The Swindler by Ethel May Dell (100 books to read in a lifetime .txt) 📕

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-assurance, "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 God, the heat and the flies!"
Durant wondered if after all it had been a kindness to call back the passing 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 unassisted. 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, reassuring. 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.
Durant turned from a man who was lying exhausted and barely conscious, took up his case, and followed him out. He did just glance at the bed in the corner as he went, but he saw no movement there.
His summoner turned upon him abruptly as they emerged.
"Look here," he said. "There's a water-bag quite full, waiting for those poor beggars in there. Better send one of the orderlies for it."
"Water!" said Durant sharply, as if the news were difficult to believe. Then, recovering himself: "Tell the sentry, will you? I can't spare an orderly."
The young officer complied, and hurried him on.
"The poor chap is breathing his last," he said. "You can't do him any good, but he wants you."
"Who is it?" asked the doctor.
"The man who fetched the water--Ford. He was badly wounded when he started. He crawled every inch of the way on his stomach, and back again, dragging the bag with him. Heaven knows how he did it! It's taken him hours."
"Ford?" the doctor said incredulously. "Ford? Impossible! How did he get away?"
"Oh, he crawled through somehow; Heaven only knows how! But he's done now, poor beggar--pegging out fast. We got him into shelter, but we couldn't do more, he was in such agony."
The speaker stopped, for Durant had broken into a run. The moonlight showed him a group of men gathered about a prone figure. They separated and stood aside as he reached them; and he, kneeling, found in the prone figure the man who had talked with him in the afternoon of the friend who had played him false.
He was very far gone, lying in a dreadful twisted heap, his head, with its bloodstained bandages, resting on his arm. Yet Durant saw that he still lived, and tried with gentle hands to ease the strain of his position.
With a sharp gasp, Ford opened his eyes.
"Hullo!" he said. "It's you, is it? Did they get the water?"
"They have got it by now," the doctor answered.
"Ah!" The man's lips twisted in a difficult smile. He struggled bravely to keep the mortal agony out of his face. "Gave you the slip that time," he gasped. "Disobeyed orders, too. But it didn't matter--except for example. You must tell them, eh? Dying men have privileges."
"Tell him he'd have had the V. C. for it," whispered the officer in command, over the doctor's shoulder.
Durant complied, and caught the quick gleam that shot up in the dying eyes at his words.
"The gods were always behind time--with me," came the husky whisper. "I used to think I'd scale Olympus, but--they kicked me down. If--if there's any water to spare, when it's gone round, I--I----"
He broke off with a rending cough. Some one put a tin cup into the doctor's hand, and he held it to the parched lips. Ford drank in great gulps, and, as he drank, the worst agony passed. His limbs relaxed after the draught, and he lay quite still, his face to the sky.
After the passage of minutes he spoke again suddenly. His voice was no longer husky, but clear and strong. His eyes were the eyes of a man who sees a vision.
"Jove!" he said. "What a princely gathering to see me carry out my bat! Don't grin, you fellows. I know it was a fluke--a dashed fine fluke, too. But it's what I always meant, after all. There's good old Monty, yelling himself hoarse in the pavilion. And his girl--waving. Sweet girl, too--the best in the world. I might cut him out there. But I won't, I won't! I'm not such a hound as that, though she's the only woman in the world, bless her, bless her!"
He stopped. Durant was bending over him, listening eagerly, as one might listen to the voice of an old, familiar friend, heard again after many years.
He did not speak. He seemed afraid to dispel the other's dream. But after a moment, the man in his arms made a sudden, impulsive movement towards him. It was almost like a gesture of affection. And their eyes met.
There followed a brief silence that had in it something of strain. Then Ford uttered a shaky laugh. The vision had passed.
"So--you see--he had to die--anyhow," he said. "My love to--your wife, dear old Monty! Tell her--I'm--awfully--pleased!"
His voice ceased, yet for a moment his lips still seemed to form words.
Durant stooped lower over him, and spoke at last with a sort of urgent tenderness.
"Leo!" he said. "Leo, old chap!"
But there came no answer save a faint, still smile. The man he called had passed beyond his reach.
* * * * *


Relief came to the beleaguered force at daybreak, and the worst incident of the campaign ended without disaster. A casualty list, published in the London papers a few days later, contained an announcement, which concerned nobody who read it, to the effect that Private Ford, of a West African Regiment, had succumbed to his wounds.

* * * * *


The Friend Who Stood By

"And you will come back, Jim? Promise! Promise!"
"Of course, darling--of course! There! Don't cry! Can't you see it's a chance in a thousand? I've never had such a chance before."
The sound of a woman's low sobbing was audible in the silence that followed; and a man who was leaning on the sea-wall above, started and peered downwards.
He could dimly discern two figures standing in the shadow of a great breakwater below him. More than that he could not distinguish, for it was a dark night; but he knew that the man's arms were about the girl, and that her face was hidden against him.
Realising himself to be an intruder, he stood up and began to walk away.
He had not gone a dozen yards before the sound of flying feet caught his attention, and he turned his head. A woman's light figure was running behind him along the deserted parade. He waited for her under