"Oh, you are all right," he muttered, then leaned heavily against the
bedside, dropping his arms on the coverlet.
"It was a close call--a close call!" he said, hoarsely. "We thought
it was ended.... They were all over you--Empress dragged you; but they
all crowded in too close--they blocked each other, you see;... and we
used the irons.... Your left arm lay close to the cage door and ... we
got you away from them, and ... it's all right now--it's all right--"
He broke down, head buried in his arms. I moved my left hand across
the sheets so that it rested on his elbow. He lay there, gulping for a
while; I could not see him very clearly, for the muscles that
controlled my eyes were still slightly paralyzed from the shock of the
blow that Empress Khatoun had dealt me.
"It's all very well," he stammered, with a trace of resentment in his
quavering voice--"it's all very well for people who are used to the
filthy beasts; but I tell you, Scarlett, it sickened me. I'm no
coward, as men go, but I was afraid--I was terrified!"
"Yet you dragged me out," I said.
"Who told you that? How could you know--"
"It was not necessary to tell me. You said, '_We_ got you away'; but
I know it was you, Speed, because it was like you. Look at me! Am I
well enough to dress?"
He raised a haggard face to mine. "You know best," he said. "They
tore your coat off, and one of them ripped your riding-boot from top
to sole; but the blow Empress struck you is your only hurt, and she
all but missed you at that. Had she hit you fairly--but, oh, hell! Do
you want to get up?"
I said I would in a moment,... and that is all I remember that night,
all I remember clearly, though it seems to me that once I heard drums
beating in the distance; and perhaps I did.
Dawn was breaking when I awoke. Speed, partly dressed, lay beside me,
sleeping heavily. I looked around at the pretty boudoir where I lay,
at the silken curtains of the bed, at the clouds of cupids on the
painted ceiling, flying through a haze of vermilion flecked with
gold.
Raising one hand, I touched with tentative fingers my tightly bandaged
head, then turned over on my side.
There were my torn clothes, filthy and smeared with sawdust, flung
over a delicate, gilded chair; there sprawled my battered boots,
soiling the polished, inlaid floor; a candle lay in a pool of hardened
wax on a golden rococo table, and I saw where the smouldering wick had
blistered the glazed top. And this was her room! Vandalism
unspeakable! I turned on my snoring comrade.
"Idiot, get up!" I cried, hitting him feebly.
He was very angry when he found out why I had awakened him; perhaps
the sight of my bandaged head restrained him from violence.
"Look here," he said, "I've been up all night, and you might as well
know it. If you hit me again--" He hesitated, stared around, yawned,
and rubbed his eyes.
"You're right," he said, "I must get up."
He stumbled to the floor, bathed, grumbling all the while, and then,
to my surprise, walked over to a flat trunk which stood under the
window and which I recognized as mine.
"I'll borrow some underwear," he remarked, viciously.
"What's my trunk doing here?" I demanded.
"Madame de Vassart had them bring it."
"Had _who_ bring it?"
"Horan and McCadger--before they left."
"Before they left? Have they gone?"
"I forgot," he said, soberly; "you don't know what's been going
on."
He began to dress, raising his head now and then to gaze out across
the ocean towards Groix, where the cruiser once lay at anchor.
"Of course you don't know that the circus has gone," he remarked.
"Gone!" I echoed, astonished.
"Gone to Lorient."
He came and sat down on the edge of the gilded bedstead, buttoning his
collar thoughtfully.
"Buckhurst is in town again with a raft of picturesque ruffians," he
said. "They marched in last night, drums beating, colors
unfurled--the red rag, you know--and the first thing they did was to
order Byram to decamp."
He began to tie his cravat, with a meditative glance at the gilded
mirror.
"I was here with you. Kelly Eyre came for me--Madame de Vassart took
my place to watch you--"
A sudden heart-beat choked me.
"--So I," he continued, "posted off to the tent, to find a rabble of
communist soldiers stealing my balloon-car, ropes, bag, and all. I
tell you I did what I could, but they said the balloon was contraband
of war, and a military necessity; and they took it, the thieving
whelps! Then I saw how matters were going to end, and I told the
governor that he'd better go to Lorient as fast as he could travel
before they stole the buttons off his shirt.
"Scarlett, it was a weird sight. I never saw tents struck so quickly.
Kelly Eyre, Horan, and I harnessed up; Grigg stood guard over the
props with a horse-pistol. The ladies worked like Trojans, loading the
wagons; Byram raged up and down under the bayonets of those bandits,
cursing them as only a man who never swears can curse, invoking the
Stars and Stripes, metaphorically placing himself, his company, his
money-box, and his camuel under the shadow of the broad eagle of the
United States.
"Oh, those were gay times, Scarlett. And we frightened them, too,
because nobody attempted to touch anything."
Speed laughed grimly, and began to pace the floor, casting sharp
glances at me.
"Byram's people, elephant and all, struck the road a little after
three o'clock this morning, in good order, not a tent-peg nor a
frying-pan missing. They ought to be in Lorient by early afternoon."
"Gone!" I repeated, blankly.
"Gone. Curious how it hurt me to say good-bye. They're good
people--good, kindly folk. I've grown to care for them in these few
months ... I may go back to them ... some day ... if they want a
balloonist ... or any kind of a thing."
"You stayed to take care of me?" I said.
"Partly.... You need care, especially when you don't need it." He
began to laugh. "It's only when you're well that I worry."
I lay looking at him, striving to realize the change that had occurred
in so brief a time--trying to understand the abrupt severing of ties
and conditions to which, already, I had become accustomed--perhaps
attached.
"They all sent their love to you," he said. "They knew you were out
of danger--I told them there was no fracture, only a slight
concussion. Byram came to look at you; he brought your back
salary--all of it. I've got it."
"Byram came here?"
"Yes. He stood over there beside you, snivelling into his red
bandanna. And Miss Crystal and Jacqueline stood here.... Jacqueline
kissed you."