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Then the ward was at once emptied, the patients being carried down-stairs amidst renewed tumult. And Pierre, having replaced Marie's box upon its wheels, took the first place in the /cortege/, which was formed of a score of little handcarts, bath-chairs, and litters. The other wards, however, were also emptying, the courtyard became crowded, and the /defile/ was organised in haphazard fashion.
We should be perfectly certain that only a few men were walking at all, and that all the other British subjects were being wheeled about in Bath-chairs. But if when we hear of walking it means slow walking, painful walking, and frequent fatigue, then we know that the mass of the nation still is walking. We know that England is still literally on its feet.
"Or smile," said Gibberne, with his eye on the lady's answering teeth. "It's infernally hot, somehow," said I. "Let's go slower." "Oh, come along!" said Gibberne. We picked our way among the bath-chairs in the path. Many of the people sitting in the chairs seemed almost natural in their passive poses, but the contorted scarlet of the bandsmen was not a restful thing to see.
"Thirsty work, this grave-digging job," said a lad who used to skate on rollers between the bath-chairs of Brighton promenade. "Can't see much in those shells," said a young man who once sold ladies' blouses in an emporium of a south coast village. "How those newspaper chaps do try to frighten us!" He put his head on one side with a sudden jerk. "What's that? Wasps?"
"We have such bracing air!" says the resident, as proudly as if that said air were his special invention and property. Certain West-country doctors affect Norton-on-Sea for patients in need of restful change, and their melancholy advent justifies the existence of the great hotel on the esplanade, and the row of bath-chairs at the corner.
Here the regimental band plays on Wednesdays; an occasional circus pitches its tents, and 'beauty and fashion' flock to see and be seen. The many are on foot; the few use Bath-chairs or machilas, fautenils hung to a pole. The only carriage in the place belongs to the Governor, and he lost no time in losing one of his horses. Riding is apparently unknown. The Battery is the old Fort Falconbridge.
I only wish that my descriptive powers would enable me to throw off a picture of the scene at a sunny noontide, individualizing each character with a touch the great people alighting from their carriages at the principal shop-doors; the elderly ladies and infirm Indian officers drawn along in Bath-chairs; the comely, rather than pretty, English girls, with their deep, healthy bloom, which an American taste is apt to deem fitter for a milkmaid than for a lady; the mustached gentlemen with frogged surtouts and a military air; the nursemaids and chubby children, but no chubbier than our own, and scampering on slenderer legs; the sturdy figure of John Bull in all varieties and of all ages, but ever with the stamp of authenticity somewhere about him.
Not a single one of them all had had the courage to move, and their fright and despair were perfectly fearful. And a nice trouble he had to get them home had to send for flys, and bath-chairs, and litters, and goodness alone knows what all!
"Or smile," said Gibberne, with his eye on the lady's answering teeth. "It's infernally hot, somehow," said I, "Let's go slower." "Oh, come along!" said Gibberne. We picked our way among the bath-chairs in the path. Many of the people sitting in the chairs seemed almost natural in their passive poses, but the contorted scarlet of the bandsmen was not a restful thing to see.
There are ten bath-chairs in all, and on sunny days ten crumpled-looking old ladies can generally be seen sitting inside their canopies, trundling slowly along the esplanade, accompanied by a paid companion, dressed in black and looking sorry for herself.
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