The voyage had been wonderful. Not for one moment of the forty-eight hours that it took to reach Southampton did the wavelets upset the equilibrium of the vessel. Only the faintest vibration showed him that she was moving at all. The food had been good and plentiful, the attendance matchless. All things seemed to be "working together for good."
While engrossed in this reverie, he awoke to the fact that well-known landscapes were rolling past his window.
Tidshot! There was the familiar landmark--the tree-crested hill and the church. The station flashed by, and then the well-known training areas.
"Just as if I were going up to town for the week-end!" he told himself.
The familiar suburbs whizzed past. Clapham Junction, Vauxhall, the grinding of brakes, and the train was gliding quietly along Waterloo platform.
An Officer boarded the train, and, in spite of a great deal of discussion and requests, succeeded in thrusting scraps of paper into every one's hand.
"The Something Hospital, Chester Square," some one read.
"What? Oh, I thought you said 'The Empire Hospital, Leicester Square!'"
yelled half-a-dozen wits almost simultaneously.
He was carried out on his stretcher, slid into a St. John Ambulance, and driven to the address on the piece of paper, which was "not a hundred miles from Berkeley Square," as the Gossip writers put it.
The Ambulance Stretcher Bearers carried him into the hall of what was evidently a private house "turned" into a hospital. A great many ladies were standing about, all in Red Cross uniform. A man was there, too.
Curiously enough, he was wearing just the coat and hat that his father would wear. Could it be possible? He turned round; lo and behold, it _was_ his father!
"Hallo, Father!" he said.
The man came up.
Both of them seemed at a loss for words. It was neither emotion nor sentimentality; it was just the lack of something to say. Taking advantage of the pause, the crowd bore down upon him, and by reason of their superior numbers drove him away, offering promises about "the day after to-morrow."
They carried the Subaltern upstairs, and placed him in a room where two other Officers who had arrived on the same boat were already established.
The Hospital was "run" by the Hon. Mrs. Blank, who was placing her entire house at the disposal of the War Office. She did everything herself: the feeding, equipping, providing the staff. The expense must have been huge. She worked night and day as general manageress of the establishment. There ought to be some special honour and knighthood for such women on this earth, and a special heaven in the next. The Subaltern used to feel positively ashamed of himself when he thought of the money, kindness and care that she was lavishing upon them.
The whole Hospital was a glorious, pulsating, human organisation. What was wanted was done, not what was "laid down" in some schedule. Indeed, their wishes were gratified before they had time to form in the mind. It was a fairyland, and of course the fairies were the nurses. The Subaltern and his two companions held a conference on their respective merits.
"I like the little pale brown one; she's like a mouse."
"There's no comparison. Ours is the star turn."
"Which _is_ ours?"
"The one who dashes about?"
"The one who upset the dinner-trays?"
"Yes. Wasn't it funny? I thought I should have died!"
The Doctors, this time civilians, used to come to him twice a day. They were quiet, reserved men, positively glowing with efficiency.
They dressed his wound, tested the reflex actions of his nerves, gazed through holes in bright mirrors at his eyes, and made him watch perpendicular pencils moving horizontally across his line of vision.
But life was racing back into his limbs. Hourly his strength was returning. He no longer lay staring listlessly in the bottom of the bed.
He liked now to work himself up, to lose nothing of what was going on around, to share in the talk, and, until the next headache came, to _live_.
He wallowed in the joy of reaching harbour.
Such rapid progress did he make that they began, in a few days, to treat him as a rational human being. They allowed him meat, and once, owing to a mistake on the part of the young Hurrier, a whisky-and-soda. They allowed him to smoke a restricted number of cigarettes, and to read as often as he liked. But aspirin they barred.
He had not many friends in London, so during visiting hours he was left in comparative peace.
One morning his mother came. As the door opened and she hurried into the room with her quick, bird-like grace, he felt that she was a stranger to him. Somehow their old intimacy seemed dissolved, and would have, piece by piece, to be built up again. Her round, appealing eyes of palest brown stirred him as no other eyes--even her own--had ever done before.
Her slim shoulders delighted him.
"Waddles!" he said; "you're priceless!"
He loved to call her "Waddles."
They asked the Doctor when he would be likely to be able to go home.
"As soon as the wound is covered over," he replied, "there is no reason why he should not go home. Providing he could get massage and proper treatment."
The gas darkly illuminated the sombre red of the walls and glimmered on the polished mahogany. The fire, too, glowed red. Outside, the wind was sighing softly in the pine-trees.
The bed seemed huge and its capacity for comfort enormous. The cool sheets seemed to caress his legs. His whole nervous system was delightfully wearied with the achievement of reaching home.
The local Doctor had promised that he could treat him perfectly well, and he had been allowed to leave the Hospital.
He could hear the paws of his spaniel padding softly on the carpet in the landing. He could hear the voices of his father and sister in the hall....
Peace after the storm! The harbour reached at last.
"It seems to be impossible to believe it's true," he murmured to himself.
"Are you quite ready?" asked his mother.
She was standing beneath the gas-bracket, one hand raised to the handle.
The light silhouetted her impertinent little nose and glimmered in her dusky hair.
Then with a jerk she turned out the light.
THE END