TREACHERY.
The young Greek had had a narrow escape with his life. Two wounds--one
on the head, producing a severe concussion of the brain; the other on
the thigh, causing an almost fatal loss of blood--had well-nigh finished
his career. For nearly forty-eight hours he remained in a state of
complete unconsciousness; then the brain slowly began to resume its
functions. But the weakness of extreme exhaustion still continued. He
lay for days dimly conscious of his existence, but content to accept his
surroundings, to swallow the food and drink which were offered him, and
to sleep without asking any questions.
Then a certain curiosity began to awake in him. The place in which he
found himself was unfamiliar, and he lazily wondered where he was. The
voices about him were strange--his sight was still too weak to
distinguish faces--and the speech which they used was strange. His first
attempt to move was followed by a feeling of absolute helplessness; his
first effort at speech produced a sound so far-away that he hardly
recognized his own voice.
It was on the morning of the seventh day, after an unusually long and
refreshing sleep, that he felt equal to the task of realizing where he
was. The physician, who luckily happened to be paying him his morning
visit, at once recognized the improvement in his patient.
"Hush!" he said, when the young man attempted to speak. "Be quiet till
you have had some food. You are better, I see, but you want some
refreshment. Then you may ask questions, and listen to what is told you,
but only for as long as I allow."
He clapped his hands, and an attendant entered the room, carrying a cup
of broth which had been fortified with a cordial. Cleanor, who was still
so helpless that he had to be fed like an infant, swallowed it with an
excellent appetite, and was sorry when the last spoonful had been
administered.
"Good!" said the man of science; "we have positively brought a little
red into your cheeks. You shall have another allowance when that has run
itself out three times;" and he turned, as he spoke, a water-clock which
stood on a table by the bedside. "Meanwhile, you can receive a friend
who has been waiting for some days to renew his acquaintance with you."
He nodded to the attendant, and the man pushed aside the curtain which
hung over the entrance to the tent. The next moment the expected visitor
appeared. Cleanor recognized in him the young officer, kinsman to
Scipio, whose life he had saved in the attack on the Megara.
"The gods be thanked," said the young Roman, "that I see you yourself
again!"
"That I am myself I must believe," replied Cleanor, "but of everything
else I feel doubtful. Tell me what has happened."
Scipio looked to the physician with a tacit inquiry whether the subject
was permitted.
"Speak on; it will worry him more, now that he has begun to think, to be
left in ignorance."
"To begin, then," said Scipio, "when did you see me last?"
"Now I come to think of it, a dim remembrance of your face is about the
last thing I can recall. But between that and the present there is a
gulf of forgetfulness."
"And no wonder; if you hadn't had a head of adamant that same gulf would
have swallowed you up for good. Well, do you remember anything about a
battle?"
"Yes, yes; the things begin to come back to me; you were on a bay horse.
I remember thinking what a skeleton it was."
"No wonder; these African pastures are terribly bare."
"And now I remember that I thought of something else. It was those
verses in Homer, the verses that Diomed says to Glaucus when they meet
on the battle-field, and find that they are old family friends."[40]
The young Roman laughed aloud. "Now, this is curious," he cried. "We are
bound to be friends, if thinking the same things be a mark of
friendship. I remember that the very same thought about Glaucus and
Diomed occurred to me. You have not forgotten everything, it is clear."
"Come, my dear sir," interposed the physician, "you must not let him
talk so much. Tell him your story, and then leave him to get a little
rest."
"Well," said Scipio, "what I have to say is very soon told. You will
remember the discharge from the walls of the fort that checked our
advance. It was admirably calculated; but, of course, when the fighting
was so close as it was at the time, and the front ranks of the two
armies were actually mixed together, it could not damage us without
doing some harm to you. I saw two or three of your men struck down,
manifestly, from the way in which they fell, by some missile from the
walls. One of them I noticed particularly, because he was close to you.
There could be no mistake, for there was a clear space round you. Our
men had fallen back, and yours were making the best of their way to the
gates. You two were rather behind the rest. I saw you stoop as if to
lift your companion from the ground. You were looking towards us, for I
particularly remember that I saw your face. You raised the man from the
ground, but then your foot seemed to slip, and you fell forwards. Then
you raised the man again. Several of us were watching you, and I have
heard from them since that their recollections agree exactly with mine.
And of this, too, I am quite certain, there was not a hand raised
against you from our side of the field of battle. Well, we all saw you
rise again with the man in your arms. You got him over your shoulder,
for that, of course, was the easiest way of carrying him, but you still
had your face looking our way. And before you turned you were struck
by--"
[Illustration: "I SAW YOU STOOP AND LIFT YOUR COMPANION FROM THE
GROUND."]
"Before I turned?" interrupted the sick man, who had been listening with
rapt attention to the narrative. "Before I turned, you say; you are sure
that I was struck by my friends behind me?"
"As sure," replied Scipio, "as that I am sitting here and speaking to
you at this moment."
"Go on, then."
"Before you turned you were struck from behind. The first blow was on
the back of your leg. I saw you put your hand to the place. And you had
hardly done that when you were felled to the ground by a second blow.
That was on your head. We guessed as much from the way you fell; and
when we came to examine you afterwards, we found it to be as I have
said. Your good physician here will tell you the particulars."
"Yes," said the leech, "I will at the proper time. But for the present
my patient has heard enough. Indeed, unless I am very much mistaken, he
has heard too much."
"Whether it is enough or too much," said Cleanor, "I must hear it all.
It would be ten times worse to be left in this suspense. I can only
judge from what you say that I must have been struck from behind, that
is by my own friends. But that treachery I can't believe. What do you
say, sir," he went on, looking to the physician; "can you throw any
light on the matter?"
"Be calm, be calm, my friend," said the physician. "You will undo all
the good that we have been doing you for the last ten days. Here, let me
feel your pulse.... It is just as I thought," he went on, "a regular
bounding pulse. I would have given anything for you to have had such a
pulse when I first took you in hand. But now it means fever, and fever
means I don't know what."
"Still, I must have the whole story now," persisted Cleanor. "Do you
think I can sleep with this doubt regarding my friends hanging over
me?"
"Well, a wilful man will have his way, but, mind, I wash my hands of the
whole business. I am not responsible for what may happen. And it
promised to be such a beautiful cure, too!"
"For heaven's sake go on! Tell me how I came to be wounded?" cried the
patient, with an emphasis of which no one would have thought him capable
half an hour before.
"Well," replied the physician, "I will tell you what I know, but it is
under protest. You see this"--he produced from his pocket a leaden
bullet of the kind commonly used in slings--"I extracted this from the
wound on your hip. A nasty wound it was, and had caused a terrible loss
of blood. You see that mark? It is not a Roman mark, certainly. Do you
recognize it? Unless I am very much mistaken, it is the Carthaginian
letter that answers to what we Greeks call _alpha_. What do you say?"
"You are right," said Cleanor. "I have myself given them out to the
slingers from the stores. Yes, it is a Carthaginian bullet."
"Then there is another thing," the physician went on. "When they were
stripping you to put you into bed, this stone that I hold in my hand
fell out of a fold in your clothes. There were some fragments of hair
upon it, and I recognized the hair as yours. See, they are here still;"
and he produced a small piece of papyrus in which they were wrapped.
"Now, where did that bit of stone come from? It has got, if you look
closely at it, a little mortar on one side. At some time it has been
built into a wall. You don't find such things lying about on the open
plain. No; that bit of stone came from somewhere inside Nepheris. I have
got some ten or twelve other pieces of stone very like it, that were
picked up near the place by a boy whom I sent to search the next day.
They are much of a size, and, I should say, though I don't profess to
know much about such things, that they came from a catapult. Nothing
else could have sent them so far. Now I have told you all I know."
"Many thanks, sir!" said the Greek in a low voice. "I am convinced that
there has been treachery; indeed you leave no room for doubt. But I
could almost wish," he added with a melancholy smile, "I could almost
wish that you had been less skilful, and my friends here less
affectionate. I hardly feel as grateful to you as I ought to be. It is a
grievous thing for a man to feel that he has been wounded in the house
of his friends."
"Come, come," said the kindly physician, "it may have been only an
accident or a mistake after all! However, you have had excitement
enough, and more than enough, for the day. Take this, and it will send
you to sleep;" and producing a small phial of poppy-juice from his
wallet he poured a potent dose into a cup of wine, and gave it to his
patient.
"Thanks, doctor!" murmured Cleanor, but added in a whisper, "Yes, sleep,
but if only there could be no waking!"
FOOTNOTE:
40: "E'en in the turmoil of battle each other's spears will
we shun:
I shall find many a Trojan, and allies many an one
To slay, whom my feet shall o'ertake, or a god deliver
to me;
And for thee be Achaians enow, to smite as thy strength
shall be."