Where aimed she? Ah, this was but the budding! Soon, soon, supreme, content, mistress of all and of herself she'd reign through starry nights, through steadfast, silent days. Peace she pursued, serenity, content. Peace she would win. Mr. Wriford turned from her when thus far his thoughts had followed her. Daily before him, petulant she struggled. He had struggled. Soon she'd be free. He had been free. Then pressed she on to happiness. He?
Was there some secret of happiness he had missed?
CHAPTER III
CRACKJAW NAME FOR MR. WRIFORD
I
Stronger now. He was left very much alone by the other inmates of the convalescent ward, and that was what he wished. Strange folk themselves, some with odd ways, some with ugly, they accepted strangeness in others as a proper qualification for those greater comforts which made this department of the workhouse a place highly desirable. The one common sympathy among them was to present their several ailments as obstinately and as alarmingly as possible, and they respected the endeavour in one another. Except when order of dismissal and return to the workhouse came among them. The victim upon whom the blow fell would then most shamelessly round upon his mates in a manner that filled the ward with indignant alarm and protestation.
"Me quite strong!" the unhappy victim would cry. "What about old George there? He's stronger than me. What about old Tom? What about Mr. Harris? What about Captain Peter? Shamming! They're all shamming! Ask old George what he told me yesterday. Never felt better in his life, he told me. Ask old Tom. Can't get enough to eat 'e's that 'arty, he says. Me! It's a public scandal. It's a public scandal this ward is. Taking out a dying man, that's what you're doing, and leaving a pack of shammers! Look at Mr. Graggs there! Look at him. Ever see a sick man look like that? Public scandal! Public—"
Outraged victim led protesting away. Horrified convalescents dividing their energies between smiling wanly, as though at the point of death and therefore charitable to victim's ravings, and protesting volubly at his infamous aspersions.
Mr. Wriford, only wishing to be left alone, escaped these bitter attacks from injured victims just as for a long time he escaped from matron and doctors the form of attention which aroused alarm in the ward. He mixed with his fellow-convalescents not at all, and this aloofness, in a community where garrulity on the subject of aches and pains and bad weather and discontent with food was the established order, earned him in full the solitude which alone he desired. Its interruption was most endangered in those hours of wet days, and in the evenings, when, out of bed and dressed, the convalescents were cooped up within the ward. At the least there was always then the risk of being caught by the oldest sea-captain living with his ceaseless: "Matey! Matey, I've got me portograph in the Daily Mirror paper!" and sometimes the descent upon him of some other infirm old gentleman who, worsted and enraged in some battle of ailments with cronies, would espy Mr. Wriford seated remote and alone and bear down upon him with his cargo of ills.