Corporal Cameron of the North West Mounted Police Part 73

"Tea!"

"Who?" enquired the Sergeant eagerly.

"Me. I say, you go in my place."

The Sergeant swore at him frankly and earnestly.

"All right John," said Cameron rather ungraciously.

"You come?" enquired the Chinaman.

"Yes, I'll come."

"All lite!" said John, turning away with his message.

"Confound the thing!" growled Cameron.

"Oh come, you needn't put up any bluff with me, you know," said the Sergeant.

But Cameron made no reply. He felt he was not ready for the interview before him. He was distinctly conscious of a feeling of nervous embarra.s.sment, which to a man of experience is disconcerting and annoying. He could not make up his mind as to the att.i.tude which it would be wise and proper for him to a.s.sume toward--ah--Nurse Haley. Why not resume relations at the point at which they were broken off in the orchard that September afternoon a year and a half ago? Why not? Mandy was apparently greatly changed, greatly improved. Well, he was delighted at the improvement, and he would frankly let her see his pleasure and approval. There was no need for embarra.s.sment. Pshaw! Embarra.s.sment? He felt none.

And yet as he stood at the door of the nurses' tent he was disquieted to find himself nervously wondering what in thunder he should talk about.

As it turned out there was no cause for nervousness on this score. The little nurse and the doctor--Nurse Haley being on duty--kept the stream of talk rippling and sparkling in an unbroken flow. Whenever a pause did occur they began afresh with Cameron and his achievements, of which they strove to make him talk. But they ever returned to their own work among the sick and wounded of the camps, and as often as they touched this theme the pivot of their talk became Nurse Haley, till Cameron began to suspect design and became wrathful. They were talking at him and were taking a rise out of him. He would show them their error. He at once became brilliant.

In the midst of his scintillation he abruptly paused and sat listening.

Through the tent walls came the sound of singing, low-toned, rich, penetrating. He had no need to ask about that voice. In silence they looked at him and at each other.

"We're going home, no more to roam, No more to sin and sorrow, No more to wear the brow of care, We're going home to-morrow.

"We're going home; we're going home; We're going home to-morrow."

Softer and softer grew the music. At last the voice fell silent. Then Nurse Haley appeared, radiant, fresh, and sweet as a clover field with the morning dew upon it, but with a light as of another world upon her face.

With the spell of her voice, of her eyes, of her radiant face upon him, Cameron's scintillation faded and snuffed out. He felt like a boy at his first party and enraged at himself for so feeling. How bright she was, how pure her face under the brown gold hair, how dainty the bloom upon her cheek, and that voice of hers, and the firm lithe body with curving lines of budding womanhood, grace in every curve and movement! The Mandy of old faded from his mind. Have I seen you before? And where? And how long ago? And what's happening to me? With these questions he vexed his soul while he strove to keep track of the conversation between the three.

A call from the other tent summoned Nurse Haley.

"Let me go instead," cried the little nurse eagerly. But, light-footed as a deer, Mandy was already gone.

When the tent flap had fallen behind her Cameron pushed back his plate, leaned forward upon the table and, looking the little nurse full in the face, said:

"Now, it's no use carrying this on. What have you done to her?" And the little nurse laughed her brightest and most joyous laugh.

"What has she done to us, you mean."

"No. Come now, take pity on a fellow. I left her--well--you know what.

And now--how has this been accomplished?"

"Soul, my boy," said the doctor emphatically, "and the hairdresser and--"

But Cameron ignored him.

"Can you tell me?" he said to the nurse.

"Well, as a nurse, is she quite impossible?"

"Oh, spare me," pleaded Cameron. "I acknowledge my sin and my folly is before me. But tell me, how was this miracle wrought?"

"What do you mean exactly? Specify."

"Oh, hang it! Well, beginning at the top, there's her hair."

"Her hair?"

"Yes."

"Then, her complexion--her grace of form--her style--her manner. Oh, confound it! Her hands--everything."

"Well," said the little nurse with deliberation, "let's begin at the top. Her hair? A hairdresser explains that. Her complexion? A little treatment, ma.s.sage, with some help from the doctor. Her hands? Again treatment and release from brutalising work. Her figure? Well, you know, that depends, though we don't acknowledge it always, to a certain extent on--well--things--and how you put them on."

"Nurse," said the doctor gravely, "you're all off. The transformation is from within and is explained, as I have said, by one word--soul. The soul has been set free, has been allowed to break through. That is all.

Why, my dear fellow," continued the doctor with rising enthusiasm, "when that girl came to us we were in despair; and for three months she kept us there, pursuing us, hounding us with questions. Never saw anything like it. One telling was enough though. Her eyes were everywhere, her ears open to every hint, but it was her soul, like a bird imprisoned and beating for the open air. The explanation is, as I have said just now, soul--intense, flaming, unquenchable soul--and, I must say it, the dressmaker, the hairdresser, and the rest directed by our young friend here," pointing to the little nurse. "Why, she had us all on the job. We all became devotees of the Haley Cult."

"No," said the nurse, "it was herself."

"Isn't that what I have been telling you?" said the doctor impatiently.

"Soul--soul--soul! A soul somehow on fire."

And with that Cameron had to be content.

Yes, a soul it was, at one time dormant and enwrapped within its coa.r.s.e integument. Now, touched into life by some divine fire, it had through its own subtle power transformed that coa.r.s.e integument into its own pure gold. What was that fire? What divine touch had kindled it? And, more important still, was that fire still aglow, or, having done its work, had it for lack of food flickered and died out? With these questions Cameron vexed himself for many days, nor found an answer.

CHAPTER IX

"CORPORAL" CAMERON

Jack Green did not die. Every morning for a fortnight Constable Cameron felt it to be his duty to make enquiry--the Sergeant, it may be added--performing the same duty with equal diligence in the afternoon, and every day the balance, which trembled evenly for some time between hope and fear, continued to dip more and more decidedly toward the former.

"He's going to live, I believe," said Dr. Martin one day. "And he owes it to the nurse." The doctor's devotion to and admiration for Nurse Haley began to appear to Cameron unnecessarily p.r.o.nounced. "She simply would not let him go!" continued the doctor. "She nursed him, sang to him her old 'Come all ye' songs and Methodist hymns, she spun him barnyard yarns and orchard idyls, and always 'continued in our next,'

till the chap simply couldn't croak for wanting to hear the next."

At times Cameron caught through the tent walls s.n.a.t.c.hes of those songs and yarns and idyls, at times he caught momentary glimpses of the bright young girl who was pouring the vigour of her life into the lad fighting for his own, but these s.n.a.t.c.hes and glimpses only exasperated him. There was no opportunity for any lengthened and undisturbed converse, for on the one hand the hospital service was exacting beyond the strength of doctor and nurses, and on the other there was serious trouble for Superintendent Strong and his men in the camps along the line, for a general strike had been declared in all the camps and no one knew at what minute it might flare up into a fierce riot.

It was indeed exasperating to Cameron. The relations between himself and Nurse Haley were unsatisfactory, entirely unsatisfactory. It was clearly his duty--indeed he owed it to her and to himself--to arrive at some understanding, to establish their relations upon a proper and reasonable basis. He was at very considerable pains to make it clear, not only to the Sergeant, but to the cheerful little nurse and to the doctor as well, that as her oldest friend in the country it was inc.u.mbent upon him to exercise a sort of kindly protectorate over Nurse Haley. In this it is to be feared he was only partially successful. The Sergeant was obviously and gloomily incredulous of the purity of his motives, the little nurse arched her eyebrows and smiled in a most annoying manner, while the doctor pendulated between good-humoured tolerance and mild sarcasm. It added not a little to Cameron's mental disquiet that he was quite unable to understand himself; indeed, through these days he was engaged in conducting a bit of psychological research, with his own mind as laboratory and his mental phenomena as the materia for his investigation. It was a most difficult and delicate study and one demanding both leisure and calm--and Cameron had neither. The brief minutes he could s.n.a.t.c.h from Her Majesty's service were necessarily given to his friends in the hospital and as to the philosophic calm necessary to research work, a glimpse through the door of Nurse Haley's golden head bending over a sick man's cot, a s.n.a.t.c.h of song in the deep mellow tones of her voice, a touch of her strong firm hand, a quiet steady look from her deep, deep eyes--any one of these was sufficient to scatter all his philosophic determinings to the winds and leave his soul a chaos of confused emotions.