“About an hour.”
But I knew it was less. I attended to others, thinking all the while of poor Noon. His home life was little known, but there was some story about an engagement at Poonah the previous warm weather. Noon was rich, and he cared for the girl; but she did not return the feeling. In fact, there was some one else. It appears that the girl's people were ambitious and poor, and that Noon had promised large settlements. At all events, the engagement was a known affair, and gossips whispered that Noon knew about the some one else, and would not give her up. He was, I know, thought badly of by some, especially by the elders, who had found out the value of money as regards happiness, or rather the complete absence of its value.
However, the end of it all lay on the sheet beneath the pines, and watched me with such persistence that I was at last forced to go to him.
“Have you sent for Berlyng?” he asked, with a breathlessness which I know too well.
Now I had not sent for Berlyng, and it requires more nerve than I possess to tell unnecessary lies to a dying man. The necessary ones are quite different, and I shall not think of them when I go to my account.
“Berlyng could not come if I sent for him,” I replied soothingly. “He is two miles away from here trenching the North Wall, and I have nobody to send. The messenger would have to run the gauntlet of the enemy's earthworks.”
“I'll give the man a hundred pounds who does it,” replied Noon, in his breathless whisper. “Berlyng will come sharp enough if you say it's from me. He hates me too much.” He broke off with a laugh which made me feel sick. “Could he get here in time,” he asked after a pause, “if you sent for him?”
“Yes,” I replied, with my hand inside his soaked tunic.
I found a wounded water-carrier—a fellow with a stray bullet in his hand—who volunteered to find Berlyng, and then I returned to Noon and told him what I had done. I knew that Berlyng could not come.
He nodded, and I think he said, “God bless you.”