Phoenix and Ashes

And he enclosed a letter of introduction to Reggie's mother that made her smile widen. I have written her ladyship myself, he said in his cover-note. Telling her about my "cousin" who was supposed to have married a fellow called Robinson down there in or around Broom, and asking if she'd heard of you, and if she had, would she look you up to see that you were all right. The rest is up to you. Reginald isn't likely to be discharged until May at the earliest, so you should have time to establish yourself before he's brought to Longacre.

She laughed silently. If Alderscroft only knew how he was setting a fox to guard the hens!

However—

She rested her chin on her hand for a moment, as a complication occurred to her. Whatever she did to Eleanor, it would have to wait. She could not afford a scandal before she got one of the girls safely married to Reggie. Afterwards—well, these things happened to the best of families these days, and at any rate, Eleanor was not, strictly speaking, related in any way to her or her girls. The Fenyx family would move heaven and earth to keep things hushed up. It was the way these things worked, after all.

So—plans for wretched Ellie must go to simmer. It wouldn't matter; Alison would get what she wanted in the end.

She always had, no matter who was in her way.

At night, once all the visitors were gone, but before most of the men fell asleep, was the easiest time of Reggie's day. That was when, freed, perhaps, by the dim light, and the first fuzziness of opiates, freed by being just one more whisper in the dark, the men talked openly among themselves of what they would not tell anyone else.

There was a new patient in the bed to Reggie's right; a cavalry officer, with an empty sleeve pinned against the breast of his pajamas. He had stared at the ceiling all day, saying nothing, not even whimpering when his dressings were changed. Now, suddenly, he spoke.

"Don't you think it's a relief?" he said, with surprising clarity, still staring at the ceiling.

Reggie thought, Do I think what is a relief? but the man continued before he could ask the question.

"Finally—no more ruddy show for the folks back home. No pretending it's all beer and skittles and no one ever gets hurt. Not that they don't know, of course, because they do, but you have to pretend anyway. No reckoning how much life you're going to pack into a ninety-six hour leave 'cause it might be the last one you get, while pretending it's nothing much. No more careful letters that don't let on. No more wondering if you're going to do a funk. It's over, the worst has happened." He did sound relieved. Reggie swallowed, his mouth gone dry. Maybe for his neighbor, the worst had happened.

"That part's a relief," someone else agreed, out there in the dimness.

"No more guns," someone else moaned. "All day and all night-pounding, pounding, pounding—"

"Ah," said Reggie's neighbor in an undertone. "FBI. I'd've done a funk six weeks ago if I'd been FBI."

Reggie turned his head, took in the neat moustache and what he could see of the other man's remaining hand, and made a guess.

"Cavalry?" he suggested.

The other finally turned his head and looked at Reggie. "Most useless waste of man and horseflesh on God's own earth," the other agreed, and though the voice was cheerful, the bleak expression on the man's face gave it the lie. "Should have put my horse on a gun-carriage and me in a trench. All we existed for was to be shot to pieces. All they could think to do with us was send us across the wire again and again and let the machine guns have us."

Reggie winced. The cavalry had not fared well in the war. And the face on the pillow of the bed next to his was, behind its brave moustache, disturbingly young.

"My brother's FBI; told me enough about it before he caught it that I knew I wouldn't last a day," the youngster continued. "Thought, since I was a neck-and-nothing rider, I'd try the cavalry. I," he concluded bitterly, "was an idiot. All a man on a horse is out there is a grand target."

"But the worst is over," Reggie suggested, echoing the young man's own words.

"Oh, yes, the worst is over." The young man sighed, with a suggestion of a groan in it. "If I keep telling myself that, I should start believing it soon."

He blinked owlishly at Reggie, then looked back up at the ceiling; another moment, and his eyelids drooped, and he fell asleep.

Out in the ward, the whispering went on.