While he was speaking, we had time to examine him. His appearance was inexpressibly shocking. Dirty, with a ragged six weeks' growth of dark hair upon his face, out at heel and elbows, shirtless and shiftless, he seemed to have reached the nadir of misery and poverty. Obviously one of the "broken brigade," he had seemingly lost everything except his manners. His amazing absence of self-consciousness made a clown of me. I blurted out a gruff "All right," and turned on my heel, unable to face the derisive smile upon the thin, pale lips. As I walked towards the house, I heard Ajax following me, but he did not speak till we had reached our comfortable sitting-room. Then, as gruffly as I, he said, "Humpty Dumpty--after the fall!"
We lit our pipes in silence, sensible of an extraordinary depression in the moral atmosphere. Five minutes before we had been much elated. The spring round-up of cattle was over; we had sold our bunch of steers at the top price; the money lay in our small safe; we had been talking of a modest celebration as we rode home over the foothills. Now, to use the metaphor of a cow county, we had been brought up with a sharp turn! Our prosperity, measured by the ill-fortune of a fellow- countryman, dwindled. Ajax summed up the situation: "He made me feel cheap."
"Why?" I asked, conscious of a similar feeling. Ajax smoked and reflected.
"It's like this," he answered presently. "That chap has been to the bottom of the pit, but he bobs up with a smile. Did you notice his smile?"
I rang the bell for Quong, our Chinese servant. When he came in I told him to prepare a hot bath. Ajax whistled; but as Quong went away, looking rather cross, my brother added, "Our clothes will fit him."
The bath-house was outside. Quong carried in a couple of pails full of boiling water; we laid out shaving tackle, an old suit of grey flannel, a pair of brown shoes, and the necessary under-linen. A blue bird's-eye tie, I remember, was the last touch. Then Ajax shrugged his shoulders and said significantly, "You know what this means?"
"Rehabilitation."
"Exactly. It may be fun for us to rig out this poor devil, but we must do more than feed and clothe him. Have you thought of that?"
I had not, and said so.
"This is an experiment. First and last, we're going to try to raise a man from the dead. If we get him on to his pins, we'll have to supply some crutches. Are you prepared to do that?"