It did not occur to Allan, as he was being carried downstairs by Wallis
and Arthur, another of the servants, that anything more than a change of
rooms was intended; nor, as he was carried out at its door to a long
closed carriage, that it was anything worse than his new keeper's
mistaken idea that drives would be good for him. He was a little
irritable at the length and shutupness of the drive, though, as his cot
had been swung deftly from the ceiling of the carriage, he was not
jarred. But when Wallis and Arthur carried the light pallet on which he
lay swiftly up a plank walk laid to the door of a private car--why then
it began to occur to Allan Harrington that something was happening.
And--which rather surprised himself--he did not lift a supercilious
eyebrow and say in a soft, apathetic voice, "Very we-ell!" Instead, he
turned his head towards the devoted Wallis, who had helped two
conductors swing the cot from the ceiling, and was now waiting for the
storm to break. And what he said to Wallis was this:
"What the deuce does this tomfoolery mean?" As he spoke he felt the
accumulated capacity for temper of the last seven years surging up
toward Wallis, and Arthur, and Phyllis, and the carriage-horses, and
everything else, down to the two conductors. Wallis seemed rather
relieved than otherwise. Waiting for a storm to break is rather wearing.
"Well, sir, Mrs. Harrington, she thought, sir, that--that a little move
would do you good. And you didn't want to be bothered, sir----"
"Bothered!" shouted Allan, not at all like a bored and dying invalid. "I
should think I did, when a change in my whole way of life is made! Who
gave you, or Mrs. Harrington, permission for this outrageous
performance! It's sheer, brutal, insulting idiocy!"
"Nobody, sir--yes, sir," replied Wallis meekly. "Would you care for a
drink, sir--or anything?"
"_No!_" thundered Allan.
"Or a fan?" ventured Wallis, approaching near with that article and
laying it on the coverlid. Allan's hand snatched the fan angrily--and
before he thought he had hurled it at Wallis! Weakly, it is true, for it
lighted ingloriously about five feet away; but he had _thrown_ it, with
a movement that must have put to use the muscles of the long-disused
upper arm. Wallis sat suddenly down and caught his breath.
"Mr. Allan!" he said. "Do you know what you did then? You _threw_, and
you haven't been able to use more than your forearm before! Oh, Mr.
Allan, you're getting better!"
Allan himself lay in astonishment at his feat, and forgot to be angry
for a moment. "I certainly did!" he said.
"And the way you lost your temper!" went on Wallis enthusiastically.
"Oh, Mr. Allan, it was beautiful! You haven't been more than to say
snarly since the accident! It was so like the way you used to throw
hair-brushes----"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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