Snake and Sword: A NovelWren, Percival Christopher
General
Snake and Sword: A Novel
Wren, Percival Christopher
British -- India -- Fiction
Poor Lucille suffered doubly—every pang, spasm, and contortion that
shook and wrung the body of her beloved, racked her own frame, and her
mind was tortured by fear, doubts, and agony. “Oh, please go away, dear
people,” she moaned. “It is a touch of sun. He is a little subject to
slight fits—very rarely and at long intervals, you know. He may never
have another.” A few of the remaining onlookers backed away a little
shamefacedly. Others offered condolences while inwardly scoffing at the
“sun” explanation. Did not de Warrenne bowl, bat, or field,
bare-headed, throughout the summer’s day without thinking of the sun?
Who had heard of the “fits” before? Why had they not transpired during
the last dozen years or so? “Help me carry him indoors, somebody,” said
the miserable, horrified Lucille. That would get rid of the silly
staring “helpers” anyhow—even if it brought matters to the notice of
Grumper, who frankly despised and detested any kind of sick person or
invalid.
What would he say and do? What had happened to the glowing, glorious
world that five minutes ago was fairy-land and paradise? Was her Dam a
wretched coward, afraid of things, screaming like a girl at the sight
of a common snake, actually terrified into a fit? Better be a
pick-pocket than a…. Into the thinning, whispering circle came General
Sir Gerald Seymour Stukeley, apoplectically angry. Some silly fool, he
understood, had fainted or something—probably a puling tight-laced fool
of a woman who starved herself to keep slim. People who wanted to faint
should stay and do it at home—not come creating disturbances and
interruptions at Monksmead garden-parties….
And then he saw a couple of young men and Lucille striving to raise the
recumbent body of a man. The General snorted as snorts the wart-hog in
love and war, or the graceful hippopotamus in the river.
“What the Devil’s all this?” he growled. “Some poor fella fainted with
the exertions of putting?” A most bitter old gentleman.
Lucille turned to him and his fierce gaze fell upon the pale,
contorted, and tear-stained face of Dam.
The General flushed an even deeper purple, and the stick he held
perpendicularly slowly rose to horizontal, though he did not raise his
hand.
He made a loud but wholly inarticulate sound.
Haddon Berners, enjoying himself hugely, volunteered the information.
“He saw a little grass-snake and yelled out. Then he wept and fainted.
Coming round now. Got the funks, poor chap.”
Lucille’s hands closed (the thumbs correctly on the knuckles of the
second fingers), and, for a moment, it was in her heart to smite the
Haddock on the lying mouth with the straight-from-the-shoulder drive
learned in days of yore from Dam, and practised on the punching-ball
with great assiduity. Apparently the Haddock realized the fact for he
skipped backward with agility.
“He is ill, Grumper dear,” she said instead. “He has had a kind of fit.
Perhaps he had sunstroke in India, and it has just affected him now in
the sun….”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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