IN WHICH THE MAJOR LEARNS THAT NO MAN IS NECESSARY.
For six days Troy continued to rejoice, winding up each day with a
dance. We will content ourselves, however, with one last extract
from _The Plymouth and Dock Telegraph_:
"At noon on Thursday the town assembled again and escorted its
Mayor and Mayoress to the Hymen Hospital, where, in the presence
of a distinguished company, Mrs. Hansombody (ward and heiress of
the late S. Hymen) unveiled a bust of her gallant kinsman, whose
premature heroic death Troy has never ceased to lament.
Sir Felix Felix-Williams made eulogistic reference to the
deceased, remarking on the number of instances by which the late
war had confirmed the truth of the Roman poet's observation that
it is pleasant and seemly to die for one's country. The Mayor
responded on behalf of his amiable lady, whom Sir Felix's
tribute had visibly affected. The sculpture was pronounced to
be a lifelike image, reflecting great credit on the artist,
Mr. Tipping, R.A. The pedestal, five feet in height, is of
polished black Luxulyan granite, and bears name and date with
the words 'Take Him for All in All We shall not Look upon his
Like again.' The bust, executed in plaster of Paris, will be
replaced by marble when funds allow. The crowd dispersed in
silence after the ceremony. Dancing in the street followed at
6 p.m., and was kept up with spirit for some hours, during which
a large quantity of beer was given away."
The Major lay in the next room--the casualty ward--and stared up at
the whitewashed ceiling.
His whole being ached as though, mind and body, he had been set
upon and beaten senseless with bladders. And this was the second
time! Yes--good heavens, how had he deserved it?--the second time!
He remembered, after the disaster off Boulogne--many days after--
awaking to consciousness in his prison bed in the fortress of Givet.
Then, as now, he had lain staring, his whole soul sickened by the
cruel jar of the jest. Hand of fate, was it? Nay, a jocose and
blundering finger, rather, that had flipped him, as a man might flip
a beetle, into the night. Then, as now, his soul had welled up in
sullen indignation. He blamed no one; for in all the stupid chapter
of accidents there was no one to blame. But when the Protestant
chaplain in Givet came to his bed he turned his face to the wall.
He refused to give his name. He did not understand this blind
malevolence of fate, but he would make no terms with it. He--Solomon
Hymen--had a will of his own and a proper pride. If the world chose
to use him so, after all his services to mankind, let it go and be
damned to it. I tell you, the man had courage.
If his friends at home valued him, let them seek him out. He had
given them cause enough for gratitude. If not, he asked nothing of
them. In the prison he gave his name as Mr. Solomon.
Yet he had made two attempts to escape. In the first he ran away
with two comrades as far as Mezieres. Being pursued by the
_gens-d'armes_ there, and called upon to surrender, his companions
had given themselves up. Not so our hero; nor was he secured until
he lay unconscious with a bullet-hole in the cheek. It was this
which ever afterwards affected his speech, the bullet having cut or
partially paralysed some string of the tongue.
It had been touch-and-go with him; but he recovered, and, passing
henceforward as a desperate character, was drafted south with a dozen
other desperate characters to the gloomy fortress of Briancon.
There, in a second attempt for liberty, a fall from the ramparts had
cost him his leg.
But worse than all his incarceration had been the final tramp through
France--right away north to Valenciennes; then left-about-turn, three
hundred and fifty miles to Tours; then south-east to Riou; and from
Riou south-west to Bordeaux, where the transport took him off--one of
six transports for about fifteen hundred released prisoners. All the
way, too, on a wooden leg! Heaven knows how bitterly he had come to
hate that leg. Yet his heart, hardened though it was by all this
long adversity, had melted as the _Romney_ transport beat up closer
and closer for England, and at sight of Plymouth heights he had
broken into tears.
Troy! Troy! After all, Troy would remember him. Though he knew it
brought him nearer to freedom, all that marching through France had
been a weariness eating into his soul. Now a free man, along the
road from Plymouth to Troy he had almost skipped.
And this had been his homecoming!
They remembered him. Beyond all his hopes they remembered him.
In their memory he had grown into a Homeric man, a demi-god. He had
only to declare himself. . . .
The Major lay on his hospital bed and stared at the ceiling. It was
all very well, but ten years had made a difference--a mighty
difference; a difference which beat all his calculations. It was a
double difference, too; for all the while that he had been shrinking
in self-knowledge, his reputation at home had been expanding like a
cucumber.
Good Lord! How could he live up to it now? To obey his impulses and
declare himself was simple enough, perhaps; but afterwards--
He had nearly betrayed himself when Cai Tamblyn--in a queer
straight-cut frock-coat of livery, blue with brass buttons, but
otherwise looking much the same as ever--thrust his head in at the
door.
In the first shock of astonishment the Major had almost cried out on
him by name.
"Why--eh?--what are _you_ doing here?" he stammered. Hitherto he had
been waited on by a strange doctor (Hansombody's new partner) and a
nurse whom he had assisted twelve years ago, when she was left a
widow, to set up as a midwife.
"Might ask the same question of you," said Cai Tamblyn. "I'm the
kew-rator, havin' been Hymen's servant in the old days, and shows
around the visitors, besides dustin' the mementoes--locks of his
bloomin' 'air and the rest of the trash, I looked in to see how you
was a-gettin' on after the palaver. If I'm not wanted I'll go."
"Don't go."
"Very well, then, I won't." Mr. Tamblyn took a seat on the edge of an
unoccupied bed, drew from his pocket a knife and a screw of pig-tail
tobacco, sliced off a portion and rubbed it meditatively between his
hands. "I done you a good turn just now," he continued. "Some o'
the company--the womenkind especially--wanted to come in and make a
fuss over you before leavin'."
"Why should they want to make a fuss over me?"
"Well you may ask," said Mr. Tamblyn, candidly. "'Tain't a question
of looks, though. There's a kind of female--an' 'tis the commonest
kind, too--can't hear of a man bein' hurt an' put to bed but she
wants to see for herself. 'Tis like the game a female child plays
with a dollies' house. Here they've got a nice little orspital to
amuse 'em, with nice clean blankets an' sheets, an' texteses 'pon the
walls, an' a cupboard full o' real medicines an' splints, and along
comes a real live patient to be put to bed, an' the thing's complete.
Hows'ever, they didn' get no fun out of 'ee to-day, for I told 'em
you was sleepin' peaceful an' not to be disturbed."
"Thank you." Under pretence of settling down more comfortably
against the pillow, the Major turned his head aside. "Then it seems
you knew this--this--"
"Hymen? Knew him intimate."
"What--what sort of man was he?"
Cai Tamblyn transferred the shreds of tobacco to a pouch made of
pig's bladder, pocketed it, and rubbed his two palms together,
chuckling softly.
"Look here, I'll show you the bust of 'en if you like; that is"--he
checked himself and added dubiously--"if you're sure it won't excite
you."
"Excite me?"
"Sure it won't give you a relapse or something o' the sort?
The woman Snell has stepped down to the Mayor's to wash up after the
light refreshments, and I'm in charge. Prettily she'll blow me up if
she comes back an' finds I've been an' gone an' excited you."
He cleared a space on the wash-stand. "I've no business to be in
here at all, really, talkin' wi' the pashent; but damme, you can't
think what 'tis like, sittin' by yourself in a museum. I wish
sometimes they'd take an' stuff me!"
He hobbled out and returned grunting under the weight of the bust,
which he set down upon the wash-stand, turning it so that the Major
might have a full view of its features.
"There!" he exclaimed, drawing back and panting a little.
"Good heavens!" The Major drew the bed-clothes hurriedly up to his
chin. "Was he--was he like _that_?"
"I thank the Lord he was not," Mr. Tamblyn answered, slowly and
piously. "Leavin' out the question o' colour and the material, which
is plaster pallis and terrible crips, and the shortage, which is no
more than the head an' henge of 'en, so to speak, 'tis no more like
the man than _you_ be. And I say again that I thank the Lord for it.
For to have the old feller stuck up in the corner an' glazin' at me
nat'rel as life every time I turned my head would be more than nerves
could stand."
"You wouldn't wish him back, then, in the flesh?"
Cai Tamblyn turned around smartly and gazed at the patient, whose
face, however, rested in shadow.
"Look 'ee here. You've a-been in a French war prison, I hear, but
that's no excuse for talkin' irreligious. The man was blowed to
pieces, I tell you, by a thing called a catamaran, off the coast o'
France; not so much left of 'en as would cover a half-crown piece.
And you ask me if I want 'en back in the flesh!"
"But suppose that should turn out to be a mistake?" muttered the
Major.
"Hey?" Cai Tamblyn gave a start. "Oh, I see; you're just puttin' it
so for the sake of argyment. Well, then,"--the old man turned his
quid deliberately--"did you ever hear tell what old Sammy Mennear
said when his wife died an' left him a widow-man? 'I wouldn' ha' lost
my dear Sarah for a hundred pound,' said he; 'an' I dunno as I'd have
her back for five hundred.' That's about the size o't with Hymen, I
reckon--though, mind you, I bear en no grudge. He left me fifty
pound by will, and a hundred an' fifty to a heathen nigger; and how
that can be reconciled with Christian principle I leave you to
answer. But I bear 'en no grudge."
"What? They proved his will?" The Major stared at his portrait and
shivered.
"_In_ course they did. The man was blowed to pieces, I tell you.
'Tis written up on the pedestal. 'Take 'en for all in all'--or piece
by piece, they might ha' said, for that matter--'we shall not look
upon his like agen.' No, nor they don't want to, for all their
speechifyin'. I ain't what the parson calls a _pessimist_; I thinks
poorly o' most things, that's all; _and_ folks; and I say they don't
want to. Why, one way and another, he left close on twelve thousand
pound!"
The Major drew the bed-clothes maybe an inch farther over his chin
and so lay still, answering nothing, his eyes fastened on the bust.
Beneath its hyacinthine curls it beamed on him with a fixed
benevolent smile.
"Not that Hymen hadn't decent qualities, mind you," Cai Tamblyn
continued. "The fellow was plucky, and well-meanin', too, in his
way; and a better master you wouldn't find in a day's march. What he
suffered from was wind in his stomach. With all the women settin'
their caps at him he couldn't help it: but so 'twas. And the men
were a'most as bad. Just you hearken to this--"
Cai seated himself on the edge of the bed again, felt in his
breast-pocket and drew out a spectacle-case and a folded pocket-book;
adjusted the spectacles on his nose, slapped the pocket-book
viciously, spread it on his knee, cleared his throat, and began to
read:
"'As a boy he was studious in his habits, shy in company,
unflinchingly truthful, and fond of animals. For obvious
reasons these pets of his childhood are unrepresented among the
memorials so piously preserved in the Hymen Museum; but through
the kindness of our esteemed townswoman, Mrs. (or, as she is
commonly called, 'Mother') Hancock, aged ninety-one, we are able
to include in our collection a marble of the kind known as
'glass-alley,' with which she avers that, at the age of ten or
thereabouts, our future hero disported himself. It must have
been by some premonition that the venerable lady cherished it,
having received it originally, as she remembers, in barter for a
pennyworth of saffron cake, a species of delicacy to which the
youthful Solomon was pardonably addicted. . . .'
"I got to show that damned glass-alley," interjected Mr. Tamblyn.
"Why? Because a man past work can't stay his belly on the interest
o' fifty pound. Oh, but there's more about it:
"'The cobble-stones with which the streets of Troy are paved do
not lend themselves readily to expertness in shooting with
marbles. But the subject of this memoir was ever one who,
adapting himself to difficulties, rose superior to them.
The glass material of which the relic is composed shows numerous
indentations in its spherical outline, eloquent testimony to the
character which had already begun to learn the lesson of
greatness and by perseverance to bend circumstances to its will.
In the case containing this relic, and beside it, reposes a
horn-book, used for many generations in the Troy Infant School,
conducted A.D. 1739-1782 by Miss Sleeman, schoolmistress.
Although we have no positive evidence, there is every reason to
believe that the youthful Solomon--'
"Ain't it enough to make a man sick?" demanded Cai Tamblyn, looking
up. "And I got to speak this truck, day in an' day out."
"Who wrote it?"
"Hansombody. Oh, I ain't denyin' he was well paid. But when I see'd
Miss Marty this very afternoon, unwrappin' the bust with tears in her
eyes, an' her husband standin' by as modest as Moll at a christenin',
and him the richer by thousands--"
"WHAT?"
The Major, despite his hurt, had risen on his elbow. Cai Tamblyn,
too, bounced up.
"The Mayor, I'm talkin' of--Dr. Hansombody," he stammered, gating
into the invalid's face in dismay.
So, for ten slow seconds or so, they eyed one another. Speech began
to work in Cai Tamblyn's throat, but none came. He cast one
bewildered, incredulous, horror-stricken glance back from the face on
the bed to the fatuously smiling face on the washhand stand, and with
that--for the Major had picked up his pillow and was poising to hurl
it--flung his person between them, cast both arms about the bust,
lifted it, and tottered from the room.