Читать книгу Jim and Wally - Mary Grant Bruce - Страница 7

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“Oh! the spring is here again, and all the ways are fair.

The wattle-blossom’s out again, and do you know it there?”

Margery Ruth Betts.

‟THEY’RE doing quite well,” the doctor said, patting Norah benevolently on the shoulder. He was a plump little man, always busy, always in a hurry; but David Linton and his daughter had been regular visitors to the hospital for some time, and he had a regard for them. (“Sensible people,” he was wont to say, approvingly: “they don’t talk too much to patients, and they don’t fuss!”) Now he knew that war had hit them personally, and he gave them two of his few spare minutes. “They’re tired, of course; and you must expect to see them looking queer. Gas isn’t a beautifier. But they’ll be all right. Don’t stay too long. Don’t talk war, if you can keep them off it. And above all, don’t speak about gas.” He smiled at them both. “Buck them up, Miss Norah—buck them up!” Some one called him hurriedly, and he fled. The khaki ambulances had delivered a heavy load at the hospital that day.

In a little room off a quiet corridor, the scent of golden wattle flung a breath of Australia to greet them, as it had greeted the tired boys when the orderlies had carried them in hours before. Jim and Wally smiled at them from their pillows. No one seemed able to say anything. Afterwards, Norah had a dim idea that she had kissed Wally as well as Jim. It did not appear to matter greatly.

They were white-faced boys, with black shadows under their eyes; but the old merriment was there. A great wave of relief swept over Norah and her father. They had feared they knew not what from this evil choking enemy: it was sudden happiness to see that their boys were not so unlike their old selves.

“We had visions of being up to meet you,” said Jim, keeping a hand on Norah’s, as she perched on his bed. “But the doctor thought otherwise. Doctors are awful tyrants.”

“You had a good crossing?” David Linton found words hard—they stuck in his throat as he looked at his son.

“Oh yes. We didn’t know much about it. The hospital train runs you almost on to the ship, and the orderlies have you in a swinging cot before you know where you are. Same at the other side: those fellows do know their job,” Jim said, admiringly. “Of course, you get a little tired of being handled, towards the finish, and this room—and bed—seemed awfully good.”

“And the wattle was ripping,” said Wally. “However did you manage to get it?”

“It comes from the South of France,” Norah answered. “There’s quite a lot of it in London; only they stare at you if you ask for ‘wattle’, and you have to learn to say ‘mimosa.’ One gets broken into anything. I’ve learned to say ‘field’ quite naturally when I’m talking of a paddock.”

“I wish Murty could hear you,” said Wally solemnly. Murty O’Toole was head stockman on Billabong, the home in Australia. He was a very great friend.

“Can’t you picture his face!” Norah uttered. “It would be interesting to watch Murty’s expression if dad told him to bring in the cattle from the field when he wanted the bullocks mustered in the home-paddock!”

“He’d give me notice,” said Mr. Linton, firmly. “Neither long service nor affection would keep him!”

“Well, Murty was born in Ireland, though he did come out to Australia when he was a small boy,” Norah said. “So he ought not to feel astonished. But the person I do want to import to England is black Billy. It’s part of Billy’s principles not to show amazement at anything, but I don’t think they’d be proof against a block of traffic in Piccadilly!”

“He’d only say, ‘Plenty!’ ” said Jim, laughing—“that is, if he had any speech left. Poor old Billy, he hates everything but horses, and any motor is a ‘devil-wagon’ to him. A fleet of big red and yellow ’buses would give him nervous prostration.”

“There’s one thing that would scare him more,” Mr. Linton said. “Do you remember the day last winter when we took Norah to Hampton Court, and you chucked a stone at the Round Pond?” He laughed, and every one followed his example.

“And the stone ran along tinkling over the top of the water,” said Norah, recovering. “I never was so taken aback in my life. And all the small children and their nursemaids laughed at me. How was I to know water turned to ice like that? The only frozen thing I had ever seen was ice-cream in Melbourne!”

“Billy never saw ice in his life,” said her father. “He would have thought it very bad magic.”

“He’d have taken to his heels and made for the bush,” said Wally, grinning. “Probably he’d have made himself a boomerang and turned into an up-to-date black Robin Hood, living on those tame old Bushy Park deer.”

“With his headquarters in the Hampton Court Maze!” added Jim. “Wouldn’t it have been an enormous attraction—the halfpenny papers would have called it ‘Wild Life in Quiet Places,’ and London would have run special motor-bus trips to see our Billy!”

His laugh ended in a fit of coughing, which left him trembling. Norah patted him anxiously, watching him with troubled eyes.

“Don’t you talk too much, or we’ll get sent away,” she warned him. “We’ll do the talking—dad and I. We’ve heaps to tell you: and such jolly plans.”

“You have to make haste and get better,” said Mr. Linton, looking from one white face to the other. “Then we’re going to take possession of you.”

“Kitchener will do that, I guess,” said Wally.

“No, Kitchener won—not until you’re quite fit. You’ll be handed over to us, and it will be our job to get you thoroughly well. And Norah and I have agreed that it can’t be done in London.”

“So we’re all going to Ireland,” said Norah, happily.

“Ireland!” Jim uttered.

“Yes. You’re sure to get leave, so that you can be thoroughly repaired. We’re going to find some jolly place in Donegal, where it’s quiet and peaceful, and we’re all going to buy rods and find out how to catch trout. Brown trout,” said Norah, learnedly. “We know all about it, because we bought ever so many guide-books and studied them all last night.”

“I say!” ejaculated both patients as one man.

“It sounds rather like Heaven,” said Jim, drawing a long breath. “Do you really think it can be managed, dad?”

“I don’t see why not,” said his father.

“We must get back to our job as soon as we can.”

“Certainly you must. But there’s no sense in your going back until you are perfectly fit. They wouldn’t want you. And though you were not as badly gassed as many—thank goodness!—and your recovery won’t be such a trying matter as if you had had a bigger dose, every one agrees that gas takes its time.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” Jim said, grimly.

“That being so, London does not strike me as a good place for convalescents,” said Mr. Linton. “Pure air is what you’ll need; and that is not the fine, solid, grey variety of atmosphere you get here. And Zeppelins will be happening along freely, once they feel at home on the track to England. I don’t believe they will limit their raids to London. The big manufacturing towns will come in for a share of their attention sooner or later; and they won’t spare the country places over which they fly.”

“Not they!” said Wally.

“So, all things considered, I think you would be better in Ireland. I believe it’s peaceful there, if you don’t talk politics. We don’t want any adventures.”

“We’ve had quite enough since we left Billabong,” said Norah.

“Hear, hear!” said Wally. “I guess the calm peace of a bog in Ireland is just about our form until we’re ready to go back and take our turn at strafing.”

“Then that’s settled—if the doctors will back me up,” Mr. Linton said. “Just as soon as they will let you we’ll pack up the fewest possible clothes and set out for a sleepy holiday in Ireland: trout-fishing, old ruins, bogs, heather, and no adventures at all.”

Later on, they were to recall this peaceful forecast with amazement. At present it seemed a dream of everything the heart could desire; they fell into a happy discussion of ways and means, of the best places to buy fishing-tackle, of the clothes demanded by bogs and heathery mountains; until a nurse arrived with tea, and a warning word that the patients had talked nearly enough. At which the patients waxed indignant, declaring that their visitors had only been with them about ten minutes.

“Ten minutes!” said the nurse, round-eyed. “Over an hour—and doctor’s orders were——”

“Never you mind the doctor’s orders,” Jim said solemnly. “Doctors don’t know everything. Why, in Boulogne——” He broke off, assuming an air of meek unconsciousness of debate as the doctor himself appeared suddenly.

“I beg your pardon,” said the doctor, transfixing patients with an eagle glance, while the nurse made an unobtrusive escape. “You were saying something about doctors, I think?”

“Nothing, I assure you, sir,” said Jim, grinning widely.

“Doctors—and Boulogne,” repeated the new-comer, firmly. “Don’t let me interrupt you.”

“No, sir. Certainly not,” said Jim. “The doctors in Boulogne are very hard-worked.”

“H’m!” said his medical attendant, receiving this piece of information with the suspicion it merited. “Quite so. We’re all hard-worked, these times, chiefly with looking after bad boys who ought to be back at school, getting swished. It’s an awful fate for a respectable M.D.” He gazed severely at the cheerful faces on the pillows. “You ought to be asleep; and of course you are not. Is this a hospital ward, or an Australian picnic?”

“Both,” said Wally, laughing. “Don’t be rough on us, doctor; it isn’t every day we kill a pig!”

The doctor stared.

“You put things pleasantly!” he said. “It seems to me that the pigs were trying to kill you: but you’re all extraordinarily cheerful about it. Now, where’s Miss Norah gone? I never saw such a girl—she moves like quicksilver!”

Norah returned, bearing a spare cup.

“Do have some tea, doctor,” she begged.

“I haven’t time, but I will,” said the doctor, abandoning professional cares, and sitting down. “One’s life is all topsy-turvy nowadays. A year ago I would not have dreamed of having tea in a patient’s bedroom—let alone two patients—but then, a year ago I was practising in Harley Street, developing a sweet, bedside manner and the figure of an alderman. Today I’m a semi-military hack, with no manner at all, and my patients chaff me—actually chaff me, Miss Norah! It’s very distressing to one’s inherited notions.”

“It must be,” said Norah, deeply sympathetic. “The cake is quite good, doctor.”

“It is,” agreed the doctor, accepting some. “Occasionally I find a pompous old colonel or brigadier among my patients, and we exchange soothing confidences about the terrible future of the medical profession and the Army. That helps; but then I come back to the long procession of the foolish subalterns who go out to Flanders without ever having learned to dodge!” His eye twinkled as he glared at Jim and Wally. Norah, whose visits to wounded soldiers during many weeks had taught her something beyond his reputation as the most skilful and most merciful of surgeons, listened unmoved and offered him more tea.

“It’s no good trying to impress you!” said the doctor, surrendering his cup. “Thank you, I will have some more—in pure kindness of heart towards you, Miss Norah, since, when I leave this room, all visitors go with me!”

“Oh!” said Norah. “I’ll get some fresh tea, doctor!”

“You will not,” said the doctor, severely. “The picnic is nearly at an end: you can have another to-morrow, if you’re good.”

“When can we remove the patients, doctor?” asked Mr. Linton, who had been sitting in amused silence. A great contentment had settled on his face: already the lines of anxiety were smoothed away. He did not want to talk; it was sufficient to sit and watch Jim, occasionally meeting his eyes with a half-smile.

“Remove the patients—Good gracious!” ejaculated the doctor. “Why they’ve only just been removed once! Can’t you let them settle down a little?”

“We want to take them to Ireland,” said Norah, eagerly. “Can we, doctor?”

“H’m,” said the doctor, reflectively. “There might be worse plans. We’ll see. Ireland: that’s the place where the motto is, ‘When you see a head, hit it!’ isn’t it?”

“I don’t think it’s universal,” said Mr. Linton mildly. “It’s really much more peaceful than English legends would lead you to believe.”

“Between you and me, what the average Englishmen knows of Ireland might, I believe, he put into one’s eye without inconvenience,” affirmed the doctor. “I’m a Scot, and I don’t mind admitting I don’t know anything. But no Englishman tells an Irish story without making his speakers say ‘Bedad!’ and ‘Begorra!’ in turn: and I’ve known a heap of Irishmen, and their conversation was singularly free from those remarks. I have an inward conviction that the English-made Irishman doesn’t exist; only I never have time to verify any of my inward convictions. And perhaps that’s as well, because then they never lose weight! Have I drunk all the tea, Miss Norah?”

“I’m afraid so,” said Norah, tilting the teapot regretfully and without success. “Do let me get you some more. I know quite well where they make it.”

“Go to!” said the doctor, rising. “Don’t tempt an honest man from the path of duty. I’m off—and I give you three minutes. Then the patients are to compose themselves to slumber.”

“And Ireland, doctor?”

“Ireland?” said the doctor, pausing in the doorway. “Oh, there’s lots of time to think about that distressful country.” He relented a little, looking at the eager faces. “Very possibly. We’ll re-open the discussion this day week. Three minutes, mind. Good-bye.” His quick steps died away along the corridor.

Half an hour later Wally wriggled on his pillow.

“Asleep, Jim?”

“No—not quite.”

“D’you know something? Your people were here quite a while. And they never said one word about gas or war or any silly rot like that!”

“No,” said Jim, drowsily. “Bricks, weren’t they? Go to sleep.”