“Is he badly wounded, Doctor?”
“No; he is not wounded at all, Mrs. Hunter. He stood up at the edge of the parapet and exposed himself so rashly to the Sepoys' fire that we had to drag him away, and then the reaction, acting on a nervous temperament, was too much for him, and he fainted. We shall soon bring him round. You can come in with me, but keep the others away.”
The Major at once returned to the terrace.
In spite of the restoratives the Doctor poured through his lips, and cold water dashed in his face, Bathurst was some time before he opened his eyes. Seeing Mrs. Hunter and the Doctor beside him, he made an effort to rise.
“You must lie still, Bathurst,” the Doctor said, pressing his hand on his shoulder. “You have done a very foolish thing, a very wrong thing. You have tried to throw away your life.”
“No, I did not. I had no thought of throwing away my life,” Bathurst said, after a pause. “I was trying to make myself stand fire. I did not think whether I should be hit or not. I am not afraid of bullets, Doctor; it's the horrible, fiendish noise that I cannot stand.”
“I know, my boy,” the Doctor said kindly; “but it comes to the same thing. You did put yourself in the way of bullets when your doing so was of no possible advantage, and it is almost a miracle that you escaped unhurt. You must remain here quiet for the present. II shall leave you in charge of Mrs. Hunter. There is nothing for you to do on the roof at present. This attack is a mere outbreak of rage on the part of the Sepoys that we have all escaped them. They know well enough they can't take this house by merely firing away at the roof. When they attack in earnest it will be quite time for you to take part in the affair again. Now, Mrs. Hunter, my orders are absolute that he is not to be allowed to get up.”
On the Doctor leaving the room he found several of the ladies outside; the news that Mr. Bathurst had been carried down had spread among them.
“Is he badly hurt, Doctor?”
“No, ladies. Mr. Bathurst is, unfortunately for himself, an extremely nervous man, and the noise of firearms has an effect upon him that he cannot by any effort of his own overcome. In order, as he says, to try and accustom himself to it, he went and stood at the edge of the parapet in full sight of the Sepoys, and let them blaze away at him. He must have been killed if Forster and I had not dragged him away by main force. Then came the natural reaction, and he fainted. That is all there is about it. Poor fellow, he is extremely sensitive on the ground of personal courage. In other respects I have known him do things requiring an amount of pluck that not one man in a hundred possesses, and I wish you all to remember that his nervousness at the effect of the noise of firearms is a purely constitutional weakness, for which he is in no way to be blamed. He has just risked his life in the most reckless manner in order to overcome what he considers, and what he knows that some persons consider, is cowardice, and it would be as cruel, and I may say as contemptible, to despise him for a constitutional failing as it would be to despise a person for being born a humpback or a cripple. But I cannot stand talking any longer. I shall be of more use on the roof than I am here.”