“A ’ospital horderly, sir,� said the passage orderly to Major Rufford, “with Color-Sergeant Donohoe’s respectful duty, and would you mind the trouble of steppin’ over and hearin’ somethin’, sir, wot ’e ’as to say? It’s Ward C., and a case of perforation—and, beggin’ your pardon, sir, there ain’t much time to lose.�
“Of course I’ll come! Say, at once!� Major Rufford lumbered up out of his chair, emptied the office kitten out of his undress cap, took his cane, which the office puppy had been chewing, and went.
“Donohoe’s wife was Rufford’s girl’s foster-mother, you know, don’t you know!� said Sir Alured. “There’s not more than a month’s difference between Peggy Donohoe and Emmie Rufford in age. When they were babies I’ve seen ’em sleepin’ in the same cradle; and dee me if I knew which of ’em was which, though I suppose their mothers did. Not that Rufford’s poor wife was over and above devoted to her babies. Odd now if the little beggars had got mixed up somehow, and Donohoe had sent for Rufford with the object of easin’ his conscience before he gave up the number of his mess.�
“Oh, that’s all Gilbert and Sullivan!� said the Assassin, getting up. “Such things don’t happen in real life, Colonel, and I’m going back to the hospital.�
“You think not? Differ with you there. Walk over with you, if you’ve no objection.� And the Chief and the Assassin followed in the wake of Major Rufford, who had only a moment before received point-blank and at short range from Sergeant Donohoe’s puffy blue lips—parted for easier passage of the slow, painful breaths that were taken with such agony—the second overwhelming surprise of his life.
For Sir Alured’s stray shot had registered a bull’s-eye. Donohoe, conscious that the grim messenger who had beckoned and passed by so many times—under the heights of Jagai, in the clammy Burmese hill jungles, amid the muddy swamps of West Africa, or the karroo scrub or grass veldt of the South—meant business on this occasion—had given up the secret less hidden than forgotten for many years. Many years since, according to her own confession, faltered out to the Sergeant upon her dying bed, the pretty young wife of Private Donohoe, urged by the promptings of motherly love, or incited, as Father Haggarty would have said, by the temptation of the Devil, arrayed her own nursling in the long-tailed cambric robe with insertion of Valenciennes, properly appertaining to the foster-babe; enduing the said foster-babe, namely Emmeline, infant daughter of Captain and Mrs. Rufford, not only with the abbreviated cotton frock which was the birthright of a Donohoe, but with all the privileges appertaining to a daughter of the rank and file; including a share in the Christmas tree and bran-pie diversions annually given under the patronage of the Colonel’s wife and other ladies of the Regiment—including her own mother.
“Don’t say it, Donohoe,� pleaded the bewildered Major, sitting on the foot of Donohoe’s cot-bed, holding the rigid hand, and shaken by the throes that were rending the Sergeant’s soul from the Sergeant’s body. “It’s an idea you’ve got into your head—nothing more! She—your wife—never changed the babies.... For God’s sake, man, say you know she didn’t!�
But Father Haggarty’s kindly, pitying look had in it knowledge, religiously kept sacred, now freed by voluntary confession from the sacramental seal. He held the Crucifix to Donohoe’s livid lips, and they moved, and a living voice came forth as from a sepulchre:
“She did ut. Sure enough she did ut; but for the right rayson why, sorr, I’m yet asthray. For wan thing—herself was a poor hard-workin’ woman—an’ the choild would be wan if ut lived. ’Twas ten years she carried the saycret—a mortial weight for a wake crayture, an’ a Prodesdan’ at that, wid no relief av clargy—and it wore her to the grave. On her dyin’ bed she confessed ut to me. I had my thoughts av makin’ a clane breast, and then—wurra! ’twas the divil at my elbow biddin’ me whisht or I’d lose my Peggy that was the pride av me eyes an’ the joy av me harrut. An’ I held off from Father Haggarty, till I could hould no longer. That was six Aysthers back; and—‘Tell the truth,’ says his Reverence, ‘or you’ll get no more of an absolution from me, me fine man, than Micky-would-you-taste-it?’ An’ at that I stiffened me upper lips an’ riz from me marra bones an’ wint me way. But the Hand is on me now, an’ I’ve made my paice wid Thim above; an’ I’d be glad you’d send for my Peggy to be afther biddin’ her ould dada good-bye—more by token she’s your Miss Emmeline by rights, and not my purty Peggy at all, at all!�