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He had instinctively put up his arm to defend his face and the thickly padded sleeve of Bellward's jacket had broken the force of the blow. Desmond had avoided a fractured skull at the price of an appalling bruise on the right forearm and a nasty laceration of the scalp. Francis had resolutely declined to enlighten him as to the events of the night until both had breakfasted.
He saw what she saw: the immense coffin set up on trestles at the foot of the bed; the sheeted body packed tight in the padded white lining, the hands, curling a little, smooth and stiff, the hands of a wax figure; the firm, sallowish white face; the brown stains, like iodine, about the nostrils; the pale under lip pushed out, proudly.
Likewise his eyes darted everywhere in search of the object he needed. Then he glided to a decrepit arm-chair and turning it over stuffed the document in a rent in its padded seat, out of sight underneath. Next he filled his pockets with other papers signed by Saurez. Last, he hastily tore open the little telephone book and ran a forefinger down the H's. "Doctor Hosmer's, hurry," he exclaimed.
He lifted his father bodily, put him in the car, took his seat beside him, shut the door, and drove off. He felt remarkably cheered as they whirled along at top speed. The General, yielding gracefully to the inevitable, rolled himself up in the rugs, dropped his head against the padded cushions and, soothed by the warmth, fell asleep.
The moonbeam, as though petulant at its own abortive attempt to satisfy its curiosity, retreated back across the floor, and faded away. Blackness! Time passed. Then from the safe again, but now in a low gasp, a pant of relief: "Ah!" The ear might barely catch the sound it was as of metal sliding in well-oiled grooves, of metal meeting metal in a padded thud. The massive door swung outward.
"Not so much damaged as he might be," the doctor announced, rising. "That shoulder will take a bit of healing, but he looks healthy. His padded uniform has saved his life. Let's get him to the private hospital up the street. Everything necessary is there, and I'd like to have his shoulder dressed before he regains consciousness."
Typhus, relapsing fever, and typhoid had gripped the town. For a time the citadel was in the hands of an English unit. Before they were there it was a Serbian hospital, and the staff threw all the dirty, stained dressings over the cliff, down which they rolled to the road. The peasants used to collect these pestiferous morsels and made them into padded quilts. Little wonder that illness spread!
When she had padded the streets of London in quest of work, she had many times told herself that she had only to secure a weekly wage in order to be happy. Although her twenty shillings a week had been increased to twenty-five, and she considerably augmented this sum by teaching music to pupils to whom Mr Medlicott recommended her, Mavis was by no means content.
And yet in some way I felt that things were not the same as they used to be. Jack was the same kindly brother I had always known, and yet there seemed in his manner a tinge of something different. I did not know what. I only knew that I felt very nervous and unstrung. As I sank into the padded seat and began to remove my gloves I was confronted by a new problem.
The cow moose no longer mooed to her young. In place of it, from the open plain and "burn" rose the defiant challenge of bull to bull and the deadly clash of horn against horn under the stars of night. The wolf no longer howled to hear his voice. In the travel of padded feet there came to be a slinking, hunting caution. In all the forest world blood was running red again. And then November.
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