A slender
taint of drugs hung everywhere about the building, and the almost
imperceptible permeation sickened him; it was deadly, he thought, and
imbued with a hideous portent of suffering. That John Harkless, of all
men, should lie stifled with ether, and bandaged and splintered, and
smeared with horrible unguents, while they stabbed and slashed and
tortured him, and made an outrage and a sin of that grand, big, dexterous
body of his! Meredith shuddered. The lights in the little ward were turned
up, and they seemed to shine from a chamber of horrors, while he waited,
as a brother might have waited outside the Inquisition--if, indeed, a
brother would have been allowed to wait outside the Inquisition.
Alas, he had found John Harkless! He had "lost track" of him as men
sometimes do lose track of their best beloved, but it had always been a
comfort to know that Harkless _was_--somewhere, a comfort without which he
could hardly have got along. Like others he had been waiting for John to
turn up--on top, of course; for people would always believe in him so,
that he would be shoved ahead, no matter how much he hung back himself--
but Meredith had not expected him to turn up in Indiana. He had heard
vaguely that Harkless was abroad, and he had a general expectation that
people would hear of him over there some day, with papers like the "Times"
beseeching him to go on missions.
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