"THERE'S NOTHING LIKE THE TRUTH."
Bob Dickenson's jaw dropped as he stood staring for some moments at the
corporal--as if he could not quite believe his ears. It seemed to him
that this had something to do with the explosion, and that his hearing
apparatus was still wrong, twisting and distorting matters, or else that
the excitement of the past night and his exertions had combined with the
aforesaid explosion to make him stupid and confused.
But all the same he felt that he could think and weigh and compare
Roby's words with those of the corporal, and experienced the sensation
of a tremendous effervescence of rage bubbling up within his breast and
rising higher and higher to his lips till it burst forth in words hot
with indignation.
"Why," he roared, "you miserable, snivelling--lying--Oh, tut, tut, tut!
what a fool I am, quarrelling with a man off his head!--Here, orderly,"
he continued, turning to the hospital attendant, "this fellow May
doesn't know what he's saying."
"So I keep on telling him, sir," said the man sharply; "but he will keep
at it. Here's poor Captain Roby regularly off his chump, and bursting
out every now and then calling everybody a coward, and, as if that ain't
bad enough, Corporal May goes on encouraging him by saying _Amen_ every
time."
"I don't," cried the corporal, in a very vigorous tone for one so badly
injured; "and look here, if you make false charges against me I'll
report you to the doctor next time he comes round, and to the colonel
too."
"What!" cried the orderly fiercely. "Yes, you'd better! Recollect
you're down now, and it's my turn. I've had plenty of your nastiness,
Mr Jack-in-office Corporal, for a year past, when I was in the ranks.
You ain't a corporal now, but in hospital; and if you say much more and
don't lie quiet I'll roll up a pad of lint and stuff that in your
mouth."
"You daren't," cried the corporal, speaking the simple truth defiantly,
and without a trace of his previous whining tone.
"Oh yes, I dare," said the attendant, with a grin. "Doctor's orders
were that, as you were put in here when you oughtn't to be, I was to be
sure and keep you quiet so as you shouldn't disturb the captain, and I'm
blessed if I don't keep you quiet; so there."
"You daren't," cried the corporal tauntingly.
"What! Just you say that again and I will. Look here, my fine fellow.
In comes Dr Emden. `What's this, orderly?' he says. `How dare you gag
this man?'
"`Couldn't keep him quiet, sir,' I says. `He's been raving awful, and
lying, and egging the captain on to keep saying Mr Dickenson and Mr
Lennox is cowards.'"
"I wasn't lying," cried the corporal, with a return of his whimpering
tone. "What Captain Roby says is all true. I saw Mr Lennox sneak off
like a cur with his tail between his legs."
"Cur yourself, you lying scoundrel!" cried Dickenson.--"Here, orderly,
I'll hold him. Where's that gag?"
"Oh! Ow!" wailed the corporal. "Here, if you touch me I'll cry for
help."
"You won't be able to," said the orderly, making a pretended rush at the
doctor's chest of hospital requirements.
"Bah! Quiet, orderly. Let the scoundrel alone. He's off his head and
doesn't know what he's saying, poor wretch."
"Begging your pardon, sir," said the attendant, "the captain don't; but
this chap does. I haven't seen what I have amongst the sick and wounded
without picking up a little, and I say Master Corporal here's doing a
bit o' sham Abram to keep himself safe."
"Oh, nonsense," said Dickenson shortly. "You're getting as bad as the
poor fellow himself. The doctor would have seen in a minute."
"I don't know, sir," whispered the attendant, glancing at the corporal,
who lay with his eyes half-closed and his ears twitching. "He's pretty
cunning. Had a crack or two with a rifle-stock, I think, but only just
so much as would make another man savage. You'll see; he'll be sent
back into the ranks in a couple of days or so."
"No, no, orderly," said Dickenson. "I prefer to believe he's a bit
delirious."
"Well, sir, I hope he is," said the man, "for everybody's sake,
including his own. I don't know, though," he continued, following the
lieutenant outside after the latter had laid his hand upon Roby's
burning forehead, and been called a coward and a cur for his pains;
"I've got my knife into Master Corporal May for old grudges, and I
should rather like Mr Lennox to hear him say what he does about him.
Corporal May would get it rather hot."
"That will do," said Dickenson; "the man's in such a state of mental
excitement that his captain's ravings impress him and he thinks it is
all true. There, you, as a hospital attendant, must learn to be patient
with the poor fellows under your charge."
"I am, sir," said the man sturdily. "Ask the doctor, sir. I'm doing my
best, for it's sore work sometimes with the poor chaps who are regularly
bad and feel that they are going home--I mean the long home, sir. I've
got six or seven little things--bits of hair, and a silver ring, and a
lucky shilling, and such-like, along with messages to take back with me
for the poor fellows' mothers and sisters and gals; and please goodness
I ever get back to the old country from this blessed bean-feast we're
having, I'm going to take those messages and things to them they're for,
even if I have to walk."
"Ha!" said the young officer, laying his hand on the man's shoulder and
gripping him firmly, for there was a huskiness in his words now, and he
sniffed and passed his hand across his nose.
"Can't help it, sir. I'm hard enough over the jobs, but it touches a
man when it comes to sewing 'em up in their blankets ready for you know
what. Makes you think of them at home."
"Yes," said Dickenson, in quite an altered tone. "There, you know me.
When we get back and you're going to deliver your messages, if you let
me know, orderly, I'll see that you don't have to walk." Dickenson
turned sharply to walk away, but came back. "Try and keep the captain
from making those outrageous charges, my lad."
"I do, sir; but he will keep on."
"Well, go on cooling his bandages, and he'll go off to sleep."
"I hope so, sir," replied the man. "But what about Corporal May?"
"Serve him the same, of course," said Dickenson, and he hurried away,
with Roby's words ringing in his ears.
"Chap wants to be a sort of angel for this work," said the orderly as he
fumbled about his slight garments. "Hankychy, hankychy, where are yer?
Washed you out clean in the little river this morning and dried you on a
hot stone."
"What are you looking for, mate?" said the third patient in the hut
feebly--a man who, with a shattered arm-bone, was lying very still.
"Hankychy," said the orderly gruffly. "Lost it."
"Here it is. You lent it to me to wipe my face and keep off the flies."
"Did I? So I did. All right, mate; keep it. Mind you don't hurt the
flies. Like a drink o' water?"
"Ah-h!" sighed the injured man. That was all, but it meant so much.
There was a pleasant, trickling, tinkling sound in the heated hut as the
orderly took a tin and dipped it in an iron bucket. The next minute he
was down on one knee with an arm under the sufferer's shoulders, raising
him as gently as if the task was being done by a woman. Then the tin
was held to the poor fellow's lips, and the orderly smiled as he saw the
avidity with which it was emptied.
"Good as a drop of beer--eh?" he said.
"Beer?" replied the patient, returning the smile. "Ha! Not bad in its
way; but I never tasted a pint so good as that."
"Oh! Ah!" said the orderly grimly. "Wait till you get all right again,
and you'll alter your tune."
"Get right again?" whispered the man, so that the corporal should not
hear. "Think I shall?"
"What! with nothing else the matter but a broken bone? Why, of course."
"Ah!" sighed the poor fellow, with a look of relief. "I'm a bit down,
mate, with having so little to eat, and it makes me think. Thankye;
that's done me a lot o' good."
He settled down upon the sack which formed his couch, and the orderly
rose to take back the tin, not seeing that Corporal May's eyes were
fixed upon the vessel, which he watched eagerly, as if expecting to see
it refilled and brought to him. But the orderly merely set it down, and
made a vicious blow at a buzzing fly.
"Well, what have I done?" whined the corporal.
"Done? Heverythink you shouldn't have done," said the orderly. "Look
here, corp'ral; next time the barber cuts your hair, you ask him to take
a bit off the end of your tongue. It's too long, mate."
"Do you want me to report you to the doctor for refusing to bring me a
drink?"
"Not I," said the orderly coolly. "The chief's got quite enough to do
without listening to the men's complaints."
"Then bring me a drink of water directly."
"All right," said the man good-humouredly; "but you'd better not."
"Better not? Why?"
"Because it only makes you cry. Runs out of your eyes again in big
drops, just as it does out of another fellow's skin in perspiration.
Strikes me, corp'ral, that you were meant for a gal."
"You won't be happy till you've been reported, my man," said the
patient.
"And I sha'n't be happy then, mate. Want a drink o' water?"
"Yes; but things are managed here so that the patients have to beg and
pray for it."
"And then they gets it," said the orderly good-humouredly as he dipped
the tin again; "and that's more than you can say about what most chaps
begs and prays for. There you are."
"Well, help me up," said the corporal.
"Yah! Sit up. You can."
"Oh!" groaned the man in a peculiar way which sounded as if he were not
satisfied with its effectiveness, and so turned it into a whine.
"Won't do with me, corp'ral," said the man. "You gammoned the doctor,
but you haven't took me in a bit."
"Only wait!" said the patient in a miserable whining tone this time.
"How cowardly! What a shame for such as you to be put in charge of
wounded men!"
"Wounded!" said the orderly, laughing. "Why, your skin is as whole as
mine is. You've frightened yourself into the belief that you're very
bad."
"Ah! you'll alter your tone when I've reported you."
"Look here, corp'ral; it strikes me that, with the row that's coming on
about you and the captain charging the officers with being cowards,
there's going to be such a shine and court-martial that you'll have your
work cut out to take care of yourself. Here, put your arm over my
shoulder, and up you come."
"Eh?" said the corporal in a much more natural tone.
"Eh--what?"
"About the court-martial?"
"Oh, I don't know. I only said what I thought," said the orderly,
winking to himself. "Now then, up you come. Mind the water."
He supported the corporal gently enough, and helped him to raise the
water to his lips, watching him as he drained it, and then lowered him
gently down and knelt, still looking at him, till the corporal gazed
back at him wonderingly.
"What are you staring at?" he said sharply.
"You, old man."
"Why?"
"I was thinking. Your knocks have made you quite off your head."
"That they haven't. I'm as clear over everything as you are."
"Oh no," said the orderly. "You're quite off your chump, and don't know
what you're saying."
"You're a fool," said the corporal angrily.
"Tell me something I don't know, old chap. Fool? Why, of course I was,
to 'list and come out for a holiday like this. Oh yes, plenty of us
feels what fools we've been; but we're making the best of it--like men.
D'yer hear--like men? I say, the captain's regularly raving, ain't he?"
"Well, er--yes--no."
"Oh, he is; and you'd better own up and be cracked too. You don't know
what you've been saying about Mr Lennox."
The corporal hesitated, looking up in the orderly's eyes curiously, and
seeming as if he was thinking deeply of the man's words and debating in
himself about the position he was going to occupy if an inquiry did
follow the captain's charges. He was not long in deciding, but he
forgot to whine as he said, "Off my head? Delirious? Not a bit. I saw
all the captain said, and I'm as clear as you are. I shall stick to it.
There's nothing like the truth."
"Oh yes, there is," said the orderly, chuckling; "a thoroughly good
thumping lie's wonderfully like it sometimes--so much like it that it
puzzles people to tell t'other from which."
"Look here, orderly; do you mean to tell me I'm a liar?" said the
corporal angrily.
"Not I. 'Tain't no business of mine; only it strikes me that there's
going to be a regular row about this. People as go righting don't like
to be called cowards. It hurts anybody, but when it comes to be said of
a soldier it's like skinning him. There, I must go and wet the
captain's lint."
Saying which, the orderly rose and went to captain Roby's side to
moisten the hot bandages, so that their rapid evaporation might produce
a feeling of coolness to his fevered head.