By and by the silence became alive, and was peopled with the visions of his thoughts. He remembered what those cholera cases were, he had seen in India—the unutterableness of it all—and there swept over him not so much the abhorrence of death as of its manifestation. After all, was it not wholly the close contact with the disease itself he shrank from? Death——
Why, death was not so bad.
And Trevelyan's tense features relaxed a little.
After all, he would not go to court death. He had lived through that desire and conquered it the night he had lain wounded by his own hand in the military hospital. Foolhardiness was not courage, so he had told himself then, and so he believed now.
Then, it was not likely that he would catch the plague and die. He had always laughed at disease; he who had never been ill; and had not Mackenzie lived through one of the worst epidemics on record—this promised to be mild, as compared to it. It was not so much the fear of death and disease, but was he willing to accept both if they came?
The old passionate love of life he had felt years ago when a boy, fighting the storm and the sea and death, shot through him and thrilled him from his throbbing head to his feet. He rose and flung out his arms and bent them backwards and forwards. He could feel the flow of the blood and the life that was there.
Then he thought of Mackenzie's letter and he pictured the oncoming of the cholera, and Mackenzie and his little band fighting the scourge unaided. What was the strength of his life for if not to serve these; if not to serve the men who served England! Might he not so serve England, too, and help to save, perhaps, the lives of those who fought in her defense and for her honor?
It would be service, but it would not be the service he had dreamed of as a child, and striven for as a boy and a youth. He had thought to serve with the sword, and perhaps—so he had dreamed—meet death in a charge like the charge his father had made. His blood had thrilled at the thought of the rally, and the command he would send down the line!
Trevelyan fumbled in the dark for his chair, and sat down.
It would never be that. If he should die serving Mackenzie and England what he had done would die with him. He might be mentioned in the Reports, but Reports—