For the last hundred miles of the journey, Dunnett felt strangely clearer. He now lay awake for hours on end, thinking.
The sickness had cleared somewhat, leaving that strange, feverish planning for the future that succeeds all illnesses. He devised endless schemes for distraining on the supposititious fortune of Señor Muras. It was only when he began working out the actual details that his head swam and his mind became clouded again.
His leg continued to drive long splinters of pain up into his thigh: perhaps it was that which kept him awake. From time to time the orderly would put cold compresses on his knee and then forget to change them. But Dunnett no longer minded. Nothing seemed really to matter so long as at the end of it all there was a ship waiting to carry him back to Kay.
When the train had finished crawling over the endless central roof of the Andes and began nosing its way for some easy staircase to take it down into the littoral, all Dunnett’s courage had returned to him. It was true that he had failed— but against what odds? When he had left Amricante six weeks before—yes that was it: nearly fifty days of peril and discomfort—he had not seen his home-coming quite like this. He was penniless, disappointed and wounded. But he still did not doubt that somehow in Amricante he could put everything right; what Señor Muras had said about him had been true.
The orderly put him on to the platform with very little ceremony indeed. He just gave him a hand down the steps and left him there. With so many of the military on the train it was not to be expected that a civilian of no special importance would be given any particular attention. Dunnett put out his hand to steady himself. He was weaker than he had realised. The whole station seemed to be folding in and collapsing on him. He sat down on somebody else’s trunk and waited for his head to clear.
The distance from the station to the Avenida was about 400 yards. It took him more than an hour to cover it. The only support was a rubber-ferruled stick which the orderly had not thought worth while stealing. Bracing his leg for the strain, he set out into the brilliant glare outside the station. He kept close to the wall all the way, trying to find some shade and something to hold on to. When he turned the corner and came upon the discoloured frontage of the Avenida he left the protection of the supporting wall and began limping across the dazzling white roadway; his leg sent stabs of red hot pain into him at every step. The Avenida itself looked more down at heel even than usual. The windows were uncleaned and the tin cages that had once held flowers now hung empty over the pavement. It was then that he noticed that there was a thin board covered in black crêpe nailed to the front of each window. His mind entirely failed to comprehend the significance of it. He had entirely forgotten the recent existence of Señor Alvarez.
By the time that he reached the double swing doors, his head began reeling again: everything in Amricante was swaying before his eyes. Then he stood quite still panting and trying to recover himself. It was only now it was over that he realised what an ordeal it had been getting there. Inside, everything seemed quiet and very subdued; it was like slipping suddenly into evening. After the glare outside he could scarcely see. Then gradually the old, familiar shapes began to reassert themselves—the moulting couches, the staircase that sagged, the wicker chairs in rows that spoke of the grand days when the hotel had been crowded.
There was a long mirror in the wall that showed him up as he stood there. It was no more than a faint shadowy image that confronted him: but it was enough. He saw a pair of sunken burning eyes peering out from a brown, haggard face covered with two weeks’ stubble of beard. His hair hung over his ears in trailing wisps. And his clothes: they were wild, tattered garments of the kind that castaways wear. He wondered dully what had become of the suit of tropical ducks that he had gone away in—he couldn’t believe that they could have changed to this.
He became aware that someone was watching him from the shadows of the desk. He moved forward and the person withdrew a little. Then he saw that it was Maria Alvarez. She evidently did not recognise him.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“It’s me, Harold Dunnett,” he said. “I’ve come back.”
Chapter XIII
It Was only when he was lying on his back under the mosquito netting in an upstairs bedroom that he realised that he had let Maria Alvarez put him to bed. He could not remember whether anyone else had been present, could remember very little from the moment he had re-entered the front door; all that he knew was that Maria had stripped him and that he was now in bed. He had been like a child in the matter, holding up his hands above his head so that she could pull his shirt off his back, and crying out when by accident she touched his leg. But not like a child altogether. For he had never for a moment forgotten that this was a woman who was waiting on him, someone with gentle hands and a quiet voice. She had placed his pillows ready for him, and he had lain back at last, unthinkably at rest. Soon his eyes were shut. He slept.
When he woke it was dark outside and the bare electric light bulb in the ceiling was shining down into his eyes. Maria was standing there facing him with a handsome, dignified man beside her.
“The doctor has come, Señor Dunnett,” she said. “He is waiting to see you.”
Dunnett smiled limply in recognition of the fact. He did not pause to ask himself how the doctor came to be there.
The doctor came forward. His actions rather suggested that the practice of medicine was distasteful to him. When it came to the point of unwrapping the bandages round Dunnett’s leg he delicately averted his nose as he did so. He stood back and prodded at the proud flesh with the end of his fountain pen.
“This is a nursing job,” he said. “Is Señor Dunnett attached to the Bolivian army?”
Dunnett told him he wasn’t.
“Then it is not possible for you to enter a military hospital.”
“Well, what’s wrong with an ordinary hospital?”
“The ordinary hospitals have become military hospitals,” the doctor answered. There was a note of rebuke in his voice as he said it as though he resented Dunnett’s selfishness in getting a leg like that in war-time.
“Then I’ll have to get a nurse to come to the hotel.”
“There are no nurses,” the doctor answered. “They are all in the hospitals.”
There was a long pause and then it was Maria who spoke. “He can be nursed in this house,” she said.
The doctor looked at her in contemptuous surprise. He was not used to people who volunteered for unpleasant duties. “Very well,” he said professionally. “It is largely a matter of technique.”
Dunnett lay back and heard the words “hot water,” “permanganate” and “lint.” The doctor repeated the word lint several times as though it were a new invention and even wrote the word down for her; it was obvious that he did not credit anyone other than himself with more than a fleeting intelligence in such matters.
Maria was a devoted nurse. She guarded the sickroom with a kind of possessive avidity, even cleaning out the room herself so that no one else should disturb him. Dunnett got used to having her to do everything for him. With the self-importance of an invalid he no longer questioned that she should wait on him, carrying jugs of steaming water, removing the soiled rolls of bandage, bringing him drinks to cool the everlasting dryness of his throat. His only visitor was Señora Alvarez, draped heavily in black. She made no pretence of approving of him. The hotel was not paying, and this sick man was only another item on the debit side. The chemist’s charges, in particular, infuriated her, and she only hoped that the Englishman would have enough to settle the bill. Altogether, it was one of the nightmares of the hotel-keeping world to have someone fall ill on your hands, running up endless costs all the time and then leaving the funeral to be paid for by what his luggage would fetch. She had advised Marie a dozen times to turn him out before it was too late. But the girl seemed entirely to have lost her wits.
It was on the third morning that the outside world suddenly came into existence again for Du
nnett. As he woke, he found himself wondering what Mr. Govern would say if he knew; and then he realised that no one except those at the Avenida knew anything at all, not even Kay. The thought of Kay came back to him in a rush; it was like being roused from sleep to be told he had come into a fortune. Carmel’s leaving him no longer seemed the anguish that it had been. It had restored him to Kay. He was hers again now, and she need never know that, even for a moment, he had belonged to someone else. For her sake he must get better, mustn’t go on burying himself off the map while his leg mended. He thought that he would test his leg, and tried to drag out of bed. But he could not bend it. It was hard and inflexible like a stone.
And then he remembered his letters. All the way up to Subrico he had been thinking of the letters that would be waiting for him when he got back, and he had been here for two whole days without even asking for them. He heaved himself up on to one elbow and began tugging furiously at the old-fashioned bell-pull.
Maria brought him the letters resentfully. He was too ill, she told him, to be bothered by such things at that moment. His duty was to place himself in her hands until he was well again. But he only laughed at her and said that it was his letters that would make him well. Why was that? she asked. And he told her that it was because he was looking forward to a letter from a girl in England. He was sorry when he had said it, for she merely took up the tray from beside his bed and left the room without speaking. It was obvious that she was jealous of everything in his life that did not belong to her.
The pile of letters lay on his lap, crumpled and a little faded, like all tropical mail. He picked out Kay’s letters first; the neat, round hand with the big capital letters was unmistakable. He opened them with the excitement which only a really lonely man can know. And then as he read he remembered the disappointment that he had experienced before. Kay said none of the things that he was really waiting to hear; her letters were simply affectionate notes that anyone could have written. They weren’t really love-letters at all. Perhaps she wasn’t certain enough of him, needed assurance after the suddenness of the parting. He dragged himself half out of bed and, with the help of a chair, reached the dressing-table. It was his dispatch case he wanted. Then sitting up in bed he wrote her the kind of letter which could leave her in no doubt.
He rested before he took up the batch of letters from the firm. He was very tired, and his mind was still full of thoughts of Kay. And then he saw that Mr. Govern had actually been sending his letters by Air Mail; the fronts of them were plastered with huge stamps. They had come by Graf Zeppelin by way of Friedrichshafen and Pernambuco. It was an arrangement that was characteristic of the impatience that was the keynote of Mr. Govern’s nature. Dunnett ripped open the envelope and began to read.
And then the truth, the absurd truth, began to reveal itself, that Mr. Govern was disappointed in him, considered that he had failed in his commission through want of effort. He spoke of “not adapting yourself quickly enough to the situation,” and went on to say, “if the circumstances were as you describe you should immediately have put the whole case in the hands of the British Consul.” The British Consul! Dunnett threw back his head and laughed. If only Mr. Govern could have seen Señor Costello! Dunnett had risked his life for the house of Govern and Fryze, had been under fire for the sake of those South American defalcations—and Mr. Govern had the uncomprehending insolence to say that he had failed. The cardinal fact that Dunnett had not got the money after all, that the cheque by now was no more than a piece of waterlogged paper no doubt caught up somewhere on one of the snags of the military river, seemed irrelevant beside the colossal effort that he had made in getting it at all.
One of Mr. Govern’s letters referred to his “telegram of even date.” Of course Mr. Govern had been cabling him as well. He ought to have thought of that: the natural drive of the man would never let him be content with ordinary letters for long. Dunnett sorted the cables carefully, date by date just as he had done the letters. He wanted to get a complete picture in his own mind of Mr. Govern’s misreading of the situation.
There was a mounting curtness about the cables as he read. They demanded to know where he was, what he was doing and why he did not reply. The last one insisted in peremptory tones on a full reply within twenty-four hours. Dunnett looked at that date: it was nearly three weeks old. On the date when that cable had been sent he had been in the hotel at Subrico waiting for one of Major Schultz’s twelve-pounders to come along and end everything. And Mr. Govern was insisting on an immediate reply!
Maria entered. She was carrying a tray with food on it. He saw that it was chicken again—yellow scraps of chicken cooked with rice. His stomach turned over at the sight of it. He seemed to have eaten whole farmyards of chickens since he had come to Amricante. She put the tray across his knees and brought over a towel from the wash stand. Without asking him, she wiped the sweat off his face and hands. But she was not pleased with him.
“You’ve been overtiring yourslf,” she said. “The doctor will be angry.”
At the words he pushed her hands away. He had been ill long enough. All that he wanted now was to get back and face Mr. Govern. His heart raced at the thought of what he was going to say. There was still one cable—the last one— unopened on the bed. He reached for it and opened it before he began to eat. But five minutes later, while Maria, bewildered, stood by and watched him, the cable was still in his hands and the food before him was untouched.
“YOU ARE SUSPENDED,” the cable ran, “HAVE STOPPED BANK CREDIT FORTHWITH AND HAVE INFORMED BRITISH CONSUL NO FURTHER AUTHORITY ON YOUR PART ACT ON BEHALF GOVERN AND FRYZE STOP REPORT IMMEDIATELY OR WILL INSTITUTE PROCEEDINGS GOVERN.”
Dunnett looked again at the date of it. It was already a fortnight old.
He replied cautiously to the cable; cautiously because he knew that if once he started to answer it with what was in his mind he would not know where to stop. He cabled merely that he had been away and been ill; that he was now back and would catch the next boat and had a full explanation for everything.
It was Mr. Govern’s cable that hurried him through convalescence. The injustice of it would not let him rest, and his whole body tingled to be active again. At first, the wound in his leg was stubborn. It sucked all his vitality down to it, and it was as though he could feel his heart throbbing there. The pain had departed, leaving behind it this everlasting pulsation, this morbid reminder of the fact that he was still alive. But already he was better. Within a week he got Maria to help him to his feet and gingerly set his injured leg on the floor. Then, holding on to her arm, he walked as far as the window. When he was back in bed he felt as proud as an athlete.
It was another six days before he could walk about, however, and a fortnight before he could leave the hotel unaccompanied. Maria watched him go the first time with alarm. Her instinct told her that he was not strong enough, and she could not understand this force within him that urged him on to overtax his strength. Moreover, in a way she resented his getting better. It meant that every day she was losing a little more of him: and soon he would be gone altogether. When she offered to walk across the Plaza as far as the poinsettia beds round the fountains in the centre, and he sent her back because he wanted to gain confidence, she went into the small room behind the reception-desk and wept a little.
He made a strange figure on those walks. He was wearing the second best suit of ducks which he had left behind him at the Avenida when he set off to Canagua and his clothes still looked new enough. Only they did not look like his clothes at all. When he had bought them he had weighed eleven stone; now he was only a little over eight. The suit sagged and rippled all over like a dust cloth. And one leg was as stiff as though it were encased in plaster of Paris. Seen from behind he appeared to be goose-stepping on one side and limping on the other. Also he had fallen into the habit of talking to himself. He did not know when it had started, but he now walked that glittering pavement of crushed sea shell that was the Plaza los Toros muttering to h
imself the whole time. Not simply stray words, but whole sentences—sentences from that forthcoming and to-be-historic meeting with Mr. Govern. He even nodded his head as he walked, to emphasise certain things in the conversation that he was rehearsing. People looked after him as he passed. Moreover, he was something of a celebrity. The story of his rescue had got about. It was generally felt in Amricante that the strain of his ordeal must have affected him a little.
There was another reason why he had not said more in his cable: he did not want to spend the money. He had gone very carefully into his position and found that he had nearly twenty-three pounds: he had transferred it into the local bank as soon as he arrived; twenty-three pounds and a return ticket. It was not a lot of money and he did not know yet what his hotel bill was going to be. He didn’t like the idea of explaining to Maria that he couldn’t pay her. He did not want her to doubt him even for the few weeks before he could draw the money in England and send it out to her. He knew that her mother would be intolerable about it.
In any case, there was not long to wait now. The Viña del Mar was on the return half of her round trip, and was returning from Valparaiso with a cargo of nitrates, hides and young ladies. There had been some kind of very profitable Pan-American Business Congress at Valparaiso, and the young ladies were now returning. The Viña del Mar would be in within three days now and Dunnett was getting ready for it. He took himself by taxi to the Passport Office to get his papers stamped. The superintendent behind the counter regarded him curiously; he even pushed back his green eyeshade to see him better. He was deeply impressed to find in his own office the mad Englishman who had chased Señor Muras into Chaco and ended by rescuing his daughter.
“I trust,” he said politely, as he handed back the passport, “that el Señor is none the worse for his martyrdom.” At that moment, anyone with a Paraguayan wound was a martyr.
With his papers stamped, Dunnett felt an odd feeling of freedom descending upon him; like a man who has achieved his escape. He would step on to that boat and the whole night-mare of Amricante would go gliding away astern. The scene of his defeat would be forgotten and he would become Mr. Govern’s right hand man in London. He had seen the world, and his mind was as much broadened as he wanted it to be.
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