said Ford, with confidence. "It has done me good to talk. I can't help thinking of Leo Rotherby. My brain runs on him. He wanted to see you--horribly--before he died. I believe he'd have asked your forgiveness. But you wouldn't have given it to him, I suppose? You will never forgive him in your heart?"

Again the answer did not come at once. Durant was frowning a little--the frown of a man who tries to fathom his own secret impulses.

"I think," he said at last, "that if I had seen him and he had asked for it, I should not have refused my forgiveness."

"No one ever refused Rotherby anything," said the dying man, with a curious, half-humorous twist of his mouth under its dark moustache.

"Except yourself," Durant reminded him, almost involuntarily.

Again the wandering, uneasy eyes sought his. "You mean--that drain of water," Ford said, with a total lack of shame or remorse. "Yes, it's true Rotherby didn't have that. But it didn't make any difference, you know. He was going to die. And the living come before the dead, eh, doctor?"

Durant did not quite understand his tone, but he suffered the words to go unchallenged. He was not there to discuss the higher morality with a dying man. Moreover, he knew that the bare mention of water was a fiery torture to him, disguise it as he might.

He sat a little longer, then rose to go. He fancied that there was a shade less of restlessness about this man, whom he knew to be suffering what no other man in the tent could have endured in silence.

In response to a sign he stooped to catch a few, low-spoken words.

"By-and-bye," said Private Ford, with husky self-a.s.surance, "when it's dark--or only moonlight--a man will creep out between the lines and crawl down to the river, to get some water for--the children."

He was wandering again, Durant saw; and his pity mounted high.

"Perhaps, poor fellow; perhaps," he answered gently.

As he went away he heard again the droning, unconscious voice:

"And power was given unto him to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched--with great heat. Eh, Sammy? Is that water you have there?

Quick! Give me--what? There is none? Then why the--why the--" There came an abrupt pause; then a brief, dry chuckle that was like the crackling of flame through dead twigs. "Ah, I forgot. I mustn't curse. I've got to set the example to these children. But, O G.o.d, the heat and the flies!"

Durant wondered if after all it had been a kindness to call back the pa.s.sing spirit that had begun to forget.

Slowly the scorching day wore away, till evening descended in a blaze of gorgeous colouring upon the desolate African wilderness and the band of men that had been surrounded and cut off by a wily enemy.

They were expecting relief. Hourly they expected it, but, being hampered by a score of wounded, it was not possible for them to break through the thickly populated scrub una.s.sisted. And they had no water.

A stream flowed, brown and sluggish, not more than a hundred yards below the camp. But that same stream was flanked on the farther side by a long, black line of thicket that poured forth fire upon any man who ventured out from behind the great rocks that protected the camp.

It had been attempted again and again, for the needs of the wounded were desperate. But each effort had been disastrous, and at last an order had gone forth that no man was to expose himself again to this deadly risk.

So, silent behind their entrenchments, with the hospital tent in their midst, the British force had to endure the situation, waiting with a dogged patience for the coming of their comrades who could not be far away.

Regal to the last, the sun sank away in orange and gold; and night, burning, majestic, shimmering, spread over a cloudless sky. A full moon floated up behind dense forest trees, and shed a glimmering radiance everywhere. The heat did not seem to vary by a breath.

A great restlessness spread like a wave through the hospital tent. Men waked from troubled slumber, crying aloud like children, piteously, unreasoningly, for water.

The doctor went from one to another, restraining, soothing, rea.s.suring.

His influence made itself felt, and quiet returned; but it was a quiet that held no peace; it was the silent gripping of an agony that was bound to overcome.

Again and again through the crawling hours the bitter protest broke out afresh, like the crying of souls in torment. One or two became delirious and had to be forcibly restrained from struggling forth in search of that which alone could still their torture.

Durant was too fully occupied with these raving patients of his to spare any attention for the bed in the far corner on which they had laid the one man whose injuries were mortal. If he thought of the man at all, it was to reflect that he was probably dead.

But at last a young officer entered the seething tent, and touched him on the shoulder.

"Can you come outside a moment? You're wanted," he said.