The One-armed Man
The seven had hardly finished breakfast
next morning when Mr. Wallis arrived. Surely
never had an elderly gentleman taken to sightseeing
with the avidity displayed by this one, and every
one of the seven Plumsteads voted him to be “a
jolly decent sort”.
His first move this morning was to
take them across the harbour in a steam ferry to a
small jetty opposite the Circular Quay, where they
transhipped to a tiny tug which took them to Farm Cove,
round Clark Island, and past the other sights of that
most wonderful harbour; and all the time he told them
thrilling stories of the early days of the Colony.
He told them of the voyage of Captain Phillips, who
set out from Portsmouth in May, 1787, and arrived,
with eleven ships, in Botany Bay in January, 1788,
only to find that Botany Bay was by no means what it
had been represented, and, instead of the land being
a series of beautiful green meadows sloping gently
up from the shore, there was nothing but swamp and
sand.
“What an awful voyage!
I don’t think that we will complain about our
few weeks on board after that!” cried Sylvia,
who was sitting close to Mr. Wallis on the deck of
the tug, while Rupert sat on the deck at his feet
and Rumple hovered in the background, all of them intent
on getting all the information they could about the
new and wonderful country to which they had come.
“The voyage now is nothing but
a pleasure trip compared with what it used to be in
the days of the old sailing vessels,” said Mr.
Wallis, who was immensely flattered at the attention
given to his stories. He had always been very
fond of telling people things, only the trouble was
that so few seemed to care for what he had to tell;
but these children simply hung on his words, and so
he was inspired to do his very best to satisfy their
thirst for information.
“Botany Bay is south of Sydney
Harbour, isn’t it?” asked Rumple, producing
the dirty notebook and preparing to take notes on a
liberal scale.
“Yes, and because it is so open
to the east there is no protection from the Pacific
swell. Captain Phillips saw that it would be impossible
to found a colony there, and so he set out with one
of his ships to find a better harbour farther along
the coast,” went on Mr. Wallis. “And
it is said that a sailor named Jackson discovered
the entrance to what is now known as Sydney Harbour,
and it was named Port Jackson in honour of him.”
“I wish that I could discover
something that could be named after me,” said
Rumple with a sigh. “Port Plumstead, or
even Mount Plumstead, would have an uncommonly nice
sound, and I do want to be famous.”
“There is fame of a sort within
the reach of everyone,” answered Mr. Wallis
quietly.
“What sort of fame?” asked
Rupert quickly. He had been very silent before,
leaving it to the others to do most of the talking.
Mr. Wallis smiled, and his middle-aged
countenance took on a look of lofty nobility as he
said slowly: “We can each impress ourselves
on our fellows in such a way that so long as life
lasts they must remember us because of some act or
acts for the good of suffering humanity, and that,
after all, is the fame that lasts longest and is at
the same time most worth having. We can’t
all be explorers, you know, for there would not be
enough bays, mountains, and that sort of thing to go
round; but there are always people in need of help,
pity, and comfort.”
“I wanted to be a doctor,”
said Rupert in a voice that was more bitter than he
guessed. “But who ever heard of a lame doctor?
Everyone would be howling for the physician to heal
himself.”
“There is no reason why you
should not be a doctor that I can see: not if
you do not mind hard work that is,” said Mr.
Wallis. “I have known lame doctors and
hump-backed doctors too; indeed one’s own disability
would serve to make one all the more keen on doing
one’s best for other people. In the Colony,
too, there is not the money bar that exists in the
old country, because anyone can rise from the gutter
here to any position almost that he may choose to
occupy, and you are not in the gutter by any means.”
“Not quite,” replied Rupert
with a laugh, and a lift of his head like Nealie.
The tour of the harbour took so long
that they did not get back to the city until the afternoon,
and then their kind host carried them off to tea at
the Botanical Gardens, which were one of the finest
sights that any of them had seen. Ducky fairly
screamed with delight at the lovely flowers, while
Don and Billykins could hardly be induced to leave
the ornamental waters where the water fowl congregated
looking for food.
Nealie and Mr. Wallis came in search
of them when tea was ready, and found them absorbed
in watching a toucan from America and a rhinoceros
hornbill from Africa, which appeared to have struck
up a friendship from the fact that they were both
aliens.
“Come to tea, boys; you can
inspect those creatures later if you want to,”
said Mr. Wallis.
“I say, Nealie, what does the
toucan want to have such a long bill for?” asked
Billykins, slipping his arm through Nealie’s
as they walked back to the tearooms together.
“Perhaps he did not want to
have a long bill, but having it must needs make the
best of it,” she answered, with a laugh, then
suddenly grew grave with pity and concern as a man
with his right coat sleeve pinned across his breast
passed them at the place where the path grew narrow.
They all knew that for some reason it always made her
sad to see a one-armed man, although she took no especial
notice of people who had been so unfortunate as to
lose a leg. Mindful of this fact, Billykins was
trying to divert her attention by talking very fast
about what he had seen; but twisting his head round
to see if the maimed stranger was leaving the gardens
or taking the other path which led by a picturesque
bridge round to the other entrance to the tearooms,
he was surprised to see him stop and speak to Mr.
Wallis, who was walking behind with Don.
“Did you see that man with one
arm, who passed us just now and spoke to me?”
said Mr. Wallis, joining Nealie and walking by her
side.
“Yes, I saw him,” she
replied, her voice rather fainter than usual, while
some of the fine colour died out of her cheeks.
“His is a most interesting and
unusual case,” went on Mr. Wallis. “He
is one of our very rich men now, and the funny part
of it is that he declares he owes all his prosperity
to the loss of his limb, which, but for a mistake
of the doctor’s, he need not have lost at all.”
“What do you mean?” she
asked, stopping short in the path and staring at him
with parted lips, her face so ghastly white that he
asked her anxiously if she felt ill.
“No, no, it is nothing, thank
you, but I want to hear about that man. It sounds
most awfully interesting; and won’t you tell
me what his name is?” she said, turning such
a wistful gaze upon him, that it seemed to him there
must have been some sorrow in her life, although she
laughed in such a cheery, lighthearted way as a rule.
“Reginald Baxter. He is
English, and came out to this country about six or
seven years ago. His people are very aristocratic,
but poor as church mice, and they were so terribly
upset at his disaster they practically cast him off;
but he seems to have no false pride himself and no
unnecessary notions of his own importance; but he is
a veritable king of finance
“What is that?” demanded
Don; but Billykins was watching Nealie with a close
scrutiny, and he had his fists clenched tightly as
if he were meditating some sort of revenge upon the
innocent Mr. Wallis for the pain he was giving her
in talking about the one-armed man.
“A king of finance is a man
who has a natural gift for managing money and making
it increase. I should not wonder if you develop
a cleverness in that way yourself when you are a little
older,” said Mr. Wallis, who was a keen student
of human nature and had already amused himself by
mentally forecasting the future of the seven.
“Perhaps I shall,” answered
Don stolidly. “Anyhow I don’t mean
to be poor when I grow up, for I shall just go without
things until I get a lot of money saved, and Mr. Runciman
used to say that money made money, and if a man could
save one hundred pounds the next hundred would save
itself.”
“Well done, Mr. Runciman, that
is sound philosophy!” said Mr. Wallis, and was
going to expound the art of money making still further
when there came a sudden interruption from Billykins.
“Can’t you talk about
something else, please? You have made Nealie cry
by going on so about that one-armed man. She never
can bear to talk about them, and you didn’t
see that she did not like it,” he said in a
shrill and very aggrieved tone.
“Miss Plumstead, I am truly
sorry. I had no idea that I was saying anything
to pain you. Please forgive me!” said Mr.
Wallis in a shocked tone, for Nealie’s face
was covered with her handkerchief, and by the heave
of her shoulders it was easy to see that she was crying
bitterly.
“Oh, it is nothing, quite nothing,
and I am very silly!” she said nervously.
“But somehow I never can bear to see men who
have lost their limbs. It is so sad and hopeless,
because, of course, they can never be the same again,
and life must be so very sad.”
Mr. Wallis laughed in a cheerful manner.
“I don’t think that you would consider
Reginald Baxter a very sad man if you knew him.
As I said before, he looks upon the loss of his arm
as his entrance into freedom, and it would be hard
to find a happier man, I should think. But let
us go in and find some tea, and think no more about
such matters.”
Tea was such a merry function that
no one had much time to notice that there was something
wrong with Nealie, although she was so very quiet
that Rupert asked her once if she did not feel well.
“Oh yes, I am quite well, thank
you; only perhaps a little tired,” she replied,
smiling at him in a rather wistful fashion; and then,
as Sylvia claimed his attention, he forgot about it,
and there was so much to see and to hear, with so
many details of to-morrow’s journey to discuss,
that it is not wonderful he did not even remember Nealie
had said she was tired.
Later in the evening, when they were
back at the hotel, the younger ones had gone to bed,
and Mr. Wallis had gone away after bidding them a
most affectionate good night, Nealie said abruptly:
“There is something you ought to know, Rupert,
that I have always hated to tell you.”
“Then don’t tell it,”
put in Sylvia lazily. “I think that half
the misery of the world comes through having to do
unpleasant things, such as going to bed when you want
to sit up, and in having to get up by candlelight
on a dark morning in winter when you would far rather
take your breakfast in bed.”
“What is it? A trouble
of some sort?” asked Rupert, with a start, for
he was remembering Nealie’s low spirits at teatime
and wondering where the trouble came in.
“Yes,” said Nealie shortly,
and then hesitated as if not sure where to begin.
“Well, you can enjoy it together,
if it must be told, but I am going to bed, for it
seems to me almost like a sacrilege to spoil such a
beautiful day as this has been with even a hint of
anything unpleasant,” said Sylvia, getting out
of her easy chair in a great hurry. Then she
said in quite a pathetic tone, as she kissed Rupert:
“I wonder when we shall have easy chairs to
sit in again; don’t you?”
“I don’t see that it matters
very much; I am not gone on that sort of thing myself,”
he replied briefly; and then he turned to Nealie, asking
in a tone of grave concern, as Sylvia hurried away
to bed: “Is it anything about Father, Nealie?”
“Yes,” she said faintly.
“That is to say, it is about the trouble that
came before Ducky was born; you remember it?”
“I never knew more about it
than that he made a mistake, some medical blunder,
for which he would have to live more or less under
a cloud for the remainder of his professional life.
I thought it was all that any of us knew, and Aunt
Judith hated to have it mentioned.” Rupert’s
tone was fairly aggressive now, for he was quite abnormally
sensitive on this subject of his father’s disgrace,
which had indirectly cost his mother her life and
had plunged the family into poverty, and bereft them
of their father also.
“Mrs. Puffin told me all about
it one day soon after Aunt Judith was taken ill,”
said Nealie, her voice quivering now with emotion,
for it was terrible to her to have to talk of this
thing which had thrown such a shadow over their lives.
“How did she know?” demanded
Rupert hotly, thinking how hateful it was that a servant
should know more about their private skeleton than
they knew themselves.
“Aunt Judith told her,”
replied Nealie; and then she burst out hotly:
“But indeed there is nothing to look so shocked
about in the affair, Rupert. If Father did make
a mistake, it was not so serious as it might have
been; and I think that it was altogether wrong to hush
it up as it has been. There are some things which
are all the better for being told, and I am quite
sure that this is one of them.”
“What do you mean?” he
asked hoarsely. “I should think that a mistake
of that kind should be buried as deep as possible,
for who would be likely to trust a doctor who might
make blunders that might cost a man his life?”
“It was not a life-or-death
blunder in that sense, but only one of maiming,”
said Nealie hastily. “Father wanted to take
off a man’s arm to save his life; but the family,
and I suppose the man himself, would not hear of it,
for the man was heir to someone’s property, an
awful pile it was; and the someone she
was a woman said that her money should never
go to a man who was maimed. So of course the man’s
family would not hear of it, and they would not have
another doctor called in either; and things went on,
the poor man getting worse and worse, until one day
Father declared that he would throw up the case, because
he would not be responsible for the man’s life.
Then the man said that it could be taken off if Father
liked, only it must be done without his people knowing
anything about it, which was easy enough, seeing that
he was being nursed at his lodgings. Father sent
for another doctor to come and administer the chloroform,
and he performed the operation himself, as the man
was too bad to be moved eight miles to the nearest
hospital. There was a frightful week after that,
when Father simply gave up everything to pull the
poor fellow through. He did it too, and the relatives
did not know until he was out of danger that the arm
had been amputated.”
“Whew, what a story!”
said Rupert, mopping his forehead, on which the perspiration
stood in great beads. “I think that Father
was a hero, because he acted up to his principle the
true doctor principle of saving life at
no matter what cost to himself. But I don’t
mind admitting, now that I know the truth, that I
have always been afraid of hearing that story, because
I had got the impression that there was something
really disgraceful behind.”
“Poor Father has had to suffer
as bitterly as if he had made the most ghastly blunder
imaginable,” said Nealie sadly. “The
man’s people had a lot of influence, although
they were not really wealthy, and when they found
out that the arm had been taken off they simply hounded
Father down as if he were a criminal. He was
boycotted in every direction, and in the end he had
to get out of his practice in a hurry. Then Ducky
was born, and Mother died; and there would have been
no home for us at all if Aunt Judith had not opened
her house to take us in.”
“Poor Father!” murmured
Rupert, and then he thrust his hands deep in his pockets,
and sat staring at the floor, frowning his blackest,
until, a sudden thought striking him, he sat up straight,
and asked abruptly: “What made you dig
all that up to-day, after keeping it to yourself so
long?”
“Because I met the man whose
arm Father cut off,” replied Nealie quietly.
“You did? Where?”
demanded Rupert savagely, and looking as if he would
like to go and have it out with the man there and then.
“A one-armed man passed us in
the Botanical Gardens, and Mr. Wallis told me that
a doctor had cut off his arm by mistake, and that the
man’s name was Reginald Baxter; then I knew
that it must be the man on whose account Father had
to suffer so badly.”
“Did he did he look
very poor?” asked Rupert in a hesitating manner;
for if the man had to lose his inheritance as a penalty
for losing his arm, it did seem as if the poor fellow
should be pitied.
“He looked as well off as other
people, that is to say, he was dressed in an ordinary
way; but Mr. Wallis told me that he was one of the
richest men in the city a king of finance,
he said he was,” replied Nealie.
Rupert gave a long whistle, and then
rose to his feet, yawning widely. “So Father
didn’t balk the business so badly after all!”
he said, and then went to bed.