Within another week Esdaile received an imposing document from the navy department, and everybody knew that his resignation had been accepted. He formally announced it to the captain, who asked no questions. The officers bade him a distant good-by, and in two hours from the time Esdaile received the notification he was off the ship and, as his classmates supposed, forever out of the navy.
Brydell had been almost broken-hearted over the effect of Esdaile’s disgrace upon poor Grubb. He wanted to go to see the marine at once, but could not get leave for a day or two. Then he was suddenly taken down with a violent cold and fever. He managed to write a few agitated lines to Grubb, but got no answer. It was nearly ten days before he was well enough to leave the ship and go in search of his friend.
It was about dusk of the midsummer evening when Brydell, rather pale from his recent illness, was going toward Grubb’s quarters. Halfway there he met the surgeon, Dr. Wayne, a kindly, elderly man, who Brydell knew had known the marine for many years.
“Can you tell me, sir, anything about Private Grubb of the marines?” asked Brydell without mentioning Esdaile at all.
“I don’t know whether he can be called Private Grubb of the marines any longer,” answered the doctor with solemn eyes. “His time was up the very day he heard of his son’s disgrace. He was on his way to the office ready to reënlist when he heard it. He walked straight to the office,—you know what a fine, erect fellow he was,—asked for his discharge without a word of explanation, except to know when he could get his papers, and turned away. He had not got a block before he fell. People ran and picked him up,—he had on his uniform,—and they were going to carry him to the hospital, but he wouldn’t let them. He said he was out of the service, and he had no right to go, and no wish to go, nor could they make him go. I happened to be near by and went to him. I said: ‘You must go to the hospital.’ You see, he was such a sort of institution that I couldn’t quite take in why he shouldn’t obey orders. He tried to touch his cap and managed to say: ‘I’ve worn this uniform twenty-four years and I have never disobeyed an officer, but I can’t go to the hospital.’ He became so excited over it that for fear it would kill him I let them take him into a little tavern at hand, a respectable sort of a place patronized by workingmen. I saw he had had a stroke, and that it was a mortal one. He asked to be left alone with me, and then that poor fellow begged and pleaded with me not to send him to the hospital, where everybody would know him and know of his son’s disgrace—he told me all about it. I couldn’t have forced him to go after that, if it had cost me my commission. He’s going to die, and as he is a good and faithful man he shall die in as much peace as I can give him.”
Brydell grew a little faint at the words, and in an instant he was carried back to that day so long ago when old Capps the boatswain had been carried out of the navy yard gate on a caisson. He had not been brought face to face with majestic Death since.
“But mightn’t he get well?” Brydell began and halted.
“No—he can’t get well,” answered the doctor quietly. “Poor honest Grubb is dying of grief and shame over his son’s disgrace. I and the other surgeons here have worked over him faithfully; if he had been the ranking officer in the marine corps, we couldn’t have done any more. But when a man is sick of life it is an incurable disease.”
“I’d like to see him,” said Brydell with pale lips.
“Go to see him, by all means. If you can rouse him, you will do him more good than all the doctors in the world can.”