II
Though Government House was officially the chief residence of St. Hubert, it was but a thatched bungalow a little larger than Martin’s own Penrith Lodge. When he saw it, Martin felt more easy, and he ambled up to the broad steps, at nine of the evening, as though he were dropping in to call on a neighbor in Wheatsylvania.
He was stopped by a Jamaican manservant of appalling courtesy.
He snorted that he was Dr. Arrowsmith, head of the McGurk Commission, and he was sorry but he must see Sir Robert at once.
The servant was suggesting, in his blandest and most annoying manner, that really Dr. Uh would do better to see the Surgeon General, when a broad red face and a broad red voice projected themselves over the veranda railing, with a rumble of, “Send him up, Jackson, and don’t be a fool!”
Sir Robert and Lady Fairlamb were finishing dinner on the veranda, at a small round table littered with coffee and liqueurs and starred with candles. She was a slight, nervous insignificance; he was rather puffy, very flushed, undoubtedly courageous, and altogether dismayed; and at a time when no laundress dared go anywhere, his evening shirt was luminous.
Martin was in his now beloved linen suit, with a crumply soft shirt which Leora had been meanin’ to wash.
Martin explained what he wanted to do—what he must do, if the world was ever to get over the absurdity of having plague.
Sir Robert listened so agreeably that Martin thought he understood, but at the end he bellowed:
“Young man, if I were commanding a division at the front, with a dud show, an awful show, going on, and a War Office clerk asked me to risk the whole thing to try out some precious little invention of his own, can you imagine what I’d answer? There isn’t much I can do now—these doctor Johnnies have taken everything out of my hands—but as far as possible I shall certainly prevent you Yankee vivisectionists from coming in and using us as a lot of sanguinary—sorry, Evelyn—sanguinary corpses. Good night, sir!”