For instance, there was a dream of eight years back with Dolly in it. Dolly was Lizarann's mother, and the reason Lizarann was not called Dolly was that Aunt Stingy had always thought it such a selly name, and it had appeared to Jim that it couldn't much matter what anything so small was called. Its size was all he knew of it, and a milky flavour, and some squeaks. And Jim was in the dark, and Dolly in her grave, and nothing mattered.
Jim was in the dark now, with a vengeance; but he could dream Dolly out of her grave, and did it, in this dream. It was a dream of the day he met her, when he came off his first voyage, a mere boy, and a perfect stranger to her. There was the bar he and his mates off the Pera had trooped into for refreshment, just paid off and feeling good, with money in their pockets. There were the square bottles with names on the glass, and the round ones all over labels, and the pump-handles in a row that Dolly's red-faced cousin Jane, the barmaid, was in the confidence of, but which everyone else would have pulled wrong. There, too, was the girl that came in behind the bar and berthed up alongside the red-faced cousin, just as Murtagh O'Rourke called back to him through the swing-door, "We're lavin' ye behind, James, me boy," and vanished. And the girl was Dolly—Dolly herself. Jim didn't know in his dream that he had married Dolly since, and that she was dead—not he! It was all new and young again, and in a moment he would hear Dolly say what she did then, when after some chat—during which the eyes of each saw the other solely, Dolly's flinchingly, Jim's greedily—the red face was called away and left them. Yes!—he knew what she would say, "You never daren't come across to me," and that he in defiance of all Law and Order would be over that bar like a shot, and then would be driven forth by the righteous rage of the returning barmaid, with the remains of a kiss on his lips, the spoil of war in this audacious enterprise. And all the sequel of the story—how Dolly ran after him to say he might come back, under reserves; and the lightning speed of their unsophisticated courtship, under none—all this he knew in the dream beforehand, but did not wonder why he knew it—took it as a matter of course.
It never came off, though, for the dream never got as far as the kiss, to Jim's bitter disappointment. Jane, the cousin, instead of clearing out and leaving the introduction to nature, swelled and became redder still and very hot, and ended inexplicably by becoming the pain that had passed through so many vicissitudes. Whereupon Jim was awake in the dark, somewhere. And a man's voice, one good to hear, was saying, "I'll sit down by him and wait till he wakes, nurse. I promised little Lizarann I would see him."
"That's my little lass!" said Jim faintly. And the nurse said, "I thought I heard him speak." Then Jim felt that a big man came and sat beside him, who asked him what he had said. So he repeated, "The name of my little lass at home, master," and then had said all he could, and went off again in a drowze, and was far away in a new dream in two seconds. In perhaps five he woke again with a start and said: "Have ye been here long, master?" But his mind must have travelled quick from the dream he was in, and his place in it. For he had to come back to bed No. 146 at St. Brides Hospital from Singapore—from the hold of a ship a Malay sailor had hidden himself in, after running amuck through the decks, wounding right and left. And Jim and Ananias Driscoll, the second mate, were the only men who would dare to ferret him out in the dark, with a horn lantern and loaded revolvers, to use in earnest if need was. And, mind you!—the fugitive might have put fire to the ship, as lief as not, except they caught him. Now the bilge in this ship, or something broke out of a cask in the hold, had a powerful bad smell with it, that had a mortal strange effect on your legs. And when Jim said so to Driscoll, a voice came that was not Driscoll's, and Jim became aware that he was somehow in a trap, and woke just in time to escape it. But the smell of that bilge was the pain of Jim's foot; for the foot was there still, for all it had been cut off and carried away in a pail. And the voice that had seemed Driscoll's, which was quite an unnatural one for a sailor with earrings, and a crucifix tattooed on his chest, was identified half-way by Jim's waking sense, and Singapore had melted.
"Scarcely a minute," said the man who sat beside him, completing Driscoll's speech. Which seemed incredible to Jim, after that affair at Singapore. But he let it pass, the more so that at that moment the nurse brought him something in a cup, which made him feel better.
"You was so good as to mention, master...."
"Your little girl? Yes—I saw her, an hour since.... Look!—I'll put my ear down, close. Needn't try to raise your voice!" For Jim had something he wanted to say badly.
"You'll not be mentioning any matters to my little lass, sir," said he slowly. And then, as though he felt his words were a little obscure: "You might chance to be saying something regarding of the matter of my fut. Ye see, master, a young child don't take these-like things as easy as we do, and my little lass's heart will be just abroke about her Daddy's fut. I'd take it very kind of ye if ye'd make any sart of a bit of contrivance like, only for a short spell o' deception, just till I get the heart in me to make a game of it all. It's the chloroform done it. A fair casuality don't knock all the heart out of a man...."
"Your little girl will have to know about it in the end."
"Ah!—in the end—yes! But then ... a wooden leg! See the difference! Why, I can most hear the lass laughing at it." Jim paused a few seconds to enjoy Lizarann's imagined hilarity, then added: "Ye'll keep it snug about my fut, master? A stump's a stump, ye know."
"She shan't be told any particulars yet, Coupland. Don't try yourself talking too much." For Jim's long speech has made his breath come short, and his last words are almost inaudible. He submits to listening. "The doctor has told me all about the accident. You'll have to have a wooden leg. Let me tell you about Lizarann." The way the speaker, whoever he is, accents the child's name, makes a family friend of him at once. Jim, with a vague picture in his mind of a sort of guardsman with quiet manners, moves his own big right hand, hot and weak now, as it lies on the coverlid. It is taken by another as big and the image of the guardsman is confirmed. Its voice suits the hand, and continues: "We thought it best for her not to come—Miss Fossett and I did. You know Miss Fossett, at the National School."
"Sure!" Jim's intonation acknowledges Miss Fossett, with approval in it. Athelstan Taylor had made up his mind how much it would be safe to tell of last night's work, so he continued:
"Your little maid and I made friends early this morning. I was passing by your house, and she came running out. Her uncle had been drinking, and his behaviour had frightened her.... What's that?" He stoops down again to hear, and Jim tries for clearer speech:
"The Devil he'll take Bob Steptoe one of these odd-come-shortlies, or I'm a liar. Only I wish he'd...."
"Wish he'd what?"
"Be alive about it—look a bit smarter! What was his game this time, master?"
"He was drunk and violent, and I had to control him. He's quiet now. I'll tell you more, Coupland, when you are stronger."
"Very right, sir!"
"I'll tell you now about Lizarann. I carried her off to Miss Fossett's—with her aunt's consent, of course. The poor little woman had had a bad time, you see. She wanted consolation badly after your accident, and not being