第48章 CHAPTER XVII(3)

Cutty sent a call to the nurse, who was standing undecidedly in the doorway; and together they put the derelict back to bed. Then Cutty fetched the photograph and set it on top of the dresser, where Hawksley could see it.

"Now, no more gallivanting about."

"I promise, old top. This bed is a little bit of all right. I say!"

"What?"

"How long am I to be here?"

"If you're good, two weeks," interposed the nurse.

"Two weeks? I say, would you mind doing me a trifling favour? I'd like a violin to amuse myself with."

"A fiddle? I don't know a thing about 'em except that they sound good." Cutty pulled at his chin.

"Whatever it costs I'll reimburse you the day I'm up."

"All right. I'll bring you a bundle of them, and you can do your own selecting."

Out in the corridor the nurse said: "I couldn't hold him. But he'll be easier now that he's got the questions off his mind. He will have to be humoured a lot. That's one of the characteristics of head wounds."

"What do you think of him?"

"He seems to be gentle and patient; and I imagine he's hard to resist when he wants anything. Winning, you'd call it. I suppose I mustn't ask who he really is?"

"No. Poor devil. The fewer that know, the better. I'll be home round three."

Once in the street, Cutty was besieged suddenly with the irresistible desire to mingle with the crowd over in the Avenue, to hear the military bands, the shouts, to witness the gamut of emotions which he knew would attend this epochal day. Of course he would view it all from the aloof vantage of the historian, and store away commentaries against future needs.

And what a crowd it was! He was elbowed and pushed, jostled and trod on, carried into the surges, relegated to the eddies; and always the metallic taptap of steel-shod boots on the asphalt, the bayonets throwing back the radiant sunshine in sharp, clear flashes. The keen, joyous faces of those boys. God, to be young like that! To have come through that hell on earth with the ability still to smile!

Cutty felt the tears running down his cheeks. Instinctively he knew that this was to be his last thrill of this order. He was fifty-two.

"Quit your crowding there!" barked a voice under his chin.

"Sorry, but it's those behind me," said Cutty, looking down into a florid countenance with a raggedy gray moustache and a pair of blue eyes that were blinking.

"I'm so damned short I can't see anything!"

"Neither can I."

"You could if you wiped your eyes."

"You're crying yourself," declared Cutty.

"Blinking jackass! Got anybody out there?"

"All of 'em."

"I get you, old son of a gun! No flesh and blood, but they're ours all the same. Couple of old fools; huh?"

"Sure pop! What right have two old codgers got here, anyhow? What brought you out?"

"What brought you?"

"Same thing."

"Damn it! If I could only see something!"