VI
Three of the Reds trooped out through the sitting room, lean, red-faced, hairy, heavy-footed, uncouth figures, for their tea. The Wandoo Ellises were aristocratic in comparison. They asked Jack to go and help hold Herbert down, because he was fractious. “He’s that fractious!”
Jack didn’t in the least want to have to handle any of the Reds, but he had to go. He found himself taking the two steps down into the dark living room, and the two steps up into Gran’s room beyond.
Why need the family be so quiet in the kitchen, when there was such a hubbub in here? Alan Ellis was holding one leg of the injured party, and Ross Ellis the other, and they both addressed the recumbent figure as if it were an injured horse with a Whoa there! Steady on, now! Steady, boy, steady! Whilst Easu, bending terribly over the prostrate figure, clutched both its arms in a vice, and cursed Jack for not coming sooner to take one arm.
Herbert had hurt his head, and turned fractious. Jack took the one arm. Easu was on the other side of the bed, his reddish fair beard glowing. There was a queer power in Easu, which fascinated Jack a little. Beyond, Gran was sitting up in bed, among many white pillows, like Red Riding Hood’s grandmother. A bright fire of wood logs was burning in the open hearth, and four or five tallow candles smoked duskily. But a screen was put between Gran’s four-poster and Herbert’s bed, a screen made of a wooden clothes-horse covered with sheets. Jack, however, from his position by Herbert’s pillow, could see beyond the screen to Gran’s section.
His attention was drawn by the patient. Herbert’s movements were sudden and convulsive, and always in a sudden jerking towards the right side of the bed. Easu had given Jack the left arm to hold, and as soon as Herbert became violent, Jack couldn’t hold him. The left arm, lean and hard as iron, broke free, and Easu jumped up and cursed Jack.
Here was a pretty scene! With Gran mumbling to herself on the other side the hideous sheeted screen!
There was nothing for it but to use cool intelligence—a thing the Reds did not possess. Jack had lost his hold again, and Easu like a reddish, glistening demon was gripping the sick man’s two arms and arching over him. Jack called up his old veterinary experience and proceeded to detach himself.
He noticed first: that Herbert was far less fierce when they didn’t resist him. Second, that he stopped groaning when his eyes fell away from the men around him. Third, that all the convulsive jerky movements, which had thrown him out of the bed several times, were towards the right side of the bed.
Then why not bind him to the left?
The left arm had again escaped his grasp, and Easu’s exasperated fury was only held in check by Gran’s presence. Jack went out of the room and found Katie.
“Hunt me out an old sheet,” he said.
“What for?” she asked, but went off to do his bidding.
When she came back she said:
“Mother says they don’t want to bandage Herbert, do they?”
“I’m going to try and bind him. I shan’t hurt him,” he replied.
“Oh Jack, don’t let them send for me to sit with him—I hate sickness.”
“You give us a hand then with this sheet.”
Between them they prepared strong bands. Jack noosed one with sailor’s knots round Katie’s hands, and fastened it to the table leg.
“Pull!” he ordered. “Pull as hard as you can.” And as she pulled, “Does it hint, now?”
“Not a bit,” she said.
Jack went back to the sick room. Herbert was quiet, the three brothers were sulky and silent. They wanted above all things to get out, to get away. You could see that. Easu glanced at Jack’s hand. There was something tense and alert about Easu, like a great, wiry bird with enormous power in its lean, red neck and its lean limbs.
“I thought we’d best bind him so as not to hurt him,” said Jack. “I know how to do it, I think.”
The brothers said not a word, but let him go ahead. And Jack bound the left arm and the left leg, and put a band round the body of the patient. They looked on, rather distantly interested. Easu released the convulsive left arm of his brother. Jack took the sick man’s hand soothingly, held it soothingly, then slipped his hand up the hairy fore-arm and got the band attached just above the elbow. Then he fastened the ends to the bed-head. He felt quite certain he was doing right. While he was busy Mrs. Ellis came in. She watched in silence, too. When it was done, Jack looked at her.
“I believe it’ll do,” she said with a nod of approval. And then, to the cowed, hulking brothers, “You might as well go and get your tea.”
They bumped into one another trying to get through the door. Jack noticed they were in their stocking feet. They stooped outside the door to pick up their boots.
“Good idea!” he thought. And he took off his own boots. It made him feel more on the job.
Mrs. Ellis went round the white bed-sheet screen to sit with Gran. Jack went blowing out the reeking candles on the sick man’s side of the same screen. Then he sat on a hard chair facing the staring, grimacing patient. He felt sorry for him, but repelled by him. Yet as Herbert tossed his wiry, hairy free arm and jerked his hairy, sharp-featured face, Jack wanted to help him.
He remembered the vet’s advice: “Get the creatures’ confidence, lad, and you can do anything with ’em. Horse or man, cat or canary, get the creature’s confidence, and if anything can be done, you can do it.”
Jack wanted now to proceed to get the creature’s confidence. He knew it was a matter of will: of holding the other creature’s will with his own will. But gently, and in a kindly spirit.
He held Herbert’s hard fingers softly in his own hand, and said softly: “Keep quiet, old man, keep quiet. I’m here. I’ll take care of you. You rest. You go to sleep. I won’t leave you. I’ll take care of you.”
Herbert lay still as if listening. His muscles relaxed. He seemed dreadfully tired—Jack could feel it. He was dreadfully, dreadfully tired. Perhaps the womanless, brutal life of the Reds had made him so tired. He seemed to go to sleep. Then he jerked awake, and the convulsive struggling began again, with the frightful rolling of the eyes.
But the steady bonds that held him seemed to comfort him, and Jack quietly took the clutching fingers again. And the sick man’s eyes, in their rolling, rested on the quiet, abstract face of the youth, with strange watching. Jack did not move. And again Herbert’s tension seemed to relax. He seemed in an agony of desire to sleep, but the agony of desire was so great, that the very fear of it jerked the sick man into horrible wakefulness.
Jack was saying silently, with his will: “Don’t worry! Don’t worry, old man! Don’t worry! You go to sleep. I’ll look after you.”
And as he sat in dead silence, saying these things, he felt as if the fluid of his life ran out of his fingers into the fingers of the hurt man. He was left weak and limp. And Herbert began to go to sleep, really to sleep.
Jack sat in a daze, with the virtue gone out of him. And Herbert’s fingers were soft and childlike again in their relaxation.
The boy started a little, feeling someone pat him on the shoulder. It was Mrs. Ellis, patting him in commendation, because the patient was sunk deep in sleep. Then she went out.
Following her with his eyes, Jack saw another figure in the doorway. It was Red Easu, like a wolf out of the shadow, looking in. And Jack quietly let slip the heavy, sleeping fingers of the sick man. But he did not move his posture. Then he was aware that Easu had gone again.