1
When a man has crossed the water-shed of forty, his power of recuperation is sorrily reduced. Perhaps he succumbs less easily to illness or injury, the bruises may take longer to shew themselves, but they also take far longer to disappear.
I found this literally and metaphorically true during the weeks when I lay at "The Sanctuary." After my one painful descent to the telephone, I returned to bed and stayed there for a month. One part of my body after another swelled and changed colour; I was pitifully weak, and for the first time in my life my nerves seemed to have gone limp. The memory of my fight with Grayle haunted me, I could not concentrate my mind on anything and I lacked the native buoyancy to want to get well. Bertrand and George were obviously anxious, but even to oblige them I could not put forth strength which was not in me; the weeks rolled by, and I remained a listless and, I am afraid, an exacting and irritable invalid.
As my name had not been published, as I could in fact plead serious ill-health at the time of the inquest on Beresford, I saw no purpose in thrusting myself on the public until I knew what explanation Grayle proposed to give. Curious enquirers were simply informed that I had met with an accident. In the early days we used to watch the bulletins of Grayle's health and the formation of the new government in parallel columns; and the second made more rapid progress than the first. The chief offices were allotted, one after another, and the minor positions down to the last Junior Lordship of the Treasury; at the beginning it was occasionally stated that "at one time Colonel Grayle's name was mentioned in connection with" this or that or the other appointment; gradually the references to him became rarer until his own paper wrote his political epitaph and announced with conventional regret that, while the Prime Minister was believed to have been hoping to make use of his services, his present condition of health put the acceptance of any office out of the question.
Bertrand smiled grimly, as he shewed me the paragraph, but I was impatiently waiting until Grayle's condition of health enabled him to give me a lead. It came at last through the medium of Bertrand on a night when he had been dining at the House and had seen Grayle for the first time since the fire. I am a tolerably humane man and, though I had struck upon provocation and in defence of my own life, I regretted the state to which I had reduced my opponent. He now walked with two crutches and a sling for his foot in place of the one stick; his head was generously bandaged, and, though a curious faint down was beginning to appear on the exposed portions of his scalp, he no longer wore a moustache, and his eyebrows were singed out of existence.
A circle of his friends was bombarding him with questions and comments from all sides at once—"You had a near shave," "Were you badly hurt?" And then the inevitable enquiry—"How did it start?"
Grayle began a roaming description of the garage and loft, its tinder-dry wood-work, its equipment of inflammable papers and the like.
"There was a large quantity of petrol there, too," he explained confidentially, "but I don't want this talked about. I had no business to have it there; it was too near the house; the place—as we've amply shewn—was in no sense fire-proof. I should have the County Council or some other damned interfering body on my back, if it came out; I'm not claiming from the insurance company, as it is, for fear of too many questions. They let me down lightly at the inquest, because there was no one who could give evidence. So this is a secret session," he ended with a laugh, as he began to hoist himself away towards a chair.
One or two of his companions followed and relieved him of his crutches, as he sat down.