Rujub, the Juggler Part 32

His eyes were closed now.

"Has he been hit, Doctor?" the Major asked. "It seems impossible he can have escaped. What madness possessed him to put himself there as a target?"

"No, I don't think he is. .h.i.t," the Doctor said, as he examined him. "I think he has fainted. We had better carry him down to my room. Shake hands, Forster; I know you and Bathurst were not good friends, and you risked your life to save him."

"I did not think who it was," Forster said, with a careless laugh. "I saw a man behaving like a madman, and naturally went to pull him down.

However, I shall think better of him in future, though I doubt whether he was in his right senses."

"He wanted to be killed," the Doctor said quietly; "and the effort that he made to place himself in the way of death must have been greater than either you or I can well understand, Forster. I know the circ.u.mstances of the case. Morally I believe there is no braver man living than he is; physically he has the const.i.tution of a timid woman; it is mind against body."

"The distinction is too fine for me, Doctor," Forster said, as he turned to go off to his post by the parapet. "I understand pluck and I understand cowardice, but this mysterious mixture you speak of is beyond me altogether."

The Major and Dr. Wade lifted Bathurst and carried him below. Mrs.

Hunter, who had been appointed chief nurse, met them.

"Is he badly wounded, Doctor?"

"No; he is not wounded at all, Mrs. Hunter. He stood up at the edge of the parapet and exposed himself so rashly to the Sepoys' fire that we had to drag him away, and then the reaction, acting on a nervous temperament, was too much for him, and he fainted. We shall soon bring him round. You can come in with me, but keep the others away."

The Major at once returned to the terrace.

In spite of the restoratives the Doctor poured through his lips, and cold water dashed in his face, Bathurst was some time before he opened his eyes. Seeing Mrs. Hunter and the Doctor beside him, he made an effort to rise.

"You must lie still, Bathurst," the Doctor said, pressing his hand on his shoulder. "You have done a very foolish thing, a very wrong thing.

You have tried to throw away your life."

"No, I did not. I had no thought of throwing away my life," Bathurst said, after a pause. "I was trying to make myself stand fire. I did not think whether I should be hit or not. I am not afraid of bullets, Doctor; it's the horrible, fiendish noise that I cannot stand."

"I know, my boy," the Doctor said kindly; "but it comes to the same thing. You did put yourself in the way of bullets when your doing so was of no possible advantage, and it is almost a miracle that you escaped unhurt. You must remain here quiet for the present. II shall leave you in charge of Mrs. Hunter. There is nothing for you to do on the roof at present. This attack is a mere outbreak of rage on the part of the Sepoys that we have all escaped them. They know well enough they can't take this house by merely firing away at the roof. When they attack in earnest it will be quite time for you to take part in the affair again.

Now, Mrs. Hunter, my orders are absolute that he is not to be allowed to get up."

On the Doctor leaving the room he found several of the ladies outside; the news that Mr. Bathurst had been carried down had spread among them.

"Is he badly hurt, Doctor?"

"No, ladies. Mr. Bathurst is, unfortunately for himself, an extremely nervous man, and the noise of firearms has an effect upon him that he cannot by any effort of his own overcome. In order, as he says, to try and accustom himself to it, he went and stood at the edge of the parapet in full sight of the Sepoys, and let them blaze away at him. He must have been killed if Forster and I had not dragged him away by main force. Then came the natural reaction, and he fainted. That is all there is about it. Poor fellow, he is extremely sensitive on the ground of personal courage. In other respects I have known him do things requiring an amount of pluck that not one man in a hundred possesses, and I wish you all to remember that his nervousness at the effect of the noise of firearms is a purely const.i.tutional weakness, for which he is in no way to be blamed. He has just risked his life in the most reckless manner in order to overcome what he considers, and what he knows that some persons consider, is cowardice, and it would be as cruel, and I may say as contemptible, to despise him for a const.i.tutional failing as it would be to despise a person for being born a humpback or a cripple. But I cannot stand talking any longer. I shall be of more use on the roof than I am here."

Isobel Hannay was not among those who had gathered near the door of the room in which Bathurst was lying, but the Doctor had raised his voice, and she heard what he said, and bent over her work of sewing strips of linen together for bandages with a paler face than had been caused by the outbreak of musketry. Gradually the firing ceased. The Sepoys had suffered heavily from the steady fire of the invisible defenders and gradually drew off, and in an hour from the commencement of the attack all was silent round the building.

"So far so good, ladies," the Major said cheerily, as the garrison, leaving one man on watch, descended from the roof. "We have had no casualties, and I think we must have inflicted a good many, and the mutineers are not likely to try that game on again, for they must see that they are wasting ammunition, and are doing us no harm. Now I hope the servants have got tiffin ready for us, for I am sure we have all excellent appet.i.tes."

"Tiffin is quite ready, Major," Mrs. Doolan, who had been appointed chief of the commissariat department, said cheerfully. "The servants were a little disorganized when the firing began, but they soon became accustomed to it, and I think you will find everything in order in the hall."

The meal was really a cheerful one. The fact that the first attack had pa.s.sed over without anyone being hit raised the spirits of the women, and all were disposed to look at matters in a cheerful light. The two young subalterns were in high spirits, and the party were more lively than they had been since the first outbreak of the mutiny. All had felt severely the strain of waiting, and the reality of danger was a positive relief after the continuous suspense. It was much to them to know that the crisis had come at last, that they were still all together and the foe were without.

"It is difficult to believe," Mrs. Doolan said, "that it was only yesterday evening we were all gathered at the Major's. It seems an age since then."

"Yes, indeed," Mrs. Rintoul agreed; "the night seemed endless. The worst time was the waiting till we were to begin to move over. After that I did not so much mind, though it seemed more like a week than a night while the things were being brought in here."

"I think the worse time was while we were waiting watching from the roof to see whether the troops would come out on parade as usual," Isobel said. "When my uncle and the others were all in, and Captain Forster, and the gates were shut, it seemed that our anxieties were over."

"That was a mad charge of yours, Forster," the Major said. "It was like the Balaclava business--magnificent; but it wasn't war."

"I did not think of it one way or the other," Captain Forster laughed.

"I was so furious at the insolence off those dogs attacking me, that I thought of nothing else, and just went at them; but of course it was foolish."

"It did good," the Doctor said. "It showed the Sepoys how little we thought of them, and how a single white officer was ready to match himself against a squadron. It will render them a good deal more careful in their attack than they otherwise would have been. It brought them under our fire, too, and they suffered pretty heavily; and I am sure the infantry must have lost a good many men from our fire just now. I hope they will come to the conclusion that the wisest thing they can do is to march away to Delhi and leave us severely alone. Now what are your orders, Major, for after breakfast?"

"I think the best thing is for everyone to lie down for a few hours,"

the Major said. "No one had a wink of sleep last night, and most of us have not slept much for some nights past. We must always keep two men on the roof, to be relieved every two hours. I will draw up a regular rota for duty; but except those two, the rest had better take a good sleep.

We may be all called upon to be under arms at night."

"I will go on the first relief, Major," the Doctor said. "I feel particularly wide awake. It is nothing new to me to be up all night. Put Bathurst down with me," he said, in a low tone, as the Major rose from the table. "He knows that I understand him, and it will be less painful for him to be with me than with anyone else. I will go up at once, and send young Harper down to his breakfast. There will be no occasion to have Bathurst up this time. The Sepoys are not likely to be trying any pranks at present. No doubt they have gone back to their lines to get a meal."

The Doctor had not been long at his post when Isobel Hannay came up onto the terrace. They had seen each other alone comparatively little of late, as the Doctor had given up his habit of dropping in for a chat in the morning since their conversation about Bathurst.

"Well, my dear, what is it?" he asked. "This is no place for you, for there are a few fellows still lurking among the trees, and they send a shot over the house occasionally."

"I came up to say that I am sorry, Doctor."

"That is right, Isobel. Always say you are sorry when you are so, although in nine cases out of ten, and this is one of them, the saying so is too late to do much good."

"I think you are rather hard upon me, Doctor. I know you were speaking at me today when you were talking to the others, especially in what you said at the end."

"Perhaps I was; but I think you quite deserved it."

"Yes, I know I did; but it was hard to tell me it was as contemptible to despise a man for a physical weakness he could not help, as to despise one for being born humpbacked or a cripple, when you know that my brother was so."

"I wanted you to feel that your conduct had been contemptible, Isobel, and I put it in the way that was most likely to come home to you. I have been disappointed in you. I thought you were more sensible than the run of young women, and I found out that you were not. I thought you had some confidence in my judgment, but it turned out that you had not.

If Bathurst had been killed when he was standing up, a target for the Sepoys, I should have held you morally responsible for his death."

"You would have shared the responsibility, anyhow, Doctor, for it was you who repeated my words to him."

"We will not go over that ground again," said the Doctor quietly. "I gave you my reasons for doing so, and those reasons are to my mind convincing. Now I will tell you how this const.i.tutional nervousness on his part arose. He told me the story; but as at that time there had been no occasion for him to show whether he was brave or otherwise, I considered my lips sealed. Now that his weakness has been exhibited, I consider myself more than justified in explaining its origin."

And he then repeated the story Bathurst had told him.

"You see," he said, when he had finished, "it is a const.i.tutional matter beyond his control; it is a sort of antipathy. I have known a case of a woman courageous in all other respects, who, at the sight of even a dead c.o.c.kroach, would faint away. I have seen one of the most gallant officers of my acquaintance turn pale at the sight of a spider.

Certainly no one would think of calling either one or the other coward; and a.s.suredly such a name should not be applied to a man who would face a tiger armed only with a whip in defense of a native woman, because his nerves go all to pieces at the sound of firearms."

"If you had told me all this before I should never have spoken as I did," Isobel pleaded.

"I did not go into the full details, but I told you that he was not responsible for his want of firmness under fire, and that I knew him in other respects to be a brave man," the Doctor said uncompromisingly.

"Since then you have by your manner driven him away from you. You have flirted--well, you may not call it flirting," he broke off in answer to a gesture of denial, "but it was the same thing--with a man who is undoubtedly a gallant soldier--a very paladin, if you like--but who, in spite of his handsome face and pleasant manner, is no more to be compared with Bathurst in point of moral qualities or mental ability than light to dark, and this after I had like an old fool gone out of my way to warn you. You have disappointed me altogether, Isobel Hannay."

Isobel stood motionless before him, with downcast eyes.

"Well, there, my dear," the Doctor went on hurriedly, as he saw a tear glisten in her eyelashes; "don't let us say anything more about it. In the first place, it is no affair of mine; and in the second place, your point of view was that most women would take at a time like this; only, you know, I expected you would not have done just as other women would.

We cannot afford to quarrel now, for there is no doubt that, although we may put a good face on the matter, our position is one of grave peril, and it is of no use troubling over trifles. Now run away, and get a few hours' sleep if you can. You will want all your strength before we are through with this business."