In about an hour the doctor came. It was perfectly true, Mrs. Gaunt had broken her leg. It was a simple fracture and, as the Doctor told me afterwards, the woman was as tough as an old turkey, but she would be confined to her bed for a fortnight at least, and the injured limb was already encased in plaster of Paris.
It was strictly against the rules for any boy to leave a fives ball about. An accident had nearly happened once before for the same reason. At lunch, I conducted a stern inquisition as to the culprit's identity. It was Dickson max., who owned up at once, and I told him to come to my room after the meal.
I could not very well cane a boy of seventeen who would have been at Sandhurst if his people could have afforded. Besides, I was too inwardly grateful to him to have the slightest wish to do anything of the sort. I gave him a thousand Latin lines and told him to stay in that afternoon, which was a half-holiday, and on three subsequent halves, and I am sorry to say that he grinned in my face as I did so. It was not an impudent grin, or I should have known how to deal with it, but it was one of perfect comprehension, and I fear I blushed as I told the young beggar to clear out as quickly as possible.
Certainly the fates were working well for me, though I had, even then, not the least idea of what an eventful day this was to prove. Nothing came to tell me that I was already embarked upon the greatest enterprise of my life. I was to know more before night.
Now one of my most cherished possessions at that time was a motor bicycle. It was of an antiquated pattern and more often in the workshop than on the road. Fortunately, such engineering knowledge as I had enabled me to tinker at it for myself. To-day, though it had recently been running with a most horrid cacophony resembling the screams of a dying elephant and a machine gun alternately, it would still get along, and I mounted it for Blankington-on-Sea to meet my brother Bernard.
I put it up at the hotel—I saw the yard attendant wink at the stable boy as he housed it—ordered a trap and went to the station. The train came in to time and my brother descended from a first-carriage. I had seen him in London only a day before, and despite his natural annoyance at the failure to get me into the R.N.F.C., he had been particularly cheery. As we shook hands and the porter took his kit-bags and gun-cases to the trap, I saw that he had something on his mind. He hardly even smiled. I jumped to a wrong conclusion.
"Bernard," I said, "would you like a whisky-soda before we start? You look as if you had been enjoying yourself too much last night."
He shook his head. "No peg for me, thanks; let us get on the road."
We went out of the station together and as we came into the yard he said in a low voice: "I have a deuce of a lot to tell you, but not now."
Then we started for Morstone.