Truman Bennet was so weakened from loss of blood and dizziness due to the last blow he had received before he rushed the girls to safety that he feared he would faint while they were in the cab with him. It was only exercise of the giant will within him that he held control of himself till the girls had left him. Had he not been afraid of distressing them with his wounds he would not have allowed them to quit the carriage till safely at their homes. As it was when they turned from him, as he watched them down the street, he smiled weakly for an instant then the world blackened and his eyes became sightless while his body slumped to the street, his knees crumpling under him.
He knew not how long he had remained unconscious. It seemed eternities, suddenly he opened his eyes again and reached his hands to his head as if to ease the pain just above his ear. He felt the soft blood-matted sticky wound and remembered again. He struggled to his feet but slumped again, this time barely being conscious of the face of the cab driver looking back at him.
When he regained consciousness again he was on the operating table in the relief station to which he had been rushed by the cab driver and was being bandaged as a kindly doctor who had heard the cab driver's story was saying:
"Young man, you came very near to being a dead hero at this time. You'd better thank your lucky stars you have been getting your football training at the University. Almost any other man would have been dead. I suppose the picture of that pretty face you rescued kept you up.—Now the romance begins."
Truman continued to follow the movements of the physician but only half consciously, not yet realizing that it was Dr. Bayard Tansey, Physical Director of the University who was speaking.
Dr. Tansey continued to talk smilingly. "You, I'm talking to. Look at me with those brown eyes. I suppose you only see the face of a pretty girl now. All men are like that. Go daffy for a pretty face then wake up after they married.—You'll do the same as the rest, if I get you well. Guess I'll let you die.—No, on second thought, if you die you won't know what I know about women and every man ought to know at least as much.—Besides they need you on the football squad yet awhile." He was just about to be puzzled at the still silent gazing eyes and to wonder if there was not a blood clot on the brain which paralyzed his patient's senses when a film which seemed to envelop Truman's head faded away and intelligence came.
Dr. Tansey noted the change. "Ah, I thought I'd bring you to after awhile. You had a narrow squawk, boy. Here taste this." He held a medicine dropper to the patient's lips. The pungent fluid cleared away all the mental clouds and Truman tried to rise.
"Steady, now. Not so fast." Dr. Tansey stepped to the table and gently pressed Bennet back to his reclining position as he spoke. "You mustn't do that," he continued. "You'll spoil all my plans for you."
Bennet again essayed to rise, the effect of the drops administered to him now having fully cleared his brain. With the attempt, however, he felt a stinging pain in his head, lifted his hand to ease it and slowly pulled it away as he touched the huge bandages in which his head was swathed.
"What's the matter, Doctor?" he asked.
"Nothing, only I've just saved St. Peter the disagreeable task of kicking a perfectly good athlete out of Heaven and preserved real promising football material from a burning."
"Yes, I know all that rot but what am I doing here? and where's the girl—where's the mob—who hit me with that brick?"
"Ah!" exclaimed the doctor. "I know you're better now. You're a poor hero, even if you did do a good job in rescuing two pretty girls out of a pretty mess."
"Two girls!—Two girls!—Why, I only saw one." Bennet answered his brain now flashing back pictures of the mob and the struggle.
"All the same—two or one—what does it matter?" the doctor replied shaking his head in a whimsical manner. "You're a lost child now Bennet. You saw beauty in distress, looked into her soulful eyes—and yielded to Circe's power—plunged into a fight that was none of your affair,—got your head cracked—and you'll be loony for the remainder of your life. All for a girl—a skirt—a woman with large blue dreamy eyes.—
"Oh, don't deny it," he continued as Bennet raised a hand to protest and defend the girl, though still weak from the battle, the loss of blood and the operation. "—I got it all from your ravings while under the anaesthetic and I was operating, and from your cabby. Boy! your constitution's iron, I guess. You raved like a mad one over the girl."
"By jove, Doctor Tansey, she was worth all the risk. You ought have seen her.—A Hebe—a Juno—a Minerva—A—a—a—goddess. That's it Doctor, a goddess." Bennet's eyes sparkled as he pictured the girl in his mind.
Dr. Tansey, the idol of the football team, in fact of all the athletes at the University, burst into loud laughter at this. Beneath his exterior of sarcasm and raillery all those who came in contact with him at the emergency hospital knew he was a man of sympathy for youth, particularly youth suffering from injury. He adopted this attitude toward those young men who came to him from the football, baseball, track field or the gymnasium on the hill with their injuries in order to test their sincerity, their vitality and their spunk.
At the outburst of Bennet's he was pleased for he knew that the vitality of this young swarthy giant of manhood had not been sapped to danger point and that recovery would be rapid. Even his chin hidden by an imperial cut of hirsute adornment seemed to reflect the joy he felt at the discovery that Bennet was not in danger any longer. He had formed a special liking for this black-haired foreign looking American and there was more than ordinary joy in his laughter when he exploded after Bennet finished speaking of the girl. He raised his hands above his head in token of surrender, as he exclaimed:
"Gone, gone, gone! Completely gone! Good-bye Bennet. That blow on the head set you off completely. It knocked the man out of you and turned you into a fool lover. I suppose you'll be off your game for the remainder of the season and you'll be mooning up and down the street in front of Miss Gregory's school from now—"
Bennet almost set up from the chair on which he was still reclining at the words.
"That's where she's from? That's where she's from?" he asked. Dr. Tansey gave no answer. "I know it! I know it!" "—Doctor take me to a ward—Please take me to a ward.—How long shall I be here?—That's it. That's it!"
Dr. Tansey was replacing his scalpels in their case after carefully cleansing them. He was so deliberate in his movements as to be almost tantalizing. As he placed the last one in its place and folded the 'case he looked at Bennet and there was approval in his eyes. The blood was flushing the latter's face again. Dr. Tansey walked over to the chair, took a wrist in his hand and counted the pulse.
"You'llneverbe" he was tormentingly deliberate, "cured." He looked at Bennet to see the effect of the words and when he saw the disappointed look in the boy's eyes, he added "—till—you're married to her." With that he burst into laughter again and pressed the hand he held in warm friendship.
Bennet gave the hand a returning grip then a twinkle came into his eyes and he said "Bring her on and I'll marry her now."
"Now I know you're hopelessly foolish," Dr. Tansey replied. "No man in his senses would be willing to marry a girl when he had no prospect ahead of him and at the start of his senior year in college. And if I thought you meant any such thing as that I'd go get that brick that laid you out and present it to you again."
Bennet was no longer listening to the doctor, however, His mind was searching out the girl. Exhaustion was creeping over him also, and he began drifting off to sleep as the physician and an attendant whom he had now summoned trundled the wounded youth off to his ward. As Bennet was being lifted into his bed Dr. Tansey, immaculate in his suit of white duck eased the bandages about the wounded man's head, whose eyes were becoming more and more drowsy as he half muttered: "Get me well, quickly, Doctor. She's a queen."
It was several weeks before Bennet was sufficiently recovered to leave the hospital and return to college and several weeks longer before he was able to take part in the football contests scheduled for that fall. He was greatly missed by the entire team. The strike had long since been settled and the clash of police and workmen almost forgotten. So rapidly do human events follow one another. Those incidents in our lives that shock us today are gone and forgotten tomorrow. All adding to the sum of life and experience; all making history as we move toward eternity.