The Burning Spear: Being the Experiences of Mr. John Lavender in the Time of War

“No,” said Mr. Lavender, “that is – er – yes,” he added, ever scrupulously exact.

“I’m coming down,” said the young lady.

“Don’t move!”

With a great effort Mr. Lavender arranged his costume, and closed his eyes. “How many lie like this, staring at the blue heavens!” he thought.

“Where has it got you?” said a voice; and he saw the young lady bending over him.

“‘In the dorsal region, I think,” said Mr. Lavender. “But I suffer more from the thought that I – that you – ”

“That’s all right,” said the young lady; “I’m a V.A.D. It WAS a bump! Let’s see if you can – ” and taking his hands she raised him to a sitting posture. “Does it work?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Lavender rather faintly.

“Try and stand,” said the young lady, pulling.

Mr. Lavender tried, and stood; but no, sooner was he on his feet than she turned her face away. Great tears rolled down her cheeks; and she writhed and shook all over.

“Don’t!” cried Mr. Lavender, much concerned. “I beg you not to cry. It’s nothing, I assure you – nothing!” The young lady with an effort controlled her emotion, and turned her large grey eyes on him.

“The angelic devotion of nurses!” murmured Mr. Lavender, leaning against the wall of the house with his hand to his back. “Nothing like it has been seen since the world began.”

“I shall never forget the sight!” said the young lady, choking.

Mr. Lavender, who took the noises she made for sobbing, was unutterably disturbed.

“I can’t bear to see you distressed on my account,” he said. “I am quite well, I assure you; look – I can walk!” And he started forth up the garden in his nightshirt and Norfolk jacket. When he turned round she was no longer there, sounds of uncontrollable emotion were audible from the adjoining garden. Going to the privet hedge, he looked aver. She was lying gracefully on the grass, with her face smothered in her hands, and her whole body shaking. “Poor thing!” thought Mr. Lavender. “No doubt she is one of those whose nerves have been destroyed by the terrible sights she has seen!” But at that moment the young lady rose and ran as if demented into her castle. Mr. Lavender stayed transfixed. “Who would not be ill for the pleasure of drinking from a cup held by her hand?” he thought. “I am fortunate to have received injuries in trying to save her from confusion. Down, Blink, down!”

For his dog, who had once more leaped from the window, was frantically endeavouring to lick his face. Soothing her, and feeling his anatomy, Mr. Lavender became conscious that he was not alone. An old lady was standing on the gardenpath which led to the front gate, holding in her hand a hat. Mr. Lavender sat down at once, and gathering his nightshirt under him, spoke as follows:

“There are circumstances, madam, which even the greatest public servants cannot foresee, and I, who am the humblest of them, ask you to forgive me for receiving you in this costume.”

“I have brought your hat back,” said the old lady with a kindling eye; “they told me you lived here and I was anxious to know that you and your dear dog were none the worse.”

“Madam,” replied Mr. Lavender, “I am infinitely obliged to you. Would you very kindly hang my hat up on the – er – weeping willow tree?”

At this moment a little white dog, who accompanied the old lady, began sniffing round Mr. Lavender, and Blink, wounded in her proprietary instincts, placed her paws at once on her master’s shoulders, so that he fell prone. When he recovered a sitting posture neither the old lady nor the little dog were in sight, but his hat was hanging on a laurel bush. “There seems to be something fateful about this morning,” he mused; “I had better go in before the rest of the female population – ” and recovering his feet with difficulty, he took his hat, and was about to enter the house when he saw the young lady watching him from an upper window of the adjoining castle. Thinking to relieve her anxiety, he said at once:

“My dear young lady, I earnestly beg you to believe that such a thing never happens to me, as a rule.”

Her face was instantly withdrawn, and, sighing deeply, Mr. Lavender entered the house and made his way upstairs. “Ah!” he thought, painfully recumbent in his bed once more, “though my bones ache and my head burns I have performed an action not unworthy of the traditions of public life. There is nothing more uplifting than to serve Youth and Beauty at the peril of one’s existence. Humanity and Chivalry have ever been the leading characteristics of the British race;” and, really half-delirious now, he cried aloud: “This incident will for ever inspire those who have any sense of beauty to the fulfilment of our common task. Believe me, we shall never sheathe the sword until the cause of humanity and chivalry is safe once more.”

Blink, ever uneasy about sounds which seemed to her to have no meaning, stood up on her hind legs and endeavoured to stay them by licking his face; and Mr. Lavender, who had become so stiff that he could not stir without great pain, had to content himself by moving his head feebly from side to side until his dog, having taken her fill, resumed the examination of her bone. Perceiving presently that whenever he began to-talk she began to lick his face, he remained silent, with his mouth open and his eyes shut, in an almost unconscious condition, from which he was roused by a voice saying:

“He is suffering from alcoholic poisoning.”

The monstrous injustice of these words restored his faculties, and seeing before him what he took to be a large concourse of people – composed in reality of Joe Petty, Mrs. Petty, and the doctor – he thus addressed them in a faint, feverish voice:

“The pressure of these times, ladies and gentlemen, brings to the fore the most pushing and obstreperous blackguards. We have amongst us persons who, under the thin disguise of patriotism, do not scruple to bring hideous charges against public men. Such but serve the blood-stained cause of our common enemies. Conscious of the purity of our private lives, we do not care what is said of us so long as we can fulfil our duty to our country. Abstinence from every form of spirituous liquor has been the watchword of all public men since this land was first threatened by the most stupendous cataclysm which ever hung over the heads of a great democracy. We have never ceased to preach the need for it, and those who say the contrary are largely Germans or persons lost to a sense of decency.” So saying, he threw off all the bedclothes, and fell back with a groan.

“Easy, easy, my dear sir!” said the voice.

“Have you a pain in your back?”

“I shall not submit,” returned our hero, “to the ministrations of a Hun; sooner will I breathe my last.”

“Turn him over,” said the voice. And Mr. Lavender found himself on his face.

“Do you feel that?” said the voice.

Mr. Lavender answered faintly into his pillow:

“It is useless for you to torture me. No German hand shall wring from me a groan.”

“Is there mania in his family?” asked the voice. At this cruel insult Mr. Lavender, who was nearly smothered, made a great effort, and clearing his mouth of the pillow, said:

“Since we have no God nowadays, I call the God of my fathers to witness that there is no saner public man than I.”

It was, however, his last effort, for the wriggle he had given to his spine brought on a kind of vertigo, and he relapsed into unconsciousness.

V

IS CONVICTED OF A NEW DISEASE

Those who were assembled round the bed of Mr. Lavender remained for a moment staring at him with their mouths open, while Blink growled faintly from underneath.

“Put your hand here,” said the doctor at last.

“There is a considerable swelling, an appearance of inflammation, and the legs are a curious colour. You gave him three-quarters of a tumbler of rum – how much honey?”

Thus addressed, Joe Petty, leaning his head a little to one side, answered:

“Not ‘alf a pot, sir.”

“Um! There are all the signs here of something quite new. He’s not had a fall, has he?”

“Has he?” said Mrs. Petty severely to her husband.

“No,” replied Joe.

“Singular!” said the doctor. Turn him back again; I want to feel his head. Swollen; it may account for his curious way of talking. Well, shove in quinine, and keep him quiet, with hot bottles to his feet. I think we have come on a new war disease. I’ll send you the quinine. Good morning.

“Wot oh!” said Joe to his wife, when they were left alone with the unconscious body of their master. “Poor old Guv! Watch and pray!”

“However could you have given him such a thing?”

“Wet outside, wet your inside,” muttered Joe sulkily, “‘as always been my motto. Sorry I give ‘im the honey. Who’d ha’ thought the product of an ‘armless insect could ‘a done ‘im in like this?”