Snake and Sword: A NovelWren, Percival Christopher
General
Snake and Sword: A Novel
Wren, Percival Christopher
British -- India -- Fiction
“Very high again last night,” he observed to Miss Norah O’Neill of the
Queen Alexandra Military Nursing Sisterhood.
“Yes, and very violent,” replied Miss O’Neill. “I had to call two
orderlies and they could hardly hold him. He appeared to think he was
fighting a huge snake or fleeing from one. He also repeatedly screamed:
‘It is under my foot! It is moving, moving, moving _out_.’”
“_Got it_, by God!” cried the Colonel, suddenly smiting his forehead
with violence. “_Of course!_ Fool! Fool that I am! Merciful God in
Heaven—_it’s her boy_—and _I_ have saved him! _Her boy!_ And I’ve been
cudgelling my failing addled brains for months, wondering where I had
seen his face before. He’s my godson, Sister, and I haven’t set eyes on
him for the last—nearly twenty years!”
Miss Norah O’Neill had never before seen an excited doctor in a
hospital ward, but she now beheld one nearly beside himself with
excitement, joy, surprise, and incredulity. (It is sad to have to
relate that she also heard one murmuring over and over again to
himself, “Well, I am damned”.)
At last Colonel John Decies announced that the world was a tiny, small
place and a very rum one, that it was just like _The Hawk_ to be the
means of saving _her_ boy of all people, and then took the patient’s
hand in his, and sat studying his face, in wondering, pondering
silence.
To Miss Norah O’Neill this seemed extraordinarily powerful affection
for a mere _godson_, and one lost to sight for twenty years at that.
Yet Colonel Decies was a bachelor and, no, the patient certainly
resembled him in no way whatsoever. The tiny new-born germ of a romance
died at once in Miss O’Neill’s romantic heart—and yet, had she but
known, here was a romance such as her soul loved above all things—the
son of the adored dead mistress discovered _in extremis_, and saved, by
the devout platonic lover, the life-long lover, and revealed to him by
the utterance of the pre-natally learnt words of the dead woman
herself!
Yes—how many times through those awful days had Decies heard that
heart-rending cry! How cruelly the words had tortured him! And here,
they were repeated twenty years on—for the identification of the son by
the friend!
That afternoon Colonel Decies dispatched a cablegram addressed to a
Miss Gavestone, Monksmead, Southshire, England, and containing the
words, “Have found him, Kot Ghazi, bad accident, doing well, Decies,”
and by the next mail Lucille, with Aunt Yvette and a maid, left Port
Said, having travelled overland to Brindisi and taken passage to Egypt
by the _Osiris_ to overtake the liner that had left Tilbury several
days before the cable reached Monksmead. And in Lucille’s largest trunk
was an article the like of which is rarely to be found in the baggage
of a young lady—nothing more nor less than an ancient rapier of Italian
pattern!…
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account